by submission | Feb 16, 2017 | Story |
Author : Callum Wallace
Bob and Dave were digging. Neither was sure what they were digging for, nor when they had started. Bob’s hole was bigger though, and he knew this was good, for some reason.
He vaguely remembered an old story, a myth, about some chap who continuously pushed a big old rock up a hill.
Suddenly there was a loud ping, pleasing to the ears, and a number flashed onto his retina, a voice buzzed in his ear drum.,
“Congratulations! You have just exceeded your previous record!”
More numbers flowed down his vision as another jolly fanfare played from nowhere.
Dave stopped, leaning on his shovel and breathing hard. “You must be cheating you old dog. There’s no way you earned all that XP already! You only just levelled up.”
Bob ignored him, perusing the virtual shop that had just opened up. Electing to purchase a rather fetching feathered cap for his avatar, he ignored the heavier spade that would assist his physical body.
He turned to Dave. “Check out my new hat mate. Good innit?”
Dave froze suddenly, accessing his own virtual display. He nodded. “Nice, nice. I like the purple bit. Wotsit, fluffy thing on top.”
“Feather, that is. Makes it rare an’ valuable an’ that.” Bob himself only knew because of the item’s title, but he lorded it over his friend anyway. “Come on bud, you’ll get one of your own soon if you ever get any good at this!”
Dave laughed and slammed his spade into the hard earth once again.
The sun beat overhead, and Bob realised he was thirsty. He ignored this too, powering on, trying to achieve another level. Maybe he’d get some new boots for his online persona, completing the nobleman look he’d always fancied for himself.
What more could a man want?
In the VirtoTech offices, a thousand miles away, an anonymous monitor checked the two dying men’s vitals, their thoughts, their ‘progress’.
The myth the older one had thought of made him smile, in his cold, steel and glass way. Sisyphus. The eternal worker. Pushing infinitely, for ever and ever, going up, falling down. Rinse and repeat.
Man hated this kind of work. It bored him, made him lazy, or mad, or both.
So Virtotech had addressed this, and it had been simple; a secondary goal, an award system. Something that continuously rewarded the player’s mundane strife with bright colours, shining sounds, and the ever lasting promise of more pointless gifts.
It was kind of sad, in a way. But the monitor’s kind had come here and realised something had to be done.
Sometimes, the lie was better than the truth.
And, sometimes, the lie was very profitable.
Very profitable indeed.
by submission | Feb 15, 2017 | Story |
Author : Kraig Conkin
Being a state of the art security drone, the People Pleaser 2200 didn’t feel the need to celebrate milestones. It held no sense of personal accomplishment, so when it’s internal logic board reported that ten days had passed without a single safety call from any of the 233 stores of Fauxhall Shopping Center, it experienced nothing akin to pride, just automated concern.
As the most widely used security drone in the world, over a million People Pleasers served humanity every day, serving their communities as guards and police, and of the models in use, the 2200 ranked as the most technologically advanced of all. Still, the recent safety report registered as anomalously perfect, so, after undocking from its over-night battery charger and starting the morning patrol, the drone initiated a self-diagnostic.
As its internal processor shifted through memory files, the PP2200 detected an intruder on the basement level of the shopping center and its mall greeting protocol kicked in. Black propellers lifted the drone from the food court floor. It whirred into the open space above the skating rink then spiraled between the escalators to enter the basement.
It lit gracefully on the floor, careful not to leave a scuff mark. Once grounded, the drone armed its anti-personal weapons array and scanned for thermal readings.
The absence of shoppers and the stores sitting quiet registered as incorrect, but the drone couldn’t place exactly why. The lack of people in Fauxhall could explain the recent lack of calls, but where did the people go?
Perhaps the diagnostic would shine light on that as well.
The drone located the target in the Nacho Pretzel Hut and moved to intercept.
Rolling toward the entrance, it attempted to pinpoint the target’s heat signature, but as his system was concurrently performing the diagnostic, the process was taking longer than usual.
Before the drone could lock, its exterior microphones picked up a high pitched hiss. The target, its furry face covered in nacho cheese, sprang from the darkness, past the drone and into the mall proper.
The creature identified as Procyon lotor, a North American Raccoon, and an unauthorized intruder.
The drone planted its firing stabilizer and unloaded. A wicked cascade of rubber bullets and bolts of green electricity erupted from his turret and instantly transformed the raccoon into a lump of burnt hair and flesh.
As its diagnostic entered its final stage, the drone paused over its most recent kill .
Something about killing the animal read as problematic, like the lack of shoppers, but, again, the drone couldn’t place the reason.
The diagnostic finished and the drone quickly reviewed the results. All systems functioned at one-hundred percent efficiency. Only one anomaly stood out. An unauthorized upload.
Ten days ago the drone had powered down unexpectedly and new perimeters had been uploaded from an unspecified source. The file registry indicated the update had been mass-distributed to every PP2200 in service- although it didn’t carry the usual encryption codes.
