by submission | Aug 29, 2016 | Story |
Author : Travis Gregg
Indentured servitude has been illegal for centuries, at least on Earth. Mars though, Mars is the new frontier. The Wild West. On Mars a lot of things that used to be illegal are being revived.
The deal was seven years of labor, seven years of running excavators, tunneling, mining, building. Seven long years of constructing the domes and aqueducts and launch pads. Seven years and then you’re a citizen. You get a free ride from Earth, you do your part, and then you’re a member of the most exciting emerging society there has been in thousands of years. Easy as that. If you don’t have any money, and if you don’t have incredibly specific training or expertise, then seven years of labor is the only way to get in. Plenty of people vying for it, I was lucky to get selected.
Seven years isn’t even that bad, or at least this is what I’ve been telling myself. Most of my 30’s will be gone for sure but after that I’ll have a new start, new opportunities, and my kids, when I have them, will be automatic citizens. They’ll have opportunities I can only dream about.
The trip up from Earth was rough, and when we arrived at the lander site we were herded through a series of shoots like cattle. At the very end, past the inoculations, the delousing, and all the tests, we were given our bunk assignments.
The first thing I did when I got to my bunk was tape up the small scrap of paper on which I’d written The Date. Capitol T and Capitol D. I was calling it Freedom Day and it was exactly seven years from today. I’d taped the date up to the wall so I could see it every day, something to keep me motivated.
My bunk mate asked me what that was and I was surprised he’d asked. He knew what day today was, and could add seven to the current year as easily as I could. Still, I explained to him that that’s the day we’re done and he laughed. I asked him what was so funny and he laughed some more then asked if I read my contract. Of course I had, I pulled out my thumbed through copy to prove it.
“Right here, seven years,” I said pointing to one of the very first paragraphs. The contract was eighty-four pages long but the seven years bit was right on the front page.
He thumbed to the back and pointed at a phrase I’d glossed over.
All measurements and metrics are Mars standard.
Now a meter is a meter on Earth or on Saturn. Same for a gram and a liter. They’re universal constants based on atomic properties. A year though, a year is a rotation around the sun. Kind of arbitrary.
While I was doing the math my bunk mate had pulled down my note, crossed out the date, and written a new one.
So long to my 30’s entirely I resigned myself, and half my 40’s too. Should have read the fine print.
by submission | Aug 28, 2016 | Story |
Author : James Riser
Tetsuo kept a collection of five hundred yen and one hundred yen coins that was worth a lot of money to an antique dealer. Instead, he used them on a noodle vending machine set against the wall of a hollow, ancient building near, what history said, was Akita Port in Northern Japan.
The machine’s once colorful advertisements were yellowed and decayed by firestorms and nuclear winters, but still worked. It still dropped a small plastic bowl and a wax coated clump of noodles when prompted by the only working button. After the the bowl dropped, a stream of hot water poured down. It usually overflowed the bowl, diluting the flavor, but Tetsuo didn’t mind. He never saw the person who refilled the machine. It couldn’t be a vending bot, because the machine had a key lock and bots used infrared sensors to gain access and refill vending machines. New Light Technologies made everything from vending bots to Lovedolls, but could never bothered to make a robot that could use an ancient key lock.
He walked up to the machine, feet crunching over glass and gravel. Tetsuo pulled his windbreaker tighter over his body. Black smoke clogged the sky. The newspapers said that most of world looked like this. A gray metal bench sat around the corner of the building. He sat with his father there and ate noodles in the years before his father succumbed to thyroid cancer; Tetsuo watched his throat, swollen with cancerous tumors rise and fall. They sat at the bench and hated the government and the robots with infrared fingertips.
He took his first girlfriend to the vending machine to eat noodles and was also sitting there when he received the live text, sent to the Port connected to his brain, informing him of the termination of their relationship; it came from a third party service specializing in break up texts. He shrugged and ate his watery noodles.
This day, his back ached with the feeling of the weight of heavy factory boxes and the hard plastic chairs in the employee break room. The manager overheard him complaining to a co-worker. When the job termination text came, he wanted to be sitting at the bench eating noodles.
