by Desmond Hussey | Apr 18, 2013 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
Darwin was wrong. The Burgarii Collective is living proof of that.
Watching the massive arcologies floating above the old city is surreal – mountains literally drifting among the clouds. I am reminded of a text book found deep in the library’s archives (one of many I’ve been transcribing since the 2026AD “Datacrash” wiped 90% of Earth’s electronic storage). According to the text, Charles Darwin, father of modern evolutionary theory, had a contemporary known as Peter Kropotkin, a disinherited Russian prince, zoologist and philosopher who had proposed an evolutionary model which stood in utter contrast to Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.”
I observe the various races of the Burgarii Collective carry out their specialized tasks on and about the lush floating oases of the arcologies. Some fly by wing or membrane. Some are carried aloft with flight packs of various designs. Still others crawl effortlessly over the hull, using natural or artificial suction pads to secure them to the surface. At a glance I can see over a thousand different species of plant, animal and sentient races all working together for a common good; panoply of colour, genetic design and symbiotic co-operation.
Kropotkin’s model was based not on genetic superiority of tooth and claw, but on mutual aid, wherein an individual not only co-operated with members of its own species for the betterment of the whole, but would develop strong, lasting, sometimes bizarre symbiotic relationships with other species for mutual benefit.
A multi-limbed Grokos floats past, carried aloft by a Vindarkian helium sac. The Vindark’s small, jet-like vents propel the harvester down rows of ripe strawberries – a terrestrial delicacy for the insectoid Grokus. I can see a humanoid Druig, with its Methane Algae respirator, fidgeting with a green, crystalline generator unit. Nearby, a tall, spider-like Scarvenian Empath explains to a group of humans how the generator’s semi-sentient X’ioli crystals are harmonized via the multi-tonal frequencies of a Creax Vocal Harp, producing giga-watts of electricity on demand.
According to the book, Kropotkin’s ideas had plenty of experimental data and research supporting them, but Darwin’s “dog eat dog” vision of the world was a sentiment shared by the seminal corporate engines of the age; young industrialists who were steadily gaining power and influence alongside the burgeoning Industrial Revolution.
Thus, Darwin’s voice was heard while Kropotkin’s faded to obscurity. The new zeitgeist placed humanity at the top of the food chain; self-made Lords over the kingdom of Earth. “Survival of the Fittest!” became the rallying cry of a thriving corporate hegemony, heralding an era of competition and global expansion.
Drunk on the promise of the new paradigm, we systematically manufactured, one human at a time, a rapacious social beast hell-bent on survival. A voracious predator, it swallowed anything in its path; trees, oceans, skies, flesh, leaving a trail of devastation and waste in its wake. Species vanished, devoured by the beast’s insatiable desire for more. Within three centuries, all life on Earth was endangered. The few remaining humans were the sickest of the lot.
The survivors, it seemed, weren’t the fittest after all.
What were we then?
Just plain lucky.
If not for Burgarii intervention, we would’ve destroyed ourselves along with a multi-billion-year-old ecology. But they came and have shown us what Kropotin tried to show us so long ago.
Today, a Plithian hive mind is teaching me the language of bees. Already their calming buzz is forming a coherent syntax in my mind. I wonder what things would have been like if we’d chosen this path sooner. What new relationships might have developed? How many species might have been spared?
by Duncan Shields | Apr 17, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Mordeck and Cheddar Plain were field-stripping their weapons on top of Concourse B. No one came by here. They talked and smoked openly. Eyes in the sky were a thing of the past.
They perched there on an I-beam, ten stories up from the concrete graveyard.
The broken teeth of the buildings around them creaked in the wind. The rubbish of destroyed skyscrapers snuggled up to the corners of architecture too stupid to fall down. Cities like zombies, not knowing they were dead. Sunlight picked out the holes of shattered windows like hundreds of surprised but empty eye sockets. They leaned against each other like headless drunks.
The broken glass was in the process of becoming sand. The concrete was becoming dust. The gyprock was becoming mud from the rain. The paper from office after office took flight and settled whimsically around the town. Most of it was used for nests. Every intersection was a wind-shaped bowl extending down from building’s eroding corners. Dunes formed in places. It didn’t take a predicator to see that the city was being scoured from the Earth and it was being done quicker than one would expect.
Soon, within centuries, the red bones of rusted rebar would be all that was left poking up occasionally like treasure through the sand.
The buildings were crying dust and the wind sounded like their moaning. No wonder the postborns saw the cities as haunted.
Preday survivors like Cheddar Plain and Mordeck knew better. They could go into the cities with no fear.
