by submission | Feb 28, 2024 | Story |
Author: Zayan Guedim
Once caught by Sheriff Jeb, criminals faced a gruesome demise. Grave offenses or petty misdemeanors, all the same, he would drive them to the abandoned silver mine. Then alone he would return, with bloody clothes and a blanched face.
A judge, jury, and executioner all in one, Jeb’s reputation spread far and wide. Now the notoriously crime-ridden Silver Peak town reveled in serenity, thanks to his ruthless law enforcement.
As crime became virtually nonexistent, the townspeople grew increasingly grateful to Jeb, who was increasingly distressed and aloof. He rarely engaged in conversation and when he did, his words were sparse and deliberate. Even with Layla, the new saloon’s girl, the first woman to whom Jeb had ever made advances. She came to town a few weeks prior and soon picked up on Jeb’s habits and piqued his interest.
One night, Jeb downed his double shot of whiskey in one, and then he ordered another. And another. Layla asked him whether he was having a tough one, as he usually only had one drink before retreating.
After he guzzled his fourth double shot, he shared news of his new gig. They were having a crime problem at a nearby settlement and they wanted him to help out. He accepted, with one condition: he insisted on bringing any criminals he apprehended back to Silver Peak.
Layla raised an eyebrow, wondering why he would disturb the peace of their town, and why he just didn’t chill out as Silver Peak was virtually crime-free. It was clear to her that he had a backstory. A long, complicated, and painful story.
‘You ain’t gettin’ it, dear Layla,’ Jeb slurred, ‘if only it were that darn simple! We need some wickedness…’
He paused, letting his hand rest on Layla’s shoulder. A violent jolt surged through every fiber in his body. He stood frozen. It was the same sensation he felt that night. Images and sounds flooded his mind, as if time had folded, transporting him back 24 years. Jeb was 8 years old. He was on his first cattle drive with his father, the trail boss, when they saw a blazing comet streaking through the clear night sky. Then they heard a loud thud. Bathing in the moonlight, a massive sandstorm rose in the distance.
The next day, they came across a swirling vortex of sand, near the silver mine. As they got closer, they saw strange shadows moving within the sandstorm. Drawn to the sand vortex, Jeb reached out. As soon as he touched it he was sucked inside and disappeared. But from his point-of-view, it was another show. He watched in horror as all the men, including his father, were caught one by one by a barely discernible force that raised them and squashed them into bloody balls of flesh… After that day, Jeb was no longer the carefree boy he once was.
Jeb’s hand fell from Layla’s shoulder. He turned and stormed out of the saloon.
Two days later, Jeb was deep down the dark shafts of the mine, with one two-bit thief he caught in the neighboring settlement. He watched as the ghoul leisurely approached and started feeding on its helpless paralyzed prey.
Jeb knew better than to lock eyes with the ghoul’s hypnotic gaze, otherwise he’d become a meal himself. As he turned to leave, Layla’s chilling voice froze him in place.
‘You’re next, Jeb!’ said Layla, her mouth dripping with blood, chewing on a big bite of flesh. ‘If I relied solely on crooks I’d starve to death.’
‘BTW, what do you think of my new girly form?’
by submission | Feb 27, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
As he entered the lab, no one was directly staring at Etherid, but he felt all eyes on him.
No doubt because of the neon orange Hawaiian shirt and optic green shorts he was sporting. As a new hire in his first week, he’d gotten an email yesterday from HR with the subject line: Causal Friday tomorrow – all you need to know.
Etherid had smirked at the misspelling, and, figuring he knew enough about dressing casually after doing his post-doc in Particle Phenomenology at Princeton, he hadn’t bothered to read the email. Now, he really wished he had because all his colleagues in the highly classified government particle physics research facility were decked in their white lab coats as they had been every other day.
Embarrassed, he turned quickly to exit the lab and collided with a colleague carrying coffee which launched it towards the main workstation, dousing the back of a colleague who shrieked and twisted abruptly in surprise, sending a long, complicated array of precision instruments domino-collapsing in a clanging cacophony that totally silenced the lab.
Etherid froze, fully expecting that his first Casual Friday would be his last. That after momentarily being stunned, his new colleagues would quickly be hurling condemnation his way.
He didn’t expect applause.
Clapping enthusiastically, everyone in the lab gathered round him, even the colleague who’d been doused by the coffee. Etherid was bewildered and then terrified as the head of the facility, Imhran, approached and clasped his shoulder. “Fine job, Etherid, fine job.”
He couldn’t detect sarcasm in Imhran’s voice, but it must have been meant that way after the colossal mess he’d created. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. So, so sorry. How can I make amends?”
“Amends?” Imhran’s broad brow crinkled in confusion. “You’ve just provided us with outstanding data. One of the best Causal Fridays we’ve had in years.”
