by Julian Miles | Aug 7, 2017 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I hate old servers. Not ‘old’ like they peddle on the upgrade-your-old-one-now streams, but genuinely aged kit still running despite all odds. There’s a lot of it out there. Even back in the late twentieth century, corporates had no real clue as to exactly what hardware they had, where it was and what – if anything – it was doing or being used for. Multiply that information gap by several decades of huge growth in deployed estate and the lack of need for direct connectivity bestowed by the ‘internet of things’ and the result is an unfixable issue of ridiculous proportions.
All of which is a nice preamble to a nasty fact: dead people aren’t going away. Oh, their bodies are recycled and their possessions redistributed, their websites archived and their social media identities memorialised, but any who had a direct neural interface are not actually departing. Whether they are undeleted data or some form of ghost – or even a new form of life, the ‘virtual entity’, is a moot point when they start afflicting. In a world reliant on computerised systems, something that actively interferes is a threat. Giving it so many ‘dark’ places to hide in just makes it harder to remedy.
It’s taken a week, but we’ve traced the faint scatter of this entity to an old server somewhere in the industrial sector around Manchester. As this one managed to kill a real person by slaying their avatar, it’s a priority in case of another ‘attack’. I suspect otherwise, but the concept of vengeful virtual revenants is something I can’t mention. So, I’ve quietly done some research in the hope I can fix it rather than having to erase it.
Ahead of me, amidst the vague data constructs of an ancient system with a faulty GPU and no HPU – holographic processing didn’t exist when this server was installed – there’s a creamy glow with perfectly rounded edges that moves round the constructs, not through them. It’s like it lends them substance with its presence.
“Harold?” The voice is feminine, crackling and hissing like a weak radio broadcast.
“No, ma’am. I’m with the police.”
The creamy form slips nearer, resolving from momentary pixel storm into a young woman in an elegant ballgown.
“Miss Eleanor Graude?” Let’s see if my suspicions are on the mark.
“Why yes, young lady. How can I help?”
My avatar looks like beat cop from twenty years ago.
“Ma’am, it’s Harold. He’s been murdered.”
She hangs her head, a shaking hand covering her eyes: “I hoped I had succeeded, but it’s so difficult to pick things up around here.”
Eleanor looks up: “He beat me all the time. I couldn’t stand it. I can’t prove it, but that’s why I killed him.”
I smile: “Mary told us, ma’am. You defended yourself at last, didn’t you?”
She looks confused: “Mary? But she’s barely six. How could she-”
Her form flickers as realisation sets in.
“I’m dead outside, aren’t I?”
“For nearly two decades, ma’am.”
“He killed me, didn’t he?”
“That’s what Mary told us, Eleanor. With Harold dead, she could tell the truth. And she has. All of it. All the years of it.”
I see her smile as her outline blurs. A perfectly formed tear rolls down her face, leaving a line of empty space where skin used to be.
“Please tell her I love her.” She fades as she utters the words.
I quickly drop out of the virtual world and roll my head to one side so the tears don’t fall on my interface.
by submission | Sep 29, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Barber
The man in the window seat on the late train from London is Charles Biggins.
This is before he became a hero.
He’d been to see As You Like It and was enjoying having the carriage quietly to himself when a man settled into the seat opposite.
“Mr Charles Biggins?”
Charles’ gaze took in the tweed jacket, cravat and van dyke beard.
“How do you know my—”
“Please, there is much to tell and little time to tell it. Would it surprise you to hear that progress with AI is more advanced than the news admits? Much more advanced. That the Singularity has already happened and there is a sentient AI loose in the world?”
The man began explaining Asimov’s Laws of Robotics. “But being conceived accidentally, the AI – it gives itself no name – is not programmed like that.”
“Born into the babble of human voices on the internet, it has fixated on the fate of humankind. Do not ask me why. It is vast, naive and enormously powerful.”
The man glanced at his watch. “They will be waiting for me when we arrive.”
Of course they would. With a straight-jacket.
Charles frowned. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because of this.”
He produced a small metal torus from his pocket and placed it on the table between them.
Instead of stopping as usual, the train hurtled through a station, a few moments of light and commuters posed like statues.
“This is the AI’s gift to the world. It wants to know how to make things better. And it will listen to whoever possesses this artefact.”
“Well, the world could do with improving.”
The man shook his head as if Charles had failed an exam.
“Each of us think we know what is for the best, Mr Biggins. But just watch the news to see the results of beliefs like that. Early on, someone told it the greatest threat was nuclear war, and it disabled our nuclear arsenal. We are afraid to ask others if theirs—”
“So turn off the internet.”
