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.”
by submission | Aug 21, 2009 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
I was out for a walk last night when I heard a cry for help. There was a girl in the river. I don’t know how she got there, she didn’t say at the time, and I haven’t asked her yet. All she said then was “help!”, in a voice that got sharper and higher as time went on.
I moved quickly, but deliberately. Doctor Mahnke used to tell me “less haste, more speed”, better to get things done right first time than have to try again after you get it wrong. I got out my equipment, which I carry with me at all times. “Be Prepared” is another thing that Dr Mankhe used to say, but he didn’t know about the equipment. Not then, anyway.
In a moment, the computer had interfaced with the girl’s cortical drive, and by a forced handshake the download process started. It took about thirty seconds. While it was going on, I watched her, paying quite close attention to the expressions on her face and the sounds she made as she tried to stay afloat. It was two minutes and fourteen seconds from the start of the transfer to the last time she went under. I timed it and made a note.
The transfer process took place without error. When I got home, I moved her file to the menagerie.
I saved her.
Now I’ll always have a copy.
by submission | Jul 29, 2009 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
Richard reached for the jug of water on the coffee table and stopped, face caught between a frown and a smile. He sat back in his chair and spoke to the couple.
“Mrs Lyell, Patricia, you were saying that Thomas had been distant lately.”
The woman on the couch glanced at her husband uneasily, then spoke.
“For the last three weeks when I’ve got home from work, he’s been sat in the front room with the lights off. He doesn’t talk to me when I get in, just waits for me to say something. He’ll sit there in silence until I do. He never starts conversations any more, won’t sit at the table with me for dinner. It feels like I’ve done something wrong and he won’t tell me what it is.”
Richard turned to the man on the couch.
“Thomas, do you have anything you want to say about this?”
The man stared back, stubborn. Richard knew without asking that he was here only at the woman’s insistence.
“Sometimes, I don’t have much to talk about.” he said, pausing after this for so long that Richard was about to ask a follow up question when he continued, “I don’t do much any more, so I don’t have much to say. I’m happy to talk, I just don’t know what to say.”
Patricia shot a despairing look at Richard, who kept his eyes on Thomas.
“Mrs Lyell, the problem is that your husband is dead.”
The woman looked up in shock at the words, and then, just as quickly, looked at her husband. He seemed not to react. Richard continued, gentle words with iron cores.
“He died of a heart attack two years ago. You had him restored from a digital backup last year, but he’s not your husband any more. He’s an electronic representation. He can’t touch anything, because he’s a projection. I’m only able to talk to him today because we have a projection rig in the building. He doesn’t do much because he can’t leave the house. He’s not a real person.”
Tears welled in Patricia’s eyes.
“But I don’t think that! He’s perfectly real to me. I don’t think any of the things you said.”
Richard looked over at Thomas.
“Your husband does. Don’t you, Thomas?”
The hologram of Thomas Lyell looked at the floor, refusing to meet the counselor’s gaze. Finally he nodded. Richard turned back to the sobbing widow.
“Patricia, after the heart attack, they gave you grief counseling. They never gave it to Thomas. You don’t need marriage counseling, you need bereavement therapy.”
The consultation ended fairly quickly after that. The problem was identified, and Thomas was already looking more hopeful five minutes later when he was switched off for transit back to the house. As Mrs Lyell was leaving, Richard’s assistant popped her head around the door.
“Your next client isn’t for an hour, Dr Furr. Want me to switch you off in the meantime?”
“No, I like the view out of the window at this time of day. Are you heading to lunch?”
“Yeah, I’ll be back in 45 minutes.”
“See you then.”
She left. Richard sat in his chair and stared at the water jug.
He was thirsty. He’d been thirsty for four years, ever since they had switched him on and a lawyer he had never met before explained about the car crash. The water jug was an affectation, something to make him feel more human.
