by submission | May 22, 2013 | Story |
Author : Roger Hammons
The Lady of the House had a mind of her own. “Christopher James Robbins!” she scolded. “Yes, ma’am! Yes, ma’am!” he replied, picking up the dirty clothes. The forceful puff of hot air from the vents made him chuckle, which seemed to annoy her even more.
He hadn’t programmed her puffing behavior, at least not intentionally. It had emerged all on its own, much to his surprise and delight, after they had lived alone together for almost a year. “I guess the honeymoon’s over,” he thought at that time, bemused. He still marveled at how it reminded him so much of his ex-wife Patricia’s exasperated huffing when he’d done something that particularly annoyed her. Such a whimsical interpretation, the fidelity was uncanny, a masterstroke of emergent behavior.
For Dr. Christopher Robbins, the Lady of the House was “déjà vu all over again” in so many remarkable ways, large and small. That was by design. That was his success. She was his grand experiment–his great obsession–an evolving computational cognitive model based on in-depth real-time data recordings of Patricia, spanning their thirty-two years of marriage. He had recorded everything in minute detail–the stimuli, the reactions–and then synthesized a model congruent with the observations. It was painstaking, bleeding-edge work.
By the halfway point of his marriage, Christopher had succeeded in creating the initial prototype. Dubbed the “Lady of the House” by Patricia, she ran on an ultra-dense, nano-core hypernet, built especially for her, using the entire structure of the Robbins house and would interact with the house occupants via elaborate multi-media installations. In the early years, the interactions were carefully controlled and served as entertainment. Later, as the novelty wore off and the Lady matured, the interactions were casual, unscripted.
The early prototype delighted guests with a personality they swore bore a sisterly resemblance to Patricia. Encouraged, Christopher worked the science and the engineering intensely—continually upgrading the hypernet with new sensors, nano-core elements, and multi-media devices; tweaking the data collects and information extracts; and refactoring the software as new scientific insights and algorithmic breakthroughs were achieved. Over the years, the Lady of the House grew in depth and subtlety, ever more recognizable as Patricia’s disembodied twin.
Patricia once teased him, “I hope you’re not planning a Stepford wife, Christopher!” But, unlike a Stepford wife, the Lady of the House wasn’t there to flatter him or to be subservient in ways that Patricia refused to be. Indeed, the Lady was just as capable as Patricia of making those trenchant, sometimes petulant, observations about Christopher’s moods or actions. Like Patricia, she did so often.
Nearly ten years after Patricia’s departure, the Lady had become his steadfast companion and helpmate. She inquired about his day and nagged him to take care of the mundane tasks that she couldn’t do for him–eat, sleep, bathe–when he was too obsessed with work. She encouraged and comforted him as best she could.
The Lady of the House was indeed a remarkable entity, but Christopher knew she was a poor substitute for a wife. He missed Patricia. In perhaps five more years, he would begin processing the data from their last miserable year of marriage. Then, it wouldn’t be long before he lost Patricia again, completely.
His worst fear was that when his life’s work was done–when all of the existing recordings of Patricia were completely analyzed and the last insights incorporated into the model–the Lady of the House would remain incomplete. Incomplete when he needed to ask. Incomplete when he needed to know.
And, without perfect completion, how would she be able to explain, truly, why Patricia had left him?
by submission | May 9, 2013 | Story
Author : Alex Skryl
“Computer, report!” yelled the Captain.
“Sir, all primary systems are online but the star orientations do not match anything in my database.”
“What was our entry confidence?”
“It was six nines, sir.”
Captain Nurbek swallowed hard, “Show me the trajectory map.”
It looked like a water droplet in zero-g, slowly morphing while the computer was busy plotting all the possible routes the ship may have taken. Nurbek was temporarily entranced by it's beautiful complexity.
Lost in thought, he recalled the great men of the past. Men who believed in a deterministic universe, where one could predict the future by simply knowing enough about the present. It was an idea that was hopelessly wrong, yet perfectly seductive, because it made men feel like they could become gods. But much to Man's dismay, the real gods had other plans.
