New Horizons

Author : Hasen Hull

“Rise and shine, sleepyhead.”

He groans, as if forced to life.

“It’s eleven and we’ve got things to do. Come on. Get up.”

“Ten more minutes, baby, alright?”

I smile. “Five, and that’s my final offer.”

There were protests at first. Human rights activists calling for bans, sanctions, restrictions. Jason once told me about a group of people called ‘tree huggers.’ People who claimed they cared for the environment so much they clung to trees to stop them being cut down. Jason and I agreed that these activists went the way of the tree huggers.

“You ever get sick of this place?” he asks.

“What do you mean?”

“You know. Tired. Trapped.”

“No. Not really. I like it here.”

“So you’d never think about leaving?”

I consider this. “Maybe. But where would we go?”

“Anywhere.” He stretches his arms out wide. “The sky’s the limit.”

Beyond that, there was little opposition. With safeguards in place, governments were unconcerned. The market was ready for it, and when the first celebrities came out in support, so was the public. It was a natural progression, and the counterargument quickly fell out of fashion.

“And Brad’s coming over?”

“Brad and Naomi, yes.”

“Ooo-la-la.”

I shoot him a look, before breaking into a laugh.

New Horizons was founded in 2048 by a wealthy businesswoman named Samantha Doeer, and it marked the future of humanoid technology. Operating under the slogan The Sky’s the Limit, then Serving Humanity, it reinvested the enormous capital gained from first-generation humanoids – already of adequate complexity to carry out a multitude of interpersonal tasks with lifelike accuracy – in order to establish the foundation of its future operations. Within a decade, ten base models became one hundred and twenty, followed by custom-made options to almost any specification.

“Absolutely not. Impossible.”

“Oh, you keep telling yourself that.”

“I will, because it’s true,” he says, grinning teasingly, goofily, both.

“One of the first things you said to me was you couldn’t even do stick figures. Now you’re telling me you’re the better artist?”

“What can I say? I learned from the best, surpassed my master, all that.” He points to the twin WaterScape frames propped against a wall, not yet installed. “Look. Just look.”

“Yours is good.” A deliberate pause. “But mine’s better.”

There are still activists, and now they protest not ‘the devaluation of human relations,’ but for the right for humanoids to be recognised and treated the same as humans. Great strides have been made towards this, facilitated by how difficult it has become to tell human and humanoid apart, but activists are pushing for legislation that allows humanoids to erase the knowledge that they are created, not born. As part of regulated trial tests, some humanoids already have this characteristic.

“Alright, alright, we’ll go out-”

“Like you said we would.”

“-like I said we would, and then we’ll come back, and then Brad and Naomi. Okay?”

“Ooo-la-la,” I say.

I see it on holoscreen, and feel it on the streets. A sense of community and meaning. A sense of belonging. Sometimes Jason reads out passages he likes on his reader, from stories written over a hundred years ago. Between people, there is always a struggle, cold and bitter, an endless stream of loneliness and wasted life. Not like this. Deep down, I know that this is it: this is what I’ve always wanted.

“But can you tell?”

I tilt my head. “Tell what?”

He smiles. “How beautiful you are.”

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Employee of the Month

Author : Travis Gregg

The two men sat in silence across from each other in their usual booth at the diner. Thomas was brooding, clearly upset about something and Stan had known him long enough to just let him stew. The two men had been friends since college and still tried to get together semi regularly despite jobs and wives and kids. Although nearly the same age, Thomas looked noticeably older. His hair was mostly gray and his shoulders sagged significantly.

“I always had a fantasy,” Thomas started, breaking the silence, “or at least a day dream I would indulge in, where I had a couple more copies of myself. Imagine the productivity, the things at work I could get done. I used to really enjoy owning a small business, but more times than I can count I have wished for a couple copies of myself. No more calling in sick for bullshit reasons, no more saying the wrong thing at the wrong time in front of the customer. With at least a couple more copies of myself things would really get done.”

Stan knew where Thomas was going with this. He’d heard bits and pieces from mutual friends but hadn’t gotten the full story.

Thomas continued, more talking to himself than anything. “When I saw the advertisement, the one that everyone saw, the one where you could get yourself or a loved one cloned, I knew it was for me. The company that was making the clones had never had a request for a 32 year old clone. Most of the time people wanted kids who couldn’t have them. Maybe an accident happened and they’d want someone a little older. The company had also never had an order for eight. I had to negotiate for weeks but a couple months later they showed up. I was only going to get two at first but why not go big. Got a quantity discount too.”

“The day the clones showed up I fired my entire staff. Every role, the warehouse guys, the accountant, the two sales guys. Everyone. Didn’t need them, I already knew how to do their jobs, and if I knew then my clones would too. For the first couple hours it was kind of awkward but we all got over it pretty quick. They were me after all, and then we got to work.”

“That seems pretty extreme. Some of those guys worked for you from the beginning,” Stan replied.

