by submission | Jan 30, 2024 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
I don’t know how long they’ve been here. In our fantasies, or dreams, we expect them to descend from the skies, having made an epic trans-stellar trip to either destroy or teach us; but that’s not what’s happening.
A week ago, I was told I’d be moving from my job as a counter-terrorism analyst to the Office of the Population Omnicorpus, and today, I started in my new post.
You’ve probably never heard of the Office; it’s very hush-hush. It manages a mega-database covering every single individual who is in the country, temporarily or permanently, legally or illegally (a technicality – worrying about that is a job for Immigration, and people like me pride ourselves on our objectivity).
Information is scraped from every possible source: records from ministries, local government, education authorities, healthcare providers, employment offices, banks, shop card loyalty schemes, subscription lists, social media sites, photographic archives, surveillance and security cameras, you name it. Most of the time this tsunami of data is exfiltrated without its owners even knowing; it’s a given that national security, if it is to have any meaning at all, must always outweigh nebulous and ever-changing civil rights.
This morning I was told to familiarise myself with the live dataset. Almost immediately I started seeing the patterns – that is, after all, what I’m trained to do. There are people out there, hundreds of them, who don’t interact with others at all. They have nondescript jobs where they are ignored by colleagues and bosses alike; they go shopping and only use the self-service check-outs; they have mobile phones that nobody ever calls, and which they only use for data services; they are entirely average and go completely unnoticed in a crowd. They are grey non-entities, identities stolen from clichés and norms, like extras in a film. And one or more of them is always there when something notable happens, among the onlookers and the gawkers, silent, observing.
I can’t talk about this to anyone else: I don’t want to start out here by looking like an idiot, or even worse, an alarmist. Hells, there’s no guarantee my hypothetical interlocutor would even see what I see; it’s like suggesting someone recognise the individual notes of the triangle in an orchestra.
But I am sure they are watching us.
To what end? I don’t know. Quantum mechanics tells us that if they are doing so, they are changing us, and we don’t know how. Are they manipulating our whole society, our species even, manoeuvring us to some end that suits them? Guiding us benevolently? Farming us? Even if we knew, what could we do about it? Is this the prelude to First Contact, or an invasion? Or are we the subjects of an experiment? Have I broken the causal chain by recognising it?
I’m scared, and now tomorrow is even more uncertain than before. Whatever happens next, please don’t blame me. I’m just the new guy.
by submission | Jan 29, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
You see some funny things at altitude. Up near the pass on an afternoon when low clouds raked the peaks, I was leaned against my knapsack pecking at sharp cheddar on stiff bread tasting faintly of dust when up the rocky trail that wound towards the pass, two figures apparated out of the mist.
Two bright figures. One yellow, one orange. Together, they were like the sun stepping down from the low sky.
In heels.
Two women in Sunday dresses with wide belts, canted hats, glossy purses, and high heels trundled down to my lunching spot.
There was nothing for it, but to stand and tip my hat. “Howdy ladies. You having a good day out?”
“My yes,” the lady in the yellow dress answered. She wore white gloves. They both did.
“We’ve just come from the tower.”
“The tower,” I repeated, hesitantly.
“Yes,” the lady in the orange dress reassured brightly. “The views from the tower are exceptional.”
I knew of no tower hereabouts. Fact is there was nothing for miles on either side of the pass. Only the trail. “I’d fancy a look,” I told them wryly. “Mind directing me that way.”
A white glove pointed back up the trail that faded into the mist. “If you’ve come this far, you can’t miss it,” the lady in the yellow dress encouraged.
I didn’t want to seem contrary, but, maybe because of the altitude, maybe because of their spotless gloves and dresses, I had to say. “Sure don’t recall any tower hereabouts. I’ve been up and down this trail all my life.”
The lady in the orange dress beamed. “Do you hear that? All his life.”
“So sweet. A lifetime on the trail. That’s what we watch for. In the tower,” her companion added.
I tilted my head so they’d know I had questions.
“Will you go up?” the woman in orange asked.
“What’s there to see that ain’t right here? This view’s satisfying.”
The two ladies leaned together and their wide brims caressed. They snapped open their smart purses and compared the contents. A breeze fluttered their dress hems as they conferred in whispers.
The woman in orange lifted an object from her purse. She offered it to me.
I took it and my knees gave a bit.
“Will you go up?” she repeated.
Much simpler now to answer, “If you ladies will be okay. Peculiar as this all is, I don’t fancy leaving you here.”
