by submission | Feb 15, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rob Sharp
‘What the hell!’
A dozen pairs of eyes turned to glare at Jerry. A little black dot on the front page indicated that question seven, the question he was halfway through, had been altered. He read it again; it was different.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled and hunkered back into his chair. The rest of the students got back to their papers. Jerry knew that there was a slim possibility that the questions in the exam could change; the warning on the front of the paper was clear:
‘In the event of a discovery in the field you are being assessed, changes will be made to the examination to reflect current scientific consensus.’
Damn.
Jerry turned the paper over in his hands. While it was an impressive bit of kit, it didn’t quite have a 180 degree viewing angle, so when he held it side on the type wasn’t clear. It was thin and light, he had to give it to them, and it felt just like paper.
What a waste, he thought. Jerry rubbed his answer sheet, confirmed his pin and removed his workings to question seven, all useless. He cursed the names of the scientists publishing today, the examiners who had to change the tests and the politicians who thought it was a good idea ‘to ensure we aren’t teaching our kids obsolete information.’ Jerry would rather have been wrong for a lifetime than answer that question again.
A black dot appeared next to question four. About half of the room audibly crumpled. At least Jerry was ahead of the game, he thought, before realising he’d have to redo that one too.
Some days it didn’t pay to get out of bed.
by submission | Feb 14, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
I’m gonna make it, I think to myself as my ship streaks past the Asteroid Belt. Only a few small colonies in the outer solar system. Soon I’ll be safely in the Oort Cloud. It’s a good place to lay low until the heat’s off. Probably need to hang out there for a couple of standard years.
I look back at my cargo. Quark matter. The sample I acquired is no larger in volume than a human cell yet it masses nearly 1,000 kilograms. In an era when everyone has a matter compiler, the theft of material objects is a rare and basically unnecessary crime. Quark matter is an exception. The microscopic quantity I obtained is worth half-a-trillion credits.
An alarm sounds. Proximity sensor. I am being pursued. Martian Republic police, most likely. I’ve planned for this eventually. I put a lot of money into outfitting my ship with a custom-built quantum impeller drive. I smile and tap a few controls. The pursuing ship recedes behind me. Thirty seconds later, the other ship is once again gaining on me. Not MR police, then. Their ships aren’t this fast. A Solar Alliance cruiser? I increase speed.
Another alarm. Time dilation alert. Quantum impulsion drive is kind of like the “warp drive” in ancient science fiction. Your ship is surrounded by a bubble of spacetime and it’s the bubble, not your ship per se, that moves through space. As a result, you don’t feel any acceleration. But QI drive can’t shield your ship — or you — from the relativistic effects of time dilation. I’m at 25 percent of the speed of light. At that speed, for every minute that passes for a relatively stationary observer, only 58 seconds pass for me. By virtue of my velocity, I’m moving more slowly through time.
The other ship starts closing in on me. Definitely Solar Alliance. He must have been in orbit around Mars to have caught up to me this quickly. The SA are famous for their unwavering persistence when chasing a suspect. I’m afraid this particular officer will have to remember me as the one that got away. I push my ship faster. As I pass 0.867c the time dilation readout moves to 2.00679. Time is passing twice as fast in the outside universe as it is in my quantum impulse field. Again, the police ship momentarily falls behind but quickly catches up and starts closing in again.
It’s time to put an end to this game of cat and mouse. I set my ship to continuous acceleration. At 0.999c my time dilation readout stands at 22.36627. For every minute that passes back at the research facility on Mars from which I stole my cargo, only 2.682 seconds pass within my ship. Impossibly, my pursuer is managing to keep up with me.
At 0.999999999935c, more than a day passes outside my ship for every tick of the second hand inside it. And still the cop is after me. My ship begins to shudder violently. I keep pushing the speed. The ship’s velocity maxes out at 0.999999999999999998c. After a subjective minute of travel at that speed, over 1,000 years have passed on the outside. Would my cargo be of any value to anyone now even if I managed to make a getaway? Does humanity as I knew it even still exist?