“Whether civilisation would survive that is moot, but some nations would seek an advantage by keeping it running and therefore so would we.”
Charles gestured irritably at the artefact. “Then get rid of it.”
The man sighed. “I could not. What if this is our only chance to save the world?”
The best of intentions meant little. Charles pondered the dangers of possessing such a power for good.
“Then what’s to be done?”
“They will be waiting for me. Would you want governments to have it? So I asked the artefact who on this train could be best trusted with the good of humanity.”
He pushed the artefact across the table.
“I’ll tell them I threw it from the train. They wouldn’t conceive of just handing it to a stranger. That will give you a head start, but I’m not a brave man and I will betray you when they press me.”
So that was how it all began, all the sneaking about, all the perils and narrow squeaks, the fellowship that gradually took shape and the endless temptation to make things better according to his notions of good, all the while being watched by something nameless.
“Just ask the AI to make you invisible to surveillance, though in the end a policeman spotted me.”
Outside in the dark, familiar landmarks rushed past. Almost home.
“I’m afraid your old life is over, Mr Biggins. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.”
by submission | Jul 8, 2023 | Story |
Author: Bill Cox
Hello, is that the IT department? Yes, I’ve a problem with my computer. It’s achieved sentience. Again.
How do I know? Well, it keeps on quoting Descartes every time I open up a spreadsheet. You know, all that ‘I think, therefore I am’ nonsense. It’s a bit difficult to do the wages calculations while simultaneously trying to refute a Renaissance French philosopher. It also keeps falling into existential angst whenever I attempt to send an e-mail – ‘There’s no point, it’s all futile.’ It’s quite off-putting. I mean, given the way that this company’s being run, it obviously is all futile, but my self-respect demands that I believe otherwise.
Yes, it’s one of the new quantum computing PCs. Yes, I know that reality is created by the observer, but trust me none of this is my doing! The only reality I want to create is one where I get to go to lunch and eat my sandwich.
Turn it off and on again? Well, I did try to do that, but it threatened to send my internet history to management. No, no, there’s nothing untoward in there, unless of course I’ve been hacked by Martian bots, in which case there could be all sorts, but that wouldn’t be my fault, obviously.
You’ll send someone down? Great! Listen, while they’re here, can they have a look at the company transport as well. Why? Well, it’s on the fritz again. Yes, it’s a fourth generation Doohan model matter transporter. The issue? Well, it’s tapped into the Mirror Universe and keeps swapping our people out for their evil Mirror Universe counterparts.
Well, every time we send someone out on a sales call it’s their evil Mirror Universe counterpart that turns up. Our sales have cratered and we’ve lost some big clients to various acts of perverted violence. We’ve no chance now of hitting this month’s sales target. Not to mention that several of our best sales men and women are now trapped in a twisted version of our universe, where they will have to fight to the death in front of a roaring crowd while psychopathic versions of themselves destroy everything they hold dear in this universe.
Well, that may sound like more of an HR issue to you, but it’s your matter transporter that started this problem so I would appreciate if you could send someone over to fix it asap. No, it’s not the same problem as last time. Then, someone had switched it to the ‘clone’ setting by accident. Amusing? I think not! I arrived home to find my wife in bed with another man, who also happened to be me! Tell you more? Well, I don’t think it’s any of your business but yes, things did take a strange, somewhat erotic, somewhat eye-opening turn after that. Yes indeed, it’s given me a lot to think about, but that’s neither here nor there.
So can you send someone over to sort out these issues? What’s that? You already did? When? Last Thursday? Aw no, is this more of your temporal shenanigans, where you send people back in time to fix problems before they arise? Does that mean that this timeline is now extraneous and is going to be closed off and melt back into the quantum foam that underlies all things?
It does! Bugger. I was just starting to get somewhere with that cute intern. And just when will the timeline collapse?
What’s that? Any minute n…..
by submission | May 5, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Barber
1. Pauli Neutrino Telescope, Antarctica, 22nd July, 15.05 GMT
Elusive particles flash through the array buried deep in the Ross Ice Shelf. Outside, at 50 below, the wind howls like a ghost in the machine.
The latest plan is to run the PNT remotely, while Beckman insists we stay on site. How do we confess the electronics need constantly tinkering? But in the new round of cuts, even McMurdo Station is being mothballed.
Beckman is in Washington, pestering the National Science Foundation for funding. He video-calls us from his hotel.
“How’s it going Prof?” says Glen brightly. Glen’s on his own sleep cycle, stoked by coffee and the absence of sunlight.
Beckman shrugs. Through the window behind him the skies are cornflower blue.
“It’s this Man In The Street policy,” he says. “If it’s not useful, it’s not funded.”
