by featured writer | Mar 4, 2014 | Story |
Author : Jay Knioum, Featured Writer
He thought he heard crows. When he found the noise, it was just a loose telephone cable blowing against the remains of a wire fence. Crows wouldn’t have survived. Crows built nests, not bomb shelters.
“Ramon? Hey Ray!”
“Yeah. You find anything, Smitty?”
“Not a damn thing. Another fuckin’ goose chase. The Lootenant’s losin’ it, man. Tellin’ you.”
“He says look for survivors, we look.”
Smitty chewed his bottom lip and seethed. “Yeah, Sergeant.”
Ray searched Smitty’s eyes, then slapped him on the helmet. “Ah, fuck it. Nobody and nothin’ around here anyway. Let’s go, man. Get dark soon.”
Smitty grinned. “Hoof it, dude. I wanna get back before Deke, get first dibs on Ziggy before the rest of those fuckers stink her up.”
Ray didn’t say anything to that. He never did. He’d stood up for Ziggy once, after Deke’s squad found her in that parking garage, blind and muttering. She never stopped muttering, even when Ray found Deke on top of her three nights later.
Ray tried to play the white knight then, pulled Deke away and took a rifle butt in the temple for his trouble.
“We ain’t soldiers no more,” the Lieutanant told him that night, “We’re just keeping the kennel, throwin’ scraps into the cages, making sure the dogs don’t get hungry enough to kill us.”
When they got back to camp, Ray saluted the Lieutenant, reported a quiet patrol, then left the boys and Ziggy to themselves. He kept walking.
He picked his way across a cratered parking lot, keeping his weapon handy and sweeping the ruins with practiced attention.
He crept over the low hill of shattered concrete, threaded his way around a forest of exposed rebar and found the school. He figured it had been a school because of the playground and the torched remains of school buses in front of the building, parked in a row, waiting for kids that never boarded.
He made his way around back, to the wall. Her wall, where she always waited for him in the midst of the other shadows, where the light and heat from the blast left imprints on the school wall. Imprints of fire hydrants, and trees, and a swing set, long melted away. Images of children, and their teacher.
Ramon smiled at her. He brought up his hand and brushed a finger gently around the curve of where her neck would have been. “I’m sorry, baby. Sorry it took me so long to get back, but the Lieutenant…”
He trailed off, then pulled something else out of his jacket. “I found this. There was a library, I think it was. There were some shelves in the basement. Looks like a book of poems. I tore out all the burned pages. I can read it to you if you want. I figured it might make you happy, bein’ a teacher and all.”
He looked up at her again. “I sure am glad we found each other. I guess it’s kind of a good thing that all this happened, or else you wouldn’t be here, neither would I.”
She stood there, one with the wall, silent.
Ramon unshouldered his rifle, sat down cross-legged and carefully opened the book. He started to read.
The shadows on the wall listened like no one else.
by Desmond Hussey | Mar 3, 2014 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
“Who am I?” Karen asked the reflection in her bathroom mirror. For years now she couldn’t shake the feeling that the face looking back at her was somehow alien, not really a part of her. As usual, the unspoken response was instantaneous, “Karen Lynn Warden, son of Greg and Laura Warden. Age fifteen.” Despite the obvious truth of the statement, a nagging doubt tickled the back of her brain like a hard to find radio station, there for a second, then lost to static.
Karen, like all privileged children born to the ruling class after the Revolution, had two brains. Two months after conception, prenatal Karen was introduced to her secondary brain, a nano-implant nestled into the tiny space next to her hypothalamus. As her brain grew within the womb a secondary brain grew along with it, grafting fine filaments of artificial neurons alongside organic neurons via self-replicating nano-bots. By the time Karen was born, her brain was more powerful than any pre-revolution infant’s by a factor of ten.
“How are you feeling today?” Karen’s on-line tutor, Mrs. Perkins asked before their daily lesson began.
“I’m well.” Karen responded mechan cally. She wanted to say something else, but the words never fully formed.
“Excellent!” Mrs. Perkins smiled broadly. “Are you ready to begin?”
Karen nodded.
For the next hour Mrs. Perkins rattled off complex algebraic equations, which Karen answered effortlessly while idly fidgeting with her stylus. Her secondary brain, linked to the DataNet, was able to perform even the most esoteric mathematics within seconds. It seemed to Karen as if she wasn’t even really participating in the process. She simply watched with her inner eye as numerals and symbols danced around her mind until her mouth emitted answers. They were, invariably, the correct responses.
