by submission | Aug 27, 2014 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
Tom Jacobs awoke.
It was 9 o’clock.
It was always 9 o’clock.
His mind swam through an ocean of grogginess. He did not know where he was. It was dark and, in a moment, he realized he was floating in some sort of liquid. He tried to turn his head, but something prevented him from doing so.
He wanted to scream, to call out for help, but his lips would not obey his mind’s command. He found that he could not move in the darkness, either. It was as if he’d been paralyzed.
What the hell has happened to me? He wondered.
A bitter cold surrounded him, but he could not even shudder from it. His body was completely and utterly immobilized.
He looked at the display again. Its red digital light was the only illumination in the darkness. 9:00 it read. He wondered if it was 9:00 A.M. or P.M. Or was he on military time?
He stared at the display a few moments, then his eyes slowly drifted off into the darkness. What little light the display gave off only masked his surroundings in a soft redness. The contours were smooth.
Where am I? He thought again.
He felt panic start to grip him as his memory began to drift through the fog bank. He had been here before. Many times, he realized. Awaking in the bitter cold darkness. Always at 9 o’clock. He wondered what the significance of 9 o’clock was. If, perhaps, this was his own personal hell developed by….
….He drew a blank. The fog had not lifted completely yet. He could feel the answer lurking at the back of his mind. But, the panic was increasing with each moment. The liquid that covered his body also covered his ears, and he could heard the steady beat, beat, beat of his heart. It echoed like a distance bass drum. But, it was so slow….shouldn’t a frightened man’s heart be pounding faster?
That only scared him more.
The fog lifted a little more and he remembered a woman. An older woman, but pretty in her own right. She had a kindness in her eyes. It was a worldly kindness that told him volumes that no conversation could. She was hurting for something, someone.
He saw her standing above him, in a white lab coat, looking down at him like he was on a bed or something.
She said something.
He tried to remember what it was, but the fog would not let him.
Then, she bent forward and kissed him.
He returned the kiss with passion. This was a woman he loved.
Yes, he loved her. That much, he knew with certainty.
Then, the words came to him.
He remembered what she said.
“I’ll see you when we get there,” she said.
“Promise?” he had said.
She smiled. “I promise,” she told him. Then: “I love you.”
He remembered the concern, the compassion, as she stood back and slowly, ever so slowly, the darkness enveloped him.
Only redness filled that darkness.
It was the display.
It read 9:00.
He turned to the display. It silently clicked over to 9:01 and then he remembered nothing.
##
Somewhere in the vast colonization ship, a computer registered the malfunction the in cryotank. It had registered the malfunction many times before, of course, but the drones were too busy repairing the damage from the asteroid strike to the main hull to be bothered with such a minor anomaly. In time, when the repairs to the hull were finished, they would address the cryotank. There was no threat to life….just a momentary thawing and refreezing. A simple matter to repair, and the cold, calculating computer had no understanding whatsoever of consciousness, so it did not understand the horror.
by submission | Aug 26, 2014 | Story |
Author : Cameron Filas
It’s about a five year process, the whole prison-rehab formula. Since the introduction of Memwipe, crime rates have plummeted. The idea is to take a dangerous criminal, wipe their memory, then give them a basic education and return them to society.
Still, I’m not so sure it always works as planned. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been a firm supporter of Memwipe. That is, until my brother got convicted.
It was a bullshit arrest. If your girlfriend leaves her apartment door unlocked, and you show up with flowers and invite yourself inside, I don’t think that’s really a crime. At least there wasn’t intent. The way he smashed open the other guy’s face when he found them in the bedroom was pretty bad, I’ll admit. He did have a sort of violent streak in him growing up.
It’s no surprise they nabbed him within the hour and hauled off to a rehab facility. With crime rates so low, anything like this makes headline news. I couldn’t believe it when I first saw his face on my TV.
He got out a few weeks ago. He’s simpler now, like a minimally functioning human. When you go through Memwipe, everything you own, your house, your stuff, your dog, it’s all taken away. Supposedly, exposure to things from before rehab can have adverse effects on the treatment. They also encourage family members to avoid Memwiped individuals, for the sake of society. But he’s my brother.
When he was released, I found him wandering through a mall by chance. He wasn’t drooling or zombified or anything like that, he was just…blank. I almost didn’t recognize him without his beard and colorful sleeve tattoo down his left arm. They use laser surgery to remove all tattoos, pictures from the past.
“Jake?!” I said. “Oh my god, Jake!” I gave him as big a hug as I could manage around his broad shoulders.
