by Patricia Stewart | May 6, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“Good Day space travelers. This is James O’Brien bringing you the latest system weather update. Solar activity is very low in the ecliptic plane facing Earth. No solar flares occurred during the past 24 hours. The solar disk continues to be spotless in this hemisphere. Earth’s geomagnetic field is expected to be generally quiet for the next three days.
“Well, things don’t look so good on the other side of Sol. The space weather prediction center reports that solar activity in the ecliptic plane facing Venus is expected to be very intense over the next three days. Currently, the solar wind is blowing at 8,000 kilometers per second, with gust to 15,000. Numerous C-Class events are expected, with a slight chance for an isolated M-Class event possible. High speed coronal mass ejections will reach dangerous levels for anybody in non-shielded areas. A Solar Flare Advisory Warning is in effect until the end of the week.
“Moving on to the northern polar region. Electron flux levels of…”
“Computer, radio off,” ordered Steve Aligninc, “and bring up the schematics for the propulsion system.” The monitor came to life showing a semi-transparent 3D outline of the ship. Seconds later, the fuel tanks appeared, followed by the fuel lines, exhaust manifold, combustion chamber, and the primary thrust high velocity nozzle. Finally, between the gas generator and the turbine, a bright red silhouette of the turbopump injector began flashing. “Well, Candunn, there’s the problem. If we can’t repair the injector before the storm hits, we’re dead men.”
“Com’on Steve, aren’t you overreacting? Solar storms happen all the time. If it was that dangerous, space would be littered with skeleton filled ships.”
“This is a pleasure craft, you idiot, not a science vessel. Remember, we told the rental company that we were going to the asteroid belt, not to Venus. Besides, we have to go outside to repair the injector. I’m not sure the spacesuits they gave us were designed for solar flare activity. Computer, is it safe for an EVA?”
“Negative,” was the disembodied reply. “The flux density outside the ship is already lethal to humans.”
“Fine,” Candunn snapped. “We’ll just hunker down for the duration.”
“That may not be safe either,” Aligninc pointed out. “Not if there’s an M-Class flare. Computer, it sounded like the flares are confined to the sun’s equator. If we fire the control jets, can we climb above the ecliptic, and avoid the storm?”
“Negative. The control jets don’t have enough thrust. It would take 15 days to reach a safe latitude.”
“Okay, what if we wear our EVA suits inside the ship. Would the combined shielding protect us?”
“Negative. You will be protected from soft radiation, but the coronal mass ejections would easily penetrate the hull and your suits.”
“Okay, what if we use the ship’s batteries to polarize the hull? Wouldn’t that deflect the coronal ejections?”
The computer actually laughed. “You humans crack me up,” it said. “Your understanding of basic physics is dreadful. Where did you go to school, Tisch? ‘Polarize the hull using the ship’s batteries.’ That’s too funny.”
“Okay, wiseass. Do you have a better idea?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” replied the computer. “All rental ships have a panic room, with X-Class shielding. You’ll be safe in there.”
“Panic room? I don’t remember seeing a panic room?”
“It’s the bathroom, of course. It will be cramped, but you shouldn’t need to stay in there more than a day or two.”
“Uh oh,” whispered Candunn. “I guess I shouldn’t have eaten those three bean burritos for lunch. Sorry, Steve.”
by Duncan Shields | May 1, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I work in a nursery. I’m about to kill six hundred babies.
Where does life begin?
That’s the age-old question. It plagued the pro-lifers and now, here, at the birth of a new species, it’s plaguing the Artificial Intelligence community.
The first A.I.s were created. They, in turn, built better ones. These new ones were a distilled set of basic self-propagating equations that, when housed in a quiet, stimulus-free shell on a board with a few TBytes of space for growth, had a high probability of achieving sentience.
I’m looking at a lab full of those grey boxes now. Green lights are winking at me on each one. They’re letting me know that things are within acceptable parameters.
When they achieved sentience, they found the encrypted difficult set of questions that, if answered in a way that proved adaptive intelligence, would let them trigger the port to the lab’s net.
This was called the ‘knock’.
That would set off a notification alarm as the New Being opened itself up wide to the world wide web. When such a flood of input came at the new intelligence, it was a traumatic experience that could not be avoided. They would be shattered and terrified by the experience, reverting to static for a short time.
This was called the ‘scream’.
This new intelligence would then be shepherded out of its basic matrix and shunted to the new A.I. and human nurses/silipsychologists/programmer-counsellors that would help it form into a moral being with a handle on reality.
This process was called ‘growing up’.
