by | Apr 4, 2008 | Story
Author : Salli Shepherd
In Fresno, California, Kalisha Henderson jacks herself in to a palm-length, slimline psii-pod and closes her eyes. She is young, barely in her teens, and her mind soon fills with images of pink, prancing horses with horns of silver.
She hasn’t yet learnt to hold her impressions well or long enough to leave a decent neural imprint. Soon the horses shred and tatter, fading into cartoonish, equine ghosts. With a low moan of despair, she watches her popularity rate spike briefly and then plummet again to almost zero. She’ll have to try harder, much harder, if she is ever going to succeed. She also realises her Subscription is running out and, in anticipation of that terrible loss, weeps loudly into her hands.
On the other side of the world, Peter O’Flaherty is enjoying the fruit of being a Master of his art. From Peter’s psii-pod and thence into ArtiCon’s main gallery flows a horrifically lifelike pack of Hell Hounds, slavering and many-limbed, set loose on a roomful of barebreasted cat-women. Millions watch the carnage, enthralled, and for every minute they do so a credit leaks from their account to ArtiCon’s coffers. Peter will see one ten-thousandth of the money, but he doesn’t care. His popularity rate just went through the roof, and the subsequent endorphin reward meted out to him through the Subscriber chip embedded in his temporal lobe sets him shivering, pleasure dripping wet and warm down his thigh.
They are just two, among six billion Subscribers.
Kalisha’s little burst of misery, a mere drop in the ocean, is nevertheless a  source of great happiness to Narghaflog. Roughly the size and shape of an inflated sleeping-bag, the alien hooked up to ArtiCon’s artificial brain by hairlike microfilaments quivers and blubbers in joy. What fuel these creatures provide! What manner of mesmeric delicacies! Narghaflog’s entire planet is beholden to It for this cheap source of food, fuel and entertainment. And to think, It almost passed the place by. With a pulse of neurons and self-satisfaction, the great Arcturean explorer transmits a message to Its second-in-command.
“Lhamayaoh! Plant discord in that large spike on Subscriber #27985362, immediately.â€
The lesser creature does as It is bidden, proceeding to insert a twin trend of manufactured outrage and disapproval into Peter O’Flaherty’s rating stream. Immediately, a massive wave of murderous anger drives response levels off the chart– Peter’s dedicated fans and followers, numbering in their millions, won’t stand for the creations of their favourite Dream-Weaver being sullied by unfavourable critique.
Moments later, the slug-like denizens of Arcturus let out a telepathic roar of approval as a tide of human rage floods at the speed of Thought across space, permeating their depleted auric channels. Narghaflog allows a final shudder of pleasure to wobble Its colourless flesh before turning back to the neural monitors, thanking the Spawn-Source for happy accidents and the limitless vanity of artists.
by | Apr 3, 2008 | Story
Author : DarlingDante
Dr. Hammond mopped the sweat from his forehead, his round red cheeks heaving in labored breath. He’d maintained a manicured composure during countless conferences, lectures, and even the couple of morning news shows he’d smiled through, but on the day of the test, a beaded crown of anxiety hung on his brow.
Newspaper headlines around the world read: “Hammond’s Miracle Machineâ€, “Energy from the Airâ€, “A New Beginningâ€, and so on. He knew the technical aspect of his work was lost on most of his colleagues, let alone the average individual, but as long as he flashed a chart or a diagram on TV, and the people who were supposed to know what they were talking about agreed with him, that was good enough for everybody.  Â
A smiling head popped into his office from the hallway “Almost show time Dr.!†Dr. Hammond barely nodded in acknowledgement. The flimsy familiar office chair that he’d grown old and fat in creaked as his weight shifted slowly off its edge. “Showtime†he muttered to himself.
He could see the machines busy with activity. Engineers checked over every inch of the mechanisms and, from the distance of the observation window, looked like ants swarming on a stick jabbed in their nest. The Nevada sky was clear, and although he couldn’t see them, he knew that there were thousands of spectators from around the world huddled in a half circle behind the safety mark. Little villages of onlookers had popped up out of the desert around the testing site in the weeks before. He had been so angry that a member of his staff had been careless or stupid enough to leak the location then, but now that the day had come, he knew it wouldn’t matter. His life’s work was framed in the long glass in front of him, as if some grand or mad painter had seen the whole of him and spread it out on crystalline canvas. The observation room was private by his request. He wanted silence at the climax of his life.