He inserted two silver, one hundred yen coins. The bowl dropped, but the noodles didn’t. The machine shook and sputtered out a small amount of cold water. Tetsuo took the bowl out and tossed it to the ground and inserted some more coins. The machine shook and sputtered again, no bowl dropped. Broken.
He produced a handful of coins and sighed. He thought of the antique dealer. A car pulled up behind him. Tetsuo turned to see a battered Honda civic, sighing in the streets. Every few minutes, the car coughed and threatened to die. An old man slid out from the doorless driver side. He took a box from the back seat and dropped the box in front of the machine. It landed with a dry thud, disturbing the dust on the sidewalk.
The old man came up to Tetsuo’s shoulders, and his entire body was wrapped in a parka and puffy black pants. Only his worn, leather face was exposed.
“Broken?” he asked.
Tetsuo nodded.
The man hit the machine and it shuttered.
“Broken.”
The pair stood there for a handful of silent moments. The wind howled and white dust washed through the streets. Tetsuo produced more coins from his other pocket. He forced the small fortune into the Noodle man’s hard, wrinkled hands. “I have more at home. Just fix it please.”
by submission | Aug 27, 2016 | Story |
Author : Callum Wallace
The heavy perfume of roses assaults my nostrils; the smell of youthful summers spent in glittering woodlands, diamond rivers, fields of grass blowing in the wind. I barely remember now.
I stink of my work; darkness, shit and fear. The rank taste sits heavily, squatting in my mouth.
I think I remember enjoying the sun.
Now the harsh rays smash down, flits spasmodically between steepled rooves and grotesque towers. Baked grass singes, crickets scratch. Dusty. Still.
Someone shouts. It isn’t friendly, but my mind flashes back anyway; barely remembered dreams of kids playing, carefree, all the time in the world.
No games now. No time.
Summers of childhood fly by; thanks for coming, good to meet you.
Summers crawl now; hang about, slow it down.
I read somewhere that time only passes if you have something to do. The more to do, the quicker it goes.
But I’m busy. Busier than ever.
Something about this tickles me, but I don’t laugh. Something about this injustice makes me want to cry out, but I make no noise.
Because I’m busy.
They take them young, once a year, when the sun returns in earnest, when the academy opens its doors. Education starts. Break them down, build them back up. It works. Just look at me.
Innocence is led in; happy, ready to learn, time flooding past. What comes out again is older, slower, busier.
The training is hard. Long days of physical exercise, martial practice. Longer nights of reading, schoolwork.
And if I’m struggling, imagine what they’re feeling. I try not to. Hell, I can’t. The Order won’t let me.
Like I said, busier than ever.
Those that fail are sent on their way; sad little plastic-wrap sacks thrown in the back of a truck. But that’s none of my business.
Mother says it’s necessary. I absolve myself of judgement; it doesn’t matter to me. I’m here for one thing and one thing only.
The newest intake comes. The smarter of the group are sullen, even tearful, but some of the kids wave, smiling up at me. They don’t know what’s coming. I do not smile back, wave them up the steps.
The smiles will be gone soon. The memories of summers will be just that: memories. They’ll be too busy to remember what we don’t teach them. Anything unnecessary is culled, cut away, left to die along with those children who fail the Order’s rigorous practices.
The stink of roses weighs heavily on my conscious.
I think I remember enjoying the sun. But not today.
That time went too fast. I can’t remember. None of us can.
And neither will they.
Too busy.
by submission | Aug 26, 2016 | Story |
Author : Beck Dacus
The organic machine hobbled unsteadily on the shoreline, leaving wet tracks in the sand. The gelatinous-lensed camera gazed up and the blue sky, and noticed a strange crescent, apparently far above, lit by the Sun. This was a surprise to the remote operators deep in the ocean behind the robot.
“What could it possibly be?” asked a shiny-scaled, broad-finned technician, turning his armored head to the mission commander. “Is there yet another world, above this new one we’re exploring?”
