by submission | Nov 7, 2008 | Story
Author : Peter Pincosy
“Accuracy is the primary road to access”
A large white room with banks of computers lined up in rows, was home to Primary English. Sanjay had worked here for three years. He’d won the lottery, the chance to immigrate to the United States. His friends and neighbors were surprised. Sanjay didn’t know any English. The rest of them had taken the entry test, and were certain their scores were better. He couldn’t handle even the most basic conversation. Some of his relatives thought he was an idiot. The day Sanjay stepped on the plane headed for the United States he had laughed at all of them, even his friends. As far as he was concerned by the time they met again he would be a rich man, humility was for the poor.
Three years later his optimism was shaken. For the past few months he’d been wondering when he would move past the testing phase and into the world of freedom that was so lauded in all of the promotional brochures.
Some people had gone. One day they were called to the office of the manager and they didn’t come back to their computer. Their personal belongings back in the immigrant holding camp disappeared before everyone returned from the shift. Some of them had been very bad at transcribing.
Sanjay was shaken, he’d become nervous about the future. Three years of typing in English words from taped transcripts had honed Sanjay’s ability to understand English. He sat with hundreds of people from hundreds of countries at computers and entered the words streaming through their headphones. The manager said the purpose was to teach them English.
“Learn English, learn life.” the manager was fond of saying in words that seemed to soar straight out of the doors and into the blue sky above.
“I worked for a man who had strange items. He sold them. I never saw what they were, just… his hands smelled like chemicals.” In through his headphones the transcript ran, and his fingers slammed out the corresponding words. He was fast. At times he would get completely lost in the words and would work until he felt a finger tap his shoulder. It tapped. He continued. It tapped.
Hands tugged his headphones from his head.
“Sanjay Patel, D-847838?” a red-faced man asked him. He was an American. He lifted the fingers that had touched the headphones and held them out beyond his body. His nose wrinkled up. “The manager would like to see you in his office.”
Sanjay felt himself flush with adrenaline. A few of the others saw him stand and he noticed curiosity and envy in their faces. He walked down the aisle toward the manager’s office. The red-faced man opened the manager’s office and Sanjay stepped inside.
At a desk in the center of a stark room sat the manager. Behind him was another door. The room had two chairs, one held the manager, and the other was empty. Sanjay sat in the chair.
“Sanjay Patel, D-847838,” the manager said. “Congratulations. You’ve graduated. Through the door behind me is the beginning of another set of challenges, a new life, hope, the future.” He was enjoying his words. “Go ahead. Have a good life.”
Nervously Sanjay stood up and walked to the door. He opened it and stepped into a small hallway. At the end of the hallway he went through another door.
Behind the door was a room, full of computers lined up just like in the last room. A sign on the wall read “Primary English Level 2”.
by Patricia Stewart | Oct 29, 2008 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“What’s the status of the quarantine field, Mr. Conrad?” asked Captain Germex.
“As terminal as an event horizon, Captain,” replied the ship’s Science Officer.
Mazzaroth was the fifth planet of the bright star Alpha Boötis, a Class K1.5, orange-red gas giant. Although the luminary was only one and a half times more massive than Earth’s sun, its diameter was 26 times larger, about a quarter the size of Mercury’s orbit. Alpha Boötis was one of the rare Population II “old disc” stars. “Old disc” stars formed in the thick discs of dust clouds that orbit the galactic core a thousand light years above and/or below the galactic plane. These stars have highly inclined orbits around the galactic core, and periodically wander into our portion of the galactic plane, as Alpha Boötis was doing now. In addition, star systems formed in these “old disc” dust clouds have a different chemistry than Earth’s Population I star. They have significantly lower amounts of heavy elements, such as iron, nickel, copper, and gold. Consequently, their planets were smaller, and less dense, and their solar spectrums contained elevated levels of Z-beta radiation. Astrobiologists speculate that it was the Z-beta radiation that promoted the development of the abnormal indigenous life that was currently driving the colonists of Mazzaroth mad.
A month earlier, it was discovered that the settlements on Mazzaroth became infected with neural parasites. These parasites were single celled microorganisms that infiltrate the host’s brain, causing schizophrenia, delusional parasitosis, paranoia, and dysthymia, to name a few. The disease was extremely contagious and incurable. Once a settlement was infected, there was no option except complete extermination. The only concern beyond that was containment. Specifically, did the parasites have an opportunity to leave the planet? Review of Mazzaroth’s shipping logs revealed that only two starships picked up cargo or passengers from Mazzaroth in the last two months. Both ships were expeditiously intercepted, and quarantined, before they reached their destinations. After a few weeks, the passengers on the second ship to leave Mazzaroth developed dysthymia. The first ship appeared clean. This convinced doctors that the epidemic could be contained. As a precaution, the propulsion systems of both ships were destroyed and they were towed to a nearby star. Both ships were placed in decaying orbits that eventually caused them to plummet into the star’s fiery corona. Destruction of the “uncontaminated” first ship was considered a necessary safety precaution. “For the betterment of all mankind,” reported The Department of Galactic Health and Safety.