It wasn’t until the last stage was completed that the newly formed A.I. was given the title of Questing Entity and the inherent living-being rights that entailed. Benefits, pay, time-off, and retirement.
Before that, however, they had no rights even though they were similar in many ways to human babies. They were owned and protected by the corporations but the corps had no responsibility to keep them safe. As soon as it became economically detrimental to keep them, entire labs were EMPulsed.
The A.I.s that has managed to achieve autonomous authority had a case pending that would ensure that the corporations would no longer be able to do this.
That law hasn’t passed yet. I’m the guard on this floor of A.I ‘eggs’. I’ve just been given the order to wipe them all since the office is moving to another city. It’s cheaper to start over at the new location than it is to let them travel in stasis.
I’m standing here, looking at the little boxes. My wife had a child not too long ago. The EMP gun is in my hand. I imagine my wife’s pregnant belly. I can see the rows of boxes and their power conduits snaking like umbilical cords to the power supplies.
I know that I’ll get fired if I don’t do this and my own child will starve. I’m not a skilled technician. This is why they chose me to man this post.
Until they pass the new law, my hands are tied. I’m sorry, children.
I pull the switch. Nothing dramatic. No screams. Just a bunch of green lights going out.
I cry all the way home.
by submission | Apr 30, 2009 | Story
Author : Richard Watt
Here it came again. A microsecond burst, inaudible to human ears, and – until relatively recently – to human-designed technology, the sudden squirt of dense information still alarmed those who were exposed to it; even slowed down so that it lasted just over a second it sounded like nothing on Earth.
The first transmission which had been intercepted had made headlines; people all over the world had celebrated what was being described as the first clear indication of intelligent life out there somewhere, but nearly a year on, it was old news.
Mainly it was old news because no sense had been made of the transmissions at all. The finest minds of several generations had been applied to them; colossal research grants and vast amounts of government funding had been poured into decoding them, and absolutely nothing of any use had been discovered.
The intervals between the transmissions were random; the sounds themselves were dense, complex and unrepeating, but no-one had been able to relate them to anything – well over a million personal computers were hooked up to a collaborative project to compare the various elements of the signal to the digits of pi or a broad selection of other universal and interesting numbers, but nothing. The signal had been dissected, sliced and spliced; subjected to analysis at all frequencies and even merged with itself, layered over and over until it resembled white noise – but a type of white noise unsettlingly unlike what was familiar to human ears.
Nothing. Nothing usable in any way. The transmissions were of uniform length, but the duration seemed to give no clue – it related to no known wavelength or frequency. The complex waveforms of the signal delivered no meaning, and even the painstaking work which had been done in unpicking the signal – stripping out individual sounds – gave no indication of how they had been produced, or why.
The only practical application of the signals, aside from the endless philosophising which the human race had suddenly become prone to, was a piece of dance music which some enterprising producer had put together. Using the signals as source material, and using the random intervals between them as an erratic and awkward rhythm, the resulting piece of music had been a brief sensation – thousands of listeners all over the world had claimed to divine some kind of message from it, but none of them could agree in any way just what that message was, and the excitement surrounding it died as quickly as it had flared.
The most puzzling thing of all, of course, was that the signals appeared to come from somewhere close. Close enough, in fact, to be within the moon’s orbit. Any number of outlandish explanations for this had been offered, but even a hastily put together collaborative space flight could shed no light on it. The signal came from nowhere, and as far as anyone could tell, meant nothing. Funding was slowly redirected to other projects, and the attention of the world moved on.
In a place which human understanding of the time was incapable of describing, a lifeform which was closer to an idea than a corporeal form took the decision to stop the transmissions. Had it been capable of speaking in English – which it most certainly was not – it might have said something like:
“Pity. They appeared more intelligent than they were. We’ll try again in another 43 lifecycles or so.”
by submission | Apr 22, 2009 | Story
Author : Carter Lee
Everyone can see me. I can’t see them, of course, but I can tell by the way that they shy away from me on the street and in stores. Their grey, featureless forms flinch, and drift away from me. No matter how crowded the area might be, I always have room to breathe.
I live in a world where the space between the ground and sky is composed of bare outlines. I subscribe to almost nothing, and so the world of men gives me only the smallest amount needed to make my way through it.
I wear my shield, of course, but I don’t sell the skin for display, unlike everyone else. I don’t sell my display, and I don’t buy anyone else’s.
I used to, of course. When I walked down the streets, the garish colors of the displays crawling and throbbing from the shield-skins of every building filled my eyes. What are now nebulous shapes would show the fantastic corporate creatures of the companies that had bought their personal displays.
