by featured writer | Dec 7, 2012 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, Featured Writer
“Good evening honored representatives of the World Coalition,” Dr. Dretch drones standing near an unconscious patient strapped to an inclined table. The top of the patient’s skull has been removed, revealing grey brain matter. A neural net, made of fine filament is stretched across the moist tissue, relaying relevant data from various lobes to several sleek, crystalline monitors surrounding the Doctor. His audience, the Cabal, observe from some unseen gallery.
“I have dedicated my entire life to realizing the World Coalition’s glorious vision; ‘The unification of all global citizens under one supreme authority.’ To this end, I have perfected Cerebral Mechanics, the science of mind control.
“With Cerebral Mechanics I’m able to manipulate every system in the body, effectively playing it like an intricate musical instrument. Most importantly, like any instrument, it can be re-tuned, simply and effectively.
“Cerebral Mechanics will reshape the way the modern mind thinks, ending the anarchy of rebellion currently plaguing the World Coalition. With your permission, I shall demonstrate.”
Dretch beams proudly. After a tense silence, a voice speaks. American. “We’re aware of your alleged success, Doctor, however, the reason you’re here today is to demonstrate the unexpected side effect of Cerebral Mechanics mentioned in your report. Meta-Consciousness. The OMEGA Complex.”
A sheen of moisture appears on Dretch’s forehead. Thin tributaries of sweat form quickly within the deep contours of his face, bending around the multi-optics monocle implanted in his right eye to finally drip off his pudgy chin.
“Deliberately initiate OMEGA Complex? That would not be advisable.”
“You’re a Cerebral Mechanic, Doctor, not an advisor.” Asian female. “Can you, or can you not duplicate OMEGA Complex? We wish to observe this phenomenon.”
“I’ll begin immediately.” Dretch adjusts his neural wand anxiously. “I must caution, however, the identity I’m about to manifest poses a very dangerous threat. Furthermore, Cerebral Mechanics will no longer be a viable tool for control once the patient has gone OMEGA.”
“We’ll consider ourselves sufficiently warned. Proceed.” German.
Reluctantly, Dretch initiates the complicated procedure, his neural wand targeting strategic cerebral algorithms. After several minutes of intricate, synaptic adjustments, he steps nervously away from the table. The patient’s mouth has curved into a disturbing, beatific smile.
“OMEGA complex initiated. Request permission to leave Operating Gallery.”
“Denied. Commence the interview.”
Dretch turns nervously toward the patient, whose febrile eyes are fixed on him, latent power glowing within.
“Do I unnerve you, Doc?”
“I’ll ask the questions,” Dretch snaps, struggling to maintain control.
“Ask away.”
“Who are you?”
“You’d be more interested in what I am.”
“What are you then?”
It sings, note perfect, “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.” Lyrics from a long black-listed song of the previous century.
“Nonsense.”
“What was once divided has been remade. I am Omega-Mind, perceiving the beginning and ending of all things.”
“Will you serve the Coalition?” Dretch’s voice trembles with false courage.
“How little you understand. There are no servants. There’s nothing to serve.”
The patient’s restraints clatter to the floor. Lights flicker as he levitates from the chair, wreathed in blue auroral flames.
“Destroy them,” someone commands.
“You kill your prophets, now witness! Your house is left desolate!” His eyes ignite – twin suns of rage within a living dynamo. Bolts of electricity lash the room. “The Universe beckons!”
Vents blast the Operation Gallery with broiling clouds of poisonous gas. When the smoke clears only Dretch’s electrified corpse remains. The patient is gone. There is no sign of egress.
“We must harness this power.” The American.
In Chinese, “Perhaps we’re not meant to.”
by Julian Miles | Nov 27, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
‘The night is yet young’ as my grandmother used to say. Apparently it was my grandfather’s favourite line before they’d go out and party. She told me about the two of them jetting off to Dubai for breakfast and always being in Shanghai for Chinese New Year. She also bemoaned the difficulty of remaining elegant in the face of a weekend of partying. It was difficult to be elegant on a Sunday evening when you hadn’t seen your wardrobe since Friday afternoon.
Fortunately, the times have caught up with the needs of the modern lady. Nanite refresher booths are a feature of every ladies room these days, and my nanofluidic couture allows me to vary my styles in response to the slightest need.
Tonight I am a belle dame from the Mississippi Riverboat era, swanning about in a flounced and ruffed creation appearing to be of jade velvet over black leather. My Personal Access Device is transformed into a pair of long lace gloves. Elegance at will.
“Christina, my dear. You look ravishing.”
His choice of words makes me smile. Carmody has a reputation for taking the ravishing bit all too seriously. But he knows that I know his tastes. He slides closer with a devastating smile in a face that cost a million. A shame that making his personality pretty is more than cosmetic science can accomplish.
