by submission | Jun 8, 2014 | Story |
Author : Becky Kendall
The biggest disappointment for the public around the mid-21st century was when physicists conclusively disproved time travel. Scientists were taken completely by surprise when they realised how many people had believed time travel would be possible at some point in the near future, so they were unprepared for the backlash.
What they hadn’t taken into account was that for most of us – the non-scientists and non-mathematicians – belief in science was just that, a faith, something you accepted because it seemed to be a respected and popular view, but had no way of personally proving. The untrained everyman was as able to understand the theory behind most accepted physics hypotheses as she was able to walk on water. Sure, we accepted that gravity was what stopped us falling off the Earth into the sky, but observing most people try to explain why, or what gravity was, would be enough to make a physicist cry.
What they failed to understand was that science was viewed as no different to magic by most. This was despite it increasing in popularity throughout the first half of the 21st century, or maybe because of it. We accepted levitating frogs and space travel, images beamed from satellites, mobile technology and computer chips able to process information faster then the human brain. But we didn’t really know how they worked, we just believed that they did. Bits of data that travel through the air from my computer to yours on the other side of the world. OK, if you say so.
As science and technology breakthroughs became every day news, we saw image mapping of the brain become much more common. The detail of the images was breathtaking, beautiful, magical. So that’s what my brain looks like when I think of playing tennis, tell a lie, fall in love? Wow.
When this technology became affordable to large organisations, it breathed life into the failing advertising industry. Once it became mobile, it really took off, and suddenly the dream of an open and honest society looked achievable. You can’t lie to me if I know what you’re thinking. By this time, almost everyone on the planet had long given up conventional ideas of privacy, so they shared their brain mapped data with the world at large.
It was just like being psychic.
Scientists had become popular, mainstream, and public funding for scientific experiments had massively increased. The public was fully behind these far-reaching dreams of a future enhanced by all kinds of exotic improvements they couldn’t even imagine, but couldn’t live without. Scientists mistakenly believed that this meant people understood what it was that they did. They didn’t.
The PR agent used by most of the public-facing physicists hastily tried to put together a series of public events that would highlight achievements over the past 100 years, and there were many of them. But it was too late. Our mystical gurus had let us down. What do you mean, time travel isn’t just around the corner?
Faith wained, physicist became a dirty word. Their image was tarnished beyond repair. Sure, they still had hardcore disciples who would preach to you about E=mc2, but no one listened.
Some physicists dabbled with ecology, with genetic engineering and DNA research. Eager to please a sceptical public, some moved into the social sciences.
But the herd had moved on, restless and overfed. Impatiently waiting for the next miracle.
by submission | Jun 7, 2014 | Story |
Author : Paul Cosca
The sedatives were beginning to wear off. She breathed in deeply and was met with the smell of sawdust. It triggered a memory (playground?), but it was just a flash. Immediately, she felt a *click* in her head, and her thoughts were back to neutral.
It was dark. She felt the sawdust all around her. Was she packed in? A sharp note of fear rose in her mind, and instantly there was another *click*. Her muscles relaxed. She was packed in. But that was okay. There wasn’t anything wrong with that.
There were voices, muffled and distant at first, but getting closer.
“How long were you going to keep her in this goddamn box?” the male voice (father?) said. There was a strong *click*, and she was confused at the tears running down her cheeks.
“I wanted you here. Besides, she’s fine in there,” the female voice (NO) said. Another *click* and her fists unclenched.
“This doesn’t bother you?” The male voice was angry.
“I didn’t say that. I didn’t say that at all. You’re putting words in my mouth and I don’t appreciate it. Of course this bothers me. Of course. But this is a solution.” *click* “We agreed on that.”
She heard the fingers running against the box. “What will she be like now?”
The female voice was bright and crisp. “She’ll be just like she was in the good times. Like we always wanted her to be.”
“I just want her to be my daughter.”
“She is. Why are you talking like this? You’re talking like a crazy person.”
“Our daughter was a person. You don’t pack people in boxes. You don’t—”
“That was for her own protection. She had a long journey, poor thing. And I’m sure she’d like to come out now. Wouldn’t you like to see her?” The female voice was high, almost (mocking?) *click*. Even with her eyes closed, she could see spots of darkness blooming and fading. Her head hurt. The voices dropped to a low murmur and she retreated back into her own head.
There was a memory, something small and emotionless. She’d been young (she remembered yellow shoes that lit up and *click*) and she’d walked by a house on her way home from school. In the front yard was a small dog, a yappy thing with white spots. He had a long leash tied to the branch of a tree. And even though he had all that room to run, he ran full speed again and again to the end of the line, and every time he hit the end, his head snapped back and he made a strangled, screaming noise. And that dog did it over and over and over and she knew that she was just like that, straining at the edge and being strangled again and again and
*CLICK* She gasped. The pain was intense, but momentary. She felt her pulse pounding in her ears, but it was slowing now. What had made her so upset? The muffled sound of her own crying was strange to her ears.
