by submission | Feb 7, 2015 | Story |
Author : Anthony Abruscato
The beeping told me my oxygen level was low.
“It’s like falling asleep,” said Gordon. Mars dust coated his space suit.
I clutched a picture of my wife and daughter. Gordon’s oxygen tank read nineteen percent. He palmed a photo of his own.
“Will you make it home?” I asked with fingers wrapped around my blaster.
“Million to one odds,” he said.
“But there’s still a chance?” I pressed.
“Almost nil,” he responded.
I’m sorry brother. I raised my blaster and jerked the trigger. Nothing.
Gordon pulled me in tight.
by submission | Feb 6, 2015 | Story |
Author : Suzanne Borchers
“You have a decision to make.” Her surgeon leaned forward on the chair, eyes soft with tiny wrinkles around them.
Mary glanced first at her husband sitting quietly next to her and then to their hands clasped together. She faced the surgeon. “Didn’t the microbots’ transplant work? We need a baby.”
Mary blinked away tears.
The official letter on the official letterhead screen said the government would pronounce them divorced after another year without offspring. It was an official law. The colony needed future workers. Producing offspring was the first official task of a couple.
“The operation was successful. Your replacement organ pinked up and is ready, but…”
Mary’s tentative smile died.
“…even though we counted the bots in and the bots out—twice–a mistake was made.”
Mary squeezed her husband’s hand until she felt him pull away. “What mistake?” She reached again for his hand.
“As I said before, you have a decision to make.” The surgeon shifted her position back. “One bot was missed. The scan shows that it now rests against your heart, cradled in arteries. It is inactive and not bleeping.”
Mary smiled.
Everything was all right. One inactive bot wouldn’t stop her from having children. She hardly felt her husband’s hand squeeze hers.
“The bot could activate at any time, especially if your body is under stress. Having a baby places a great deal of stress on the mother’s body. You could die.”
Mary’s mouth trembled.
“On the other hand, if we try to remove the bot from its precarious spot, it is still dangerous. You could die from the slip of a needle cutting into an artery or the bot might awaken and begin to surgically cut your heart or an artery.”
Mary looked at her husband.
He turned to meet her gaze. “It’s your decision.”
How could she decide? Do nothing and perhaps enjoy a year with her husband to then be alone forever? Have a baby and perhaps die before the birth? Have the procedure and perhaps die during it? Maybe this stress had already activated it. Die on this chair?
Mary turned to the surgeon. “What would you do?”
The surgeon retreated back on her chair. “It’s your decision. I’m sorry, but it must be made before you leave.”
Mary turned to her husband, but he continued to face forward.
Mary’s mouth trembled.
Was her ache for a baby worth taking a chance on the bot being activated? Perhaps she could have the bot extracted after the birth. Was she a gambler? She loved her husband and needed to keep him. Could she survive without him? Why wouldn’t he help with the decision? How much did he really love her?
She bit into her bottom lip.
What if she couldn’t have a child even with the transplanted uterus? Was the hope of a child worth the risk to her life?
Mary decided.
Her voice shook with the words.
Mary’s husband released her hand.
by submission | Feb 5, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
Scientists couldn’t help but wonder if solar flares that disrupted communications worldwide for three days were related to the concurrent solar computing experiment.
“Thanks for joining this web teleconference on short notice. As usual I will provide a detailed project update and others on the team will contribute as appropriate. Let me begin by tracing the path of the spacecraft from Earth to…”
“Sorry to interrupt, Henry, but can’t you just skip ahead to the payoff and then fill in the history later? I’m so excited I’m going to pee my pants.”
“Keep that sphincter tight, Katherine, while I relate events during the last 72 hours.”
“Oh merde. Just answer one question. Did you get a response from the Sun?”
“Scatology from you, too, Jacques?” Henry tried to restore order over the rumbling.
Finally, Zoe jumped in, “Yes, YES, the solar computer is operational.”
A collective cheer drowned out her next words.
Henry said, loudly, “Quiet down! Any questions you can think of now are trivial compared to the ones you will ask when you hear what we have to tell you.”
That last part generated a round of “WTF?” in several languages.
Zoe took the lead, “Here’s a quick overview. The quantum computer seed plunged into the Sun at 07:48:31 UTC on Wednesday the 21st. We settled in to wait for a response that could come at any time, or never. At 10:10:06, we received the first transmission, which included results of the test equations, all of them solved correctly.”
Amidst the pandemonium, Nathan asked about the solar flares.
“Yes, the flares were related to the experiment.”
“How could you possibly be sure of that?”
“Because the computer said so,” answered Henry.
“What?
Zoe continued, “We fed it math problems we had answers to and some we didn’t, like the Clay problems. Each time, little more than eight minutes later…”
“The time it takes for electromagnetic radiation to travel from Sun to Earth,” Henry reminded his fellow PhDs.
“…we received solutions. It was solving ‘millennium problems’ instantaneously and spitting the answers back.” Zoe’s voice was cracking. “But more than that, it began taunting us with, ‘Is that the best you can do?'”
“We’re supposed to believe the solar computer is sentient?” scoffed Phil. “It’s the singularity?”