Yet, somehow, its records showed the upload as successfully initialized. Such a thing shouldn’t have been possible.
The PP2200’s safety perimeters, intruder definitions, and several aggression threshold protocols had all been altered. The previous files had been erased, so the drone had no way of knowing exactly how the files had been altered, but the update almost certainly explained Fauxhall’s recent security record.
The PP2200 had been improved.
Relieved in its synthetic way, the drone expertly scooped the raccoon’s remains into its undercarriage compartment. The PP2200 noted that this body was smaller than the shopping center’s previous intruders. Dumping the carcass in the underground parking lot wouldn’t take nearly as much time as the other bodies.
The drone could be back on patrol in no time.
by Stephen R. Smith | Feb 14, 2017 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
When the last of the ships left, they blasted craters a mile deep in the earth, so large it would take the better part of a day to walk their circumference.
The ground at the bottom of these holes had been heated to molten, and had cracked and fissured as it cooled. The sides were carved almost perfectly vertical, exposing the bands in the earth that marked time.
The underground waterways found their way to these low spots, and they, helped by the rains that followed the evacuation, filled them, the water teeming with new life.
The vegetation that had been caught in the downwash burned for months, leaving the earth around these new geometrically unlikely lakes blackened and ashen.
From space the Earth must have looked like the charred bowling ball of some many-fingered god, discarded in its decaying orbit around a dying star.
In time, the plant life that survived produced seeds, and the birds and bees carried them, as did the breeze. The scorched earth sprouted flowers and shrubs on the high ground, and bullrushes and reeds in the valleys, and grasses and other persistent life of every colour and shade imaginable sprung up throughout. The bugs crawled up from the ground and reclaimed the spaces they had once been so violently expunged from.
Rivers found their ways into the massive pools, bringing sediment to cloud the waters, and sustain life, and fish to feed on the insects that had started to breed there.
Foxes chased rabbits, and were themselves chased by coyotes. Wild cats chased rats through the empty streets and buildings left abandoned.
Slowly, the Earth filled in the spaces man left behind with what remained, gradually erasing the memories of the people who had paved over and walled in everything for so many hundreds of years.
On the hilltop, in the shade of the great observatory, I watch the sun dip below the horizon, bathing everything in sight with the purple and orange haze that I will never get tired of seeing.
In the distance, wild birds are calling their last for the day, and the forest animals are waking and talking to each other, and no-one, and to the coming night.
In the years since you’ve been gone, the planet has worked tirelessly to erase all memory of you.
And yet still the memory of you persists.
by Julian Miles | Feb 13, 2017 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Crystallized atmosphere streams in slow motion from shattered windows and blown-out doors. It catches the light and paints rainbow banners against the starry night beyond the curved expanses of cracked supraglass. This was Balyen Station, first of the freespace habitats, home to a million souls.
A frozen pigeon spirals by, beak wide open, eyes reduced to pits of ruin. It conjures images in my mind that make me dry heave into my helmet.
Zeiral whispers over my commlink: “Is it as bad as I think?”
“Probably worse. Haven’t had the guts to go see.”
“Enough circumstantial proof about?”
“There are birds and pets.”
“Oh, no.”
“I saw a goldfish. In a globe of ice, bowl shattered. This went bad unbelievably fast. The crash freeze happened first, which caused the environments to crack. It also rendered the seals on their emergency facilities useless.”
I hear Zeiral updating the other groups, her voice tremulous: “The disaster written off as a ‘negligible chance’ has happened.”
She’s pre-empting the conclusion of the inquiry-to-come but is right.
Eternal dark can ruin a mind and lack of atmosphere will kill a body. But, to let people live in space for any span of time, the leeching cold has to be defeated. Open-form habitats like Balyen have huge temperature inverter rigs, parasitically utilising the cold to massively enhance their heating ability.
There is a minuscule chance that a micro-meteor, if it impacts at a precise angle and speed, could cause sufficient specific damage that it would force the surviving inverters into cascade failure. If that does happen, there is a fraction of a single percent chance the failure will manifest as a catastrophic cryonic event. Too bad Murphy’s Law wasn’t factored into the risk assessment.
“Are we invoking rescue or recovery?”
Zeiral’s query breaks my distraction.
“Give me a few minutes.”
Her reply is lost as I crest a rise and realise this used to be a park. Right in front of me, two bodies lie in a contorted embrace. They’re both in T-shirts and shorts. Barefoot. A picnic blanket is spread under them, the unopened hamper to one side.
Her arm is raised, probably a result of muscle-freezing spasms. A beautiful red rose rests in the loose grasp of a pale hand. The petals are edged in black, topped with white crystals highlighting the outline of each.
It’s like she’s offering it to me. I fix my gaze on the rose as tears start to float in front of my face. I’m not going to look into her possibly ruptured eyes: I daren’t – I’d never leave Earth again. Let the determination be made by something immune to contemplating the horror of whether she froze to death or was rendered immobile and then decompressed.
