by submission | Jul 28, 2024 | Story |
Author: B.M. Gilb
“I don’t like that we’d ‘buy’ Charlotte a friend.”
“We wouldn’t be buying her a friend, Leo. We’re essentially adding a new member to our family. Like a dog,” says Amelia.
“A robot is not a dog,” says Leo. He stuffs another garbage bag full of dead leaves into the pile in their forest-lined backyard. Amelia leans on her rake to give him a severe stare that softens in the fall air.
“I understand your concerns, Leo. It’s not the same as having a dog, but it could still bring joy and companionship to our home. Especially for Charlotte,” says Amelia.
Flashes of colorful light escape from their colonial-style windows on the second floor. Amelia and Leo look to Charlotte’s bedroom, where she plays alone all day. Leo’s hopes of Charlotte coming outside to play by clearing the yard becomes as real as the holographs she interacts with inside. He sets his rake against a tree.
“Amelia, I know you want to make Charlotte happy. God knows I’m worried about her isolation at school, too. But putting that level of technology in the hands of a child isn’t healthy. Remember the studies about cell phone impacts on kids? Anxiety, depression, sleep problems, catastrophic long-term impacts to their mental health–”
“This is different. A.I. is different,” says Amelia.
“That’s what worries me. What impact will an A.I. robot companion have on her development?”
“What do you think loneliness is doing to her development?”
Leo has flashes of his childhood loneliness. He distracts himself from the pain by stuffing more leaves into a trash bag. His parents bought him a dog. But his dog Barney couldn’t play chess or Monopoly. It only helped so much.
“Okay. Fine. We can try it. I’m just really nervous about having a smart robot walking around the house,” Leo says.
“Just think of it as another person,” Amelia says.
“But… Is it another person?” Leo asks.
Leo and Amelia stare silently at each other over the dead leaves—only the cold wind answers.
by submission | Jul 27, 2024 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
A meteor did in the dinosaurs.
70,000 years ago, an Ice Age wiped out all but a few handfuls of Homo-Erectus.
Almost half the population died in the 1300’s because of the Black Plague.
Armageddon had been predicted since man could tell stories. Aliens, zombie invasion, geo-thermal disaster, pandemic. Even the bible chronicles an event with a whole lot of goddamn rain.
But true End-of-Days turned out to be music.
A song with the ironic title, “Alone Without You.”
A new musical idol appeared on the scene six months prior, Colton Michaels, with his catchy debut song, “Love is in My Brain,” that quickly climbed the charts and hit number one with a bullet. Two months later, “Listen to the Beat,” followed and it was the first time a newcomer had held the top two spots on all the charts in music history.
Fan clubs sprung up around the world begging for an album, a tour, even a glimpse of the ‘so far’ elusive singer. The mystery of who he was only heightened the phenomenon’s attention.
Then it was announced, in a whirlwind media blitz, that Colton Michaels’ new hit would be released worldwide on June 6 at midnight GMT. East coast cities coordinated an eight PM super party with every radio station playing it simultaneously, some deciding to run it continuously. California was hosting a kickoff banquet at the LA Coliseum, an end-all blowout with every major celebrity and dignitary in attendance. Europeans were planning to stay up past everyone’s bedtime to hear it as soon as it was played. China, at eight o’clock AM, had massive call outs so people could listen to it live. It would be the biggest event ever recorded by mankind.
Eighty-five percent of the planet’s population were dead in the first three minutes, five seconds, the length of “Alone Without You.” Another seven percent by the end of the first hour.
Colton Michaels was the creation of an Artificial Intelligent supercomputer that had been tasked to compile extensive research on the workings of the human brain and map out a possible cure for the effects of dementia and Alzheimer’s. The computer spent years studying the data from countless testing. Scientists were hoping the computer could reverse or correct the path that the mind suffered during these ailments. What it unwittingly discovered was that it could manipulate certain electrical impulses with a specific reverberating tone.
The computer then conducted its own experiment. The first two songs contained subtle subliminal messages priming human psyche to fall in love with the singer. It evaluated results and was encouraged to execute the global completion of the project. When “Alone Without You” was released, the underlying beat had a coded direction that the human brain’s synapses picked up without even realizing it. It triggered a failure of involuntary signals causing hearts to stop beating, blood to quit pumping, lungs to cease inhaling. People’s metabolisms arrested on the spot.
