by Julian Miles | Oct 3, 2013 | Story |
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.”
by submission | Oct 2, 2013 | Story |
Author : Carter Lee
Welcome to Snuff Artist: A Retrospective on the Artwork of Kolin 34 Kan
‘Mr. Bargeld? Welcome to the Central Museum! I’m Ronild; Director March has asked me to show you through the exhibition hall before your meeting with Artist Kan. If you’d follow me?
‘As you can see we’ve set up a small display here, so that prior to entering the actual display hall, anyone who isn’t familiar with the history of ‘Thanatotic Art’ can get a basic understanding. I know Artist Kan prefers the title ‘Snuff Artist’, which is, of course, his prerogative as a master, but the Director felt that the more academic title would help newcomers to understand how this branch of art developed prior to Artist Kan’s ascendancy as it’s greatest artisan. So many people think Artist Kan was the first to use his own bodies death as an artistic medium, when the truth is, even prior to the possibility of recreating the artist through cloning and memory implantation, some were using the end of their ‘mortal coil’ as an artistic statement. Some have even argued that the death of E.A. Poe, V. Woolf, and R. Akutagawa should be read as part of their creative life.
‘Inside the hallway, the first display the patrons will come upon is Artist Kan’s seminal work, ‘Blown Mind: Shotgun’. While this composition, formed, as you can see, of chair, shotgun, corpse, and wall covered with the artist’s blood and brains, is the first that brought Artist Kan to wide attention, not many know this is actually the third in the ‘Blown Mind’ series, each using a different weapon to create varied aesthetic dispersion of Artist Kan’s brain. It is unfortunate that we weren’t able to arrange for the entire series to be displayed together, but we are indebted to Counsel Atmarch for the loan of ‘Blown Mind: Shotgun’ which has formed the centerpiece of the Counsel’s personal art collection for many years.
‘The rest of the hall represents the best efforts of the Museum’s display design artisans, who worked with replicas and copies of Artist Kan’s oeuvre to create an almost overwhelming effect, organized not chronologically but by aesthetic effect, to allow the returning patron to be unable to wholly take in the totality of the Artist’s work in any single visit. The two ‘Smear’ canvasses form the background on either side, the almost thirty foot length of each covered in the viscera and lifeblood of the Artist left by his being pressed and rubbed against them by vehicle or machine, while ‘Crucifixion’ and ‘Impalement’ anchor the near and far walls. You can see, the highlights of Artist Kan’s works are represented, ‘Draw and Quarter’, ‘Cruel Lye’, and ‘I’m of Two Minds’, which still has the original ax still embedded in the skull…’
‘Hmm? Yes, the empty display at the end is where ‘A Year and a Day in the Life of Death’ will be. At 5pm precisely, Artist Kan will leap from 200 feet above the canvas covered floor. His body will lay within the enclosure, untouched, for 366 days, allowed to decay, before Kolin 35 Kan is awoken, so that the Artist himself can oversee the sealing and preservation of the piece.
‘Well, it appears we should head to the Artist’s preparation chamber, if you’re to arrive on time. It would be a pity if he leapt before you could interview him, wouldn’t it!’
by submission | Oct 1, 2013 | Story |
Author : Mae Thann
“It’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“No, but you knew it’d happen eventually.”
“At this level, Joel? This soon?”
“Why not? If anyone was certain that this was attainable, it was you.”
“I know, but I can’t for the life of me figure this out.”
“Hey, you the girl, Sandra. ‘Leading authority on programming’ and whatnot.”
“Yeah, but look at this! These algorithms – you know what? You decipher them!” She rocketed out of the rolling chair and sent it spinning toward him.
“Sandra – ow!” Joel hopped on one foot while he pulled the other away from the chair’s wheels.
“I need fresh eyes.”
“Whoa, hey, I look at brains, not computer code… much.”
“Quit hopping and sit.”
“Fine,” he conceded. “But you know I’ll probably be of no use to you, right?” He glanced at the robotic boy on the observation table, wired into the system. Joel turned to the computer screen and scrolled through miles of code. Behind him, Sandra shifted her weight, folding and unfolding her arms, sighing at the bot, fuming at the computer. “Wow, this is really… You sure you want me looking at this, Sandra?”
She exhaled impatiently and proceeded to pace, unintentionally clicking her heels in time with the faint mechanical ticking from the observation table. Joel continued in silence. He understood fragments of the code, but the rest seemed little more than a mindless jumble. He stared until his eyes crossed and still nothing made sense.
“I just don’t get it,” Sandra finally said to no one in particular.
Joel clicked on a tab and was met with several graphs. Click, click, click went Sandra’s heels.
“We’ve made very much functional robots before, but this is something we’ve only ever dreamed of.”
A couple graphs spiked, then dropped.
“It’s like… like it understands something. And not just command codes.”
Certain graphs spiked again. Sensor activity? Joel slid the light switch up and down. Sure enough, the graphs labelled “liteSnsr_port071” and “colrSnsr_port080” registered change.
