by submission | Oct 24, 2014 | Story |
Author : cchatfield
I didn’t want to show up to work today.
By the time my crew arrived for the usual day of loading and unloading, packing and unpacking, signing and releasing, I’d rehearsed a little speech about the importance of keeping our jobs.
“This is a time of crisis and change,” I told them. “All we can do is ride it out. And if we let the Planet Troopers keep the peace out there and make sure nothing happens to the shipment in here, then at the end of it we’ll all still have our jobs and life will move on.”
We’re a stop on the route of the battery-powered hearts that keep every bot in every home on every planet running, which is a bit tricky on the best of days. But today, with half the galaxy watching and the other half thinking about coming out here to protest, we’re not shipping anything.
Now I’m looking through a porthole window in the docking bay. Beyond the row of gun-clad Troopers, a silent sea of slowly winding-down bots are staring my direction, wondering if the fickle humans are going to change their minds and give their lives back.
They should be screaming. Shouting, jumping, pointing fingers and waving signs until the shadows of the executives are peeled from the recesses of the building and plastered to the front windows. They should act human and force everyone to wonder if what’s happening qualifies as murder. But they just stand there, and that’s the whole issue, isn’t it?
I may not be able to explain how or why, but I think I just picked a side.
My employees are in the break room, whiling the tense hours away over coffee and sandwiches. No one sees me break open a shipping container and remove a few units.
I slip out the utility door next to the docking bay and make my way into the crowd of bots standing impassive as trees in an orchard.
Go back inside, a part of me pleads. You’ll lose your job and your reputation and probably get arrested and for what? A cause you never cared about until today? Let others decide the fate of bots and humans. Go back to work.
I walk up to the first one I lay eyes on, knowing that none of them would want me using my flawed human reasoning to try and decide who was most deserving.
Its shiny optics connect with me, and I forget the words to the qualms running through my head.
I hold up the pack, noting the reading on the bot’s chest that confirms its dire need for energy. It takes the batteries and I move on to hand out the few others I’ve squirrelled away in my pockets.
I expect the first bot to have already ripped open the unit and inserted its new heart. Instead, it holds my shoulder in a firm metal grip and, with more sincerity than I’ve ever heard from anyone, bot or human, says, “Thank you.”
It leans over and slips the heart into the chest panel of a fallen comrade.
We watch the bot regain consciousness and I shrug, still unsure of my motivations until I vocalize it. “I’m just doing my job.”
by Duncan Shields | Oct 23, 2014 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Frouda Jeffries touched down on the soil of Binauer 4, smart boots neutralizing any toxins and spreading defoliant footsteps as she walked up to the leader of the plants.
‘His’ name was a gust of pheromones. They just called him Windy. Giant, bulbous appendages hung over ivy tentacles as he shuddered a rustling, fearful welcome to Frouda. The bleached footprints leading back to the blast crater underneath their landing craft spelled out how diplomatic they were prepared to be. They took it safe and kind with challengers to their authority but when a race was found to be an easy conquest, the masks came off.
They were here to make the kind of deal that involved little negotiation and a lot of ‘yes’ from the plant life whether they liked it or not.
“Human”, his grassreed, recently-grown vocal cords hummed. It was like talking to a harp.
“Hey there Windy.” Frouda responded. “Good to see you again. Did you consider our offer?”
“Yess” said Windy. His thousands of leaves rustled and a slight breeze rolled over him.
The thing about the plants is that their brains grew on the outside. The smarter the plant, the bigger and more numerous the brains. They grew more mindpods as they needed them to solve problems.
The thing about these mindpods is that they were delicious. Delicious meant money. They humans were here to harvest.
“You want to take our minds to eat them. And you want to keep coming back. You want to lobotomize our planet every season. And our reward for this is that you will not annihilate us. In the hopes that the fad will pass and we will no longer provide you with profit. After that point, we will be left alone to continue our evolutionary path.” Windy’s musical words drifted across to Frouda.
“Yeah. Hey, you just managed to distill a three-hundred page contract into a few sentences. I’m impressed.” Frouda said.
“We reject your offer.” Said Windy, “But we may be able to help each other.”
Frouda looked up from her wrist com at the cluster of fronds in front of her.
“As you saw, we were able to grow eyes to read your contracts. Our family grew different minds to understand your language. We grew these vocal cords to speak with you.” He said.
“Uh, yeah. So?” Frouda retorted. This was not following the script.