“The first month was the best we ever had,” Thomas continued, as if he hadn’t heard Stan. “Sales were up, complaints were down, and I didn’t have to worry about someone screwing up. A couple mistakes were made but I literally couldn’t have done any better personally so I couldn’t get too upset.”

“After that first month though, things slowed down a bit. A little less enthusiasm in the office, especially form the warehouse guys, was the start of it. We all agreed to shuffle the roles a bit. Obviously some positions were better than others and we were all capable. Spread it around a little bit.”

“A couple months after that, clones Four and Five started embezzling and clone Two stopped coming in entirely. Could I fire myself? That’s a pretty complicated question it turns out.”

“Six months after my brilliant idea we had a literal coup and for a time I was ousted. I got Six and Seven on my side, convinced Two to come back, and Three after some tense negotiations to form a majority but it’s tenuous at best. The next step is going to be litigation for sure and I’ll be suing myself for the next couple years if I’m lucky.”

“It turns out I make a terrible employee, in fact I’m the worst employee I’ve ever had.”

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Conduit

Author : Matthew Prosperi

The glowing keys of the command console reflected lazily off of my “Best Team Player!” mug that sat dangerously close to the expensive equipment in front of me. I considered knocking the mug over longer than usual before glancing outside my small observation window into the hub of activity on the factory floor below.

Mr. Rockwell, the head of the labor union placed me here after the accident, and here I stay. Condemned for the foreseeable future keying pre ordained commands into a computer. I returned my gaze back to my mechanic partner with a sigh, and noticed a red light flickering on and off. I stared in shocked silence for several moments until a voice from orientation ran through my head;

“If that red light ever goes off: call administration immediately.”

I picked up the phone, which led upstairs to administration as I turned around to face the manufacturing floor. The units were being shuffled along like they had every day since I started, and nothing seemed to be amiss. Their human faces always made me uncomfortable. They looked less human and more…dead.

I kept scanning the room while waiting for the phone connection to reach my superiors until I saw the error. A unit was standing off the supply line and facing away from me.

Someone must have moved it. The machines were programmed to be service units. They have no ability to act on their own. As if in response to my thought, the machine in question began to move. I then realized the machine was holding a tablet. Finally, the other line answered as I hurriedly tried to explain the situation;

“A unit is operating on its own, please advise.”

The voice on the other line sounded confused and replied; “Please repeat, a unit in manufacturing is acting on its own?”

Frustration gripped me as I responded, “YES! PLEASE ADVISE.”

Feedback began to override what the voice was saying before the line went dead. I stared at the useless phone and then diverted my glance outside as I remembered the immediate threat. The machine was interacting with the tablet and seemed to be proficient in its use.

I quickly began putting the emergency codes in action, which locks the manufacturing area and prevents anything from getting in or out. The doors were locked and the manufacturing stopped.

A sigh of relief escaped me and I looked at the unit curiously…and it looked back. We made eye contact for several moments until it turned back to the tablet. I stifled my worries because I knew that with the emergency protocols in place, nothing could leave the factory floor.

I almost didn’t notice my right arm until it was already putting commands into my console. I stared in shock as my arm was operating autonomously. I grabbed it with my other arm and swept it off the console. But it immediately began typing into the computer again, inhumanly fast. I stared in horror while the possibility of remotely hacking cybernetic prosthetics was suddenly introduced to me in the most terrifying of ways. I quickly diverted my attention to preventing myself from allowing the rogue unit from escaping the floor but it was too late.

The emergency protocols were lifted and the factory doors began to open as I looked on helplessly. The machine then strolled into the control room until it stopped in front of me, looked up, and smiled.

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Science Fair

Author : Mark Thomas

The teacher flexed the piece of moulded plastic.

“I used our 3D printer to make it,” the girl said. Her heels were placed tightly together and she wobbled her hips back and forth nervously. She was new to the school and always tried so hard to impress.

The teacher rotated the model in her hands. The back was a concave shell, as if it was a large sophisticated cake mold, but the front was an incredibly detailed rendering of a partially dissected dog. Anatomical parts were labeled, but not with childish terms like “tummy.” This model referred to the “zygomatic arch” in a peeled section of skull and “adipose tissue” underneath a flap of skin pulled back to reveal glistening intestines. A “tracheal cyst” prompted the teacher to touch her own neck lightly.

“You don’t like it, Ms. Green?”

“Lilli, it’s absolutely stunning.” The girl smiled broadly.

The school board had a variety of physical simulations for students who were too squeamish to perform actual dissections, but nothing of this quality. Ms. Green brushed her fingers across a hind leg and could feel the texture of the fur, and the tiniest striations in the tendons. There was a breeder’s tattoo in the left ear, partially hidden by a fold of skin. Ms. Green had to look at the hollow back side of the model again to convince herself that she wasn’t examining a real cadaver.

