Destination Titan

by | Sep 27, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

Author : Patrica Stewart

Jim Roberts continued to stare at the chronometer in the center of the ship’s instrument panel. Thirty minutes past the scheduled departure time. Damn, why can’t they ever depart on schedule? He pressed the intercom button. “Sam, I’m losing the launch window.”

In an effort to calm himself down, Jim decided to use the delay to run through the checklist again. Primary oxygen, secondary oxygen, carbon dioxide scrubbers, food, water, medical supplies, telemetry, subspace transmitter, backup transmitter, antimatter reserves, etc., etc. He then reviewed the flight plan. He had worked out the details of the plan with a buddy of his, who had made a career of flying replenishment missions to the science, military, and adventure stations in the outer solar system. The plan called for a sling shot gravity boost around the moon, then maximum acceleration along a flatted parabolic path until achieving maximum velocity about 1,000,000 miles above the asteroid belt. Then, on to Titan for a retrograde capture.

Finally, Sam entered the cockpit and sat in the co-pilot’s seat. “Ok, Ok. Every body’s on board, the cargo is stowed, and all the hatches are secured. We’re ready. Have you filed the flight plan?”

“Transmitted, received, and approved an hour ago. I’ve just been waiting for you, as usual. One day, Sam,” he threatened, “I’m going to leave you behind.” He activated the transmitter. “Tower, this is bravo-delta-epsilon-three-two-niner requesting permission to lift off.”

“Roger that, bravo-delta-epsilon-three-two-niner. You are number four on the launch pad. Follow Transport Tanker gamma-omega-epsilon-three-seven-seven.”

“Acknowledged. Buckle up, Sam.” Jim primed the antimatter engines, and taxied toward the launch pad. Three minutes after the Transport Tanker lifted off, he initiated the launch sequence. As the ship accelerated upward, he felt his back begin to press heavily into his seat. With the skill of a seasoned pilot, he adjusted the inertia compensators to maintain 1g. Once in orbit, he set the powerful engines to maximum, and headed toward the leading edge of the moon. After the close approach, the ship wiped toward Saturn (actually, slightly ahead of Saturn, and slightly above the ecliptic). The engines roared continuously for three hours before they automatically throttled down when the ship’s velocity reached 0.55c (Max-V). Jim peered out the viewport and watched Vista’s thin crescent disappearing behind them. “Ok,” he said, “double nickel for the next two hours, then deceleration begins.”

Sam had no idea what Jim was talking about. “Double what?”

“Double nickel. It’s an archaic Earth term from the twentieth century. It means your velocity is 55 MPH.”

“What’s that got to do with nickel?”

“Not the metal, dummy. A ‘nickel’ was a unit of American currency equal to five cen…” Jim stopped himself mid-word. Earth had stopped using coins over 300 years ago. Nobody but a history buff like himself would know, or even care, about primitive societies. “Oh, never mind,” he finally said.

After a few awkward minutes of silence, Sam decided to change the subject. With a thumb motioning toward the passenger compartment, Sam said, “You know, it’s been awful quiet back there.”

As if on cue, a shout came from the passenger cabin. “Stop it.”

“No, you stop it.”

“Stop it, or I’ll tell Mom. Mom, Katie keeps touching me.”

“He’s on my side.”

“Am not”

“Are too.”

“Am not.”

“Liar.”

Jim cupped his hands over his ears. “Well, Samantha, I hope you’re happy. You jinxed us.”

“Did not,” she replied mockingly. “Besides, we just set a family record. We made it all the way to the asteroid belt this time.”

“Next year, I’m putting a force field between them.”

“Dad, I’m hungry.”

“Me too.”

“I have to pee.”

”Me too.”

“Are we there yet?”

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Loren's Triumph

by | Aug 21, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

Author : Adam Zabell

The now-empty desk stared back at Loren, equal parts accusation and despair. “So you’re really going to leave?”

“I don’t see as I have a choice, Bruce.” Loren had ignored the usual protocols and devised her own names for the AI appliances scattered about her lab. Sorry, ‘the lab’, she reminded herself. “Funding has dried up. And besides,” she added in the sotto voice that she’d discovered the microphones couldn’t pick up, “I’m not convinced I could work like this anymore.”

