by featured writer | Oct 11, 2016 | Story |
Author : Priya Chand, Featured Writer
Sam looked at the tickets and crumpled paper, already softening under the onslaught of summer heat and Mei’s palms. “I never been to some classics concert before,” he said, holding his fists tight against his sides.
“You never sat in the nootropic section, either.”
They’d been to two other concerts—inside the walls, anyway—in their seventeen years. Sam licked grit off his upper lip and said, “How you get those tickets, anyway?”
“Same way you got cake for my birthday. See, the waiver.” Mei waggled the crumpled paper in his face. “I already signed, but your ticket not gonna activate until you do, too.”
Sam smoothed out the waiver and nodded when he saw the Tuskegee Convention seal in the corner. Certified ethical. “Fine.” When he pressed his finger down, the nanofibers winked and both of Mei’s tickets turned pink. “When is it, anyway?”
“Six hours, but it’s in Shivnagar.”
“Shit.” Sam tugged his shirt off with the deliberation of someone who owned two outfits, both threadbare.
“Yeah, I got a dress this morning at Hydracity. All they wanted was skin.” Mei raised her thumb, which barely looked raw. She’d once scraped her palm sneaking into a kitchen. Sam could see the scar from the infection.
“Coulda warned me,” Sam muttered, but by then Mei was halfway down the street, sandals slapping around the oily puddles that littered the road. Awnings flapped in her wake, droplets scattered. Sam hoped the acid wouldn’t wreck his clothes. Scoring goods was harder for boys than girls—after centuries of gender imbalance, there wasn’t a huge demand for male data.
#
There was a whole line of teenagers outside the stadium. Most of them had decent clothes and shining hair, but when Sam looked at their feet, he saw mud and ragged toenails. There were other lines of people in heat-wick salwars or jeans—the kind of people you’d expect at a classics concert. He bet none of them had ever sold data, or if they had, it was the kind used to make new cures or enhancements. Sam had a friend who’d gotten out of the slums that way.
The ticketwalla didn’t make eye contact with Sam, just slapped a patch on his hand and shooed him through. “Come on,” Mei said, dragging him past the signs to their section.
The seats were disappointing. Plastic, small, same as the movie theater in their own neighborhood. At least the setup below looked fancy. Backup dancers were going through their paces as techs guided speakers and screens into place. “How long?”
Before Mei could answer, they were blasted with noise.
Sam couldn’t figure out what was going on—the crowd roared along to lyrics in some near-dead language, one he’d missed in nine years of school—and then the patch activated.
Bliss, he was riding a dolphin leaping through a sea of sound, tears of joy. The strings slipped into mourning, and a moment later he was sobbing like he hadn’t known he could sob. Sam caught Mei’s face out the side of his eyes and saw it glistening. She hadn’t cried when she first showed up, a six-year-old from the hydroponics, but it was lit in neon tonight.
After it was over, Sam and Mei agreed that the classics were pretty good. When the under-thirties job market reopened and they got placed in a factory, maybe they’d put a little aside and learn Telugu.
Mei traded her fingerprints for train tickets, and as the silver bullet dove under the swamps, terabytes of data streamed through the skyscrapers floating above.
by Julian Miles | Oct 10, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The room is a stock F-Class residential dwelling. With three people and a forensics robot within, it’s one small child short of standing room only.
A young man in a lurid red suit, cut in the fashionable retro-zoot style, turns to his bearded boss with a look of mystification: “What’s a ‘buk’?”
Detective Dru looks up: “It’s an intermediary form of collated hardcopy, printed on sheets of pressed wood pulp.”
“It’s made of wood? No wonder they called it pay-per!”
“You’re not wrong. Now, back to the matter at hand: why does Miss Priscilla Townsend, a twenty-year-old student, living on the poverty line, have a shelf full of them?”
The third member of the team, a woman possessing eyes seemingly too large for her narrow face, waves a hand toward the shelf: “Initial assessment has their value at mid or high six figures, depending on content.”
