by submission | Dec 3, 2013 | Story |
Author : Andrew D. Murrell
I awoke.
I could still feel the remnants of foreign thoughts gently receding from my consciousness. Then I felt today’s check deposit into my account, twenty one thousand dollars. Minimum wage jobs just don’t pay like they used to do they? I waited to feel the disconnect signal and then opened my eyes. I breathed in deeply and coughed.
Life, I am getting old.
My bed stood me up and disappeared into the floor. A neural link transponder drifted towards me, eagerly offering its services.
“No, I’ve had enough of other people’s opinions for one day.” Ever since the distributed thoughtnet replaced the static web and our minds themselves became commodities for sale, I have yearned for three things in life above all else: stillness, simplicity, and silence.
But what can one do? Life is no longer simple, still, or quiet, it is complex, ever-changing, and constantly berating us with options, opinions, and each other. Even now, only seconds after leaving the thoughtnet I could feel the incoming interaction requests and updates from SocialLink and the AutoBillPay alerting me to the fact I would soon have no money, once again. If only I could just take a break, a real break.
I walked to an Autoportal wall and felt the breeze gently waft through it as the microfibers aligned themselves to direct wind from outside through the thin coating of electric generators. I gestured to the wall and it became transparent. The day was beautiful and sunny, but the infinite suburb of haphazardly colored and eclectic houses was the last thing I needed to be reminded of seeing. I turned away and the wall once again shifted to a shallow opaque green.
No, I don’t need a rest. Just the opposite, I need something to do. I turned inward and navigated through several thought-changing stations to the System Control Menu in my Neural OS. After reflecting on the oddity that one must authenticate to access one’s own brain, I found the most heavily guarded portion of my mind.
“System, go Offline,” a willful auditory confirmation and the system slowed to a halt. I felt blurry. Enhanced senses shut down and the hum of the dim house faded into the background. I stumbled around until I found the manual access panels and switched the house to full power. I knew that I couldn’t afford it, full lighting for even a few hours was prohibitively expensive as the house itself could not generate that much electricity and would have to buy some from our neighbors, but I had to do it. I could not live out my life from inside my head any longer. I needed reality.
Had I been younger I would have punched a hole in the wall. I would have broken some screens. I would have torn off all of my clothes and run down the streets of ugly houses until the community police managed to take me into custody kicking and screaming about the wrongness of it all. But no, it is much too late for that.
I remember the sound of birds, but there are no birds outside anymore. I thought about that for a while. I thought about birds until the mood had passed. I don’t know if I’d even be capable of those things any more anyway, so no, I will stay inside. I will sit in my chair and wait for the government to say that I’m old enough to die. One day they will tell me that I have lived long enough, met the life expectancy and am permitted to leave. Until then, I will turn off the lights, reconnect to the thoughtnet and sell my mindspace to the rich young folks with new ideas. I don’t need to think anymore they said, our lives are perfect.
I awoke, but only for a moment.
by Julian Miles | Dec 2, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
One world. Seven hundred and ninety-two people. Less than a hundred berths on the ship out. It’s a recipe for bloody mayhem and that’s how they want it. Only the most committed make it to upship. We did basic training for five weeks before being shipped out here in long-sleep with burst-feed data tutoring. A thousand left Earth, two hundred and eight either died in transit or emerged hopelessly impaired. We used the latter for warm-up. Even the damaged will fight like banshees to survive.
“Left twenty.”
I look past Alyn. Sure enough, another group is crawling on their bellies through the long grass toward the position we occupy. It’s the only piece of high ground for three kilometres. It allows us to see approaching people by the trenches they make as they flatten the grass on their way in.
“Right ten.”
That’s welcome news: another group incoming. I slide back down into the foxhole we dug when we arrived.
“I need two volunteers to set them on each other.”
Martin raises his hand, as does Rico.
“Go.”
They crawl off down the back of the hill and make their way round to where the groups approach. Nothing disturbs the silence except the constant rustle of wind-blown grass across this savannah. I wriggle back up to the vantage point.
“Rico’s offbeam.”
“Sort it.”
She warbles like a skylark with a cadence that tells Rico what he needs to get back on track.
“No reaction.” Lanna shakes her head in despair.
Incredible. We’re light-years from Earth on a planet devoid of animal life. Yet the cry of a bird produces no alarm. These people don’t deserve to make it. When Martin and Rico reach position, Alyn warbles again. Both men take a fifteen count before making our play.