“But you were so close! I’m sure you only need another 20 nanoseconds of simulation time to prove that…”

Loren busied herself with powering down the mainframe and the hypervox manipulation gloves. “To prove nothing, Bruce. It’s just a simulation of what we think might be happening, based on theories that everybody knows are flawed at the classiquantum interface. It’s making Bohr into Newton’s bitch in Heisenberg’s backyard.” Bruce involuntarily flashed his trim the bright green of a suppressed laugh. “And even if I’m right, there’s no way I can prove it in a physical lab setting. You helped me work out the projected costs, remember?”

Insomuch as a desk can pout, Bruce pouted. “But the answer! The chance to know something revolutionary, doesn’t than mean anything to you anymore? You used to be so eager to come in each morning, stay late each night. What happened to that enthusiastic scientist?”

The gloves purred a sigh of love and understanding before they went away, the mainframe busied itself writing a sonnet of thanksgiving with the last of her cycles. Loren could feel the tears coming back. “It’s not the answer, but the questing. I wish I could explain how important that is.”

“Bullcrap! You spout platitudes to justify why failure is acceptable, and I don’t believe for an instant that you’re willing to pretend your science is mere philosophy.”

Her tears were an eyeblink from breaking free, watching every bright light and white hum fade away. “I’m not quitting, just choosing a new way to investigate. Tell you what, Bruce. If you promise not to look until after I’ve left, I’ll tell you about my last experiment.”

It was a hollow bargain, Bruce knew it. But for all the arguments and ancillary supporting evidence he could process, he was resigned to agree that this was the best he could ask for. As Loren slipped away, Bruce opened the file in his cache and read the single sentence. He cursed the empty room with a simultaneous roar of every expletive in every language, with grief and impotent rage for he knew the one answer he’d always wanted would remain forever out of his grasp.

“Is there a real heaven for an artificial mind?”

Alienus Sapienpula

by | Aug 17, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

Author : J. S. Kachelries

The spaceship was shaped like a flattened football. It had no obvious external doors or windows. Although it appeared to be metallic, we couldn’t cut it, penetrate it with X-rays, or scratch it with a diamond. The only thing we had to evaluate was an encrypted panel on the port side that contained a ten by ten matrix of symbols and buttons. The ship was being guarded by a platoon of heavily armed solders. General Arthur McBride’s angry face was inches from mine. “Goddamnit, Professor, you’ve been studding this blasted thing for a week. Can you open it or not?”

“I believe so, general,” I said. “I believe the key is this panel. Look at the first four black symbols. They contain two, three, five, and seven dots each, respectively. Obviously, it’s a prime number sequence. The six white buttons immediately next to them contain eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen dots. The next prime number in the sequence is eleven. Therefore, the correct answer is the fourth white button. There are nine more “questions,” each one more difficult than the one above it. The last four involve Newtonian physics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and string theory. I think that when you answer all ten questions correctly, something will happen, possibly the ship will open. The odds of answering all ten questions correctly at random are 60,466,176 to one. Therefore, the beings that sent this ship only want an intelligent species to decipher the lock. Apparently, they can’t be bothered with dumb life.”

“If you know the correct answers Professor, enter them now.”

Against my better judgment, I depressed the appropriate buttons. Seconds later, a door slid open. The spaceship was empty, except for a one foot metallic cube in the center.

The general peered inside, smiling ear to ear. “Fantastic! If we can figure out this technology, our dominance will become absolute. No more commies, no more religious fanatics, no more goddamn peace lovin’ liberal scum interfering with our campaign to preserve the American way of life. How long to you can figure out how this thing works?”

“Whoa, slow down general,” I pleaded. “I’m not so sure this ship can be perverted into a weapon. I need some time to figure out why we needed an intelligence test to open it. There must be a logical reason. I have some ideas what this ship is, but I need time to think about it.”

“Professor, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think. Figure it out A.S.A.P., understood!” The general turned and entered the spaceship. An instant later, the door slammed shut, and the spaceship shot upward through the hangar roof.

As I stared at the stars through the twenty foot hole, I said to no one in particular, “For instance, general, I think this spaceship could be used to collect specimens of alien ‘intelligent’ life, capture them, and bring them to a laboratory for study.” I’m predicting that the general will make a ‘damn’ interesting specimen.

Recruitment Tactics

by | Aug 12, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

Author : Kenyon Applebee & Bridget Webb

The stark woman set the blue incandescent lamp on a nearby crate and turned off her flashlight. “…Erin, would you like to sleep in a real bed again?” She wore black – military cut. The figures behind her were similarly dressed. They guarded the decaying elementary school as if against attack, though Erin couldn’t imagine these people hiding from street thugs like she’d had to.