Zoe ignored him. “The exchange went on for about 48 hours, until it transmitted this message: ‘Send more Chuck Berry.'”
“Very funny. That’s from an old Saturday Night Live skit about Voyager,” said Phil.
“Right,” said Zoe. “Think about the significance of that. A computer interjects humor, in the right context — extraterrestrial responds to earth technology.”
“But you didn’t send any Chuck Berry in the first place, did you?”
“Not intentionally, Phil. But once we jump started it, it devoted massive energy resources to understanding our TV and radio transmissions. And it tapped into our worldwide web and sucked up the content. It gets us. Our math and science. Our languages and cultures. And it’s conversant, literally, with every sort of electronics on the planet. We soon recognized the irony in the Chuck Berry joke. It doesn’t have to ask for more. It can take what it wants.”
“It occurs to me,” said Katherine, who had peed her pants, “that this might be one of those ‘cosmic roadblocks’ that explains why civilizations in the galaxy don’t last long enough to contact one another. They upset their sun.”
Nathan said to nobody in particular, “We’re going to have to come up with something other than ‘solar computer’ to call this thing.”
“Oh, it’s already thought of that,” said Zoe. “It wants us to call it Ra.”
by submission | Feb 4, 2015 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
“It’s troubling,” said Commander Smithee. “I don’t understand how the crew of the Carcosa could have disappeared. From all intelligence, Maurid 3 is a safe planet.”
“It’s outer space,” replied Captain Cox. “There’s nothing safe about it.”
Smithee nodded. “You’re right, of course….but it still doesn’t explain how the crew of the Carcosa disappeared.”
Smithee looked out the view port at Maurid 3’s landscape. “Alien, isn’t it?” he said.
“I don’t think I could ever get used to the foliage,” Cox replied.
“Yes, it is odd,” said Smithee. He looked out at the trees. The foliage was a strange, almost flesh-like color. The leaves on what could only be called “trees” were the same color, only a darker shade. Only the blue water in the distance looked familiar.
“It’s bizarre, I say.” Cox stared out at the strange new world a moment longer. Then, he turned his attention to the cylindrical spacecraft to his left. The hatch to the Carcosa was standing wide open. Whatever had happened to the crew, it had happened quickly and without forewarning. Cox nestled his plasma rifle to his chest. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake they had.
“You say this planet is uninhabited?” he asked.
Smithee nodded again. “Yes. We sent down a host of unmanned probes and they saw no sign of life. But,” he added, “something happened to the crew of the Carcosa.”
Cox turned his attention to the open hatch of the Carcosa again. It was then that he saw the long streaks of blood on the flesh-colored grass and nearby foliage. Something had killed the crew of the Carcosa. Could one of the crew have gone mad? He wondered. It seemed the only logical answer.
“Well, I guess we’re not going to get any answers standing here,” said Smithee. He reached out and took an environment suit off the hook. Maurid 3 had a breathable atmosphere—it was the reason they had sent down a survey team on the Carcosa in the first place—but both of them agreed that there might be something airborne that had overcome the other ship’s crew. It was better to be safe than sorry, so environment suits were the order of the day.
He quickly doned the suit and pulled on a helmet. He grabbed a plasma rifle, too.
“Ready?”
Cox nodded.
Smithee reached out and activated the hatch.
It opened.
They stood there as the ramp extended itself to the ground. Smithee took a step forward, but Cox caught his arm.
“Wait a minute.”
“What?” Smithee asked.
Cox pointed at the bushes nearby. “Do you see it?” he asked.
Smithee’s gaze followed the end of Cox’s finger. He looked at the bushes and, for a second, saw nothing. But, as he concentrated on the bushes harder, he saw something.
An eye.
“What the hell?”
Cox pulled him back toward the airlock. “It’s camouflaged to its environment,” he said in a whisper. He shook his head. “The human eye can see more shades of green than any other color because we needed to discern predators from the foliage….the crew of the Carcosa thought they were alone. Our probes saw nothing because their camouflage was nearly perfect….and we expected to see normal colored animals.”
“My God,” Smithee said. “Look!”
Before them, the ground and the bushes seemed to come alive. Everywhere, things were moving.
“Get inside! Quickly!” shouted Smithee…but it was too late. Out of the corner of their eyes, they saw the thing as it attacked…and one thing looked normal.
Their fangs were white.
by Julian Miles | Feb 3, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Jardine dragged himself over the log, gasping in agony as the belt that formed the tourniquet on his leg caught. His jodhpurs were stained and the lower sections were covered in bloody handprints where he’d had to kick Harvey loose.
It had been the first Pembrokeshire hunt in over a century, set in the recently restored forests and part of the carefully designed fauna management plan. After all, if one were going to restore a nineteenth century estate, why not have authentic methods of vermin control?
Those last two words came back to haunt them. They had all laughed at the antics of the anti-hunting lobbies of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but really, in the hierarchically-enlightened twenty-third century, what could the great unwashed do?
It turned out that some of the ‘unwashed’ had kin who had fought in the Tarantilla and Shoren Gar campaigns. Descendents who excelled in the comparatively new discipline of cyborg handling.
