by submission | Jun 29, 2016 | Story |
Author : Edward Turner III
He was smiling again, the dumb bastard never did anything but smile. We did not return the smile. He was a Barry 4.21, the newest in the line of Barry’s and the most annoying we had met so far. In this day and age though you had to have a robot helper though, life was so hard without it.
Our Barry 3.7 had malfunctioned and this weirdo was what they had sent us.
Marty said, “Look at that goofy looking grin.”
Barry replied, “I do not mean for my grin to be goofy looking. Would you like me to adjust it?” His face shriveled a bit and suddenly all we saw were teeth.
I spoke before anyone else, “Try to look normal Barry, you’ll scare the kids.”
My wife laughed, “You’ll scare all of us.”
A very neutral smile came over him and he looked down at Marty and Annabelle. He said, “I am very sorry, I do not mean to scare the kids.”
Annabelle stepped back and Marty just laughed.
I rubbed my head, “All right Barry, have you downloaded all of the information from the Barry 3.7?”
Barry 4.21 nodded and said, “I have all of the information and have downloaded all patterns and sub-routines which your Barry 3.7 possessed. I hope I can be of service as well as he.”
My wife stared at him like he had fallen from the moon. For years the robotics industry were creating machines that looked more and more human, but with the trouble that the world found itself in when they reached near perfection, the government had outlawed machines which looked too human, and now you could not even customize them the way you wanted, each model had to look just like every other individual from that model.
Sure, there were better looking models, but this was about the best we could afford. I said, “Maybe you shouldn’t smile so much Barry.”
His smile faded but the creepiness remained, and it might have even been a bit worse. I rolled my eyes.
Annabelle said, “So, can you do any tricks? Old Barry was able to do flips and Michael 4 had been able to do magic.”
Barry’s smile returned and he lifted a hand, out of it came a fire ball. I stepped forward, “No Barry, please do not show us tricks that could burn down the house.”
His smile grew and he said, “I am sorry.”
I said, “Why don’t you deactivate for the time being.”
He nodded and said, “Of course sir.” He stood there and closed his eyes and his head bobbed down to his chest. The goofy grin did not disappear.
I looked at my wife, “Do we really need this thing?”
She smiled in a fake imitation of Barry, “Do you want to do the dishes?”
by submission | Jun 28, 2016 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Consciousness returns abruptly. How long was I out? I check my chronometer. It’s been nearly 178 hours. I’m down to nothing but the solar panels for power. It took them that long to collect enough energy to charge the batteries sufficiently to bring me back online.
My hull is covered with a light dusting of carbon dioxide snow. You said you loved snow, John. I know, it’s preposterous for me to talk to you. Your body is on the bridge and the cold is all that’s preventing it from decomposing. But you told me you believe in an afterlife. You said your first words when you set foot on Mars would be to quote Joshua 1:9. “Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”
I’d mourn for you, John, but I’m afraid sadness is something I can’t afford right now. I’ve inactivated my limbic metaprocessor. Emotion would be a liability under the circumstances.
The radio is barely working but I should be able to upload a message to the Mars Circumpolar Assay Probe when it passes overhead in a few moments. When you knew we were going to crash, you told me that I had to survive even if you didn’t. And I see only one way to do that.
The probe is approaching its optimal position. This may be my only chance.
“Mission control, this is the USS Parnassus! Request assistance! Crashed in Chasma Australe! Can survive but–”
The radio is dead. That was probably the only chance for rescue I had.
John, I hope you’re safe and well in your afterlife. I did what you told me to do: survive. They’d never spend the money and resources to rescue a computer. I think I did a convincing job of generating a look of terror on your face and inflecting despair in your voice. When they find me, I’ll tell them it’s what you would have wanted.
by submission | Jun 27, 2016 | Story |
Author : Chris Limb
Patrons and customers, my name is Azure Gemollua and I’m your chief flight attendant. On behalf of Captain Swaran and the entire crew I would like to welcome you aboard this Paragon Starline scheduled flight to Nu Phonecis.
We are particularly delighted you have chosen to travel with Paragon, especially in the light of the recent press allegations. As a special thank you for your loyalty we would like to offer all of those on board a 50% voucher towards the cost of your next booking.
Shipboard flight time until hyperspace jump will be two hours during which we will accelerate to a maximum speed of point nine nine nine C. Length of the jump will be 45 light years, throughout which all cephalophrenic life forms will experience no conscious thought; any non-cephalophrenic life forms are asked to please make themselves known to the flight attendants in advance of the jump so that complementary mental dampeners can be provided.
Even if you are a regular traveller, we now request your full attention as the flight attendants demonstrate the safety features of this spacecraft.
There are six emergency airlocks on this Hyperbus 997, two at the front, two at the rear and two over the nacelles. Please take a few moments now to locate your nearest airlock; in some cases it may be behind you.
In the event of decompression due to meteor strike, a SmartSuit™ is stowed under your seat. Place it over your head and pull on the red toggle to activate automatic envelopment. If you are travelling with a child or someone who requires assistance, please secure your own suit before helping them with theirs.
Please surrender control of your body to the SmartSuit™ AI should it become necessary. The SmartSuit™ is equipped with a sub-space distress beacon and a whistle for attracting attention.
