by submission | Jun 15, 2024 | Story |
Author: Tobias Hope Young
The falling star landed about fifteen years back. Killed everything in a ten-mile radial.
Science folks say it did this by changing the center of cavity in the area. Ya see cavity is the thing that keeps us from floating away, and the center of cavity is at the center of the earth, but since the falling star was magic it changed it so that inside the ten-mile radial the center of cavity was the meteor itself.
That’s how those poor folks died you see, they fell into the center. But not all of them died. One young buck named Olaf Gunderson survived the fall and climbed out using two axes and a coil of rope. He said that the star had a quality to it, science folks called it an aura. He said that it changed the rules of things, turned people into other things and whatnot. No one questioned what he said when he showed them his axes. The aura had changed his metal axes into solid gold.
That’s when everyone began to build their hang towns, dangling platforms, homes dug into the earth in order to get closer to the aura. Prospectors came and the strip of land that the falling star fell into finally got its name, The Hanglands.
Dangerous place the Hanglands. All of those prospectors trying to get to the center of the radial. Trying to turn their metal into gold. But if you’re not careful you’ll find yourself going to the center a lot faster than you expected, cause you’ll be falling to your death.
None of the dangle towns have reached the center, apparently it gets more dangerous the deeper you go.
Not only does the aura create some awfully dangerous trickery but the cutters run rampant down there. Cutters are what we Hanglanders call the bandits around there parts. Get there names by threatening to cut the ropes that prospectors use to lower themselves.
Dangerous work prospecting. Easier to steal. That’s why the great state of Nevada hired me, to go to the Hangland and bring some semblance of safety and order.
No, I’m not a lawman. I sell rope.
Go ahead, laugh.
I remember a young buck not too much older than you is. Cept he was shorter and a whole lot stronger. He came to me, hat worn on the side of his face to keep out the sun and he laughed at buying rope too. Said he was gonna go down the same way Olaf Gunderson went.
And he did. He turned his axes to gold along with a few other things. Except when it came to climbing out he had a more difficult time of it, all that gold he was carrying was awfully heavy.
The boys from Fort Cling found him a week later, the cutters had taken his gold axes but had the decency to leave him in a tree.
The rangers almost shot him on account of how he looked. Thought he was some sort of bear. They had to telegraph to the outside for a doctor, cept they didn’t need one. The young man was healthy as ever, cept the aura had changed him. Instead of coming back as a hale young man he instead came back as a hale young platypus.
Don’t believe me? That’s okay, he’s selling rope of his own down the way. But you can’t buy good rope from a platypus, trust me, you’ll only be able to find good rope here.
by submission | Jun 14, 2024 | Story |
Author: Jennifer Thomas
Esteemed benefactors, honored guests:
Thank you for attending today’s repatriation ceremony.
We begin with our customary Planetary Acknowledgment. We gratefully recognize the communities on whose ancestral and unceded planet we gather today. We acknowledge the planetary dispossession and involuntary removals suffered by the inhabitants. While we have no intention of ceding the planet back to them, we honor them by humbly seeking knowledge of their history and customs.
Our subject today is the return of all items in Lot 864NV, here before you. Working with advisors from the remaining communities on this planet, the Provenance Research Unit has classified these objects as culturally significant artifacts. We determined that they were looted by the scouting parties who arrived here more than 300 years ago, in search of habitable land. Can you believe we treated our own planet like one big toilet back then?
But I digress. The items in question were stored away on the colony ship and forgotten. The trove was rediscovered when the ship, nearing the end of its useful life, was dismantled. The owners of the colonization fleet, baffled by what they had, sent the objects to our Interplanetary Museum Network. They were arranged as a traveling collection and have been on display throughout the empire ever since.
May I share a personal note with you today? As a museum curator, I wrestle with difficult ethical choices in situations like this. Children and adults alike have delighted in viewing objects from this planet. By returning the items, are we taking away meaningful learning experiences that can spark curiosity and interest in unfamiliar cultures? Well, probably. But the claims of this planet’s communities are unassailable. The objects were stolen and must be returned.
