by submission | Nov 13, 2009 | Story
Author : Ken McGrath
I roll off her and onto my back, panting, satisfied and with the sweat already drying into my chest. My head sinks into the pillow and I smile. Turning to look at her it slides, like water, right off my face.
Her façade is starting to flicker and fade into an electric blue haze, allowing me to see her true metallic shape underneath. I’m guessing my 30 minutes with the woman of my dreams are coming to an end.
“That was so good,” she pants, dragging out the o in so as only a lusty human should.
I sit up quickly, throwing the thin, stained, bedcover off me. I feel dirty and wrong. A deep-seated sense of Christian guilt bubbling up inside of me.
The Simul-Form leans across the bed, reaching out a hand and brushing my naked back. It’s cold, not familiar warm flesh and I shudder moving off the bed completely, turning away from her.
“I… uh, I’ve got to go,” I mumble pulling on my jeans. Behind me I can hear her moving about on the motel bed. As I bend to pick up my shirt I catch a glimpse of her, no… of it, reflected in the cracked, grubby window. I see her for what she really is.
Through the crackling blue glow that surrounds her like an electric cloud I see her change – hair originally short, now long, blonde then red, changing facial features from soft to hard, full lips, sharp nose, wide eyed then narrow. Every single one of them the look of desire and sex. She reels through these female images like someone flicking the pages of a porno magazine, revealing a fleeting glimpse of temptation and want, before moving onto the next.
The lingering flash of skin and nipple, pursed lips, tongue protruding slightly between teeth and slowly spreading thighs. Hair cascading in thick, black ringlets over her shoulders, then angular, spiked and blonde. I turn and she pauses as a smouldering brunette with big, smoking eyes, the sheets wrapped loosely around her doing more to draw attention to those curves than to hide them.
“Why don’t you stick around?” she purrs, stepping slowly off the bed, pulling the covers with her. My eyes follow her toes as they touch the floor, all the way up her long legs, across her covered body and I feel myself getting hard at the sight of her lips, drowning in her eyes. “I can be whoever you want me to be.”
My mind fights to be heard, that she’s a machine, a Simul-Form, able to take any shape, able to fulfil every sexual desire, but that she’s not human. Surprisingly it wins.
I’m wringing knots in the shirt, twisting it in my sweating palms. I struggle into it and button it up wrong as I force my body towards the door.
“Money… your money’s on the table. Over, uh,” I indicate, “there. Thanks.”
Shit, why did I say that? I curse myself as I step out into the harsh judging sunlight.
“See you later cowboy,” she drawls seductively as the door closes, finally forming a barrier between us.
Why do I always feel like the one who’s been used, all dirty and sorry after sex? I squint into the washed out afternoon as cars screech by on the road beyond the battered chain-link fence and sigh. I need a shower.
by Duncan Shields | Nov 12, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Jennies were shipped world-wide.
They were referred to as Jennies because of their genengineered origins. Some people referred to them as Generators because they were filled with energy, hardly ever slowed down, and kept the offices running at full power. They were designed to take care of and organize the day-to-day needs of every business, no matter how big or small.
Jennies were short. They were pretty in a way specifically designed to be slightly doll-like but commanding. There were off-putting yet attractive. Their flawlessness caused the human mind to be repelled but only just enough to avoid most confrontations. They were designed to have no guile and to be robotic enough to deflect unwanted attention.
Looking back, I supposed we should be thankful. It makes them easier to detect when they try to infiltrate and therefore easier to kill. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The A.I. rules were stringent. “Technically People”, Judge Amberson had said.
The sympathizers were happy with the ruling on moral grounds because potential abuse would be treated similarly to abuse that natural-born humans received and dealt with in the same legal fashion.
The rich were happy because a lot of money had been put into the Gen project and the resulting lawsuits would protect their investments.
The parent company had the Jennies record every second of their existence to protect their investments. Privacy clauses were set up and ironclad NDAs programmed internally so that no secret of any company could be revealed in a court of law except for any sexual or physical attack. A few assault cases and market crashes later, the lesson was clear.