There was a polite knock on the door then the principal quietly entered the room. “Hello, Ms. Green,” he said, nodding stiffly, then turned to the young woman. “Hello, Lilli.” The student smiled broadly and fidgeted in her new shoes. The principal met Ms. Green’s eyes. “Um. How’s it going?”

“Well, Lilli was just about to explain how her family’s 3-D printer works.” Pause. “It’s obviously more advanced than the machine that produced key rings for our school’s future technology unit.”

“Oh yes,” Lilli giggled. “Our printer has the eight universal colors in a dispersal fan. It mixes layers of mineral pigment with a clear gel– that’s what makes the viscera look wet…” She stopped suddenly at the sound of a loud anguished sob which seemed to come from an adjacent room. There was an uncomfortable pause, and then Lilli asked the principal “was that Mary?”

He nodded.

“Is she the girl who ran out of the gym, crying, when she saw my project?” Lilli looked puzzled.

The principal cleared his throat. “Uh, yes, she did.”

“Was she unwell?”

Ms. Green answered. “Lilli, she thought your project looked an awful lot like a family pet, and it upset her.”

“Oooooh,” Lilli said, as if suddenly realizing something important. “Is that why she screamed Amos when she ran out of the gym?”

“Uh, yes,” the principal said. “I believe that was the animal’s name.”

There was another knock on the office door.

“Sir.” Mr. Brown, a young social studies teacher leaned into the room. “There’s a problem.”

“Yes?” the principal prompted, nervously.

“It’s Tyler, again. He and his father are setting up his science fair project. It’s more video footage of his neighbors at the townhouse complex.”

“Oh, my God,” the principal said.

“It’s the conspiracy theory thing– aliens are among us. He’s playing the free speech card.”

“Yes, I’ll be there in a minute.”

Mr. Brown retreated back into the gym. Lilli quietly moved near the water cooler and observed the adults.

The principal rubbed his zygomatic arches. “Ms. Green,” he said tightly, “don’t you vet these projects?”

He opened the door and strode out of the office.

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Entwined

Author : Rick Tobin

“O holy night, the stars are brightly shining…” She choked off her singing of the next phrase, unable to overcome phlegm from fearful regret as Marcus lay still next to her in the dark, cramped ejection pod. Oxygen recycler packs heated smooth surfaces of the stark plastic enclosure. Air supply would not threaten the long journey—their final voyage into a tarry abyss rising before them. Susan cleared her throat. A ferry craft’s bright window glints shrank as the pods escort sped away from the black hole’s gravitational tendrils. The couple had signed all documents for the eternal assignation: entwining two souls to each other’s minds, while meandering timelessly in an unforgiving universe. Their last kindred adventure waited just ahead.

“Susan,” he muttered, lowly, squeezing her wrinkled hands in the raised console between their scooped, padded recesses. She stopped the Christmas carols they had agreed would serenade their sojourn until bonding was complete.

“My love,” she whispered, grasping his tired fingers for a squeeze of remembrance—times before disease and fatigue overcame the ripeness of youth and middle age fortitude. His cancers grew without guilt for the host pummeled in agony. Electronic pain blocks maintained some of Marcus’s sanity as he was hoisted into the space station entwinement box. Many friends and honored guests celebrated their release from spoiled bodies that could no longer be rejuvenated by injections, replacements, transplants or new miracle cures. “There is always a marker in time for us all,” Susan said in her parting elegy played over the ship’s speaker system as the entwinement tug guided them out from the shuttle bay into the frigid vacuum.

Elderly couples were allowed internment into black holes now that the concepts of heaven, hell and an afterlife were universally discarded. The entwinement process was a lasting remembrance and bonding believed to continue for centuries for souls who had a life-long commitment to their pairing. Probes revealed the second part of the journey outward in its three phases as travelers entered the chasm. Participants were carefully trained for each stage, including appropriate technical and support elements for a successful blending.

Phase I: Entry
Silent Night filled the soundless void of the cabin as velocity increased. They passed the darkening rim with other particles of cosmic space debris fluttering into the vacuum cleaner maw. Susan increased musical volume and bass so their beds vibrated in harmony with choirs from past ages. The portal before them grew inky. She closed the view screens. There would be little need to view outward and they combined inwardly.

Phase II: Blending
Susan activated the hallucinogenic drug injections and brain implant stimulation of their nucleus reticularis pontis oralis, to ensure deep REM sleep. As the ejection pod started its violent swirling, the couple’s amalgamated memories bonded for eons to come.

Phase III: Drifting
The whirlpool of initial entanglement with matter in time-space continuum slowed to a near halt as Susan and Marcus shared singularity, already a thousand years past the time of their injection near the black hole’s horizon. Inside the sightless womb, they would circle, for millennia, bonded in love and memories of pure health, until their rebirth as piercing energy from the fiery mouth of a quasar on the other side of the maelstrom.

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