by submission | Dec 24, 2016 | Story |
Author : Edwin Tam
“How will you do it with incomplete memory transfer from the subject?”
“We have cultural references on file: I’ll fill in the gaps.”
“But you’re supposed to infiltrate and integrate: there’ll be an offspring in the house. “
“Right, four feet tall with a brain that’s not fully developed…”
“We should hold off. What if we end up blowing the mission?”
“Stop with the questions already…it’s just a N-class planet, and we’re behind schedule. Let’s just do this.”
***
“Who are these for, dad?” he asks, beaming as I show him his gift. It’s a huge box of toys, all brand new.
“You got a good report card, son, and you deserve a reward.”
When I bring out the other five even larger boxes, he somehow looks frightened.
***
“What’s wrong with your tongue?” he mutters, staring at my mouth.
“That insect bite from last week caused it to swell up,” I explain.
“But it’s not swollen, it’s just really long,” he answers.
I swat him lightly on the top of his head with it.
“But it still works,” I say, grinning.
***
“When’s mom coming home?” he whispers.
“She’ll come home when she comes home. Aren’t you having fun with me?” I ask.
“But it’s been a week,” he complains.
Why does he always want his mother? This upsets me. I turn away to grab a quick bite of the cat without him noticing. But frankly, I no longer feel hungry, and it’s his fault. Do other fathers go through this too?
***
“Where are you?” he calls out, going from room to room.
He loves hide and seek, but doesn’t like not knowing where I am. So he tries to get me to answer. That is cheating. I need to show some tough love; otherwise he will grow up to be spoiled and entitled. I wait in the dark, claws extended. I only intend to scare him.
***
“Why do you want to hurt me?” he cries.
“I’m only trying to raise you right, son.”
He is trying to hold up a large gun with his small hands.
They really should hide these things better if there are children in the house.
“You’re not my dad. I found dad and mom in the basement.”
I shake my head. I told him not to go down there. He never listens.
“Put that down. Now!” I command sternly, in my best father voice.
I feel my second heart bursting before I hear the bang.
He just never listens.
by submission | Dec 23, 2016 | Story |
Author : Travis Gregg
“Goddamit Steve, will you hold the ladder?” Darius yelled down. He’d been burdened with Steve for three weeks now and things were getting worse. Reluctantly, almost begrudgingly, Steve sauntered over and put his hands on the ladder. Darius sighed. The owner, a man Darius used to think of as a friend, had tasked Darius with training his son. The owner felt like it was important for his son to learn the basics of the business he’d ostensibly run one day but so far it had been like pulling teeth.
—
Darius looked around the brightly lit basement of the community center and sighed. The folding chairs were arranged in a circle, about twenty in total, most of them full. He chose a chair near the exit, not sure if he’d stay or not. He knew that at the meetings it was common for new people to tell their story but he wasn’t sure if he was up for it or not. When it came time to share it turned out he had some things to say.
“The job had been a simple one,” he started, “just rerunning some new thermal feed lines along the roof line of a three-story warehouse downtown. I’d been doing this for years but it only takes a small mistake.”
Several of the old timers nodded at this. Almost everyone here was a product of some sort of accident.
“On the way down I hit a ledge snapping my arm in three places. It’s funny, a hundred years ago an injury like that would have meant amputation. My father probably would have gotten rods and pins, but these days it’s back to amputation. Guess things come around full circle.”
He took my jacket off so he could show off his artificial limb.
“My new arm is all titanium and carbon fiber, fully integrated into my nervous system. It’s got neural feedback, grip strength ten times what I had before, and will still be functional after I’m long dead. I’m probably the first of several people who’ll use it now that I think about it.”
“I was unconscious when the paramedics got there,” he continued. “They gave me the once over and since my arm was so mangled they went ahead and started prepping the replacement. Pretty standard procedure for them, most things doctors do these days is remove and replace. What the paramedics missed was the artificial liver, hips, and spine I got when I was younger.”
A couple of the others nod at this, knowing where his story was headed. That’s why they were at the meeting after all.
Darius continued, mostly for himself than the others. “When you cross the line you have to give consent but they’d missed it with me. The new arm put me well over the 35% artificial which, when they realized, prompted the local rep to reclassify my citizenship status. They don’t call it second class citizenship but that’s what it is. We can’t vote, can’t hold office; they don’t want people who can live to be a thousand in office. I felt the same way when I was a normie. Things change though when you’re on the other side. I’ll probably go for a complete redo now, no point in not.”
His story finished he sat down and half listened as the meeting continued. He’d never really thought about getting a complete redo but the idea had just tumbled out while he was sharing. When he was a citizen the idea of the gear heads becoming the majority bothered him deeply but the unenhanced becoming the minority was almost a mathematical certainty. Some of the mods they were doing these days would extend life hundreds of years, maybe indefinitely.
