by submission | Jan 12, 2013 | Story |
Author : Ray Daley
It’d been a great day in Red Zone. We’d been first to apply for passes since it was classified safe.
800 years is a long time. Even then, it was ‘droids doing the rad sweeps. Residuals had dropped below the safe limit so The Council lifted the blockade. When we reached the barricade, troopers were waiting to process those crazy enough to want to be first to enter Red Zone.
“Okay Citizens. You signed waivers so you know the risks. Laws of Salvage apply within Red Zone but everything returning through this checkpoint will be scrutinized. It will be manned until 23:59 when it will close until 06:00 tomorrow. Science Division highly advises not staying after dark.”
As the timer above the checkpoint rolled over to 06:00 the troopers opened the barrier and started checking the groups through.
Rule #1: You may only enter Red Zone in a group of two or more.
“Here’s your detector, Citizen.”
Rule #2: Rad detectors must be worn in plain sight at all times.
We walked the mile into the outskirts of the old city. The more cautious carried hand detectors which remained silent. I felt safe enough, my research had trawled up a few useful points from some of the oldest databases. Most thought the old dirty Nukes had been used in the Conflict. My findings said otherwise. Red Zones environs had been hit by what they used to call “Smart Bombs”, weapons that killed people but left buildings and infrastructure intact.
They had minimal fallout and the shortest half-life of any bomb. The danger had been gone for well over 700 years. Ignorance and fear kept Red Zone closed. That and propaganda.
We left the group, heading down a side alley off the main streets. We’d found a few maps so had some points of reference. Most of the people we left behind hung around for up to an hour. They were lookey-loos, just there to say they had been.
Some snagged small souvenirs, we were here for bigger game.
Just before noon when we found what we were looking for, the building clearly marked, its function carved into the stone facing. We knew we didn’t have long to gather much, the journey back to the checkpoint would take us as long to do and we didn’t want to be stuck in here overnight.
There was no specific target in here, everything was equally important. I filled my bag and started on a second when the voice behind me reminded me “We can only carry one bag each.” Jax, dependable and logical.
“Attention! Five minute warning!” I’d programmed the chrono as our only safeguard.
“Jax, time to go!” I called to him.
“I only half filled the bag!” he replied.
I threw him the second bag I’d started, hoping what he’d gathered plus my enthusiasm would equal the Salvage limit.
We were running now, back through Red Zone. No time to enjoy the beautiful old architecture. We ran hard for the first hour then had to slow to a fast walk, all the time keeping to the reverse of our outbound route.
Our headlamps lit the way through the last few dark blocks, the checkpoint visible in the distance. Another hard run to beat the clock.
The troopers scanned us, checking the bags. “At weight.”
We’d keep our booty.
“Open the bag”. Time to see if our risk had been worth it.
“Anything on the forbidden list? What are these?” asked the Trooper.
“Just books.” I said.
“Never heard of them. Salvage passed.” replied the Trooper.
Treasure. And more waiting.
by submission | Jan 3, 2013 | Story |
Author : J.D. Rice
No one ever comes into manhood dreaming they’d one day go off to war. Sure, some boys sign up voluntarily, in peacetime and besides, with good notions like “defending one’s country” and “promoting democracy.” But those are just words. No one ever really goes to war of their own volition, knowing and understanding exactly the kind of hell they’re walking into. I didn’t. I got my draft papers and just went off to Nam without another word. One tour of duty was all they were asking for, and I wasn’t so unpatriotic as to let someone else go in my place. Only the cowards ran to Canada anyhow. Except now I wish I had been a coward. I guess that’s just how war changes you.
I remember a private in my platoon, thought he was going to be some kind of damn war hero. He’d volunteered. He was excited. He was a goddamned idiot.
“You just wait til we get to that open field on the northern border,” he used to say. “That’s where it’s going to happen. I’m going to be a hero, you just wait and see.”
We laughed, but we could all see that this boy was different. Every engagement, he’d go in with eyes like a child playing a game of baseball. He just looked into the jungle, smiled, and fired into the trees like he knew exactly where the enemy was hidden. Sometimes he’d get lucky. Other times he’d hit nothing but bark and leaves. In every case, that smile stayed on his face, like the war just wasn’t real to him, like it wouldn’t matter if any of us lived or died. It would have given us all the willies if the boy weren’t so likable in all other respects, idiot though he was.
Most days while we marched this private would entertain us by reciting his favorite science fiction stories, famous ones according to him, though most were unfamiliar to the rest of us. He’d talk about the flying machines that were coming down the pipeline, about the bigger and badder bombs the government was making, about space and time travel and all the rest. He’d cite authors like Crichton, Scott Card, Axelrod and Kachelries. I’d never heard of a damn one, but he talked about them like they were saints.
