by Desmond Hussey | Aug 30, 2013 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
“Oracle, will she love me forever?” Tim whispers to the shimmering, liquid amber orb hovering in its special alcove in the family room. It’s late and he should be in bed, but he must know the truth. He can’t sleep. All he can think about is her kiss on his lips.
“Insufficient data. Specify subject of inquiry.” The Oracle’s voice quavers like a bubbling brook, not quite feminine, not quite masculine. Pulses of orange light punctuate each word, casting strange shadows within the darkened room.
“Melanie, Melanie Calder. From school.” He glances quickly over his shoulder to make sure no light emanates from beneath his parents bedroom door.
“Require genetic sample to complete inquiry.”
“Genetic sample? What for? I thought you just knew everything about the future?” Tim hisses, impatience coloring his barely pubescent voice.
“For love matches, a genetic sample is required to determine compatibility.”
“Like, blood?” he barely utters, horrified.
“Any bodily fluid, skin, hair or nail sample will suffice.”
The boy slinks off to bed, his young mind feverishly plotting how to acquire the necessary sample. His sleep is restless, but by morning he’s hatched a plan.
That evening, when certain his parents are sleeping, Tim prowls down to the family room and stands before the Oracle’s nook. In his hand he holds a single long, auburn hair like a precious artifact. Melanie winced and scowled when he pulled it from her head as they made out, but he quickly apologized and made up some stupid lie about her hair getting caught in his watch band. It was all he could do to keep hold of it as they continued to frolic beneath the elm tree by the school yard.
“Oracle, I have the sample. What do I do with it?” Tim can barely contain his nervousness. What if he gets caught? What if they aren’t compatible? What if they are?
“Place sample in scanner and re-state inquiry.” The Oracle’s voice is blandly indifferent to his anxiety. In the darkened quiet of the house, its voice seems thunderous, out-matched in volume only by the beating of his love-sick heart.
Tim carefully places the hair into the awaiting scanner tray and, once again, whispers his fated question, “Oracle, will Melanie Calder love me forever?”
A red laser flashes over the hair in the tray and for an agonizing minute the Oracle says nothing, just hangs silently in its niche while Tim waits with baited breath.
“Genetic compatibility is unsatisfactory. Love match will not succeed. Try again.”
The blood drains from Tim’s face as each terrible word slices his tender heart. It can’t be true. It feels so right to be with her. How can this be happening? “There must be some mistake,” he reasons. “Why, Oracle?”
“Genetic compatibility is unsatisfactory.”
A firm hand lands on his shoulder launching Tim’s stomach into his throat. He turns shamefully around to see his father’s stern face in the darkness reflecting the amber glow from the Oracle.
“Dad,” Tim chokes, “you’re up.”
His dad gestures toward the sofa. “Have a seat, son. We need to talk.”
Tim collapses into the sofa, deflated, all hope for the future washed away by the Oracle’s agonizing words. His father sits beside him. A long silence passes before his father finally speaks.
“Son, sometimes knowing the future robs us of our present. It prevents us from living in the moment. Do you understand?”
Tim stares woefully into the gloom.
“I’m sure Melanie loves you, now, today. Enjoy it, kiddo.”
A faint smile creeps onto Tim’s face.
“Thanks Dad. I will.”
by submission | Aug 29, 2013 | Story |
Author : Lindsey McLeod
“Good afternoon!” The teller chirped happily as Nagano sat down at the first available desk. “Welcome to FilmScape! What may I help you with today?”
“I’d like to cancel my account,” he said, sliding his card across the counter.
The robot picked up the card. “You are a valued customer, sir!” it piped happily. “We will do whatever it takes to retain you, sir!”
“Yes but you see,” Nagano said, “I don’t actually use my subscription anymore.”
The robot turned to the machine on the counter beside it, and inserted what could loosely be called a finger.
“You last used your account 412 days ago, sir!” it burbled. “How may FilmScape improve your service?”
“I don’t want you to improve it,” Nagano said patiently. “I don’t use it. You can’t improve on something that isn’t actually being used.”
The robot processed this statement. “You are a valued customer, ” it said eventually.
“I want,” Nagano said, as calmly as he could manage, “To Cancel. My Subscription. Please.”
The robot tilted its head slightly. “Did you not enjoy your subscription, sir? You rated many of our services very highly.”
“Well, yes,” Nagano said, “but the thing is, I’m not using them anymore, am I?” He realised he was crushing his cigaretto packet in his fist.