Dru nods: “Tomas, get someone from Antiquities to catalogue and bag everything on that shelf, then get me the last five years of our victim’s life. Loanna, find me something on the family. We’ll meet at the office in two hours.” With that, he turns and carefully makes his way out of the cramped domicile.
Their office was a converted B-Class residence, salvaged from the last flood before the Thames Levee went up. On the flat roof, where Dru was, you could see the broken line of low islands that marked where the Thames Barrier had been.
“She was the great-granddaughter of Elliot Parson, boss.”
Dru knew that name, but the details eluded him. He sighed: “Go on, then. Remind me.”
Tomas grinned: “Headmem, boss. You really should get some before your mental archives of London criminality and how to catch them are lost to us.”
“I meant remind me about Mister Parsons.”
Loanna joined them: “He knows that, but couldn’t resist it.”
Dru pointed at Tomas: “Tell.”
“Elliot Parson, last curator of the British Library, disappeared fifty-three years ago, just after the library system was abandoned. During the transfer of assets to the British Museum, it was found that he had stolen a huge selection of collectables from the deposit archives in Bolton over the preceding decade. Most of those items are still missing, and all of the items on the young lady’s shelf are part of that haul. She died of malaria because she wouldn’t sell stolen goods to pay for treatment.”
Loanna nodded: “We’ve actioned a death mandate for her data presence, and her private blog details exactly that. It also seems that Elliot may not be as dead as everyone thinks. He, or someone purporting to be him, sent those books to her three years ago when she started university.”
Dru stared out across the Thames Delta: “Send the actionable data to Interpol, arrange for her ecofuneral, and hand the books over to the British Museum.”
As Tomas and Loanna reached the door to the stairs, Dru’s raised voice reached them: “Don’t forget to get an itemised physical receipt as well as an electronic one. There are far too many academics in that place for there not to be an indebted hacker or two.”
by submission | Oct 9, 2016 | Story |
Author : Samuel Stapleton
Synthetic: a substance made by chemical processes, especially to imitate a natural product.
The data analysis was grim. Predicted system stability – 62%.
—
My small gathering of journey members stood off to one side. Tori spoke quietly.
“What’s the consensus?” She asked. I took a breath and looked up from the floor.
“Further analysis showed it’s only scored a stability rating of 62% for the next 2,500 years. It’s not good enough.”
A frustrated sigh emanated from the group of young professionals.
“We scrap this round of synthetic bodies, reupload to digital, and we should make the next system in just under 160 years. It’ll feel like a quick nap.”
They took it well, but disappointment lingered throughout the ship.
—
Tori came to see me in my quarters before we reuploaded.
“How is everyone scoring mentally with the news?” I asked.
“All well within norms. I actually came to see you because I need to report something.”
“Shoot.”
“I’ve been speaking with one of the younger members, Scott Yearsley. I’m afraid he’s broken more than a few protocols plus numerous ethical standards as well…”
“Give me the short version.”
“He brought an illegal upload. He’s one of our programmers. I don’t know how he did it but I know he’s not lying.”
I sat. Stunned.
“We have a stowaway?”
Tori nodded as my head began swimming with the implications.
—
“Scott. I have to level with you. Tori reported to me like she had to. It’s her job. This will go easier if you just explain what’s going on.”
He looked at me the way a cat might look at a beetle it is considering swatting down from the air.
“It wasn’t hard. I uploaded my girlfriend onto a separate network. Reprogrammed my allotted space to make it look like she was personal data files – mostly video – and then reuploaded her to the ship from a port before we left.”
I shook my head in disbelief.
“Scott we have no idea what kind of mental state she might be in from being stored. Humans go mad without proper monitoring and subconscious waking.”
“I’m not an idiot captain. I know I’m only 14 but I’m fluent in 22 coding languages and I almost earned my medical degree before we left. It took me like, 19 hours or so to build a self-housed mental watchdog for her. Like I said. She’s as safe as you or I when we’re in storage.”
“Well you’ve broken about 17 military laws and even more civil ones.”
He was silent.
“Yeah but you’re not going to delete another human being as per stowaway regulations. Those were meant to apply to physical stowaways. And I’m the best programmer aboard, it’s not even a close competition.”