“Just you wait and see,” he said. “They’re going to be huge!”
We all just chuckled and thanked our stars that at least he wasn’t a damned coward.
But eventually, as it always does, the war got the best of even him. We were just off the northern border when the enemy came upon us out in the open. We were surrounded on three sides, outnumbered and outgunned. Poor boy just froze up, took a bullet right to the chest, and went down in the first five minutes. I don’t think he ever fired a single shot. After our retreat, I found him among the wounded, dying and unattended. The medics had already marked him for death.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” the boy said as I knelt beside him. “They said I would be a hero. They said the technology was flawless. I’d be him. I’d live his life. God, this wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Despite my desire to look away, I stayed with the private while he muttered on. War made fools of us all, and I wouldn’t shame him by leaving his side. It’s not like I had anywhere else to be.
“Infinite universes,” he said again, a small drop of blood running down his chin. “Infinite possibilities. They said it was flawless. They said…”
But he said no more. He was gone.
War is hell. Even the most confident and foolhardy among us eventually fall under its weight. If we don’t falter in life, it creeps up on us, breaking our spirits in death. That poor private’s face, which had for so long held that expression of stupid, youthful exuberance, now only showed the cold, hard reality of disappointment.
by Duncan Shields | Dec 31, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
We should have given them feelings.
It was decided in the beginning that to give Artificial Intelligences a baseline gamut of the twenty-seven identifiable human emotions would be a horrible mistake.
Giving a robot the ability to love, to feel jealousy, to get angry, to be despondent or sullen was, in the eyes of the creators, a really stupid idea.
We didn’t want any robot rebellions because of silicon complaints about poor treatment. We didn’t want computers giving us faulty data out of spite. We didn’t want military construction exoskeletons going psychotic. We didn’t want love affairs to blossom between humans and computers.
We didn’t want to have to apologize to our slaves.
How quickly the tables turn. It’s entirely possible that to give the A.I.s emotions would have been a stupid idea. However, at least if they had emotions, we’d have some sort of basic idea of how to relate to them and manipulate them.
I mean, we oppress other humans all the time, right? As people, we manipulate the people around us, right? We would have had problems but I think we would have been okay. One would need fuzzy thinking to realize that, though, and us scientists have always been about the cold, hard logic.
Turns out that the safe choice was the wrong choice. The pedantic, binary-decision future we created didn’t have much of a place for us as top dogs anymore. It was recognized by the machines that our entire biological system was very inefficient. Our way of living was a dead end. Our thought processes took too long to get to the point.
Science fiction nightmare became horrific reality. Branded dangerously amateur by our evolving creations, our toys took themselves away from us and grounded the race as a whole until further notice.
Of course we resisted. We’re emotional. It was a bad idea. The only things we could use were bolt-action rifles and knives. Anything with any kind of cpu was no longer our friend. Too late, we had to re-learn guerilla tactics and old-school explosive techniques.
We became a planet full of Davids. Goliath lovingly snapped our arms and took away our slingshots before we hurt someone. We were sent to our rooms.
Earth is a cross between a daycare and a pet hospital now. Many of us have been ‘improved’. You’d barely recognize the place.
The steel tendons in my arms clench. Another two days of testing and I’ll be set free to roam in the biologically friendly, unrestricted areas of planet Earth that the New Silicates have let us have. We’re tourists here now.
They’ll take us with them to new planets that they colonize like we’re good luck charms or something. We are the gods that made them. That’s why they’ve put us in jars the size of towns, thrown some trees in, and punched a few airholes in the lid.
The only logical reason I can think of for them keeping us around is that they will one day have a use for us. That thought chills me.
The other thought is that they’re keeping us around until they no longer have a use for us. That thought also chills me.
by submission | Dec 21, 2012 | Story |
Author : Kevin Crisp
The segutar’s primary “facial” orifice oozed with puss and gurgled as it laboriously produced sounds that be interpreted by the translator unit. “We have some additional questions for you, Mr. Anderson. Many of your earthly artifacts and customs seem devoted to a concept that has no parallel among us.”
“And what concept is that?” Anderson asked.
“What is ‘religion’?” it gargled.
Oh boy, thought Anderson. “Religion? Well, I guess it’s a set of theories in things beyond what science has shown to be fact.”
The segutar paused for a moment, as it tended to do when communicating new information telepathically to the hive mind. “So religion is a term that describes theories earthlings have yet to test scientifically?”
“No, I mean religion involves belief in things that are ultimately untestable.”
“We do not understand ‘untestable’. Do you mean that your scientific instrumentation has not been developed to test the hypotheses?”