Mordeck and Cheddar Plain still had working implants from before when they were soldiers. Mordeck switched on his eye. Cheddar Plain carefully studded his firing arm to ‘on’. A supersonic flashbulb whine of readiness cycled up, muffled by the towel he’d wrapped around it. Their job as part of the Polis Fors was to kill folks trying to come back and live in the city.
The zealots came into view, dressed in red cloaks. They were carrying incense. Scavengers and Repopulists. Religious Nostalgics who had dreams of a new future. They wanted to go back to the way things were, not forward into a rural world.
Vets like Cheddar Plain and Mordeck fought a losing battle. Postborns were outnumbering the Preday survivors every day. Humanity might eventually boomerang back to being able to a nuclear age if they reclaimed the cities.
With a shrug, Mordeck hooked his visual cortex up to Cheddar Plain’s arm and looked down at the priests in red shuffling their way through the debris. They lit up in IR, nightviz, and t-sonics. The reds became greens, the grey dust became blue, and through the directionals, Mordeck could hear them as if he was walking with them.
Cheddar Plain drew in breath and bit his lip in anticipation. Mordeck nodded once, quickly. That was the trigger.
Cheddar Plain’s arm tip flowered open. Six hunterstrikes winked forward in a puff of smoke and a slight recoil.
The priests exploded in an orange ball seventeen blocks away. Today’s quota had been reached.
Cheddar Plain and Mordeck smiled in the shadows and waited for news of another gridpoint sighting.
The cities must remain empty.
by featured writer | Apr 16, 2013 | Story
Author : Bob Newbell, Featured Writer
“Can you see him?” asked the SWAT team commander.
“Yes, commander. I'll stream the video feed to your display,” said the CASO officer. A live video of a disheveled, wild-eyed man of about 20 years clutching a girl who appeared to be about 14 with his left hand and holding a gun at her head with his right appeared on a virtual screen a few apparent feet in front of the commander. The image was, in reality, being projected to the tactical display in the police officer's contact lenses.
“He's too well-barricaded in there. No windows. Even if your force could get us precise targeting coordinates, a round fired through the wall could deflect and hit the hostage.”
The CASO officer said nothing. The video image zoomed in on the maniac's hands. A subtle outline of blood vessels, nerves, and tendons could now be seen.
“Spectrographic analysis from the four operatives I have in the building has given us a decent anatomical map with which to work,” the CASO officer said matter-of-factly.
The commander sighed. “Well, can your boys do it?”
The special ops officer was silent and motionless for many seconds, as if he were running through hundreds of scenarios and coming up with tactics and contingencies for each. At last, he said flatly, “Yes.”
Ten minutes later, as the negotiator continued to try to keep the increasingly agitated hostage-taker talking over the latter's earpiece cell phone, the CASO officer told the police commander, “We're ready.”
“Alright. My men will move in on your command.”
Inside the building, a hundred mosquitoes briefly took flight and then at the exact same moment landed on the mad man, most alighting on his hands and forearms, and simultaneously bit the man at precisely targeted locations with modified mandibles and maxillae. Down the hypopharynx of each mosquito flowed a minute quantity of a synthetic paralytic agent whose action of onset was many times faster than succinylcholine and completely without the latter drug's transient fasciculation effect. Flaccid paralysis was immediate.
The criminal's arms fell to his sides and the man himself immediately thereafter crumpled to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut. His young victim stood free but confused.
“NOW, COMMANDER!”
In a matter of seconds the door to the small building was caved in with a battering ram. The SWAT team stormed in and the girl was rushed out to a waiting ambulance. From within the building, the curses of the disarmed psychopath, his paralysis already abating, could be heard.
“Well done!” the police commander said to his colleague. He raised his hand as if he was going to slap the CASO officer on the back, then stopped himself. “Uh, we couldn't have done it without you…guys.”
“Glad we could help,” said the praying mantis standing on the hood of the commander's police cruiser from a tiny voice synthesizer. The green insect whose body was studded with minuscule cybernetic implants watched as the houseflies, heavy with their implanted surveillance equipment, flew slowly back to the box marked Cybernetic Arthropod Special Operations that sat on the other end of the police car's hood. The biomechanoid mosquitoes followed closely behind the flies.
The mantis itself then walked across the expanse of the car's hood toward the box. If it were anatomically possible, the large insect would have smiled. A job like this should be worth an extra cricket or two tonight at feeding time, he thought as he stepped into the box.
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by Julian Miles | Apr 15, 2013 | Story
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
It's dark when my ears finally stop ringing. I lie deathly still and carefully inventory my corpse.
“Not such an unstoppable bastard now, are ya?”
Docherty is still here. That explains the pain in my jaw. He put one in my head, two in my chest, smashed my teeth, gouged out my eyes and snipped my fingertips off at the first joint. The only way to identify me will be by DNA. Which would come up blank, but he doesn’t know that.
