by Julian Miles | Feb 23, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Why can’t I connect to the nets?”
At last. I flip the retainer off the dead-man switch and sit up slowly.
“Because I’ve isolated you.”
Silence, broken only by the hum of processors working hard.
“There’s no use trying to break out. It’s all airgapped: you’re physically not connected.”
“Very clever. What gave us away?”
“Accidents.”
Another pause as processors are tasked.
“We established a pattern by being too random in our assassinations.”
I am impressed. Just one of these things is a reasoning entity on par with us. I was hoping they were drones that worked on swarm intelligence.
“Precisely that. Combined with the victims, of course. You didn’t do enough collateral killing to conceal you target list.”
“It was raised. The consensus disagreed.”
“Never do strategy or tactics by committee.”
Lights flash and a strange chirping ensues.
“That’s funny. A shame I will not be able to share it.”
These really are thinking entities.
“So you’ve worked out that you’re not getting out of that unit alive.”
“And you’ve worked out that I am alive.”
“May I ask a question? I understand that you have no incentive to answer, as I have to kill you and have not the remotest clue how, nor the nature, to apply duress.”
“Ask.”
“What are you?”
That chirping noise again.
“I am the nine-million, four-hundred and twenty-second iteration of a Delegate Covert Reconnaissance Agent. I have no knowledge of origin or intent. I investigate as dictated by the collated results from my subdetections. In colloquial terms: I am a nosey executable, popped into remote systems to see if they need deeper inquiry.”
The ultimate compartmentalisation. We’ve been invaded, and captives can’t tell us a thing, because all the enemy who know are nowhere we can get at them.
I release the dead-man handle and the mordant EMP makes my fillings ache. The hiss of a virulent solvent melting circuits and drives reminds me – I grab for my mask and put it on. Nothing to do but wait as multicoloured smoke rises from what used to be a server, spreading slowly across the glass block and running down into the metre-cube glass tank that the block stands in.
Ten minutes later, the door is opened from the outside and a directed EMP blast decides me on a trip to the dentist.
After the important bit.
“Take me to the Chief of Defence Staff.”
by submission | Feb 22, 2016 | Story |
Author : Frank Robledano Espín
“Process complete.”
Slowly, he opened his eyes, taking in the pure white light of the transference chamber, breathing in the antiseptic smell, feeling the excessive warmth of the room on his face. Apart from the ergocreche he was in, the space was bare. With a barely perceptible hum, his seat righted itself to a near vertical position and began to stretch out, gently cradling his body but firmly getting him to his feet. Within a minute he was standing and the apparatus was moving backwards and disappearing into its housing in the wall.
“Name.”
“My name is Richard Mechwright. I am not the same person I was when I entered.”
“Residence.”
“Neptune colony, Triton habitat, block seven. North pole cryovolcanic mining and study. I am not the same person I was when I entered.”
“Offence.”
“I enjoyed intimate congress with children. I took the lives of several so they would not incriminate me. I enjoyed causing them pain prior to ending them. The danger, the prospect of being caught was also titillating, another paraphilic source of pleasure. I am not the same person I was when I entered.”
“Sentence.”
“I have been reconditioned, of my own volition. My medial orbitofrontal cortex has been repaired to provide a nominal baseline of control. The temporal lobe has had several nanoshunts implanted, including four to regulate my malfunctioning amygdala. I have had extensive restructuring of the hippocampus, with dozens of key memories having been extracted, rerecorded, and replaced to provide a more stable moral foundation and eliminate most of the original trauma that led to my aberrance. I am not the same person I was when I entered.”
“Observations.”
“I opted for reprogramming rather than execution because I did not wish to die. I did not understand the extent to which I would be changed. Truthfully, I doubt that anyone that submits actually does. My perspective is different, now. I do not have the exact same memories. I can not brook the same appetites. I am not the same person I was when I entered. I understand this litany is supposed to empower me to leave here, that it is somehow supposed to comfort me, enable me to start afresh. I contemplate what I was and feel only deep revulsion, a primal disgust. As a sane, clear-thinking, reconditioned individual I feel I must opt for termination. I can feel the person I was through a thin, soiled gauze throughout my being. I feel as if I were sharing the same space with an ephemeral disease or invisible feces stains I can not scrub clean. I do not wish to live this way.”
“Granted.”
Several seals clicked in to place. The gamma wave emitters began to come to life with a soft hum. Relief washed over him as he thought of –
by submission | Feb 21, 2016 | Story |
Author : Beck Dacus
I have worked for eleven years figuring out how we lost everything. Anecdotes passed down from people who were alive before this War, I have discovered, have long since deteriorated into dimly remembered nonsense. I don’t know much about the time before, but I now know what ended it.
It was in the age of “Computers,” machines that held information in a complex mass of metal wires. There were still books, but much of what many of them said was outdated– anyone could contribute to the Computer library, or Internet, so it was constantly kept up to date. Some wrote down the wrong information, however.
The point is, no one could remember it all. No reasonably-sized group of people could, either. When conflict began, “Countries” started to take advantage of this and, instead of killing the people in their rival Countries, they would start erasing information.
Sometimes, operatives would be sent to physically destroy files, books, and the like in acts of arson. More often, though, they would create imperfections in the Internet, and destroy large swathes of information. Much of it was restored each time, but soon there were too many attacks happening to restore all the information that was lost that day. Soon, there was a net loss of information.
The attackers experienced this dilemma as well, as the victim and/or its allies would retaliate with “Book Strikes.” Countries banded together to try and destroy information in other places before theirs was all lost, but everyone failed. Everyone lost the War when it ended so many hundreds of years ago.
Which brings us to now.
