by submission | Feb 15, 2012 | Story |
Author : Phil Newton
Sammy always used his polished titanium Tek-Tech Grav Boots to reach the Hundred Foot High Branch — cheater. I climbed. I climbed well. Still, grav boots were cool. I wish my parents had money.
‘Wiry’, that’s what coach called me. I should try wrestling. I needed more meat on my bones if I wanted to play football.
Sammy wasn’t cut out for football or wrestling, he carried too much meat. He would never be mistaken for wiry. On the other hand, he was the king of the cheap shot. That didn’t win him any friends. He didn’t need any. His parents had money.
Sammy always beat me to the high branch, but I was closing the gap. Grav boots were cool, but they weren’t fast. I was fast — getting faster. Sammy knew. Sammy feared. I overheard him whining to his dad over his wrist com. He wanted the upgrade. His dad refused. Sammy would wear him down. He always did. Sammy was a whining sissy baby. Still, grav boots were cool. I wish my parents had money.
My path is memorized. My muscles recalled each gap, the bounce of each branch. Yesterday, I nearly beat Sammy, even though I slipped on my second step. Sammy saw the inevitable end of his reign. His upgrade will be delivered tomorrow. I could not afford a mistake today.
My climb was perfection. I even flipped up from my last handhold into my perch atop the Hundred Foot High Branch. Sammy didn’t care for my show-boating, though he probably would have kicked me regardless. Grav boots are cool, and titanium is hard.
Sammy the rich boy…
Sammy the ass…
Still, half-way down I’m wishing my parents had money.
by Julian Miles | Feb 14, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
She cries into my arms as they come for us. Such a simple thing, this expression of heartbreak through physical reflex.
“I thought I’d lost you.”
Her hand brushes my cheek and curls around my neck. So soft. The touch is like a feather landing on a still afternoon.
“But you came back. You came back.”
I bow my head and crouch a little more to accommodate her legs as she brings them up to hook over my thighs.
“They can’t take you away again. No. I can’t do this anymore.”
I hear them approaching. Six units, two rolling heavy with ranged firepower, two clattering with ten man fire teams, one jingling with the medical team and one silent with command damping.
She hugs me hard and looks up at me. So small. So very precious. I agree with her totally. This time, we will not be separated. She senses my resolve and smiles with shimmers playing across her eyes in the unshed tears. Her words are a whisper with an adamantine core.
“We stay together or we go together.”
I nod. It was inevitable that it would come to this. So sad but so right. A love such as this cannot be denied by the actions of others. She slips from my arms and leans back against me.
“Show me, Sam. Show me what makes the enemy cry and why those who brought you back fear you so much.”
The acceptance in her voice is a release for my final doubt. I straighten up and deploy. Three metres of silken black ceramic biped blossoms as the shutters on my back release and tensor wings unfurl, blue-green in the streetlights. They arc two metres above my head and spread a metre either side of me. The irises on my forearms and calves open and my nyotentacles extend, their tips fading into invisibility where the monomolecular edges begin. My eyes are covered by silver lenses as my tactical comes up. I feel the faint vibration as my head deforms, rising in two peaks to reveal the needle laser cluster above the chronomantic array in my nasal cavity. With a casual flick of my elbow I drive a nanofilament down into the ground, fraying out to grab power feeds and data lines. I charge my combat arrays and my laminate dermal armours sparkle with slate fields. With a thought, I find that I can shape the fields around her as long as she remains in physical contact. My diagnostics tell me the little black gun she carries is a piconuke launcher with a ten pack. I pass the mapping of my environment to the augmentations and return to normal perceptions. Her voice shows as warm blue waves that fade into words as I shift sensory inputs.
“…beautiful, Samuel. My reincarnate angel, will you fly me away when you go?”
I have a voice in this form: “I shall. Never to be parted again.”
She smiles, tears still running down her face. The convoy turns the corner and screeches to an untidy stop when they see me fully deployed. No contrition this time. From the limo, a black uniformed figure strides down the road to stop a few steps away and regard us with her hands on her hips and tears in her eyes.
“Samuel, I give up. Despite the screaming of my scientists, I am going to take empirical proof and give you and Talia married quarters. Then we can all try to work out what they did right, because I am actually jealous of you two.”
by Duncan Shields | Feb 13, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
It was a way of life down here to prove how far you were willing to go.
The stew of Oddtown. The people that lived here knew that they’d never work in a place that required a dress code let alone a mannered way of behaving. The modifications they had done to themselves were extreme.
There was work that a person could get done that was reversible. Horns, smaller tattoos, piercings, subdermal implants, that sort of thing.
Judge’s kids got those to show that they were rebelling against a society that they didn’t create. All tasteful and done in places that could be covered up by business suits and hairstyles in later life when they realized that their destiny was to be a benefit to society rather than a burden.
They took their little rebellious walk in the wilderness on Oddside. If they were lucky, they made it back out with a few ‘hardcore’ stories and some street cred with the other kids from rich families. Learned a few staring tricks for negotiations in the boardroom when they finally accepted Daddy or Mommy’s tuition and went to law school. Memories to make them think that they had a soul or had experienced ‘real life’ for at least a little bit.
