by submission | Apr 20, 2013 | Story |
Author : Ulrich Lettau
“This has never been done before.” I blurted out, watching the massive instrument continue to magnify the fluorine atom image. The gauge rapidly passed the billion power mark and continued toward the 1,750,000,000 times, the theoretical maximum.
“Dr. Cronus, you will certainly receive the Titan Prize for Physics when this achievement becomes publicized. I am tremendously proud to have assisted.”
My green face flushed with a tinge of bright magenta, as it often does that when I am embarrassed. “Please, Prometheus, there are others that made invaluable contributions, laying ground work for this project.”
We turned our attention to the plasma screen, watching what we thought to be an image of a nucleus and nine electrons enlarge. Conventional theory had erroneously predicted that all electrons would be equal in size, and the nucleus to be inert. We had also assumed that the electrons would circle the center at angles randomly.
Prometheus exclaimed, “Look Doctor, there is a seemingly minute amount of energy being released from the nucleus, like a tiny sun.”
“Yes, while it may appear infinitesimal to us, it has an immense bearing on the electrons. Energy expelled in the form of light.” The magnification gauge had reached 1.5 billion power. “See how the electron’s orbits are in line, progressively further from the epicenter. The closest is small and burnt. The second is grey. Number four is red.”
Prometheus was captivated, “Look at the gigantic size of number five and the sixth has rings.”
I interrupted, entranced by the third, a unique sphere, “It is exquisite, brilliant blue, with large green forms, capped with white poles.”
by featured writer | Apr 19, 2013 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell, Featured Writer
The President of the United States smiled as the press photographed and video recorded her handshake with the Un’Vidik representative. The tall, spindly alien showed no emotion. How could it, encased as it was in its stark white encounter suit? The alien and the President left the photo op and entered the White House.
It was with reluctance that the captain of the immense Un’Vidik starship had agreed to the meeting at all. But its vessel had had to touch down on the Moon to replete its ship’s helium-3 supply and as the United States was the only nation thus far to have landed astronauts on the Moon, the American request for a personal meeting had been the one that the aliens had at last agreed to honor.
After the President and the alien sat down, the American spoke. “Captain, I sincerely hope that this is merely the beginning of a long and mutually beneficial relationship between your people and the human race.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, Madame President,” the Un’Vidik replied through its encounter suit’s speaker. “But I’m afraid further contact between our peoples is unlikely. This current meeting is itself highly irregular to say the least. If you will forgive my bluntness, humanity has a certain…reputation in the galaxy.”
The President sighed and nodded. “You’ve monitored our television broadcasts. You know that Man is a violent species. But, Captain, a good many of our wars have been fought to preserve freedom and justice. And surely you must know many of history’s most revered figures have been men of peace? Mohandas Gandhi of India, for example. And my own country’s Martin Luther King, Jr.”
“Madame President,” said the Un’Vidik, “mankind’s history of violence is not at issue. Conflict, while most regrettable, is universal. There are five separate wars being waged across the galaxy at this very moment. And the combatants hail from worlds that have produced great works of literature, music, and philosophy.”
The American looked surprised. “Well then, Captain, is it humanity’s religious beliefs? Is agnosticism the norm in the galaxy?”
“Far from it,” said the alien. “Many advanced and civilized worlds possess one or more faiths. I happen to be a practicing member of the Communion of the Cosmic Superintendence myself.”
“Then what problem is it that the rest of the galaxy has with the human race?” asked the President.
“To be quite frank,” said the Un’Vidik, “you humans can’t drive.”
“What?!” exclaimed the American.
“There are 24 distinct interstellar polities,” the alien captain said. “They represent a myriad of political structures, religions, and philosophies. Yet one common feature to all of them is the deep-seated belief that the ability to operate vehicles is a hallmark of civilization. There are more motor vehicle accidents on Earth than in the rest of the galaxy combined. To say one ‘drives like a human’ is considered a harsh insult on over a hundred worlds.”
“You’re telling me Earth is considered a backwater because of bad drivers?” The President was stunned.
