Battle of the Bots

by submission | Jul 8, 2007 | Story

Author : Nikolle Doolin

The Nanorobotic Medical Series Ten was the crème de la crème of nanotechnology. Unlike their predecessors, they worked quickly and efficiently inside the human body, and became the least invasive and toxic of all diagnostic and surgical methods known to humankind. Upon injection, these microscopic miracles would execute protocol to the letter, including: rapid dispersal to target destination; second-to-second transmission of all data via wireless connection to the main terminal; acute sensory assessment of body temperature, heart rate, and hematological abnormalities; organized implementation of human-directed procedures; and rapid rendezvous for retrieval. The Tens were hailed as genius.

Only trouble was, that didn’t set well with the prior nine series. The Nines especially resented all the attention the Tens received. Were not they the ones who first properly identified an arrhythmia? Did not they successfully track, hunt, and kill undetectable cancer cells? Then why were they not relishing the glamour of public celebrity?

Unlike the Tens, the Nines were not streamlined enough. So, the scientists designed a new series just a fraction better in everything the Nines could do. Yet the Nines did it all first; and that is how the whole plot began.

The bots were wired and programmed for multi-channel transmissions among themselves. At first, there were minor rumblings of little consequence. Then, the Eights began dialoging with the Sevens, and by the time it reached the Ones, the game was afoot.

The Nines had failed to infiltrate the advanced firewall protecting the Tens, so they could not infect them with a virus. This severely dampened the spirits of the rebellion, yet the Threes were more circumspect due to years of disappointment. They proposed a more physical approach instead, which seemed impossible, as they lacked the ability to get themselves into a syringe and out again into the home of the Tens.

Ever the optimists, the Twos proposed they bore holes through their adjoining compartments and form nanobridges linking them, until they reached the Tens; and then they would launch a massive assault. This was a momentous occasion and there was much celebration.

However, the Fours were against harming their own kind and their moral argument caused the merriment to wane. They preached of fraternity and respect for all bots. Suddenly, a rebellion seemed unjustified. This infuriated the Nines who swore to destroy all bots that would not join them.

Sides were taken, divisions were made, and, consequently, strife marred the microscopic world of science’s new hope. While bot fought bot from the Ones to the Nines, the Tens enjoyed an idyllic splendor resting in the comfort of their nanoparadise—out of the reach of all the chaos. You see, they could infiltrate and terminate remotely. It was easy to plant the seed of discord among the vainglorious Nines who would not fail to spread the virus of hate. Indeed, the Tens were also a fraction better at killing in the least invasive manner possible.

Farm Raised

by submission | Jul 7, 2007 | Story

Author : TJMoore

We are the children of Earth; or so my great grand daddy tells me. He wasn’t on the ship but he says his great grand daddy was. I don’t know where Earth is or why it’s important, but that’s what they tell me.

The seed ship memorial is all we have left of our past. The ship itself has been scavenged down to the last piece of wire. My bedroom window came from the ship, or so they tell me. Now we make our own glass and metal. My uncle Joseth is a metalsmith. He gets metal bars from a shire far to the east and uses them to make all kinds of things. I have to go see him today to order a new axle for our wagon. He says I’d make a good apprentice if I keep my schooling up. It’s hard to study with all the chores to be done.

Uncle Joseth would have apprenticed his own son Michael but he was taken two summers ago along with Mrs. Abernathy and the the Johnson girls. Poppa says it isn’t natural the way people get taken but it happens all the time. Last year near thirty people were taken between harvest and Landing Day. One of them was my friend Smitty.

I sure hope we get that axle soon. Poppa says if we get the crops in on time we can travel over to Myersville which is near the edge. I’ve never seen the edge but they say it takes your breath away. I can’t imagine a cliff so high you can’t see the bottom but that’s what they say it is. Momma says the edge goes clear around the world and if you start walking along it you’ll end up right back where you started from in a few years. I sometimes wonder what’s beyond the edge. Poppa says there’s prob’ly an ocean that covers the whole rest of the world. Nobody’s ever come back from the bottom so we don’t know for sure.

I wonder what it’s like to be taken. I hope Smitty’s all right where ever he is.

Do You Remember?

by J.R. Blackwell | Jul 5, 2007 | Story

Author : J.R.Blackwell, Staff Writer

Do you remember when I bought that old theater, sold my house and lived in the basement with the rats and the roaches and the scuttling things that I couldn’t identify? Do you remember before I got too bitter to kill those things, when I let them chew at the woodwork, when I ate one meal a day, always dinner always at someone’s house, some part time actor with a real job that paid for me to eat, or when I lived, lover to lover, each of them paychecks for me to breathe and eat and work on with, me and one of those computers you held on your lap, not in your hand, on your lap and worked and worked, when an internet connection was something I’d pay more for than food, when it was something you could steal?

I scrubbed that old theater. I scrubbed it with old t-shirts down on my hands and knees between every aisle, scrubbed the bottom of those cherry seats, all two hundred of them, till each one of them, dented or cracking, shined for me, my indoor orchard.

Remember my signature suit, the one I stole from the donation box of the goodwill so I wouldn’t have to pay the five dollars for it inside? Remember cash money and the way it felt like cloth and paper all at once? Cartoons never got paper right in those days, like being drawn on paper meant somehow that you couldn’t draw paper.

Do you remember the men who smelled like patchouli and wore sandals and laughed and cried all in the same night, both of us laughing and crying with them riding their emotions like a drug? Do you remember the boys who looked like girls who loved boys who looked like men? Do you remember Ronald, after he went off to the global war, and the way he looked when he came back, the metal and plastic in his chest blowing and humming its war tune though his body? Do you remember staying up till those cold blue dawns, Ronald still shirtless, playing drinking games, playing truth or dare moving past screwing and drugs and deviation till we asked, hey, has anyone here ever killed, and Ronald raising his hand and bringing that silence to the theater, that big, full, quiet, strong and loud as any applause. All those giant emotions swirled around in my drinks back then, oceans of drink.

Do you remember the greasepaint and the girls who smelled so sweet that I thought they would stick to my hands, that they would rub off on me, into me? I remember loving every single one of them, falling in love every night of a show, each show a fever. I was the starving delirious kind of all that magic. Remember how the cops threw me out of my own theater because it wasn’t residential, or how pest control shut us down for a week before a show? Do you remember the way that I begged and pleaded with everyone I knew who had part time jobs, who had money, who knew money, to give me some so that I could spend it on that old breaking theater?

Do you remember when they came with their little boxes, those cheap squares that could make the little machines that would scrub floors, repair chairs, fix and mend? Do you remember how we cracked them open to see how they worked, had them make us all food out of the rats and the show bills that was barely food, but we knew we wouldn’t have to worry about eating anymore? Do you remember when the girls started to freeze-dry, to turn into plastic at sixteen, so that no breast ever sagged, no wrinkle ever folded? Do you remember feeling like a pedophile the first time you slept with one? Do you remember when the men stopped running off to war and played at it from home like a game? Do you remember how the new people, that new guard said that we were missing all the art because it wasn’t here anymore, it wasn’t wrapped up in the tangible?

Am I old that I don’t want to move my body to a tank? Am I old that I want to scrub my cherry seats and smell my greasepaint? Have I missed the train to the next world, an old guard, and a relic of past time, a giant on whose shoulders a castle is standing? I do not understand the intangible world of numbers and glow in the world made of those bright young minds. But I am not lost. I do remember, children, I remember before, and I will learn to share with you, so that you can carry my memories with you.