“We can grow humans now.” Windy said.
Frouda took a step back and bumped into something. With a startled yip, she whirled around. And saw herself staring back with a small grin.
“The fidelity to your original is accurate. It will be enough to fool your ship mates. It will tell them that the deal is off. This is the most peaceful solution.” Windy rustled.
Frouda stared slack-jawed at the vegetable copy of her. They’d even copied the suit. It was fascinating and completely believable. “Gotta give you credit, Windy,” Frouda whispered through terrified lips. “You really nailed it.”
As she brought her wrist com up to her mouth to signal the ship for help, the spores in her breathing apparatus activated, swelling up to tennis balls and blocking her intake valves. Aerosol seed flocks immolated themselves in her electronics, coating the ciruits with nectar. A mess of thorns ravaged through the fabric of her suit as shoots poured in through the holes. They grew into branches and then flowered inside of Frouda. She didn’t know plants could move so fast. Her last thought was that she smelled strawberries, not knowing if it was a gift from Windy or if the killer plants just smelled like that.
Frouda’s body disintegrated into fertilizer.
by submission | Oct 22, 2014 | Story |
Author : Suzanne Borchers
Arnold, a four-foot bot, assists an elderly woman by holding her drink in one hand and supporting her upright with the other. He had been superseded so many times that today his job is tending the grannies and granddads at Ever Pleasant Retirement Home. After she has been slowly lowered down in front of the 3DTelly, Arnold places her drink on the table beside her. She rubs his smooth gray pate which he warms to her touch for gentle feedback.
He receives a transmission from Roberta, a translation bot. Arnold wishes he could jump on his rollers, or laugh, or even smile. He forces back the whistles and beeps of glee. He has finally been acknowledged by the newbies. He is invited to a party at the laboratory!
He sedately moves out of the room, beeping at residents, saving one whistle for a granny named Harriet, with long blonde hair and painted face. She laughs.
Arnold enjoys a wheelie around the corner of the Home.
He arrives at the party.
“Hello, Arnold,” Roberta says. “Come in and meet the gang.”
Arnold beeps hello then notices two bots communicating at the far end of the room. They are sleek, and shiny. He knows them. They are the Steven model. They were produced two weeks ago and probably still smell of HT oil.
“Arnold, these guys want to meet you,” Roberta says. The Stevens move toward them.
Arnold wishes he could smile or spin. Finally he will be part of the elite group. They invited him to a party! When he was produced months ago, he was alone. He stood alone in the laboratory and zapped circuit ebots into place on sister boards. Arnold hadn’t known he was lonely until the Charlies were produced. The Charlies worked together as team-soldering bots in an assembly line and communicated within their model. Arnold stood alone and zapped circuit boards.
“Arnold, this is Steven and Steven,” Roberta says. “They are my friends.” She leaves to welcome another bot.
Steven grabs Arnold’s hand and begins to pull him toward the far wall. “Listen, Arnold, we invited you here because we need you to loan us one of your ebots for our presentation tonight. We heard you have the last historically imprinted one.”
“You can stay at the party until we come back,” the other Steven says. “Okay?”
Didn’t Roberta invite him because she was his friend? But maybe if he gives them what they need, they will include him in their group. He looks at the Stevens and gives a low wavering beep. He wishes he could cry when the ebot is removed. But he is at the party. This is his chance to make friends.
By now there are Charlies to Stevens all over the room. Arnold gives out a tiny beep before he rolls over to a small group of Miltons. They are communicating with each other. He beeps a quiet hello. They move away. He tries again with some Justins with the same result. When will the Stevens come back? Where is Roberta?
He wishes he had stayed at the Home and played virtual checkers with Harriet.
He waits alone.
by Julian Miles | Oct 21, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The night is slashed with beams of white light and the sky is spotted with technicolour detonations.
“Who does that? I ask you. Who does that?”
I don’t know how Mitchell can talk and run at this speed. I shrug in reply and keep going.
We pulled up in the panel van at the designated staging point: under a bridge a klick from the target. From there we moved to the edge of their secondary perimeter and commenced insertion. It was textbook, fully planned out, tactically vetted to hell and gone.
Except for one thing: nobody bothered to check if they had a tertiary perimeter. Where it starts, I don’t know. I suspect it’s a couple of klicks out. Which means Mitchell and I are around three-quarters of the way through it and far from safe.