My last hope dies. Balyen Station: icy grave for a million people.
I sob out orders as I retreat: “Activate automated recovery and forensic procedures, Zeiral. Nobody else gets to carry this nightmare as a memory.”
by xdhz8 | Feb 12, 2017 | Story |
Author : David Henson
“Tommy and Sally, fly down to your seats and turn off your levitation belts, OK?” Miss DeRozan says gently. The two children ignore their teacher at first, then glide down to their places.
“Let’s get started,” the teacher says. “We’re going to have a wonderful time learning a lot of wonderful things this year.” — “Sounds wonderful” — someone giggles from the back of the room. Miss DeRozan smiles. “We’re fortunate to have an IACD conference with Captain Sandier. But first TA will deliver a quantum mechanics refresher. TA.”
The featureless android walks to the front of the class, light streaming from its synthetic skin to form a perfect image of Albert Einstein.
“Spooky action at a distance,” TA Einstein says in German.
“Miss DeRozan, I think his hair is spooky,” Sally says, also in German.
“Please, Sally, be nice. And by the way, you should have your UT checked. You just said TA Einstein has a scary rabbit. TA.”
“Spooky action at a distance,” TA Einstein repeats then reviews the early study of quantum mechanics. Every few minutes, lights swirl as TA’s appearance progresses through a series of prominent physicists. All the while children glide in and out of their seats despite Miss DeRozan’s pleas. The glowing android finally concludes as renowned artificial sentient Ciress Prime Xavier, who describes how she used the phenomenon of quantum entanglement to develop ICAD, instantaneous communication at any distance.
“Thank you, TA,” Miss DeRozan says. The teaching assistant assumes its blank appearance then turns toward the noisy students and flashes brightly. As it does, Tommy and Sally fly up near the ceiling and chase each other around the room.
“Children!” Miss DeRozan says sternly, then clears her throat. “Please,” she says sweetly. After another lap around the room, Tommy and Sally return to their desks.
“TA,” Miss DeRozan says, “Connect with Captain Sandier.” TA goes to the communications port, inserts its index finger, and glows the appearance of the Captain light years away.
“Good morning, class,” TA Captain says with a friendly salute. “Who can tell me the Expansion’s mission?”
“You’re on the far side of Alpha Centauri B looking for planets to terraform,” Jimmy shouts. “I have a question.”
“Uh…sure.”
“Have you ever been in a laser duel?” he says, rising into the air and pretending to shoot at Tommy, who flies out of his seat and fires back.
“Boys, please,” Miss DeRozan says.
“Captain Sandier, do any of those planets have giant frogs?” Sally says, rising and hopping through the air.
“Class, class,” Miss DeRozan says, but soon most of the children are hopping, back-flipping and somersaulting above their desks.
“Maybe we’ll do this another time,” Captain Sandier says. “Signing off.” TA immediately goes blank.
“Students,” Miss DeRozan says weakly, then walks to her desk and slumps heavily into her chair, the children roiling above her.
Suddenly TA begins to glow more brightly than ever. The swirl of light broadens and nearly reaches the ceiling till finally a Rhondarian Dragon is towering in the middle of the room. The beast roars and snaps it’s huge jaws, just missing Tommy. The boy freezes then immediately drifts down to his desk. TA dragon bares long razor-sharp teeth and eyes the other children, who quickly return to their places as well.
“Uh, thank you, TA,” Miss DeRozan says as her assistant reverts to its neutral form. “Now, students, please activate Chapter 1 in — Yes, Tommy,” she says noticing the boy waving his hand frantically.
“Miss DeRozan,” Tommy says. “May I please be excused to go to the bathroom?”
by submission | Feb 11, 2017 | Story |
Author : Dylan Otto Krider
I don’t believe in love, but spent my entire professional life studying it, the last ten years in your lab. Our compatriots believed in it. They believed it made us human, separated us from the animals. They think love was the basis of morality: sacrificing yourself for others. You were one of these, yet, you are one of the most selfish people I know.
I am not so naïve. The kinships could be self-serving: the group with the genes for sacrifice had an advantage over the purely selfish.
Outwardly teaching self-sacrifice had the purpose of raising your standing in the community and encouraging others to follow your example. Not adhering to your example gives you an advantage over your upstanding colleagues.
I do believe in hypocrisy.
You feigned interest in my career, promised to leave your wife, as you promised others in your office. When I complained, the department didn’t listen because you are upstanding.
But love? Not anymore.
I believe in war. That was something I can quantify, study, mark down in a notebook, but not love.
We were the only animals who engaged in war, except for ants. Ants have no capacity for love. What they have is self-sacrifice so they can engage in battle, just as we have done, banding together, putting those careers you promised us on the line when we went to the press. What a scandal, a pillar of the community exposed.
That is love, in a way. A love I can believe in.