Society soon collapsed, what was left of it, as a fog of rotting corpses poisoned all the cities of the world. The only people that survived were the three or four percent of deaf people left on the planet. What the supercomputer hadn’t calculated was that the power girds slowly began to fail without maintenance and the electricity they needed to operate dried up and they went dormant.
Now it’s sixty years later and those of us still around survive in an archaic establishment where communications are only done by sign language and society lives in the crumbling shells of leftover buildings.
And it’s a silent world, devoid of music.
by submission | Jul 26, 2024 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
The bullet passed straight through him. Of course it did, he was a Hollow but he was the latest model, state of the art, the most efficient and lifelike replica on the market right now.
Lenny groaned, because to all intents and purposes at that particular moment in time, he WAS Lenny. He grasped at the wound, creating more than a little blood and allowed it to seep through his fingers and drip onto the carpet as he too dropped onto his knees.
The gunman stepped closer, both arms outstretched with the gun pointed directly at Lenny’s head. The next bullet was destined for his brain.
Lenny didn’t recognise the man.
‘I don’t know you,’ he said, pleading, ‘you don’t know me. Why are you doing this? You don’t have to do it; you don’t have to cross this line.’
Looking up, Lenny saw the man’s face had turned deathly pale and his hands were shaking. Hell, Lenny was enjoying this too damn much, relishing the subterfuge, enjoying his own performance. The plan wasn’t to survive this, to come through it.
Groaning again, he dropped his head, avoiding the gunman’s stricken face, his eyes.
‘Just do it,’ he barked, ‘come on you pussy, just do it.’
And he did, he pulled the trigger and Lenny dropped back. This was the easy part for a Hollow, playing dead, laying lifeless and dormant.
An older hitman, a more experienced assassin, would have leant over the body and checked for a pulse, two fingers just below the ear. But this young man, still shaking, was already fleeing the scene.
Lenny stopped recording. He had all he needed and his revenge was going to be oh, so sweet.
by submission | Jul 25, 2024 | Story |
Author: Ell Rodman
I spent most of Monday morning awake in bed, staring at a clock that reads three hundred and eighty two. Its set into a wall of deep green steel tainted by orange rust. Or did the clock stare at me? I could never tell where the cameras were. Next to me, Missy Mae slept silently. Her alabaster skin was covered in matted blonde hair, blank eyes framed by blue eye shadow that was beginning to smear.
I’d have to fix that later.
With a sigh, I descended the stairs. They were carpeted with a series of emergency blankets stashed in the back of the local commissary. There was nothing worse in the early morning than feeling cold steel on one’s bare feet. I rounded the corner into the kitchen and plopped down onto a barstool by the counter. While the walls and ceilings were the same cramped, rusted green as my room, the furniture had some personality; rickety stools were made of real warm wood, the counters a cracked white plaster, the sink – if you could believe this – actual earth-sourced marble. To outside eyes, it may have looked like just another stack of shipping containers. Inside, however, it was home.
I coughed. Unfortunately, it was hard to find unoccupied housing in this area. Our roommate Frankie stood in front of the oven, intently watching a baking loaf. She liked to lounge about our shared apartment in her nightrobe, a short silky number that clung to her hips and barely concealed her considerable form. We have a history, I’m ashamed to say. It’s something Missy doesn’t know about, and I’m damned lucky the two don’t speak very often.
“I had a bad dream this morning,” I said meekly. I’d talk about my relationship with my mother if it meant not being entranced by those thick legs again. “It was about my case. It wasn’t right, y’know? Wasn’t fair.” Frankie gave no indication she heard me, which was not uncommon. The woman had sex appeal like you wouldn’t believe, but all the conversational talent of a cat’s asshole.
The oven timer went off. She made no move to open it or speak to me. Frustrated, I walked to the oven, ignored the slight flutters in my stomach as my hand brushed by where that silky robe clung to her hip. I cut myself a slice of the loaf and walked out the door. I may have stammered a goodbye, an apology, or a “don’t tell Missy”, but whichever it was fell on deaf ears.
It was dark outside – our daytime simulation had been buggy all Autumn. Two halves of a splintered moon sparkled like a stripper’s glitter in the sky. I walked to my daily, clocked in, and sat on a synthetic tire. It had three hundred and eighty-two marks on it, and I added another before rolling it towards Jeff. I knew he was a melancholy type, but I didn’t know he was fragile.
