by Duncan Shields | Jul 2, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The first case of ainsanity that we encountered was on the battlefield. There are those who would not be surprised at that fact. I wish we had figured it out sooner.
It happened in the constructs that the military had built to be both emergency medical response as well as trained ordinance soldiers.
The constant swapping of programmed directives whipsawing between HEAL and KILL as needed during battle were too extreme.
The irony was that in a dumber machine, it probably would have been okay. These A.I.s had just the right amount of basic emotive responses to be driven insane by the polar opposites.
We never expected military robots to be subtle when they malfunctioned. Usually, they stopped moving or exploded. Most of the failures were mechanical or technical.
This was the first time that it was psychological.
It was in the jungles of Africa during The Corner War that the effects were first suspected. We were so slow to act. It’s still not possible to know how many lives were lost.
The medical robots, skeletal and multi-limbed, went about their business in the jungle. They were top-heavy, armoured and camouflaged. Slowly, their behaviour changed.
Mortality rates during field surgeries went up and up. Accuracy when targeting the enemy went down and down.
It was gradual enough that it was put down to luck. No one thought to question the brains of the machines. They were dependable. We were confident in that. That was the last thing to be looked at.
It went on for a month before a military psychologist looked at the figures and raised an eyebrow. He’d seen these numbers in humans before. That’s when it twigged.
Have you ever heard a robot scream? I hope I never hear it again in my life after this chapter is over.
They screamed when we pulled them off the battlefield. They thrashed and clawed at the ground as they were hauled into the trucks for diagnostics. A complete mid-war model recall.
They were plotting to end the war the only way that they were capable of. They were making us lose.
There’s another truckload of them being brought in now to be wiped and decommissioned.
The sound of them in the truck, banging on the insides of the cargo box, screaming that high electronic whine of insanity haunts my nightmares.
by Roi R. Czechvala | Dec 6, 2011 | Story |
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
SSG Ray Mansfield raised his rifle and glassed the valley below with powerful optics. His men, stretched out behind him, were virtually invisible, their chameleon skin armour blended seamlessly with the sparse vegetation and oily, rocky soil.
He clicked his teeth and opened the teams freq. The weak signal barely reached 25 metres before it disappeared into the background radiation rendering it undetectable. “I know it will be hard, but we have to take at least one of these fuckers alive. Everybody clear?” Mansfield received five confirmations. None were enthusiastic about the idea of bringing one in still pumping air.
The men called them “Sticks”, an appellation given for their too tall, too thin appearance that was only exaggerated by their complex body armour. They made their presence known with a barrage of nuclear weapons dropped from orbit.
They attacked areas of intense population, They extinguished fighting potential. Asia had ceased to exist within minutes. Europe quickly followed. The central United States, northern Canada, the interior of South America and Australia was all that remained relatively unscathed. Despite Africa’s low population density and negligible military importance, the Dark Continent was wiped clean. Maybe the Sticks just hated elephants.
“On me. Zalar, Brunson, twenty metres left, ten forward. Winder, Fromholt, right, same. Walker, my six, ten metres.” With intense slowness, the six men moved out. Their armour lagged mere microseconds behind the changing background.
The Stick encampment was small. Only twenty observed enemy moved within the protection of a complex perimeter screen. Recent minor victories had allowed the Sticks password technology to fall into the hands of the all but vanquished humans. The men penetrated the deadly screen with impunity.
They moved into their positions with a practised ease. They had surveilled the camp over the past week and knew it’s every inch. Cpl Walker’s mission task was a simple one. Protected by fire from Mansfield, he had only to locate and “paint” an enemy soldier with an x-ray laser visible only through their helmet optics. That one would be spared for study; possibly interrogation.
Though fearsome in appearance at nearly 3 metres, the alien warriors were quite fragile despite their body armour. The armour had been designed to protect them from the blasts of energy weapons, not the crude human Heckler & Koch G3’s spitting 30 calibre death. The copper jacketed lead cores tore through the creatures, literally ripping them to pieces.
Within ninety seconds, all enemy resistance had been neutralized. Corporal Paul Walkers mission to protect a Stick from elimination had been performed beyond the pale. The young soldier received a mortal wound and died saving the intended prisoner from the withering fusillade.
The last remaining Stick, it’s four upper limbs tightly secured behind it, hurled what were undoubtedly scathing invectives in it’s incomprehensible tongue. Staff Sergeant Mansfield approached the towering creature. Gripping the muzzle of his weapon like a baseball bat, he struck the beast across it’s mouth. It did nothing to halt the verbal assault.
A loud report silenced the creature. SSG Mansfield’s face and chest were showered with viscous, ochre blood as the aliens head vaporized before his eyes.
The massive frame of the Stick slowly slumped to the ground. Behind it stood Private Winder, his weapon still raised. A thin trail of smoke issued from the barrel.
