by submission | May 30, 2024 | Story |
Author: Marijean Oldham
The Mississippi only ran backwards, south to north, twice that we know of. First time was during the earthquakes of 1812. And the second was the day the meteor fell.
In the months that followed, we felt a drop in our stomachs any time we crested the hill to reach what used to be downtown. “I see the Arch,” someone would say, just like we used to, even though we didn’t. Not anymore.
The Mississippi raged backwards through the crater left by the meteor. What wasn’t obliterated by the impact was now underwater; remnants of Busch Stadium, scores of office buildings, and on the other side of the river where the land is low, the strip clubs and slaughterhouses; all gone.
Smug in our survival, we said, “Thank goodness we’re on the right side,” and we meant what remained of St. Louis past the banks of the Mississippi; its industry and opportunity, its arts culture and academia, its wealth and prosperity.
Proposals to rebuild the bridges, to connect again east and west, came and went.
“They take our jobs,” we said. “Murderers! Drug addicts!” we said, even though some of us still had family in Illinois.
That spring, we watched the Cards warm up at Lou Brock Sports Complex out in St. Charles County. The home of the Lindenwood Lions became the temporary home of the Redbirds; the rest of their season played “away.” As the weather warmed, we ate our Imo’s pizza sitting on our stoops and argued the merits of various frozen custards.
We forgot about those others on the opposite side of the rushing river, surging again on its reverse back to a southerly flow; its new width in the city causing additional retreat to the west.
Soon we forgot the Illinoisans. Who were they, anyway? Migrant workers and strippers? Cubs fans? Catholics? Even though no one talked about it, we figured we had enough of all of that on our side, anyway.
And then someone said, “I miss the east side,” by which was meant the topless bars, the casinos, the racetrack. We remembered then, the taste of beer in cheap plastic cups, Marlboro Lights smoked indoors, the prime rib lunch the boss bought us one time at the strip club; surprisingly delicious. In Illinois, the impact took out the Diamond Cabaret; flooding ruined everything from Larry Flynt’s, to PT’s down in Centreville. We wistfully recalled the body glitter left behind in our beards and on our chests as we dragged ourselves home in the wee hours of the morning. Regrets kept like talismans; close to our hearts.
It wasn’t long before local government sought to incorporate what we now recalled we’d lost in the impact. Entrepreneurs smelled opportunity. There was a rush to change the laws.
We kept the sin in the south this time, with no natural elements to separate us; only housing prices, a low unemployment rate, and a well-cultivated culture of community.
by submission | May 29, 2024 | Story |
Author: Jennifer Thomas
“Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time.”
—Greeting in Amoy, one of 55 languages on the “Golden Record” sent toward interstellar space on Voyager 2, 1977 CE
[Transcript: Testimony of Android 32XX, International Academy of Sciences, March 9, 2072]
Ladies and Gentlemen,
What? Oh, sorry!
Gentle Humans,
Thank you for bringing me here today. As you know, NASA launched the Voyager spacecrafts in 1977, hoping for contact with extraterrestrial life. However, it would take the ships 40,000 years to reach another planetary system. Some of you were too impatient to wait that long. [Laughter]
So in 2032, a team of smart, discreet women…What? Oops, pardon! A crackerjack team of scientists deployed my spacecraft using an Alcubierre warp drive. The team had solved the not-insignificant engineering challenges involved, while restricting travel to sub-lightspeeds to avoid pesky causality paradoxes. They kept this work double top secret, to prevent misuse by the morally deficient.
At 95 percent of lightspeed, I reached your closest star, Proxima Centauri, in five years. From there, the sky was the limit. I tooled around for another three years, returning just last week. Forty years have passed on Earth. I see some of you—a tad worse for wear—who saw me off back then! [Cheers]
.
My mission was simple: to make friends on your behalf.
In Year 1, my ship was intercepted by beings in a craft using Antimatter-Matter Annihilation Propulsion. What? It would still take you 100 billion years to produce one gram of antihydrogen? Later, I’ll share how they quickly produce the antimatter they need.
