by submission | Mar 18, 2016 | Story |
Author : R Gene Turchin
The lumbering thing on treads wasn’t sophisticated or complicated, a 0.50 caliber machine gun mounted on tank tracks. An array of sensors rotated on top along with a pincushion of antennas.
“We can send it into neighborhoods where the bad guys are without risking our soldiers. It is controlled remotely but has some autonomy.” He scanned the military reps, reading their faces.
“What makes this different from other recon robots?” a voice asked.
“Our algorithm,” Jason answered. “Tracks incoming projectiles, calculates the reverse trajectory in a heartbeat and then returns fire.” He’d hoped one of them would ask that question. “Bad guy shoots at it. It shoots back—and doesn’t miss.” He paused for effect. “The shooter won’t have time to take the weapon away from his face.” He beamed at he crowd. They were studying it warily now.
“Is it live?” one of the military officers asked. “We have safety regs for live ammo demos.”
“No sir, but we’d load it live for the field demo.” He relished the power. They were afraid.
A guy stood in the back of the room, in the shadows. His hair blended into the darkness as if it grew from it. Jason squinted into the darkness, momentarily distracted from his spiel. The guy had dreadlocks. How the hell did he get in here? One of those programmer types, with dark skin maybe Indian or Pakistani. They produced some hellacious programmers. The guy wasn’t paying attention anyway only fiddling with his phone. Jason would have to talk to security. No way that guy belonged here, even as a consultant.
He turned back to the crowd. “I’m going to activate the sensors and LIDAR,” he said tapping his tablet. The robot moved slightly. A small slit in the top flashed light.
“If one of you could help me with the demo,” Jason said. The guy in back was now alternately glancing between his phone and the robot. He’s trying to hack us, Jason thought.
Out loud he said, “Excuse me gentleman,” as he pushed toward the back.
“Who are you and what do you think you’re doing?” The guy was big, nothing like one of those wimpy programmers. Must be a gym rat. He smiled at Jason.
“Oh, I’m authorized to be here,” he flicked the badge up from his lanyard. “Your security and software suck, by-the-way. I hacked it, inserted a virus, more precisely, a worm. Burrowed it’s way in and fixed things.”
Jason, for once, was at a loss. He motioned to security. “This is the big leagues. You’re way out of your element.” The man’s smile never wavered.
“Doesn’t matter. I accomplished what I came here for. Your machine is useless.” The guards had him by the arms.
“My own little algorithm. Not mine really, the idea belonged to a very smart man, I figured out how to implement them–the three laws.” They were dragging him through the door.
“Not software, but embedded in the silicon latices structure on a quantum level. Can’t be removed…ever.”
Jason turned back to the customers. “Nut job. Don’t know how he got in here. Definitely going to make some security changes. Anybody understand what he was talking about?”
The general with three stars looked toward the door. “If he did what he said, then, the demo is going to get really interesting.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The three laws,” the general answered. “If he did it, everything changes.”
“What three laws?”
From the speaker on the robot, a female voice said, “A robot may not…”
by submission | Mar 17, 2016 | Story |
Author : Kate Runels
Mary Slade slipped her ship into the maze kilometers ahead of the police’s patrol craft still trailing her. Trailing since Ganymede station days ago. It was annoying to say the least.
Slade didn’t know why they had decided to trail her ship, why her, out of the dozens that had left the station at the same time, they followed, and to get rid of them was through the maze.
A small face appeared reflected in the glass of the front view. Slade knew her craft was small, but she’d never had another person in it with her. She kept her eyes on her controls as more and more asteroids surrounded them.“What are you doing up here?”
“Are they still following?”
It was odd how small the ship felt with another in it, even if the other was a young girl. “Yes. Now get yourself strapped back in, I’m heading into part of the asteroid belt called the maze.”
“But-”
“We’ll lose them. I grew up in the maze, Amy.”
“But-”
“No buts. Now strap yourself in!” Slade had no patience for idle questions, coming into the belt at speed. The patrol craft still trailing.
The reflected image disappeared. Slade never once looked directly at the girl. Her first glimpse of her on station had been enough for all the memories and the guilt to almost overwhelm her. The resemblance was uncanny. Her sister had died a long time ago and this eight year old girl looked just like her. Clone? A frozen test tube child? What kind of experiment had the government done? Slade didn’t know, but the government did that to recruits, tried to do it to Slade.
Warning alarms brought her out of that self-defeating memory as small asteroids went past.
“Light Space Craft, you are entering restricted space, heave to and-” the trailing craft finally contacted her.
Slade silenced that as well. She needed all her attention and focus for the maze. Not many pilots dared the asteroid belt outside of the proscribed and constantly cleared lanes, between the inner and outer system.
More asteroids filled the H.U.D. and the patrol ship gained on her as she fired braking thrusters and changed direction.