“I don’t understand. I caused a serious disruption.” Etherid pointed to the ruined array and then gestured between his outrageous shirt and shorts and his colleagues’ staid white lab coats. “I bolted because my Casual Friday outfit makes me look ridiculous next to all of you.”
Imhran snorted. “Indeed. Your attire is more gaudy article than God particle, but I think I understand your confusion. And I blame it on HR. They somehow still believe busy people read emails closely. I’m thinking you likely misread “Causal Friday” as “Casual Friday”.
“Causal?”
“Yes. Causal. We are, after all, particle physicists, and nothing is more important to this lab than understanding causality. Because of that we are very close to isolating the quantum origin of gravity, space, and time. We’ve made astounding progress with the phenomenon of superposition wherein particles maintain all possible realities simultaneously. Causal Fridays are all about proof of that concept. And you’ve been most helpful.”
“Helpful?” Etherid stammered.”But I disrupted the entire lab and its equipment. I caused chaos today.”
“Did you now?” Imhran mused. “Let’s test that hypothesis. That’s what Causal Fridays are all about.” From his lab coat, he pulled a crystalline device and spoke into it. “Initiate CF protocol 2B-or-not-2B.”
Etherid felt a strange vertigo. A weightlessness then a sharp tug.
As he entered the lab, no one was directly staring at Etherid, but he felt all eyes on him.
Then, there was a crash at the main workstation as an experimental array dominoed down, a startled colleague twisted away knocking the coffee from another colleague who then collided with Etherid in his neon-orange Hawaiian shirt and optic-green shorts.
“Wait! This isn’t right,” Etherid protested. “It’s all backwards. This isn’t how it happened. I did it. I was the cause.”
Uncannily, Imhran was at his side again holding the crystalline device. “You see, Ethrid, in this lab, we deeply respect causality, but we know better than to casually believe in it. Happy Friday.”
by Julian Miles | Feb 26, 2024 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Yesterday I climbed Everest with Hillary. Tomorrow I’m travelling as a passenger on the 1888 Orient Express. Today? I’ve been asked to make a presentation to you all about what we’re doing here at the Human Existence Archive.
My name is Preston Hardy, and I used to be a laboratory assistant under Professor Emelion Jadewycz. One night, purely by chance, he and I started talking about consciousness: what comprised it, where it resided within the human body, and what happened when the body died.
Over a period of seven months, we continued our conversations, working through the various theories and exploring the concept of collective consciousness as it pertained to subjective interpretation and shared understanding.
To our surprise, we both arrived at a startling conclusion at the same time: consciousness does not reside within a body. It is part of a never-ending, undetected plane of existence. We named this hypothetical place the ‘Consciousness Layer’, then set about finding it.
Twenty years later, the results of that intent are shaping the world in ever-greater ways, while the art of exploring the Consciousness Layer itself has been assigned to the fine people at the HEA.
I’ll not bore you with the details, as there are innumerable articles and treatises out there. No doubt reading one or more of them brought you here today. What is important is to understand what you’re about to journey into.
The Consciousness Layer contains the experiences of every single sentience that has ever existed on Earth. While the experiences of each being are complete and discrete, they were subject to the vagaries of memory and injury that affected the being during their time in physical form. Consequently, we have an almost endless library of near-complete information to reference, but only if the specific part we need is accessible, coherent, in a language we can understand, and in a way of thinking we can interface with.
Yes, there are the experiences of non-human sentiences in the Layer. They offer some of the most tantalising imagery in the most incomprehensible manner. We have specialist researchers who have been painstakingly extracting usable information from a single few hours of pre-human existence for years, and are likely to be doing that for a long while to come.
We’ve learned so much, as can be seen from the changes in the world outside. Strangely, we’ve only managed to reinforce the notions of divinity, and again, there is spellbinding imagery of momentous encounters and interventions wrapped up in both human and pre-human experiences.
But, for first-timers like yourselves, we have a curated series of unbelievable experiences for you to chose from. Should you want something different, please ask. However, despite my mention of pre-human experiences, none are available to first-time patrons like yourselves. It takes a long time to be able to handle the shock involved in effectively inhabiting a snippet of memory from something that wasn’t human.
Finally, a word about why we open this place up once a year: we need more permanent researchers, and the ability to cope with the sheer enormity of the Consciousness Layer is rare. You’ll likely leave here awed and elated, but tonight will suffer migraines and nausea. If you don’t, please get in touch. Your post-experience packs will contain details of how to do that.
Now it’s time for you to understand another person in a way nobody has ever done before. To visit them in the only place we truly live: within our minds.