“There’s another bunch heading for the hill!” Martin injects just the right amount of righteous anger into his voice.
“They’ve spotted us! Take them before they make the high ground!” Rico rolls with Martin’s opening.
Two groups of green and tan clad people rise up, look about and then charge at each other, screaming defiance and less obvious things. Within moments a thirty-man melee swirls below us, crushing the grass as blades and blood catch the light.
“Right thirty.”
I shift position and look down at a position just out of sight of the fighting. It’s a trench but a narrow one. As I watch, a white rag on a stick rises into view. I gesture to Alyn. She warbles for Rico to take a look.
A few minutes later, Rico and a tough-looking girl covered in mud scoot over the edge of our foxhole.
“I’m Neria. Nice set up you have here.”
Rico nods toward the extra gear she carries. Looks like she’s supplied-up from at least six other candidates.
I grin: “Any of the donors going to ask for their kit back?”
Neria looks about as Martin rejoins us. She grins fiercely: “Don’t be so bloody silly.”
I nod and Alyn does the same. Lanna reaches out her hand: “Welcome to the team.”
Our newest recruit raises her chin towards the sounds of ongoing battle: “We going to clear up?”
Martin shakes his head: “The survivors will drag themselves all the way up here. Battered, knackered and sweated out by the time they reach us.”
Neria nods: “Solid plan.”
That does us. Six-man fire teams are the operational standard. From now on, all we have to do is hold our position until the all-clear sounds and we get to ship out as soldiers.
by submission | Dec 1, 2013 | Story |
Author : Stivi Cooke
They didn’t think about that…
In all the plans, all the awesome designs, the mind blowing concepts, all the calculations, the deals, the engineering and finally the launch… they forgot that part…
As humanity reached out to the planets and the asteroids, landed and started to colonize the Moon (china), Mars (America), Titan and europa (India); we built bigger and better, faster and more powerful spaceships.
But time and distance still play god’s game…
Even at the speed of light and depending on the relative positions of Earth and Mars it would still take between 12 and 21 minutes to get there and Pluto would take about 23 years to reach at that ultimate speed.
Now we were stretching outward, past the solar boundaries, deep space… a emptiness equal only to death perhaps…
Oh, sure we knew people would have a lot of time on their hands, trapped in a steel can with no way to pop outside for a smoke, a fresh pizza or a long stress reliving soak in a bath. Moreover, we had great stores of entertainment – music from forgotten times, books from every genre imaginable – all of mankind’s knowledge and wisdom too.
We choose our crews carefully for compatibility. The accommodations like a five star hotel. Meals that were banquets. And oh! That exquisite music… always that music…
Now we were on the way to Alpha Centauri, the engines silently screaming at full ignition.
They forgot that… people’s favourite stuff… no-one listens to all the music in the world or reads all the books or watches all the movies… sooner or later, we prefer stuff… again… and again… and again…
I couldn’t listen to the captain’s David Bowie music anymore, the flight navigator’s hip-hop was the first to go, then the engineering boy’s reggie and samba collection was discreetly destroyed. The medical doctor and her nurse’s operatic themes were the worst… how many times could I listen to Aida?
And they forgot that as we travelled at the edge of light’s limit’s, any upgrades to our entertainment collections would never catch up until we reached landfall…4.3 light years away… always racing towards us with a gap between us and the music because they didn’t start sending the new stuff until we were clear of Mars…
To save space, the collections were implanted in our mind supplements, constantly linking to the ships computers and of course the sound systems. Well, who wants to wear headphones for four years? The music seeped out in spite of the soundproofing.
I loved it at first but a year later it started to grate on all our nerves… we stopped listening so often… then began to retreat into our private rooms but it was a big ship. You had to go out and do things so you couldn’t not notice the tunes. Unavoidable really, as we started to exhaust each other’s conversations and opinions, which we heard a million times before.
I snapped around October in the third year. Killed them all – had to, didn’t I? The music was in their heads.
Now I’ll arrive in a years time, serene, glowing, happy and comfortable in my work grooving to Grand Master Funk… and it’ll take them another eight years to come for me.
by submission | Nov 30, 2013 | Story |
Author : Denis Bell
Morbid fear, for God’s sake. Driving home from the shrink, Hugh turned on the car radio in an attempt to blot out the thoughts churning in his head. The radio was tuned to WPB. It was Science Monday and they were discussing Hugh’s least favorite subject in the whole world, that and some weird new invention. It sounded like something out of The Twilight Zone.