Next was history and social studies. Today’s topic was the Revolution of 2023, which brought about the current utopia of which Karen and her remarkable brain were both products. While a part of her mind responded to each question in fluent and accurate detail, another part of her was dimly aware that her hand was sketching an image on her tablet.
When Mrs. Perkins asked about the Final Conflict, a war which had been waged both in the digital world and in the very bloody, very real world between the AI known as Ozymandius and the rebel Freedom Fighters led by General Kim, Karen finally glanced down to see what it was she’d been doodling. She froze in horror at the image glaring back at her.
“I repeat,” Mrs. Perkins was saying, “Why was it important for our Glorious Leader to imprison and rehabilitate General Kim’s Rebels rather than simply execute them for treason?”
The shock of seeing the sketch had apparently disrupted even Karen’s superior cognition, because for a second all her mouth could formulate were unintelligible syllables.
Once again, Mrs. Perkins repeated the question, her tone and rhythm identical to her previous attempts, making her sound like a skipping record. Or robotic.
For a brief moment there was an internal struggle within the teenage girl’s cerebellum; a miniature, yet desperate war raged like an echo of the Final Conflict as identities battled for supremacy of Karen’s fractured mind.
When it was over, the victor spoke. “It was necessary to rehabilitate the Rebels to demonstrate to humanity the compassionate generosity of Ozymandius and the futility of resistance.”
With the casual flick of a hand, the defiant image of Karen’s hate-filled facsimile was erased from the tablet forever, along with all trace of Karen’s original brain.
by submission | Mar 2, 2014 | Story |
Author : Matthew Allen
A mechanical appendage lifts away from her, its claws curling back as it settles next to the table she is lying on.
“And breathe.”
Her diaphragm tightens and the pressure in her lungs drops, dragging warm air in from outside. It feels uncomfortable.
“Good. And out, that’s it. Keep going.”
Cool, soothing metal is pressing down against her limbs to restrict movement. She can feel input from the electrical jacks that run down her spine, but someone is systematically switching them off.
“Ok. Just try to relax.”
“I can’t. You’re taking them away from me.”
“You don’t need them any more.”
“I want them. Why can’t I keep them?”
She feels anger surging inside of her. It presses against her throat and wells up in her eyes. Anger is a new experience, and she doesn’t yet know whether she likes it or not. It complicates matters. She feels strength but it’s unfocussed, imprecise.
“Why am I angry!?”
Her voice is different. It doesn’t sound like she expects it to.
“Everything is coming together. The disorientation will pass.”
“I want to go back.”
“You can’t go back. This has already been decided.”
The last electrical input is cut off and she’s left alone. Although once soothing, she’s now aware of how restrictive the metal bands are, and after a struggle they twist and break. With a newfound sense of freedom she throws herself into the room and sees colour. At first it’s vibrant, with everything in contrast with one another, but the elation doesn’t last. Soon the shadows become obvious, and everything seems duller than before. Disappointment – another new experience. She knows she doesn’t like this one.
“She seems to be adjusting well.”
“Mechanically, she’s in full working order.”
There are two voices now, but they sound further away, like they’re walking away from her. She looks around, but the room is sealed off by glass on all sides so there’s nowhere for her to go.
The voices continue, piped in through a meshed box in the corner.
“But we don’t yet know if she’ll integrate properly with our society.”
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Then we’ll try something different next time. We’re only interested in the successes.”
“Can anybody hear me?”
Silence.
She decides not to wait for new experiences to come to her. This whole affair, this forced birth of her humanity, has left her wary of waiting. Instead, she allows her anger to rekindle, and without holding back grabs at the mechanical appendage that brought her into the world. This tool of her creation become a weapon as she smashes at the glass wall. She dares not tire.
“What is she doing?!”
“Stop that!”
The glass shatters, and the voices fade into the distance as she steps through.
Panic erupts around her, but she refuses to submit. She continues to fight her way through the building, tearing down every obstacle they put in her way. By the time she reaches the final set of doors they have nothing left to offer, and without resistance she walks free into the world.
by submission | Mar 1, 2014 | Story |
Author : Robert Spencer
When Dr. Fassenbiender both stepped out of the capsules, it took them half a second to realise who was Dr. Fassenbiender and who was not.
