by submission | Dec 12, 2006 | Story |
Author : Patrick Supple
At the peak of the technological firestorm of the mid-21st century, few would have forecast a second Dark Age. The advance of dogma started with the unification of the world’s major religions into an evangelical philosophy in the 2050s. Many had welcomed the amalgamation, believing it would consign wars of faith to history. Yet within two decades the New Faith had dramatically expanded its following through its proselytizing against the dehumanizing and non-spiritual nature of modern technology. The New Faith’s power grew until it was no longer a vehement critic of secular states – it became the state itself. Sharia laws which blended the moral traditions of the former religions were enacted and art and learning slowly atrophied. Inquisition agents searched for scientists who continued to study outlawed subjects and brought them before religious courts.
Harvey Johnson now stood before one such court. He had refused to end his studies in nanotechnology when university science departments were dissolved. He knew he was close to creating repair engines that could prolong human life indefinitely. For years he had worked in secret laboratories funded by wealthy individuals who dreamed of eternity. Harvey’s breakthrough arrived just weeks before he was found by the Inquisition and dragged away in chains.
The Bishop-Judge seated above Harvey began sentencing. “Your crimes are the most heinous that have been brought before this court. Despite the New Faith’s ruling on the sanctity and immutability of the God-like human form, you have continued to study your changeling art. For this crime, even death and the inevitability of your soul’s damnation are inadequate. Through you, this Court wants to send a message writ in stone to others who seek to alter God’s world. I thereby sentence you to become your creation and experience an eternal life of the dammed.â€
While still trying to understand the sentence, Harvey was led to a side-room where he was administered an injection of his repair engines and handed back to the inquisition.
Less than a week later, Harvey was pushed into the obsidian void of space from an Inquisition shuttle. He was naked. The vacuum sucked the oxygen from his lungs, his veins exploded as his blood broiled and his skin blackened and cracked as it froze. Harvey felt an unendurable pain and despaired as he now understood his sentence. The repair engines began to reconstitute his body. His blood was recreated, ruptured veins closed, and his body reformed. With the nano-bots able to draw energy and matter from the dust and radiation of space, Harvey knew that his body could be repaired for an eternity. He also knew that the engines had been programmed to simply recreate and not develop adaptations to the rigor of vacuum. When Harvey’s body was whole once more, the stress of the void again tore it apart, only for the nano-bots to rebuild again. Harvey’s only hope would be for madness to come quickly and mask this pulse of destruction and creation, this drawn out moment of death.
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by submission | Dec 9, 2006 | Story |
Author : Stin
Final round.
Just don’t get knocked out.
Just keep on your feet.
You can do this, you need to do this. You need this win.
CRACK!
He’s too fast. I can barely touch him. It’s not fair, they shouldn’t be allowed to fight like this, they have too many advantages, how’s a guy like me supposed to keep up with a machine like that?
It’s not fair. He’s bigger than me, there’s more too him, but he moves around like he barely weighs a pound. I don’t even see his fists move sometimes. I just feel the gloves and then
CRACK!
Too fast…way too fast, and what a wallop. What did they used to say? “He hits like a Mac truckâ€. This guy hits like a space freighter coming out of a jump. Damn Roboxing officials. They’re supposed to screen for this type of thing, we’re not supposed to be getting
CRACK!
Killed out here. There goes my eye. I’m half blind. The ref has to stop the fight now, or my corner? Someone stop it, look at my EYE for crying out loud.
Never mind the eye. Just keep moving. Just wait until the bell. Just don’t get knocked down. Stop letting him hit you, put your guard up!
CRACK!
I can barely lift my gloves, my arms feel so heavy, my head droops, and everything feels like it weighs tons. How am I supposed to be able to fight like this?
You need the money. You know you need the money. Money is essential. Money buys things you need and then maybe once you have the things you need and you get out of debt you can get back to training, and then if you train enough you can beat monsters like the hulk in the corner.
It’s not like you need to win, we both know you aren’t going to win, just
CRACK!
Don’t get knocked out, that was the bet, don’t get knocked out…
Don’t
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
I feel my jaw unhinge, I feel my legs give out; my arms are like wet towels, before I know it I’m on the mat.
And then I hear it: “BOXOTRON 77681 is down! Winner by Technical Knockout: Joe ‘The Circuit Breaker’ Granger!â€
I can hear the human laughing in his corner, the crowd goes wild, I’m going to be in the shop forever after this. More debt. My other eye shuts down and I hear my corner say: “Put him on the slab. Damn 77k series aren’t worth the metal they’re made of.â€
I wish I could disagree.
