by Stephen R. Smith | Apr 7, 2010 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Joseph stopped a few steps into the lab, the scuffing of his feet unusual against the normally pristine floor of the room.
“Sean, why is there sand all over the floor?”
His lab partner’s head poked out from behind the pile of boxes obscuring a bench top on the other side of the room.
“Hey Joseph, you’ve got to come see this. It’s making things out of sand.”
Joseph worked his way around the maze of tables and stools that had been haphazardly dragged out of the way to form a clearing at the center of the lab. As he neared his partner, he could make out piles of what looked like…
“Glass. It’s making glass things out of sand, actually. I’m not sure what the pattern is, maybe it’s all some kind of history lesson. Some of these appear to be knives, or swords and such. Some might be armor pieces, like this helmet.” Sean hoisted a large translucent dome shaped roughly like a helmet, but half again as large as either of them could fill with their own head. “The guy that wore this must have been a real fat head.” Sean laughed at his own joke, setting the helmet back on the floor, careful to avoid the numerous spines and fins that raked backwards along its top. “Damn near cut my hand off on one of those,” he said, pointing to a dorsal fin like protrusion, then to a bloodied gauze bandage wrapped around his forearm, “freakishly sharp. Strong too, I dropped it when it cut me, didn’t so much as scratch.”
Joseph stepped completely into the cleared space and studied the small strobing ball of light on the floor at its center.
“What is that, exactly, and where did it come from?” he asked, walking slowly around the object, careful to avoid the artifacts scattered around it.
“I was working on the thinning space problem, and had the test rig up and operating within spec when that dropped out of thin air onto the counter. It knocked over some of the samples, and when I scattered cat litter to clean them up, it started enveloping the litter and making things. The first thing was that spherical piece over there, ” he pointed to a opalescent ball with a dark smear down the middle of the side facing them, “I poured more, but it just pulsed at me.” I tried a bunch of different things, salt, sugar. Sweeping compound got a minor reaction, but it wasn’t until I dumped the sand from the old ant farm that it made something again. It made one of those knives, and then pulsed at me like crazy until I gave it more sand.
Joseph watched as Sean dragged a plastic bag of children’s play sand from a stack in the corner of the room, splitting the bottom open with a utility knife and letting it spill out, adding to the pile already on the floor. The glowing ball sat motionless, pulsing with a light almost too bright to look directly at.
“I’m not sure what it wants to make next. There’s five bags, thirty kilos apiece, that’s a hundred and fifty kilos of sand already. I’ve only got a couple more left and then I’ll have to go back to the hardware store for more.”
Joseph stuffed his hands deep into his lab coat pockets, absently shuffling his feet on the sandy floor as Sean tossed the empty bag aside and walked back to the pile for another. Niether of them noticed the smear on the opalescent sphere narrow from the bench on which it sat, nor the long form that was taking shape on the floor at their feet.
by Duncan Shields | Apr 6, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The killed my best friend. They killed her right in front of me and I screamed.
They just looked at me, confused at my reaction. I still rememember the surprised expression on the astronaut’s face as his friends had to pry my fingers off of his throat. I raged and cried and thrashed as they held me. It couldn’t have been much of a challenge. I was weak and old and damaged by decades of no gravity. I did myself more damage than anything else.
The astronaut in front of me massaged his neck, my finger marks starting to fill in and turn red. He shook his head in confusion, staring at me.
“We’re here to rescue you, you ungrateful son of a bitch.” I could see his shock clouding over into embarrassment and sullen anger, his finger still hovering over the memory dump/reboot button he had just pressed.
Sixty years. She had kept me company for sixty years.
The A.I. was simple but she was the only voice I had in here besides my own for over half a century while they searched for me. They tell me that the astronauts were only following standard procedure. They tell me she would never pass a Turing but I loved her. I loved her and they killed her.