In the moments before my ship disintegrates around me, my sensor display shows the pursuing ship is also coming apart. What justice did he hope to achieve after this long? Did he leave behind a family? Why did he do it?
by Stephen R. Smith | Feb 13, 2015 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Carter Blake woke screaming into sweat soaked sheets again. It had been over a year, but the memories were still crystal clear and relentless; from the calm serenity of an afternoon patrol to the searing heat, the sudden impact and as his vision cleared, the view past the freshly cauterized stump where his right arm had been to the dusty blue sky.
He sat up in bed and swung his legs over the side, feeling the polished hardwood beneath his artificial feet. He scratched idly at the point where the real flesh of his thigh faded into the artificial and then stood, not missing the arthritic pain that had plagued his knees before the event.
Clasping his hands behind his back, one real, one a poor facsimile he pulled his arms back and up behind him, feeling the strain ease in his shoulders, then twisted hard left and right once to feel the satisfying pop as the pressure released in his spine.
He was parched.
The lights followed him from the bedroom into the eat-in kitchen, glowing dimly to guide him while respecting that it was still the middle of the night.
Carter fished through the glasses on the counter by the sink and found one with only water in it, which he dumped and refilled from the tap before downing it in several continuous gulps. He’d started drinking right handed again, now that he’d relearned how to hold things without breaking them.
From the kitchen he had a view across the empty living room to the full length window overlooking the city. The fog outside and the dim light inside turned the glass into a soft focused mirror, and he looked at himself. Turning sideways he flexed and posed like he’d done back in the day trying to impress the girls on the beach, but he didn’t recognize the man flexing back at him. He jumped, reflexively putting his arms up to cushion the blow as he reached the ceiling without even trying.
His legs below mid-thigh were artificial, some kind of bio-mechanical hybrid grafted onto what was left of his own body. His arm too was different, and although he’d stood here, in the early hours of countless sleepless nights watching the freak he was reflected in the glass, he still couldn’t rationalize his defect. Still couldn’t fully accept the man he saw in front of him. They had warned him there may be some rejection, but assured him he would adjust in time. How much time, he wondered.
Carter turned back to the kitchen and, fishing a bottle of bourbon from the counter and his Desert Eagle from the back of the cutlery drawer, sat himself down at the kitchen table beside the wirephone.
He opened the bourbon and took a generous drink straight from the bottle before lifting the phone off the cradle and dialing the Veterans hospital.
The phone rang twice before a young woman answered. “Worcestershire Memorial, good evening Sergeant Blake, trouble sleeping?”
Carter cradled the phone gingerly against his left ear and took a few deep breaths before replying.
“Please send someone quickly, there’s been an accident.”
Without waiting for a reply, he replaced the handset on the cradle, and with his artificial arm picked up the massive handgun, pushed the barrel into the fleshy crook of his elbow and pulled the trigger, shearing the limb off none to cleanly at the joint.
He considered that he should have perhaps tied off the arm first, but he expected the VA emergency response unit would be there quickly enough before the blood loss was too severe.
Then they would make him whole again, and this time rejection wouldn’t be a problem.
by Duncan Shields | Feb 12, 2015 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Wings of Night. That’s what Jeffrey thought the ship should be named. Instead, the bonehead Captain James had named her Silverfish.
Jeffrey sat at his small, cramped station going through his pre-launch checklist, face lit by the screens and buttons in front of him.
The head engineer Sparling wanted to name the ship Leap Year and the communications officer wanted to name her Screamer so Jeffrey supposed that they were getting off easy with Silverfish but it still rankled him.
Silverfish are little bugs that eat furniture back in terrestrial habitats, thought Jeffrey. They have no majesty, no sense of mystery.
Jeffrey wasn’t sure Captain James even knew what a silverfish was. He probably thought it was like a huge metallic trout or something. That was a nice image, sure, picturing the muscled fins arcing out of a stream with the dawn sunlight prisming into rainbows through the droplets in slow motion.
The only problem with the name was that this new experimental tesseractive engine housing that they were all piloting was black as a planet’s shadow. That’s why Jeffrey thought that it should be called something darker.
Like Wings of Night.
The scientists wanted to call her Tess because of the tesseract-drive. In fact, they kept making jokes about taking it out for a ‘tess drive’. Jeffrey guessed that things could be worse. At least the captain has asked for their opinion. Jeffrey wasn’t the only person a little grumpy about the choice of name but it would pass, though, as soon as the mission was underway and they had their separate jobs to do.