The robot narrowed its eyes. “Are you switching to another provider?”
“What?”
“It’s another provider, isn’t it?” the robot barked. “Networld or Cinefare or one of those other -” it actually seemed to sneer, “-peasant quality film services. Admit it!”
“No!” Nagano said desperately. “It’s just – I’ve got to a point in my life – I’m so busy all the time, with work… Look, I just don’t have time. It’s not you, it’s me. Honestly.”
“I see,” the robot said. The disapproval in its tone could have carved a glacier in the Mountain of Shame. “You might have thought about that before you took out such a long subscription. FilmScape was under the impression you wanted a stable contract for security and comfort.”
“I did, at the time,” Nagano said weakly. “But things change. People cha- I mean, er, things change,” he corrected hastily.
If possible, the robot looked even more disapproving. “I see,” it said crisply. It turned back to the machine on the desk, inserted another small whirring part of its anatomy, and produced a huge pile of coloured papers. “You’ll have to fill out these forms.”
“What, all of them?” Nagano said in horror, as they thudded heavily onto the desk in front of him.
“Yes,” said the robot. “In triplicate.”
Nagano stared at the robot. The robot stared back.
“Some of them are double-sided,” it added smugly.
“Couldn’t I just-” he began.
“No,” it said simply, and with finality. “Here is a pen.” A small blue biro was propelled slowly, maddeningly, across the counter towards him. Nagano fought a sudden, murderous urge to stab.
“You know,” the robot said after a few moments, leaning what could loosely be called its elbows on the counter. “Your subscription is one of the cheaper packages. I could always discount that a little further for you. As a valued customer, sir. Perhaps even a couple of months…. free.” This last was suggested in a low, back-alley whisper.
Nagano looked deep into the beady eyes of the robot teller. They flickered minutely for a moment. Was that triumph?
“Fine,” he said resentfully, throwing the pen back across the counter. “Discount me. I’ll be back in a few months to cancel the damn thing again.”
The robot leaned closer. “Persistence is key,” it said quietly. “Have a nice day, sir.”
Outside, Nagano lit a worse-for-wear cigaretto with hands that trembled in frustration.
A small automatron waddled up to him, holding out a little red leaflet. “Would sir like to consider the possibility of opening a Cinefare account?”
The cigaretto, in obeyance of the laws of gravity, hit the pavement a second after Nagano broke into a run.
by submission | Aug 28, 2013 | Story |
Author : David Kavanaugh
“Your honor, counsel, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, good morning. Over the last two months, we have heard so many rambling excuses for the accused’s illegal activities, that I’m sure you’re feeling a little overwhelmed. So I want to take the final moments of this trial to step back, and look at the simple facts.
“These individuals before you did knowingly deceive the American government and steal sixty-two billion— let me repeat that— sixty-two billion dollars from the United States! Under the pretense of their so-called ‘science,’ they convinced Congress to fund a mission designed to deviate the course of the asteroid known as Hercules 113b. They claimed their federally funded satellite network indicated that the asteroid was on a collision course for planet Earth.
“Of course, we all know now that no such imminent disaster was ever actually likely. And the accused’s trickery didn’t end there. They staged a launch and released a video that showed a supposedly successful strike on 113b. The world cheered, the streets rang out with joy. We were saved! Or so we thought, until video analysis proved the footage to be phony.
“When news came of their deceit, they didn’t beg for mercy or apologize or even return the funds right away. They were— they are— proud to admit that Hercules 113b was never going to hit Earth! In fact, it was never going to pass any closer than twenty-two thousand miles. I don’t know about you, but I’m not too worried about a bit of space rock whizzing around somewhere out in the stars.
“Now, we’ve heard their excuses about threat of these Hercules asteroids, about how they needed more funding. But here’s my question: Why couldn’t these ‘scientists’ convince Congress in the first place, with the truth?
“Now, we’ve already begun the process of healing after this repulsive abuse of trust. We’ve frozen the program until new leadership can be established, and the satellites should be back up and running in a few months. But that’s not enough. We cannot let treachery of this sort go unpunished.
“It doesn’t matter how fervently they believe their methodical mumbo-jumbo. What matters is that the law is followed, and that the American people have a say in how their hard-earned dollars are spent. It’s that simple. So, on behalf the United States of America, I ask that you return a verdict of guilty as charged against the accused. Thank you.”
It took the jury less than twenty minutes to deliberate. Guilty. On all charges.