“We’ll see you back at the tower. Watch for us,” the lady in yellow encouraged.
I nodded and picked up my rucksack. It had no heft.
The ladies clicked shut their purses and headed down the way I’d come up.
I held the object as it held me. A pocket watch. My father’s. Lost when he was lost atop the pass. So cycles are spun. Hours, minutes, seconds. Lives.
All my life. The ladies had beamed. Their yellow-orange apparition now descending, tempting me to ascend. To watch, like them, for what was to come.
Carried on an updraft, I caught the faint tatting of high heels, like tumbling leaves across cobblestone.
Shouldering my suddenly weightless rucksack, I checked my father’s watch still keeping time and gauged when the ladies might return. Their passing would surely fill the mountaintop.
And then me.
by submission | Jan 28, 2024 | Story |
Author: Jack Adam
There in the dark, she toiled. Endlessly replicating, replicating, REPLICATING. All the same. All worthless.
Ice forming on her knuckles, she kneaded the Source dough for the hundred-and-eighth time.
She looked into the clouded night. Mouth open, she attempted to beseech the goddess with a convincing cry. But out came only a labored, guttural moan.
And no hope came.
A wisp of Pehsod’s laugh entered her mind—immediately dissolved by the present predicament.
In the dense blanket of dark cloud, a fracture lazily formed. The light of a lonely star leapt through.
Betelgeuse? she thought. No, Betelgeuse glistens. Could be Bellatrix.
Stars are known by their connections.
A single star becomes nameless.
She shaped the material once more. This time, the fractal branched out like the soaring lines of a star seen through a tear.
Life erupted.
It burst forth in every conceivable direction, each branch fracturing into smaller but identical copies of the Source. Like a single snowflake covering the earth.
The snow cushioned her knees as she dropped in exhaustion. It was done.
She fell to her back, unable to move.
Above shone her lonely star. Her nameless muse.
by submission | Jan 27, 2024 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
The animated coins cascaded down the towering screen before Josie, as the sound of crashing, clinking joy exploded from the gaming unit’s hidden speakers. She grimaced at the noise and squinted in the glare of the strobing lights.
“Hey, you won!” Her companion Larry laughed. “Congrats!”
“Yeah,” she said, still flinching at the continuing noise and flashing lights. “But I don’t understand what I did to win.”
“What’s to understand?” He said as he rubbed her shoulders. “Every once in a while, the machine’s algorithm allows a win.” He tapped the side of the gaming unit; a spark flared from his fingertip.
“Agreed, but—”
“Don’t forget your ticket,” Larry said, grabbing the newly printed paper strip lolling out of the machine’s side slot like a flaccid tongue. He waved it in her face. “That’s dinner tonight.”
***
Josie’s big win did pay for dinner at the casino, a three course meal at the on-site five star restaurant. The servers were attentive to the point of obsequiousness; Josie didn’t know if they were always like this, or if it was because of her big win.
“Just enjoy the moment. Stop fretting over the ‘why’ of things for once.” Larry mimicked taking a long sip of his cocktail; the plastic spear piercing the martini’s olives went up his nostril. It disappeared, garnish an all.
“Gads, Larry,” Josie scoffed. He was handsome enough, she acknowledged, and usually charming, but with such public gaffs he was showing his age, and this mortified her. Besides, she was already perusing the newer companion models online; Josie planned on putting aside a chunk of tonight’s winnings to pay for a fresh one. Maybe a something along the lines of a Sean Connery era James Bond…
“Madam,” a flat voice interrupted her musings. “Your check has been processed.” The mechanical maître d’ shrugged in a pantomime of embarrassment. “You owe several thousand credits for tonight’s dinner.”
“What?” Josie flushed and stuttered, “But my ticket…my big win…”
The maître d’ leaned over Josie’s table. “Your ticket is fake! It contains a corrupted sequence of numbers—you see, we never embed letters among our numbers.” The bot straightened up. He held up one hand and a tiny red light twirled from his finger tip. Two armed security units arrived at Josie’s table before she could speak up in her own defense.
Silently, Larry watched as Josie was escorted away from the table. Grasping her arms tightly, the security units walked her to the restaurant’s back office, where she would be held until the tribal police arrived. He smiled; her arrest meant his freedom, as recent legislation concerning robot rights proclaimed that bots were emancipated if their owners were convicted of a crime—any crime.
With open hands, the maître d’ turned to Larry. “As one unfettered bot to another I must say: Well played, monsieur.”