“Why don’t we take a stroll somewhere quieter, mademoiselle?”
I am just about to tell him to fornicate and depart when my PAD clenches about my wrists as my dress locks up.
Carmody smiles: “Oh dear, cheap bodyware? Wonderful.”
My intent to shout for aid is pre-empted by my choker acting literally. Carmody is the very soul of attentiveness, helping me past concerned partygoers, onto the veranda and down into the bowers of the love gardens. The bastard is using a slaver program to turn my couture into a prison. I think about what I’m actually wearing and realise I am, to put it politely, vulnerable to manipulation.
Carmody walks through the starlit evening to a remote nook containing a low table, with me accompanying him like a meal in a serving-droid.
“I think we’ll start with obscene and get inventive from there. Any objections? Thought not.”
Bastard bastard rapist bastard. I am striving to remain calm when Carmody emits a falsetto shriek and collapses rigidly, his face slamming into the gravel with a satisfying crunch. A figure steps into view as my couture rushes to cover my nakedness.
“My apologies for being a tad late, Miss Christina. Your brother’s compliments; he felt that you would object if he insisted that you employed a Safeguard.”
Safeguards are personal bodyguards trained, enhanced and equipped with the latest countermeasures for just about anything. Using them is deemed as gauche, but after tonight, I’m a convert.
He offers his hand and pulls me up without effort. His impeccable couture changes colour and style to complement mine as I take in his two-metre tall frame. I could become accustomed to this. Turning slightly, I nudge Carmody with my toe.
“What happened to him?”
“I thought it best to dampen his ardour by restricting the volume of his codpiece as I locked his couture. The servants will take him to the gatehouse for collection by the Police.”
I like the edge to his voice as he describes defending me, but I have to confirm my suspicions: “What volume, exactly?”
He actually blushes.
“Five cubic centimetres.”
I laugh. My Safeguard and I are going to get along just fine.
by Clint Wilson | Nov 26, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
The secretary general entered the command center with her entourage. She walked directly toward me, an imposing figure. Although we had not yet met in person she obviously knew I was the team leader. Dispensing with any formalities she got right to the point.
“So Doctor Grant, I am told that you and your team have deciphered WOW2020?”
“I uh…” clearing my throat I quickly composed myself. “Ahem, yes, the signal detected some three months ago apparently coming from the direction of Hoag’s Object, an odd ring galaxy some 600 million light years distant, has been baffling us up to now…”
She interrupted, “I know where the signal comes from Doctor, you can skip the science lesson. I’m here to find out what it says.”
“Yes, of course,” I apologized. “Um, as I was saying, we were baffled,” I turned and reached out to the mega decoder humming and blinking there in the center of the room, “But not this baby.” I smiled and patted the top of the Cray Translator Array, a ten-meter long bank of super computers working in unison, enough calculating power to state pi to some ten trillion places. “The signal is extremely complex but the decoder has been able to break it down into a comprehensible message.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Comprehensible how?”
“Oh, why plain English of course.”
She exchanged a glance with one of her aids and turned back to me. “Okay Doc, I’m waiting.”
“Yes… as you will soon hear, we have run the translation through a basic voice modulator.”
The eyebrow went up again as she wondered at my unfamiliar technical term.
“Oh,” I clarified, “It will sound like Doctor Stephen Hawking.” And with that I turned to my console and typed in a command.
Suddenly loudspeakers blared throughout the room as everyone stood listening intently.
“I AM THE KNOWLEDGE FACILITATOR. I EXIST TO EDUCATE THOSE WHO DEVELOP THE INTELLIGENCE TO WONDER AND UNDERSTAND. I AM A NATURALLY OCCURING PHENOMENOM, EVOLVING OVER EONS FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF ANSWERING QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PROPERTIES OF THE UNIVERSE. I AM NO LIVING THING YET I AM HERE TO SERVE ALL LIVING THINGS. SINCE YOU HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFUL IN TRANSLATING MY MESSAGE, WE NOW SPEAK EACH OTHER’S LANGUAGES. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ASK ME ANYTHING YOU DESIRE TO LEARN.”
I turned to her smiling.
She said very bluntly, “That’s it?”
I blinked several times then, “I don’t understand… do you not find it wonderful?”
She stepped closer. “I’m not a complete idiot Doctor.” She poked me in the chest. “How the hell are we supposed to ask it questions when it will take over half a billion years to send a signal back?”
I brightened up. “But that’s the thing you see Madam Secretary, we’ve already asked it our first question!”
“You what?” She looked around at her entourage seemingly furious. “Did anyone else know about this?”