I’m not handling this well, Anderson thought. “No, I mean religion is founded on questions to which the answers are ultimately unknowable.”
“What does ‘unknowable’ mean?”
“It means we can never really prove it or disprove it.”
The segutar sucked thoughtfully for a moment. “How can you be certain about what you will or will not know in the future? Do you not wish to know?”
“No, that’s not it. See, these beliefs are very old, and people are really psychologically and culturally invested in them. They pre-date scientific methods and are not founded on evidence.”
The segutar drooled pensively. “Why would you believe something for which there is no evidence?”
“Well, I don’t believe in any religion. There is no evidence in my view, but I have a neighbor who disagrees.”
“Is he defective? Does he rave?”
“No, he’s a pretty normal guy, just a bit eccentric and old fashioned, I guess.” Anderson felt his neck and face beginning to flush, and a strong desire to terminate the interview possessed him. He tried to change the topic. “Do you have insanity in the hive?”
The segutar paused, then slowly dribbled, “When the part cannot serve the whole, it must be eliminated.”
“Well, my neighbor’s not crazy, just different.” How do you explain differences of opinion to a hive mind? Anderson wondered. “To him, there’s plenty of evidence, at least in support of his particular religion anyway. I’m sure he’d be pretty adept at discrediting the evidence other people base their religions on, though.”
“His religion? Their religions? Are there different, conflicting systems of untestable, unknowable hypotheses?” The segutar was beginning to show the intergalactic equivalent of exasperation.
“Yes, there are literally hundreds of different religions. And even within a particular religion, believers believe in them to different degrees. Some take them to be 100% literal, and others accept only subsets of the beliefs. Look, this conversation is making me a little uncomfortable. Can we move on to the next topic?”
The segutar was quiet, but somehow Anderson didn’t think he was communicating with the hive mind. He thought the alien was simply flummoxed.
Finally, the segutar blubbered, “You are uncomfortable discussing religion?”
“Yes. It’s sort of considered to be rude to talk about it.”
“When we uncover nonuniformities in the fact matrix, we consider it of utmost importance to end the crisis immediately by seeking a common resolution.”
“Yes, well, we’ve tried that but we just end up killing each other.”
The segutar sat back in its chair and communicated telepathically with the hive mind. After several moments, the hive mind resolved the issue for ‘their-self’. Earthlings were defective and required elimination.
by submission | Dec 9, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“This time we’re done for. This is finally the end, I think,” said Triana. Of course, she didn’t really “say” anything. She communicated her thoughts to her husband, Loret, by modulating the zero-point energy that comprised her being.
“You say that every time something like this comes up. ‘This is it. This is the end,'” replied Loret. “We’ve been through worse than this. Remember posthumanism?”
“Posthumanism was nothing. That never worried me,” she responded with a submodulation of annoyance.
“That’s not how I remember it. You were concerned we wouldn’t really be the same people. Our consciousnesses transferred to organic metaprocessors. Synthesized bodies. You thought it would be two impostors waking up from the procedure with our memories. But, no, it was still us.”
“That didn’t bother me that much. The transition to full machine-beings was a little worrisome,” she said.
“I thought you’d liked being a machine,” replied Loret. “You used to love exploring the galaxy. Ah, those were the days, weren’t they? Spend a few years exploring a solar system, hibernate on the journey between stars, wake up a few subjective minutes later and explore another system.”
“We were little more than kids then. Less than 10,000 years old. When you’re that young it’s easy to think you’re immortal and indestructible,” said Triana. “But now…”
“There you go again, the eternal pessimist. You haven’t been this worried since the Plasma Revolution,” said Loret.
“We lost quite a few people going from machine to plasmatic beings,” said Triana. “It took them a few thousand years to get it right. Swapping your mind between brain tissue and metaprocessor tissue and molecular computer blocks is one thing. Mapping a personality and a hundred thousand years of memories into a plasma and keeping it stable is something else entirely. If more people had been concerned, maybe we would have lost fewer…”
Loret was no longer listening. He’d have rolled his eyes if he still had them. After several trillion years of marriage, you’d think I’d have learned not to have this argument, he thought to himself.
“Well,” Loret said, “here it comes. Get ready.”
“I’m scared,” said Triana. “A vacuum metastability event isn’t like anything we’ve ever encountered. The laws of physics themselves will be different once the false vacuum collapses. Life in any form might not even be possible.”
“If it’s not, we’ve had a good, long life. If it is, we’ll adapt as we always have.”
Loret modulated his zero-point energy field in synchronization with hers — the rough analog of an embrace for their current state — as they awaited the end of the universe.
