by submission | Aug 10, 2013 | Story |
Author : TPKeating
It took me just a few minutes to unpack and activate the robot.
“How can I assist you, friend?” she asked, softly.
Friend?
I could leave her on for a year, for five years, ten, learning and developing and simply being, and then simply shut her down on a whim. Without warning. Erasing her experiences completely. Some friend that would be.
“We’re in trouble. Get us out of here.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“Hell, get us away from this nightmare of a place by the quickest route to civilization possible. Friend.”
She scanned the bloody scene for a few seconds. “OK.” She walked off, leading the way through stony scrubland flecked with red clay.
From a short distance you’d mistake her for a living woman. Any nearer, and you may notice the book of operating instructions in my hand and begin to wonder. With long chestnut hair, which billowed in a warm breeze, she appeared to be in her mid-twenties. According to her storage container, she was over thirty years old. About my age. We both wore the grey company uniform.
The hot yellow-orange sun on our backs, which discomforted only me, we kept away from the small prefabricated buildings we found after two hours, riddled with blast holes, and the bodies of the dead, also wearing the grey company uniform. They too were riddled with blast holes.
“Hey, robot, I didn’t know there’d been a battle in Base Colony Two. Was it a local dispute, or could anybody join in?” Despite my flippancy, I was deeply troubled. I hadn’t heard about any of this, so just how much information was a unit like her privy too, and from which networks?
“I’d ascribe it to a rival firm. Perhaps a chemical slipped into the water supply. Competition among humans can be notoriously fierce.”
“Yeah, notoriously.” Were robots programmed for irony?
She’d seen the results of the earlier insanity when I powered her up. An utter bloodlust, which had come from nowhere this morning and devastated Base Colony One, almost to a man. My turn to check the hilltop sensor array had saved me. After the sound of the first shot reached me, I grabbed my field binoculars and witnessed the deaths of my ten colleagues. Swift, brutal, sickening.
Thankfully, this emergency robot came with simple instructions, and deploying it was a mandatory part of company training. In fact with a robotic mind in a robotic body, she’d be immune to that sort of irrationality. Exoplanet mining, as we all knew when we signed up, was notoriously dangerous.
A few steps further on I stumbled, and she lent me her artificial, curiously warm hand. Another hour later, she stopped.
“Here we are, friend.” We’d arrived at an intact prefabricated building. No blast holes. She slipped inside. Allowing myself to relax, I unzipped a pocket and put the operating manual away.
“Here being where, precisely?” She hadn’t knocked, which under normal circumstances would have been a breach of protocol. Had she sustained damage in the battle? She emerged. Aiming a particle gun. “My fellow robots confirm that the insanity is incurable for humans, so I’ll be leaving Boundary in the scout ship which is docked behind this structure. It’s for the best. Don’t worry though, you’ll only be unconscious for thirty minutes. Plus there’s another scout ship 6 miles north of here. Telling you about it is the least I can do. It’s what friends are for.”
“North?”
“That way.” I followed the direction she pointed to with her slender hand. Which meant I was completely distracted and unable to avoid her shot.
by Clint Wilson | Aug 7, 2013 | Story
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
The normally white bulbous head of the spacer became yellow as he indulged in triple Rotten Roxathdons on the rocks over the hours. He had been watching the fat Boojardin make his way drunkenly around the bar engaging one patron or another with his riddles and anecdotes. Now he stumbled this way.
Zitenius wanted nothing of it, he had come here to drink and reflect. But it was too late. The fat pink rolls undulated toward him, a slimy two fingered paw extended in friendship. The interloper slurred, “Related to the Thacktizites eh? Had a few too to be sure.” The repulsive being licked his lips. “You look different than them though, stockier,” he eyed the stranger some more, “but you’ve got their trait all right. Yer head’s about as yellow as a Reigel 9 radish!”
Zitenius refused the paw and kept drinking.
The drunken Boojardin didn’t seem to slow at this. He snapped his pink flipper toward the automated bartender and shouted, “Another double Evil Eargrub and another of whatever my yellow headed friend here is having.”
Metal arms, accompanied by the whirring of electric motors, quickly served the drinks. Zitenius took his without thanks, just a barely imperceptible nod as he tipped back the fresh Rotten Roxthdon.
The fat Boojardin kept right on. “Say pal, now that you’ve accepted my hospitality, how about a little story?”
Zitenius neither accepted nor refused. The interloper plowed on.
“Buddy of mine… spacer from the inner donut hole, says he ran into a strange fellow at the Century 4000 Tavern who told him that he was of a kind that never had portraits of themselves ever until their recent intergalactic integration introduced them to other species. Can you believe it pal? How nutty is that?”
The thus far quiet stranger suddenly slammed his cup down and turned his stare toward the portly pink drunkard. “Yes, I can believe it, because that was one of my people!”
The Boojardin looked positively excited at this. “Excellent! Now you must tell me, why good spacer, why no portraits?”