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by submission | Dec 2, 2006 | Story |
Author : Curtis C. Chen
The first crystal fell on Los Angeles in the middle of rush hour, killing thirty-two people. Caltrans spent an hour trying to move the enormous mass before it drilled itself into the ground and disappeared.
Two hours later, another crystal splashed into the Pacific Ocean. The Navy sent a submarine to track it, but they couldn’t go deep enough. Three hours after that, another one hit the Pacific. Then a fourth crystal struck the ocean south of Japan, flooding the coast.
Someone noticed that all four impacts had occurred on the same line of latitude, proceeding west. Governments evacuated cities while the bombardment continued, every three hours, like clockwork: China, Iraq, Algeria, the Atlantic Ocean, South Carolina. Then the tenth crystal impacted off the coast of Mexico. They were moving south.
NASA triangulated the origin of the crystals to a point outside the Moon’s orbit. Observatories all over the planet turned their lenses that way, but saw nothing. The ship was too small to be visible at that range.
We had no vessels that could reach that far. All we could do was evacuate, and attempt to study the crystals, which we were so far unable to halt or slow as they burrowed underground.
Five days later, the last of the crystals fell into the Pacific, west of central Peru. There were now one hundred and eight crystals embedded deep in the Earth, arranged in a precise grid circling the equatorial region of our planet. The aliens had parked their ship in space and let Earth rotate each target into position for them.
Eight different research teams had crawled down the crystal tunnels. Two teams were broadcasting live video when the crystals began burning. Again, we could only watch, helpless.
The world burned for nearly a year. Most of the plant and animal life died within the first day. The crystals weren’t just raising the temperature– they were also causing chemical changes, using the planet as raw material to terraform itself.
The aliens waited a decade before landing, to let their new vegetation and prey animals grow. The few humans who had managed to survive, in Antarctica and other frozen places, were slowly suffocated by the toxic atmosphere. We mourned them, but only briefly. We still have work to do.
The crystal fire had killed our bodies, but freed our minds– some say souls, or spirits. We don’t entirely understand it, but we know that we’re still here. We can see everything. And we can do things.
We watched the aliens land, and sent scouts to verify that they couldn’t sense us. Creating six billion angry ghosts had not been part of their invasion plan.
They use electronics, just as we did, and we’ve found that our incorporeal forms can directly affect electrical systems. A million physicists, no longer restrained by language barriers, are devising a plan to sabotage whatever the aliens do next.
We’re betting that they won’t want to live on a haunted planet.
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by B. York | Nov 29, 2006 | Story |
Author : B. York, Staff Writer
Being in a think tank wasn’t easy. Dev never saw it as easy but he lived it because of his pursuit for the perfect equation. Life in pursuit of such a grand dream was not without its quirks however.
No one could have predicted the probability of Dev’s broken arm and how he’d been hit with a shiny purple Cadillac not two days prior. Certainly no soul under God would have seen that driving such a thing was a nun.
Bones heal, however, and God forgives nuns who hit skinny, weak mathematicians with their cars.
It would have been a forgotten case if both the tires of the ambulance bringing him to the hospital and the tires of the cab bringing him home were not similar in the fact that they blew out (yes, all four) simultaneously each trip. Hospitals have extra ambulances, however, and cab drivers can swear themselves into four new tires.
What happened next would send poor Dev into near psychosis as he sought to figure out the exact probability one would have of a Czechoslovakian Spy Satellite falling into their room and on their bed when one was away buying groceries. The numbers were mind-boggling.
Despite all this, Dev would continue his work to find the perfect formula, the one that could help him understand the universe.
Coincidence, a known fable of mathematicians, was not yet done with the poor boy. That nun with the purple Caddy came to warn him every day of dreams she had been having, dreams of Dev being killed in some horrible manner. Everyday the logical number-cruncher would usher the nun out his door with a fear that he’d heard too many ghost stories from her to concentrate on his work. Yet, everyday she returned with renewed vigor.
Dev worked in the think tank with two roommates that he never once gave notice to beyond whether they would shell out the cash for his latest excursion to the grocery store across the street. These roommates never once asked him about the nun or about why the apartment was shut down for two weeks by NASA to extract an object of import from Dev’s room. They were good roommates blissful in their ignorance.
One day, Dev had thought of the absolute best completion for his formula on his way home. Getting home he found Sam, one of his rather reclusive roommates, standing with a gun in his hand, pointing it at Dev and standing in front of his computer.
“I tried to off you, Dev, tried to steal your formula but no… my equation was too imperfect! Finish the formula, Dev… do it and maybe I’ll take you out of the equation.” Sam cocked the gun.