And so, in a small laboratory at the back of the Centre for Untested Technologies (or the “Creators of Unspeakable Terrors” as it was known to the not-so-kind newspaper journalists who occasionally tried to get the government to shut it down) the first of the many psychological issues that are today all so common in the world of Procedural Cloning was experienced.
Since this was the first successful Procedural Cloning (the attempt by Doctors Gredarski and Smith of 2077 is widely considered to not have succeeded: despite the fact that an exact replica of Smith’s cat was constructed, many reason that its subsequent disintegration one and a third seconds later disqualify it) there were no philosophical or psychological frameworks that either Dr. Fassenbiender could apply to the situation and both promptly fainted.
When they both regained consiousness they were so similar in thought that no words were necessary to convey to each other the shock and horror they experienced. Due to the relative positions of the two capsules, both could identify themselves, leading to the first word ever uttered by a clone as Dr. Fassenbiender[1] sat on the floor and exclaimed “shit.”
It would take seven years and countless hours of psychoanalysis before Jackson would formulate his Method of Recognising the Other in Self, which is the most widely accepted method of dealing with the shocking experience of meeting oneself for the first time. It states that at the moment of cloning, one person becomes two, who henceforth diverge in personality, tastes and identity. Both can lay claim to all experiences up to the cloning, but neither has any seniority after the event. This theory is claimed as original by both Jacksons (resulting the famed Jackson v Jackson litigation (presided over by Davids and Davids) which has yet to be resolved).
This theory is supported by the League of Others, but many fundamental religeos organisations rebuke it, claiming that natural conception and birth beget a soul and that Others are thus empty shells. This has, not unexpectedly, led to violence in certain areas of the world, and the great Massacre of Romania and her sister states of 2089 is testament to the horror that endures when man turns upon himself.
For Fassenbiender, the horror was only beginning, as he sat back to back.
“Well.”
“Yeah.”
“Mary is going to kill me.”
“You? How about me?”
“True.”
“She wouldn’t want to…”
“No, I doubt it.”
“Right.”
“Could get double the work done.”
“Won’t work. No shared knowledge base”
“Hmm.”
At this point, both Fassenbienders passed out from exhaustion, and were found the next morning by an intern called Silverson. Silverson would later go on to advise all seventeen country-states on various clone related issues, and is the author of the renowned book “Seeing Double, a Short History of Procedural Cloning.”
It should be noted that Mary Fassenbiender did eventually clone herself, and after a number of most embarrassing double dates, Dr Fassenbiender[1] and Mary Fassenbiender[0] ran away to a small town in Southern France. Dr Fassenbiender[0] and Mary Fassenbiender[1] still live happily in Cornwall, where they are working on making the Procedural Cloning device more efficient. They have four children (two Johns and two Amys) and (as of going to press) sixteen cats.
by submission | Feb 28, 2014 | Story |
Author : Nigel G. Mitchell
Detective Laura Harman fingered the small device in her pocket as she looked down at the frail old man lying in the bed before her. It took everything she had to keep from wrapping her fingers around that thin and slender neck, and snapping it in half.
Harman snarled, “My father gave his life to put you here, Kristoff. And this is where you belong. Death is too good for you.”
Maxwell Kristoff’s wrinkled face fell into a smile. “Yeah, that’s probably true. But the good thing about life sentences is, you can only serve them once. Even if you have a couple hundred like me.”
Harman pulled the small box out of her pocket, only a few inches long with a single button on its face. She held it up for Kristoff to see. “Well, I’m about to change that.”
She pushed the button.
A flash of light blinded Maxwell. He cursed as the redness filled his vision. When it faded, he looked up at a cracked gray ceiling instead of the smooth white ceiling of his hospital room. He looked down to see the hospital room had been replaced by a darkened cell, only eight feet wide. He lay on a prison bunk, not a prison hospital bed. Kristoff felt a chill as he realized it looked familiar. Too familiar. But it couldn’t be.
He looked down at himself. The white hospital gown had become a gray prison uniform, and his yellowed and wrinkled flesh had become firm.
He stood up to move to his cell door. It had a small window that he slid open. Through the bars, Kristoff could see a prison guard walking down a narrow hallway.
Kristoff called out. “Hey, screw, where am I?”
The guard grinned at him. “Forget already? Too late to pull the amnesia defense. Welcome to the first day of your multiple life sentences, Kristoff.”