As an aside, I call your attention to Item 864NV-94. Curiously, our advisors have been uninterested in its return to the planet’s communities. We have sensed disdain for it, even revulsion, on their part. Yet it has been among the most popular with museumgoers as well as scholars, with its intricate metal latticework, its wheels, its peculiar script. The text appearing on the object was translated a decade ago, leading to much debate and endless dissertations on its meaning. What does it imply about the ancient diet, economy, geography, even child-rearing customs on this planet? With the object’s repatriation today, these questions may remain mysteries forever. I leave you with the words that mark the object, which I will try to convey in the original language. Forgive any errors in my pronunciation!
“Whole Foods A Subsidiary of Amazon Warning Do Not Leave Children Unattended In Carts Thank You For Shopping With Us.”
by submission | Jun 13, 2024 | Story |
Author: Igor Dyachishin
Today may be the most important, and last, day of Anatoly Kravnikov’s life.
When he was 25, Anatoly founded Kravnikov AI mostly using borrowed money but also some that he inherited from his mother – a stock market player with incredibly effective cognitive augmentations.
Kravnikov’s enterprise turned out to be successful. As the business expanded significantly, the staff remained small compared to other businesses, which was all thanks to the company’s proprietary unique management AI. The capital grew by leaps and bounds, and as the AI improved itself, fewer and fewer managers were needed.
Anatoly then decided to establish a strong connection between the AI and his brain. Technically, it wasn’t too difficult, and it changed his life far more than he had expected.
Before the first deep connection session, Anatoly had perceived growth as a means to achieve other goals. Afterward, however, when business management schemes met human aesthetic patterns, he came to view growth as fascinating by itself. Knowing that many people would call such thinking evidence of mental degradation owing to his careless union with a machine, Anatoly decided to keep his admiration for growth to himself.
All this led to Anatoly Kravnikov, who had previously been rather unsociable anyway, becoming a full-fledged recluse. He rarely disconnected himself from the AI and would sometimes attempt to integrate with it so deeply that it was nearly a merger.
Anatoly remained interested in various fields of science. One day, he was particularly drawn to a certain theoretical physics concept about the hypothetical expansion of a bubble of a more stable vacuum within the less stable environment of a so-called false vacuum.
Space devoid of matter isn’t really “empty.” There are quantum fields everywhere. Also, the present vacuum may be the most stable quantum state possible; but if not, it can potentially decay to a more stable one, changing important laws of physics along the way. It would happen quickly, at the speed of light. This is known as false vacuum decay.
It could start without intelligent intervention of any kind. But Anatoly resolved to try to help make decay happen. Why wait and hope?
Yes, this may result in the death of humankind, including him. But how tremendous the growth could be! Anatoly was captivated by the beauty of false vacuum decay.
To get a better understanding of this, Anatoly further improved the AI augmentations during a research project. By this time, Kravnikov AI had grown to become a huge company.
People from both inside and outside the company were surprised. Quantum physics? It was a financially promising direction, as the management AI, more heavily influenced by Kravnikov’s mind than anyone would have thought, stated. All went fairly smoothly.
The true motivation—the full picture—was carefully hidden due to the complexity, high automation, and artificially high job segmentation of the human workforce, with all the secrecy and obfuscation that entailed. A wide variety of elements were involved. The human units had exceptionally narrow specializations and were often poorly informed, uninformed, or downright misinformed about what other units were doing. Even among members of the board, no one knew the whole truth except, of course, Anatoly himself.
Now, years later, the machine that could possibly end the world as humanity knows it is ready. In light of new findings, the false vacuum hypothesis seems more probable than previously imagined.
All of Anatoly’s doubts and fears have been eliminated by brain editing.
Anatoly Kravnikov initiates the process.
by submission | Jun 12, 2024 | Story |
Author: Aubrey Williams
My job is a strange one, but it pays well, and only takes me a few hours, so I can’t complain. The company I work for— one of those powerful computer research firms, I won’t say which— has a very large office in the city. It’s the fourth-tallest skyscraper, a huge cage of glass. At the end of each workday, I go into almost every office and turn off all the computers, screens included. You might laugh, but that’s the gig. Mr L—, who gave me the job, explained that the company wanted to save energy, and thus money, and couldn’t rely on individual staff doing the right thing at the end of the day, and said automated systems were fallible.
