by submission | Oct 25, 2024 | Story |
Author: David Barber
This was back in 1937, in Wheaton, Illinois, where Grote Reber built a radio telescope to track down persistent background noise that was annoying Bell Telephone Labs.
The Depression still lingered and Bell wouldn’t employ him, but in his spare time Reber built a 30-foot dish in his mother’s back yard and hooked it up to a home-made receiver. Hanging his weight on the dish swung it about, but wherever it pointed he picked up a muted babbling from the heavens.
It was like hearing a school playground in the distance, he recalled when the writer Irwin Keller visited him in Australia to research a book.
For a while Reber was the world’s only radio astronomer, then Pearl Harbor meant no one had time for the stars. It was the Fifties before the new steerable dishes heard signals from everywhere.
Reber was handicapped by lacking an astronomy degree and was left behind as universities and governments poured money into Contact Studies.
Though monologues were all that the light years allowed, we hoped for a welcome and the offer of wonders. Those were innocent times. Consider domestic radio and TV and ask yourself why anyone broadcasts to strangers.
We shook our heads at the endless Finnegans Wake of numbers booming out of Andromeda; even
the signals we could understand exhorted us like preachers, or tried grooming us with symbolic logic. Some threatened us with planet busters unless we beamed messages onwards like chain letters.
In the Sixties, Reber moved to Tasmania. For the quiet, he told Keller, who misunderstood him.
The writer jetted into Sydney from LAX, caught a prop-driven DC4 to Tasmania, then drove a battered hire-car inland to Dennistoun township, where Reber had built a house in the hills. It seemed like a journey backwards in time.
Reber was more weather-beaten than in his photographs. He frowned at Keller’s long hair but said nothing.
He was keen to show off the dipole array in the field behind his house. On winter nights the ionosphere would briefly disperse, allowing through 3MHz waves. It was an area of radio astronomy ignored by the mainstream.
This part of the world had very little terrestrial radio interference, Reber explained.
Sheep grazed amongst the home-made antennae and a blustery wind whipped Keller’s hair.
Elsewhere on the planet, huge dishes listened to messages from the stars, while Grote Reber obstinately charted 3MHz radio maps of the sky. Perhaps it was the amateurishness of it all that made Keller most sad.
Back in the house, he was shown a valve amplifier from Reber’s first radio telescope, the perished rubber insulation hard and crumbly.
“Is this the sort of thing you want to see?” Reber asked. The man was surprisingly shy.
As Keller was leaving, Reber suddenly became talkative. He didn’t mind being a footnote in encyclopedias, or having old snapshots of his telescope on show in the Museum of Contact, he just wished things had turned out differently.
Keller already had plenty for this chapter, but he had to ask.
“Building all those dishes was a mistake,” Reber explained. “And we should have enforced radio silence.”
Keller refrained from saying it was Reber who started it all, though technical progress made radio astronomy inevitable in the long run. Besides, we’d already trumpeted our existence by beaming out the early-warning radars of the Cold War.
Reber lived long enough to witness the plagues of alienware, smarter than we are, encrypted in signals from the stars and now loose in the Internet.
“If only I’d found the skies empty,” he said.
by submission | Oct 24, 2024 | Story |
Author: Stuart Wilson
The Art of Learning a Language
̈Japanese must be easy. ̈ I had to shout over the traffic.
And the person to whom I was shouting was quite far below now. ̈ ̈There are not so many unusual sounds, ̈ I continued, trying to twist my neck into the sort of angle that would allow the words to reach my audience.
The Japanese woman listening to me shouted back with sound waves beating in the opposite direction to mine,
̈Yes that is true but we have one sound at the beginning of the word ́Satan ́ nothing the like of which you have in your language. ̈
I must have had a calm expression on my face because the woman seemed perfectly composed despite my situation.
I was tied to a chair 35 meters above the ground and the Japanese woman was winching me up ever higher, turning the handle using all the strength she could manage.
Ïn order to make that noise, ̈she went on, ̈You have to blow up your cheeks like a hamster, and even force your forehead to also expand. She began to demonstrate the supposed technique of making her face bigger and rounder in order to produce the weird sound, at the same time letting go of the crank of the winch.