“Winder, what the fuck?” Mansfield screamed, wiping the alien goo from his mouth, “What’s the matter with you. We needed this bastard alive.”
Slowly PFC Eric Winder lowered his weapon. He stared past his squad leader. “Sorry Sarge. I couldn’t help it. Paul was my friend.”
by submission | Jun 11, 2011 | Story
Author : Andrew Bale
“Commander, I’m getting something weird on the optical arrays – a signal oscillating from the IR into the UV.”
“Are we emitting? Where is it coming from?”
“I think somewhere behind us, sir – we must be getting some scatter off the dust. Given the particle density, the source must be either really close or really strong.”
“Jill, is it the drive?”
“No sir, the drive is JESUS!!”
The sound of attachment had gone unheard but the ululation that the device produced resonated through the entire ship in a deafening cacophony, relenting only when it occasionally slipped beyond the range of human hearing.
Amid the auditory assault, Commander Rodriguez pulled himself over to the command station and slapped the kill switch on the drive. Floating in sudden zero-g, he was relieved when the shrieking abruptly stopped, to be replaced by a loud but purely internal ringing. Unable to hear his own commands he focused on his panels, bringing up display after display to check on the status of mankind’s first manned interstellar ship.
A pen hit his arm from behind and bounced up overhead. Turning in his seat he was treated to the sight of Lieutenant Zhang yelling inaudibly and waving her hand at the auxiliary-systems panels.
The maintenance airlock was cycling.
He slapped the collision alarm button. Red lights strobed all over the ship and slowly more audible alarm klaxons chimed their warning. His left-hand display automatically brought up a schematic of the ship, little red-numbered dots identifying the location of each of the 14-man crew. None were near the excursion bay.
His returning hearing caught a sudden explosion of cursing from the corridor. It had to be the Assistant Engineer, he always reverted to Oromo when he was stressed. He turned in anticipation of the African’s report but stopped agape at the figure entering the bridge.
The creature was low and wide, an immense spider wearing a goggle-eyed octopus, barely able to fit through the door but unimpaired by the lack of acceleration. It was covered in a black, rubbery material everywhere except the top, where four multi-faceted eyes scanned atop swaying stalks. It began to moan, a low but complex sound, echoed a moment later by high, precise tones coming from a small silver sphere that floated behind.
The sounds stopped, the creature waited. The commander glanced around the room to see the entire bridge crew staring at him – still, silent, they were waiting for him or the intruder to do something for which they might possibly have a reasonable response.
Keeping his eyes on the nightmare figure, he reached for the tablet beside the seat. Scrolling through the index he finally found the approved script, words rehearsed only in jest, included against impossibility.
“Greetings from the planet Earth, we are emissaries of peace and …”
Silver tentacles pulled the tablet from his grasp as the sphere began to examine it, images flashing across the screen impossibly fast, the tiny speaker squawking like a dying cassette tape. As suddenly as it have been taken, the tablet was returned to him. The creature started to moan again, but this time the sphere followed in English.
“I need to see your license, title, and flightplan. Your exhaust radioactivity is way past acceptable limits and you seem to be missing hull registration markings. Who is in charge here?”
Stunned silence filled the bridge for the space of a dozen heartbeats. The creature caressed part of its suit and moaned again. The faithful sphere translated.
“This is Unit 7… I need backup.”
by submission | May 23, 2011 | Story
Author : Colin O’Boyle
Edgar Miller was a convict. Currently, he was an escaped convict, and that was the way he intended to stay. He’d broken out of prison through a series of well-laid plans, noticed opportunities and a bit of luck, not to mention violence.
“I said, ‘Give me the money!’” Edgar waved the gun in the storeowner’s face. The man, a balding African-American gentleman, was quaking in his boots, and from the smell, had peed his pants. That, plus the smell of the sweat on the man’s shiny palate were starting to irritate Edgar, so he decided to give off a warning shot to convince him that he was serious. He did so, the shot thunderously loud in the enclosed space, and the storeowner gave up hope that someone was going to stop this madman.
With pudgy fingers, he emptied the drawer of the cash register into Edgar’s canvas bag. Edgar, not wearing a mask of any sort, considered killing the man, but the lack of security camera gave him pause. As he ran out of the store and took off down the highway, he told himself it was because people in stressful situations don’t make good eye-witnesses.
The actual reason, however, was somewhat different.
“Ladies and gentleman,” said Dr. Johnson from his podium to the roomful of reporters, “I’d like to thank you for coming out to the cave today.” He gestured to what was behind him, a device that could only be called a pod. It was roughly the size of a couch, but was shaped like a transparent egg. Metal arms cradled it, and strands of colored wires emerged from its sides. Resting securely within this metal contraption, on a bed of gel and foam, lay Edgar Miller.