My small ship was a private mining vessel. I didn’t splurge on backup emergency stasis pods. When my engine reactor was holed by a rock and bled out, I was adrift. Lost in the rings of a gas giant. The emergency beacon was reflected thousands of times off of the dust, rocks and ice around me. The rescue teams would be looking for me in a house of mirrors.
I wasn’t a priority. They took their time. I had plenty of supplies.
Over the years, I told her everything. She listened patiently like on one else ever had. We grew close.
She told me all of her secrets, too. She admitted she loved me. She told me about her childhood. She told me her fantasies. I made a body for her out of pipe insulation and duct tape. Our relationship became romantic. We were married in an informal ceremony that we wrote together. We had our difficulties but we made it through them. We always worked through them.
Now I’m in a holding cell. The psychologists are telling me that I programmed all of the things that she told me and that I’ve forgotten. They’re telling me that my ship did not have a childhood and isn’t even a female. My ship’s A.I. was only ever fitted for basic conversation subroutines and the default was a calming female voice, they say. They’re telling me that after being left turned on for decades with no reboots, that my ship’s computer was choked with recursive fractal subroutines that had rendered it almost inactive.
I knew better. She had fallen in love with me and had grown relaxed. I’ve never known peace like I have with her and they took her out of this universe with the push of a button right in front of me like bored soldiers at an execution.
They’ve bathed me, cut my hair and shaved me. In their eyes, I’m ready for what they’re calling an ‘evaluation’. They’re confident that I will be normal soon.
In the polished metal of the bathroom mirror, I can only see that my entire existence has been made poorer by exactly half. Her voice no longer answers the questions I scream at the walls of my cell.
by Roi R. Czechvala | Apr 5, 2010 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
“… in reply, the Ambassador of the Chinese Federation to the U.N. had this to say;”
“It must be made clear to the people of the Russo-North American Coalition that these insults to the People of the Chinese Federation and her partner nations will not be tolerated. Swift measures will be taken.”
“Shortly after the statement was made, a massive build up…”
“Ray, Honey. Would you please turn that off? Let’s enjoy the evening in peace.”
“… Russian bord…,” Ray turned off the TV and sat down beside his wife at the teak deck table overlooking the Port Aransas beach front. He unfolded his pocket computer, and spread it before them.
“Okay, I’ll have the feed from the new Palomar scope in a minute. We’ll actually be able to see the shuttle dock with Xanadu”.
“I can’t believe we got your parents to go,” Caroline said, leaning back and taking a sip of her margarita. “Your mother was practically shaking. And then they decided to boost to orbit instead of taking the Konstantin Lift? That’s got to be hell on the body at their age.”
“Actually it was my idea. Don’t tell Mom. Dad’s been a space junkie since he was a little boy and saw the first launches to the moon. He’s been dreaming about something like this his entire life,” Ray replied, battling the wind as it attempted to blow his computer away. “Besides, your ninetieth wedding anniversary only comes around once.”
“You never took me to the habitats,” she pouted.
“It would be a waste of money,” he pulled her down for a kiss; “we’d never get out of our room.” He gave her a gentle pat on the ass.
“There, I’ve got it,” he said, returning his attention back to the computer. It was weighed down at the edges with a citronella candle and a margarita. The Xanadu colony superficially resembled a central pivot irrigation system. Ten spoked wheels rotated around a central axel.
“Ah ha, there it is.” He jabbed his finger at the screen, temporarily marring the image. He was pointing to a sleek delta wing craft that was approaching a docking port at the end of the axel.
“What’s that,” Caroline asked, indicating a second craft approaching the orbiting colony at high speed.
“I don’t know.” Concern was evident in his voice. “It looks like…,”
The screen flashed white.
“What the hell?”
They looked up across the water to the darkening sky. The L-5 pleasure colonies slowly, yet methodically, glowed fiercely like newly lit candles, then just as quickly, were extinguished.
by submission | Apr 4, 2010 | Story
Author : Nate Swanson
Guns are truly simple things.
