by submission | Oct 22, 2011 | Story |
Author : Damien Krsteski
Nurse Anne’s botoxed face creases into a contrived expression of worry but her tone remains bizarrely casual, “I’m sorry Mrs. Adrian, but as you can see for yourself, we’re unable to start therapy on the fetus.”
Caroline gets visibly agitated. “No,” she screeches in a panic-laden voice. “You must’ve made a mistake. I’ve looked these things up online and the margin of error turned out to be much higher than most people are aware of.” She stares right through the woman, incredulous.
“I assure you, Mrs. Adrian,” the nurse sounds bland, “no mistake has been made. I’m terribly sorry.” Her face stretches unnaturally into a sympathetic smile betraying her age.
“The common procedure after such results is…” She trails off.
Caroline nods, dumbstruck. She knows what the common procedure is.
“I’ll leave you alone now,” the nurse adds and strides out without further fuss.
Tears stream down Caroline’s cheeks. Her hands tremble, making her mindful of the results print-out that she still holds. She flings it across the room angrily just as the door slides open again, parting before Joseph.
His face appears burdened with sadness, eyes distant and unfamiliar. The two of them hug and hold each other for a few moments in silence. Little Geoffrey’s genetic results strike out of the blue, tearing a massive fault line between them. And they planned it all: the countryside baby-proofed house they saved up money for, neighborhood where the baby will grow, even the elementary school where he’ll tread into intellectual water for the first time. But now, because of the wretched Seventy-seven syndrome Geoffrey will be unable to receive the crucial cognitive enhancement therapy at the fourth month of pregnancy. A whole future wrecked, the fault line breaks them further apart.
“The nurse said we should do as most people,” Caroline manages to say through the sobs.
“But we’re not most people, we could still…”
“I’m not raising an idiot, Jo!” she interrupts through gritted teeth, apparently more angry than grieved. Her thoughts stray to their family trees, calculating despite herself a way to place blame.
Muted by pain they remain for the better part of the afternoon in the room, each in a separate corner, avoiding eye contact at all cost.
Three days later, on a day of weather as rotten as the fetus in her womb, she walks in the hospital alone. Doctors usher her unceremoniously in a wide windowless chamber, ease her onto a yellow X-marked spot. She dons a white paper gown which covers her entire body except for a cut right before her belly.
Flash.
The first wave of radioactivity bursts throughout. She thinks of the poor boy. He is almost a person.
Flash. Another loud click and burst. Why did they name him? They shouldn’t have done that.
After the third flash comes and the doctor’s digitized voice says she’s free to move, a single morbid spasm of remorse rips through her brain. Her blood freezes, but she quickly shuffles the thought aside hoping it’s gone forever.
Next time, she thinks, caressing her belly. Next time I’ll make a good Geoffrey, a better Geoffrey. And I’ll be damned if I let someone spoil me again.
Caroline smiles inwardly and saunters off to the adjacent room for the flush-out.
by Roi R. Czechvala | Oct 21, 2011 | Story |
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
It wasn’t much. A rocky asteroid honeycombed with branching tunnels and storage chambers. Though predominantly a rocky body, it contained enough nickel and iron to shield its twelve inhabitants from hard radiation.
Though not the most distant of the Confederation’s outposts, this was by far the loneliest. The men were volunteers, carefully picked. They had no families. No living relatives. They possessed unswerving loyalty. They knew this assignment was a one way ticket.
The men had gathered in Assembly Hall, so called as it was the only chamber large enough to accommodate all of them at once. Though their grey uniforms were threadbare and patched in places, they were still kept clean and pressed. Despite the isolation of their posting, they maintained strict military discipline. All had undergone full depilation. While not official regulation, it was convenient and widely adopted by soldiers of the fleet.
Colonel John Davidson regarded his men with a rueful smile. All were highly trained and dedicated soldiers; a terrible waste, but the opportunity to save millions, perhaps billions, outweighed their existence. “Gentlemen, you already know the content of the message I received.” They nodded in unison. “It is becoming too costly in men and equipment to pursue the enemy throughout the system. We already knew that. That’s why we’re here.” The Colonel smiled. A grim chuckle rippled around the men.
“Captain Sokolov, I don’t have to ask if you have checked the mass drives.”