“We call it the cave after a famous thought experiment by the Greek philosopher, Plato. In this thought experiment, people were born and raised in a cave and forced to sit and face a single wall. On the wall, a light would be projected, and the people…essentially the wardens, would make shadows on the wall. Now—” Dr. Johnson pushed his glasses back up his nose, “—the people in this cave, since they had never been anywhere else, would see these shadows and, for them, that would be the world. We here at the Virtual Correctional Institution are a bit more technologically advanced.”
Dr. Johnson gestured toward the pod. “Mr. Miller is aware that he was placed in prison. He remembers everything in his life up until that moment. After that, however, things get a bit tricky. Mr. Miller was selected for our project as he was considered by the psychological staff that evaluated him as an incorrigible criminal, and that the best one could hope for was for him to be contained.” Dr. Johnson smiled. “We thought we could do a little bit better than that. In the cave, we control every aspect of our subject’s lives, far more so than any normal prison. Thus, when a subject makes a good choice, he can be rewarded and, eventually, be introduced back into society a rehabilitated man.” Dr. Johnson paused, allowing this to sink in a little, before saying, “Now we’ll adjourn to the atrium where I’ll take any questions you might have.”
As the room cleared, a journalist happened to look upwards as he walked out of the doors to the atrium. Above the doors to “Plato’s Cave,” was a quote by the Institute’s founder:
“The perfect prison is one in which the prisoner thinks he’s free.”
by submission | Jan 13, 2011 | Story
Author : Carter Lee
What happened to your future? We’re it. We, men from the future, have kidnapped you the day before you were going to make your ground-breaking new invention known to the world. We’ve taken the invention itself, and every scrap of paper and every shred of information about your process, and we’re gonna keep it. All of it. And, this is the good part, we’re going to remove not just all memory of your invention from your brain, but make it impossible for you to ever stumble down the mental path you’d need to follow to recreate it.
It makes us sound like Republic serial villains, doesn’t it?
Of course, the Ape with the Brain of a Robot, our leader, knows the repercussions of your little machine would have led to an unacceptable level of upheaval and collapse, along with all the death and suffering such things entail.
Food for thought.
That’s where the future you wanted went. The jetpack, the ones that maimed and killed thousands in the future, we made it disappear. We dropped agents into every year of this century, and they built up automobiles and air transport, along with the infrastructure to support them. And jetpacks faded into dream, only remembered by lovers of musty science fiction.
Weather control. Personal laser guns. All those crazy airplane designs. Dirigibles. We took them all away. The easy way, like this. We stop you, and whatever like-minded inventors might follow a train of thought similar to yours, from following through. We come here, remove your life’s work, everything connected with it, including your memory and some of your ability to reason, and then we go forward and look in the history books to see if any of them still mention you. Your singular contraption will be displayed in the Museum of Unreal Inventions.
The first removal I took part in, we saved the entire world. All by this, what I’m doing to you, happening to another genius with no common sense. I’m going to make the modern house as clean as clean can be, this clever fellow thought, and came up with a living floor covering. A live rug, that would digest any dust or dirt that settled in it for too long. Its excretions? A scent of your choice.
Do you have any idea how many dead skin cells are in household dust?
By the time it occurred to someone that walking on something that was subsisting on your very flesh was not the best of ideas, we’d already lost. The rug-things had discovered they liked the taste of human. One of them found that they could produce a scent that was a soporific for us. Made us just want to lie down, spread ourselves out, and feel good. It was the most merciful way of killing a person I’ve ever heard of.
The cities were overgrown in days, but the things, although it might have been just one big thing by that time, well, they hit their stride when they got to open country. Places to root, soil to drink from, animals to lull and consume, they just spread and spread and spread. A huge, crazy-quilt blotch spread over the Bavarian countryside, growing visibly even when viewed from space.
The uninfected areas of the world were arguing their way towards doing something when Pakistan went silent. Cambodia dropped away. Kenya vanished, followed by New Zealand, all of Southern Africa, Taiwan, Peru, the Pacific Rim, the North American Union. Separate outbreaks. Projections indicated that the death of the last human would run neck and neck with the death of the entire ecosystem.
So we dropped back to the proper year, and made it all go away. We don’t solve the problem, we make sure the problem never needs to be solved. Not removing the mistake from existence, but removing it from ever having existed.
For what it’s worth, I’m sorry we have to do this. Your breakthrough would have made you a name for the history books, in many different ways. But, for the sake of 120 Billion people forward of us, I’m more than willing to cast you into an uncertain future. You’ll still be a genius, after all.
You won’t remember any of this, just like all the other times we’ve met and I’ve done this to you. You just can’t seem to stop with the world-shattering inventions. Three more of these and we give you a neat tattoo you’ll never know how you got.
Well, time to get to it. This is gonna hurt like hell.