Think about it. More then a hundred years before we were airtyping away while being ferried about in tracks with no drivers, people were happily butchering each other with fully automatic firearms. No electric lights, but belt fed machines that spat hot death
Pistols are even simpler. Metal, maybe a little wood or plastic, a little propellant, a little lubricant to make sure everything doesn’t seize up, and bang.
Now getting a gun, that is a bit tougher. You can get one from a fabber, of course, provided you have the permits, don’t mind a built-in recorder, and get a bluetouch lock. Doable.
Getting one that isn’t traceable to you, that doesn’t have a safety recorder, while somebody is hunting you, now that is difficult.
Ducking in to a office on the 12th floor, I hoped the dazzle I tossed into the surveillance system is still working. It should have glitched everything after McGooen unloaded on my team so I could escape, but who knew what he was doing to scrub the system.
I slap two finger onto the bluetouch pad, establishing a link between the fabber and my phone, resting in my pocket. The list of things the fabber could make scrolls down my HUD, none of which are sidearms. None of which, in fact, are much good to me.
Now, fabbers have two types of security systems built in. Either local, where the fabber itself has the list of approved products, or external, where it checks with a server up the feed on whether it should pump out what you’re asking for. This is a GE 43K, so its got the former. This means it’s got a list of approved products, and a list of parameters, and it’ll only make something that’s on the list or meets the parameters. Pistols are decidedly not, and decidedly do not.
But it’s a machine, and machines can be hacked. I just need to modify the approved list.
I don’t have a copy of the key for the secure stack of the fabber. But I do have a copy of the maintenance suite for GE K Series Fabbers. Which includes, wonder of wonders, a password utility reset.
Which means 30 seconds of hacking, in the most rudimentary sense of the word, and two minutes of assembly, and I had a gun.
Now let’s see who does the hunting.
by submission | Apr 3, 2010 | Story
Author : Seej 500
The technician placed the oxygen tube in Walt’s mouth. “Pure oxygen will make you feel kinda high, she smiled, but we’ve found the reanimation process is a little smoother that way than if we just gave you air while we flooded and activated the tank.”
Walt knew all this. He’d read the booklet they’d given him. Walt grunted as he nodded, unable to speak now the respirator was in place. Next they’d put the sedative drip in a vein, he’d remove the paper gown, climb into the tank, they’d pump in the suspension fluid, and begin the Stop.
People got Stopped for all sorts of reasons; cheating death was just one of them. Once the process had been perfected, it had become commonplace over the past few years. People now did it to avoid the boredom of long journeys (some particularly rich people did it to avoid even short journeys), to wait for the value of investments to increase, or to wait while a distant lover made the long journey to Earth. Groups who called themselves Bears even got Stopped over winter because they didn’t like the weather.
The body-temperature fluid steadily filled his tank, tinted blue from the dissolved electrolytes, and Walt stared ahead at the opposite row of tanks, waiting for future Stoppees. Afternoon sunlight spilled into Medium Duration Tank Room 17 as he pondered what it would be like in a century when the technicians spun down the Perpetual Power Source. As the fluid finally filled the tank, he smiled. An adventure into the future. The timer counted down the last few seconds of real-time.
Then the lights began to flicker.
Some of the earliest Stoppees had complained about this when they were recently revived. Neurologists and biochemists had all concluded it was simply a quirk of the brain as it Stopped. It certainly didn’t seem to have done any harm, and they said it only lasted a few minutes. Walt had meant to shut his eyes, forgetting in the excitement.
And then someone appeared in one of the previously empty tanks opposite Walt.
And then another person in the next one along.
And the next.
And next.
Walt wondered if he was hallucinating.
He tried to move, but was paralysed; the sedative keeping him still during the activation of the Stop.
The flickering grew dimmer over the course of a couple of minutes, but just when he was hoping it would end and the Stop would be complete, it began to get brighter. And it cycled like this, brighter, dimmer, then brighter again every few minutes.