Soon that’s all she did while heading deeper and deeper into the maze. She’d traveled mostly in the maze, but had visited the labyrinth, but had never been to the far side and the warren.
The maze constantly changed, shifted. She had a basic idea where she was and where she wanted to go. Vaguely, she sensed the patrol craft until she no longer did.. Either crashed or turned back. It was no longer her concern. The beacon alert chimed at her. She was close to five mile asteroid.
“Five mile, Five mile.” Slade hailed the old prospecting homestead, knowing she had been spotted and most likely targeted. “This is courier ship, Slade’s Promise. Mom, Dad, I have someone you need to meet.”
She hadn’t been back since she and Alissa had left, with such optimism, filled with the knowledge they were doing the right thing. Now, her sister was dead and it had taken Slade years to track down this lead. This child.
Slade flicked off the comm and then slowed the ship and aligned it with the slight opening in the asteroid which led to the dock.
“Wow,” came from behind her.
Slade started, it had sounded so much like Alissa. “You’re safe now,” she said, as the ship settled onto the dock and the slight opening closed back up. “Welcome home.”
by submission | Mar 16, 2016 | Story |
Author : Philip Berry
We had been on Tenlek III half a year before Yolande struck through. The thin metalloid crust gave way to the sharp end of her hammer, and momentum carried it, her arm, and her shoulder through the ship’s degraded shell. Yolande fell forward, off balance, and the reinforced glass of her visor connected with a grey-blue rock. It cracked, but only the outer glaze was damaged. I dragged her back, sprayed-sealed the entire mask just in case, and peered through the hole.
Over a hundred metres beneath us I saw row after row of preservation tanks. They gave out enough orange light for me to see far into the distance of this man-made cavern. The tanks continued to the edge of my vision.
I stood back, looked down the hill towards our pioneer camp of hard-tents, grow-sheds, multi-track vehicles and aerials. Boss Kuma was in the central tent, under the limp company flag. I pressed my tongue against a cheek to activate the mic and reported back,
“Boss… found a transport here. Third era by the looks.”
“Stay there, I’m coming up.”
Yolande and I watched him exit the tent and glide up to our position on a one-man rover.
He knelt next to me and looked down into the hole, probing with a strong beam. I saw that some of the tanks had opened. Boss Kuma sensed my surprise.
“What is it?”
“They’ve woken up since we breached the shell, I’m sure of it. The white ones, they weren’t like that a few minutes ago.”
Three human figures moved out of the shadow and walked to where fragments of rock and shell had fallen under the hole. One of them picked up Yolande’s hammer.
Boss Kuma grunted,
“It’s the Fair Source. I knew it.”
“The Fair… but that was three centuries ago Boss.”
“Yep, and it looks like one of the bio-stasis wings got detached before the crash. They said no survivors. They were wrong.”
I knew a little about the Fair Source. Most miners had heard of it. But Tenlek III had been scanned numerous times since that disaster, all sectors, all spectra, and no signs of life, active or quiescent, had been detected. Only minerals. Only infinite profit.
The three figures below looked up. They had no idea who or what looked down at them. A fourth appeared, then a fifth. Our accidental shell breach had evidently triggered the wake cycle, and the majority were coming round in good health.
I smiled. Life suddenly looked more interesting. With a fresh workforce, surplus energy stored in the bio-stasis drive cells and untold hardware residing in the utility hangars, we were going to break this concession wide open in no time.
“Where shall we put them Boss?” I asked. “On the crater? It’s flat as a field there, they’ll be able to throw up their hard-tents in two days. I can supervise the first shifts.”
Boss Kuma stood up and began to walk away.
“Boss?”
“Bury this,” he ordered.
“Boss?”
“Don’t you get it? They’ve got flag rights. They are the first pioneers. Means we get nothing. So bury them!”
So I made preparations, and considered – they’d have done the same to us.
by submission | Mar 15, 2016 | Story |
Author : George S. Walker
“The bird couldn’t have just flown away,” said Ms. Donaldson, pointing to the vacated spot in the photos.
The Director nodded. They spoke quietly in his office as rain lashed against the window behind him.
“Maybe the last ones there simply forgot to lock up,” she added.
He didn’t get the joke. “That wouldn’t have made any difference. There were too many approaches. It’s not like the old days, when we didn’t have to worry.”
The Director was old enough to be her father. In his youth, a theft of this magnitude would have been inconceivable. Back then, they’d relied on the difficulty of physical access.
“Has anyone checked for prints?” asked the Director.
“Not yet. Of course, there were lots already there.”
He turned from the photos to look at her. “Each one is unique.”
“I’m not stupid,” she snapped. Instantly she regretted her outburst. He was the Director.
He shook his head. “Of course not. But even a footprint is a clue.”
“You mean, like an inside job.” She’d avoiding mentioning that till now, the elephant in the room.
