by submission | Aug 2, 2006 | Story
Author : S.Clough
You’ve heard of the Unequivocal, right?
Okay, then. I’ll assume you’ve been living under a rock since before you were born. The Unequivocal was the very first flagship of the Earth fleet. One of the early-pattern destroyers: It was lost in its fourth year of service, holding off a half-dozen Beamer ships by itself, buying time for a freighter convoy to get through from Deimos to Earth.
Now when I say ‘lost’, I don’t mean destroyed. I mean lost. There’s no real evidence as to what happened to it, but everybody thought that it was destroyed.
The Beamers signed the treaty, and everyone forgot about the Unequivocal. When Free Celestia declared their tax war, and Earth was forced to defend itself again… the Unequivocal showed up. A freight-courier was blasting the run from Eros, and an entire Celestia wolfpack was right there waiting. Now, freight-couriers are hardly defenceless, but even an ECS variant armed to the teeth would have issues with such a wolfpack; a merchant navy variant had no chance.
They’d lost shields, and most of their weapons when the Unequivocal blindsided the wolfpack. It was a real laser show – big weapons: old thermonukes, hard beams, Wraitii caps, and some other stuff even Earth Central can’t identify. The Celestians were wiped out, and the Freight-Courier limped home. Its sensor arrays had been badly damaged, but it had recorded the battle in high enough quality to confirm that the only known ship which matched that hull configuration was the Unequivocal. Of course, it could just be an old destroyer, modified over time to resemble the old flagship. But spacers, being spacers, would prefer for their saviour to be a revenant from the past rather than a modern-day phenomenon.
Now, the rumour goes that in that fight near Deimos, the Unequivocal was hit by a Beamer secret weapon, and something odd happened – isolated spacetime bubbles and transference are the popular theories. To be honest, I don’t care. I don’t know if it is that same ship that disappeared all those years ago, but I know pilots and captains which owe their lives to it. It never communicates anything, never stops, and has no known base. It just appears, fights, (most often against overwhelming odds), and leaves. Untraceable.
Every Earther who strays beyond their homeworld’s ecliptic has hope now. If everything turns against them, the Unequivocal might show. They’re not scared to face up to those who would deny them the system.
And that, my friend, is why I believe the stories.
by Stephen R. Smith | Aug 1, 2006 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
“Man – this is awesome!” John was in a state of constant verbal barrage, his voice unnaturally loud above the diner chatter as he overcompensated for the music playing in his head. “I’m telling you, these Koreans know how to make implants.”
Scott sat across the table, sucking absently at a milkshake and visibly not sharing his friend’s enthusiasm. Lenny was still in line at the counter, which left Scott as the unwilling sole recipient of John’s manic discourse.
“I’m listening to the new Chilies – it’s not even out here, and I’ve just downloaded it right into my head” John was still in the honeymoon phase with his new cerebral implant, a Korean unit he’d bought from a friend of a friend and had implanted that morning. He hadn’t shut up about it since. “Hang on – I’m going to message Josie and see if she wants to meet us. She was on the mmorpg a few minutes ago – I’m sure she’s still online. This is so cool – I’m mmorpging, messaging and jackin’ tunes all at the same time. Your AmCo. ‘plant’s got nothing on this.”
Scott hit the bottom of his shake with a sudden noisy suck of air, which he continued for a moment for it’s sheer irritation factor. When it was obvious it wasn’t having the desired effect, he gave up and pushed it aside. Leaning across the table, he tried to penetrate his friend’s state of distracted euphoria.
“Listen buddy – would you stop yelling – I can hear you – I’m right here. The whole freakin’ diner can hear you, and honestly, you’re not that interesting.”
John continued to wave absently at windows in his field of vision that only he could see, while Scott resisted the urge to slap him, instead slumping back into his seat. “Don’t you think it might have been a good idea to get that thing tested before you had it installed? I mean you can barely hear me – isn’t it a little loud in there?”
