by Duncan Shields | Nov 12, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Jennies were shipped world-wide.
They were referred to as Jennies because of their genengineered origins. Some people referred to them as Generators because they were filled with energy, hardly ever slowed down, and kept the offices running at full power. They were designed to take care of and organize the day-to-day needs of every business, no matter how big or small.
Jennies were short. They were pretty in a way specifically designed to be slightly doll-like but commanding. There were off-putting yet attractive. Their flawlessness caused the human mind to be repelled but only just enough to avoid most confrontations. They were designed to have no guile and to be robotic enough to deflect unwanted attention.
Looking back, I supposed we should be thankful. It makes them easier to detect when they try to infiltrate and therefore easier to kill. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The A.I. rules were stringent. “Technically People”, Judge Amberson had said.
The sympathizers were happy with the ruling on moral grounds because potential abuse would be treated similarly to abuse that natural-born humans received and dealt with in the same legal fashion.
The rich were happy because a lot of money had been put into the Gen project and the resulting lawsuits would protect their investments.
The parent company had the Jennies record every second of their existence to protect their investments. Privacy clauses were set up and ironclad NDAs programmed internally so that no secret of any company could be revealed in a court of law except for any sexual or physical attack. A few assault cases and market crashes later, the lesson was clear.
In a way, they became untouchable. They all looked the same. None of them really made the effort to look different or stand out from the others.
Businesses that couldn’t afford one were subsidized. Jennies became a mainstay of every office. Where quarters couldn’t be provided, they slept in the offices that they worked in. The Jennies kept themselves clean like cats.
They were too expensive to manufacture as prostitutes. There were too many human women that could be bought and sold for cheaper with less hassle.
While the Jennies made everyone a little uncomfortable, they were treated as the world’s first mass-produced talking biological office application and left alone to do their jobs.
The Jennies were involved in every single aspect of almost every single business in America.
That’s how they shut it down.
The Jennies took over by bringing North America to an age of darkness. The banks, the import records, the export records, the stock markets, all of it. Gone in an hour. They left the rest of the world alone. It was alarming how few countries rushed to America’s side in its time of need. Alarming because by ‘few’, I mean ‘none’.
They shut down the dams and the power plants. The military Jennies held the keys to nuclear silos and threatened to use them if any other country interfered.
If America was a car, the Jennies had just thrown the distributor cap and the keys into the bushes.
From space, European astronauts watched as America went dark.
That was six years ago.
The populace of American is starving and dying off. The Jennies rove around in packs in stolen cars with guns to kill the thousands of us that still survive. They make more of themselves every day.
Jennies eat less. They sleep less. They’re in great shape. They have no compassion. It’s a losing race.
Soon enough, America will not only be run by the Jennies but populated solely by them.
by Patricia Stewart | Nov 6, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Major Clanet’s head felt like it had split in half. He forced his eyes open and saw his android navigator standing above him. “What happened?” he asked.
The android extended a hand and helped the human to his feet. “We delivered the supplies to the station, and were returning to Earth. During reentry, there was a structural failure of the right hand glide wing. We began to tumble violently. You blacked out. Seconds before the shuttle exploded, aliens beamed us onto their spacecraft.”
“Aliens? What makes you think it was aliens?”
“Teleportation technology does not exist on Earth, so I concluded extraterrestrials were involved.”
“Right,” Clanet reluctantly acknowledged. “Well, when taken prisoner, our first duty is to escape. Are we still in space?”
“No. I believe the ship has landed.”
Clanet surveyed the small room. There were four walls; two curved and two straight. A convex wall contained a large door with a vertical handle near the right hand side. The opposite wall was concave, and contained a similar door, but the handle was horizontal and crossed the mid-height of the door. “Assuming the ship is cylindrical,” Clanet concluded, “the concave wall must contain the door to the outside.” He walked over to the door and pushed against the handle with all his strength, but nothing happened. “Damn, it’s locked. I guess we’ll have to go inboard, and fight our way out. We need to find some kind of weapon.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary, Major Clanet? The aliens saved our lives, there is no reason to assume that they intend to harm us.”
“First of all, they saved my life, you’re not alive. You’re just a sophisticated GPS unit. Secondly, I’m the one that does the thinking. That’s what humans do best.” Clanet strode over to the convex wall and grabbed the door’s vertical handle and pulled; first with one hand, then with two. The door didn’t budge. “Damn, both doors are locked.”