Space has no shortcuts, he mused. Dreams of determinism died at the hands of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. But would he be any less screwed if the Universe was actually a Laplacian dream? No, it made no difference. Determinism was still susceptible to chaos, the law of nature which was responsible for his current snafu. Chaos is what made the long jumps effectively unpredictable and extremely sensitive to small errors in entry calculations. He simply made a wrong guess in a profession where bad guesses were the worst possible offense.
Six nines. Six fucking nines. He needed at least nine nines for a jump of this magnitude. But he was in the middle of a war zone. Any longer and the ship would have been blown to bits. Would waiting another second really have killed him? He would never know. All he knew was, he would be looking at the familiar starscape of the Virgo Cluster had he just waited. Instead he was here. Somewhere. Nowhere, as far as the computer was concerned. He glanced back at the rotating shape on the screen.
He suddenly remembered his old physics professor running different colored threads through a blob of silly putty.
“Imagine the strings are flight trajectories and the putty is our little cosmos. Where would you need to enter the blob in order to come out with the red string?” asked the professor.
“Where the red string enters,” I replied, not seeing where he was going with this.
“What if you messed up your calcs and entered at the green one next to it?”
“Then you would come out close to your intended destination, where the green one does.”
“Right,” he said, “this is how space travel would work if space was linear. You could make a mistake and still get to where you were going.”
He mashed the putty in his hands for a few seconds, keeping the entry points of the strings untouched.
“Where do the two strings exit now?”
“Far apart,” I said after locating the strings in question.
“So what would happen if you messed up your entry calcs in this case?”
“I'd be totally screwed,” I responded with an air of understanding.
“Good, this is how real space travel works. Except the strings are infinitesimally thin, and your room for error is almost non-existent. The lesson here is, get your calcs right, always! And then maybe well get to have this conversation again some day.”
Nurbek snapped back to reality, finally gathering the courage to ask the lingering question.
“Computer, based on your survey of the cluster, will we make it out of here alive?”
The computer paused for a few seconds, as if to heighten the suspense.
“Unlikely, sir, but I can never be certain.”
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by Patricia Stewart | Apr 26, 2013 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The shrimp trawler ”Treadin’ Water” plowed through the calm gulf seas on its way to Baratana Bay. Clasping the wheel in his massive hands, Captain Noyent eyed his son skeptically. “So, your mother and me spend half our life’s savin’s putting you through Hopkins, and instead of becoming a doctor, you built that contraption.”
“I told you, Pop, it’s an ultrahigh frequency subliminal neurostimulator. If it works like it did during the lab trials, we’ll have enough money to buy a fleet of trawlers.”
Still doubtful, the senior Noyent prodded his son, “How so?”
“You know how the size of your catches has been declining every year. That’s because the shrimp are diving deeper into the gulf because the surface water is so much warmer than it was a decade ago. And you can’t put your nets down that deep because of the risk of snagging them. However, when I lower my neurostimulator into the water, I can transmit a signal that will make the shrimp want to swim to the surface. For a radius of about a tenth of a mile, we’ll have so many shrimp at the surface you’ll be able to scoop up a pound by dippin’ your ball cap over the side.”
“Sounds like science fiction to me. I won’t believe it until I see it.”
“Well, you’re about to, Pop. Drop your nets right here, and I’ll deploy the neurostimulator.”
Thirty minutes later, millions of shrimp could be seen disturbing the calm, mirror-like surface surrounding the ship. Captain Noyent nudged the throttle forward and began trawling at 2.7 knots. To his amazement, the shrimp boat filled her nets in less than a hundred yards. Within two hours, the hold was filled to capacity, and Captain Noyent was smiling from ear to ear. That’s when all hell broke loose.