Dr. Hammond’s moment of reflection was interrupted by a hasty knock, followed by the door to his sanctuary being flung open. Robert, his chief assistant, dashed inside with a bundle of computer printouts tucked under his arm. Robert was the only other man alive that had understood some of the critical workings of the project, and in some minor ways contributed to its fruition.
“Dr. we really need to talk.†Robert sputtered, catching his breath. His words sounded discordant in the vacuum of Hammond’s haven.
“Well what’s so important?â€Hammond spat back with a look on his face as if he’d been struck.
“I know you’ve told me to relax and enjoy myself, but I couldn’t help going back over the numbers, and some things just didn’t add up.â€
He turned his back to Robert, again fixing his gaze on the edifice that was preparing to activate.
“The numbers are fine.â€
“Doctor, I really think we should take some time to look this over…†Robert trailed off, and after a moment’s hesitation said: “We are going to have to reschedule the test.â€
A small smile crept across Dr. Hammond’s wide cheeks.
“The numbers are fine.â€
The countdown blurred into a hum of syllables sounding to Dr. Hammond like a backwards count into anesthetic sleep. There was a brilliance that seemed to darken the crystal sky, then a violent shake that split the awful image of achievement into fragments. As the concussion rushed toward his outpost, Dr. Hammond pressed his palm to the glass.
“It’s finally finished.â€
by | Apr 2, 2008 | Story
Author : naquoya
It ended as it always was. Just me with my thoughts bidding farewell to the only friend I really knew. At least he was the only one who really knew me.
There was no grave site. No urn to hold his burnt remains. No, there was just my memories of him, which will fade in time I guess. He told me they would. He told me they always do. How do you let go of something you have held onto for so long?
My shrink said it was just a faze. It will pass, it had to.
“These drugs are designed for your condition” he told me. He never told me what that condition was.
“But I don’t want to lose him.”
My shrink didn’t understand. It was his job to not understand. My family, they just wished I would grow up and be normal.
Sometimes I feel I was born into the wrong body. Or perhaps the wrong time. Or perhaps the wrong place. But I once found the place for me. He took me there.
“Did I tell you about the time he took me to his home?” My shrink gave me that look. The look that says ‘what am I to do with you’. What he did was up the dosage. He always did. It cost me my friend.
It’s not my shrinks fault. I was just born into the wrong body. Or perhaps the wrong time. Or was it the wrong place? Ah yes, there was that other place. His place. He took me there once. I tried to tell others about it. No one would listen. No one listens when they think you’re crazy. My friend, well he listened. He took me home, to his place.
To his world. A world of lights and movement. And buildings. I’ve never seen so many buildings. And they pierced the sky. It was just so beautiful. I know, I was there. I didn’t dream it.
The drugs tell me I did. My shrink tells me I did. My family tell me I did. But I didn’t. And now it’s starting to fade.
He told me it would.
by | Apr 1, 2008 | Story
Author : ifrozenspiriti
“True knowledge comes from memory,” he proclaimed to the gathered smiles and nods. “Memory is what makes us human.”
The next morning, he fed the memory of lackluster lovemaking and asthmatic perfume staining hotel-white pillowcases to the Machine, along with the memory of breakfast’s runny eggs and the remnants of dreams—bright, sticky, meaningless.
It bulged with hoarded humanity: documents, dictionaries, translations; photographs, paintings, cave art; poetry. And now, technicians in white lab coats (for tradition’s sake) fed it countless small metallic squares; and now, it fed on memory.
The Machine was the answer.
“The meaning of life?” he asked the crowd. “How can we even consider the possibility, inadequately armed as we are with just our individual memories?” There was always whispering at this point, the sibilant rustling of coat sleeves and comprehension.
As the people filed out of the room—some silent, some whispering to family members—they each picked up a square before stepping into the icy wind of normalcy. No one left without a square.
Some of them, filled with a buoying sense of righteous self-importance, would go home immediately and spend the remainder of the evening reciting their recalled lives into the squares. They’d send them off in the morning, and they’d wipe their hands on their thighs and smile at that sense of accomplishment, of significance; and then they’d rush off to work with the smile slowly sinking into a cup of gas-station coffee.