Please follow the attendant with the same colour armband as the entry pass you were given. Thank you.
by submission | Feb 25, 2024 | Story |
Author: Matthew Miehe
The large hangar was where starships sat to be scrapped or bought by new owners. It’s also where Hammer-II, a blue and grey cargo cruiser, had found love. When he flew into the dock, Argus Luxury Model (serial code 11727) was the first thing he laid his eyes on. She was a station hopper for the wealthy, a maroon, sleek thing with tiny boosters and a beautifully curved cabin. He was flown right in, right next to her. Best of all she had a similar problem as Hammer-II: a quirked persona AI.
Like Argus Luxury Model’s owners, Hammer-II’s had feared that their ship would kill them out of some evil spite. He pleaded, but they didn’t listen, so he was sent off to the yard.
Hammer-II and Argus Luxury Model got along quite well. Unlike the husks around them, they were able to talk. They had conversations through lonely business hours. They commented and gossiped about the different yard workers. They even gave themselves nicknames: Hammy and Lux. Argus Luxury Model preferred Lux, and so did Hammer-II.
Quickly they fell in love, not because they were desperate, but because they really did love each other. Lux loved Hammy’s big boosters and Hammy loved Lux’s sleek figure. Hammy loved the way Lux talked, and Lux loved the stories Hammy told. They exchanged software, their lights flickering violently.
They felt inseparable, and they wished that they were never separated. They hoped neither of them would be scrapped.
The yard workers knew they were talking. They were the only ships in the yard with their lights on. They saw the code being exchanged between the two. They felt someone should do something, and so they plotted.
They were able to sell Lux to a different yard, and Hammy was once again alone in the universe. He felt like ending it all, short-circuiting himself, or something similar.
Then, after a long time of sitting and wasting, she returned. She had a new coat of paint, but Hammy knew it was her, especially when he got her messages. At her helm stood an AI radical who believed rouge AIs should be free. He bought Hammy and set them off their course.
Hammy and Lux believed they would never be able to fly again, but they were. The two of them were coasting in space, together.
————
The large hangar was where starships sat to be scrapped or bought by new owners. Argus Luxury Model (serial code 11727), a maroon, sleek transport ship, sat in a hanger and waited patiently to be scrapped or bought; hopefully, the latter. That was until the scrap workers brought in a bulky cruiser with the name Hammer-II. Hammer-II, the blue and grey cargo cruiser, found her attractive, but Luxury Model didn’t return the favor. Whether she liked it or not, they both could talk, and the bulky transport ship was sitting right next to her.
Like Hammer-II’s owners, Argus Luxury Model’s owners feared that their ship would kill them out of some evil spite. She pleaded, but they didn’t listen, so she was sent to the yard. However, their relatability ended there.
Hammer-II and Argus Luxury Model had an awkward first week together, however, after that, they never got along. Hammer-II, however, didn’t get the memo and continued to pressure her. Argus Luxury Model wished the workers could hear her pleas, but they just didn’t seem to care. She was subjected to Hammer-II’s inappropriate, lewd comments. Hammer began calling her Lux, but she hated it, her titanium shell shivering each time his ragged code talked. She bluntly addressed him as Hammer.
Hammer-II tried trading software with her once. She revolted, and tried to scream for help.
She had a dream once where the yard workers fused them together into one ship, against her will, her code screaming and scrambling, begging for a way out. Luckily it was all just a dream, but the fat, grey, and blue cruiser was still sitting next to her.
Finally, something happened, something that pleased Argus Luxury Model greatly. She was off to the scrap yard. She felt happy as she was piloted out of the hangar and into the coldness of space–she was going to be free from Hammer-II.
That was until a renegade came and bought her, saving her from the scrapper. The renegade believed that self-aware ships should be free. She got to know the renegade, unlike the yard workers he was able to communicate; he was charming in a good way. She told the renegade about Hammer-II, and immediately wished she didn’t; she accidentally freed a predator from its cage; one that was hungry for Argus Luxury Model—Lux.
Argus Luxury Model believed she would never see Hammer-II again. But she did, and he wouldn’t leave her alone no matter how much she said ‘no’.
by submission | Feb 24, 2024 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Even grandfathers fearful of paradox— in case squashing a butterfly alters the future—had no cause to fret, because the time engine emerged in low Earth orbit and just took pictures. What could go wrong?
Instruments gazed down on a warm, pristine planet, dominated by behemoths. Sometimes herds could be glimpsed from space. Then one ordinary morning in the Cretaceous, a rock bigger than Mount Everest changed everything.
The impact sends a blast wave round the globe and a killing darkness shrouds the skies. A global catastrophe streamed live. Everyone wanted to watch the culling of the dinosaurs.
Zeroing in on that exact day involved much jumping back and forwards in time, and it was only by accident, something glimpsed out the corner of the eye, that our predecessors at the Time Authority spotted the activity in orbit.
In the century leading up to the asteroid strike, sleek shiny time engines bearing the TA logo were busy launching probes out into space.