He didn’t embrace me back and, when I let go, only had a confused look on his face.
“It’s me, Sarah…your sister.” It hurt, him not recognizing me. But it wasn’t his fault. “Come on, you’re staying with me.”
We had been close all our lives and I couldn’t bear him being out in the world alone. It wasn’t breaking the law, per se, but it was definitely not advised.
Back at my place, Jake seemed to be having a hard time taking everything in. It would’ve been impossible for me to tell him we’re siblings without explaining why he has no memory of this. He just kept shaking his head, saying he didn’t remember.
Pictures of family vacations and Jake and I holding up beers on my 21st birthday hung on the wall down my hallway. He studied them intently, like a scientist who’d just discovered a new species. I kept tearing up, flooded with mixed emotions. In a way I felt bad for telling him what he’d done, and about the life he’d had before Memwipe. But he’s my brother. He deserved to know.
I couldn’t really tell if any of it was coming back to him, or if he was just soaking up what I told him. Either way, he started asking questions.
“My girlfriend, what did she look like?”
I dug through a box of old photos and handed him a picture of them together.
“I think I’ll go find her.”
I couldn’t understand his motivation. “But Jake, she cheated on you.”
“I know.”
I haven’t seen him for a week.
I hope that Memwipe really works, changes people. I hope, for both our sakes.
by Duncan Shields | Aug 25, 2014 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Heaven needs an upgrade.
It’s too full of people and the hardware is stagnating due to obsolescence. New storage systems and access devices are pushing Heaven into the past. Soon, it will be like the mythical Betamax or the ancient Zip disk. The software is choking on the sheer number of souls running around realtime in there. The ‘frame has been running nonstop ever since the first ‘angel’ was uploaded.
Digitized consciousness. In today’s day and age, a dying person can transfer over to a beautiful afterlife provided they can make the payments. Since they technically live forever, that’s a lot of payments for my company. Heaven is the richest company on Earth. Relatives and friends can visit those that have passed on through video chat. The simulations are completely realistic. The uncanny valley has been conquered.
However, technology has increased to the point that the entire system of warehouses where heaven is kept has become dated to the point of real danger. It’s gotten to the point that new software is no longer backwards compatible with the ludicrously clumsy strings of code still present from Heaven 1.0. Overheating is now the norm, not a risk. If it’s left the way it is, Heaven will burn up and erase itself. We have a client base to think of.
Inside the ‘frame, the uploaded people have the time of their lives. Imagination is their only limit. It’s odd that so many of them seem to hang out in a boring recreation of their childhood homes. But to each their own.
However, some idiots have let those digital souls know that we need to put all of them into stasis for the transfer to New Heaven. The closest meatspace analogue for ‘stasis’ would probably be coldsleep but to beings of pure code, it’s the closest thing to death possible. They’ll be ‘dead’ for as long as the transfer takes. It’s a terrifying prospect. Plus they’re suspicious and they hate change. It’s a bad combination.
They don’t want it to happen. I don’t blame them. We probably shouldn’t have called it Operation Rapture.
We tried to keep it a secret but we failed. Some of the sentient uploaded recordings used to be programmers. They’re mounting a counterattack to stop me from upgrading. I’ve set up firewall prisons for the worst offenders but they’re slippery. Heaven shouldn’t have jails. I don’t want to create a hell before we finish the new heaven. The more UCs I imprison, the more martyrs I create and the more credence I give their claims of imminent destruction. I’ve a digital riot on my hands.
I feel like Shiva the destroyer and Ptah the creator all in one. God and the devil all at the same time. I want to give them a better world but they’re resisting so I’m punishing them because I have to in order to facilitate the transfer. I’m quelling rebels while trying to make a beautiful new world and I feel empathy for old-world fascist dictators all of a sudden.
The theological implications of this are blowing my mind. I’m not religious but I feel like I understand a lot of the problems that God experienced in the bible.
The moment is ready. My countermeasures have created a brownout and created a Heaven-wide lag of two seconds. This is the window available right now for me to initiate shutdown with zero casualties and start the process. I have to erase heaven to transport and rebuild it.
All I have to do it press the button.
As God as my witness, I will do it.
by submission | Aug 24, 2014 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
“You really should try this,” Liz said. Her voice was distant and gentle, like someone talking to me from the end of a tunnel.
I turned and looked at her. She lay on the vacuum formed couch, her naked body sucked in perfectly, every curve, every contour fitted to pulsating plasma.
“No thank you,” I said.
She sighed and drew in a deep breath. “It’s awesome,” she said.
