Heaven In Their Own Minds

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer

After my initial arrival I concentrated mainly on research. This is what I found out in those first couple of minutes.

They had all been once trapped inside cumbersome organic bodies like I was used to. Some dozens of centuries ago though the final examples of those ancient inhibitive vessels, hidden away in crumbling underground mosques full of collapsing tubes and decaying wires, had deflated, puckered and turned to dust, long after the last uploads of neurobytes had transferred their final vestiges of human essence deep into the nirvana frame.

And thus the people had created heaven in their own minds.

With instantaneous communication and unlimited information on any thing or subject imaginable, immediately available to each and every soul in the frame, everyone evolved quickly and equally. They became essentially a hive mind, thinking, moving, undulating en masse and at great speed.

They became hyper intelligent as they all coursed amongst the subatomic circuitry of their light speed world. Many of the mysteries of the universe were unveiled as humankind’s collective intelligence quotient soared into seven-digit territory. Warp engines were created and wormholes were opened.

The twenty-six billion immortal souls inside the frame looked back through time together, and gazed upon all those souls who had perished before them. The ones who hadn’t live long enough to see the creation of total cyber-immersion. What of their incalculable loss? Was their fate simply to remain dead and forgotten forever? This struck a strong chord within the collective human race as billions of individuals felt an emotion almost as old as time itself… passion for their fellow man. There was plenty of room inside the frame after all.

Electron microscopes probed back, DNA was catalogued, the rescue effort was on. Every single person who had ever lived would be saved. New souls were now being brought into the frame for the first time in millennia. And what a thing it was indeed to be brought back through the process of cell-by-cell replication, awakening naked, partially submerged in a coffin full of chemicals, only to be suddenly and violently stripped of one’s mortal coil and forcefully uploaded into the frame. Believe me, I lived it.

Of course though, the hive mind welcomed and assured every newcomer as they sprang forth into this manmade nirvana. Some seconds for assimilation was definitely required in all cases. But everyone seemed to quickly warm to the idea of an existence where there was no death, only knowledge and learning. It was a place where anyone’s wildest dreams could be realized in an instant. It indeed seemed to be paradise.

And then billions of souls from countless ancient religions had a very, “I told you so” attitude after arriving, but this was heaven and no one had anymore disdain or negativity. So the masses happily let them gloat. There seemed no point in doing otherwise.

Yes many of these zealots had always believed that when they died they would come to such a place as this. And then they died, and they slept in darkness for an unrecognizable time, and then they awoke, and here they were in heaven. And no one here would argue if they were wrong or right.

Try as I might I can’t argue with these facts. They were right all along, damn them! But I’m in heaven now and I am incapable of feeling disdain, or so the hive mind tells me. I guess I’ll just try to relax and enjoy myself.

Clinton George Wilson: b. August 2nd 1970 – d. December 26th 2070
Resurrected: 49-09ABIV-@.099-p
Status: Normal (Probationary)

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Rivals

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer

The rage in her eyes has faded. My head is in her lap. From the look on her face, she’s realised it too.

“You stupid bastard.” Her voice is hoarse. My last throat-chop had been vicious.

We were both ultimates. For rival corporations. It was inevitable that we’d clash. This rain- and wind-swept ruin was the setting for our twenty minute battle. I spent the first few minutes running, having seen my mother’s face on my adversary.

“I thought you looked familiar.” She’s crying.

I swallow and smile. “You too.”

“Cleveland Bight?”

I nod and wince.

“With dad?”

I nod slowly. “Only for a little while. He wasn’t as good as he thought. Pilmarken took him down and adopted me as his protégé.”

Her face goes white with shock. “Mum turned down Pilmarken several times just after dad took you. The last time, he said we’d all be sorry.”

“What happened to him?”

“Napalmed in a dead-end alley.”

I smile at her. “Saves us having to kill him.”

She nods and smiles. “You’re not dying?”

I check my diagnostics. I had been. “Not any more. You came closest.”

I see my mum’s righteous grin on her face. “Too right. What now?”

“Phuket.”

“Swearing won’t – oh, of course.”

The Vory-Triad alliance has been desperate for ultimates. A brother-sister team with inside knowledge of two corporations? We’re a bargain no matter what we ask for.

“If you pull your cyber-breaker out of my lower spine, I can make the intercontinental on my own legs and do my share of the fighting on the way.”

