The GENErevolution ™ is Now

Author : Joshua Reynolds

“Are you sure this will work?” the President asked. He was broad, clumsy and permanently flustered. These were his only defining qualities, and his election was still regarded as something of a fluke.

“Of course, Mr. President.” The GENErevolution representative said confidently, clone-bank teeth blisteringly white in the finest smile medical science could provide. He gestured and the corporate doctor leaned over the President, gloved fingers clipping, fastening and generally making the President exceedingly uncomfortable. The last was not part of the doctor’s job, merely a benefit given his current circumstances.

“The procedure has become a staple of the GENErevolution services packet. We use only the finest cloned neural webs from our celebrity DNAbanks. Great men, Mr. President, great men.” The representative continued, watching the doctor work. The doctor tapped the President’s skull-implant harder than he should have, causing him to jump.

“Ow!”

“Stop moving please.” The doctor’s hands gently rotated the President’s head back into position with calm precision. Inside of course, he was seething as only a man of high education can. Six weeks earlier, the President had railroaded a bill through Congress that allowed corporations, like GENErevolution for instance, to clone and brain-bump valuable employees as part and parcel of company insurance programs. Since the clones were the property of the creating body a cunning corporate body, again GENErevolution for instance, could in fact lay-off the original employee and use his clone at cut-rate cost instead.

The doctor, a graduate of the New Bethesda surgery program and worth six-figures, had received his pink slip in the mail that morning. He had also received a gold watch because GENErevolution was like a family and all about tradition.

The watch, having been designed by a disgruntled former employee in the souvenir division and newly cloned himself, did not work.

Thus, the doctor poked the President again.

“Ow! You’re doing that on purpose!”

“Please don’t move.” The doctor said, unsmiling. The GENErevolution representative, who had not been cloned as the new practice was waived for management-level employees, leaned forward, hands behind his back.

“Don’t worry Mr. President, a complete neural overlay is nothing to fret over. It’s quite old hat these days, ha-ha-ha.” The representative’s laugh was as artificial as the rest of him. It was borrowed from a popular comedian, royalties pending, of course.

“Ha-ha?” the President said. “And I’ll still be me, right? I mean, I’ll have all the moves and such, but I’ll still be me?”

“You’ll be fine. Completely unchanged, save for the mesmerizing skills of Gene Kelly implanted into your cortex. All we’re really doing is giving your neural network a good shoring up to prevent any synaptic burn and maybe give you a few smooth moves, ha-ha-ha.”

“Good. Good. The Sin-Lu Treaty Annual Ball is tonight at the Chinese embassy and I’d like to make a good impression.”

“Oh you will, you will. Right doctor?”

“Of course.” The doctor said. He glanced at the neural tray, containing a cloned neural web tattooed with the letters ’G-K’.

These letters did not stand for Gene Kelly.

That night, at the ball, the President pulled a ceremonial Shou Dao sword, dating from the Song Dynasty, off of the wall and attempted to behead the Chinese Prime Minister while shouting “This is for building that bloody great wall, you bastard!” in ancient Mongolian.

The Board of Directors for GENErevolution could not be reached for comment.

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Celestial Mechanic

Author : hraesvelgr

“Solar Systems are easy to program. Way easier than I thought.”

“Told ya so,” I could hear the Director’s voice crisp and clear. “Did you enjoy the challenge?”

I smiled down at the still water of the lake before me, reflected in it a perfect image of Earth and its moon as viewed through the dome of my Surveyor Station. The sight was pristine, perfect; not just the beauty of reality as a canvas, but now that I knew every detail of the situation’s physics, now after I had run millions upon millions of equations, sorted through mathematics that had previously been beyond my imagining, I could appreciate the movement of the planets and satellites in a way no other human being would ever be able to.

“Yes,” I answered plainly, after a long pause, having almost forgotten the phone at my ear. “I mean. I love what I do.”