The tire burst through his legs, shattering them to pieces. His blank face reflected nothing of the pain I just put him through. Why would it? He was a department store mannequin. The only difference between him and Missy or Frankie were poorly lubricated silicone parts I’d glued between the latter’s legs. My shaky hand brought a cigarette to my lips. Fixed to my wrist, a chrome shackle displayed a red number: 2,537. The number of days I had left in isolation in this prison box on the edge of the galaxy.
I watched through tears as the tire spun itself to the ground.
by submission | Jul 24, 2024 | Story |
Author: Elysia Rourke
The meteoroid hurtles towards Pioneer’s cockpit every time you close your eyes. Alarms scream—you scream—and slam the controls.
All for nothing.
Today, your calculations have worn your last pencil to the eraser. That’s why you’re mixing urine and red drink powder, gathering the paste on the tip of a flimsy pipet.
Andy,
( )
Love,
You haven’t written your name since the catastrophe. 249 days. It’s almost impossible to write through the tremors. The hunger, the thirst.
But Andy will understand the brackets. You’ve kissed every passed note since high school biology. The brackets make the kisses easier to find.
You sift through the research module. Spilled mineral samples litter the ground, victims of your frustration. A plastic test tube will work. You slip the note inside.
You crawl past your bunk and the useless engine. The meteoroid obliterated the thrust chamber, leaving not a single screw to reconstruct. You’ve tried.
Priming the lavatory flush vent, you thank heaven the tube fits in the plumbing. The toilet hisses and flings your message into the expanse.
Back in the cockpit, you prop your feet on the useless controls. The display is a familiar fireworks show of warning lights. It usually makes you anxious, but tonight it reminds you of home.
A jellyfish nebula sparkles beyond the fused silica glass window, blue and pink tentacles twisting among the star field. It’s the gravesite of a supernova. One day, its glowing gases will knot together and birth a new star.
A promise you’ve clung to since the accident.
Celestial bodies twinkle light years away. Andy’s on one of them, searching, grieving, moving on. Loneliness offers half-hearted chest compressions; you’re fighting dry tears.
“I love you,” you whisper, as though somehow Andy might hear.
It’s alright. You’re waiting to move on too.
by submission | Jul 23, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
It’s a bummer, but whenever you try to cram too much into too small a space, black holes inevitably form. That’s the danger of trying to imagine the largest of numbers.
Huge numbers contain a lot of information, and information has weight. Ten trillion gigabytes of data weighs about as much as a speck of dust. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re dealing with the size of numbers that I do you have to be careful that your head doesn’t explode.
Or, more precisely, implode.
A thing most folks like to avoid. I did for most of my life. But when the Extrasolar War began and Earth was dealt a punishing blow, I got called in by the top brass. I’d once been a government mathematician that specialized in very large numbers–Avogadro’s number, the Eddington number, Googolplex, Graham’s number, TREE(3)–until those weighty numbers crushed me.
Broke me.
If you let those numbers get inside your head, they don’t resolve. They’re finite, containable, but wildly opportunistic. They’ll always always follow the fool’s path to infinity, and there’s only one end to that: black hole head death.
It can happen. Calculating the largest of numbers in your brain is equivalent to ten billion trillion trillion trillion trillion gigabytes of information. That’s a lot of very localized weight. Enough to form a black hole with the same radius of a typical human head. It makes for a rather singular singularity. A very catastrophic one.
That’s why the generals wanted me. There was no way our hastily cobbled defense forces were going to beat a foe that had mastered interstellar travel. The only thing sparing Earth from a full scale invasion was the invaders’ very sensible caution. They weren’t entirely sure what they were dealing with. I mean, we haven’t exactly figured our species out either, so they had to be wondering: What makes us tick? Could they subjugate us? Should they annihilate us?
Right after their initial salvo to demonstrate their superior might, the invaders pulled back. Went dark. Went sinister. Went hunting.
A diverse cross section of humans of various ages, races, and professions went mysteriously missing. This rattled the populace even more than the initial attack from orbit, but, as the pattern of abductions became clearer, the top brass saw an opportunity to strike back at our extraterrestrial foes.
They called the top secret operation Beavis and Black Hole which seemed fitting since the idea was diabolically asinine. Along with other numerical savants, I was trained and then put in a more likely position to be abducted. Why?
Suicide bombers are better off not asking why.
If abducted I was to continue calculating Graham’s number as I had been trained to do until the crush of information in my head reached criticality and formed a black hole. A formidable weapon against any enemy.
Now as bait, I wait. Counting not just the hours, but the near infinity of the finite, because my days are absolutely numbered.