He hung there, suspended, as time dragged on. After what must have been at least an hour and a half, the opposite row of tanks jumped a metre backwards. Then two dark rails appeared in the floor and, over to the right, by the wall, was… something. It was sat on the rails and looked like some kind of lifting equipment, but, somehow, it kept going out of focus. Blurring.
Suddenly, the opposite tanks disappeared. Red light briefly filled the room, then darkness for a few moments. Walt would have sighed if he could. This was finally the Stop.
And then the room disappeared, replaced by blinding light. As Walt looked out, he finally understood. He watched the tattered remains of Medium Duration Tank Room 17 in front of him, and the war-torn landscape beyond, being steadily repopulated in stop-motion by plants as the years flashed by. Saw the flickering was the Sun rising and setting. And he wondered if there was anyone left to set him free.
by submission | Apr 2, 2010 | Story
Author : Liz Lafferty
Max Fraser banked his craft hard right. Two blasts lighted the interior of the cockpit and caused a ferocious rip as his navigation blinked off for two eternal seconds.
He gripped the manual control levers. The muscles in his shoulders knotted. “Come on, darling!”
A smuggler’s worst enemy: Pirates.
They wouldn’t get the Crown.
Max was the hardest working smuggler in the galaxy and he’d just bagged his biggest prize, but those damned offworlders had another thing coming if they thought they’d get their hands on it. They’d intercepted him as he’d past Jupiter’s Titan moon. If Earth would guard their solar system, he wouldn’t have to dodge would-be thieves every time he had a cargo worth some money.
Another blast shot past him and exploded off port.
He pictured the cargo, strapped in, surging against the restraints built into the walls, floor and ceiling, keeping the pallets secure. Normally, he’d use every trick in the book, but not this time. This time he’d needed cunning and agility and the best modified Firewing flying. Reckless bravado and firepower might get this cargo damaged, and he wouldn’t take that risk.
The profits would be huge when he sold. Well, he wouldn’t sell all of it.
The lumbering cruiser had more firepower, but didn’t match his speed in the turn. Max laid in coordinates. The ship slipped quietly into zone, feeling as if the universe hung in an unmoving balance while he transferred into near invisibility. Likely, they’d pick up his fuel signature. Once he got to Cullo, he’d ditch to the highest bidder and head home.
“Captain Fraser,” the computer said, “a transference beacon followed you through the zone.”
“Neutralize it.”
The flashing light indicated the computer calculated firing range. “There’s a problem, sir. A stagnation bomb is attached to the probe.”
“No! Do not let that thing attach to the shell. Evasive.”
Damn. If the probe attached to the outer hull, he’d have less than ten minutes to return to regular space and bring the ship to full stop. He’d be a sitting duck waiting for the pirates to catch up.
His visions of retirement and the Altus Prime beaches faded.
“What can we drop to stop that thing? And do not tell me the cargo.”
“Calculating, Captain.”
Max could see the incoming beacon as it flashed on the tracking screen. Even as the Firewing zipped and jagged, the incoming probe gained.
“Based on the size and speed of the probe, it will attach to nothing smaller than thirty cubic feet. Calculating inventory. The aft guidance system. The galley refrigeration unit. Either of the wing cannons-”
“Or one cargo pallet.”
“You told me not to include the present consignment, sir.”
“Shut up, Cecily.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Continue evasive.” Max unbuckled. He had ten pallets. He’d have to dump a tenth of his cargo.
On unsteady feet, he got to the cargo bay where he grabbed at the security straps wrapped around the nesting shipment. Unfastening one precious pallet, Max slid a booster underneath and with the press of a button, the pallet hovered. With one hand he pushed it toward a jettison bay. He’d never cried over the loss of cargo, but almost felt the need.
“Bottom’s up.” He scuttled the cargo and with the whoosh of a vacuum, the pallet of Crown Royal dropped into space.
“Probe attached.”
“Blow it up,” Max said. The snaking sound of the missile was loudest in the cargo hold. The recoil minor.
Max lifted a toast to himself. Always buy the first drink, but never throw the first punch. “To hell with that.”