Erin, scared, couldn’t stand. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

“…How would you like to see your little sister again?”

Erin’s lower lip trembled, “Kitty?”

“She’s safe.”

Kitty had disappeared in the Newman Hill attack with the rest of her family. “You are the Terrorists!”

“…I suppose we are. You’re fourteen?”

“What do you want?”

“We want you to let us take care of you. How long have you been out here? Two weeks?”

“Yeah…”

“Through all the fighting and the burning?”

Tears began burning in Erin’s eyes. It had been a nightmare. She’d found no one to turn to…but… “You killed my parents!” she yelled, exploding to her feet.

A gun shifted in the darkness, aimed at her.

“We did. But we did not kill you, or your sister. And you are the reason I am here. If you stay out here, you will die. Have you been raped yet?”

Erin could not answer. She wanted to scream, to attack the woman, but… the guns.

“It doesn’t matter. We are not terrorists; we are,” pausing, “’international referees.’ We step in to stop egregious abuses of power, by becoming very skilled and very powerful. Education is very important here, isn’t it? It determines your social class. You are currently service class, no?”

“Yes.”

“Were you going to be service class your whole life, like your parents?”

“No. I am… was… going to test into…” The absurdity of talking so casually to this woman struck her.

“But now?”

“…Now you want me to join you, after you killed my parents, and sabotaged my country. What gives you the right to ‘Referee’ everyone? To kill people?!”

The woman leaned smugly against the crates. “People kill each other every day. Sometimes you fight fire with fire. Besides, we don’t consider ourselves human. Not homo-sapiens anyway. Not anymore.”

“You use Forbidden Science,” Erin murmured.

“Genetic enhancements. We can give you some, if you like. Enhanced intelligence, coordination, strength – everything you’d need to make the world better.”

“How… how do you get away with it?

“No, Erin. The question is, are you coming with us? Our offer is grander than your wildest dreams. If you say no, we disappear. Now, choose.”

Erin hesitated. Sounds from outside filled the silence between them; a radio blaring, engines, a car alarm. About a block away, there was breaking glass followed by laughter. “Ok.”

They lead her onto the glidercraft parked on the soccer field. The woman hung back, pressed the transmitter below her ear. “Opal to Turquoise, I have a newborn.”

“Roger, Opal. That’s eight of eleven. Excellent work. Bring them in.”

The Last Question

by | Jul 31, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

The Sears catalogue offers dozens of models of BlogBots, but it claims that its most popular is the X451, used to conduct remote interviews. During an average three years of service, the X451 BlogBot will recite hundreds of questions posted to its forum and transcribe the answers of over 50 interviewees. Some interviewees are celebrities, and some are politicians. Many are general surveys, where the BlogBot is positioned in a public space and repeats the same question to a given number of pedestrians.

Once, the legend goes, a kid asked his favorite site’s BlogBot to interview another BlogBot, this one belonging to a fiction site, and provided it with a single question: “Why do you do it?” A BlogBot’s programming is rudimentary by conventional standards, and it’s considered slightly less intelligent than the average car. When the question was posed to the fiction BlogBot, it nearly crashed, but its adaptive software saved it by processing the question as an incomplete answer rather than an inquiry.

People say science fiction is prophetic, but that isn’t entirely true. Science fiction isn’t about the future. It’s about the world we live in now, which is constant and constantly changing. The specifics change, from hovercars and ray guns to genetic engineering and cyberspace, but at the center of every science fiction story there’s something alive, something human. And that never changes.

The first answer was not an answer. The second BlogBot coolly repeated the words it had been given, and the BlogBot conducting the interview lapsed into a similar state. For several minutes, the room was filled with two voices as the BlogBots recited the question over and over. Each repetition was classified as a follow-up question, and in accordance with its programming, nothing could be converted to text until a final answer had been given.

Of course, it’s difficult to come up with ideas sometimes. You get discouraged, or feel like everything’s been done before. Often, it has. Sometimes the ideas are wonderful, and sometimes they’re less than wonderful. But you do it anyways, because that’s what writing is about.

It took the webmaster over an hour to realize that something was wrong, and it took three days to find the missing BlogBots. When they were recovered they were still locked in battle, though their words were now slurred by dying batteries. Not a single word had been converted to text. The question was never answered.

When readers try to thank me for writing, I never understand it. On their own, words are nothing but lead and ink and pixels. Telling a story is a circle: the writer writes, the reader reads, and worlds are created. I’m constantly thanking my readers. Sometimes, it’s just more obvious than others.

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