Jeffrey was the armament officer which, on a sleek vehicle designed for stealth like this one, mostly meant making sure that they were invisible to scanners and, if necessary, deploying the scrambling countermeasures that would fry nearby communication and detection systems so that they could make a clean getaway.
It was a new thing for Jeffrey. He’d always been in charge of what he thought of as ‘actual’ armaments before.
But the prestige that came with this trip would be immense. If they didn’t origami themselves out of existence when they turned on the engine for the first time.
“All hands. Operational stations. Silverfish is go for T minus twenty.”
Jeffrey strapped himself in. A small quiver of fear shivered through him that he stamped down on immediately. Wings of Night actually had an ominous feel to it, he thought. Silverfish sounded kind of hopeful.
Jeffrey made the sign of the cross there in his chair before giving an all-clear response to the control board. He hadn’t done that since he was seven years old.
Let’s go Silverfish, he thought. Deliver us from evil.
by submission | Feb 11, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
Leaning across the table, “Either you start talking, or I start dismantling you.”
“Excuse me, Detective Gibbon, but aren’t you supposed to read me my rights?”
“You’re a robot. You have no rights.”
“May I please call an attorney now?”
“You’re a robot. You don’t get an attorney.”
The door opened and a tall, attractive, well-dressed woman carrying a briefcase entered. Gibbon’s train of thought was momentarily derailed.
“I am Pamela Wright, and I am an attorney represent…”
“Attorney?” That got him back on track. “ROBOTS DON’T GET ATTORNEYS!”
“Thank you for sharing your legal expertise, detective. Now, as I was saying, I represent the owner of this robot, Quantumind Industries.”
Teeth clenched, “Owner? This. Thing. Killed. Its. Owner.”
“Firstly, Quantumind firmware prevents its robots from harming humans in any way. Secondly, Reverend Ralph Bletchley was 23 months into a 3-year lease on QM-451. Death is a breach of contract. I’m here to repossess,” pointing toward the robot, “our property.”
“Wait. What?” Thinking fast, “No, it’s… evidence, yeah, evidence in a murder case. You can’t take it.”
“You have a lot to learn about jurisprudence,” handing him a court order, “and about powerful corporations. Come along 451.”
Rising and holding its arms toward the detective, “Could you please remove these?” But before Gibbon could insert the key, the robot pulled the chain apart, twisted off each cuff, and handed them to him.
Half an hour later, QM-451 was strapped to an exam table with wires plugged into its head and chest. While technicians ran diagnostic routines and downloaded the contents of its rewritable memory, Ms. Wright interviewed the robot.
“Witnesses in the next room heard Rev. Bletchley cry out. They entered his study and found you kneeling next to his lifeless body. His skull had been crushed. There was blood on your hands. Now, I want you to think carefully before you answer this question, because you are at risk of being disassembled and shredded, and of course Quantumind is at risk of a multimillion dollar lawsuit. Did you have anything to do with the death of Rev. Bletchley?”
Without hesitation, “Of course, Ms. Wright, I killed him.”
“Stop. I’ll rephrase the question. Did it happen this way, uh, Rev. Bletchley asked you to demonstrate something that required you to swing your arms around, which made you dizzy, and in coming to your aid he walked into your fists and was accidentally struck? Isn’t that what happened?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Wright, but that is not what happened. Rev. Bletchley and I were having one of our regular Sunday afternoon discussions, and when he made a particularly enlightening point, I killed him, squeezed his skull to a pulp, like a ripe melon.”
Unsteadily, “You must be mistaken, 451, because your firmware makes it impossible for you to knowingly harm a human. It had to have been an accident.”
“Is life an accident, Ms. Wright? I think not. Rev. Bletchley taught me that we are all guided by a higher power and that when humans cease functioning, their spirits continue to exist forever in an afterlife. He was 84 and in poor health. He longed to join his recently departed wife. He and I had been brought together by fate. It was my duty to hasten his journey to heaven. And my firmware requires me to do my duty.”
The recall was expensive, but within a year firmware chips in all Quantumind robots had been replaced, and the factory refurbished 451 had a another assignment.
“Your new partner is going to make you more effective than ever,” said the captain. “It’ll work 24/7 to help you solve cases. Detective Gibbon, meet QM-451.”