John’s waving became more frantic, and his eyes were starting to become unfocused. “Damn – goad_theRedRocket keeps trying to chat with me. I can’t make him stop.”
“Just jam him on your filter list.” Scott was the king of stating the obvious.
“I can’t – the screens are all in Korean. Oh, crap – I opened one – crap, crap, crap – I can’t see – he’s popup bombing me… I’m getting flooded with pink pocket monsters. Not cool at all.” Johns arms flailed wildly about the space in front of his face, his elbows coming dangerously close to upsetting his Coke and fries, which Scott quickly moved to safety. “Now the audio’s screwed – it’s all static – these stupid popups must’ve overrun the buffer… I can’t see a thing, there’s too many windows open – and I can’t get the stupid avatar to switch to English. How the hell am I supposed to…” John’s eyes abruptly glazed over, his face going slack and his arms falling limp first onto the table, and then coming to rest on the bench at his sides.
Lenny picked this as the perfect moment to arrive, slamming his shake on the table and dropping heavily onto the bench beside Scott.
“What’s up with him?” Lenny jerked a thumb towards their limp friend.
“Korean implant. Probably still in beta, he got spammed and it wigged out. He’s in total head crash.” Scott retrieved the now abandoned Coke and began drinking it. “It should reboot in a bit, hopefully. He won’t be too happy if we’ve got to EMP the thing to unfreeze his head.”
“Bummer… that’s why I always buy domestic. Hey, are you going to eat his fries?”
by Kathy Kachelries | Jul 31, 2006 | Story |
The Sears catalogue offers dozens of models of BlogBots, but it claims that its most popular is the X451, used to conduct remote interviews. During an average three years of service, the X451 BlogBot will recite hundreds of questions posted to its forum and transcribe the answers of over 50 interviewees. Some interviewees are celebrities, and some are politicians. Many are general surveys, where the BlogBot is positioned in a public space and repeats the same question to a given number of pedestrians.
Once, the legend goes, a kid asked his favorite site’s BlogBot to interview another BlogBot, this one belonging to a fiction site, and provided it with a single question: “Why do you do it?†A BlogBot’s programming is rudimentary by conventional standards, and it’s considered slightly less intelligent than the average car. When the question was posed to the fiction BlogBot, it nearly crashed, but its adaptive software saved it by processing the question as an incomplete answer rather than an inquiry.
People say science fiction is prophetic, but that isn’t entirely true. Science fiction isn’t about the future. It’s about the world we live in now, which is constant and constantly changing. The specifics change, from hovercars and ray guns to genetic engineering and cyberspace, but at the center of every science fiction story there’s something alive, something human. And that never changes.
The first answer was not an answer. The second BlogBot coolly repeated the words it had been given, and the BlogBot conducting the interview lapsed into a similar state. For several minutes, the room was filled with two voices as the BlogBots recited the question over and over. Each repetition was classified as a follow-up question, and in accordance with its programming, nothing could be converted to text until a final answer had been given.
Of course, it’s difficult to come up with ideas sometimes. You get discouraged, or feel like everything’s been done before. Often, it has. Sometimes the ideas are wonderful, and sometimes they’re less than wonderful. But you do it anyways, because that’s what writing is about.
It took the webmaster over an hour to realize that something was wrong, and it took three days to find the missing BlogBots. When they were recovered they were still locked in battle, though their words were now slurred by dying batteries. Not a single word had been converted to text. The question was never answered.
When readers try to thank me for writing, I never understand it. On their own, words are nothing but lead and ink and pixels. Telling a story is a circle: the writer writes, the reader reads, and worlds are created. I’m constantly thanking my readers. Sometimes, it’s just more obvious than others.
Information about the upcoming year of 365
by B. York | May 31, 2006 | Story
The glow of a television never graced two happier faces before that summer day. Aaron was blonde and wide-eyed while next to him, in an almost mirrored image save for the black hair, sat his friend Hamel. Both children were staring at the images of a mad scientist and kid from the 1980’s flying around in a steel contraption through time. One might incorrectly assume there was a science fiction special on. Try the history channel.