He rested for a moment before carrying on.
“I mean I hate to make it seem like I’ve won but once we left Earth both she and I were free and clear. You’re better off doing nothing. It’s why I told Tori. My girlfriend isn’t hurting anyone and we can download her once we’re all settled and the mission has been a success. Or we’ll fail to find a stable system and she’ll vanish into eternity with us.”
I sighed. And wished I could have a stiff drink.
“Well. What’s her name? Tell me it’s not Juliet…” I said out of sarcastic spite.
I caught the flash from his perfectly white teeth as he smiled and spat out that single syllable.
“Eve.”
“Her name is Eve.”
—
Subtle.
by submission | Oct 8, 2016 | Story |
Author : Leanne A. Styles
I reached across and tightened the strap on my kid sister’s tatty seatbelt. She grinned; through the breathing tubes, through the pain.
The shuttle we’d stolen had been recently decommissioned, but so far it was holding together pretty well as we hurtled towards our destination.
The poor had been exiled from Earth by the rich many years ago. I’d escaped the cesspool space station we’d been born on dozens of times to visit the wonders of the blue planet, but Tilley had always been too sick to come with me.
The parasites attacking her lungs were making her sicker than ever now. One week, tops, the medic had said. This was her last chance.
Through the hatch window, the haze of the atmosphere was approaching fast.
“Hold on, Tilley,” I said. “It’s about to get bumpy.”
We hit the fog. The shuttle shook violently and I braced my arms against the hatch, terrified it would blow and we’d be sucked out.
“How much longer?!” Tilley yelled over the racket.
“Nearly there!”
Moments later, the turbulence died and we were sailing through calm skies. I deployed the chute. The shuttle decelerated with a jolt, and swayed gently, descending to the water with a soft splash.
“How long do you think we’ll have?” Tilley asked as I helped her into her survival suit.
“A few hours ‒ if we’re lucky.”
We put on our life jackets, then I opened the hatch and we climbed out. Tilley gasped when she saw the towering cliff face rising out of the inky waves.
“What are they?” she asked, her eyes scanning the sky.
“Birds. ‘Gulls’, I think.”
“And where are we exactly?”
“Somewhere in what dad told me is the Atlantic Ocean.” I double-checked that her oxygen tank was watertight, and climbed down the ladder into the bitterly cold sea. “Hurry; no time to waste,” I said, reaching up to her.
To my horror, she jumped right in, disappearing beneath the waves before re-emerging coughing and spluttering.
“Are you alright?!” I said, grabbing her by her life jacket.
“Ye―ah.”
“Your tubes!”
“I’m… fine, Archer.” She started splashing and laughing.
“Come on,” I said, shaking my head and pulling her towards the rocks.
Laying side-by-side on a slimy ledge, we watched the birds launching off the cliff face. After what felt like a few hours, I looked over at Tilley.
Without looking back, she said, “I love you, Archer.”
But I didn’t reply. I’d been distracted by the distant drone of the search crafts. The patrols had spotted us on radar and were coming to arrest us. My stomach flipped at the thought of Tilley spending her last days in a detention centre, or worse, surviving the journey back to the space station and dying in solitary.
“Time’s up,” I said solemnly.
Nothing.
I looked over. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t moving.
I nudged her gently. “Tilley?”
She was gone. I burst into tears, burying my face in her chest.
The crafts were getting closer. If they found Tilley they’d only burn her and dump her somewhere horrid.
I couldn’t bear that.
As quickly and carefully as I could, I took off her life jacket, stuffed her survival suit with as many loose rocks as I could find, and slipped her into the water.
Her beautiful face disappeared into the depths just as the crafts roared over my head.
Six months in solitary awaited me, but it had been worth it to see my sister smile one last time.