If they were unlucky, they met up with the people that didn’t give a fuck about their parents or futures. A few shots of crackoin later, a few hours of video later, and few ransom demands later, a few brain burns later, and the little girls and boys from the rich side of town ended up in pieces amongst the garbage bags in the alleys. Either that or just stumbling around dead-eyed until they starved to death.
But the smart inhabitants of Oddside realized that these kids had money and would soon be running things. Becoming friends with these kids could be good down the road. Ever since the inheritance act was passed, the poor became poor forever and the rich angled with each other for more money. The gulf between the two societies became an uncrossable trench littered with the Icarus skeletons of people who tried.
It’s all about appearance.
Take Mannycentric, for instance. He had robotic, cherry-red fists the size of oil drums. His shoulders and biceps were grafted to take the weight. If he relaxed, his knuckles dragged on the ground. Those fists could knock chunks out of buildings when they were fully charged. They weren’t gloves. The birth-meat of his forearms and hands was long gone.
Killie had antlers and four hearts. Her scars and tattoos ran the gamut from tribal to baroque. Not much of her original skin still showed. Hundreds of small, scalloped shark fins inserted from her tailbone up to her shoulder blades turned her entire back into a cheese grater.
Flail had extra joints installed in his legs. He ran like a deer and leapt like a flea. He had the buttonhole pupils of a goat.
They were currently letting a blonde rich girl buy them drinks and impressing her with violent stories, watching her eyes grow wide, feeling her excitement growing. She obviously thought she had a wild streak and was ready for whatever the night threw at her. She was wrong. Manny, Flail and Killie had been promised a hundred credits to deliver her to the Skinner. They were just waiting for the roofies to take effect. If they didn’t need the money, they might have tried to make her a friend.
It was a way of life down here to prove how far you were willing to go.
by submission | Feb 12, 2012 | Story |
Author : Jason Verch
It was time to put Em to sleep, but he could tell there was something on her mind.
“Everything ok sweetie?” he asked.
“Dad. Kay is an AI, right?”
“Well sure, you know that. She is a robot with an AI built in that controls her.”
“But I thought AIs were made to do really hard things that regular people aren’t smart enough for. Why do we have one for a housekeeper?”
“That is what AIs are mostly used for, but not every AI is smart enough to be a doctor or a scientist. Some are only as smart as an average person, and some not even that smart. Usually the ones that aren’t that smart get destroyed but daddy is able to keep some of the ones from work that don’t work out, and that?s how we got Kay.”
“What if I don’t turn out to be smart, will you and Mommy throw me away?!” She sounded on the verge of tears.
He reassured her, “Of course not sweetie, don’t be silly. That’s just part of my job at work. Mommy and I love you and will always love you no matter what.” This seemed to calm her.
“Do you think someday I could design AIs like you do? I think that would be fun.” She said.
“I think you can do whatever you want when you grow up. You are already smarter than all the other kids in your class, and get perfect marks on all your tests. You can be a doctor, a lawyer or yes, an AI designer. I’m sure you can be whatever you want to be.” Satisfied that he calmed her he added, “But now I need you to be a good little girl and go to sleep. It’s already past your bedtime.”
“Ok daddy. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight Em, I love you,” he said, as he typed the commands on his handheld to put the program in hibernation for the night.
An AI that designs other AIs he thought to himself. Well, I guess it could happen, but there was something unsettling about the thought. Wasn’t there some old 2d movie like that with President what’s His Name where AI robots take over the earth? That was just Hollywood fantasy; he put it out of his mind. He wasn’t sure what Iteration M would be used for, but there was no denying she was already leaps and bounds beyond the first eleven iterations of the program. Whatever she did it would be something great, something to make him proud, and definitely not another damn housekeeper.
by submission | Feb 11, 2012 | Story |
Author : Peter Andrews
The unmoving city. My city.
The boy is frozen now, four, maybe five, feet from the ground, cheeks pulled by inertia’s invisible fingers.
It is up to me–he might never turn into viscera, his limbs and neck at deathly angles. His family might never have to mourn. This day need never end. The sky could remain forever that shade of blue. People moving along the street might never reach their destination.
I walk away down the center of the road, litter lifeless in the air. The blur of tears makes the world a haze that need not exist. In still cars people are mid-conversation. I try to guess what about. Something about children I imagine, something happy. I do this sometimes, freeze the world and piece together my own understanding of it. The only time I have peace. Everything ceases to be, no one calls for me. There is no family wondering why their son/ wife/ baby/ whatever hadn’t been saved, why the Guardian hadn’t stopped that mugger/ rapist/ arsonist/ drunk/ whatever. Just bouncing around in their grief to find something — anything — to focus the loss on.
I am very old in a way. I stopped aging decades ago. I had a destiny: Humanity would die away — plague/ war/ earthquake/ floods/ meteors/ whatever–and I would be left here, alone, in peace.
Now it is different. The blood I cough up is dark, thick. They can’t do anything–their blades can’t cut my skin, their beams bounce off me. I have lived life as an immortal, now they tell me I will die. They wonder: How can a man who cannot be harmed develop cancer? They ask each other, shake heads. One of those things. They don’t think to ask me.
But so long as I do not release time, I have my eternal destiny, my black passenger in stasis.
But no more. I am human enough.
The boy hits the ground. He feels nothing, deep into shock. Another cluster of black cells in me.
I walk the city streets that have given me a life, and a death. Both are gifts.
