by submission | Nov 8, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
I set the display to pan to the constellation of Canis Minor. The holographic celestial sphere rotates all around me until the Smaller Dog comes into view. I wave my hand over the controls. The display zooms in on Procyon A. The white main sequence star fills half the room. The image is a real-time picture, at least as real-time as 11.4 light-years of distance will allow. The Procyon system has no planets, but if it did I could zoom in on an object the size of a deck of cards on the surface of one.
All across the solar system telescopes of every variety continually search the sky. Sensors scrutinize gamma ray sources to determine if they are the product of an antimatter propulsion system. Detectors search the void for hints of Bremsstrahlung radiation that could come from the plasma confinement system of a fusion reactor. The possible visual signature of a photon rocket? Cyclotron radiation that might be a sign of an operating magnetic sail? A radio signal or modulated neutrino pulse of an extraterrestrial civilization? There are devices to detect all of them and more. And all of that data is sent to observation and early warning stations like this one.
We’ve been watching the skies for decades, watching for any telltale sign of an impending invasion. A second invasion, that is.
January 18, 2098. That was the day the human race finally made contact with an alien civilization. Much to everyone’s surprise, the signal came from Mars. To this day, we have no idea where they originated. We know it wasn’t Mars. They’d come from another star system and claimed Mars for themselves. In fact, they claimed the entire solar system. Earth was ours, their transmission said. And we could maintain satellites in orbit. But that was it. No manned missions and no more probes beyond Earth orbit. Even the Moon was off limits. The entire solar system outside of Earth was their territory. This ultimatum was the first, last, and only communication humanity ever had with the aliens.
The Chinese didn’t listen. Nine months later, they launched an instrumented probe to study Saturn. Three weeks after the launch, Beijing was annihilated. Antimatter weapon, the physicists who examined the aftermath said.
For six years after the destruction of Beijing, Mars was minutely studied by telescopes both on Earth and in Earth orbit. On July 9, 2106, the alien facilities on and in orbit around Mars were struck by 75 nuclear weapons. The Greater United States, China, the European Union, and the Russian Federation had developed stealthy vehicles that could approach the alien stronghold undetected. Each nuclear-armed probe had secretly gone up along with some other innocuous payload like a weather satellite and then surreptitiously proceeded to Mars. The aliens were obliterated.
For close to 50 years, humanity has studied the remnants of biology and technology left behind after the destruction of the invaders. As a result, we’ve advanced much faster than we otherwise would have. We’re all over the solar system now. There’s even serious discussion about a manned mission to Alpha Centauri before the end of the century. The dream of humanity exploring and colonizing space has finally come true. But it’s not the old science fiction vision of the human race evolving into something nobler and embracing its destiny among the stars. It’s a nervous necessity that drives mankind out into space. And we never stop watching the skies.
by Julian Miles | Nov 7, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The echoes are thunderous, something that keeps most of the predators down here away. This far along, everyone is fatigued. Even the children no longer have bursts of energy. Existence is eat, sleep and march to the beat. The chant cadences our footsteps through the netherways, the deep tunnels that were once used to move building materials between the growing United Cities.
“Come tomorrow, we’ll live in a far better place.”
Each Petacity is a continent covering sprawl that incorporates everything into an extended conurbation. Intensive automation overseen by computers fast enough to map DNA in minutes made them possible. Mankind quickly became dependent on the hyperstructure that provided everything. Then the control systems worked out that growing replacement labour was far more ecologically efficient than building it.
“Come tomorrow, we’ll suffer no machine-led pace.”
We went from dependent to subservient in two generations. Some objected, of course. But ancient tales of rising against robot masters were glaringly short on overcoming the details. Death came in crush corridors and gas clouds. When you’re inside the thing you fight, nobility and righteousness count for little in the immune system versus disease deathmatch.
“Come tomorrow, there will be space for the free man.”
Our opponents could dynamically run every possible strategic response for every scenario before we detonated the bomb, landed the second blow, fired the second shot or took the next step. We lost nearly a whole generation in a guerrilla war that more resembled rodents versus pest control than a resistance movement. Finally, cleverer minds prevailed.
“Come tomorrow, we’ll do it all with our own hands.”
Rats did not fight, they inhabited places man couldn’t reach or didn’t want. Living underground was not an option and Galifan Scott gave us the answer: United City Seven. The south-polar Petacity had been abandoned as the cold was something that the robots could not overcome without causing ecological harm. They had withdrawn along the netherways, leaving the nascent Petacity to the eternal ice.
“Come tomorrow, the white land will become our home.”
The netherways remain, some decrepit, some submerged, all dangerous. But those who survived the first long walks found only a Gigacity core with Petacity foundations unfinished in the face of machine-freezing cold. The founders of Free City One defined the maximum technology that could support millions without processor-based automation. From there they designed a new culture.