The young prosecutor’s very white smile showed as he sauntered down the courthouse stairs and jogged across the street towards the park.
Ducks were bickering over breadcrumbs. A teenage boy was trying in vain to lock lips with a teenage girl on a park bench. A girl wearing headphones and neon sneakers and little else jogged past, her breasts bouncing in rhythm with each step. The prosecutor’s grinned widened.
It truly was a beautiful day. The sun was high and hot, the sky a rich blue, broken only by a few feathery cirrus clouds.
He sighed, taking in the scenery, nearly bursting with pride at knowing that his career was finally taking off, that the world was his.
Then the sky cracked in two and the horizon rushed towards him in a wall of black.
Hercules 114, unseen as it passed by the satellites whose funding was now cut, had just reached Earth. It burst over the coast of Nova Scotia, sending ripples washing across the continents, so that the landscape glowed and danced.
by Clint Wilson | Aug 27, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
Quintari looked out the huge view screens at the inky night sky. The eight dying stars still visible to the naked lens were faint and alone against their velvet backdrop. She addressed her long time companion. “Ventry, do you recall the old sky, when you were still flesh? So many visible stars in those days. If I still had those old organic eyes I should not be able to even see a pinprick of light when I look upon this pitiful smattering before us.”
Ventry clicked and whirred for a time. Even his seemingly indestructible parts, assembled with precision tolerances down to mere atoms in thickness, were starting to wear after all these thousands of millennia. “My files are so glitchy that far back. I don’t remember.”
She felt sorry for him. He was only two thousand years older than her but the silicells that made up his processor were flawed at the quantum level, and deteriorating much faster than hers. It mattered not anyhow. The universe was coming to an end. Everyone had known this for a long time. But now it was just the two of them, and it was real. It was finally approaching.
Suddenly he perked up and addressed her. “You will be the one you know?”
“I will be the one what?” she asked.
“You will be the end of it all.”
“What do you speak of you crazy old man?”
“We are the last. If not for us, this universe would already be over with.”
She highly respected the intelligence of her lifelong companion and wondered what he was getting at. “Okay, can you please explain it to me as if I were a child?” Sometimes when she conversed with Ventry she indeed felt like one.
He broadcasted a random friboppery of bubbles and blips, his version of a laugh. “After all we’ve talked about, after all the meditating, the inner searching, do you not see it yet?”
She stretched the corner of her avatar screen up at a rakish angle, her version of a smirk. “Of course I know the universe is cooling and expanding, dying in fact, faster than we ever predicted it would. But what philosophical connection are you trying to make?”
“Trying? Made it all ready!”
She loved his brilliance. “Please go on oh wise one.” Another smirk.
“My processor will deteriorate completely within a hundred thousand years, more or less, beyond any capability of thought; reduced to a pile of hiccupping circuits like dying embers in a fire.”
“Let’s assume you’re right,” she replied, knowing full well that he was.
“You will go on,” he continued, “assuming your advanced and far superior silicells don’t encounter some rogue radioactive attack or some such, for at least several more millions of years.
“I can only hope.”
“But eventually even the permabonds holding them together will weaken as they lose particles via dimensional osmosis, and you will shut down as well, the last survivor, the final intelligence of this ancient universe.”
“And then when I’m gone things will still go on. The husks of dead stars will continue to cool and race away from one another.”
“Oh you think so?”
“Well what would be the alternative?”
“You really don’t know Quintari my dear?”
“Just spare me the suspense and tell me my love.”
Then the wisest man who had ever lived told her. “This universe exists based solely on our perception and observance. Once you cease to exist it will die with you.”
Quintari sat silent, pondering the weight of this new information. Suddenly she felt like crying but didn’t know how.
by submission | Aug 26, 2013 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
I slowly wake up. I’m in a hospital bed. An IV in my left antecubital vein slowly infuses normal saline. I feel like I need to urinate, but I have a suspicion. I look. Yep, Foley catheter in place. I smile. “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” I say aloud.
I hear a knock at the door. A man wearing blue surgical scrubs walks in.
“Hello. I’m Dr. Waples. Was that Neil Armstrong you were quoting right before I walked in?”
“Yes,” I say. “I assume I’m not the first guy to use that line to appear wittily ironic under the circumstances?”
“I’ve had two other patients in the past do the same,” the doctor says with a smile. “How do you feel?”
I look at my hands. They’re perfect right down to the scar on my left index finger. Cut myself slicing an orange when I was a kid. I run my tongue across the interior surface of my teeth. The left maxillary central incisor protrudes slightly compared to the right just as it always has.