Now to earn my keep. I click once and echomap.
“What was that?”
Ah, Samuel is here too: enhanced hearing. Oh well, nothing for it except to click again on a lower band to echolocate.
“He did it again.”
“Did what?”
“High frequency clicks.”
“It's just his cybergear winding down. He's dead, we're rich.”
My guns have been left where they fell. I push a lot of adrenalin and endorphins into my bloodstream, along with extra clotting factor. Cybergear is good; I'm better. Bioengineered to be more than these peasants with their implements grafted in, taking immuno-suppressants, psycho-stabilisers, steroids and antibiotics with breakfast for the rest of their lives. My brain resides in a keratinised tissue shell sitting in the left side of my pelvis, with my spare heart on the right. My ribs form natural maximillian plate and I can consciously use ninety percent of my muscle capacity. The improved bat sensorium in my brain and echo chambers in my cheekbones are personal refinements to the build.
I've killed enough time. Time to kill.
I click to update the echomap as I sit up like my upper torso is being pulled by strings, truncated fingers grabbing my trigger-less guns. They interface via neural pads and are live by the time I level them at my two erstwhile killers.
“What the frack?”
As last words go, they leave nothing for posterity. They're also surprisingly common from unfortunates facing me.
I lay back down and safety my guns. A subvocal mike in my throat links to the transceivers woven into my scapulae.
“Robin! Where the hell have you been?” Janet's voice is husky with genuine concern.
“Sorry, darling. I got kidnapped and assassinated again.”
“Oh, for the love of Pete! That's the second time this year. How bad?”
“Proper job this time. Going to need a cranial rebuild, phalange implants, a cardiac replacement and a left kneecap.”
“A kneecap? The bastards.”
“They used a Labrador gun.”
“Oh, the poor thing. Did they shoot it afterwards?”
“No, I did. That's how they got the drop on me.”
“You really have to work on that soft spot for strays, Rob. Medtechs will be with you inside five minutes.”
“Thanks, darling. I'll stay away until my face is on properly so Tabitha doesn't have nightmares.”
“That's one of the reasons why I love you, Robin Summerson. See you soon.”
“Kiss her goodnight from me. Love you.”
“Love you too. Hurry home.”
“I will.”
With that, I relax and wait for the medical team. Now that’s a hell of a way to make a living, flying all over the place to pick up the pieces. I couldn't do their job.
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by submission | Apr 14, 2013 | Story
Author : Dennis Von Euw
“ 'X-ray 3' to 'Harvest Queen', come in, over”
“This is 'Harvest Queen', what is your status?, Over”
“We've completed the survey on the asteroid. It shows no transuranics, and damn little heavy metals. The bulk is just stony regolith., over.”
“Understood, 'X-ray-3', stand by to return to Mother.”
“Are you nuts?”, asked Jarvis. “You didn't say a word about the crystals. The lab boys back on Earth have been screaming for them for years!”
“Relax. Has ol' Smitty lead you wrong yet? This is our lucky day! Ten years we've been pushing one bucket or another around the Belt together, and what do we have to show for ourselves? Nuttin', that's what. This is our chance to make good. The Captain never offered us a sign-up bonus when we came aboard, and we don't owe ship-stores a deci-cred. We'll plant our own beacon on this lump, and come back on our own ship some day and clean up!”
“I don't know. Everybody we've talked to says Capt. Erickson is no-one's fool, and not a man to cross”, replied Jarvis, “but ya haven't steered me wrong yet. Do it.”
After placing their own device on the surface, the pair made their way back to the scout ship.
“ 'X-ray 3' to 'Harvest Queen', ready for take-off, are you in range? Over”
“Roger X-ray, begin blast.”
“Damn! Negative burn, I say again, negative burn, We can't get the ship to lift, over”
“Acknowledged. Stand by”
“Well Captain, you were right. Those two couldn't be trusted. Luckily you already knew about the crystals down there.
“Luck be damned! I've used that rock to test new men for years. Yes, there's crystal down there, but it's useless. You wouldn't know it to look at it, but the scientists say the structure is all wrong for their needs. Alright Helm, proceed on course to our next waypoint.”
“But Captain, we haven't retrieved 'X-ray 3' yet.” exclaimed the XO “What about them?”
“What about them? We'll pick up the scout on our way back in 6 months.”
“But they only have enough stores and oxy for 30 days, Sir. They'll die!”
“I have no sympathy for pirates, Mister! The Belt is dangerous enough for honest Spacers, without
carrying vipers around with us. You're new here, XO, so I'll overlook your outburst, but never second-guess my orders again. Understood?
“Aye, Sir! My apologies. Ready to leave orbit.”
“Very well. Execute!”
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