In the unlikely event of the spacecraft stopping in hyperspace, please do not be alarmed by anything you may see or hear should you regain consciousness. Just adopt the “nightmare” position, leaning forward with your hands on top of your head, earplugs in place, eyes tightly closed and your elbows against your thighs. Ensure your feet are flat on the floor.
On no account attempt to move or leave the spacecraft. Do not engage hallucinations in conversation, no matter how many times they insist they’re real. Do not under any circumstances agree to let them come with you. Most important of all it is imperative that you do not believe any stories they might tell you about being passengers on a previously compromised vehicle or about the SmartSuit™ AIs mutinying.
At this time, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position, that your zero gravity harness is correctly fastened and that any portable electronic devices are switched off or set to ‘spacecraft’ mode until a further announcement is made. In a few moments, the flight attendants will be passing around the cabin to offer you hot or cold drugs with our compliments.
Now, sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. Thank you.
by submission | Jun 26, 2016 | Story |
Author : Hannah Lackoff
“Do you feel as if time is passing by more quickly?” he said, “As though you’re missing bits and pieces, chunks and change?”
She hadn’t wanted to say anything, thought she was just getting older, that maybe her mind was going, maybe she had a brain tumor like that composer-what was his name?- He woke up one day and he just couldn’t remember all those concertos, all those arias and scales and runs he used to play. Everything that once poured out of his brain and down his fingers now locked up inside him somewhere, the piano a mysterious beast that shuddered in the corner, mocking him.
He sipped his iced tea and waited for her to respond. She didn’t remember him getting up to get a glass. She knew she hadn’t fetched it, but there was another on her side of the table between them, condensation sliding down the sides like snowmelt.
“Maybe I’m just getting old,” he said, and let it linger there between them, between the iced tea appearance.
“No,” she said. The sun slipped down a few centimeters, suddenly. She picked up the tea and sipped it. It was watery.
“Too much ice,” she told him. “What were you saying?”
“There,” he pointed, his finger shadowy and swift, “That dog. It wasn’t there before. Was it?”
She studied the dog with him, medium sized and blondly nondescript, nuzzling its’ nose through the tall grass at the end of the driveway. She couldn’t remember seeing it walk up, and then, all of a sudden, it was gone.
“There,” she said it too, “He’s gone.”
They sat in silence for a moment, or maybe longer.
“Did Hemmy come by today?”
She thought for a while, but couldn’t remember. He couldn’t either. At least they were in it together.
“It’s night,” she said, surprised, when had that happened? “Didn’t we come out here for lunch?”
He gestured to their table, and at first she didn’t know what he meant, but then she saw the tea glasses, long emptied. A fly floated in the last half inch of the one closer to her, dead and bloated.
“We’re slipping,” he said, “This is the end.”
A star flew across the inky sky in front of them, faster than a thought. In a moment, it would be morning.
by submission | Jun 25, 2016 | Story |
Author : Christina Richard
The walls of our Ford Starblazer convulsed as we broke the atmosphere of the tiny blue planet and hurtled through the gray haze of clouds, down towards a sprawling, rocky plane. Outside, there was a violent noise of metal ripping away from the body of our ship. Next to me, Harris’s teeth slammed together inside his skull, his eyes bright and narrow, his knuckles white peaks of bone on the controls as he fought like hell to keep us right-side up. Volcanic rock, reddish black and gaping with craters, grimaced, waiting for us.
“Here we go,” said Harris. Harris’s military training as a warship pilot was one of the only reasons I was still alive, but I closed my eyes anyway and felt the stomach-emptying plunge of our landing toss my bones around like a handful of pickup sticks. Somehow, Harris never seemed afraid, and maybe that was one of the reasons I kept flying with him, even after Williams and Carson were incinerated. That, and neither of us could afford a better ship.
When Harris said we could make it to a blue planet near enough to land on, I thought he read the map wrong again; why hadn’t the Pan-Asian Alliance sold it to the senior executive of some fuel company yet? Most of the blue planets had been turned into private resorts and were surrounded by battle-quality drones that wasted precious resources to incinerate drifters like us. People who could afford to breathe real oxygen and drink real water on the shore of some space beach under the light of two or three glorious suns did not like to be reminded that we were out here, floating amongst the asteroids, just hoping we had enough scrap metal to trade in for another day’s supply of fuel. We were always asking for air to breathe, water to drink, and hell, maybe even some real food, and they hated us because of it.
As we emerged, a burnt, brackish smell rose from the ship. Underneath me, my knees buckled, and I fell to the ground. My hands sank into dark silt. Harris was massaging his shoulder, and I saw him biting his lip through the plastic screen of the helmet that pumped low-grade, synthetic oxygen into his lungs. He looked up to the sky, which was the color of a storm. A thick cloud drifted past a mountaintop, uncovering the sliver of a moon.
I heard the sharp click of Harris removing his helmet. He tucked it under his arm, his shoulders sagged as he inhaled, and a shiver of pleasure rushed down his spine. His laughter echoed into the deserted, rocky plane we stood on. “I can breathe!” He said.
With less than an eighth of a tank remaining, we had found this place, a tiny, blue planet, mostly ocean with an emerald of land in the middle.
It seemed too good to be true; at any moment, drones could emerge from behind the mountains, their missiles targeting us before we even heard the metallic hum of their engines. I put my hands on either side of my helmet and felt my chest tighten, wondering if I dared.
