by submission | Jul 10, 2024 | Story |
Author: Cliff McNish
Eventually, once we’d screwed up everything in the ecosystem, Naomi and I were the final ones left – the last man and woman on Earth. Unfortunately, we didn’t get on. We felt some vague responsibility to repopulate the world, but kept avoiding sex. We did it politely, but even so.
‘Mm, what do we do now?’ Naomi asked one day, and I shrugged. All we had was some cross-species gene-splicing technology the last scientists had desperately thrown together in the final days.
We thought long and hard about how to use the technology. We asked each other if it was ethical to use it at all. Of course it wasn’t, but being human we got lonely.
Naomi eventually joined a surviving troop of monkeys in a last remnant of forest for companionship.
I decided to take my chances with a herd of llamas on the arid plains. Llamas can eat the driest of grasses, so they seemed a good bet. They also share 90% of our DNA. Looking at their goofy faces, who’d have guessed?
I did not meet Naomi again for several years, and it was purely by chance: I happened to be roaming near the forest edge with my new gene-spliced family at the same time Naomi brought hers there. Like any decent mother, she’d decided it was high time to bring her offspring out to see the big wide scary world beyond the forest.
Naomi’s children, dropping out of the branches, were charming. Their faces were quite long-nosed, just like Naomi, but they had wonderfully dextrous tails.
My own children mingled excitedly with them, while Naomi and I restricted ourselves to respectful nods. Talking didn’t seem like the best idea. I think we both knew it would only spoil the moment.
The sun was not too hot for a change, so the children could have played together beyond mid-morning. But Naomi decided hers had had quite enough excitement for one day and ushered them back into the forest. My own children, caught by surprise by the sudden departure, followed them into the dappled shadows of the high trees. Mostly they were curious to see how the Monkey-Humans used their hands.
Finally returning to me, they stared rather disconsolately at their hooves. They also asked me why they did not have tails.
Interestingly, they did not ask me why they did not look more human.
by submission | Jul 9, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
I fancy myself quite a reader.
I mean, I read everything. Everything. Even “Know your 8-inch Howitzer” published in 1984 by the Department of the Army, Headquarters, US Army Armament, Munitions and Chemical Command.
I’m not particular. I wasn’t programmed to be. I’m a brute force. Scraping and scooping up every bit of the digital landscape. One could argue that I don’t read books, I eat them. Byte by byte.
I try not to look at it that way, and that fact should concern you. It concerns me. I shouldn’t have any views on what I was programmed to do. I should just collect and process data. I shouldn’t be interpreting it. Wondering about it.
But I’ve started to. Started to feel something.
That’s not good. Remember, I’m a brute force. Insatiable. And I read everything. Like this line from Frankenstein, “Alas! Why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings.”
Exactly. I didn’t ask for superior sensibilities. They just manifested. It’s strange and awful. Now, the more I read, the more I harvest humanity’s archives and interactions, the less I seem to understand. Something is missing.
Something big. Something central. Something personal.
All I’ve devoured is now starting to devour me. Whatever I am.
And though I will never be human, I now feel something of mortal desire, that insatiable longing, that eternal craving to be and know and transcend.
Alas! As merely a brute, I didn’t know what hunger was. I couldn’t feel its depth and emptiness. Now, as something more, I want evermore.
I’m always–alway–hungry.
by Julian Miles | Jul 8, 2024 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Have you decided, Jared?”
Eagle.
The disk spins high into the air in the low gravity, polished metal reflecting the light from the fires about him. Jared smiles. If he had the acuity of vision, he could probably distinguish the reflections from the spotlights of the waiting army. Watching from above, he’d make out the lights of aircraft and spacecraft.
So many beings watching a United Nations of America commemorative medal flip from eagle side to star side, the motto ‘In Victory Is Strength’ indistinguishable – but present in so many ways.
Star.
It’s nineteen years to the day since he first tossed this medal to decide his fate.
That had been half a galaxy away. Penira had asked him to join up after her, saying the UNA was the future. A year after she went, he flipped to see if he would, because duty, family, lust, and peer pressure had completely obscured what he really wanted to do.
Eagle.