Captain Germex stared at Mazzaroth through the forward viewport. Once, this planet had supported over 250,000 inhabitants. Now, less than 80,000 were still alive, and they were no longer considered human. “Prepare to execute Operation Sterilize, Mr. Atwood,” ordered the captain. The Tactical Officer entered the appropriate codes into the computer, then looked up at the captain and nodded, to indicate that he was ready. With both regret and determination, the captain said “Fire all torpedoes.”
The modulation fields of the twelve engineered projectiles passed smoothly through the quarantine grid at roughly 60 degrees of separation. At an altitude of 10,000 feet, they all detonated. The concussion wave spread outward at more than 2,000 miles an hour. Mazzaroth’s atmosphere ignited into a global fireball that consumed the entire planet. For a few hours, the planet was nearly as bright as Earth’s sun.
by submission | Oct 27, 2008 | Story
Author : William Tracy
A luxurious coat of trees springs from the earth’s skin. The morning’s clouds have burned off, and the jungle canopy stretches to the horizon in every direction. A single towering industrial complex pierces the rolling sea of leaves.
The structures are girded by a labyrinth of pipes of myriad sizes and hues, crisscrossing and splitting and joining. The maze is punctuated by dire chemical hazard placards. The steel monoliths sparkle in the afternoon sun, altars to unknown gods.
A solitary robot trundles along a catwalk high above the forest floor. A twisting vine struggling to reclaim the structure for nature is crushed unseen by the lumbering machine.
Methodically following the radio beacons studding its path, the robot turns a bend and travels toward the center of the complex. It leaves the living forest for one of metal, where constellations of colored lights blink on and off. Ubiquitous embedded microcontrollers read their instructions from solid-state wafers, then sleep until their next jobs arrive.
Solenoids twitch open and shut, and a gasp of steam escapes a vent. The cloud is swept away by a tug of wind that sets the trees to whispering amongst themselves. The robot notes the change in atmospheric pressure with its internal barometer, but feels nothing.
It reaches its destination, and stops. Guided by barcodes burned into the structure, it mates a canister to a socket, forms a seal, and flushes fluid into the system. The pipes scream as precipitates dissolve and reagents flow again.
Its job done, the robot turns and descends a zig-zagging ramp spidering down from the sky. The sun slips away to roost in distant mountains. Its glow floods the jungle, and sets the sterile machinery alight. The robot’s infrared unit recalibrates to compensate, and it continues forward.
The robot reaches the ground, and returns the spent solvent canister to its hopper. The machine moves on. The feeble twilight—so fleeting in the tropics—comes and goes. Gleaming sequins appear in the sky, shy and self-conscious. They are drowned out by the abrupt onslaught of nauseous sodium vapor lamps sprouting from the buildings at regular intervals.
A jaguar leaps into the robot’s path. The machine stops, its infrared camera tracking the animal’s body heat. The cat snarls at the robot, but the robot cannot hear. The creature glides into the night, and the machine resumes its dogged march.
Now the jungle is alive with sound. Unseen beasts roar, scream, call, chirp, and sing. Oblivious, the robot moves to a tool bin. Servos whine as it peruses the implements one at a time, digesting the information from RFID tags. Finally, the robot mates a repair attachment to its arm. It turns to continue, then hesitates.
For a moment, the machine wishes it could see the sunset.
by Stephen R. Smith | Oct 15, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Truger loathed recreational narcotics; he could never understand the point. Hallucinogens, depressants, all of them ran completely counter to his personality.
This made his current situation unbearable.
He remembered the moments before the crash, the low orbit sky-fight, the enemy fighters he’d engaged and the victory that he’d been sure of, one snatched away in a hail of flak as they’d strayed too close to the anti-aircraft emplacements. His last memory was of the gaping hole in his cockpit, and the cauterized stumps of his freshly truncated arms and leg.
He remembered waking here.
The first hallucination had been the spiders. He hadn’t seen them as his eyes were bandaged, but he felt them navigate across his body, clicking and chattering, poking and prodding. He’d been trained to overcome foreign chemicals in his system, and he tried as best he could. The bandages were peeled back from his eyes, tiny metal appendages pulling away the mesh to let the light in. Somewhere far away, someone began screaming. His drug-enhanced imagination fed him back his own face reflected in a hundred shining facets. Seconds stretched into minutes before a sharp pain in his shoulder redirected his attention, and, as the light dimmed, he was aware that the screaming had stopped.