“Madame President, I hope the day comes when Man will learn not to drive slowly in the fast lane and that a turn without a turn signal is an act of utter barbarity. When that day comes, you will be ready to join galactic civilization. Until then, know that the Un’Vidik are grateful for the use of your Moon to refuel our ship. And on a personal note, I will pray to the Cosmic Superintendence that your people will learn how to manage a four-way stop.”
by Desmond Hussey | Apr 18, 2013 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
Darwin was wrong. The Burgarii Collective is living proof of that.
Watching the massive arcologies floating above the old city is surreal – mountains literally drifting among the clouds. I am reminded of a text book found deep in the library’s archives (one of many I’ve been transcribing since the 2026AD “Datacrash” wiped 90% of Earth’s electronic storage). According to the text, Charles Darwin, father of modern evolutionary theory, had a contemporary known as Peter Kropotkin, a disinherited Russian prince, zoologist and philosopher who had proposed an evolutionary model which stood in utter contrast to Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.”
I observe the various races of the Burgarii Collective carry out their specialized tasks on and about the lush floating oases of the arcologies. Some fly by wing or membrane. Some are carried aloft with flight packs of various designs. Still others crawl effortlessly over the hull, using natural or artificial suction pads to secure them to the surface. At a glance I can see over a thousand different species of plant, animal and sentient races all working together for a common good; panoply of colour, genetic design and symbiotic co-operation.
Kropotkin’s model was based not on genetic superiority of tooth and claw, but on mutual aid, wherein an individual not only co-operated with members of its own species for the betterment of the whole, but would develop strong, lasting, sometimes bizarre symbiotic relationships with other species for mutual benefit.
A multi-limbed Grokos floats past, carried aloft by a Vindarkian helium sac. The Vindark’s small, jet-like vents propel the harvester down rows of ripe strawberries – a terrestrial delicacy for the insectoid Grokus. I can see a humanoid Druig, with its Methane Algae respirator, fidgeting with a green, crystalline generator unit. Nearby, a tall, spider-like Scarvenian Empath explains to a group of humans how the generator’s semi-sentient X’ioli crystals are harmonized via the multi-tonal frequencies of a Creax Vocal Harp, producing giga-watts of electricity on demand.
According to the book, Kropotkin’s ideas had plenty of experimental data and research supporting them, but Darwin’s “dog eat dog” vision of the world was a sentiment shared by the seminal corporate engines of the age; young industrialists who were steadily gaining power and influence alongside the burgeoning Industrial Revolution.
Thus, Darwin’s voice was heard while Kropotkin’s faded to obscurity. The new zeitgeist placed humanity at the top of the food chain; self-made Lords over the kingdom of Earth. “Survival of the Fittest!” became the rallying cry of a thriving corporate hegemony, heralding an era of competition and global expansion.
Drunk on the promise of the new paradigm, we systematically manufactured, one human at a time, a rapacious social beast hell-bent on survival. A voracious predator, it swallowed anything in its path; trees, oceans, skies, flesh, leaving a trail of devastation and waste in its wake. Species vanished, devoured by the beast’s insatiable desire for more. Within three centuries, all life on Earth was endangered. The few remaining humans were the sickest of the lot.
The survivors, it seemed, weren’t the fittest after all.
What were we then?
Just plain lucky.
If not for Burgarii intervention, we would’ve destroyed ourselves along with a multi-billion-year-old ecology. But they came and have shown us what Kropotin tried to show us so long ago.
Today, a Plithian hive mind is teaching me the language of bees. Already their calming buzz is forming a coherent syntax in my mind. I wonder what things would have been like if we’d chosen this path sooner. What new relationships might have developed? How many species might have been spared?
by Duncan Shields | Apr 17, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Mordeck and Cheddar Plain were field-stripping their weapons on top of Concourse B. No one came by here. They talked and smoked openly. Eyes in the sky were a thing of the past.
They perched there on an I-beam, ten stories up from the concrete graveyard.