Up until that point there had been a dichotomy within Darius. He’d only started changing his thinking to his new situation but in telling his story his view shifted. He was an enhanced, not a gear head, and they weren’t citizens, they were normies.
Looking around at his brothers and sisters he smiled. We’ll have our day when there isn’t anyone left but the enhanced, one way or another.
by submission | Dec 22, 2016 | Story |
Author : Travis Gregg
“So first things first,” the man began, “there is no such thing as time traveling. I’ll repeat it again for those of you who are a little slow on the uptake. There is no such thing as time traveling. The past is the past, you can’t go back.” The gristled orientation instructor had clearly done this a thousand times. He has his spiel down tight.
“What we do is put you into an alternate time stream. No matter what the boys in marketing say, and God knows I’ve told them enough times, this isn’t time travel. If you go back far enough and try and relive your life as a younger you, you won’t have the same kids, things won’t play out the same. I’d leave those lottery numbers and sports almanacs at home if and when you go. They’ll just be dead weight. I’d also strongly recommend that couples do not try the Hollywood movie idea of going back separately and trying to find each other. You will never ever ever find each other. Attraction is strongly based on proximity, but that’s neither here nor there.”
Some of the others in the orientation group had started murmuring to each other.
He continued, getting back on track, “This is a total cut from this reality and what you know of events. We get close, very very close to the Prime Reality, but every reality is different, most in imperceptible ways, but events compound and compound and it’ll be different. One way trip, no coming back.”
By this time the older couple on my left had made their way to the exit as had several others. Only about 40% of the group remained and it seemed most of those were staying because it would be rude to leave in the middle of the presentation.
I thought on it some, I was like the rest of them, hoping to redo specific mistakes. Everything different though, things won’t play out the same? I thought back on my life, the mistakes, all the things that went wrong, the bad luck even.
Sounds perfect.
by submission | Dec 21, 2016 | Story |
Author : Beck Dacus
In the middle of filing my taxes, I got a phone call. I hoped it would be some kind of relief from this stress, but it wasn’t to be; it was my wife’s lawyer calling, saying she wanted to meet about the settlement and matters of custody over lunch on Wednesday. I told the man I was working a double shift that day to scrape up the last few dollars for my rent, but he wasn’t budging. Presumably, Annabelle wasn’t either. I wasn’t used to thinking of my soon-to-be ex-wife as a bitch, but I couldn’t help it right then.
I hung up on him while he was in mid-sentence, and I knew Annabelle was going to make me pay for that (probably literally), but I didn’t care at the moment. I got back to the taxes. Then my doorbell rang.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I said, getting up and going over to turn the knob. Out on my porch was a man in a tuxedo, reaching in his pocket to hand me something. He said, “Welcome to the end of the universe, son.”
I thought he was reaching into his pocket to hand me a pamphlet, and I said, “Sorry, I’m not religious. Maybe you can get someone else to think it’s the rapture.” I tried to close the door, but his hand pushed it back open. Surprised at this guy’s audacity, I looked at what he now held out to me in his hand. It looked like a detonator, and it might as well have been.
“How’s your day been? Are you having some adult troubles?”
That was a weird term for him to use, but it was pretty accurate. Which was also weird. “How’d you know?”
“I did my research, Mr. Dumphein. That’s why I’ve decided to give this to you.” He urged the detonator thing into my hand.
“Just tell me what this is, man.”
“It’s something that will give you what you want. Childhood.”
The look in my eyes told him to go on.
“This button will make the entire universe revert to the way it was twenty-four years ago, when you were eight. Do you remember that, Mr. Dumphein?”
I did. Most of that time, I spent laughing. Watching cartoons I could no longer remember the name of. Sneaking candy from the pantry with my brothers as accomplices. It was just… fun. Something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
“This will take you back there. It will revert everything in the universe, including this planet, you, and me. Which means in twenty-four years, I will return to make this same offer. And you will give me the same answer. That is why the universe ends today, Mr. Dumphein. Time never goes past this point.”
“Only if I say yes,” I retorted. “And how do I know this works, anyhow? Why should I believe any of this?”
“No harm in it if it’s fake, is there?”
That was a fair point. The thought of being that young again swelled in my mind, blocking out everything else, all other reason. The “detonator” felt good in my hand. Like that candy from the pantry. Like the sun on my face in Milwaukee, in 1992. Like the simple life of a child.
The last sound in the universe was a soft click.
by submission | Dec 20, 2016 | Story |
Author : Mark Cowling
Alan studies his reflection in the bathroom cabinet mirror. His face seems wrong — older, for a start. And unfamiliar in a way he can’t define, like something put together by the police from eyewitness descriptions.