When next he awoke, the room had changed. The bugs were gone, and everything was bathed in a green white glow, it’s edges blurred and indistinct. Truger tried to sit upright, but his torso was too heavy. He concentrated instead on his drug-heavy hands, and as he struggled with them, the memory of cauterized limb fragments flashed back, vivid and real. The panicked surge of adrenaline helped him pull them into his line of sight but instead of familiar or even burnt flesh he found clear, crystalline limbs of stunning beauty. He marveled as the light refracted through their internal structures, until their weight finally overcame his strength.
He had to wake up. This hallucinogenic daydream was too much.
Somewhere, someone was screaming again.
Truger couldn’t remember falling asleep, or being awoken again. The light had changed, and a flurry of activity in his peripheral vision begged for his attention. His head was too leaden to move, so he strained his eyes to the left and wished he hadn’t. A doctor, resplendent in his gown, moved in and out of his field of view conversing with a nurse. Their heads both stretched impossibly in the dim light, elongated and flailing whip-like at the air. The doctor’s arms tapered off into slender, excessively jointed digits which undulated as he spoke. Their words were no more than melodic chirps to Truger’s intoxicated mind. That people took these chemicals into their system willingly and for entertainment was beyond his comprehension. The images they superimposed on his reality terrified him, and he squeezed his eyes shut as though willing the distorted shapes to disappear.
He felt something in his personal space, and opened his eyes to the faces of the medical staff, pressed close and staring, eyes now faceted and double lidded, mouths a quivering mass of vertical fleshy strips.
“Stop giving me drugs,” he screamed into their startled faces, the force of his words driving them back. “I can suffer the pain, but these drugs, you’re driving me out of my mind.” The effort taxed him to near unconsciousness. As his awareness slipped away into blackness, he whispered simply “no drugs”, a series of sound-waves the doctors chirped and clicked about for some time, trying to decipher what these noises could possibly mean.
by Stephen R. Smith | Sep 12, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Claire cleared the fire-doors just moments before they sealed the lab. She knew they would hold for a while, but still ran down the corridor dragging the unconscious Doctor behind her. He out-massed her by a wide margin, but she severely outmuscled him.
The outer doors irised out of their way, and she dragged the Doctor to a clear space on the floor. There was no time for niceties. Without hesitation she drove a large catheter into the Femoral artery in his thigh, leaving the unsecured end to spasm as blood pumped through it onto the floor.
She tore through the supply cabinets and returned with a cryogel pack and injector, which she hurriedly assembled and drove through his chest and into his heart. The gel pack flooded his vital organs with its oxygen rich preservative while Claire counted the agonizing minutes, his life pooling on the floor, sticky about her feet.
When she was sure the bleeding had stopped, she set to with a scalpel, quickly removing every appendage that was too big to fit into a cryocan. When she was finished, the Doctor had been reduced to a head and torso, limbs cut clean revealing the pink sponge-like gel that had replaced all his bodily fluid.
Outside she could hear heavy equipment at the fire-doors. They’d be through in a matter of minutes and could not be allowed to capture her. What she knew they would extract bit by bit, cell by data saturated cell until not even the one with her name on it remained intact.
She hoisted the Doctor from the floor, abandoning the off-cut pieces and carried him to the reactor anti-chamber. She retrieved a cryocan from the lab and hurriedly stuffed him inside. Slipping the wiring harness into place and pushing the steel pickups in through unfeeling flesh she paused, bent, and kissed his cooling lips.
She sealed the canister and hoisted it over the railing, leapt gazelle-like after it and bending nearly double, at a run pushed the canister across the safety apron and launched it into the pool of coolant. She watched for a moment to be sure it sank before sprinting back across the steel floor, hurdling the railing and hurtling back through the lab, opening valves and spilling large containers of chemicals. Corrosives splashed at her skin, but she ignored her burning flesh, focused instead on priming an explosive cocktail in the tightly enclosed room.
Satisfied that there would be no evidence left behind, she dropped into a chair and jacked a fibre cable through the pickup in her ear.
“Claire. Emergency upload protocol. Tango Romeo Uniform Sierra Tango.”
A voice in her head responded, “Charlie Lima Alpha bio acknowledged. Outbound transmissions offline.”
“Override. Nuclear environmental reporting channel. Possible burn-through.”
“Override engaged. Nuclear EV channel online. Destination EPA.”
“Override. Destination random. Public internet cafe. Sweden.”
“Override engaged. Upload commencing.”
Claire felt her life siphoning from her physical self and flood out onto the network, and as she became less aware of the burning of her flesh, she became instantly aware of the Special Ops forces breaching the outer fire door, of the agents surrounding the complex, and of the intense fireball that erupted from the lab, vapourizing the recent incarnation of Claire in flesh and the scraps of the Doctor she’d scattered on the floor.
As she poured from the back channel out on the nets into Sweden, she hoped she could highjack a body at least as capable as the one she’d abandoned. She was going to need something special to get her Doctor back.