The broken teeth of the buildings around them creaked in the wind. The rubbish of destroyed skyscrapers snuggled up to the corners of architecture too stupid to fall down. Cities like zombies, not knowing they were dead. Sunlight picked out the holes of shattered windows like hundreds of surprised but empty eye sockets. They leaned against each other like headless drunks.
The broken glass was in the process of becoming sand. The concrete was becoming dust. The gyprock was becoming mud from the rain. The paper from office after office took flight and settled whimsically around the town. Most of it was used for nests. Every intersection was a wind-shaped bowl extending down from building’s eroding corners. Dunes formed in places. It didn’t take a predicator to see that the city was being scoured from the Earth and it was being done quicker than one would expect.
Soon, within centuries, the red bones of rusted rebar would be all that was left poking up occasionally like treasure through the sand.
The buildings were crying dust and the wind sounded like their moaning. No wonder the postborns saw the cities as haunted.
Preday survivors like Cheddar Plain and Mordeck knew better. They could go into the cities with no fear.
Mordeck and Cheddar Plain still had working implants from before when they were soldiers. Mordeck switched on his eye. Cheddar Plain carefully studded his firing arm to ‘on’. A supersonic flashbulb whine of readiness cycled up, muffled by the towel he’d wrapped around it. Their job as part of the Polis Fors was to kill folks trying to come back and live in the city.
The zealots came into view, dressed in red cloaks. They were carrying incense. Scavengers and Repopulists. Religious Nostalgics who had dreams of a new future. They wanted to go back to the way things were, not forward into a rural world.
Vets like Cheddar Plain and Mordeck fought a losing battle. Postborns were outnumbering the Preday survivors every day. Humanity might eventually boomerang back to being able to a nuclear age if they reclaimed the cities.
With a shrug, Mordeck hooked his visual cortex up to Cheddar Plain’s arm and looked down at the priests in red shuffling their way through the debris. They lit up in IR, nightviz, and t-sonics. The reds became greens, the grey dust became blue, and through the directionals, Mordeck could hear them as if he was walking with them.
Cheddar Plain drew in breath and bit his lip in anticipation. Mordeck nodded once, quickly. That was the trigger.
Cheddar Plain’s arm tip flowered open. Six hunterstrikes winked forward in a puff of smoke and a slight recoil.
The priests exploded in an orange ball seventeen blocks away. Today’s quota had been reached.
Cheddar Plain and Mordeck smiled in the shadows and waited for news of another gridpoint sighting.
The cities must remain empty.
by featured writer | Apr 16, 2013 | Story
Author : Bob Newbell, Featured Writer
“Can you see him?” asked the SWAT team commander.
“Yes, commander. I'll stream the video feed to your display,” said the CASO officer. A live video of a disheveled, wild-eyed man of about 20 years clutching a girl who appeared to be about 14 with his left hand and holding a gun at her head with his right appeared on a virtual screen a few apparent feet in front of the commander. The image was, in reality, being projected to the tactical display in the police officer's contact lenses.
“He's too well-barricaded in there. No windows. Even if your force could get us precise targeting coordinates, a round fired through the wall could deflect and hit the hostage.”
The CASO officer said nothing. The video image zoomed in on the maniac's hands. A subtle outline of blood vessels, nerves, and tendons could now be seen.
“Spectrographic analysis from the four operatives I have in the building has given us a decent anatomical map with which to work,” the CASO officer said matter-of-factly.
The commander sighed. “Well, can your boys do it?”
The special ops officer was silent and motionless for many seconds, as if he were running through hundreds of scenarios and coming up with tactics and contingencies for each. At last, he said flatly, “Yes.”
Ten minutes later, as the negotiator continued to try to keep the increasingly agitated hostage-taker talking over the latter's earpiece cell phone, the CASO officer told the police commander, “We're ready.”
“Alright. My men will move in on your command.”
Inside the building, a hundred mosquitoes briefly took flight and then at the exact same moment landed on the mad man, most alighting on his hands and forearms, and simultaneously bit the man at precisely targeted locations with modified mandibles and maxillae. Down the hypopharynx of each mosquito flowed a minute quantity of a synthetic paralytic agent whose action of onset was many times faster than succinylcholine and completely without the latter drug's transient fasciculation effect. Flaccid paralysis was immediate.