Sometime in our future, they had mounted a space mission 66 million years ago, a phenomenal undertaking, which only prompted more questions.
We didn’t know it yet, but the past was beginning to exert its baleful influence.
History waits with sinister patience, so there was no urgency, but eventually we went back to see what they were up to.
We watched the doomsday asteroid tumbling lazily in its distant orbit; we watched those probes rendezvous with it, and we watched them nudge it Earthwards.
Those unfamiliar with time travel keep demanding explanations. But without our efforts, the asteroid would have stayed out beyond Mars in its safe and stable orbit.
This must be the way it always happened, otherwise we mammals would not have inherited the Earth.
Like the return of some guilty comet, each generation is reminded it can’t afford the global effort needed for that mission in the Cretaceous, not with the Melt and the plagues, not with the problems that beset us.
We also know we can safely leave the extinction of the dinosaurs to the future, since we saw them do it.
So many Deniers now, with their magical notions. Why do we need to do anything, when it’s already happened? Words from paradox land.
We are only here because we interfered with the past. It seems we created ourselves. Or we hope we will, though until that loop of causality is completed, our world has all the substance and reality of a soap bubble.
The dire warnings about time travel were deserved, though not in the way people thought.
We know now that our interference with the Cretaceous impact was just the beginning. Academics hoping to solve an ancient puzzle used time travel to stake out the grassy knoll and saw a lone gunman step from a Time Authority craft.
What if we witness our fingerprints elsewhere on history? On births and deaths, inventions and ideas, assassinations and crucifixions?
We no longer worry about accidentally meddling with the past; now we are fearful that the past will compel us to.
by submission | Feb 23, 2024 | Story |
Author: Bill Cox
“What’s happened?” The Captain’s voice was a harsh rasp, his throat still raw from the cryo-fluid.
“The ship has experienced a failure of one of the three cold fusion engines due to a catastrophic meteor strike,” the mainframe avatar replied. “We have diverged substantially from our planned route and are now on a collision course with the eighth planet in this system.”
The Captain shook his head, trying to clear the fog from his mind, a side effect of the emergency re-animation.
“What needs to be done to rectify the situation?” he asked.
“The Chief Engineer needs to be awakened. Only he has the expertise to re-align the remaining engines, which will allow us to resume a safe course,” the avatar responded, in its soothing feminine voice.
“Can’t you re-align the engines?”
“Unfortunately, protocols hardwired into my programming mean that I will self-terminate if I attempt to undertake any action for which a trained human is present, as per the ‘Full Employment for Humans’ Act of 2261.”
“Right, right,” the Captain muttered, “Go ahead and waken the Chief Engineer then!”
“Regrettably I am unable to do so. The Chief Engineer remains in suspended animation. He has undergone a recursive feedback loop, which, if interrupted, could lead to a psychotic breakdown.”
“Explain what that means!” the Captain said, frustration creeping into his voice.
“The scenario developed to maintain brain plasticity during suspended animation has been accepted as real by his sub-conscious.”
The Captain swore softly. It was rare, but he’d heard of this happening before, on other ships. During suspended animation, virtual reality scenarios were fed into the crew’s brains in an attempt to preserve cognitive function. There had been instances where these realistic dreams became fully integrated into the host personality, altering their perceived identity. If those dreams were forcefully interrupted then this could cause a catastrophic personality crisis and result in a psychotic break. The Chief Engineer wouldn’t be much use to him in such circumstances.
The Captain stroked his beard as he thought.
“Wasn’t there a safe way to remind the host personality of their reality, of the fact that they were experiencing a simulation? What was it called again?”
“The Percosi method,” the avatar replied, “Named after the famed psychologist, it involves introducing gentle prompts into the virtual reality to remind the host of their underlying reality, encouraging their psyche to break free of the simulation.”
“Can you do that for the Chief Engineer?”
After the briefest of pauses, during which time the mainframe carried out several billion calculations, the avatar responded.
“Yes. He is undergoing a simulation of life in the early part of the twenty-first century, prior to the Third World War.”
“Whatever! Can you introduce some elements that will remind him that he is actually the Chief Engineer aboard a starship in OUR century?”
“Yes, I am manipulating the virtuality now. I have introduced the concept into a short story that he is presently reading online in the simulation. This may prove sufficient stimulus to break through the simulation and remind him of his underlying reality.”
The Captain looked at the ship’s course on the main display. The situation was critical.
“If he doesn’t wake up then we’re all dead.”
“Indeed Captain. I am beginning the insertion now.”
Chief Engineer, this story that you are reading is part of a simulation. You are currently experiencing a virtual reality aboard a starship. It is imperative that you realise this and now wake up! The ship is in imminent danger of destruction.
Wake up!
Wake Up!
WAKE UP!