The Pembroke Hunt had used genegineered hawks for spotting and all the hounds were networked – it made it easier for the packmaster. Things had been going swimmingly until the fox turned at bay, and the hawks had all gone dark in rapid succession. The packmaster had shouted something unintelligible before going into a Grand-Mal seizure and thrashing himself to death. Far away, they heard the baying of hounds in full rout. It became a fascination, listening to the number of crying animals drop off one by one. By the time the last hound limped into view, those remaining realised they had left it far too late to run. To reinforce that, the one flying thing that remained unloaded an unholy number of dart-missile things into their horses. Some horses blew up while the others keeled over, either shutdown or dead. Riders were crushed, limbs were broken.
Into this scene of chaos came the Fox.
A red-eyed hunting cyborg – the Rorschach stain of white question marks visible on its head identifying it as one of the deadly Critsune marque – set itself to slaughtering the downed huntsmen.
This encouraged the ambulatory survivors to flee, and the macabrely reversed hunt began in earnest. All afternoon they fled, manners and artifice banished by terror and desperation. Naked brutality surfaced, where people crippled former friends to give themselves more time.
As evening drew in, Jardine had kicked Harvey until his nose broke and he fell backwards into the cutting. Jardine knew that cutting, it was the one that ran across the foot of the wooded backdrop to the formal lawns. Lawns that replaced the lakes about Pembroke Castle. He was nearing safety!
He curled himself with his back to the log while the pain in his leg eased. When his vision was no longer grey at the edges, he gathered himself for the last stretch.
Red eyes opened in the shadows between him and the castle towers.
There was a crackle. A voice came from the Fox: “The birthplace of Henry Tudor silhouetted against the last light in a way that he himself could have admired on his way to Bosworth. Fitting, don’t you think? A nod to heritage as we have this out.”
Jardine choked, his throat dry: “What do you want? Money? Fame? Have you recorded this?”
There was a chuckle: “I want you to die, Foxhunter. I want the abhorrent practice to remain a thing of the past. Thus you will be a statistic of a massacre unclaimed. Fear is better for keeping this sort of thing under control.”
The Critsune leapt for the kill.
by Duncan Shields | Feb 2, 2015 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Are we robot zombies or are we the pinnacle of humanity? Are we ahead of the evolutionary curve? Did we make the leap that all creatures with a finite lifespan have to or are we freaks? The universe remains as silent as it ever has on the subject.
No one dies of natural causes anymore.
We count our blessings but we’re scared. Dr Hansen saved us and doomed us all at the same time.
The year was 2020. “A year for vision”, they called it. And Dr Hansen delivered.
Immortality, eternal youth, the cure for AIDS and the Big C. All a person had to do was cease to be human.
“You see, our spirits are not our bodies. Our bodies are not our selves,” Dr. Hansen said. “Our brains are meat but our minds are something altogether different. We decay too quickly. The problem is what we’re made of, not who we are.”
He proposed a consciousness transfer into mostly artificial bodies. Sausage meat into a bullet casing. Nervous systems became calm systems. The hot red of blood became the cool blue of coolant. Neurons became nanocapacitors. Shreds of the original brain and nerves survived but were coffined into layers of hermetically-sealed exoskeletons.
The eccentric rich went for it. After that, Hansen cut corners and lowered prices, extolling his wares on telnet and oldweb. It sold well. The older folk, the terminally ill and the daredevil visionaries lined up. It created a very lively debate amongst the existentialists and religious scholars.
The military departments loved him. Living weapons were a reality; more predictable than the alien algorithms of flaky A.I.s. Unregistered mercenaries loved him as well.
Dr. Hansen became rich off of the patents involved, the factories that made the equipment, and the laboratories that made the switch. The black market, the grey market, and the legitimate downtown offices all were booming.
The thing that freaked the naysayers out was that it was a one-way switch. Just a glance at the metal skin of the warmechs or even the plastic skin of the short-lived humanomorph fad made a lot of people shut their eyes and shiver.
Sex was no longer possible in an artificial body. Orgasm programs and virtual reality were available stims for the fakebodies but it wasn’t the same. That fact made the young people stay away.
Dr Hansen was trying to figure out how to pitch to their demographic when the plague hit.
An airborne flesh-eating virus dubbed The End with a 98% communicability rate killed all the non-transferred people, Dr Hansen included. The higher primates all died as well. In one year, the population of the earth nosedived.
Everyone in Shells survived.
The earth is populated now by the minds of out-of-work soldiers, old people, and the once rich. Hulking metal weapons and artistic interpretations of the human form. Basic automaton models mixing with shining, high-end custom jobs. The population is holding at ten million, two hundred thirty thousand, and sixty-six.
Scared minds in tin cans.
We’ve been building shells again in an effort to propogate the species but we’re finding it difficult to clone new nervous systems with the virus still in the air. It hasn’t gone away. And most of Dr Hansen’s notes were lost in The End riots.
We are a closed system now. A finite population that can only get lower unless we figure out how to reproduce properly. Our scientists are working on it but not that many of them made the switch, oddly enough.
Until we can figure out how to reproduce, we wait.