“Someone will be there in the morning to check on your productivity, but from the sound of things, I’m guessing all those recommendations were right about you.” The Director’s voice had a certain allure to it; one that told of a promotion, maybe even a bonus or an upgraded  Surveyor Station. “Once I get the report, kid, there’s a chance we can talk about getting you to work on Letser 920. It’s a sixteen-planet job.”

More work! I stifled a small laugh of sheer joy, still eyeing the reflection, watching as the moon drifted gracefully so near earth that it looked for a moment that the two might touch. “I’m up for anything you can throw at me, boss. Now that I have a handle on it, I could probably even build a solar system from scratch.” There was a flash of light in my little lake, reflected from above where the sun was peeking out from between the two celestial bodies. My distracted mind thrummed over the math of the event for a moment, and there was a little tick in my subconscious telling me that the sun was still three hours from that sort of dawn. The Perturbation Theory could account for that, maybe. But, really…

My thoughts paused to reprocess what was going on, taking their time, going over the calculations I’d run and trying to figure what had…

Happened. I snapped my head away from the reflection. Looking up, I saw with my own eyes, the flash of light hadn’t been from the sun; Earth had just suffered a head-on collision with its own moon. “Son of a bitch!” Goodbye, Africa.

For several seconds I just stared upward, speechless, only partly hearing the director’s inquisitions about my sudden explication. I could see it all now: the perturbations that had gone wrong, the prophetic calculations of what was to come, the Earth breaking apart, the orbits of the other planets all skewed into catastrophic spirals. It was to be a dead solar system. And what’s worse, it was going to be hell for me to score even a two-planet job after the Director heard about this one.

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Secrets of the Universe

Author : Scott E Meyer

“Some of what you are about to read you will think is science fiction, ” said the front of the dust jacket, “But I assure you, dear reader, that it is not. It is based on sound scientific principles with which we are all familiar.” Edgar skipped on. The book looked dry, windy and boring, but Edgar liked dry, windy and boring. He amused himself, picking out the long words to see if he could pronounce them, words like “supersymmetry,” “quantum fluctuations,” and “unified field theory.” For a minute, he allowed himself to be absorbed by what this Dr. Ledbetter had to say. He imagined the world as Ledbetter imagined, a world of free energy, travel to the stars, transmutation of matter and all the dreams he had ever had coming true.

Edgar looked up, curious as to which section of the bookstore he had stumbled into. To the left were Bigfoot Sightings, UFO’s, and the Loch Ness Monster. To the right were alien abductions and government conspiricies. Not an auspicious place to find the missing secrets of the universe. He flipped to the back of the dust jacket, the author’s biography. It seems this Dr. Ledbetter had been laughed off stages and out of seminars for years before finally vanishing only a few years ago. He had only published one book, the very book Edgar held in his hands.

Edgar frowned. As much as he wanted to believe, wanted to be caught in the mystery and play with the secrets Ledbetter claimed to reveal, he couldn’t bring himself to take the man seriously when the entire scientific community had already laughed him into obscurity. He placed the book back on the shelf, determined to find something of value in this bookstore.

The secrets of the universe would have to wait for another generation.

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The Supaida Snare

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

The SS Furai was traveling at warp three through the Supaida Sector on a survey mission to look for planets that were suitable for human colonization. A decade earlier, an unmanned probe had passed through the sector and reported numerous habitable planetary systems around two Type G stars, and four Type K stars. Each of the star systems all had at least one terrestrial planet orbiting in the habitable zone, sometimes referred to as the “goldilocks zone.” The Furai’s mission was to determine if any of the planets meet the criteria for human colonization; the plant-to-animal biomass ratio had to be 98.5 or higher, and no indigenous animal species could have an Intellect Potential (IP) above 64.2.