“Irrelevant,” the commander replied. “Our machine cannot swim up in the thin gas of the Highworld, so we should focus on what we can reach. Move forward.”
On badly jointed, uncertainly constructed legs, the spidery robot responded to its command, limping uphill, away from home, into the arid Highworld.
For a long time, there was nothing to be seen but a rocky, unworn landscape. Away from shore, the rocks enlarged and sharpened, gradually giving the rover a harder and harder time. It took around an hour for the clumsy assemblage to clear the rise that had been visible ever since it scrambled from the waves, which was farther than any other of the explorers had ever gone. Its high vantage point gave it a wide, clear view of the much wider Highworld, apparently stretching on for leagues.
The machine saw movement.
“What could that have been?” one of the scientists asked, more to herself than anyone else. Nobody could answer her question.
“Is it possible that there’s life up there?” a journalist asked.
“I don’t see how,” the commander said. “How could they move? It’s unlikely that they could float up there. And how could anything survive without water?”
“Isn’t that what our machine is doing?” an engineer refuted.
“Right, yes” he said sarcastically. “Some fish decided to take a trip onto land and turn into robots.”
The crowd gathered at the event released bubbles of amusement. They were silenced when an armored, six-legged monster landed in front of the robot.
“By the Shimmer!” someone said. “What the hell is that!?”
A segmented tail curved above the beast, before lashing at the camera, blurring the image in the lower-left corner. Then the front claws took care of all four of the explorer’s legs, while the tail repeatedly sunk into the stone-and-seaweed exoskeleton of the rover until the camera went dark.
“The Project’s been completely destroyed,” said the head engineer, mourning the loss of his brainchild. “Hundreds of days of work, destroyed in instants. Torn completely apart.”
“By life,” a biologist chimed in. “Life in the Highworld. Life on land.”
“Did you see that thing’s legs!?” another technician said excitedly. “They absorbed all that impact force on the jump, and it walked circles around the rover like it was nothing! Imagine making a machine with those legs!”
“How could it live without water?” someone else wondered. “Wait… could it be holding it inside itself? That armor looked pretty sturdy.”
“All we know,” the commander said, “Is that we have a lot to learn. Now make preparations for another rover. We’re going again. And this time it’ll be really fun.”
by submission | Aug 25, 2016 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
It had been nearly a year since he’d brought a girl home, and his heart raced as he fumbled in his pocket for keys.
“Need help?” she asked, groping in the general area of his pocket.
Her face so close, he couldn’t help but say, “You’re beautiful.”
“You don’t have to say that, hon, I’m already here.”
“No, really,” leaning in for a kiss.
Backing away, “Not yet, mister, not until I see some green.”
“Right, of course.”
Inside the door, pulling off each other’s clothes, they stumbled onto the couch.
“Mine or yours?” he asked.
“I only trust mine.”
Opening her bag, she removed a device about the size and shape of a hair dryer.
“Better do me first, while you can,” he said.
She pressed the icon for Male on the touch screen, and a concave-sided probe emerged from the business-end of the device. Placing it on his…
“Ouch,” he said, as it pricked and captured a sample of blood along with flora and fauna on his skin.
“Poor baby.”
At the tone, she lifted the probe, which retracted, and seconds later Decider Headquarters transmitted a 24-hour clearance for his DNA, signified by a green light.
He was relieved, too relieved, it turned out.
She pressed the Female icon, and a smooth-sided probe emerged.
Reaching for the device, he offered, “Do you want me to…”
“NO! I’ll do it,” she said, carefully inserting it.
She gasped as the samples were obtained. At the tone, she withdrew the probe, which retracted, and this time a flashing green light conveyed both her clearance and DHQ approval for the couple to have coitus.
“We’re good to go, hon,” returning the device to her bag.
Looking down, “Uh, how ’bout we just snuggle awhile?” he said.
At DHQ headquarters across town, a prisoner peered out of a window to a chamber within which he was strapped to a chair.
A technician made final adjustments. “It’s calibrated. We’re good to go.”
An interrogator looked in, “For the last time, did you murder your mother-in-law?”