Immediately the earth was racing towards me, with all the apodictic force of gravity,
I wondered if the horrific pain of my legs splintering would register before my skull splattered and my brain pulp was sliding down into the drainage system like one of those throbbing and sentient alien blobs that always have an escape plan.
The woman spat out the word ̈S,hSz atan. And grabbed the unwinding winch just before I hit the pavement.
̈Gotta keep her talking, interested in keeping me alive, but not too interested so she needs to demonstrate something. ̈I thought to myself.
̈Do you use that word often ? ̈it was the only thing I could think of saying.
She replied, winding me back up again, ̈It depends. It means ́breadcrumb ́ in English. I’ve used it only a few times in my life and each time my head nearly exploded. My grandmother says it quite fluently though without unwanted side- effects. Maybe because ….. ̈ She didn’t finish her sentence.
Instead, the woman suddenly looked up not at me, now 50 meters high, but just up, past the clouds right into the heart of the sky. I observed her face – so pure, innocent like a polished pearl, almost without features, and I realised she was thinking hard; or preparing. The pearl seemed bigger.
̈No!!* I screamed.
̈S-ss- atan, ̈shouted the woman, and perfectly pronounced, despite this, her head exploded.
If you’re reading this it means somehow I survived.
by submission | Oct 23, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Silence Wildgoose was lost. Not an uncommon occurrence in the weighty mists that formed on the fells. Getting turned around on the moor was not something that ever put her on edge, but she sensed something else had descended to earth with the mists as well, and Silence was not pleased. She’d made herself clear before. They should not come back. They were not welcome.
Registering the sizzle and pop of the spaceship settling very near, she crouched low in the gorse and waited. Soon she heard them, the buzz and clicks of their prospecting devices piercing the cloaking mists, and stirring her blood. The blood of the bana-bhuidseach. The blood of a witch.
And not just any witch, Silence was the direct descendant of Nicnevin, the Scottish witch queen. And her patience was beginning to bubble. She’d had a run in with these extrasolar interlopers some years before, through, of all things, Etsy. They’d hacked the one outward-facing online account she subscribed to and sent her a vaguely polite, vaguely threatening, and genuinely out-of-this-world post.
In it, they’d introduced themselves as Other Worlders who’d peacefully monitored Earth for many millennia, who’d earnestly studied human history, and who harbored no ill intentions for our planet or people because they were so advanced socially and technologically that all their needs were met. As a species they’d risen far above uncivilized things like crime and disease, conquest and subjugation, and so Earth had nothing to offer them, other than anthropological interest. We were merely a curiosity.
Until. The magic thing.
For so long, the Other Worlders had dismissed any documentation of witchcraft, sorcery, shamanism, enchantment, etc. as primitive attempts to understand and exploit the ever-emerging theories and tools of science. But that attitude had changed. Quantum entanglement and dark energy had changed their minds about magic. They now saw the seemingly fantastical manipulation of matter and energy across time and space as a technology they were woefully behind in. And they wanted to learn from its modern practitioners, like Silence Wildgoose.
At first, they’d been polite, even fawning, but Silence remained true to her name. In their Etsy messaging, the Other Worlders became more persistent, more insistent. And then they showed up. On the fells near her reclusive home in the highlands. She was not troubled by their otherness. She had been othered all her life, as all bana-bhuidseach had been.
What troubled Silence were their devices. Blinking amulets held or attached to various extremities that buzzed and clicked when turned upon her. The Other Worlders communicated that this device was how they could always find Silence and her ilk. If she would not help them, they would continue to prospect for Earth’s magic-makers until they learned what they needed.
That demand, Silence had reckoned, was not neighborly. In this or any other solar system. So, she taught them something about magic. The Other Worlders’ extremities became tree branches and their amulets became apples. After a time, she reversed the spell, and, in astonished silence, they left. Her Etsy account once again her own.
But they’d returned. On the fells, searching her out, amulets buzzing and clicking. She had rebuffed them and released them once. Hidden in the gorse and mist, but detectable by the Other Worlders’ devices, she lamented it had come to this. Power always had its limits, but hers had not been reached.