“Come tomorrow, our children will be free to roam.”
I am a Finder. We go out along the netherways from Free City One, equipped to rescue and retrieve those coming to the end of their long walk. We help the hearty and build cairns for the dead. No more shall we become food or fertiliser depending on our age at dying. The chant gives them hope and strength, keeps them moving toward freedom. It is the last regimen they will have to endure, as Free City One runs on pride, courtesy and idealised British policing.
They say that one day we will reclaim the world. I am one of those who believes that to be a futile objective. We will watch as an alien culture of our ancestor’s creation tends the world we so nearly ruined. What the future holds is for our descendants to decide. ‘Come Tomorrow’ is more than the title of a chant to march the people home.
It is a promise that free humanity will never cease to be.
by submission | Nov 6, 2012 | Story |
Author : Susan Nance Carhart
“There’s no way to program my time machine remotely. Not really,” Solberg told his friends. “I can’t perform a unmanned test. I can’t even use an animal for the passenger. But the modeling works. It all comes down to me.”
The friends caught each other’s eye and shook their heads. Solberg’s private laboratories were in a separate wing from the rest of his facility, and even more amazing. Cool blue light suffused the shining interior. Before them was the device that Solberg had dreamed of for thirty years.
“You tell him, Royce,” muttered Julia. “He won’t listen to me.”
Solberg stared back at them, and then put up his hands. “What? What is it?”
“You always think it comes down to you, Jack,” Royce grunted. “Real science can’t be done by one person these days. And it should never be done in secret. You have a team to vet your ideas. Bring them in on this! You need free discussion. I don’t care if you have more money than God. If you had to look for funding, you’d have the challenge of informed analysis and constructive criticism—”
“I might as well send my research to the Chinese,” Solberg sneered. “This is going to revolutionize human life. I’m getting all the credit this time. Do you want to see the test, or not?”
“Yes, we want to see the test,” Julia shot back. “We want to know what happens to you. I think this is insanely reckless, but there’s no way to stop you now. What’s the plan?”
“A short hop, really. I’m going to go back in time one month exactly. I know that no one was in this laboratory at that moment. To prove I’ve been moving in time, I’ll scribble a message on that wall.”
He pointed to the white and pristine tiles facing them. “You’ll be here, and as soon as I’m gone, those words should appear on the wall. Then I’ll come back. It shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes in absolute time. Don’t move into the space occupied by the device… that could be bad.”
“You are completely crazy, Jack,” Royce sighed. “You know that, right?”
Julia took him in her arms and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Good luck, you idiot.”
Solberg grinned at her, shook Royce’s hand, and climbed into his time machine. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I’ll just be in this exact spot, one month ago.”
A crackle of light enveloped him, and he vanished.
They waited.
They waited all day.
They waited until nightfall, with aching hearts and fading hopes. They called the Head of Research just after midnight. Doctor Philip Carmichael was at the facility in half an hour, and poking through his employer’s holy of holies in another ten minutes.
Balding and sardonic, he heard their story, and gave it some thought.
At length, he ventured, “You know what Galileo said to himself, when the Church forced him to swear that the Earth was the center of the universe?” He paused, and then told them.
“‘And yet, it moves.'”
Illumination. Each saw, in a mind’s eye of awe and terror, the time machine winking into empty space: in the exact position on the Earth’s orbit that the planet—and Solberg Laboratories— wouldn’t occupy until one month into that time’s future.
by Patricia Stewart | Nov 5, 2012 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The Prometheus Station was an engineering marvel. Orbiting the Earth in a low altitude sun synchronous polar orbit, it did the impossible. Its six mammoth hyperspace siphons sucked more than a Zettajoule of energy directly from the sun’s core, converted it to columnar microwaves, and transmitting it to thousands of receiving stations on the Earth’s surface. This station, and its twin orbiting 180 degrees behind her, provided Earth with all the energy its ten billion inhabitants craved.
As Hellen Sappho relieved her alpha shift counterpart at the Prometheus Station’s Command and Control console, she glanced at the calendar wall clock on the inboard bulkhead. It read Sunday, March 20, 06:00. She then turned to the large viewport and watched the Earth as it rotated serenely some 500 miles below. The daylight terminator was slowly traversing the Rocky Mountains in the western half of the United States. In a few minutes, she noted, the sun would be rising over her hometown of Eagle City, Utah.