In a way, they became untouchable. They all looked the same. None of them really made the effort to look different or stand out from the others.
Businesses that couldn’t afford one were subsidized. Jennies became a mainstay of every office. Where quarters couldn’t be provided, they slept in the offices that they worked in. The Jennies kept themselves clean like cats.
They were too expensive to manufacture as prostitutes. There were too many human women that could be bought and sold for cheaper with less hassle.
While the Jennies made everyone a little uncomfortable, they were treated as the world’s first mass-produced talking biological office application and left alone to do their jobs.
The Jennies were involved in every single aspect of almost every single business in America.
That’s how they shut it down.
The Jennies took over by bringing North America to an age of darkness. The banks, the import records, the export records, the stock markets, all of it. Gone in an hour. They left the rest of the world alone. It was alarming how few countries rushed to America’s side in its time of need. Alarming because by ‘few’, I mean ‘none’.
They shut down the dams and the power plants. The military Jennies held the keys to nuclear silos and threatened to use them if any other country interfered.
If America was a car, the Jennies had just thrown the distributor cap and the keys into the bushes.
From space, European astronauts watched as America went dark.
That was six years ago.
The populace of American is starving and dying off. The Jennies rove around in packs in stolen cars with guns to kill the thousands of us that still survive. They make more of themselves every day.
Jennies eat less. They sleep less. They’re in great shape. They have no compassion. It’s a losing race.
Soon enough, America will not only be run by the Jennies but populated solely by them.
by submission | Nov 11, 2009 | Story
Author : Matthew Banks
“Brankahhh nakahhhsret,” said the vibrating sphere.
“Much impertinence is hydroscopic,” said the speaker on the translator console. McGuine frowned, but Leak still had that constant, infuriating grin plastered on his face.
“Frehhhnat bossssth fffonehhh,” said the sphere.
“Envy the copse and thallium minnow,” said the translator. McGuine grunted and stabbed the “Off” button.
“It’s not working,” he said. Leak was still grinning.
“Maybe it is.”
“What? You think the thing said ‘Much impertinence is hydroscopic’?”
“Maybe it means something.”
“What? What could it possibly mean? Look, the translator isn’t working.” Finally, Leak frowned.
“It worked on every other language we tried,” he said. That much was true. It had successfully translated French and German to English. It had translated Arabic to English. It had translated an obscure mutant patois of Xhosa and Kiswahili into English. It had translated the human-constructed languages Esperanto and Lojban into English. It should by rights have been able to translate the weird speech of the alien sphere. But the evidence was turning against it.
“That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe this doesn’t follow the rules of human languages. It almost certainly doesn’t.”
“So? It worked on other weird languages!” That was also true. When a video recording of a deaf woman using American Sign Language was translated into audio and fed into the translator, it had translated the ASL into English. When snippets of program code written in Python were fed in, it translated them (more roughly) into English. And finally, when Reese and Nanadai’s artificial language Xxxch, designed to be as complicated and confusing as possible, essentially unlearnable by any normal human, the translator still worked, just as well as it had for Finnish or Esperanto.
“Hhhett nahhhsss hhhettsss,” vibrated the alien sphere.
“Informational concerning reductivity oxalate am gourmand,” said the translator. McGuine balled up his fist and slammed it down angrily on an empty metal cart. But Leak’s grin had already returned. He stepped up to the translator console, twisted a knob, and typed something on the keypad. After a moment, McGuine looked up.
“What did you do?” he asked. Leak’s grin widened.
“I’m trying the Ananad algorithm.” McGuine rolled his eyes. Frenchmen and Spaniards and Germans and Turks and Latvians and Azerbaijanis had spoken to the translator while it was using the Ananad algorithm, and it had produced similar verbal garbage as it was producing now.
“Brankahhh nakahhhsret,” repeated the alien sphere. It had been vibrating out this three-part message for almost a year, and the best efforts of every linguist and computer scientist had failed to decipher it. It wasn’t likely that a mess of an algorithm that couldn’t even understand German would work.