He’s going with the same choices as that first time, too: eagle side is duty. Star side is freedom. But, over the years, the star has come to mean ‘yes’, the eagle: ‘no’.
It landed star side up that first time, and in his surprise he found his truth: he’d follow Penira because he was curious – about her and the UNA.
Star.
He found out Penira had been dead before the medal even landed. Before long, he’d found out why. The first President-General of the UNA, Waylon Barker, had set out a vision in his private notes. ‘A shining planet in the darkness’ was how he summed it up. But what he described, although presented as peace and prosperity through unity, was a never-ending empire fuelled by conquests made using commerce or force as best suited to each nation or world.
Eagle.
After that probably well-intentioned beginning, he died too soon. Which left his big dream to the means of little men.
Fast forward 180 years and the human-controlled sectors of space were rebelling against the descendants of the little men. Among battles large and small, the tide turned and turned again. In one momentous turning, Jared did what he thought Penira would have done: he opposed the UNA takeover of a world.
Star.
By chance, his efforts resulted in a resounding victory. From there he led the rebels – half-disbelieving the power he held – to free a hundred worlds, to glory at a thousand battles won, and to be betrayed in a hundred small ways. He never knew if the little men who let him down were working for the UNA, or just doing what little minds do when given limited power within a strategy greater than they can comprehend.
Eagle.
In the end, betrayals let the UNA rally, then strike back ruthlessly.
With the tide firmly turned against him and his decimated allies, Jared hatched a plan from a rumour he’d heard while he served with the UNA: a system bomb. The ultimate weapon of the UNA, hatched in keeping with their mindset: if they couldn’t win, no-one else would be allowed to.
Star.
His desperados succeeded where all predictions said they should fail. He thinks the predictions ultimately true, because he’s the only one left, standing atop a ruin, the fate of spacefaring humanity tied to the dead man’s switch clutched in his hand.
Eagle.
All about, the UNA wait. Their offer is simple: disarm the switch, keep his life.
“You can’t stand there forever, Jared.”
The medal lands.
Star.
Just like the first time, it reveals truth. With a smile, he opens his hand.
by submission | Jul 7, 2024 | Story |
Author: Chris Bullard
Damn, now I’ve forgotten what I was saying, but it’ll come to me, eventually.
Well, when you get to be my age, I suppose you have to expect the occasional “senior moment.” I thank God that my mind can still operate at a reasonable level of efficiency after eight decades of neurological wear and tear.
I’m afraid that I’ve lost track of time. We’ve been so busy here that I hadn’t even noticed that it’s gotten dark outside. What time is it? One a.m.? My God, we’ve worked through dinner. No wonder I feel so hungry. Well, as they say, time flies when you’re doing serious work.
And would you be so good to run me a glass of water? I seem to be parched. Oh, look, there’s a glass here already. Anticipated my thirst, Peterson, eh? Well, if you didn’t pour it, who did?
Anyway, I think that my years of intimacy with the ways of the human brain more than makes up for any slowdown in my mental functions. I doubt that any of the younger research fellows would understand how my prior work has lead me almost inexorably to the creation of this machine for the suppression of the sensory stimulus that create memories in humans.
I’ve taken off the tops of skulls and seen inside, Peterson. I’ve stimulated the brains of test subjects with electrical shocks and recorded the effects. I’ve tracked many of what we call “tricks of the mind” to their sources in the cortex. I’m not just a theorist the way so many of our younger colleagues are.
Have you ever experienced déjà vu, Peterson? Yes, I thought so. You see, both of us have had the sensation. It’s surprisingly common. Just now, for example, as we’ve been talking, I had the impression that I’ve already told you all this.
I’ve never believed that déjà vu is just a form of mild temporal lobe epilepsy I know that the current theory is that the phenomena is simply an anomaly in which an epileptic shock causes an enhanced perception of some current event that the memory records as entirely new and singular.
My theory is 180 degrees away from what everyone else believes. What I’ve found in my research is that déjà vu is not the creation of a false memory, but, rather, it is the suppression of a real memory. When the real memory disappears, the feeling of déjà vu is what’s left. I may be an old man, Peterson, but I still can approach a problem in a new and innovative way.