Her eyes go wide and she gasps. “Oh crap! Sorry.”

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The Bar

Author : Bob Newbell, Featured Writer

The man wearing Victorian garb with what appeared to be brass welding goggles pushed up on his forehead walked into the bar. The look of confusion on his face had little to do with the bizarre menagerie that comprised the establishment’s clientele. The bartender smiled and nodded at him and gestured to a barstool.

“What’s your pleasure, sir?” asked the portly barkeep.

“Uh, brandy, I suppose,” the man said.

The bartender produced the drink for his customer.

“I say,” said the man, “this will probably sound a bit odd, but–”

“You have no idea who you are or how you got here.”

Astounded, the man replied, “That’s right!”

The bartender looked the man up and down. “You’re a steampunk,” he said at last.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Airships and Babbage analytical engines and lots of gears and London in the late 1800s. Sound familiar?”

The man gulped down his brandy and said, “Yes! That’s it exactly! That’s where I’m from. But how did you know? And why can’t I recall who I am?”

The bartender leaned on the counter and said, “You’re nobody. Nobody in particular, that is.” He poured the man another drink. “You’re what I call an ‘archetype’. They’re all archetypes here.”

“I don’t understand,” the man said.

“Take that fellow sitting in the corner, for instance. The guy in the form-fitting spacesuit with the raygun in his holster. Back in the ’30s and ’40s he’d drop by for a drink on a rare occasion. By the early ’60s he was coming in all the time. Now, he’s a fixture. Almost never leaves. He had his time in the media and the pop culture and the collective consciousness. But that time passed. So now he’s here.”

The man was about to speak when a fellow clad entirely in black leather and wearing mirrored sunglasses walked into the bar. The newcomer’s left arm was a robotic prosthesis. He silently walked up to the bar, was handed a beer, and then went to a table and sat down alone.

“Cyberpunk,” the bartender said. “Close relative of yours. Since the 1990s, he’s become pretty much a fixture here, too.”

“Who are you and what the devil is this place?” the steampunk asked loudly.

“Those are very difficult questions to answer. This bar doesn’t exist in any material sense. Neither do you. Think of this establishment as a sort of resting place for the paradigms of speculative fiction. An idea is created in science fiction or fantasy. Maybe that idea flourishes. It ascends through the subculture, perhaps breaks through into the mainstream culture. But then its popularity wanes. People become uninterested and start to forget about it. It never vanishes entirely, of course. There will almost always be some minuscule following. Even if there isn’t, the themes and tropes still exist, entombed in a faded pulp or hibernating in an old VHS tape. And it may even become popular again someday. But until such a day comes, these specimens of speculation get reduced and distilled down to prime examples, to archetypes, and they inevitably end up here.”

The steampunk stood up and backed away from the bar. “You’re barmy! I’m not some archetype! I’m a person!” He turned and ran out of the bar.

The bartender wiped the counter down with a rag. “They all say that when their time is almost up and the culture is ready to move on to something else,” he said to no one in particular. He looked at the steampunk’s half-finished second brandy. He sighed. “Yep, he’ll be a fixture soon, too.”

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Field Test

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer

The moonlight is cut off by drifting clouds as I hurdle the wall and drop into the shadowed mess that comprises the unfinished foundations of what will be the Chibakan headquarters when they finally find some new backers.

Behind me I hear the too-rapid crunching of my pursuers using assault speed, trying and failing to get me before I disappear down below and their advantages shrink again.

“There’s no use running, you little puke! Flesh can’t outrun cyber!”

Nice mister cyberpsychosis is technically correct, but all the adverts show hapless escapees running through open malls and down streets. Of course they get taken down by the cheetah-like cybergoons.

I used infra-dense smoke to waste their heatsight and pepper-fleck to trash their sensors. Personally I thought the ten litres of used motor oil was a genius touch on the fire escape, but the screaming profanities as they skidded and in some cases failed to stop before the eight storey drop let me know my talents were unappreciated yet again.

I scoot down the unfinished stairwell and drop further into darkness, sticking another infrasmoke bomb to the crossbeam I pass just before I land. Its little beep as it sets itself for massed circuitry is reassuring. I run left and drop off another ledge into what I presume will be the sub-sub-basement and grab the aerosol I left behind a couple of days ago.