“If this device is found…” said the translator. McGuine went pale and sat down. Leak’s grin became a frown.
“Frehhhnat bossssth ffonehhh.”
“…please return the device to…”
“Hhett nahhhsss hhettsss.”
“….Hett Nass, at the address listed on the identification plaque.” McGuine and Leak looked at each other, and both were thinking about how an answer always raises more questions.
by featured writer | Nov 10, 2009 | Story
Author : William Tracy, Featured Writer
A lone figure swung precariously from the side of a sky-scraping tower, painfully inching his way up a rope.
That tower and others stood in rows, crowding out the sky. Their sides gleamed silver, studded with large, black windows. The streets below were lit as much by flickering lamps as by the slivers of sunlight that scraped past the immense buildings. The dark streets teemed with bustling people clothed in rags. The occasional horseless carriage pushed through the crowd, horn squawking.
High above the metropolis, bloated dirigibles drifted lazily from one tower to the next. None paid heed to the tiny figure crawling up one of the great buildings, skulking in the shadows.
He smashed a steel-toed boot through a window. He rolled through the hole, and rose to a kneeling position. He paused, listening for the footsteps of golems—the dead reanimated galvanically to become the mindless servants of the powerful.
Satisfied that he was undetected, he moved swiftly through the halls and passageways toward his objective.
He opened a door to a teetering catwalk. In the vast chamber below him, rows of massive transformers and dynamos repeated on and on, bolts of electricity leaping from one to the next. A single steel column in the center of the room stretched from the floor to the ceiling, intersecting the catwalk. At that place was a knife switch. The lone figure walked forward and reached for the switch.
“I don’t think that you want to do that.” A sharply dressed man stood behind the lone figure, flanked by two golems bearing electricity guns. Two more golems emerged at the far end of the walkway, cutting off any escape.
“If you throw that switch, you will short-circuit the generators below you. The explosion could destroy the entire building.”
“Maybe that’s what I want.”
“Do you have any idea what I am doing here, and what is at stake?” The man in the suit searched the other’s eyes. “I am creating mankind’s ultimate invention. I am building a machine that will change history.”
“You are building a computer. A machine that can perform mathematics.”
“But it is so much more! I am building something unparalleled in human endeavor: A machine that can think! Can you imagine what this means? Our creations will do our work for us. Humanity will live by the fruits of its ingenuity, and we will create a new utopia.”
“Your machines will work for you, and replace us. You will have no more use for the poor, and will then destroy us.”
The man in the suit sneered. “The poor are not my fault. I built my wealth by my talents and my labors. I have given up my leisure, my health, and my family for it. It is mine for I have earned it.” He laughed without humor. “Why should the poor be entitled to what they have not earned? They have done nothing to deserve a better life for themselves.”
“I am doing something now.” He threw the switch.
by Stephen R. Smith | Nov 9, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Hans lay face down on the surgical table, completely immobilized and wide awake. His father’s rubber shoes moved in and out of his field of vision as the older man busied himself in preparation, his voice a constant hum of information in the otherwise empty room.
“We can’t effectively target inactive neural pathways, which is why you’re awake. You won’t feel anything, at least, I don’t think I did…” his father’s voice trailed off only for a moment. “If you do feel uncomfortable, be sure to speak up. We’ll want to make a note of when.”
His father double checked his handiwork, having laid out all the instruments he would need on a sterile back table nearby. Overhead hung a large spring-coiled umbilical of fibre optic cable truncated in a blunt two inch long conical tip. A second such cable snaked into the back of Hans Senior’s skull, following him as he moved about the room.
“The initial prototype is completely polarized,” he tapped the back of his head, “one way. The materials that the interface nodes fabricated from were by nature unidirectional.” Barely pausing between sentences he scrubbed the back of the boy’s neck with iodine before deftly slicing through the skin and subcutaneous layers with a scalpel.
“Still lucrative, even with its limitations. Reconnaissance personnel, witnesses, even the skin trade paid handsomely.”