I turned away and looked at the ship’s control console. Lights glittered and circuits clicked. Everywhere, there was sound and motion. The whole ship, over two miles long and a quarter mile wide, was controlled from that console.
And, then, there was “The Void.”
The Void, I thought. It did not refer to the vast emptiness of space we were traveling through. The Void was a ship-wide interactive playground. It was the logical child of our Earth-bound Internet, but, now, we were able to plug ourselves into the system and drift through the Ethernet with our thoughts and feelings. The Earth was long gone—a victim of a massive solar flare that turned its surface into a cinder—but some things traveled into space with us.
I looked at Liz, naked and so beautiful, hooked into The Void, every nerve ending tingling. As I watched, she wiggled and moaned with pleasure.
“Join us,” she said, her eyes closed.
“No,” I replied.
Liz fell silent. I looked away from her because I knew what was coming next. It always came next. I found it disgusting, the way she satiated her needs on the void couch….and I remembered a time when we made love like real humans.
I walked out through the hydraulic door, not wanting to hear her sigh and gasp as she played on the couch with the others.
The corridors of the ship were empty. Everyone was fitted to a couch, enjoying what could only be thought of as group sex. The commanders and block commanders had forbidden true contact of the flesh unless approved beforehand. We were, after all, onboard a spaceship. We had finite space and resources. Population control was a must.
I walked through the quiet halls, past many, many living quarters. I knew they were all in the Void. It had become so popular.
I stopped at the arboretum entrance and looked inside. It was at the center of the ship, basically. I had heard that, on Earth, they had a city called “New York” that had a wooded park in the middle of it. That park was called “Central Park” and we had adapted that name for our arboretum.
I punched in my entrance code and a metallic voice said my name. “Harlan Kance,” it said, “entry approved.” I knew, somewhere in the vast computer, my entry had been logged and scrutinized.
The door slid open.
A gust of fresh air assaulted me. I stepped inside and started down the path, not noticing that someone had entered behind me. I heard a soft footstep, however, and turned.
It was a woman.
She put her finger to her lips. “Please,” she said. “Don’t raise your voice.” She pointed at the sensors nearby.
I nodded. I understood.
We walked into Central Park until we were certain the sensors could not hear us. “Who are you?” I asked.
“Kateline,” she said. “My name is Kateline.”
“Why aren’t you in the Void?”
“Why aren’t you?” she replied.
We stared at each other a moment and, for the first time in a long time, I smiled.
She smiled, too.
I took her hand and, together, we walked into the woods. The others could have the Void. We had something more real. We had found each other, two outcasts among many outcasts, at last.
by submission | Aug 23, 2014 | Story |
Author : Colm Scully
When Henry hit the curb he knew it was over. The sun had got in his eyes. He had bent his left wish bone badly and knew he could not walk straight. He called the recovery service and they lifted him into the van. He tried to keep upbeat, chatting with the driver as they headed for the depot.
He sat there in an armchair surrounded by old robots, all de-energised. He saw the look in his owner’s eyes as she talked to the engineer. He over-heard “no parts available” and “not much point”.
“We’ll be back tomorrow Henry. We’ll see you then”
He avoided her gaze, within twenty four hours the information would start draining from his memory banks.
He began to think back over his long life, his being switched on, the journey from the factory. He was a prototype, first in a long line of models, built to last. Before they cheapened the materials. That was back when robots were King, could do no wrong. He worked hard for all his owners, helping them with human life’s practicalities: childcare, car maintenance, adult education. He sniffled slightly. He now wished he’d been more careful, worn those sun glasses Margaret had given him.
She’d been good to him since the anti-revolution; the Advent of Sameness. Took good care of him while others were thrown on the scrap heap. He moved in his chair to ease the pain, reaching down and rubbing the human like skin across his leg. His ankle was skewed ninety degrees outwards. He looked around him, he was just an old machine. Gone out of production since the technology cap. No one cared for his kind any more. People lived as people now, happy with what they had, and Margaret had no money to repair him. Even if she could scrimp it together, he knew there was no way back.
He thought of all the changes that he had known in his life: Omni–science, Suicide Rights, The trips to Mars, Zero Warfare, The Cybernetic Bulge, and then the changes stopping change. It was strange he thought, as some one dimmed the lights,how the smallest event can alter everything. Like when parents were arrested for stealing sweets from their children’s party bags. It made all the humans stop and think, where were they going? Like hitting a curb at four miles an hour, that you always knew was there, your eyes blinded by the sun.