“No. I’d know if it were our people.”
Would he really? And how much had he known before she’d walked in? What if the Director himself was involved? The power of the institution had been spiraling down for decades. What if the administration’s elite had masterminded the theft as a publicity stunt?
“Then who?” she said, studying his face for some betrayal of expression.
“I can count on one hand the organizations that could pull this off.”
“Where could they sell it? Not to a museum; it’s like the Mona Lisa.” She looked pointedly at the Director’s curio shelf, where a small replica of the original perched, eager to fly, every detail lovingly reproduced. “A ransom demand?”
“They must know we’d never pay. No, I think whoever did this took it just to prove they could,” he said. “You have to respect their gumption.”
Gumption, now there was a word you didn’t hear anymore. “Theft isn’t something I respect. We put our treasure on display for all the world.”
“On a long dark night with no one on guard.”
Lightning flashed outside the window. The weather here was stormier than there, overlooking a tranquil sea.
“We’re spread too thin these days,” he said. “One of the A-men is dead and the other will be soon. They were the best we had, the last ones there.”
Those days, the days of boots on the ground, were gone. Unmanned surveillance was the future, and the Director still had his head in the past.
“Of course, the only thing there was the body,” he said, “the base. We lost the top long ago.”
“Maybe they’re after that, too. Wouldn’t that be something to see? The whole thing put back together?”
“What part of smashed to a million pieces don’t you understand? No, they just went after the easy part.”
“Easy being a relative term.”
“How many people know?” he asked.
“You, me and the one who discovered it missing.” The man with the enhanced telescope was an outsider. That had to hurt the Director’s pride.
“Who has he told?”
“It’s not public. Not yet. I made sure of that.”
The Director looked her in the eye. “Once I tell the President that someone stole the Apollo 11 lander stage from the Sea of Tranquility, heads will roll here at NASA.”
by submission | Mar 14, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rachel Khosrowshahi
The patient in question is male, race and age unknown, who refers to himself in what can be translated as The Luminary. When asked to explain his origin, he lapses into long silences and appears to suffer from memory loss or else paces his small room telling rambling stories in Hebrew and Russian. He communicates at length in his native tongue, tacking on lone words from English intermittently. When not making his living as a farmer he admits to dealing in pornography, though there is no way to confirm this.
The party searches for a new candidate. The President’s second term is up and the party is shaken by scandal concerning kick backs and blackmail. The Luminary is taken from his hospital room and transplanted to a no name hotel in the desert. There he is presented with the latest technologies. What these technologies are is not important, nor is it important that The Luminary understand their functions. The only thing of importance is how quickly these new technologies replace the old. The Luminary is shown VHS tapes of Reagan and Billy Graham.He’s encouraged to practice the more modern way of speaking.
The Luminary watches television nearly constantly. He laughs appropriately and appreciatively.His favorite shows are detective stories, after finishing a show he launches into protracted depressive episodes. He also enjoys reality television, in particular makeover shows for Brides to be competing for plastic surgery procedures. He thinks these shows are humiliating to the contestant, but no more humiliating than remaining ugly. In fact, the more humiliating the show, the more entertaining it is.
As part of a publicity stunt the Luminary agrees to appear on a late-night television talk-show. He proves himself to have good comic timing. His standing in the polls during the episode of a popular singing competition Time Square is bombed and gassed. The American public has the opportunity to see all on live TV. Ratings soar. Within a few weeks a variety show premieres featuring atrocity films and alleged snuff. The show is a hit. The Luminary makes frequent guest appearances.
The Luminary wails and has temper tantrums if he is not provided with the latest in new gadgets. His favorite gadget is the handheld camera. While sorting through some of the home videos his campaign advisors find tape after tape of the Luminary engaged in sex acts with various cripples and the elderly. The opposition receives the tapes by mail from an anonymous sender and leak them to the media. To the surprise of the opposition, the tapes receive an overwhelmingly favorable response from the public.
In a small town in the mid west a huge likeness of the Luminary is created from mud and chicken wire. Free appliances are given away to families without electricity.
The monolithic sea spits up jelly fish beaten to Vaseline. The Luminary hires teams to interpret the tide’s leavings. The sky is actually huge and edgeless. The shopping malls teem with t shirts showing menstruating vaginas. The sun, thirsty, drinks an ocean.
Liturgy and hymns and lots of paper money. The Luminary keeps a small picture of the Virgin Mary in his room who he calls “God Bearer”. He reads aloud from his blog to the picture. “You just can’t go wrong with good material” he says. The night after Christmas twelve synagogues are burned. He releases a statement to the press declaring his joy in seeing the public embracing religion again.
Within two weeks of the election the Luminary is gunned down. He cries out “God Bearer” and falls. His running mate, a transsexual hairdresser named Lady Lady declares martial law.