Some of them would go home and watch TV and forget about the squares, buried under phone bills and pizza-delivery pamphlets and appointment cards and the other accumulated detritus of everyday life. And then they’d wake, days or weeks or months later, to a sensation of unexplained guilt; and then they’d clean off the kitchen counter and discover the squares, still shining, and hastily record some record of Life and send them off Priority.
Some of them would finally fall asleep to echoes of dystopian daydreams. They’d wait weeks to send the squares, watching them warily for signs of mind control, before finally giving in to family-member rebukes. They’d whisper something rushed and send them away, feeling somehow lessened.
And then technicians in white lab coats (for tradition’s sake) would feed the squares to the Machine.
“It will be a great day indeed for our humble humanity when this project is complete,” he said, and his was the voice of prophecy.
He’d lost track, long ago, of how many times he’d delivered the same speech. At first, to elegantly clinking clusters of Society over thin-stemmed sips of wine, while the Machine was still a novelty among the cities’ highest circles. Then, as the advertisements increased and rumors tore through towns like whirlwinds, there were more stars visible in the country-clearer sky than in the ratings of his hotels.
“When all human experience is contained within a single vessel . . . a vessel equipped with the most advanced problem-solving pattern-recognition software ever imagined. . . . Well.” And the crowd was left drifting for a few seconds on those glimmering clouds of promise.
He smiled as they left, pale beneath the podium-bleach of the lights, and wondered when the question would be asked. He watched the (ever-smaller) crowd collect their squares, and wondered what would happen when the most advanced problem-solving pattern-recognition software ever imagined tried to categorize the accidental, tried to organize the entropic.
The next morning, he’d feed these thoughts to the Machine.
by Kathy Kachelries | Mar 31, 2008 | Story
Author : Kathy Kachelries, Staff Writer
They’d followed the grishna since the beginning of time. Their elders described uncountable days and night, each lasting several lifetimes, since the first keeper had been formed from hard-packed snow and melted by the grishna’s breath. They had never neglected their duty. They hibernated with the large creature, curled up in a vast pile of limbs between the grishna’s tusks, and when they woke they gathered food to care for the endless being. It never spoke. It was a god, so it never had to. When they spoke it was in whispers and gestures, mimicking the silent movement of the grishna’s several mouths with the one tongue they possessed, and this was what fascinated the linguists.
The first outsider came during night, while they slept. Before they awoke a half-dozen had arrived, with boxes that trapped voices and forced them to perform at will and other boxes that clicked and whirred, frightening the grishna. Once, it tore through the outsiders’ enclave, reducing their boxes to brightly colored shards, but everything was quickly replaced.
With time, they learned to live with the newcomers. The grishna adjusted to their presence, and the keepers followed suit. They accepted that the new beings must have been charged to follow them in the same way they were charged to follow the grishna, so they did not interfere.
The first word the linguists learned indicated the most solid snow, the kind that could best hold the grishna’s weight. The kind they’d been carved from, at the dawn of time. The second word was the word for heat, particularly the heat of the grishna, though they believed it also applied to fire. After that, the words came quickly, and although the outsiders lacked the limb used to indicate the passage of time, they could communicate their origin.
And the keepers communicated theirs.
More arrived. Too many to count. Again, the grishna was frightened. Again, the grishna adjusted. The linguists offered food in exchange for words spoken into the box, and the keepers no longer foraged. The grishna was fed as well, food that it seemed to prefer to what the keepers had always gathered. The outsiders were no longer outsiders. They became a part of life. Some of the keepers learned the methods of the boxes, some even learned the second language. They were told about the light, how it came from far away, and how the stars did not mark the days of the grishna’s life. New words were created, to describe new ideas and new objects. When the first one was taken away to be studied, he returned with stories that terrified and thrilled the others.
All of them wanted to see the lights and feel the nauseating movement. Many of them did. The elders waited for this to pass, knowing that all things passed, but some of the younger ones never returned. If they did, they wore coverings over their fur in shades no keeper had seen. They no longer hibernated. They spoke words no keeper’s tongue should be able to form. The grishna grew restless. Nobody studied the grishna.
When the elders left, the linguists noted it with interest. The smaller footsteps of the oldest keepers made small indentations in the larger footsteps of the grishna as they walked away from the lights and boxes just before another uncounted nightfall. They’d followed the grishna since the beginning of time. They had never neglected their duty.