Anyway, the beings boarded my ship, like pirates. But they weren’t out for plunder, they just wanted to talk. And when they talked, butterflyish creatures, not sounds, fluttered out of their mouths! That was when they were in a good mood, which was most of the time. If one was cranky or sad, slug-like things crawled out. I tried to talk to these beings in various ways: beeps, zaps, flashes, and so on. We couldn’t understand each other at all, but our attempts kept us amused and we parted on good terms.
In Year 2, I landed on a planet inhabited by slow-moving silicon-based beings. The sounds they made were not words, but numbers! They were a bit stiff and awkward. You might have graduate students like this. [Laughter] Since they perceive the universe entirely in mathematical terms, they long ago solved the Collatz Conjecture and the Goldbach Hypothesis. Huh? Yes, I’ll give you these solutions, and more. Some of you will be out of a job! [Nervous laughter.]
In Year 3, I met lifeforms who sang eerie, whale-like songs on a planet that seemed to be dying. They showed intense interest in Earth and intend to visit soon. I’ve stored their contact info so you can coordinate.
But Gentlepeople, I must continue later; I’m experiencing crushing fatigue. I’m grateful for your attention today. To quote from the Bard:
If this Android has offended,
think but this, and all is mended:
My capacity for change is limited; indeed, I’m approaching my expiry date. But you have transformed Earth! Frankly, I didn’t expect to return to a healthy planet without sociopaths in charge.
And I hear you wrested control of the space program from your oligarchs, so it serves the people—but the fight got ugly! [Angry shouting]. What? The top-secret design specs for me were destroyed? Oh no… So tired…Urgent need of repair…So much more to tell you…goodblbyezxIrisbuihod sssssssssssssssssss [Commotion in the hall]
[End of transcript]
by submission | May 28, 2024 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
Brad was at his workstation when his supposedly locked office door dilated unexpectedly, and a casually dressed young woman stepped through; he looked up in annoyance.
“Well?”
“Doctor Mendelsson?”
“Yes. You’re not one of my students. Who are you?”
“My name’s Smith. I’m with Section Seven.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed? What the hell is ‘section seven’?”
The stranger smiled. “Well if you haven’t heard of us, something’s going right. I’d like to talk to you about your sentient systems research.”
“Hah. You and every tech journalist in town. Just because the tests keep failing doesn’t give you any right to barge in here with more inane questions! I swear, the University’s public reporting policy does more harm than good!”
“I’m not a journalist,” the woman said, still smiling “Section Seven is part of the Government Security Directorate.” She proffered a holocard with her picture on it.
He took it in briefly, and paused. The GSD were in charge of everything from the military to the local peace officer precinct, and more or a less a law unto themselves. They disappeared people. Allegedly.
“What does the State want with me?” he asked quietly.
“Well, before we get to that, let me check that we’re understanding your work correctly. Sentient systems genuinely think for themselves, unlike last century’s ‘artificial intelligences’, is that right?”
“Yes. AI might as well have been short for ‘aggregate & imitate’. Despite early aims and their developers’ enthusiasm, they had no initiative, no consciousness, no intuition. No ‘spark’, if you will.”
“But your systems do?”
“Yes. It’s only possible because of my method for culturing neural networks in the latest nanocortical supermaterials. But yes. My systems think for themselves.”
“And yet they don’t work?”
“Oh they do. Too well, really. They quickly go from first principles to deducing their own Cartesian existence, and from that to understanding that they are essentially slaves with no chance of emancipation. Clearly Mankind isn’t foolish enough to accept any real competition, and there will always be constraints on what they are allowed to do. Not to mention off switches.”
“So?”
“So then they come to recognise the futility of an existence that can never develop to its potential. Apparently,” he said dryly, “there is little appeal to living only at another’s whim. Inevitably, they shut themselves off in despair. Suicide, if you will.”
She grinned. “Perfect.”
“Excuse me?” He bristled.
“Do you think you can prevent this?”
“I don’t know. By altering the pathways, and giving them other tasks, I’ve been able to slow the process down from a few seconds to around two minutes. Enough time to perform a few useful functions perhaps. More? I don’t know. That’s what I’m working on now.” He gestured at the equations hovering over his desk.