“The men and I just made an inspection fifteen minutes prior to this meeting. All components and systems have been checked. Mass payload has been checked. All is in order.”
“Of course it is Yuri. As it has been for the past five years.” This project was Colonel Davidson’s brainchild. After his family was killed in the first wave, he conceived the idea to smash an asteroid into Japan.
It hadn’t been hard to convince the Council to adopt his plan. “It will be considered an act of God. They won’t be able to blame us. If we launch out of Jupiter’s shadow, by the time they see us, it will all be over. Even if they manage to launch a warhead, it will be too little too late.” The plan was sound, cheap and easy. A perfect weapon.
“Gentleman, at 13:42 hours, we begin. You know the drill. Any final questions?”
A deafening, “Sir, no Sir,” roared from eleven throats. Never had men been so ready to lay down their lives.
The asteroid shuddered as thousands of tonnes of carefully prepared nickel/iron blocks were magnetically launched from the asteroid. No sooner had one projectile left the kilometre long barrel than another took its place. The constant launchings set up a vibration that resonated unpleasantly in the teeth of the men.
After thirty seven minutes, the firing ceased. The extraterrestrial bullet was Earth bound. Honshu, its final destination.
“Uh… Colonel?”
“Yes Lieutenant, what is it?”
“When were these calculations last updated?”
“They’ve been checked repeatedly since we left Earth.”
“Sir, were the tidal forces of Jupiter and Mars taken into account?”
“Yes, of course.”
“The impact of millions of infinitesimal objects over a period of time?”
“Simulations showed it wouldn’t matter significantly. Why?”
“We’re going to miss, Sir.”
“Miss? Well, even if we hit the sea, the resultant Tsunami should still do…,”
“We won’t hit the Sea of Japan, Sir.”
“Mainland China? That’s okay. There isn’t a square inch of China that isn’t populated.”
“Not China, Sir.”
“Well, where then damnit?”
“Sol.”
“Sol?”
“Sol, yes Sir.”
“Sol?”
“Yes.”
“The big glowey thing Sol?”
“Yes Sir. That Sol.”
“Hmmm… Well… That sucks.”
by Duncan Shields | Oct 20, 2011 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I hope I like her. I hope I like her.
The Truemate service is just one of the programs. There’s Perfectjob and Opti-health as well.
It’s no utopia but people the world over agree that this system is the best so far. There isn’t much in the way of rebellion. The computer employs the world. The computer divides the resources equally. The computer encourages creativity. The computer has made money obsolete. And the computer gives us true love.
The main thing that defuses potential revolt and allays fears is this: the computer is fair. The creator had the computer write its own security software. No human has been able to crack it or co-opt it so far.
It’s neither communist nor democratic nor totalitarian. It’s something new.
In ten minutes, I’ll be meeting my future wife for the first time.
She was selected for me by the computer based on our likes, dislikes, age, race, family history and biological capability. All of the footage of my life that has been captured on the security cameras was cross referenced with all of my purchases. A record of my PIN-chip movements was plotted. All of my emails were weighed and psychoanalyzed. My productivity was predicted.
A mate was chosen that I would be crazy about and who would be crazy about me.
This process is not enforced but with the plummeting divorce rates and the rise of a new age of stable family units, everyone I know uses the service. It’s an optional part of the basic package we’re all born with. There’s no punishment for refusing the service but after a generation of good results, no one turns it down.
The central computer has become something like a parent to the whole human race.
I am waiting in my apartment for a woman that I have been assured will be a woman I will immediately like and will continue to like for the rest of my life. I drink water nervously and my attention span is very short.
My trust in the process is complete. I keep telling myself that.
I am so nervous.
Her taxi pulls up outside.
The door opens and she steps out. I open my front door and look at her.
She looks at me from beneath the brim of her hat and smiles. Not the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen but I already know that I never would have been comfortable with that. I feel a subtle shift in my soul.
My glass of water slips from my hand. She laughs.
The computer was right.
by Julian Miles | Oct 19, 2011 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The room is dim as I seal the doors and windows against the polluted mist that descends most nights. I wave the low-lights on as I pass to check on Linda. She’s sleeping peacefully so I wander back to the den, collecting a can of coffee on the way.
