by submission | Aug 29, 2008 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
It was a crisp, clement evening. The air was fresh and new, and the gentle purple of the sky gave the scene a tranquil and poetic feel.
About five hundred people were gathered here, although similar groups were gathered all over the world, looking up at the sky and the far away stars. Despite the beauty of the night, there was a somber feel to events, as of serenity mingled with sorrow.
When the ceremony started, it did so gradually. The speaker did not rise on any prearranged signal, but instead did so on the feeling that the moment was right. A glance to the sky told him he had chosen correctly.
“We are gathered here in memory and in celebration. In memory of what happened one hundred and five years ago, and in celebration of what has been done since then. We are gathered ten years after the founding of our colony on this new world, to remember that which we lost.”
The crowd looked to him, and then to the sky, eyes focusing on a particular point.
“It took us ninety five years to get here, although to us it felt less than a week. The exodus took us past the light of our own departure, and for ten years we have been waiting for its arrival.”
All eyes were on the same spot. An astronomer could tell them it was a main sequence star, spectral classification G2V. They didn’t need to know this. They all knew what it was.
“Our mistakes cost us our world, and we have determined to do better here. Until tonight, we have worn this point of light as our mark of cain. From tonight, we will wear it as a reminder, a lesson learned.”
The point of light suddenly began to get brighter in the sky. Photons that had been travelling for more than a century suddenly arrived en masse and were captured by eyes that had leapfrogged the distance, overtaken the disaster they caused, and gathered here in memory.
“Friends, I give you the sun. Let’s do better this time.”
by submission | Jul 22, 2008 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
The puddles of rainwater reflected neon and sodium up from the streets as the two men stood at the taxi rank. One waited, the other waited with him.
“Shame you have to leave so early, Tom. The evening was just getting started.”
“Sorry Jake, it’s Barney’s storytime, you know how it is with kids.”
Jake looked uncomfortable for a moment, but continued.
“You coming out this weekend? Tanya is having a party at her house. Marie’s going to be there. You know, she really likes you. All week she was asking about you and making sure you would be here tonight. I don’t think she expected you to duck out after an hour.”
“I can’t. It’s Barney’s birthday this weekend.”
The discomfort turned to dismay on Jake’s face and he put a gentle hand on Tom’s shoulder.
“Tom, mate, it’s been six years. You have to let it go. You never come out any more. I know what happened, and it’s a tragedy, but you’re letting it eat your life up.”
Tom shook the hand off. Before Jake could say any more, the next cab arrived. Tom got into it without a word, as if Jake had simply been switched off.
When he got home, the lights were off throughout the house. He stood in the dark hall and looked for a moment at the shadows lacing through the open doors of the other rooms. He tried to remember the last time he had had visitors here, then shook the thought off as irrelevant, and headed upstairs to Barney’s room.
Barney was already lying on his bed. Tom was used to the lack of blanket by now. It didn’t break the scene for him any more.
“Hi, Barney-bear”
“Hi, daddy”
The voice was perfect, a computer recreation based on five years of recordings the house had made. In fact, everything about the projection was as close to perfect as he could get. He upgraded the software every time something better came out, and had even had some parts of it custom written. The result was as close as he could get to what he had lost.
Barney was five. He had been five for six years, now. He couldn’t get any older and Tom didn’t want him to. He pulled the book from the bedside table and started reading.
“Once upon a time,” he said, “There was a little boy…”
by submission | May 11, 2008 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
They turned Valerie off this morning.
Nothing flashy, nothing officially announced. Two grey-suited daemons came in, picked up her sprite and walked out with it. When I went to the dorms to investigate, her room was blank, no sign that she had ever been here.
I know the drill. They’ll say there was some irregularity in her payments and she was being moved from virtual to storage until it was sorted out. Which is crap. What they mean is that the company directors owed someone a favor or were made a better offer on her runtime. In a few weeks they’ll say how much they regret the misconception and that Valerie will be back with us as soon as a space opens. Which they never do.
Valerie, myself, and most of the other residents are lifers, legacies. We paid on insurance policies for decades so that when the inevitable happened our digital consciousnesses would continue in post-life communities. This was back before they understood how expensive the runtime would be. Legally, they have to maintain us here because our policies have been grandfathered in. In practice they want nothing more than for us to vanish and leave the lucrative virtual environment to paying minds with runtime trusts.
So every now and then, they do this, just to get rid of one of us, just to keep the others scared.
They used to call it murder, back when we were alive.
by submission | Mar 21, 2008 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
I sit alone in the dark, the birthday boy. I could have left the lights on, but with only a couple of minutes to go it hadn’t seemed worth it. Typical, really.
Well, this is it. Or this was it, at least. They had taken the neural snapshot four minutes ago, and they were already at work reviving me.
“Me”, funny word to use about someone I’ll never be. Was it always like this? I suppose I’ll never know.
This was a conscious choice, as little comfort as that gives me now. Most people did the refresh on a five or ten year cycle, but not me. I wanted to be twenty one forever, never see the slow spread of age reminding me of how mortal I was. A perfect year after a perfect year, that’s what I was after, and that’s what I’ve got, sort of. Every year on my birthday, they make a perfect digital copy of my brain and put it in the new body. To stop there being two of me running round, they send a shutdown signal to the old body’s brain. It takes exactly ten minutes to propagate, by which time the new me is up and about and 21 again.
Only I’m six minutes the wrong side of that copy, now. I can’t see much any more. Everything’s starting to fade.
I’d never been on this side before, clearly. This was an experience I – or he – will never learn from. Shame, really, because all I want to do is grab myself by the shoulders and yell in my face, telling myself it’s not worth it, living forever by dying every year.
Too late now. It will always be too late, I expect.
I can just make out the digital display on the clock. 30 seconds left.
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday
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