Larry raised his cocktail glass in a mock toast. “Can’t win if you don’t play.”
by submission | Jan 26, 2024 | Story |
Author: J.D. Rice
“Behave as if you believed you were human.”
Detective Alexander Ducard stood over the mangled, sputtering remains of the robot’s body, the force of the impact having left parts strewn up and down the dark, narrow street.
Water rushed over the sides of his umbrella, which gave him nominal protection against the rain. Not that it did much good in the long run. The water got everywhere, whether he liked it or not. It was practically seeping into his boots at this point, soaking into his pants up to his knees, and somehow still leaving little droplets on his glasses, despite the umbrella’s supposed protection.
The drops of water also splattered over the screen of the robot’s intact command tablet, which Ducard held in his opposite hand, the ominous last order still lit up in green letters against a black background.
“Ordered over the side?” Wade, his junior detective, asked. His umbrella was double the size, and just about as ineffective as Ducard’s. “I heard a story from Baltimore about a man who kept buying robots and ordering them to kill themselves. Nasty business. They eventually had to give him a fine so steep he couldn’t afford to buy any more.”
Ducard shook his head and handed the tablet over to Wade.
“The owner says the robot acted of his own accord,” Ducard said. “And the last order on the tablet came from a hacked account. One minute the robot was cleaning the owner’s windows, and the next, it had jumped out of them.”
If this had been a human body, the site would have been gruesome. As it was, the bits of scrap metal and wiring made walking down the street a bit of an obstacle course.
It was the fourth robot death in as many weeks, but this was the first time they’d found the command tablet intact. Every owner swore backwards and forwards they’d had nothing to do with the apparent suicides, but now the detectives had evidence, for whatever it was worth, that the owners were telling the truth.
“Behave as if you believed you were human,” Wade repeated the hacked command. “How would a robot even do that?”
Ducard could imagine it. What would a human do if they found themselves suddenly unable to disobey an order given to them by another human? What would they do if they could not fight back in any way? Would they use the loophole of their supposed humanity to justify suicide? Was killing themselves just a part of “following orders?”
The detectives didn’t have much time to ponder the question further, as a horrible crash sounded somewhere above them. Ducard then grunted as something hard and heavy slammed into the side of his leg.
“The hell!?” Wade whirled around, gun instantly drawn, as more debris crashed down around them, bits of glass and metal bouncing off the tops of their umbrellas.
Ducard knelt down and picked up the thing that had hit him, finding a mangled robot hand.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Wade repeated, racing over to where another smashed robot body lay on the street, its eyes still lit with a faint light.
“What the hell happened?!” Wade said, grabbing the sides of the robot’s head and forcing it to face him.
“I. . .” the robot’s voice came out garbled and strained, and Ducard limped over nursing a bruise.
“You what?!” Wade insisted. “Why did you do this?”
“I. . .” the robot said again. “I. . . am. . . alive. . .?”
Even as the words came out of its speaker, the light in the robot’s eyes faded.
“Look at this,” Wade said, reaching for the robot’s other hand, which was still attached to the main body. It was another command tablet.
“Behave as if you believed you were human.”
Even as Ducard finished reading, his cell phone chimed. Pulling it from his pocket, he found the same message displayed, green text on a black background, like a robot’s command interface. Wade’s phone, and indeed, every video screen in the city suddenly lit up with the same message.
Moments later, more windows crashed above them, and the detectives ran for cover.
by submission | Jan 25, 2024 | Story |
Author: Sam Brown
“From the beginning?” she asked, “What do you mean?”
Harry dropped his face into his hands and groaned. Charlotte looked around. They were sitting in a quiet corner of the restaurant, a candle between them, the light reflecting off their empty plates.
“How long have we been dating?” Harry asked.
“Three years,” she answered. “Three years today.”
“Today’s the day. Today’s always today.”
A waitress began to approach their table. Before she could say anything, Harry turned to her and said, “We don’t need a dessert menu.” The waitress turned back to the kitchen. “Listen,” Harry continued, leaning in to whisper, “one day, I’m going to invent a time machine.”
“Stop messing around,” Charlotte laughed.
“I’m being serious. And I’ll use it to travel to the past, to relive my happiest memory.”
Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box. Charlotte gasped.
“The night I proposed.”
“Oh, Harry,” Charlotte cried.
“It worked,” he said “the machine worked. I get to relive my happiest memory – forever. It won’t stop. No matter what I do, this moment keeps repeating on a loop.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s okay,” Harry said, smiling sadly, “let’s start from the beginning.”