To bring her home. To Earth. Where she belonged.
by submission | Oct 8, 2016 | Story |
Author : Jordan Altman
Weightlessly floating in the blue liquid of my suspended animation pod, a queasy feeling stirred in my stomach. The tubes down my throat feeding me air, water, and food didn’t help; although I will admit the worst of it was the flashing red letters on the display in front of me. It read ‘Malfunction: Anaesthetic Failure’. As I pounded on the protective plastic layer of my pod, I tried to scream, but the tubes prevented me from doing so. Shifting my head to find a way out of my tomb, I noticed another computer screen, this one read ‘Current Travel Day 12’. If I’m to remember correctly in my haze of panic, the trip to Mars was to take 6 months or 187 days.
With time ticking by, I slept not. Instead, I was awake for every second in the tight confines of my space casket. As I tried in vain to get out, my index and ring fingers broke from the excessive thrashing, and all my finger nails were peeled back from scratching at the thick plastic. The pod mocked me as I made no dent in its shell, but instead suffered its endless torture.
After the first few days, my fear was eclipsed by my anger. Hatred burned towards the engineers who trapped me in this box, loathing seared for the doctors whose anaesthetic failed to keep me sedated, and odium scorched for myself at my helplessness.
30 days in, I could no longer take the torture and tried to kill myself. The invasive tube down my throat would not come out as it was secured to a mask around my face. With no way to drown, or even hold my breath, I felt useless as I learnt how ending my life was impossible.
I found God after countless weeks, then a month and a half later, I swore him off and tried again to kill myself in vain.
I am willing to admit how I’m probably not of a sound mind anymore, but as day 187 glowed in the computer screen, I broke down in gratitude. This was my 67th breakdown, but first of a positive nature… so that was a blessing. What wasn’t a blessing, was an hour later when the screen flashed a new message. ‘Landing Impossible Due To Storm. Return Trip Initiated’.
Breakdown 68!
by submission | Oct 6, 2016 | Story |
Author : Daniel S. Helman
Malia read the paper and then again. It was hard to believe. “Really?” you thought. “They’re offering money for that?” It was midweek, and you’d managed to accompany your brother to the store, where he picked up yesterday’s news for half price.
Behind the lists of loved ones, the ones who you prayed and hoped weren’t dead, the tens and hundreds of names with messages like “Ama, come to Uncle Atta’s house. That’s where we are. We’re safe except for Nisan, who died,” and the very sad pictures, that you’d hold in your mind, bathed in light, trying to send a thought or feeling that someone cared—that’s where Malia found it.
Within borders that were decorated with figs and pomegranates, enclosed in elegant swirling lines, was a short notice: “Contest. Cash prize. Answer the following question: What is the basis for calculus? Include at least 15 worked problems. Send answers to …” and then it gave an address that was in the country’s capital, on one of the main streets, a name that you’d recognize. It was odd. What, for heaven’s sake, had anyone the right to hope for, after war? Was it really ok to think of the joys of getting new books, of the paper tablets with those narrow lines, smelling oddly of the gum used in the binding, of new pens, the cheapest kind, but still new?
And Malia wondered what to do. Calculus is a mystery, sure. But there were ways of finding out. It was more a question of time, and not knowing where you’d be in a few days. What would your father decide, and what new unwelcome grief would come—these were the questions now, as life had become one of chores and uncertainties. You hope that your auntie will contact her sons and let them know where you are, so they can bring some extra food, maybe a package. You worry about getting everything done before curfew that needs a hand.
Mostly, Malia wondered about the name on the notice. What was the “Office for Future Growth in Human Affairs?” It sounded like an NGO. Should you trust them? Probably not. But … it is for learning, and there is money.
Fifty four days later, and you and Ham are on the way to pick up a package. It’s only been ten days since the intensity of the work broke. It was almost too much. But the deadline was so soon. Infinitessimals and deltas aside, you’d rather not worry too much about the fifteen. Were they any good? Did it make sense to compare rise and run to the cycles of the moon? Was it ok to include some things that you’d basically copied? At least the work had been intense, and a distraction.
The letter in the package that was addressed to Malia contained a congratulatory note and enough money for your family to buy you food for two months. And this NGO’s strategy had worked. They were able to put money in the hands of ordinary people. They had succeeded where all the world’s governments had failed. And they did it through learning. There was a chance for peace.