Sappho’s peaceful repose was interrupted by the ear piercing variable whine of the emergency klaxon. With catlike reflexes refined by years of intense training, she quickly assessed the nature of the impending threat. The proximity sensors had detected an incoming object, and it was on a collision course. Sappho diverted all available power to the station’s deflectors, but she could see it wouldn’t be enough. Quickly, she closed all of the decompression bulkheads, and activated the emergency distress signal. Seconds later, a fifty foot meteoroid slammed into the habitation section, ripping a gaping hole, and instantly killing dozens of her friends and colleagues. The shock wave raced through the station, testing the very limits of its structural integrity. Sparks erupted from her console, as the shock wave knocked her to the deck. Sappho tasted blood as she climbed back into her chair. She opened a comm link. “C&C to Engineering. Status? Engineering, report.” No reply, not even static. “Control to Power Conversion. Report.” Again, silence. That’s when she looked out the viewport, and realized the real terror that the asteroid had unleashed.
The targeting arrays were misaligned, and the safeties had failed to shut down the hyperspace siphons. As Sappho watched, hundreds of intense microwave beams scorched swaths of hellfire on the surface of the Earth as it rotated beneath the Station. Forests burned and oceans boiled. Millions of people were being roasted alive, and billions more would join them if Sappho couldn’t shut down the siphons. Trapped in the Control Section, she feverishly tried every protocol in the manual, and many more that were not. Nothing she did could stop the station from sucking energy from the sun’s core. As the hours passed, her frustration grew, and the Station continued to transmit death rays upon the helpless souls below.
More than half the Earth had been destroyed when she conceived a new plan that was born in desperation; unsure of the consequences, she fussed the conduits that transferred the power from the siphons to the transmitting array. Without the array to release the unimaginable power being siphoned from the sun, the Prometheus Station reached a critical point where it exploded with such intensity that it ruptured the very fabric of space-time. For a brief instant, yesterday, today, and tomorrow merged into a fog of chaos. Slowly, as the continuum repaired itself, the river of time began to flow again…
As Hellen Sappho relieved her alpha shift counterpart at the Prometheus Station’s Command and Control console, she glanced at the calendar wall clock on the inboard bulkhead. It read Sunday, March 20, 06:00.
by submission | Nov 4, 2012 | Story |
Author : Melinda Chapman
Specimen 459 cannot see its reflection, or the glass itself, or the woman entering the room beyond it.
Christine enters the small laboratory and settles into the office chair in front of the glass capsule. Contemplating the specimen inside, she sighs. She gently fidgets until her lab coat becomes comfortable. Lately she’s been wondering what she’s really doing here – they’re getting nowhere. Christine speaks a sentence to 459, again.
459 realises this, as it does every other day. Listening in its own way, the specimen knows that Christine means well. She is more or less saying that she wants its health to improve. 459 sends her its gratitude, and wishes the same for her; perhaps not quite the same. 459’s expression of goodwill is personal, as opposed to experimental like hers, so they do not resonate together and there is no real exchange.
Christine looks to the waves on the screen. The machine doesn’t detect any variation in 459’s biometric pattern. She makes a note of it and begins her next communication.
459 considers her new words, but they are difficult to translate. The message vibrates at a higher level than the last question, and 459 thinks it knows what it means. The researcher’s frame of reference is different to 459’s, however, and her message is obscured by clutter. Even so, 459 believes she has primarily asked if it has a soul. To which, 459 reverberates a resounding…
“Yes.”
Christine touches the screen and zooms in closer on the biometric waves, hoping to detect some degree of change in the pattern, but there is none. She makes more notes.
459 waits patiently for her attention to return. It enjoys the questioning. It appreciates her dedication and has much time for her endeavour. But 459 also knows the device she is using to measure its responses is useless. The device can only measure certain frequencies, such as those that control biological functions. But these react much more slowly and minutely in response to other beings.
The device can’t measure high enough frequencies to detect the level of consciousness on which 459 communicates. As of yet, no machine can. 459 must wait for Christine to discover there’s only one device that will detect frequencies of that level and translate them as a response. She brings it with her every single day, to every session. It is consciousness itself. Even so, hers would need considerable tuning upward. Currently, it can barely detect anything. Christine predominantly uses her consciousness as a simple device for processing input from her other senses, not unlike the device she’s using on 459. She looks with her eyes at the patterns on screen for any suggestion of answers. She listens with her ears for the blips that she hopes will one day tell her that 459 has something to communicate.
The monitor flashes continuously, and Christine swipes her hand across it. Martin, a colleague, is using the screen to transmit to Christine that she needs to attend a meeting. He will come past the lab, and they will both walk a short distance in order to congregate with others and communicate using their basic physical senses.
Martin opens the door as he knocks. His eyes flicker with curiosity at 459, as if he might discover something ground-breaking in those brief seconds.
Christine pinches the corners of her tired eyes and picks up her cold coffee. As she walks through the door, Martin shakes his head and says “I can’t believe they pay you to talk to a plant.”