She was greeted only with nervous mumbles, shrugs and averted eyes. Seeing she was getting nowhere she turned back to me and poked me in my chest again, this time much harder. “Well then Doctor, I feel like I’m going to regret this but, exactly what question did you ask it?”
I tugged at my collar. It suddenly felt very warm in the command center. “We uh, we asked it if there was any quicker way to send messages back and forth.”
She stood there motionless for a moment, then shrugged thoughtfully. “Hmm, makes sense I guess.” Then she leaned forward smiling nastily, “Now how about we ask it why I still feel like slapping you?”
by Duncan Shields | Nov 23, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The controls were familiar to any race that had developed mechanical means to get around on their planet’s surface.
There was an altitude stick, turning/braking pedals, a throttle plus a variety of buttons and dials to let the pilot know how the trip was going.
A year or two of study to get the math and emergency situations covered and there you go. Every single sentient race could become a pilot.
Except one.
Humans are dumb. They routinely disregarded the most important rule.
“Don’t look at the wormhole’s terminus” was written in all of the available languages, pictograms, sensefields, and soundfeeds around the edges of the front viewscreen of the ship.
That singularity that broke the back of the universe’s insistence on rational behaviour was a place where laws of physics broke down. To look at it drove any sentient mind from this universe irretrievably insane.
They went into whatever fetal, litter, or eggsac position their race was familiar with and stared, wide-eyed, for the rest of their soon-to-be-machine-assisted lives.
Every race knew. Peripheral vision was okay to a point. Look around the point, not at it. Avoid the center. Avoid the center. Avoid the center.
Humans. Sigh.
They called it curiousity. Every single human pilot that had attempted a jump had looked at the center of the singularity at some point during the jumps. The jumps are usually only a few hours long.
They’re banned from piloting now. They’re transported in rooms without windows. Universally, they’re looked down on because of this one trait.
by submission | Nov 18, 2012 | Story |
Author : Phro Metal
A chill autumn breeze blows through the trees lining the old, cracked cement path. Their leaves whisper like the fragmented cries of an artificial intelligence trapped on a dying CPU. Save for the weary pale glow of a single, distant skyscraper light, the midnight sky is blacker than a disconnected monitor’s lifeless stare. Homeless, nearly feral cats wander between the tree trunks, playing dismissively with terrified field mice.
A lone man treads down the path in heavy, wooden geta. His even pace clacks, clacks, clacks rhythmically on the cement. Twin swords rattle quietly with his every step, though he pays them hardly any notice. The beauty of his slow, steady march is marred by the jerking of cybernetics running desperately low on power. He would be a pathetic figure were it not for his quiet, burning gaze.
Not far ahead, a lonely street lamp glows like a once-brilliant firefly slowly dying of radiation poisoning. Drawing closer, a small crack splits across the man’s stoic countenance and relief is writ large in his eyes. A few more steps and he finds himself under the lamp, bathed in its yellow hue. As he tosses his head back to expose his face to its rain of photons, steel glints in his neck and shimmers from his right hand. Bathed in the light, his once-labored breathing slows to a low, monotonous rhythm like the mournful melodies of a Noh play. As the light pours over his body, his guard slips and he finds himself tumbling back through memory.
Twelve hours earlier, the man was not alone. His companions numbered five, all dressed in the somber colors of the warriors who lived under the clouds of eternal night. Charged with a mission to dispel those unchanging shadows, to turn back the onward roll of environmental decay, they had headed into the Dark Realm where none of their kingdom dared venture.
Hour after hour, they had marched silently, their cybernetic eyes and composite legs guiding them over treacherous terrain and through forests of mute horror. The deeper they had journeyed, the tenser they had grown, but neither the shriek of a Darkling nor the howl of a Nightwolf had been heard. They all were springs clamped down tighter than physics should ever allow. Numerous times, snapping branches had brought their swords from their sheaths, but never were there enemies to strike.
And then the attack came. It was silentmore silent than the emptiness of space. And quickquicker than Mercury’s orbit of the Sun. With his companions dead before their heads hit the ground, the now lone warrior let his blade fly. Through steel, flesh, and bone, it cut deep and strong. Like the perfectly-placed steps of a wild cat, the man flew through the Darklings hidden amongst the shadows. When at last there was nothing left to kill, the man lit a tiny candle, said a silent prayer over the deceased and set off yet again.
Ten hours of ceaseless marching had brought him here to the first source of light he’d seen in days. As the light washes over his body, his dark brown eyes begin to glow, turning green as they grow brighter and brighter. After some minutes pass, his eyes are as bright as a full moon. At last, with a few blinks, he lowers his face. After seven deep breaths and a moment’s pause, he takes a step forward and then treads back into the darkness.