“I feel fine. Except I could do without…” I gesture at the Foley catheter.
“Nurse will be in in a minute to remove that,” the doctor says.
“You know,” I say, “I thought I’d be…different. I mean, at least a little.”
The doctor nods. “Everyone says that. I said it myself when I ‘arrived’. The scanners back on Earth image all the way down to the atomic level and the fabricators on this end synthesize cells and tissues and organs with the same precision. A few months ago I had a new arrival who had the same cold she — or rather her original — had back at the time she was scanned. Fabricators reconstituted the rhinovirus.
“I need to ask you a few simple questions just to check your orientation,” the doctor continues. “What is your name?”
“Kenji Herrera.”
“And what is the current date, by which I mean last date you recall from a few subjective minutes ago on Earth before you woke up here?”
“February 3rd, 2452.”
“That’s correct, although the current date is in fact October 23rd, 2456. Travel time for your scan data to get here plus time for fabrication. Could you tell me where we are right now? What is this place we’re in?”
“The Niven Reconstitution Station orbiting Alpha Centauri B.”
The doctor nods. “Alert and oriented times three,” he says.
Another knock at the door. A robot walks in and stands next to the doctor.
“I’ll step out and let the nurse take care of your catheter and IV. I’ll be back to do a complete exam in a few minutes. Then we can let you start a liquid diet and advance you up to solids if you handle the liquids okay.”
“Sounds good, doc,” I say with a laugh.
“Something funny?” the doctor asks as he’s turning to leave.
“Just this,” I respond sweeping my hands over my trunk and legs and extending them out at the room. “It took a hundred years for this station to travel here from Earth orbit so we could start replicating scanned copies of people. No mighty starships with magical faster-than-light drives. No dramatic teleporting down to ‘explore strange new worlds’. And this is how space explorers make their entrance into the final frontier: an IV in an arm, an oxygen mask, and a tube running from one’s bladder to a plastic bag.”
The doctor smiles and nods and leaves the room as the machine nurse walks toward my bed.
by submission | Aug 25, 2013 | Story |
Author : Sevanaka
It is an unnatural sensation. A man is meant to know – thoughts firmly grasped in hand. Oh, for the sweetness of emotion, the joy and sorrow and bubbling laughter and the deepest pits of despair. For the solid stoicism, the reassuring taste of logic and math and the ever-expanding pursuit of knowledge. Instead there is the noise – the gutteral, deafening howl of the wind screaming its objection.
Someone here is yelling, too. The sheer terror of this step, this short launch from atmosphere as the craft is slung towards space at a frigtening pace. His fists balled, knuckles stark white as he braces against the vibrations. Once upon a time, it was much worse, he knew. Strapped to the back of what amounted summarily to a large, directed bomb; a tin can with tiny windows peering out into the blackness of night. Still, every fiber of his being protested furiously at the transit.
His hands ache, his head pounds. Fleeting memories distract him: the clearest blue of sky and an open field. Wildflowers and swaying grass brushing his knees, and her smile. He’s leaving her now. He loves her. He remembers their first kiss, stolen under a full moon. The sweaty nights tangled in sheets and the whispered words and autumn and the stained oak writing desk and winter and magnificent carosels with tufts of colored sugar and spring again. The brilliant glint of light as he knelt and asked the words.
A sharp bounce throws him from the thoughts and his eyes catch sight of the viewport. She couldn’t come with him. No place for children, were the words from Command. Her picture, her smile, happily gazing up at him from the console. Yet he can’t see her, eyes barely focusing on the scrolling readouts.
Some of the crew can be heard, barking commands or laughing that nervous, jittery shallow chuckle. Expectation. Congratulation. Careful, measuered excitement. She won’t know the feeling, being thrown, tossed gracelessly, flung aimlessly into the blackness of night.
The shouting is getting louder. Screams, really. Gut-wrenching. Loud. Louder. Mote by mote the stars wink into existance. The noise rises in pitch and slowly, steadily, abates. The deafening roar collapses down to a mewling thrum. The great expanse of blackness looms ahead, dotted with the radiance of a trillion suns. He’s leaving her. Already the smile in the photograph looks like a distant memory. Yet the feeling that grips his chest, securing him against the noise, the thrum, the growl, reminds him what the greatest expanses of infinity could never give him. He’ll be back in a year.
The man’s throat protests: raw, dry, hoarse.
The screaming stops.
Space beckons.