“Now start typing those numbers.”
Poor, poor Dev.
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by J.R. Blackwell | Nov 20, 2006 | Story |
Author : J.R.Blackwell, Staff Writer
Georgie threw the best parties, mostly because he had a carpet he didn’t care about. Heather and Ralph used the monthly parties as an excuse to play drinking games and challenge each other to contests. The winner was usually responsible for dragging the other the two blocks home. Since Ralph had already gone upstairs to vomit, Heather had preemptively declared herself the night’s winner.
“Another drink Georgie.” she said, leaning against a cabinet in the kitchen.
Georgie handed her another drink. “Where’s Ralph?”
Heather flipped her purple hair over one shoulder. “He’s in the bathroom.”
“Still? He’s been in there for a while.”
Heather nodded. “I’ll go check on him, see that he hasn’t fallen in.” At the top of the spiral staircase Heather could see Ralph’s black boots under the bathroom door. “Are you okay baby?” She tapped on the door.
Ralph’s voice was tired. “Just taking a sit down while my liver cleans itself. I might do a little reboot in a minute.”
Heather took a sip from her plastic cup. “Drink too much?”
“Nothing a reboot can’t handle.” Ralph’s voice crackled, a current running though it.
Heather tried the doorknob, it was locked. “Baby, you don’t sound too good. Can I come in?”
There was a thud, flesh smacking tile inside the bathroom.
“Baby? What happened? Are you okay?” Heather sent a query to Ralph’s system. She pounded on the door. Her inbox received an error message. User unavailable. Heather banged her shoulder against the bathroom door, forcing the lock against the old wood in Georgie’s apartment.
“Heather, are you breaking my house up there?” asked Georgie “Come back to the party!”
“Call 911,” screamed Heather, slamming her shoulder into the door. She tried pinging his system again. User Unavailable. Ping. User Unavailable. Heather knew her arm was hurting, knew she was going to have a bruise, but Ralph was in there and he wasn’t answering. “Ralph!” she kicked at the door, screaming her lover’s name.
The rotten wood gave way and the door swung open, banging into Ralph’s body. He was laying awkwardly against the bathtub a red welt rising on his forehead. Heather knelt beside him. Georgie appeared in the doorway, scarf over his left shoulder, shock on his face.
“Oh shit.” he said.
“Call the ambulance.” said Heather.
Georgie paced back in forth in front of the bathroom. “Shit. Shit.”
“Just call them Georgie!” yelled Heather, slamming her fists into her thighs. Heather put her hands over Ralph’s mouth. He wasn’t breathing. She put her ear on his chest, but it was like an empty cage. Heather breathed into his mouth, but his chest didn’t inflate, it was like blowing on a wall.
“No. Oh Ralph. No. No. No.” She reached into her throat behind her teeth and up, flipping open the little panel in the back of her throat. A little too hasty, a little too quick, she sliced her throat with her fingernail. Tears bit her eyes. She gagged a little as she pulled the wire out from the back of her throat. Holding her cord out with her teeth, she opened Ralph’s mouth and reached back, fumbling to get his slick panel open, fumbling to pull out his cord, spit and blood on her hands, his or hers, didn’t matter, linking the two cords, instructing for a power transfer. This Ralph, who let her rest on his shoulder even if it made his arm fall asleep, who gave her sips of his coffee and let her wear his t-shirt. She was going to jumpstart him.
A screen lit up in front of her vision. Ralph’s full name and a prompt for password access. The last time she saw this was two years ago, when they first decided to sleep together and did the direct connection scan for STD’s. Ralph’s system scanning her, feeding him a full report, every physical secret. Her system scanning Ralph, telling her about a leg once broken and the drugs he used to take.
If Ralph changed his password in those two years, she wouldn’t be able to affect his system, no password, no access. You were supposed to change your password every six months. Please be lazy, Ralph, she prayed. Please baby, be my lazy, lazy man. She entered that two year old code and waited, waited, Georgie back at the door just watching both of them. Georgie putting a hand on her shoulder, saying something she couldn’t quite hear, paramedics on their way, maybe she should disconnect, it wasn’t working.
Then Heather felt her heart pull, her eyes get heavy, lights dimming and then back on as her system readjusted to the power output. Ralph opened his eyes, hand going to his mouth, touching his cord.
“What’s up baby?” he said, his mouth making mutilated words from the cord. Heather felt herself shaking, her eyes squeezing shut, hands on Ralph’s chest, yes, really there, really breathing, awake and heart and lungs all pumping and inflating and moving like they should. Ralph saying “Sawwy.” around the cord. Heather closed the space between them, holding him in her arms.
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