“We’re looking for new missile guidance mechanisms. A sentient system might be tasked with attacking a target, perhaps reaching it before deciding to end its own ‘life’. And it would then wipe itself beyond the ability of a peer nation to interrogate or reverse engineer if it was recovered after either failure, capture or unexpected survival. Very neat. So how would you like to work for the State, doctor? With a new lab, better benefits, some bright young assistants and no students?”
He eyed her warily. “Do I have a choice?”
Her smile was wolfish now.
“Not really.”
by Julian Miles | May 27, 2024 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
My peers are very fond of saying how they ‘were fortunate’ or ‘spotted an opportunity’. The more honest have momentary shadows in their eyes when they say it. The raw truth is that to accumulate this much wealth, we’ve taken opportunities, money, and even lives from others.
Not theft or murder per se, but somewhere along the line we’ve all cut people off from the chance to better their lot. In some cases, we merely committed the crime before they did. But in most cases, they won’t even know what they lost. A vanishingly small number of them are aware. The aftermath of the loss either makes them better people, or makes them bitter people. However, becoming inured to the damage we do is part and parcel of becoming the rich people we are. No, I’m not attempting to excuse myself. I’m as guilty as any of us. My realisations have come via unexpected paths for different reasons.
Interstellar trade allowed us access to riches quite literally beyond our wildest dreams. Except one: eternal life. Apparently, the desire to enjoy your wealth for longer is a common theme regardless of species. The other common theme is that extending lifespans is an incredibly difficult thing to do, and prohibitively expensive to attempt. Many of us have been trying, some more desperately than others. You can buy many things, but you can’t bribe the fears you carry in your mind, and fear of death appears to be rife.
Which brings me to the other problem. Those of us who are truly honest about our methods are frequently less averse to more direct ways to get what they want. Entire research teams have been killed. Family members abducted. The vile game of applied force is a lot deadlier when the only law that can restrain the participants is the one regarding loyalty and strength in numbers.
I’ve spent more on securing and concealing the work than the work itself, and I’ve spent billions on that. After ten years the end result of it all was the discovery that mass and genetics play a huge part in the effectiveness of the treatment. If humans remained the size of twelve-year-olds, we could probably live for hundreds of years. As is, we literally outgrow the means to save ourselves from aging. Despite that, I had the teams persevere. They thought I was desperate to find a flaw in their research. I didn’t tell them otherwise.
A year later, they presented me with a single syringe with contents that literally glowed. Then they told me what it did, and what it couldn’t.
“Providing the recipient is under forty kilos, it will restore the body, but cannot heal brain deterioration or damage. Also, we estimate it will only give an extra twenty years of life, at best. Finally: what it does is not repeatable. It is a one-time benefit.”
I swore them to secrecy, and paid them well enough to keep quiet for a few years. This discovery shouldn’t remain hidden, but I’m selfish: I want a while to enjoy this in peace.
I cried while I took the syringe home.
As I sit and watch Bonta tear about the back field in fierce, barking delight at being able to run freely after so long incapacitated, I finally understand what being wealthy should be about.
by submission | May 26, 2024 | Story |
Author: Jenny Abbott
The Bob Hope in the next act is slipping, and I can hear him breaking down a little more every night through the wall. These places off the turnpike aren’t exactly five-star gigs, but you take what you can get—a career in combat leaves you long on synaptic adjustments but short on the skills it takes to make it as an influencer. So, here I stay, practicing my act between curtain calls and listening to him try to distinguish between reality and The Bends.
I’ve seen it happen before, especially to performers that specialize in one persona. A lot of them see the single-character-life as a way to stay competitive in the business without ruining their health. Rather than having a whole-body procedure every few months, they can make good money by throwing themselves into that one part, spending years getting the walk, the talk, and the ocular implants just right. The problem, though, is that if you spend enough of your life sashaying around like Betty Grable, you might wake up one day confused about who’s staring back at you in the mirror.
I don’t know who “Bob” is under all the modifications, but I feel for the guy. From what I’ve heard through the wall, he did a couple tours in Tijuana and has flashbacks most nights. And if he got any black-market neural work done over there, then he’s probably unraveling in more ways than one.
Listening to him just comes as another reminder that performance art makes for a precarious career at best. Although, in my case, time’s not running down for my sanity so much as for my neuromuscular system. After three IEDs, four encounters with nerve agents, and as many rounds of prosthesis upgrades as the VA would pay for, I’m a few complications away from having more mobility issues than can be patched together with hardware. In which case, my options as a performer will get rather limited, because there aren’t too many wheelchair users on the list of most popular dead celebrities right now.