“… process is rather complicated. But I can describe the basic functioning. The machine takes in a few drops of the subject’s blood. Performing an analysis on the white cells, it is able to determine the precise moment of the subject’s death.”
“Remarkable! But is the machine reliable, Morty? It would be unfortunate if a person scheduled to die say, twenty years from now, were to take up bungee jumping then end up plunging to his or her death next week.”
“As it happens, the technology is far from new. It was developed by DSSR in the late fifties and been in use ever since. The point is that in almost sixty years there is not a single instance where a prediction made by the machine has turned out to be erroneous. It appears to be infallible.”
The interviewer audibly gasped. “But the implications of such a device are… staggering! It will change the world. Why haven’t heard about it until now?”
“The project was highly classified until very recently. A group of us felt that– I’d prefer not to comment further on this.”
Hugh had heard enough. A machine that tells you when you’re going to die. Just what he needed. Hugh knew his own make-up and constitution only too well. He knew with the certainty of roast beef that if he ever encountered one of these contraptions it would be the end of him. Hugh suffered from hypertension, cardiac arrhythmia, weakened arteries, a genetic predisposition to stroke and seizures… news of his imminent death would surely kill him. Right there and then. Right on schedule.
It seemed impossible, though. A blood test? It had to be some sort of joke. But the radio, why would they–
He almost laughed out loud when he cottoned to it. Almost, but not quite. Today’s date – April 1, 2013. Morty.
Last year was that report of life discovered on the dark side of the moon. He’d just seen Independence Day and lay awake night after night for a week worrying about an alien invasion. The previous year saw him peeling rubber along 90 East. Half of California had fallen into the Pacific. All those calls from people with family in LA and Frisco…
What a day! First a condescending little weasel of a shrink, now bozo radio pranksters. Hugh felt that he could kick their asses all over town. Felt light and heavy at the same time. This time next year he was going to be in bed with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones.
In the studio, the interview was winding down. Richard Morton nodded apprehensively as the interviewer thanked him. It seemed they’d done a dangerous thing going public with this. Intimidation … threats … Dr. Morton was a bold thinker but not a bold man. He never would have had the nerve except for one thing – he wasn’t due for another thirty years.
by Clint Wilson | Nov 28, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
He scanned the desolate horizon through ancient hollow eyes from beneath the brim of a very weathered top hat.
All around him was the smoldering ruin that had once been the world of man. Endless heaps of scorched garbage and piles of twisted and rotting corpses were set against the background of a burnt orange sky that was peppered here and there with wandering radioactive clouds.
His thin cruel mouth turned up in a macabre grin showing off two rows of sharp yellow stumps. His skin was old tanned leather stretched impossibly tight over its frame. A few wisps of long white hair danced in the hot breeze from beneath the old top hat.
Also flapping in the wind was his long dusty overcoat. It blew open revealing an intricately carved and well-oiled leather gun belt. The pearl handled revolvers were now back in their holsters, still searing hot but finally silent.
He laughed aloud and it sounded like a rusty tin can being torn in two. Turning and stepping over a dead rat his cracked leather boots with their jingling spurs took him to his nearby waiting steed.
The rigid framed Shovelhead leaned at a rakish angle. Its lone bullet headlight and springer front end gleamed nearly as much as its chrome spoked wheels. He threw a long leg over the carved leather saddle and grabbed the ape-hanger handlebars with his spidery fingers. Then the mighty beast roared to life with a single kick from his pointed black boot.
Flames belched from the slash cut pipes and a great rumbling noise rolled across the decimated landscape. He threw back his head and laughed again, the rusty tin can sound now augmented by a thick slimy gurgling. He turned and spat a glob of pure blackness and it hit the dead rat squarely, singing its fur.
His thin fingers pulled the clutch lever in and he kicked the bike into gear. As the big machine lurched forward and away, its blasting exhaust pipes blew debris in all directions. Then he changed gears and accelerated and the mighty rumble of the big V-Twin engine grew louder and higher yet, still there was no one there to hear it but him.
And as a fading red iron-cross shaped taillight disappeared down a bombed out highway, the only sound louder than a tricked out Shovelhead skull bound for glory, was the rusty laughter of the devil himself. His work here was finally done.