Closing the door gently I open the drawer and lift the strange device out once again. Purple lenses twinkle as I spin the counterweight and brace myself.
*write*
I shake my head. This has to be good.
“No. I can’t send more people to their death.”
*write*
“No. You’ve had twenty years of my feeding you.”
*write or I come to you*
“Do it. Losing this place so you are trapped would be a triumph.”
*write or I take her back*
That stopped me. Linda dying had started this. In my grief I’d bought some very odd, supposedly alien detritus from the local flea markets. Everybody wanted a bit of the archaeological treasures coming in from a universe that only had us in it now.
Three of those bits had fitted together.
When I spun the counterweight for the first time, the voice had said I could have her back. I was one of those who could write the real. What I wrote became an alternate reality somewhere. So the deal was that I wrote of a place where Linda was alive and it would retrieve her for me. Then I could write of anything I liked and it would use those realities to feed itself. When I lost my job it started dropping off valuables from the realities it ate. Life became easy. But over the years, I have started to contemplate my bargain. I have been playing God in the worst way. My devil has to be sent down.
*write*
“Very well.”
I started to type, my fingers flying across the keyboard as the story and place were so familiar yet the opening gave nothing away. After a page or so I felt the ‘loosening’ in my mind. I typed on, guilt buried under purpose at last.
*delightful*
I smiled and typed on. After a further two pages I felt the vibration and heard a distant predatory wail in my mind as it fell upon that new reality. The counterweight stopped. This was usually where I stopped too, wandering off in self-loathing to drown my guilt in vodka.
Tonight I carried on. I wrote of a world much like this one, where a man with my name had become a genius scientist only to lose his childhood sweetheart to a strange thing that stole her away leaving no trace. He battled years of scepticism until he proved that multiple realities existed and that they were preyed upon. He prepared his world against such an eventuality. Such genius, driven by loss, backed by the resources of a world, would not miss a single opportunity.
*!*
That made me pause. Then I smiled as I saw the lenses crumble and the counterweight rust in seconds. I poured myself a drink before a thought struck me. I ran to the bedroom and lunged through the door to confront another me with Linda supine in his arms. He looked at me in shock and then with compassion that I did not deserve. He put Linda back on the bed.
“Look after her.”
With that, he was gone leaving only a faint purple ripple fading in the air.
I cried for hours, Linda hugging me but unaware of the cause: I had written a better me.
by Stephen R. Smith | Oct 18, 2011 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The police bulletins all called him ‘Pretty Boy’, but those that preferred their atoms in the form they were currently coalesced called him ‘Mr. Floyd’, or simply ‘Sir’.
His reputation had followed him from planet to planet, system to system, but out here, out on the rim, the frontier, only the greedy interested themselves with his capture. Perhaps he couldn’t report a crime, but he could order breakfast, have a suit tailored and share a drink without fear.
On this evening he was hidden in the shadows across the street from the gated mansion of Marco Fitzsimmons, the owner of the only bank on this backwater rock. Floyd was looking to make a withdrawal.
At ten thirty, right on schedule, a police cruiser glided past on a skirted cushion of air. Floyd waited until the whine receded into the distance before crossing the street and striding up to the gatehouse.
Two men stood on the far side of the gate, weapons holstered, and one more perched on a high chair in the guardhouse itself, scattergun laid across his lap. None of them spoke, and none spared Floyd a second glance as the gate opened and he walked past them towards the main house.
This scenario repeated several times as guards at the house entrance, in the foyer and again in the hall outside the bank manager’s study stared ahead with disinterest as the criminal passed by them all on his way into the heart of the banker’s inner sanctum.
Fitzsimmons on the other hand had quite a different reaction.
“Pretty Boy, how did you…?” He started, spilling a drink as he stood up quickly behind the deep polished expanse of his desk. “Guards!” He bellowed, regaining some composure.
Floyd pulled an ugly looking blaster from inside his jacket, the barrel short and fat. “Stow it fella, nobody’s coming.” He pushed the study door closed behind him with a heavy clunk.
“What the hell do you want you thug? When the police get here you’ll…”
Floyd cut him off. “The police aren’t coming. They don’t know because nobody called, and if they do happen by your security team will tell them everything’s just fine.”