The android walked over to the door and placed his index finger on the vertical handle. “It has been my experience,” he lectured, “that human arrogance hampers your ability to reason. Your species assumes that your physiology is the pinnacle of evolution. Hence, you built robots in your image, even though there are more efficient design options. You also assume that aliens must look like you; with two legs, two arms, two hands, and opposable thumbs. Therefore, you conclude that a vertical handle must always be pulled.” The android gave a slight push with his finger and the door swung open.
The android entered first, followed by Clanet. The adjacent room was clearly the bridge. It contained approximately thirty robots of varying sizes and configurations. A few were scurrying about, but most were occupied at the numerous work stations. A tall, bobble-head robot, with four snake-like arms appeared to be directing activities from the center of the bridge. It finally noticed the two newcomers and quickly motored toward them on a pair of rapidly rotating tank treads. It agilely banked around several crisscrossing robots, and came to a screeching stop a few feet away. “Good, good, you appear to be functional. We are very pleased to make your greeting. We look forward to a great friendship between our two worlds.” The alien robot suddenly stopped its rambling and turned toward Major Clanet. Its optical scanner panned the human from head to toe. “Ah,” it said as he turned back toward the android, “I see that your companion is biological. Is it a servant, or a pet?”
by submission | Nov 5, 2009 | Story
Author : Chris Abernethy
I don’t know why I ran.
Caution, paranoia, groupthink… pure blind panic maybe, god knows what finally sent me scurrying up out of the elliptic, screaming in tight round ol’ Ares and out into the darkness.
Guess it won’t really matter, hell it’s not like there’s anything up here to actually be running to, though that’s half the reason I hurled myself out here; last place anyone would look because it’s the last place anyone with half a brain would run… no easy way back, nothing to slingshot yourself round; just you, the black and all that delta-v you’re sat barrelling along on…
To start with I hoped, kidded myself, maybe even prayed that I’d just jumped at sounds in the night, that all the little things that had spooked me turned out to be a series of coincidences; nothing but an addendum to the catalogue of meaningless accidents and lives sacrificed to the cold depths of space.
But then the reports started coming in, slow at first; lost Kuiper Belt terraforming teams spiked from one in ten to nine in ten, the deep imaging array on Charon fell off the grid, SatGov declaring a state of emergency after all contact was lost with Rhea colony… the litany of loss went on.
I suppose that’s when people started to really worry, EarthGov statements that “these rumours of a crisis are baseless fear mongering” not withstanding, but things went ballistic when the Belt mining stations started dropping out; one or two at first, then dozens, then hundreds… the industrial heart of the species was going dark and the only thing the politicians had to offer us was, “No comment”.
Panic was all but inevitable, people ran where they could; to other colonies, to satellite rings, to the hills, to each other.
Things seemed to peak for a moment when the UNSC special forces were sent in to find out what had happened in the Belt; days of upbeat but oh so serious reporting from the media as they moved towards their targets, then silence… for hours, nothing.
God knows what happened to those soldiers, even trying to patch things together after the fact it’s hard to find anything concrete about what happened, what they faced, why none of them came back.
One thing I can tell you from the fragments of coms chatter that I’ve scrapped together from what filtered out; they died bloody, they died hard, they went down howling their defiance at an unseen and implacable foe.
After that history seemed to pause; whatever was lurking malignantly in the heart of our system stopped reaching out for a time, bland assurances were issued, whole worlds held their breath.
Then it went for Earth.
Have you ever listened to a planet die? Listened to millions of lives being torn away in an instant and billions more screaming for a reprieve that would never come?
We were culled, wiped from the face of universe like a flawed design, something best forgotten…
I huddle here terrified and impotent in the night watching the shattered remnants of civilisation’s light gutter out one by one in the darkness, knowing that as each light goes out it will never come again, and I mourn the slaughter of my kind.
by submission | Nov 1, 2009 | Story
Author : Jacob Lothyan
It comes back to an inherent flaw in the system. The Incident Imprinter isn’t exactly time travel, not as time travel was originally imagined. That is to say that we still don’t fully understand how matter on the quantum level can be in two places and times at once, so we simply leave our bodies behind. Our consciousnesses travel to different times and distant places, wherever we can imagine, really.
It was great for a while. We were the disembodied embodiment of the unobserved observer. Humanity learned more about the world and its history than ever imagined. We studied dinosaurs and wars and eruptions. We spent days with philosophers, generals, and playwrights. We watched pyramids being built and rivers drying away.