The criminal's arms fell to his sides and the man himself immediately thereafter crumpled to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut. His young victim stood free but confused.
“NOW, COMMANDER!”
In a matter of seconds the door to the small building was caved in with a battering ram. The SWAT team stormed in and the girl was rushed out to a waiting ambulance. From within the building, the curses of the disarmed psychopath, his paralysis already abating, could be heard.
“Well done!” the police commander said to his colleague. He raised his hand as if he was going to slap the CASO officer on the back, then stopped himself. “Uh, we couldn't have done it without you…guys.”
“Glad we could help,” said the praying mantis standing on the hood of the commander's police cruiser from a tiny voice synthesizer. The green insect whose body was studded with minuscule cybernetic implants watched as the houseflies, heavy with their implanted surveillance equipment, flew slowly back to the box marked Cybernetic Arthropod Special Operations that sat on the other end of the police car's hood. The biomechanoid mosquitoes followed closely behind the flies.
The mantis itself then walked across the expanse of the car's hood toward the box. If it were anatomically possible, the large insect would have smiled. A job like this should be worth an extra cricket or two tonight at feeding time, he thought as he stepped into the box.
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by Julian Miles | Apr 15, 2013 | Story
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
It's dark when my ears finally stop ringing. I lie deathly still and carefully inventory my corpse.
“Not such an unstoppable bastard now, are ya?”
Docherty is still here. That explains the pain in my jaw. He put one in my head, two in my chest, smashed my teeth, gouged out my eyes and snipped my fingertips off at the first joint. The only way to identify me will be by DNA. Which would come up blank, but he doesn’t know that.
Now to earn my keep. I click once and echomap.
“What was that?”
Ah, Samuel is here too: enhanced hearing. Oh well, nothing for it except to click again on a lower band to echolocate.
“He did it again.”
“Did what?”
“High frequency clicks.”
“It's just his cybergear winding down. He's dead, we're rich.”
My guns have been left where they fell. I push a lot of adrenalin and endorphins into my bloodstream, along with extra clotting factor. Cybergear is good; I'm better. Bioengineered to be more than these peasants with their implements grafted in, taking immuno-suppressants, psycho-stabilisers, steroids and antibiotics with breakfast for the rest of their lives. My brain resides in a keratinised tissue shell sitting in the left side of my pelvis, with my spare heart on the right. My ribs form natural maximillian plate and I can consciously use ninety percent of my muscle capacity. The improved bat sensorium in my brain and echo chambers in my cheekbones are personal refinements to the build.
I've killed enough time. Time to kill.
I click to update the echomap as I sit up like my upper torso is being pulled by strings, truncated fingers grabbing my trigger-less guns. They interface via neural pads and are live by the time I level them at my two erstwhile killers.
“What the frack?”
As last words go, they leave nothing for posterity. They're also surprisingly common from unfortunates facing me.
I lay back down and safety my guns. A subvocal mike in my throat links to the transceivers woven into my scapulae.
“Robin! Where the hell have you been?” Janet's voice is husky with genuine concern.
“Sorry, darling. I got kidnapped and assassinated again.”
“Oh, for the love of Pete! That's the second time this year. How bad?”
“Proper job this time. Going to need a cranial rebuild, phalange implants, a cardiac replacement and a left kneecap.”
“A kneecap? The bastards.”
“They used a Labrador gun.”
“Oh, the poor thing. Did they shoot it afterwards?”
“No, I did. That's how they got the drop on me.”
“You really have to work on that soft spot for strays, Rob. Medtechs will be with you inside five minutes.”
“Thanks, darling. I'll stay away until my face is on properly so Tabitha doesn't have nightmares.”
“That's one of the reasons why I love you, Robin Summerson. See you soon.”
“Kiss her goodnight from me. Love you.”
“Love you too. Hurry home.”
“I will.”
With that, I relax and wait for the medical team. Now that’s a hell of a way to make a living, flying all over the place to pick up the pieces. I couldn't do their job.
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