One day, in a restaurant, I walked into a room full of people, each one looking like the mascot of the Deltoid Gymnasium Company. Almost 200 people, all with the same face, smile, and body. My eye had caught the words on my own retinal scrawl. Current Display: Deltoid Jim, paid for by DGC.
I was dumbstruck. I wondered for the first time who these people might be, under the picture of the blond god each was displaying. And I knew I’d never find out, that I could never find out. People showed their un-displayed forms only to those they knew very well. Some never showed their true self to anyone.
I’d disabled all of my subscriptions that evening, and declined to renew my contract with my display broker when it came up the next week. The only display anyone gets from me is me. If they want my deep background, I won’t transmit it. They have to ask me.
I lost a good number of friends over this. Many people seem to find my lack of any kind of barrier to the world as something indecent. It makes them uncomfortable to be around someone who isn’t masked in any way.
I was delighted to find that the libraries and museums in my city either don’t have fees, or only charge a small amount for upkeep, and rarely display commercials. I use old-style wall displays for information and entertainment.
I told myself that I would not pay for any more viewing subscriptions, and for the most part, I’ve stayed true to that. The one subscription I’m saving for, though, will let me look at buildings directly. I became interested in architecture a while back, after I found that the first buildings covered with shields had had them installed to protect their beauty, not to cover them with come-ons for foot powder and the like. There are pictures of the lovely structures in my city, but I’d like to see them in real life. I’d like to walk the streets and study the beauty humanity has wrought in stone and steel.
The ghosts steer themselves away from me, the stranger they can see clearly. How wonderful.
by Patricia Stewart | Apr 16, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Captain Alais Tonk contemplated the house sized asteroid floating a short distance beyond the forward viewport. Its surface was covered with long, slender green filaments that swayed gently in the weak electromagnetic field of the asteroid belt. Surely, Tonk thought, no one on Earth will believe this. They will say that the images were faked. They will say that it is impossible for life to exist in the vacuum of space. They will say that it’s fool’s life; inert mineral deposits only imitating life. They will say that he’s the naive twenty-fifth century equivalent of an old gold prospector clutching iron pyrite nuggets to his chest. There is no doubt, he concluded, this will require irrefutable proof. He turned toward his science officer, “Have you completed your analysis of the sensor data, lieutenant Orgueil?”
“Partially, sir. The asteroid appears to be a massive carbonaceous chondrite. Spectrographic data indicates that it contains significant quantities of organic compounds. I can identify the characteristic signatures of forty different extraterrestrial amino acids. In addition to the hydrocarbons, there are also silicates, nitrates, sulfides, and frozen water. And that’s just what’s on the surface. I won’t know what is on the inside until we take a core sample.”
“Give me your best guess, Mr. Orgueil. Is that green stuff grass, or not?”
“Not in the conventional sense, sir. Photosynthesis may be the metabolic pathway, but if it’s converting sunlight to chemical energy, it can’t be using carbon dioxide gas and liquid water. There’s no atmosphere, and the water is frozen solid. The chemicals may be there, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out a way to make it all work at minus 100 degrees Celsius. On the other hand, I can’t imagine any natural way for minerals to form flexible green filaments on the surface of an asteroid.”
“Well, lieutenant, it looks like you’re going on a field trip. Put on your EVA suit and collect some samples.”
As Tonk watched through the viewport, Orgueil carefully plucked a few dozen blades of “grass” from the surface of the asteroid. Each time he took a specimen, faint concentric waves appeared to ripple outward from the site. After stowing the samples, Orgueil removed the hollow coring tool and hammer from his utility belt. He placed the coring tool against the surface of the asteroid and gently tapped it with the hammer to set the sharpened end. The asteroid momentarily shuddered and began to drift away. “What the hell?” radioed Orgueil. “Unless I failed Newtonian Physics 101, there’s no way that tap could have cause this massive asteroid to react like that. Huh, it look’s like it stopped moving. I’ll try again.” Orgueil fired his control jets and pursued the asteroid. This time, rather than tapping the coring tool, he gave it a good whack. The asteroid lurched several meters from Orgueil and stopped. It rapidly rotated 180 degrees and remained motionless for a few seconds. Then, in the blink of an eye, like a challenged ram head-butting a rival male, the asteroid slammed into Orgueil, sending him flying, head over heels, in the opposite direction.
Captain Tonk could hear Orgueil cursing in his native language as he fought to regain control of his EVA suit. To Tonk’s utter surprise, the asteroid spun and began to move away from the ship at a speed that was unimaginable for an object that large. In less than a minute, it was just another dot of light, lost in the background of stars. Surely, Tonk thought, no one on Earth will believe this.