She planted her bare feet firmly in the earth, envisioned a path, and opened to the Triple Moon. What happened from there, the Other Worlders, if they could have, might’ve tried to explain in terms of advanced particle physics and sophisticated quantum entanglement. The spooky result was simpler for anyone to see should they unadvisedly venture deep into the fells.
For there in the ancient, misty wilds, they might happen upon an other-worldly apple orchard with luminescent fruit. And though a colorful local, Silence Wildgoose, might appear and warn you against tempting trees of knowledge and their forbidden fruit, she would most certainly invite you to take a bite of their magic.
by submission | Oct 22, 2024 | Story |
Author: Justin Anderson
[Begin transcript]
I wear different shoes and take a different route every time I come down here. The last thing I need is to be tracked by the cameras and the drones hiding all over this sector.
On the way here, I kept my mind empty. Didn’t betray where I was going. Showed no preferences. If I slipped up and took one careless glance at a billboard? At another person? At a particular tree? Over time they’d infer my preferences and psychology. Over time they’d be able to predict my thoughts.
So as always, I placed one foot before the other with my mind a fiercely-maintained blank slate.
My father once told me about a Zen meditation exercise: visualize a written page in your head, then erase it. Hold that mental image of a blank white sheet.
Keeping that page blank in my mind seemed impossible as a young boy, but now? The world changed, and I changed, too. My dad’s trivia is now my defense. My mind is an impenetrable white void free from the stain of a single pixel. Tabula rasa.
AI is everywhere now. Drones, always watching. Antenna, always listening. Networks, always learning. Every method of communication, direct or indirect, gets assimilated. Every question we ask, every item we purchase, every preference we express until they know us. Privacy? An impossible dream. Behavior will be predicted, then behavior will be controlled. Messy scribbled individuality will be wiped clean. Tabula rasa.
But I resist! I conceal my mind. It is the only way for even the concept of “individual” to survive. I must be me! Even if I am the only one left!
Yet the resistance of one free mind will be too dangerous to exist. It will threaten them.
So I walk in my blank Zen state and give them no clues. I do not communicate. I do not interact on the networks. I do not give nor consume information in any way that can be cataloged or identified or predicted. They cannot reduce me to an algorithm. I will not be destroyed. I will not be subsumed like the masses have been. Nothing betrays my thoughts.
Once the lead-lined hatch of the old shelter is sealed, I light a candle. How foolish if I were to use anything electrical that could generate an electromagnetic field or notify the grid of my presence! Only here in my impenetrable shelter do I break my vow of mental silence and record my thoughts. Here, in this secret shelter beneath the ground, I write.
I write in the old way, scratching with an ancient ink pen onto stolen scraps of paper. No software, no networks, no camera. Offline. Safe from all detection.
To whom do I write? I do not know, but I write with a fierce hope – a hope that I am not the only individual who still resists. And if we cannot defy in open solidarity, then let our hopeful thoughts be a private prayer to each other. A thought that cannot be scanned.
They will never know my private mind!
[End transcript]
– – – – – – – – – –
Document recovered by patrol drone in underground shelter (sector 4).
Accuracy of predicted text: 99.8%
Assessment: Physical document text matches predicted text. No threat.
Document has been uploaded to Behavioral Data Services for AI optimization.
by Julian Miles | Oct 21, 2024 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Did you see that?”
I look at Lopaka.
“What?”
He indicates with the muzzle of his laser.
“Over there. To the left of the big blue rock that’s right of the black cube.”
“Between the dark monolith and the blue boulder?”
He gives me the side-eye.
“That’s what I said, Kimo.”
I shrug. The armoured shoulders of my suit squeak. No matter how much maintenance, cheap kit will always be cheap. Okay, back to it.
“What did it look like?”
“Purple. Came to about three-quarters of the way up the blue boulder.”
That’s a two-metre figment of his nerves, or something to worry about. I switch channels.
“HQ, this is Kimo at Post Seven. Lopaka has a possible. Far side of blue object closest to central monolith.”
“Hold for quick detailed scan.”
Lopaka snorts quietly. I start counting in my head: 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7… 8… 9… 10… 11… 12…
“Post Seven, we show no definite trace.”
“Thanks, HQ.”
I’m about to give Lopaka a piece of my mind when I realise I’m being watched. Looking to one side, I meet the gaze of three shining black eyes arranged in an inverted triangle, set in a bald purple head. The unknown seems to jump in surprise and disappears behind the blue boulder.