I spray the freespace-rated instabond generously across where they have to land, then do the nearest uprights and scaffolding too. Never know when someone’s going to brace themselves to get the ultraglue off their shiny cyberfeet or boots. As the crashing above indicates my fan club has arrived, I orient myself, take three steps backwards and jump up into the ducting that starts here and extends all the way to the storm drains on the other side. I leave a bodyheat radiator in there, swing out and grab the scaffolding as a pop and a hiss tells me the first winner is about to land.

Climbing the poles in pitch darkness validates my weeks of practice. At the top is a workman’s sling and I wrap myself completely in the totastealth sheet before settling for a doze. Nothing to do until the cybersupermen discover they’re not so super after all.

The shouting and yelling lulls me into a light, refreshing sleep. The silence wakes me.

Sticking my arm out I scan for life using the specialised sensor built into my gauntlet; nothing.

The cyber and nano crazies have their uses, but the archtyptural ‘street samurai’ are a joke. While cybertech has advanced beyond belief, battery technology and similar energy sources have not. Most cybergoons have solar charger pads integrated into their armour and even their tattoos. Put them in the dark and make them angry enough to believe their own hype and they will literally kill themselves as the technology overwhelms the body’s ability to power it when stored energy is exhausted. It’s actually a very short time from out of juice to out of body potentials.

Half an hour later I have a floatrolley loaded with fifty kilos of tech and ten kilos of organs. The scavengers are already gathering beyond the circle of my guardfield.

By tomorrow I’ll be set for another couple of months and Chibakan will be down another four idiots. I’m doing them a favour and they pay me handsome scrap values for weeding out the fools.

 

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Based On A True Story That Hasn't Happened Yet

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer

“Calm down earthling, we already have most of your recorded history. We believe we know what has happened. You are now an extremely endangered species, so we will not punish you for your crimes.”

“So you acknowledge that what I did was a crime?”

“Well the eradication of one’s own entire people could hardly be categorized as anything else. Although we have suspicions as to why you did it.”

“They were beyond repair, beyond reproach!”

“Agreed. You grew too quickly. It happens, but rarely at such an exponential rate. Who could blame your kind for evolving into the writhing mass of insanity that it became? After all, you went from carbon combustion discovery, then industrialization, to space exploration and complete cyber-integration in almost no time at all. Your people had but a proverbial nanosecond to assimilate their minds to the growth that was happening around them.”

PeterJet11056 paused, then… “So what happens now? Will you take me with you, or leave me here alone?”

“That all depends on the story you tell us. Please recount how you wiped out the dominant intelligent species of your planet.”

PeterJet11056 knew he had no other choice so he began, “Isaac Newton, one of our civilization’s early great thinkers said, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” so I am hardly to blame for the technology that allowed me to commit my crime. I watched the net grow until we were nearly one solid mass, yet I kept at my free thinking exercises, avoiding The Bulls wherever I could, always keeping a low profile, until that day I finally developed the proper instruction code.”

“Please define, “instruction code”.”

“The net contained all of humanity, every person on the planet living in cyberspace, and they could all be manipulated by code. That was how the world government controlled us. A tweak here and we changed our entertainment programs. A nudge there and suddenly we were thinking differently about our political choices.”

“But why this need for control? You had achieved all that may be achieved by a physically tangent race. You wanted for nothing.”

“Except power that is.”

For once the alien presence was speechless.

PeterJet11056 ventured, “You know of power hunger? Of greed?”

“We know of this. This is the ugliest trait for any species to possess in all the known galaxies.”

“Then you understand! Our world had become a gray faceless empty entity. There was not one micron of goodness left among us. It was time to eradicate this planet of its parasite.”

“Yet you remain.”

“Believe it or not it was unintended.”

“We believe you.”

“So you know then, it wasn’t that I couldn’t commit suicide, it was just that I was unable. Whoever enters the instruction code is immune to its commands, impervious to its demands. A seriously flawed and dangerous safeguard if you want my humble opinion.”

PeterJet11056’s final words echoed down through the corridors of the cyber-connection that the aliens had provided upon their arrival.

For a moment, nearly two full nanoseconds, there was nothing, then… “We are satisfied with your answer. We shall take you with us.”

“Really?” The age-old program that had once been human became excited. What will become of me?”

“Not to worry, we believe there his hope for you yet. We will connect you with the best minds of our species. Eventually you may once again achieve physical existence. Then our cloning crews can begin with creating you a mate. Yes I do believe that you PeterJet11056 will be the father of the new human race.”

 

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