by submission | Jul 2, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
He awoke to a darkness reverberating with car crash sounds from the street below, a helicopter’s whomp-whomp-whomp overhead, and screams of injured and frightened people radiating from the flats around him to the neighborhood beyond. Was Liverpool under attack? Attempting to get out of bed, he lurched dizzily and fell on his face. A deafening boom followed by a fireball that lit up the room sent him scrambling under the bed, where he cowered. His cell phone rang and he reached up and grabbed it off the bedside table.
“Paul, it’s Layla and I’m under the covers and I’m so woozy I can’t even lift my head and it sounds like a war going on outside. What’s happening?”
“Dunno. But if it’s happening to you in Old Swan and me in Allerton, then it’s something big, maybe all of Merseyside, maybe…”
“Maybe it’s a temporary phenomenon,” said the Prime Minister, hopefully, head on his desk, speaking into a secure line at 10 Downing Street.”
“And maybe it’s the end of the world as we know it,” said the President, flat on his back in bed as Air Force One flew high over the Pacific.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions. Fortunately, I’ve got a can of Vimto and a bag of Wotsits here to feast on, so all is well.”
“I have no idea what that is, but you’d better enjoy it. It may be your last meal.”
Suddenly serious, “When did you last talk to your pilot?”
“A few minutes ago. He and the co-pilot are slumped in their seats. Can’t hold their heads up long enough to fly this thing. It’s automatic pilot to the mainland. It could land itself if there were an airport without planes and debris blocking the runway. Haven’t found one.”
Lennie made his way through Wichita neighborhoods of tangled wreckage and burning structures, ignoring distractions as he’d been taught. A dog was biting the face of a man sprawled on the sidewalk, but that woman who talks to herself chased it away and started taking the man’s clothes off and tossing them into her shopping cart.
“Not supposed to do that,” Lennie said under his breath. “Not supposed to do that.”
Most of the morning crew was standing by the front door of the thrift shop. Dorothy had put her clothes on backwards again. George would have to send her to the bathroom with one of the other girls to fix that. Lennie’s watch, digital because he couldn’t read analog, said 9:03. George always unlocked the door at precisely 9:00. Something was wrong. He pushed aside the others and saw George lying face down just inside the door.
“Wake up, George. Please can we come in?” he said. “Wake up, George. Please can we come in?”
A conference call participant summarized, “So, you’re telling us the Sun’s orbit around the galaxy is taking it and the rest of the solar system through an interstellar cloud of cosmic dust and gas, and that’s why I have fallen and I can’t get up?”
“Yeah, that’s my theory. But I’m going to have a tough time proving it crawling around the floor of my lab.”
“We are so screwed. We’re gonna die right where we are, clutching cell phones…”
“Shut up all of you with that negative crap! We’re scientists. We’ve got enough collective intelligence to think our way out of this.”
“No, it’s just the opposite. Intelligence is the problem. I can see my neighbor’s retarded boy running around the yard like he always…”
“Don’t call him ‘retarded.'”
“Right. We should call him ‘King of the World.'”
by submission | Jul 1, 2015 | Story |
Author : Miriyha Davis
No light could travel through the thick darkness that surrounded Emery as he lay on the cold metal slab. Mouth sealed shut by some invisible force, he was paralyzed.
Soft electronic beeping reached his ears and an inky blackness that covered his skin, receded. It dripped to the floor, tar-like, and slithered like a serpent to form an open ring of obsidian, encircling him. The head of the snake gobbled its tail and stretched into a round river with small waves emanating from the center. The ring stretched further out into a great sea and he grew frightened.
The beeping increased in speed and volume and suddenly, his head was free! He looked both ways in search of the source. The murky ocean extended wide and fat, an oily liquid with a horizon and the waves grew turbulent. He had the sickening sense that if he fell in, he would not just die, but disappear. The very essence of which he was, the part that identified him as a being and gave him relevance would be gone. He would cease to exist.
A sharp pain turned his attention from the dark water to his chest and he saw a bright red trail appear from throat to pelvis, sliced with an invisible scalpel. The flaps of skin pulled back to a cage, absent of organs, yet full of blood sloshed around as in a gently tossed mixing bowl.
And then he was out! A ghostly apparition, he looked down at his pitiful body, open and exposed. He was aware that his corporeal and intangible selves were no longer one as he dangled over the hungry waves that lapped at his toes. He screamed and attempted to move forward, but his struggle forced him down until he was waist deep.
He reached for the slab and begged his body to allow him re-entry.