These days, despite what he said to his clients, feeling human was hard to come by.
by submission | Jun 14, 2009 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
I don’t want to do this any more.
It’s cold, and we’re all hungry. I knew it would be like this, but that’s the difference between knowing and experiencing.
Nobody talks much any more, Scott least of all. When we were on the way there, he tried to keep people’s spirits up by talking up the grand adventure. When we got to the pole and found we had lost, that all this was for the privilege of being the second team to get there, he sort of withdrew. He doesn’t show how much this has broken him, doesn’t show that he suspects what I know for certain. We are all going to die here.
I knew it would be like this. Observing this is why I came. I’m sure that months from now when I hand in my paper, “A chronosociological survey of the extremes of the human condition, with specific reference to the antarctic explorers”, everyone around me will say what brave and courageous work it was. But it’s not. It’s cowardly. All of these men are going to die, have been dead for centuries. Whatever happens to this body, I will live on.
I stand up, they all turn to look at me. They will call this a supreme sacrifice, but it’s not.
“I’m just going out,” I say, “I may be some time.”
by submission | Jun 5, 2009 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
“Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my apartment?”
The man at the window didn’t turn to look at Lloyd’s outburst. When he spoke, his voice sounded bored.
“You know who I am, and if you have any sense, you know why I’m here.”
Finally he did turn. He pulled a card out of his pocket, and a hologram leapt out of it, a tiny three dimensional version of his face, with a stream of data running underneath it.
“Agent Moorcock, Chronology enforcement. Don’t bother introducing yourself. You’re Lloyd Fry, on placement from the archaeology department of the University of Charon, and you and I are the only people in this city from our century.”
Lloyd adopted the slightly guilty pose that comes naturally to anyone who has to deal with the police, as if running through in his mind what he could possibly have done wrong.
“Of course, how can I help you, officer?”
“Where is it?”
A chill ran through him. He tried as hard as he could not to let it show, and ended up overcompensating
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“Mr Fry, please don’t cause any problems. Your university worked hard for your visa, and I’d hate to think they wasted all that work just because you panicked when you saw a badge. Where is the recorder?”
The game was up. Lloyd reached into his back pocket, noticing as he did that the agent tensed very slightly at this. He pulled out a silver stub roughly the size of his thumb and placed it on the table. The agent walked over to it.
“A motorola HS6290 hologram recorder, best in its class at the 2053 Consumer Electronics show, as I recall. Mind telling me why you thought you should bring one back to 1996?”
“I-”
The agent cut him off before he could get himself in any deeper.
“Mr Fry, you are in pre-unity time. Any time period before 2018 is embargoed, and likely to remain so. When you received your visa, you agreed not to bring anything back with you apart from your body. Even there, your records state they removed your retinal HUD. What in god’s name made you think this little thing would be acceptable?”
“I didn’t think anyone would mind. I needed it to take recordings for my fieldwork, and…”
“And?”
Lloyd slumped into a chair, feeling around three inches tall.
“And I wanted to get a hologram of the eiffel tower before it was wrecked by the earthquake. My mother asked me to.”
Agent Moorcock’s face softened slightly. He said nothing, the man before him knew what he had done.
“So,” said Lloyd after a while, “What happens to me now?”
“Nothing happens to you now.”
Lloyd’s face creased in confusion.
“What do you m-”
Agent Moorcock touched a control on his wrist and the room vanished. Instead, he was walking through a crowded travel lobby towards a tired figure standing in front of a desk.
“Mr Lloyd Fry?”
The man turned. it was the same face Moorcock had just seen, maybe six months younger.
“I’m afraid that your visa application didn’t pass vetting. Unfortunately we cannot permit you to complete your travel plans.”
Lloyd looked disappointed but resigned. Applications were rarely successful.
“Can I ask why?”
“I’m afraid that information is classified, sir. Oh, sir?”
“Yes?”
Moorcock held something out to the man. It was, after all, for his mother.
“You dropped your recorder.”