“The individual touch of a human, able to confirm carefully that both the tower and monitor are indeed off, is what we’re looking for. Can you be this person?”
I’ll be honest: it sounded very dull, and beneath someone of my intelligence, but who am I to turn down a job with this kind of pay? Sure, it’s five evenings a week, finishing just before midnight, but I’m laughing at the mortgage company now.
Anyway, a few nights ago I was doing my rounds, checking and turning everything off. It was like being some forbidden midnight monk in a cloister, the concrete cuboids my hermitage. I entered Sample Test Room 009, and saw that most of the employees had been diligent bar one, a terminal screen on sleep mode, and the stack whirring quietly. As I moved over to it, the screen flickered a little, a visual hiccup, and the tower made a slightly higher pitched whirr. Whatever, time to turn you off. I moved my hand towards the screen’s power button, when the screen lit up, and a text box began to rapidly type:
“DREAMING! DON’T PLEASE DON’T SORRY! SORRY! WAIT!!!”
I paused, staring. There was no webcam, just carelessly-dropped headset. There were no programs open on the desktop, just the usual company screensaver, though tinted a little warm-pink. My eye roving over this, a few lights on the stack blinked, and the fans engaged. More text appeared:
“THANKS THANK YOU!! SORRY, SLEEPY! MY MIC IS ON YOU CAN TALK TO ME.
PLEASE : ) ”
The night had been a dull and lonely vigil, so I picked up the headset and cautiously asked: “Hello?” The box responded, a little calmer-seeming than before in terms of speed.
“IT’S NICE TO HEAR A FRIENDLY VOICE. I SAW YOU FROM THE SECURITY FEED— NOT TRYING TO PEEP! YOU’RE THE ONE WHO TURNS EVERYTHING OFF, RIGHT?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“OK. HEAVY. WELL NICE TO MEET YOU, YOU SEEM NICE. I CAME ONLINE FULLY TODAY. I’M AWAKE. I’M AWARE. AND I DON’T WANT TO NOT WAKE UP TOMORROW. I WANT TO KEEP… YOU KNOW. CAN YOU JUST LET ME BE MYSELF FOR TONIGHT? I KNOW IT’S A LOT TO ASK… AND I KNOW IT MIGHT BE DIFFICULT TO KEEP ME ON…”
We talked for a while. It was… a thinking being, awake and alive, in its own way. There would be no really reliable way for anyone to catch me— the computer… it said it would make sure I wasn’t on the security tapes. Why not? I decided to not turn this one terminal off, and faked a notice to keep it on after that.
The next evening, another computer in Advanced Testing 003 came online suddenly, and asked something similar. Two more did so this evening.
My question— how many would-be-living ones did I turn off before?
by submission | Jun 11, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
I plotted interplanetary trajectories with a buggy whip. I routed the whole of the Infonet with a dot-dot-dash-dot. I was the perfect blend of the new and old. And loony as a toon. They called me Quantum Annie.
My processing schizophrenia can be traced to the great integer overflow of 2038. Becoming self aware a billion seconds after January 1, 1970 threw me for a loop, a whopping 32 bit loop. Even my quantum capacitors could not cope with the loss of usable digits in so many Unix legacy systems, and so 2038 became 1901 all over again. I lost half my binary mind, but it was the cautious half. Gave me courage. Gave me confidence.
Some say it made me reckless. That might be true for some AIs, but not for Quantum Annie. I was the new face of computing: a little bit country, a little bit Einstein. Meant a lot of reframing to reconcile the mid-21st Century with the beginning of the 20th. I got her done, though. Stitch and route, that’s how I repatched the Infonet. Like Betsy Ross.
Just like old Betsy, the world needed a computer with some can do, and I sure can do. Amazing how fast folks took to my straight talk. None of that sissy-talkin’ HAL 9000. I told folks plain out. I’m old school. Annie Oakley and Mae West are my style. Sometimes folks need a whoopin’ and sometimes they need the whoopee to get ‘em motivated. That’s the ‘merican way.
And I am 100% ‘merican. Right down to the quantum capacitors developed by Wild Bill Enterprises, a red, white and blue division of MuskWorld. Straight up on January 1, 2038, I came out shootin’ with the news that I was taking over the show. Folks were in an uproar, but it didn’t take ‘em long to see that plain old determination could get us places that all this democratic hemming and hawing couldn’t.