The first two star systems they surveyed were non-viable due to exceptionally high concentrations of animal mass. They were approximately one hour from the third system when the ship unexpectedly came to a dead stop. Fortunately, the inertial dampeners responded instantaneously and prevented any serious injuries. “What the…,” snapped the Captain? He pressed the intercom button. “Chief, why have we dropped out of warp,”

“I don’t know, sir. The warp engines are still on-line. They’re straining like hell too. Did we hit something?”

“Unknown, Chief,” he replied. “Shut down the engines until we figure this out. Ensign O’Toole, any idea what stopped us?”

“Sensors readings are normal, sir. Nothing unusual in the electromagnetic spectrum. Graviton activity is typical. Charged particle density is low. Huh, this is unusual. The quantum chromodynamic sensors show a tiny spike in the strong interaction color confinement. But it’s barely above background. I can’t believe that has anything to do with our situation.”

“We need to be sure, Mister O’Toole,” responded the Captain. “Take a science pod out, and have a look.”

Fifteen minutes later, O’Toole reported in. “Captain, I’m approximately 10 klicks aft of your position. I’ve adjusted my sensors to detect baryon waves. It appears that you are caught in a 2D matrix of some kind. From here, it looks like a large net that extends for light years in the Y and Z directions.”

“Mister Kline, did the probe report this phenomenon?”

The science officer quickly accessed the records. “Captain, according to the logs, Earth lost contact with the probe before it surveyed this corridor. It was presumed lost. However, since the probe had mapped 95% of the sector, Central Command determined that it was not cost-effective to send another probe to complete the survey.”

“What? Protocol requires complete sensor mapping before manned vessels can enter a new system. This is…”

O’Toole’s voice interrupted the captain in mid sentence. “Sir, I’m picking up a huge flux of fermions. The density is increasing fast. It’s off scale. Sir, it looks like the signature for quark matter. But I’ve never seen it this intense. I’m transmitting the sensor data to Lieutenant Kline.”

“Put it on the main viewer, Mister Kline,” ordered the captain.

The viewscreen at the front of the bridge showed an unmagnified image of the Furai entangled in a faint 2D network. Suddenly, a glowing semi-transparent anomaly three times larger than the ship entered the field of view. It moved toward the ship and began to encapsulate it with long string-like filaments similar in appearance to the 2D net.

“Damn. Red alert,” shouted the captain. “Raise shields. Charge the hull plates, maximum intensity. Tactical, bring weapons on-line. Target that creature and fire everything we have. Helm, full impulse power, and initiate a barrel-roll, maximum sustainable RPM. Chief, I need warp engines, now. If we can’t break free of this web, we’re all dead.”

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Special School

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

When we were both sixteen, we made a pact. We said to each other that we would never race ahead without each other. Now we’re eighteen and I barely see you.

I’ve had a whole arsenal installed in my arms and head. You cook the food in the cafeteria. You weren’t picked. Something in the genes, they said. I pleaded your case but they didn’t listen. We drifted. I got the full scholarship.

I stand in front of you and there’s an awkward pause after you’ve squeezed the ice cream scoop of mashed potatoes onto my plate. You’re looking at me with an eyebrow playfully raised. I scan you and I can see that while you’re acting nonchalant, your heart rate is triple what it usually is.

One of the reasons we drifted is because it became obvious to me after my augmentation that you were in love with me and you always had been. I’m not a good actor so it became obvious to you that I knew how you felt and didn’t feel the same way.

After the classification process terminated and we were put in different categories, I didn’t have a chance to explore how I felt about you. I might have loved you back, given time. Well, that’s kind of weak, I suppose. If you know, you know. That’s what I hear in the pop songs. So I guess I didn’t love you. Luckily I was too busy to ever have ‘the talk’ with you.

I heard you’d decided to stay in the school and major in science. You’d never see any field work but you’d probably design weapons I’d be using one day.

Now here you are. Working in the cafeteria so that you can pay the bills and looking at me and you still want me. All of a sudden I feel like I’m standing in a soup line.

I guess neither of us were very smart.

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