“Don’t you understand? We had no portraits of anything. Not ourselves, not a landscape, not a single thing!”
For the first time the fat Boojardin looked concerned. “But no, how you could never want to represent anything in facsimile?”
The stranger downed the rest of his drink. “I don’t understand it either. Now that I see all these other intelligent races I wonder how we missed it all this time.”
“Missed what good sir?”
“Why, art of course!”
“Art? You never had art?”
“No! And that’s why we never had a single portrait you see. Where your people once represented relations and ones deeply cared for by way of smearing colored ingredients into shapes and likenesses, which in turn developed into capturing images through light sensitive chemicals, which then evolved into moving pictures…”
The Boojardin interrupted dreamily as the light of recognition came on in his huge red eyes. “…which developed into digital imaging which quickly became three dimensional digi imaging. I see… truly fascinating.”
“Fascinating? Perhaps. But we don’t find it all that humorous or exciting.” He went on. “We have achieved great things; artificial intelligence, interstellar travel, amazing wonderful things.” He sighed and drained the rest of his cup. “But our world is plain and gray, without artistic curve or the simplest decoration. I feel we have missed the meaning of it all.”
The suddenly sympathetic Boojardin patted him on slumped shoulder, and pointed around the garishly decorated establishment with its multitude of diverse patrons. “There’s still time friend!”
zp8497586rq
by submission | Jul 15, 2013 | Story
Author : J.D. Rice
The lion stares at me with all five of its eyes, and I know that my death is near. I call it lion, like so many colonists do, because I have no better name for it. Tripedal, with scaly flesh and pentocular vision, the creature is nothing like the lions back on Earth, except for the distinctive feathery mane that surrounds its curving, elongated neck. Like terrestrial lions, they've rarely been known to attack humans unless provoked. Unlike terrestrial lions, they view our very presence on this world as provocation enough to kill three colonists a month.
Slowly stepping forward in a criss-cross pattern, the lion lets out a low-pitched tone, like something from an electronic synthesizer, indicating its intent to make me its next meal. Nervously, I glance side to side, seeing nothing but purple sand and stone, trapped in the barren desert that borders the north side of our enclosed biosphere. I had hoped, when I ventured away from my scavenging party, to find nothing but valuable minerals in this wasteland. No one has ever seen one of these lions outside the southern jungle. But here he is, criss-crossing ever closer to where I stand.
Not daring to entirely look away, I shift my body slightly to the side and try to see how far I'd have to run to reach my jeep. Too far. I'd never make it.
The creature draws nearer, twisting its neck low and allowing its acidic saliva to drip to the ground below, turning the fine purple sand a fiery shade of red, a chemical reaction we haven't entirely been able to study. The feathers in the lion's mane stand on end as it comes closer, and the low tone it makes gets lower, lower, before finally drifting out of my ear's ability to hear. The silence is deafening. At any moment it will lunge and end my life.
Remembering my bowie knife, I fumble, hands shaking, to pull it from its sheath in a futile play at self defense. I was never a hunter, never a soldier. I came to the colony to get a fresh start, to get away from the crowded Earth and build a new home among the stars. We all did. But these creatures, these vestiges of a world resisting change, they've seen our frailty, they've seen our desperation, and they're fighting back. They say in nature that only the strongest survive. These creatures have taken that to heart, mangling our fences, destroying our listening posts, and making us a regular course in their meals. Humans may be the dominant order of life back on Earth. . . But here? We barely rate higher than a gazelle.
Suddenly, finally, the creature's three legs tense and release, launching its misshapen form in my direction. Blinded by panic, I swing my bowie knife wildly, stabbing and swiping as I feel his scaly body knock me to the purple landscape. I feel his suckery mouth close around my shoulder, acid burning through my jacket, melting my skin, digesting my flesh before it ever enters the creature's stomach. The lion flails, kicking its multi-jointed legs in the air, and then, just as suddenly as it had launched itself at me, it goes limp, my knife sticking out from what I assume to be its chest.
As quickly as I can, I push the creature off and pull my canteen from its clip on my belt. Pouring the mercifully cool water over my exposed flesh, I feel sweet relief from the lion's digestive saliva. A small pool of red sand grows from where the creature's bodily fluids leak from its mouth and knife wound. My own shoulder, while horribly burned, shows no signs of exposed deep flesh. It may yet be saved. I got lucky.
Heart pounding, half in remembered panic, half in triumph, I pull my knife from the lion's gut, then hear it. Three sets of ominously low tones.
“Damn,” I say. “They really do hunt in packs.”
zp8497586rq
by submission | Jun 30, 2013 | Story
Author : Bob Skoggins
Jacob Nash was the first man to penetrate Titan’s ice and explore the world beneath. With a heat suit resistant to the dense atmosphere, for thirty-six years he lived in a small sphere of ice and metal.