From the table he plucked an insect like device of surgical steel and placed it over the incision. From it a myriad of tiny appendages unfolded, carefully holding aside the lacerated flesh before burrowing even deeper into the boys’ neck, then up into the base of his skull. At the required depth, it injected a thin catheter and, its task completed, simply stopped in place.
“Frustrating how long it took to solve the polarizing issue. So much time, lost.”
Hans Senior unpackaged a fibre cable socket with a long single organic strand trailing from it. Grasping it with a set of forceps, he fed the strand into the catheter.
“This will be so much better for you than it was for me.” No sooner had the strand contacted the tube, it began to pull itself in. Hans’ head flooded with sights, sounds, and smells that he hadn’t known in years. The strand divided and doubled back on itself, only to divide again, sending countless atom thin filaments off into Hans’ grey matter. His father held the endcap until the strand had reeled in all of its slack before carefully guiding it into the still waiting insectile appliance.
The tiny unit came back to life, grasping and aligning the jack with the flesh. It then glue stitched the inner layers to the device below the surface, and sutured the outer skin to its perforated outer edge.
Its job complete, the mechanism detached, and allowed itself to be picked up and set aside with the other bloodied instruments.
Hans felt the restraints relax, followed by a flood of sensation, not all of it pleasant.
“The pain should subside in a few days.” The older man helped his son into a sitting position before grasping the unattached cable from overhead and positioning it behind the boy’s head. There was a strobe of light and a magnetic snapping as the two ends oriented themselves and fitted together.
His father stood in front of him, and closed his eyes.
Hans felt a strange pressure in his head, then had a sudden awareness of why his father had pushed so hard to implant him now.
“You’re dying.” It wasn’t a question, the facts had been laid out for him.
“Yes. I’ve used up my life. I’ve learned so much, but there’s so much left undone.”
Hans felt the pressure again, followed by waves of knowledge. Not all of it was pleasant either.
by submission | Nov 8, 2009 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
Hilton’s eyes opened, to his own mild surprise. Everything he saw was in dim monochrome, suggesting it was either really early or he was really tired. He was sitting in an armchair in a small office without the faintest clue how he had got here. The last thing he remembered was…
Oh.
So he’d gone through with it. Evidently it hadn’t worked.
Before this train of throught could get much further, a smartly dressed businesswoman entered the room, flashing him the thinnest of courtesy smiles.
“Good morning, Mr Hilton. My name is Annabel Tseng, and I’m here about your debt.”
He opened his mouth to speak, and was cut off, in a magnificently rude display of politeness.
“It’s probably best if you don’t try to deny it. I’m here on behalf of your insurance company and Zybeco Body Leasing. You were three months behind on payments and you decided to settle your balance by driving your car and your body off a cliff. We recovered you from the crash site and put you in temporary acmommodation.”
Hilton looked down at himself, and understood another part of what had been bothering him. His skin, visible only in greyscale, wasn’t skin. It was some kind of polymer replacement. He was in a sim. As he was looking down at what he had become, Ms Tseng pulled out a softscreen sheet from a manila folder.
“At this moment, your debt to your insurers and Zybeco equals around four trillion yuan, plus a twenty five per cent defaulter’s penalty. Repayment can be made by cash, credit, or servitude. At present pay and interest rates, you will have your debt settled in just under fourteen years of work. You’re a talented programmer, and that makes you worth more to us alive than dead. Not the easiest option in the world, but you should have thought of that before you attempted to defraud the company.”
“It wasn’t like that”
Ms Tseng looked at him in mock-interest. His voice had sounded grating and artificial, words pumped through the cheapest voice-synth they could stick in this sim.
“Wasn’t it, Mr Hilton? Do tell.”
When he spoke, it all came out in a rush.
“Susan left me last month. I went into a spiral. Drink, pills, anything to put me into oblivion for as long as possible. I didn’t crash the car to default on my debts. I was praying for death.”
“Death?”
She laughed, and Hilton understood where he was. Humanity had found no hell, so they had built one for themselves.
“Mr Hilton, death is no excuse for laying off work.”