“We’re nearly two klicks out, man. Let’s find some transport.”
He’s the boss. I wait as he scopes out the driveways of the neighbourhood we’re running through. All modern grid saloons; easy to track and useless off gridded roads. Punching the air, Mitchell points toward a vintage Merc. Ideal.
I’m just about to run after him when my suspicions regarding the tertiary zone stop me in my tracks. Which is the thing that saves me as Mitchell dives into the Merc, slams the door and the killing vapours hide him from view. A flytrap – dummy vehicle, wood and cloth interior, organo-molecular acid sprays – this far out is a new level of vicious.
Some very old training surfaces and I run back toward the target. Without pausing to give them time to triangulate, I dive into the culvert we crossed, letting all my gear pull me down to the bottom of the murky flow.
Taking the oxygen bottle from the medical kit, I ditch the rest of my gear, slow my breathing and let the water take me. Just another chunk of waste on the way to the Solent.
Six hours later I’m lying on the sun-warmed sands of the Isle of Wight. Stripped to my trunks, there is nothing to betray me when I present myself to the local police just after sundown. I tell them a sorry tale about having my car stolen while I spent a day on the beach. They will find it where I left it two days ago, when I was picked up for the job. I’ll get assisted transit to it, after they’ve checked it and found it clean. It’s a hire car, after all.
Then back to bonny Scotia and enough of this sorry Police State infested with paranoid private military companies. Whatever they were protecting, they can keep it. I’ve just retired.
by Clint Wilson | Oct 20, 2014 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
A stadium-sized vehicle crawled along on massive tracks to my right. I hadn’t been awarded a sleep cycle for ninety-eight kilometres and was well overdue when the klaxon finally sounded. Not slowing my pace an iota I looked up and saw a half-dozen citizens lowering themselves down the nearby ladder. They moved slowly, none of them in an hurry to reach the rocky landscape below.
One by one they dropped to the surface and automatically began marching alongside the crawler. I scanned my immediate surroundings. There were at least twice as many tired walkers as recent arrivals. Some of them had been on shift almost as long as me. I waited more than a minute. Finally, frustrated, I radioed the deck officer.
“Crawler Seven deck, this is Dawkins off the port stern. Have seen six fresh arrivals. Where’s our relief whistle?” For a moment there was nothing. I almost tried again, then suddenly,
“Dawkins hold your position for the time being.”
My response was immediate. “Hold my position? I’ve been walking for,” I checked my odometer, “almost one-hundred clicks here, what’s the deal?”
There was another long pause. Then suddenly a familiar voice, “Dawkins, you and Chambers are relieved. Welcome back aboard.” I immediately caught the sight of Pavel Chambers dropping back and cutting over across my field of vision. With my own legs turning to gelatine, I followed suit and also drifted toward the crawler. I maintained radio silence as Chambers gripped the ladder and pulled himself up. And I didn’t breathe another word until I too was slowly making my way up toward the massive travelling deck full of greenhouses and livestock pens above.
Finally I broke the silence. “Deck officer. Why do six relieve only two this shift?” There was no response. Twice more I tried. Still nothing.
As I neared the deck I saw people pulling Chambers up and then as I too reached the top a hand reached out and I looked up into the familiar face of my old friend Brendan Chow. “Is there a transmitter out? Are you guys deaf?” I asked.
The friendly smile faded as I crawled forward and then stood up face to face with Chow. He sputtered, “Keep quiet. I will tell you all I can.”
An hour later I sat, legs dangling, off the edge of the machine looking out at the distant crawlers all clambering along westward with their thousands of citizens trudging alongside. Many walked. Fewer and fewer got to ride. The sun sank slowly, but not so slowly that we could ever catch it. It was said that the Earth once turned a thousand times faster than this; that people could live in one place and as day turned into night and then back into day again it never got too hot or too cold.
I looked back toward the nearby greenhouse behind me and noted that the vegetation did appear to be thinner and browner than ever. “Okay I admit it Brendan. We’re running out of energy. But what can we do about it? You know how it is. We are cursed. We must always chase the sun!”
Brendan Chow lowered his head morosely. After a time he looked up. There was a tear in his eye. “Look at them!” He suddenly motioned with his arm.
I looked back out at the dotted landscape of machines and countless tired walking humans and asked, “How did we ever get to this point?”
Chow replied solemnly. “I really don’t know. But I am sure of one thing. Our race will not survive!”