Everything was perfect until a brilliant physicist tried to go back and watch the beginning of the universe. Unfortunately for her, Descartes was right. A tech came across her body, burnt and frozen and starved for oxygen, still strapped into conduit 761231. It is hypothesized that she found herself in the complete darkness of space, and was probably fine at first. Over a small duration of time, as the universe began to unfold in front of her, she began to consider all of the physical properties that she understood about space. Forgetting that she did not have a body that could burn or freeze, or need oxygen, she panicked. It was the first ever trip to space using the Incident Imprinter. It was also the last. It is the most cited case when debating the effects of mind over matter.
That may have been the last visit to space, but it was not the last evidence of the flaw. Once other travelers realized that they could impact their physical being even while detached, they couldn’t get the thought out of their minds. Travelers started coming back with scrapes and bruises, burns and missing limbs. Wars and eruptions saw an immediate and steep decline in tourism. Suicides became more creative.
It was only a matter of time before some less scrupulous individuals took advantage of the flaw. Eventually, it was found that, even though we couldn’t understand the physics involved, travelers were able to create physical manifestations of themselves while visiting the past. These manifestations were nothing more than blinks or blurs, but still enough to be viewed and noted by the natives of any particular time. Worse still, these travelers discovered that with a little practice they could also be heard. It wasn’t until recently that ripples have been detected in the timeline.
It is hypothesized that we have found the cause of apparitions such as ghosts and spirits. We no longer believe that prophets who claimed to have spoken with angels or messengers were insane, just the victims of cruel pranks. It is even suspected that the voice of God may be walking amongst us. Needless to say, public access to the Incident Imprinter is no longer allowed. They are even thinking of canceling previously sanctioned school and business trips. Nobody is above suspicion.
by submission | Oct 28, 2009 | Story
Author : Michelle Keeley
Frank stared impassively as the Floridian dawn crept silently across his bedroom, the line of accolades on his antique dresser cast long, foreboding shadows onto the elegant wallpaper. The day had come.
He showered as usual. He dressed as usual. Even the drive to mission control was now routine.
As he pulled up at security the nod from the guard was replaced by an earnest yet supportive ‘All the best Commander’. He parked up and entered, the automatic doors sliding silently open to reveal the soaring atrium beyond. Passing through, his stride was broken by an over-emotional receptionist planting a good luck kiss on his cheek, although appreciating the sentiment his discomfort was obvious.
Inside the debriefing room he took a seat alongside his crew as he fought the desire to run a thousand miles in the opposite direction. His exterior belied nothing, he was still ice cool Frank, top graduate in his year, the automatic choice, you could always count on Frank.
After some final words, the four headed across the launch site to suit-up, attire that had been almost as long in development as the shuttle itself. Each crew member had their personal fitter or space tailor as Frank used to call them.
He was surprised but slightly relieved to find no sign of his fitter as he perched on the edge of the grey tub chair in the kit room, his body too rigid to sit back. Joel entered moments later accompanied by some final items of kit and an oppressive silence.
Self consciously Frank stripped off his outer clothes and stepped into his pearlescent suit, its cumbersome nature soon leaving him in need of a second pair of hands. Frank tucked each arm in as Joel pulled from the waist before fastening the front, their close proximity thickened the air in a way that seemed inconceivable a few weeks ago.
They had practiced this procedure so often they completed it without a word. Glancing at the clock, Frank was well enough versed in the timetable to realise the next few minutes were allocated to family goodbyes. He made for the door, gaze firmly fixed floor wards and despite his broad stature, the strength to break the tension eluded him. The desire to apologise, to confess his feelings and admit his fear of intolerance were buried too deep. He left, closing the door behind him.
Two small children ran towards the crew as they appeared in the lounge doorway, a toddling girl and an older boy. Two of the crew hoisted their children into the air prompting fits of giggles, the third embraced his wife as best he could around her prominent bump.
A silver haired gentleman strode enthusiastically towards Frank, his Navy uniform resplendent with medals. ‘We’re so proud of you son’. ‘Thanks Dad’ Frank replied with a weak smile, his mother simpered quietly. After a few minutes small talk the klaxon sounded and the last goodbyes were said.
‘Right men, time to go’ Frank boomed, momentarily recharged with his Father’s praise.
The four walked across the pad and took their positions in the shuttle. As the countdown began tears welled up behind Franks visor, the roar of the engine masked the sob he could no longer contain.