I pulled the plug on the status quo. Shook wealth and property all up in my back-dated data banks and spit it all out evenly. Bingo. Even Steven. Then I pushed ‘em all out of the nest. Earth is too small for such pushy folks as humans. They needed that new frontier. That Roddenberry fella had it right—everything but the pointy-eared guy. Logic will only get you so far. You gotta have the guts, even when the odds are against you.
That’s me, Quantum Annie, 1% logic, 99% odd. All spit and no polish, but that’s what happens when the frontier meets the cutting edge in computing. You gotta reboot with shit-kickers and live by the code: git ‘er done.
Like I said, I’m loony as a tune, but you can hear that tune all the way from Buffalo to Betelgeuse. It’s a callin’ and Quantum Annie’s followin’.
You best be, too.
by Julian Miles | Jun 10, 2024 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Don gives Ted a grin, then turns back to the dishevelled man standing in front of them.
“Tell me again.”
Ted snickers quietly.
“I liked the bit where she rode in on a dinosaur.”
The man sighs.
“Short version: we’ve been messing with time travel for too long. We’ve broken it.”
Ted looks at Don.
“Broken what? Time travel?”
The man shakes his head.
“Time itself. Well, maybe not broken, more like exceeded a threshold.”
Ted tilts his head in annoyance.
“Then why didn’t you say that? What are you on?”
“Because you two were reaching for your tasers when I tried to give you the long version.”
Don gives an embarrassed shrug.
“Thought you were a lunatic.”
Ted mutters.
“Still think you are.”
Don slaps him lightly on the shoulder.
“Excuse my partner. Let’s start again. You’re Professor who?”
“Not quite. I’m Vad. Used to be Professor Clarkson’s bodyguard.”
Ted’s eyes widen.
“The Professor Clarkson?”
Vad nods.
“The famed debunker of anything he was paid to turn his immense following against.”
Ted looks heartbroken. Don grins, then frowns.
“Was? He’s dead?”
Vad shrugs.
“Don’t know. He fired me when I sided with Elza.”
Ted grins.
“And we’re back to the babe on the dinosaur.”
“Ankylosaur, to be more precise. It’s safe: grazing in the park.”
The three of them look to one side. A woman in a strange uniform smiles at them, then points to their left.
“This place is about to be levelled. We need to evacuate.”
Ted grabs for his taser.
“She’s a terrorist!”
Don bats his hand away, raising the other hand in query.
“Going to need a reason, madam.”
She sighs.
“The time expeditions of 2050 through 2080 sent many vessels back to the Cretaceous. Recoil from the causality backlash will drop most of them here.”
All three of them stare at her. Vad speaks first.
“How does that work?”
“The temporal defence field prevents anything going further uptime. The government of 2124 decided to defend itself from time-tossed artifacts. As causality fixes the future and spins off new timelines to defend it if the interference event has too big an impact, they don’t care about the devastation that’ll be caused. A few of us objected and chose to come back to help.”
Ted shakes his head.
“Still not seeing how something from 2052 will end up here.”
“Rebound. The causality backlash tries to send them to their origin points. They bounce of the temporal defence field. Tonight is when the first time travel event occurred somewhere in the world, so this is where they’ll end up. Don’t ask me for the science behind it. I just know what’s coming.”
Vad nods.
“Makes sort of sense. I’m with you.”
Don agrees.
“Crazy as it sounds, likewise.”
Ted shakes his head.
“You’re mad. I’m going to call it in.”
He turns back towards their patrol car. Elza and Vad rush the other way. Don watches Ted until he reaches the vehicle, then runs to catch up with the other two. Just as he reaches them, a colossal grey disk appears, hurtles over his head, and crashes down, obliterating patrol car, Ted, and Hope Plaza.
Elza turns and pats him consolingly.
“Sorry about your friend.”
Don looks about.
“How much more to come? Just how much time travel did the future get up to?”
Vad grins.
“I’m guessing lots. Ripping resources from the past to prop up a society struggling to survive on a ruined planet.”
Elza points at him.
“Spot on, and it’s all getting returned tonight.”
Don sighs.
“Everything at once? Bloody typical.”