Desperately, via a tinny speaker, “Like I told you a million times, no, NO!”
They all looked toward a panel on the opposite wall. Seconds later, a red light shone brightly.
“Sorry, pal, it’s out of our hands,” the interrogator said, covering his eyes as a white flash rendered the prisoner’s body lifeless and smoldering.
Elsewhere in the capital, deep below the White House in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, two dozen people sat in silence, staring at a green light flashing on a device at the center of a conference table.
“We cannot… I cannot allow a computer to make this decision, to send us into all-out nuclear war.”
“But, Mr. President,” reminded the Secretary of Defense, “Congress has explicitly ceded to this computer the responsibility to analyze data, to declare an existential threat to our country, and to decide when and how our military should respond. It is your responsibility as Commander in Chief to carry out that response.”
“Not when it means the mutual destruction and death of…”
“We’ve gone over this for hours,” interrupted the Vice President, “and all of your points have been thoughtfully considered by us and by the The Decider. I regret to inform you that it has declared you mentally impaired and that I am assuming your powers and duties as Acting President.”
He motioned Secret Service agents to remove the President from the PEOC.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, green flashes reflecting in his eyes, rose to his feet.
“Mr. President, are we…?”
“Yes, we’re good to go.”
by Julian Miles | Aug 24, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The metallic grey blob shot across the cavern and landed with a wet ‘splat’ in the circular tub of turquoise gel. The conical lid had an aperture the exact size to admit the blob, and a length of cone precisely calculated to prevent any gel splashing out.
“What the hell is that?” Walt pointed at the assembly through the glass.
“That is the first 9-Cronin Adsee in the Kuiper Belt, Mister Thrumyn.”
Walt turned to face the willow-thin, native born woman who had spoken: “In plain terms, Miss-” he paused to pointedly read her name tag, “Hayvers. Preferably non-technical English.”
She smiled: “It is the most advanced Autonomous Digital Synthesis Engine – ADSE – ‘Adsee’ – outside of the laboratories of Mars. A ‘Cronin’ is an abstract unit of capability and performance, allowing the many different styles and types of chemputer – chemical synthesis computers – to be compared easily.”
“Thank you. Now why is it occupying an entire Class-One processing cavern in my headquarters asteroid?”
“That is better demonstrated that explained, Mister Thrumyn.”
Walt turned his attention to the tub. Inside, the blob seemed to spinning, or maybe see-sawing incredibly fast, he couldn’t be sure. But it wasn’t a blob. He saw shining flakes spurt into the gel from one side, a glittering stream that disappeared into the blob that now seemed to have a blurry shape visible within its frenetic movement.
Three more streams of material were shot into the mass, then the sides of the tub turned opaque and a hatch snapped shut over the top of the cone. From within the tub, flashes of intense light showed up every fine gap in the closures. Then the hatch over the cone aperture opened and bright beam of energy shot into the tub.
“Intense heat. That and a near-weightless environment allows the Adsee to do, in minutes, a growth assembly that would take a week on a planet.” She nodded toward the cone, which was lifting.
Walt gasped as a silver-grey drone lifted from the tub, oriented itself to the local ‘up’, then exited through the slot opposite.
“Belt mining has always been fraught with danger. Drones have lowered the fatalities, but replacing lost drones was difficult to keep pace with. Switching to modular assemblies with common Power and Control units allows us to keep up with that. In the event of an incident, the P&C unit will, if possible, rotate the drone so it takes the impact. Usually, the function module survives and we can just mate another P&C unit with it. As you can see, P&C units are something we can make in under half an hour. The cavern size is necessary because those drones are eight metres across.”
Walt drifted slowly across the viewing chamber, face pale, eyes wide: “Oh.”
Miss Hayvers tilted her head: “Anything else?”
Eyes fixed upon the device in the chamber, as another blob landed in it, his reply was barely louder than a whisper: “No, that’s fine, Miss. I’ll just wait and watch, if that’s okay.”
She shook her head and exited the room, while Walt watched the machine that ‘grew’ spaceships do its thing, experiencing a wonder he hadn’t felt since childhood.