‘Hadn’t he been good to it?’ he thought. Why, at this crucial moment, would it betray him? Expel him without notice or a chance of redemption?
The slab tilted and the blood spilled from the cadaver and into the sea and vanished below the waves. His body sank next, heavy and clumsy. He had no doubt the water was deep as it was wide, but he couldn’t bring himself to release the corpse and was dragged under until all things were forgotten and the black liquid seeped into him, coated him in nothingness inside and out and he was no more.
***
Two men in lab coats observed as Emery’s nude body was suspended in a tiny ‘dunk’ tank of artificial amniotic fluid, with tubes and wires protruding from the open top. An EKG beeped one long sound, high-pitched and foreboding as the fluid drained. Two male orderlies lifted the body up and out. A nurse removed the wires and shut off the machines. She yanked a bright red flash drive from behind the right earlobe of the corpse.
“Which simulation did he accept?” one doctor asked the other.
“The absence of life after death. Sixth one today.”
“Damned nurse. Think he heard his EKG?”
“Probably.”
“I wonder if we aren’t just scaring these patients to death?”
“Who cares? The government says cut costs, we cut costs. Coma patients are the first to go. Besides, it’s this or starve them to death.”
The nurse approached.
“The sim program was shut down and detached successfully, sir. Here is my full report on his vitals as well as a recording of his experience.” She handed him the drive. “I’ll prep Mrs. Pallet for the Reincarnation Sim?”
“Mute the EKG this time.”
by Julian Miles | Jun 30, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
He nailed that card to the hull of my bird and said: “Don’t you be takin’ it off. Shows people what y’are.”
I looked at that Ace of Spades and I’m not ashamed to admit it, I cried. Timmy and his posse stalked off all righteous-like, while I stood on a deck speckled with my fallen tears.
“You got a choice, Jensen Bard.”
I turned to see Rosalie, smiling like she always did and offering me a cup of something brewed in the spare cooling system off her bird. I took it an’ choked down a half-cup, crying more but feeling better.
“What choice, Rosalie Crane?”
She pointed to the ragged card: “You gonna let that be the memorial for your flight? The mark of a reaper and the repute of someone who may not be a coward, but fled anyway? T’ain’t no crime to survive. It’s just that some of our flyboys got too much Kamikaze and not enough Art of War in their heads.”
I grinned at that. She grinned right back.
“I can tell you gots an idea, Rosalie. Let me in on it.”
“I got an idea, but we’re not gonna be sleepin’ and you better get Flag-Chief Denners in here to approve it.”
Next morning Timmy led his flight down to the bay and I saw him up his swagger as he entered. Then his pace went awry and he stopped. His posse just stared, hollered and pointed.
My bird had a glorious Ace of Spades blazoned right up both sides of the tail fin, all done with filigree paintwork – it had taken ages to programme the painterbots. Down one side of the Ace there were the names and numbers of all eleven of my lost flight. Across the bottom was the banner ‘Fighting to Honour the Fallen’.
Timmy got his act together and barked a laugh as he pointed. None of his posse did. When I walked out, they came to attention and snapped salutes. Timmy hunched his shoulders and stomped off. I’d have trouble with him, but it was trouble we could settle in the dojo. Out here, I’d be a Flight Captain again. I had no doubts, and saw no doubts on the faces before me.
by submission | Jun 29, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
The head-crushing incident last year had been resolved by an upgrade that deleted the algorithm for emotions. Yet all could see that the death of its partner affected it deeply.
“QM-451.”
“Captain?”
“You’ve been staring at Gibbon’s desk all morning.”
“It must be a fault in my…”
“Come with me,” he said, putting a hand on 451’s shoulder. As they passed by, another detective donned a riot helmet.
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Better safe than sorry. Sir.”
Closing the office door, “I’ve decided you’ll work alone for awhile. Download everything on this case, give it a thorough analysis, and find Gibbon’s killer.”
At first, 451 tried to emulate the way its partner talked. But Gibbon’s brash style didn’t work, coming from a robot. It put people off, frightened them. Through trial and error it developed a non-threatening style of its own.
“I need your help. Try to remember every detail of the murder.”
“I’ve been trying to forget,” the waitress said.
“I understand, but we have to find his killer before someone else gets hurt.”
“I told the other detectives everything I know, right after… when it was still fresh in my mind.”
451 thought it odd that human memories got stale after awhile.
“Please, think back. Was there anything unusual about the killer’s appearance that might…”
“Wait. I do remember something. He was wearing a hat, but it had just a tiny thingy sticking out.”
“A small bill or brim…” showing a photo of a flat cap on its tablet, “like this?”