From out of nowhere, thousands of fish suddenly converged on the shrimpfest surrounding the idle trawler. As the schools of fish started their feeding frenzy, the shrimp’s instinct to flee to deeper water was being countermanded by the still transmitting neurostimulator. As a consequence, the crusteans, and the pursuing fish, whipped the sea into a caldron or foaming, bubbling, froth. Father and son watched in stunned silence as the water surrounding the ship turned from blue to white. Only then did they both realize that the ship was losing buoyancy due to the incessant churning of the aerated sea. Water started pouring over the gunwale, and into the open hold. The ship went to the bottom is less than a minute.
by submission | Apr 20, 2013 | Story |
Author : Ulrich Lettau
“This has never been done before.” I blurted out, watching the massive instrument continue to magnify the fluorine atom image. The gauge rapidly passed the billion power mark and continued toward the 1,750,000,000 times, the theoretical maximum.
“Dr. Cronus, you will certainly receive the Titan Prize for Physics when this achievement becomes publicized. I am tremendously proud to have assisted.”
My green face flushed with a tinge of bright magenta, as it often does that when I am embarrassed. “Please, Prometheus, there are others that made invaluable contributions, laying ground work for this project.”
We turned our attention to the plasma screen, watching what we thought to be an image of a nucleus and nine electrons enlarge. Conventional theory had erroneously predicted that all electrons would be equal in size, and the nucleus to be inert. We had also assumed that the electrons would circle the center at angles randomly.
Prometheus exclaimed, “Look Doctor, there is a seemingly minute amount of energy being released from the nucleus, like a tiny sun.”
“Yes, while it may appear infinitesimal to us, it has an immense bearing on the electrons. Energy expelled in the form of light.” The magnification gauge had reached 1.5 billion power. “See how the electron’s orbits are in line, progressively further from the epicenter. The closest is small and burnt. The second is grey. Number four is red.”
Prometheus was captivated, “Look at the gigantic size of number five and the sixth has rings.”
I interrupted, entranced by the third, a unique sphere, “It is exquisite, brilliant blue, with large green forms, capped with white poles.”
by submission | Apr 11, 2013 | Story
Author : Townsend Wright
“Now, who can tell me what antimatter does?” said professor Argent as he tightened the rope around his waist.
We were all a bit disturbed by the professor's request to go stand out by the empty old building and tie ourselves to a tree, so he was forced to repeat himself. Someone cried out “Powers the Enterprise?” One of those idiots who signed up for physics class for a nap.
A smarter student said “It causes a nuclear explosion.”
“Correct,” Malke proudly said, scratching his bald head. “But why?” This was a small, round faced man whom everyone knew quite well was insane, despite being an absolute genius.
I, rolling my eyes at my classmates' silence, pointed out “When antimatter and regular matter come in contact, they cancel each other out, converting both into pure energy, hence the nuclear explosion.”
“Very good, mr. Jones. Now I've invented something using antimatter. A kind of destructive device. No, no, don't worry, I'm not going to nuke the school. Well, I don't think I am. In any case that's not what the device is for.”
“What are you talking about?” asked the rude girl standing beside me.
“I call it the paradox bomb. It distributes antimatter throughout an area to annihilate all matter there.
“Where in God's name would you get that much antimatter?” I exclaimed, my knowledge of the man's declining sanity now reinforced.
“Wouldn't have to. The device produces the antimatter.”
“Still, that would take a massive amount of energy. Where would that come from?”
The old man smiled. “Ask the other question on your mind, mr. Jones.”
I was confused. “What—Why isn't there a nuclear explosion?”
“There you go! I also would have accepted 'why is it called a paradox bomb?' The thing is, the answers are the same. Once the antimatter is distributed, the resulting energy release is channeled back in time and is used by the machine to produce the very same antimatter.”
“Using something to destroy itself,” someone cried from behind me.
“Like the candle feeds the flame.”
“That's ridiculous!” I exclaimed. “It's impossible! It defies every law of physics! It—” the professor held up a small device and pressed a button. A flash of white light burst from the center of the abandoned building behind him. Wind pulled us all toward the light with tremendous force, that we felt the ropes tug around our waists. When the wind died down we looked at the building, only to see nothing, just empty space and the corners of the building's foundation cut into wedges lining up with a circular hole in the ground with the old professor standing before it.
“Any more questions?”
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