It was from him that we exist. Though we’re called Titans, we aren’t like the ancient gods of Earth Jacob spoke about. We first existed in Petri dishes. A biological experiment to create a being that needed no suit to survive. A cross of oxygen-breathing endoskeleton DNA with nitrogen-feeding exoskeleton DNA. I was the first successful Titan.
Nash was like a father to me. He was seventy-eight when I was spawned. He lived for only two more years, but during that time he taught me everything. How to create, how to survive, where he came from…
How such a great man could come from such a horrible place, I do not know. He came from a place where they wear masks to breathe, wear suits to keep their skin from burning, and are divided against each other like tribes of some primitive land.
There are 3,000,000 of us now. We no longer use the machines to create, but we can now procreate ourselves. We live peacefully and have a mutual respect that Nash’s kind does not have.
When more of his kind came to our moon, we were nothing but hospitable. Most of them returned to Earth, disappointed because we would not send a Titan along with them.
It was not until a man who claimed to be Nash’s grandson came, that I considered going. He had a resemblance. I was the only one who saw it for I was the only one who knew Jacob Nash. I decided to go. Though he spoke of its horrors, he created me. He created Titans. I could tell Earth his story. I could tell mine.
It took three months to reach Earth. The reek of chemicals stung my nose from miles away. I had to put on a suit in order to protect my skin from the heat and sun. Once there, I helped design a room that would allow me to live without the suit. It is in that room that I now sit and write this.
Nash’s grandson is nothing like Jacob. Though he was curious at first, he soon lost interest in my story. He built glass windows surrounding my room and told me it was for observation. He took away my suit so I could not leave the room, or else I would die.
I now endure endless floods of humans and their children watching me and taking photographs. Nash’s grandson told me it would gain us fame and fortune. Fame and fortune is nothing to me.
Earth is still as Jacob Nash described to me years ago.
zp8497586rq
by submission | Jun 18, 2013 | Story |
Author : Morrow Brady
I surfaced from the suckling gel, my memories muddied like debris in a low tide canal. I know gelwork has long term memory risks but this post work haze was getting ridiculous.
“Shell clear”, I mumbled.
Layered, milky scales shimmered transparent, revealing an outside view that needed a warning. My single room cell clung to the rim of a stadium sized crater and overlooked a hundred-strong blisterpak of similar cells carpeting the crater’s floor and walls. Beyond the crater’s rim, a blackened landscape receded, pricked with skylon antennae.
Above the chewed horizon was an asteroid, its rusty silhouette orthographically sculpted by mining operations.
A metallic Hadfield truss, shaped like a long-chain chemical structure, thrust upward from the horizon across ten miles of space. It anchored beyond into a pink regolith wad on the red asteroid.
Faint memories emerged. I was on asteroid Alpha. Out there was Gamma, a motherlode asteroid, rich in ship building ores and riddled with gel linked Minerbots.
Following their capture, asteroids Alpha and Gamma were towed into a stationary earth orbit to become astellites. Everyone knew them as the Twins. Their pirouetting dance over Japan, now part of everyday life.
Memories of my past life in Japan crashed into my thoughts, forcing me to sit down in shock. Memories of a good home and a love for sushi. Memories of corporate giant FukuCorp, looking me in the eye as it pissed in my pocket.
FukuCorp owned the Twins. Populating it with miners shanghaied through their Earth based restaurant chain FukuSushi. Shokunin robots installed at each restaurant, screened diners for suitability. It was eighteen months ago when I walked in for lunch that day. By my third plate, I was marked. Perhaps it was my chopstick dexterity or maybe my choice of dish from the sushi train satisfied the visual acuity tests. Either way, my life was about to change.
The seemingly innocent salmon nigiri I savoured, was laced with the Taste. A nanite laden serum, designed solely to control humans through addiction.
When saliva, tongue and Taste met, my jaw seized shut and I panicked. Starbursts of pent-up adrenaline released and moments later, the lockjaw dissipated. Biochemical energy cascaded in bands of relaxing warmth down my cheeks making my jaw peacefully slump. The warmth seeped through my neck. Wriggling into my spinal column only to rocket upward and gush into my skull. It flooded my brain with pure ecstasy making me swim in eye rolling joy. A layered cascade tickled every nerve ending in my body, leaving my joints lubricated and free. Thoughts became precise and true. I remembered every experience of my life journey.
I opened my eyes, having no memory of closing them. The restaurant remained unchanged.
A shiver down my spine preceded a strange feeling that I came to recognise as an all consuming emptiness. An aftertaste that would drive me to the heavens.
The Taste lingered on. Gifmarking my retina with a looping animation of the Twins and barraging my body with waves of discomfort. This depleted what remained of my mental strength, finally defeating me physiologically on the second day. I signed my life to FukuCorp in the afternoon and was space bound in an ascent dirigible the next morning. By week’s end, with training complete, I was sealed into my cell and charged with operating over a dozen drillbot teams via gel-link.
The gel bath delivers Taste and sustenance. The immersion period grows the less I remember. Maybe I will stay under a while longer this shift.