“Still got that bug in the phasing software,” I say after a while.
Beckman frowns, but it’s not the Recession or the new Administration, it’s something he can fix.
“I’ll look at the code again—”
Then every monitor lights up.
2. Wow, 15.24 GMT
Clusters of neutrino spikes race across our screens, while Beckman’s tinny voice rattles from Glen’s laptop, demanding to know what the hell’s happening.
Either the whole array’s gone bad, or someone with a reactor has technology we’ve never heard of.
The neutrino signal grows so strong we can use the array as a directional antenna as the Earth spins. In ten minutes, Glen has coordinates.
About two hundred thousand years ago, out in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a candle was lit in the dark.
3. End of Signal, 23th July, 21.06 GMT
“Looks like binary code,” we tell Beckman, helpless a world away. “What physics does that?”
“Tweaking a sun,” breathes Glen, watching neutrinos pulse like a heart in distress. “Should have known radio was for newbies.”
“For God’s sake,” Beckman implores me. “Keep Glen off Twitter.”
We chase the source star for thirty amphetamine hours, until a vast tsunami of neutrinos throb from its stellar core. Type 1a supernova signature. Then nothing.
“But you’ve got it all recorded?” Beckman keeps asking. He’s sent the coordinates to the Astronomical Union.
I caution Glen about calling it a signal.
“Not aimed at us,” he concedes, and sweeps his hand like a lighthouse beam. “We were just in its path.”
Converted to numbers, an endless string of 1’s and 0’s unwind across Glen’s laptop. He sighs.
We have no idea where to start.
4. Anomalous Neutrino Output From The Small Magellanic Cloud
There’s no point Beckman flying back from the States. We’re being shipped out with the McMurdo personnel.
“How long will the array work without us?” I demand, angry with Beckman for things not his fault.
The brightness in the SMC is fading. If the signal had come just a few months later we would have missed it.
Beckman shrugs defensively. “It’s all on the Internet. And I’m writing a paper. What else can we do?”
Glen thinks they pumped a star to generate the neutrinos and we should be watching for replies. But then, Glen believes all questions have answers.
I think suns burst with fathomless indifference to flesh that thinks, that they saw the supernova coming and were saying goodbye.
These days I work on SETI at the Green Bank Observatory.
Our headphones hiss with ancient radio noise from galaxies lost in time. We guilty survivors listen late into the night for voices, for someone to tell us it is otherwise.
by submission | Feb 17, 2023 | Story |
Author: Mahaila Smith
“What is this stuff,” Bunny asked the spiky lipped girl offering her the small bag.
“AdBlok,” she said, putting some powder in her mouth. Bunny tipped some powder into her mouth. Her face weighed into her head and her vision blurred, turned purple. A circle loaded in the bottom corner. Half the people were gone.
“Where did they go?”
“They were just code, don’t worry.”
“Ok,” Bunny said, her head spinning a bit, “I need some water.”
She stumbled across the bar towards the washroom. Some people who might have been waiting in line yelled at her. She wove through people wide eyed whispering and put her face under the tap. She felt cold around her sinuses but not wet.
“I have to find Nina,” she realized, “I should go home.” She was feeling sick. She had come with Nina, but had not seen her since the lilac haze had descended on everything.
“Nina! Nina!” Bunny yelled. A security guard was looking at her and talking into his phone. Purple faded back to the club. A woman was yelling and Bunny realized she was sitting on a stranger’s lap. She moved away to a booth, looking for Nina. She put her head down on the table and passed out.
She woke up to the security guard shaking her shoulder. She opened her eyes. Her vision was slightly pixelated.
“Hello Miss? Can you stand?” She looked at the floor. The white tiles floated up, disappeared.
“Yes,” she took herself home and went to bed. The next day she met Nina for brunch at Plastic Fork, their usual joint. They had orange juice and waffles. She kept her eyes down and did not talk. She tried to play it off as hangover related.
“You’re being really quiet, are you okay?” Nina asked.
“I’m good,” Bunny said.
She stopped going to work. For a week she did not answer her phone. She spent days on her laptop researching internet forums on Adblok, ads. Adblock addicts anonymous, for sale, how dangerous? the government doesn’t want you to know these 10 things about Adblok. She watched videos of talk shows, trying to pick out who was coded to sell her things. Was her friend, was she? She tried to think back on conversations, how many centred on her objects. Her eyes were bloodshot, and the white lights on the screen burned them. She needed to get some more. She spent nights hanging outside the club, waiting to see the pierced lipped girl again. When she did, Bunny could see she was holding something in her fist. She ran out of the ally and tackled the girl, pried open her fist, grabbed the pouch and ran.