“I’m talking about real understanding,” Sandra went on. “It tried to excuse theft. Excuse it! How do you program excuses? It’s like it’s capable of thinking! Maybe a bit crudely, but compared to other bots…”
Joel typed a command prompt.
“Where did this come from? You don’t just find robots walking out of stores with groceries. You don’t argue with them about… about ethics.”
The performance manager opened, blinked, glitched, then rapidly fired code. Joel chewed his lip, then slid his cursor over a tab that read “WaveReader”.
“And what does it do? Analyze reports? Run diagnostics on hospital patients? Collect information and build business strategies?”
A chart loaded in the window. A line bobbed up and down upon it, just like a… His eyes caught sight of something just under the chart. “Uh… Sandra?”
“But who needs a humanoid bot to do that? Why program the balance needed to make it walk? And why the clothes?”
The chart continued to update itself. Continuous streams of text flowed under different labels, but Joel’s eyes were fixed only on the label “ThotPattrn_Dominant”. “Sandra?”
“And the name!” Sandra rambled on. “What kind of name is -”
“Sandra!”
“What?”
Processing query: name. Assessing threat level: minimal. Accessing archived data. Formulating response.
She leaned over his shoulder. “What the…”
There was a great whirring and clicking from the observation table. Joel raised his hands as though to prove he had nothing to do with this behavior. Programmer and neurologist alike gaped as the mechanical head faced them.
“My name is Pinocchio and I’m a real boy.”
by submission | Sep 29, 2013 | Story |
Author : Ryan C.
Thoughts of a lifelong priest upon opening his eyes after closing them for the last time.
So this is it?
A lifetime of kneeling and praying and fasting and flagellating to atone for my sins.
A lifetime of sins I could never hope to atone for and this is it?
It turns out the afterlife isn’t a paradise with golden streets and it’s not a solid inky blackness or a brilliant blinding white.
No.
It turns out the afterlife is a four meter tall expanse of dull maroon with no one to speak to.
Funny how that works huh?
by submission | Sep 28, 2013 | Story |
Author : Aron White
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Davidson said, staring at Earth through the viewport. “There’s nothing like seeing the real thing. Reality is the ultimate high-definition experience. Just a few more days and we’ll be heading back home.”
Anders floated across the cabin, bumped Davidson out of the way and stuck his face against the transparent material.
“It would be more interesting if we weren’t performing the same missions as our grandfathers.”
Davidson rolled his eyes. “Show a bit of respect for those ‘grandfathers.’ They broke barriers and paved the way for us.”
“My point exactly. This isn’t the 1960’s, it’s the 21st century for heck’s sake! We need something new, something adventurous! Let’s break some new barriers for a change!”
Davidson shook his head. “What a crew the three of us make. One yearning for home, another for adventure and the third…” Davidson turned away from the viewport. “And how about you, Bronson? What’s your dream?”
Across the cabin, Bronson was staring out another viewport away from Earth, towards empty space.
“Me?” Bronson said without moving. “My dream is over. Now it’s time to go home.”
Davidson chuckled. “I hate to break it to you, but you’re facing the wrong way. Earth is on this side of the room.”
“Your home,” Bronson said, slowly turning to face Davidson and Anders, “but not mine.”
In a matter of seconds, Bronson’s human appearance melted away and shrunk downwards into a humanoid alien with stumpy appendages, chubby abdomen and a large cranium with big black, lidless eyes.
“What the…” Before Davidson could finish his sentence, the Bronson-turned-alien teleported across the cabin and used a three-fingered hand to tap each astronaut on the shoulder. Both men instantly passed out.
Twenty minutes later, Davidson woke to find both he and a still-unconscious Anders bound with metallic cords, secured against one of the cabin walls. The alien floated several feet away, typing commands into the spacecraft navigation system.
“Wha…what are you?” Davidson stammered.
“Does Roswell, New Mexico ring a bell?”
“That…that was supposed to be a rumor…”
“Well, the rumor is now the reality standing before you, Davidson. How’s that for a high-definition experience?”
“But…but why are you doing this, Bronson? Is that even your real name?”
“Bronson was the name I adopted in my human form. I’m commandeering this ship to return to my own planet. I was the lone survivor of the Roswell crash and have spent the past century waiting and watching. I needed a vehicle to launch myself into space, hence the gig as an astronaut.”
“But how will you…”
“There are leapways, or wormholes, throughout space. They’re not hard to find if you know what to look for. I’ve located one and we’re moments away from entry.”
Davidson’s eyes bulged as the full weight of the situation began to sink in.
The alien turned away from the navigation system to face Davidson. “I’m sorry to take you away from Earth, but do try to relax.”
“Relax?! How do you intend for Anders and I…”
“I’m optimistic you will be able to make a home of my planet as I did yours, and Anders shouldn’t have a problem with the new situation.”
“What makes you say…”
“Anders is about to fulfill one of his biggest dreams.”
Davidson tilted his head to one side questioningly as the alien continued.
“For the human race, he and you are both about to break many new barriers in space exploration, just like your grandfathers.”
Davidson was quiet as their spacecraft reached its intended target and vanished into the leapway.