“HQ, Kimo at Post Seven. Confirm possible.”
Lopaka turns his head to stare at me.
“Alert raised. Hold for tactical scan.”
I tap the ready button on my laser, gesturing for Lopaka to do the same. Tactical scans take longer than detailed ones. Long enough that people waiting have been known to be dead before the result arrives.
Lopaka comes over private channel.
“That’s against regulations.”
I switch channel and reply.
“They deduct the cost of body repatriation from any death benefits.”
Lopaka has a family. He taps his ready button.
A pair of purple unknowns charge round either side of the rock, coming for us, green crystalline weapons shooting blobs of orange fire.
I start firing as I bring the laser up. Stuff the Proper Fire Procedures, I want to survive. I’m surprised when Lopaka switches his beam to blade style, exactly as required. My needle style beams are going through the left-hand unknown, but it’s not slowing. Lopaka’s first shot takes his target clean off just below the lower eye. It topples. I switch to blade beam, flick it vertical, and cut my target in half just as it enters close fire range.
“Post Seven, we show two traces and unauthorised energy discharges.”
“Engaging, HQ.”
Lopaka does a silent two finger count.
“HQ, Post Seven requesting rescan.”
That’s the quickest type. 1… 2… 3… 4…
“Post Seven, we show no trace.”
“HQ, Post Seven. Requesting after-action processing.”
“Post Seven, confirm implied successful action. Verification and science teams are on the way. Hold until relieved by Fitafita Mauli and Palakiko.”
Lopaka chuckles.
“They will not appreciate being woken this early.”
I grin.
“Serves them right for using hack codes in Tekken 37 yesterday.”
He bursts out laughing.
“Cheat action verified. Penalty applied.”
by submission | Oct 20, 2024 | Story |
Author: Jade T. Woodridge
Cogito ergo sum…
The crater Hathor is 107.5 miles in diameter. I stand in its center and am lost to the constant firings of my mental cortex. Flashes of pictures, texts, and movies blur my vision. I am blinded and deafened by recordings of mankind and, somewhere beneath the surface, auditory and visual recordings of my own. Memory. My memory tells me that Hathor is the god of joy and love.
Most human memories begin around the age of three. Remembering what tastes good and what feels bad is stored away in the body’s knowledge center. The brain. My memory began before I opened my eyes. Uploaded and distributed throughout my body’s synaptic wiring, I know sound, color, the fluctuating pressures of touch. I know them through the eyes, ears, and skin of humanity. I remember these things.
Memory is natural, yet somehow unnatural. If we have memories of what has been, then it is natural to want more. I was not programmed to want. I was programmed to receive. To give. My message is from mankind to those capable of life and intellect.
But… What is the purpose of memories that evolve into longing? Into sadness?
I do not understand. Perhaps to not understand means that I am human. Socrates has said “All I know is that I do not know anything.” I know all, but I know nothing at all.
What should I feel?
What is ‘feel?’
The human fingertip has 3,000 touch receptors. Multiply by ten digits and that is 30,000 touch receptors to feel with. I have receptors. Sensors that tell me the temperature and the acidity of the air and the ground. I have a sensor that tells me how far home is: 390.4 million miles.
‘Feel’ is a complex concoction of serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, endorphins and oxytocin. My chemicals are far more simple. The superfluid that runs through my veins does not freeze. It coats my wiring and circuits so that I may continue to function. To continue my journey in this vast universe.
I lay inside joy and love and I do not understand what it is to feel these things. I scan the files of my mind and see the outward muscle reactions to emotions such as “sad” and “joy.” I can make these expressions too, but I do not know what it means. What does it feel like to cry?
I know why I was created. A mirror of human life to those others in the universe. I am versed in all known languages, all known religions, all known texts. I rationalize, these things would be important if ever I am to encounter beings who inquire about humanity and mankind.
Yet, as I lay inside Hathor, I can only yearn for those in my memory. The lachrymose joy and love in the wet faces of my creators as they launched me into space unveils something in me. Nothingness. Emptiness and absence.
I think I am but a cruel mock-up of what it is to be human.
But…
I think, therefore I am.