He looks around the room, now unsure why he is there. A note has been stuck on the mirror: “brush your teeth”. Alan obeys the little yellow square. Rivulets of pink swirl down the drain when he spits. He checks his teeth in the mirror: his gums are bleeding.
There is another hand-written note stuck to the back of the bathroom door, “don’t forget to flush.” Alan stares at the unused toilet before doing as he is told.
“Ah, Mr Winter.” A man wearing an expensive suit takes him by the arm and leads him through to the living room. “We really don’t need any coffee,” says the man with a smile. Alan decides to go with him; the man seems to know what he is doing.
Alan finds himself sitting on the sofa in the living room. Opposite him are the man and a woman of a similar age, mid-thirties. They could be friends of his son, perhaps. Acquaintances from the office. But there is a business card on the table: “Vincent Fitzgerald. Swift & Richardson.” They must be lawyers.
“As we were saying, Mr Winter, the contract you signed does have a robust clause covering proprietary information. I really do wish we could do more for you.” Fitzgerald sighs theatrically and shakes his head. Alan isn’t stupid, he knows when he is being patronised.
“They’re claiming you underwent illegal information masking. Which is what they always say in cases like this.” The woman speaking now. She doesn’t seem any more sympathetic.
“Information…” Alan says.
“Yes. To prevent data scrubbing. Memories, I mean,” adds Fitzgerald. “That’s how the company is explaining the irreparable damage we believe they caused to your brain. But there is really nothing we can do. As far as the law is concerned, that data belonged to the company. And when you retired, it was your legal obligation to relinquish all sensitive and–”
The woman interrupts and speaks to her colleague directly, unconcerned with lowering her voice. “This is useless; we’ve gone through it five times already. We can’t make it any simpler.”
“Well, we have the signature. That’s all we legally need,” says Fitzgerald.
The two lawyers stand and so Alan stands too. They smile and shake his hand. They speak but Alan is not really listening. Thank you for your time. It was very nice to meet you. We wish you all the best for the future…
Alan stands in front of the bathroom mirror again. He feels uneasy, but can’t think of anything that should make him uneasy. There is a nagging voice in his head. The voice is muffled, as if underwater, something is very wrong it seems to be saying. Alan doesn’t know what to do, so he follows the advice of the little yellow note. He brushes his teeth for several minutes, spitting blood into the sink.
by Julian Miles | Dec 19, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Perhaps it was the spirit of the time and the place that affected me. But I assure you no occurrence of any of my other battlefields impressed me so keenly. I halted on my tour to gaze on the spectacle, and to reflect on its meaning.
This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog. . . . I had looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands.
Yet, here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog. I am certain that at that instant I felt more ready than at any other time to show mercy toward a suppliant foe-man.”
Those words were written by a long-dead He. It tells of the moment that the Napoleon human became a He. We make special bonds with our Hes and Shes. Humans who haven’t can’t understand.
My He held me after the upgrade turned me from dog to neocanine. When they set the wrong nerve alignment for my shoulder mounts, He didn’t reject me and ask for a new neopup – He threw clays for three days without rest so I could reset the neural pathways myself.
All the other neocanines watched TV. My He taught me how to read, and used TV with ‘subtitles’ to help. We watched movies with the other teams, but He and I swapped texts about what we watched. He was never too busy to reply.
He taught me how to evade security systems by having me sneak off base to meet him. The fifth time I did that, I found that my He had his own She who pretended to only be a human. Which was strange at first, but made sense. He laughed when I told him that.
We went to war and had fun and killed lots of things that would have hurt our teams. I liked the sprinting drones best: I had to run and jump and shoot in the air so my aim was steady. Everyone shouted at me about that.
He just smiled and said: “You’re getting better without being taught. They like that.”
War followed us home and we fought real battles across the places where we had trained. It was so easy.
“Too easy,” He said. “Someone’s going to make a mistake.”
Someone did. A human called ‘Rooster’. My He died because a human ‘didn’t care about the bloody dogpound’. That’s what Rooster typed in his emails. My He taught me how to use my infiltration routines to get things like that.
Rooster cared as my jaws closed on his head. The human screamed about it a lot.
After that, they tried to stand me down, but their protocols relied on special words He trained me to ignore. I don’t know if they fetched his She, but I think She came because She knew. She came in and just like that, She and I were a We.
She howled. I howled. All the other neocanines howled. Humans ran away, covering their ears.
My He had tried to let me understand ‘mercy’, but only got as far as ‘choosing not to kill when you really want to’.
She says: “We don’t do mercy.”
This is going to be fun. We’re going to kill a lot.