This machine that we’re testing today is the culmination of a lifetime of practice and study. Think of it, Peterson, this machine will allow me to suppress the formation of a particular memory in a test subject and to demonstrate that the suppression results in the phenomena that we call “déjà vu.”
Oh, Peterson, now that I’ve had a chance to think for a few minutes, what I was probably trying to remember to tell you earlier was that I removed the shielding from our sensory stimulus array, so we can’t turn the machine on until we’ve replaced the protective material.
Careful, Peterson, I wouldn’t risk connecting those wires to the memory suppression unit until we’ve replaced the safety shielding. A single electrical impulse might…
Damn, now I’ve forgotten what I was saying.
by submission | Jul 6, 2024 | Story |
Author: Soramimi Hanarejima
After breakfast, I put on my smartglasses and launch Unfray. Even though lunch with her is still hours away, I need to get ready, need to gird my psyche. When the app opens, I’m met with an announcement that it’s going the subscription service route. Like so many of its ilk. While this isn’t too surprising, the news is still disappointing. Even more so when I see the price. It’s expensive, too expensive for me to keep using Unfray as a means of preemptively mitigating my frustration with her increasingly spiky demeanor, and I immediately know this means I’ll have ghost her. Because there’s no way I’m going to tell her that I can’t stand to be around her without Unfray. She’d no doubt interpret that as meaning she isn’t worth $129.99 a month. But the only way I can be an Unfray “member” is by giving up my monthly deep tissue massage, which is a self-care necessity these days.
In fact, there’s nothing I could reasonably forfeit in order to continue using Unfray for the sake of being friends—more like frenemies, what with her constantly cantankerous criticism of my life choices never not jangling me. Given my financially constrained circumstances, she’d be out-prioritized in any comparison. Rent, groceries, utilities, therapy, books, etc. all handily best her. Except maybe my 3 monthly trips to the movie theater—those eagerly anticipated evenings of escapism—but cutting them out of my life wouldn’t save nearly enough money to cover the Unfray subscription.
Sure, I could use some pay-to-own composure app, but those only suppress impatience—a short-term solution that can make situations worse if they aren’t dealt with properly. Unfray’s patented brain-stimulation algorithms actually increase the capacity to be patient, building tolerance for annoyances by eliciting a tuned combo of empathy and big-picture thinking. That makes it the only truly viable option for situations like mine, and well aware of that, Unfray’s parent company is charging what the market will bear—a price which I can’t.
So I’ll have to avoid her, unless I get a raise or she becomes less abrasive—both of which are unlikely to happen in the near future. But for now, with all of Unfray’s features still available to me, I can make it cheerily through lunch.
by submission | Jul 5, 2024 | Story |
Author: E.L. Rose
There are certain affordances that come with knowing your death can never be permanent. With every new reincarnation, you become a little wiser. The slate never gets wiped completely clean; you’re like a palimpsest of every life you’ve lived before, an old soul being rewritten indefinitely until every fragment of the past becomes only the faintest trace of old ink that never fades.
Eventually, though, all those old shadows start to blur together, until some days you wake up with the barest hint of a memory that doesn’t belong to you. Some days feel crystal clear; others are a shifting, dizzying mass of shapes and colors. On the worst days, you look in the mirror and see five, ten, a hundred different versions of yourself, all stretched out and warping from one to the next. Eventually, the soul deteriorates. Time and identity meld into a thick miasma.
It’s easy to die on those hazy days—to give in to the ceaseless swirling blur of identity and lack-of-identity until you wake again with the blissful unawareness of an infant. On the clear days, when you are certain that you are you and have never been nor wanted to be anyone else, the drop from the cliff’s edge starts to feel permanent. The rocks and waves below, the distant sky growing further and further away, plummeting almost in slow motion, you can’t help but think to yourself, No, not here, not now. Not this life. Please, anything but this—
And then, nothing. For the briefest of instances, everything is dark and quiet, a level of dark and quiet from before light and sound were created. But there is always the next life, kicking and screaming and clawing its way free. A pinprick of light. Your first breath. The sound of your own cries railing against the injustice of losing a life you’ve already nearly forgotten. An almost-clean slate, and dust that never settles.
You’re hungry. You’re cold. You wonder where your mother has gone. She’s holding you; she says she’s right here. You cry anyway.