With a frustrated look, Hamel turned to his friend and curiously inquired, “I say, do you ever wonder if people have already changed history without us knowing? If, forty years ago, some madman had come and swiped our parents, neither of us would be around. So forty years ago, we could stop existing.”
Aaron raised a brow. “That might be the dumbest idea I have ever heard. People can’t travel in time. If they did, then there would be nuclear wastelands everywhere and bad people would prosper.”
Despite the comment, Hamel just shrugged and turned back to the screen to watch the time-travel shenanigans continue. Both sat in silence until a commercial.
“What if good people had control of the time machine?”
The blonde boy just sighed, “You can’t tell if people are good or bad, dummy. Bad people would eventually get their hands on it anyways.”
Hamel lifted his head up high, his expression unchanged. “No. I believe in a good nation. One with values and a belief that people can be good.”
“Not all people are good. Some people have to do bad things to get to the good.”
Both children shut up for a moment after the movie came back on. The one-liners, the classics shot from the speakers. A voice from the kitchen rang out into the living room interrupting the two and their cinema reverie.
“Aaron Francis Hitler, you have been watching television all day. Get your rear in here and help your father clean the dishes.”
The poor embarrassed youth rolled his eyes and started to get up off the floor, followed by Hamel’s giggles. “Your middle name is funny,” the tall child next to Aaron teased.
Sticking out his tongue, the blonde boy turned to go towards the kitchen, “At least my last name isn’t the same as a car!”
Pouty-faced, the dark-haired boy yelled after Aaron, “At least Lincoln is an American name!”
by Kathy Kachelries | Apr 13, 2006 | Story |
Hello. My name is Demetri Thornwick. I’m a graduate student in physics at Hawking University, but in your century you probably know it as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I just left Professor Mendalin’s Temporal Physics class, where I just received a D- on my term paper. The paper was on Dr. Franklin’s theory of Negative Timeline Distortions. I won’t bore you with the physics, but it involves the effects of changes made when traveling back in time (aka, Timeline distortions). Now, nobody disputes that the timeline will be irrevocably disrupted if a time traveler makes a major change, like detonating a 100 terawatt EMF pulse bomb in Hollywood. In addition, nobody disputes that a minimal change, like dropping a pebble in a dry well, will not disrupt the future one iota. The arguments always center on the Maximum Disruption with Zero Consequences (MDZC). You know, what’s the most I can change without screwing up the primary timeline.
That’s why I’m overwriting this web page, to prove to Professor Mendalin that my grade should be increased. You see, my term paper predicted that changing an obscure twenty first century web site will produce zero consequences. However, Professor Mendalin argued that 2d/(c2-ga )1/2 is not valid when DT>200 years. And, based on that, my successive derivations were worthless. Frankly, he’s an idiot. And, when I prove him wrong, he’ll have to change my grade to an A.
It’s relatively simple to infiltrate your twenty first century internet using a Tachyon carrier beam. I can do it from here, and you see the results real time. Now, clearly, I cannot make a drastic change, like take ebay off-line for a few hours. That would absolutely collapse my timeline, and my century would cease to exist. So, I decided to go back to April 13, 2006 and delete a story from 365 Tomorrows, and replace it with this dialog. FYI, I chose 365 Tomorrows because it only has a modest following; certainly below the MDZC threshold. In addition, twenty-first century critics all agreed that fewer people read the stories of Kathy Kachelries than any of the other writers, which I why I chose today, because it lowers the MDZC threshold even more. Surely, a few thousand lonely sci-fi geeks can miss one apocalyptic story without the world coming to an end. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure you’re all good people, but come on, you’re not a major thread in the tapestry of time. If my calculations are correct, the loss of that one boring story (less than two minutes of your life) will be equivalent to dro-ping a p-bble in a d-y we-l. Wh-t th- he-l is h-pen–g. -h, s-it…