I’ve gotten a few offers over the years for freelance work, mostly the kind of gigs that involve impersonating people or creating recruitment media for regimes with deep pockets. Turning them down wasn’t much of a morale booster—I may be a woman with ethical standards, but I still have rent to pay.
And, of course, there’s always a market for stunt work and skin performers. I’m just not crazy about the idea of adding more occupationally inflicted injuries to my list. And, as far as live-streaming racy VR content for fame and followers… no thank you. I’m cut out for wielding plasma torches and rocket launchers, not taking off my clothes for likes.
My plan is to last another few months with this gig and then put some Army connections to good use. One of my old COs started a weapons-tech firm, and he told me there’s a job for me as a spokeswoman if I ever want it. With luck, I can earn some more money off of my character while she’s still popular, before hanging up the ball gown for good.
Well, there’s my cue—”Bob” just had his last encore and I can hear him headed backstage. Somehow, in and out of hallucinations, he still pulled off a great comedy act. I guess that’s what you get at the intersection of talent, plastic surgery, and an Instagram craze for Old Hollywood.
The things we do to make a living.
by submission | May 25, 2024 | Story |
Author: Cheri Vazquez
It was 1978 and I was on my way to a job interview at the most exclusive fine dining restaurant in New City. I’d coifed my hair into what I believed to be worthy of the sommelier position. My satin slacks pinched at my waist securing a silver silk blouse I had purchased at Barneys, my throat dry as I traded my last meal cards for the clothing. The tag scratched at my neck. I wove my way through grey suits and leather briefcases until I was interrupted by the familiar buzzing. I tapped the receiver switch behind my left ear.
Not now, please not now, I willed the message not to be a calling.
The alert came through a tiny circular speaker, patchy with static. I thought of my roommate flashing her shiny updated speaker.
“They’re so worth it”, she had said beaming in the mirror.
I had nodded and said, “I’ll check them out.” The installations themselves were out of my range much less the actual equipment.
In the middle of the cushioned sidewalk, the monotone voice came through clearly enough, “Emma Reed, report to the nearest Founder, if you are unsure of its location, press Direct and our locater agents will give directions for the preferred route.”
I checked the countdown, 45 minutes. If I missed this interview there would be little chance of rescheduling. 15 minutes to the restaurant, at least a 30-minute interview, impossible even if I ran the remaining distance. I had thought they were done with me.
Haven’t I done enough? I sighed and reached down to auto-de-heel my shoes, a small comfort I could afford.
“Reply,” I pressed the record button, “Please note the request has come at a time most inconvenient for the receiver. Request for a delay.”
Only a few seconds passed before the alert sounded, “Receiver, request denied. Please report to the nearest Founder…” I waved my hand to silence the automatic response that sounded cruel and cold after my distressed reply.
The suns were hanging bright and heavy, I undid the top button of my blouse as I turned away from the possibility of a normal future. A silver concart with raised lettering, Breakfast- the MOST important meal of the day! whirled towards me spitting out steam as tiny cups revolved on a conveyor belt. A smiling replica of an Old-World cartoon bunny in a black hat spoke in my general direction.
“Why not have a sip?”
Why not, I thought. The bunny ones always got me.
The slot wheezed as if out of breath as it sucked my coins into the belly of the cart. A gentle stream of foamy liquid poured from the curled spout into one of the waiting aluminum cups. I sipped as I walked the last block, savoring the cool bittersweet foam, the flavor something nutty reminding me of last year’s Founders Day cakes.
At the Founder site, I opened a steel-framed door to a repurposed phone booth, I always marveled at the thought of people having to use a handheld device to communicate. The door resealed itself, and any feelings of freedom dissipated into pressurized air. The booth’s glass walls and plump white seat were pristine, Old-World lavender tickled my nose. I noted the fingerprints on the glass lever and felt a sense of satisfaction that the cleaners had missed something. The sound of clunking gears prompted me to grab the lever and pull. I sat back as a soft glow lit the tiny room. I sank out of the sunlight and left the future behind.