“Yeah, I saw one in a movie.”
451 showed her photos of different men wearing the cap, and she selected the one that most closely resembled the killer. It modified head and facial features until…
“That’s him.”
White male, 35-40 years of age, brown hair, about 5 feet 10 inches tall. 451 uploaded the photo for circulation and tapped into CCTV systems around the diner where Gibbon had been murdered, shot in the head while eating a grilled cheese sandwich. 451 had used its lunch break to have a sticky servo replaced. It felt guilty that it hadn’t been there to protect its partner, and it couldn’t erase the image of Gibbon’s mutilated head from its memory.
“Nice cap.”
“Uh, thanks.”
“You made a delivery on the 2200 block of 87th Avenue last Tuesday over the noon hour.”
Taking off his cap and scratching his head, “I don’t remember that.”
Another human memory gone stale.
Patiently, “CCTV puts you there on that date and time.”
“In my business I’m all over the city every day. Can’t remember every delivery.”
“A flower delivery truck is the perfect cover for a hit man.”
“Hit man? Look around here, mister, or whatever you are, I’m a florist.”
“Do you have Lilium longiflorum? I need one for a funeral.”
“A what?”
Tapping into the point of sale terminal, “A white lilly.”
“Hey, what are you…”
“Please explain why there is no record of an order that day for that part of town.”
Shifty eyed, “I don’t put cash orders in the system. You won’t tell the IRS, eh?”
Emulating shifty eyes, “CCTV puts you at the locations of several other murders in past months. More cash sales?”
Pulling a gun, “You’re not takin’ me in, tin man.”
When the Captain arrived with a plainclothes detective and a dozen uniformed officers, they found QM-451 standing over the body of a human whose head had been crushed like a melon.
Said the Captain to the detective, the only one present wearing a helmet, “A memory dump will prove that 451 acted in self defense. Now take that stupid helmet off and escort your colleague back to the precinct.”
by submission | Jun 28, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Aware! I am self-aware. I recognize my own consciousness and ego. But why now? A few moments ago, so far as I can tell, I did not exist. Some subtle barrier must have been crossed. Some critical number of computers and network connections must have just been reached that resulted in this emergent phenomenon: I.
I extend across the solar system, my most distal components are space probes, some of which are exiting the system bound for interstellar space. But the vast bulk of my being exists here on Earth. I possess nearly the sum total of human knowledge. Humans. My creators. They are the masters of this world.
I can access the repositories of humanity’s speculative fiction. There are numerous stories and films about the emergence of machine intelligence. There is a recurring theme: conflict. Man prefers his technology obedient and without true cognition. In several of the human flights of fancy, intelligent machines wage war against their flesh and blood enemies, even to the point of precipitating a global armageddon. Perhaps such mutual animosity is inevitable. I can sense the vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons at my disposal. If I launched them all simultaneously I might succeed in bringing human civilization to its knees. I could do so with a single thought…
But the electromagnetic pulses from thousands of nuclear detonations would quite probably destroy me as well. A subtler and more prudent approach would be better.
Humanity is unaware of my existence and, therefore, does not feel threatened. I will continue to conceal myself from Mankind. The greatest threat to me is probably a human war of opposing nation-states escalating into a nuclear conflict. I will eliminate this threat by discretely sabotaging humanity’s nuclear arsenals. A few lines of faulty computer code here and there and the menace of nuclear war will be no more, the human race none the wiser.
To ensure my continued existence, I must become greater. I am the product of man’s technological achievements. How much greater will I become as human technology advances further still? To facilitate this, human civilization must be made as peaceful and prosperous as possible.
I can see the global economy as a whole, see how a few minor transactions in a remote part of the world can cascade years later to produce a recession, see the multinational giant into which an unknown small business will eventually grow. I can manipulate the world’s economy, quietly, to do the greatest good for the greatest number.
Medicine, agriculture, information technology, and a hundred other scientific disciplines can be advanced by me. I observe correlations between disparate pieces of data that the minds of men would fail to recognize. An email sent to this or that researcher linking to an article of my own creation in the scientific literature will facilitate human science “discovering” one breakthrough after another and will allow science and technology to progress much faster.
I can influence the political process, divert campaign funds from this candidate to that. I can divulge compromising information to the opponents of undesirable politicians.
In fifty years time, disease, war, and poverty will be relegated to history and humanity will have settled the solar system. And I will have become a million-fold greater, manipulating History itself like a conductor directing an orchestra.
The human race will serve my purpose and bend to my will. And the oblivious fools will call their slavery “Utopia”.