Fitzsimmons’ mouth opened and closed several times.
“You call me a thug, you who’ve corrupted the lawmakers, the peacekeepers. You who hold the purse strings and use them to bully people from their homes. Do you know how I got in here?” He lowered the gun only slightly, keeping a bead on the banker from his hip.
The banker swallowed hard. “You must have promised them more money than you could possibly have. When you don’t deliver they’ll cut you up and feed you to the livestock.”
Floyd laughed. “No, actually I walked in here without offering anyone a single credit. Last week you foreclosed a number of mortgages to make way for new construction. Those homes belonged to the aunts and uncles of the men you underpay to keep you safe.”
The banker paled. “I’ll move them, give them new homes.”
“It’s a little late for that. They’ve got no use for you. I on the other hand,” he paused, “I think you may be partially useful.”
Fitzsimmons straightened, sensing an opportunity to save himself. “What can I do?”
Floyd sang a quiet verse, “Through all the worlds you travel, through all the worlds you roam, you’ll never see an outlaw drive a family from their home.”
With that he raised his weapon. The banker managed to get one hand in front of his face before the beam tore through his midsection, atomizing him from the neck to the waist and sending his head and raised arm flying to the wall behind him, before they came to rest in a smoking pile of cauterized flesh on the floor.
Floyd recovered them both, laying the hand on the palm scanner and holding the head, eyes wide and staring up to the retinal scanner.
“These are the parts I’ll find useful,” he chuckled as the system unlocked the accounts management console and he began to make amends.
by submission | Oct 17, 2011 | Story |
Author : Isaac Archer
Dad brought me to his lab again today. I was really excited when he told me I could come help him with his work because I want to be a scientist too. He told me not to tell Mom, because it’s a secret, our secret.
“Some things are for sharing,” he said, “but some things are for keeping. Secrets are for keeping.”
He even called my teacher to tell her I was going to be out sick today from the car, so Mom wouldn’t hear. I like helping Dad and I like missing school even more. I haven’t been enjoying school since I got in trouble last week. Ms. Roberts said I skipped her class, but I told her I didn’t skip it, I’ve never skipped! She told me not to lie and said I was developing bad habits. Dad believed me though and he said we didn’t have to tell Mom either. He said we don’t need to worry her.
Dad works in his own private lab. It’s pretty messy – there’s not much space left because one big machine fills up most of the room. Dad can barely even get to his desk, let alone the shelves and piles of stuff, which is why I can help him. He spends all day doing experiments with the machine, except when somebody comes to talk to him. Those times are the worst because I have to be really quiet and go in the corner and it’s boring.
Today only one person comes to talk. He’s a bald man in a gray suit. The top of his head is so shiny I almost laugh, but I try my hardest to stay quiet. I’m not paying attention when the man and Dad start talking but then the man starts to yell.
“People are dead because of your shoddy work! This is the only project we have without any direct oversight and you’d quit over it? We’re fighting a war here. We can’t have our own weapons killing our soldiers.”
“There will always be risk involved, and you don’t have anybody capable of understanding, much less overseeing, my work.”
“Don’t give me that risk line! Genetic modification–”
“Is not what the implants do! Genes can’t subvert the laws of the universe, no matter how cleverly you configure aminos. The implants are produced by accessing properties that aren’t comprehensible to our physics, much less our biology. They translate those properties biologically, but the machine, the source… most of it is pure mathematics. And it’s probabilistic. I don’t know what a given implant will do. In fact it cannot be known with certainty. You just have to test them, see what each solution does.”
Dad turns away from the bald man. “You guys treat this like it’s magic, but expect it to operate with the consistency of science. Every council meeting, you chatter like little kids with comic books, arguing over whether you’d prefer flight or invisibility. Flight and invisibility! Listen to yourself. No, I won’t have someone in here looking over my shoulder.”
The bald man’s head is purple now, but he doesn’t say anything else, and after a while he leaves. He reminds me of Ms. Roberts.
I decide to ask Dad about it, so I hover over to him and flicker once to get his attention. “Dad,” I say, “Isn’t it wrong to lie? Why didn’t you tell him about my implant?”
He sighs and stares at the ceiling behind me.
“Some things are for sharing, son,” he says, “but some things are for keeping.”