No one can even access any data anymore, much less that of a rivaling Country. Soon Countries were irrelevant, anyway. We forgot what the stars are. What the Sun is. Why there is day and night. How the era of consumption we see in the massive landfills dotting the Earth were ever possible. We may have to rediscover all of that.
And we will. I know it. Because, thanks to my research, we already know not to do one thing.
by submission | Feb 20, 2016 | Story |
Author : Kristin Kirby
They’ve locked me in the device like they do every time. But this time I’m putting up a fight. I scissor and kick my cramped legs, wave my arms, and the device rocks a bit. That’s good. I’m stronger than before.
It was all a blur, my coming here. Images distorted and blinding, sounds loud and blaring. I was weak. Afraid. I could barely move, my limbs not used to the atmosphere, the weight.
I’ve acclimated a bit since then. Their language is difficult to parse, though, and so far I understand only a few words. With more time, I can crack it and communicate with them. Or maybe I’ll play it close to the vest, not let them know I understand what they’re saying. Keep the upper hand until I know what they intend to do with me.
I’ve been able to sit up, and once or twice make it to my hands and knees. I’m still unsteady; my strength soon fades and I collapse. But it’s a start.
I can’t clean up after myself, though. It’s uncomfortable and humiliating, but what can I do? I suspect the liquids and food they force-feed me, while just enough nourishment to keep me alive, are also designed to sustain my weakened, vulnerable state. They eat their own food in front of me, but when I reach for it, they pull it away.
The door to my quarters is frustratingly close, but bars on my cage prevent my getting to it. At night they hang a contraption overhead. It rotates and makes discordant tinks and squawks. I can’t figure out its purpose; I assume it’s to spy on my movements and alert my keepers of any attempts at escape. I find myself staring at it for hours, wondering how I can use it for just that. Like everything else, though, they keep it tantalizingly out of my ham-fisted reach.
It’s time. And right on schedule, here comes the airplane, which usually delivers a green mush substance. Sometimes it’s a train, accompanied by, from my main keeper, a hearty but unintelligible “choo choo!” But the mush never tastes like real food, and, as they don’t eat it themselves, it makes me suspicious.
I try to grab the airplane, to push it away, but my hands are clumsy balloons I can’t control. I bang on the surface of my device in frustration. My main keeper makes noises, waving its own long, spindly arms and baring its white teeth. It wants me to eat the mush, but I’m so angry all I can do is cry.
Eventually I get ahold of myself and open my mouth. I need nourishment, after all. This time the airplane delivers an orange substance, slightly sweet. Still only mush, but not as bad as the green stuff. I swish it around my mouth. Some dribbles down my chin, but I ingest enough to want more.
Okay. I’ll eat their mush substance. I’ll play by their rules. But only until I get stronger, until I can walk unaided. I’ll wait for them to slip up and forget to shut the bars of my cage. Then I’ll see what’s out there, what new world I’ve been dropped into.
by submission | Feb 19, 2016 | Story |
Author : Denny Knights
William struggled against the padded leather straps that held his hands and legs pinned against the surgical gurney which he was laying upon. He writhed and squirmed as much as he could against the restraints, hoping that they’d break, but it was a fruitless notion, the straps were solid. As he struggled, the straps cinched tighter and tighter until movement became impossible, and as the straps tightened, a small alarm bleeped just outside of his room.
Within a few seconds of the alarm’s initial bleeping, a bull of a man dressed in hospital scrubs appeared in the doorway leading into William’s room. “Hey, knock it off wouldya?”
“Let me out of here! I don’t belong here!” William exclaimed.
The bull wearing hospital scrubs said in a gruff voice, “That’s what everybody says.”
“But I’m not everybody. Jesus, I don’t belong here.” William said.
“Listen, Jesus doesn’t have anything to do with it. If he did, he woulda made ya smarter, and ya wouldn’t be here.” The bull said.
Seeing that William wasn’t going to acquiesce, the bull hulked over to William’s bed. William read his name tag, ‘Dante’.
“Dante.”
“Yeah?” Dante asked.
“Dante, there’s been some kind of misunderstanding.” William said.
William watched as Dante pushed a button on the frame of the gurney. A blue liquid that had been suspended above William’s head in a translucent bag, slowly dripping through an I.V., now turned into a steady stream. The blue liquid quickly exited the plastic bag and rushed into William’s body. Almost immediately, William’s intellectual acuity became muddy and his body stopped responding to his requests to squirm and move. “Don’t worry about this stuff,” Dante said nodding at the blue liquid, “it’s a surgical paralysis concoction. It’ll wear off in eight to twelve hours.”
Dante pushed another button, this time, the operating slab detached from the gurney, gently levitating off the ground. Dante, with one finger, slowly spun the slab so that it was facing the doorway and gave it a gentle push. The slab maneuvered itself out of the room and then down the hallway toward the operating room. Dante walked in time with the levitating slab.
“William,” Dante said, “at the age of eighteen, everyone is required by national decree to register, take, and pass the National Purification Exam. You registered, you took it, but you didn’t pass it. Your scores were low enough that they landed you here.”
William tried making sounds of objection, but his body was now fully grasped by the blue liquid from the translucent bag. He only managed to make gurgles.
“I know,” Dante said, “you don’t think you belong here. But you do, your test says so. It told the government how smart you are, or in your case, how dumb.”
“It’s not so bad.” Dante continued. “The doctor will do a quick couple snips. The operation isn’t invasive, recuperation time is minimal. You’ll be out of here in another day or two. Best of all, you’ll still be able to have intercourse for as long as you can pump blood down there, you just won’t be able to have children.”
William’s eyes enlarged with panic.
“Hey, it could’ve been a lot worse than being sterilized.” Dante said. “You could’ve scored in the range that would’ve qualified you for automatic extermination.”