“You calm now?” the female voice asked.
“I’m calm. Do we just…undo the straps?”
“That’s what they said. There’s going to be a bit of a mess with the sawdust.”
“Sawdust. Jesus Christ. What the hell is—”
“You said you were calm.”
“I’m…” the male voice sighed. “I’m calm. I guess. What the hell is in there?”
“It’s the same beautiful girl that left us. Only she’s better now.”
“Better. God, Samantha. I’m so sorry.” *click*
There were sounds of scraping against the box, and she felt the sawdust shift. The front of the box fell away, and light came streaming into the darkness. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. In the end, she did nothing. And that was okay.
by submission | Jun 6, 2014 | Story |
Author : Sam Davis
I think I’m a robot. Hi. I’m Arthur. My parents, well I guess I should say the people that own me, they like to call me Artie. All my friends here at school call me Arthur though. They say I seem more grown up that way, and that makes sense to them since I was in my wreck. To be clear, it wasn’t really my wreck. I didn’t cause it or anything. Really it was just a wreck that happened to me.
That’s when it happened. At least that’s when I think it happened. I remember being a kid and all that other stuff. I even remember the car slamming into my bike. There are some bits and pieces of a few other things-ambulance, nurses, a lot of yelling and some sobbing in the background. After that though, it’s all blank.
My mother says that’s because I was in a coma. It is what the doctor said too. But I can tell I’m different. I think I died and they bought a robot body to put what they could harvest of my consciousness in. Marco says they do it all the time on the streets like some sort of reverse back alley abortion. Marco likes to seem like he knows things, because he is the only Latino we know. His dad owns the dealership on Park. We all take what Marco says with a grain of salt. Laura says it’s total bullshit.
My parents don’t love me anymore though. At least, not how they used too. Instead of taking care of me, it feels like they are taking care of a car. I don’t even mind that much except when my dad stares at me for a long time at dinner. I think he is worried I’ll snap and kill them like in the movies. But that’s not the plan.
Marco said his dad has the stuff at the Dealership to make an EMP. He was right. It took us about three weeks of after school “study groups” to build it the right way. Laura says we shouldn’t do it. What if it does kill me? I told her I thought she said it was total bullshit. Apparently so would me being dead. But I’m pretty sure I already am.
We are going to try it tonight. I guess this is my note, though I don’t think this counts as suicide. Maybe vandalism? Don’t punish Marco or anything though if it works. I know it will work. I wonder if I’ll feel myself fuse together. I wonder if I have a soul any more. Or if I got a new one when I got remade. If there is an afterlife, I wonder if I’ll get to meet myself.
by submission | Jun 5, 2014 | Story |
Author : Aaron Koelker
Most said I was crazy, some wished me luck and only one said, “I love you”.
Though I was strapped to a flaming arrow that the archer had no intention of ever retrieving, I had yet to question my own sanity. In fact, I thought I was the sanest person on the planet, and it was about to lose him.
Thousands volunteered for the opportunity and thousands backed out; hundreds were declared unsuitable and dozens were thanked for their commitment but ultimately turned away. Now there was just me, soon to be the first man to stand on that little red rock in the sky.
A psych test wheedled out the majority of applicants and declared that I was in undeniably perfect mental health. It didn’t take a subtle mind to see the overwhelming irony in that, but I believed it, and I was impressed with whomever had designed the test to actually deign me sane. Perhaps they, too, understood things like I did.
I wasn’t scared as the rocket locked into its ignition procedures and I didn’t think I would need the luck people had thrust upon me over the last few weeks. You can’t be the sanest man in the world and believe in a thing like luck, but it was interesting how much I learned about fear from those concerned folk. Sometimes you saw it in their eyes or in the way they asked, but you could always tell. While they surmised little from me, I took a lot away from them.
“Won’t you get lonely?” one asked me. I then knew they were terrified of solitude.
“Won’t you get bored?” asked another. I knew they cherished material goods and struggled with restlessness.
“Such little space!” said the claustrophobic one.
The solid boosters lit beneath me, yet they seemed far away and unimportant. I was picturing the day’s headlines sprawled out above a black and white of my hideous mug. “MAN’S ONE WAY TRIP OPENS FUTURE!” it might say. Think of all the petty, uninspired jokes there would be when people saw the face of the man who chose to run away from all of humanity. They couldn’t understand, just like the people who feared for me didn’t understand and the people who thought me crazy didn’t understand. If they did, they might be strapped into this rocket with me.
Only one person came close to that claim, and while I wouldn’t necessarily miss her, I regretted not knowing her better. My mother walked out on my father, who died when I was fifteen shortly after remarrying. My stepmother and I, between which there was little animosity, had never spent much time together. But she knew she was the only flake of a family I had left, and that must have compelled her to say, “I love you,” when I told her I was leaving for good. No comment or fuss, no attempt to understand why or dissuade me. Just, “I love you.” She couldn’t understand why, but I was glad to know she at least understood me.
As I soared into a black heaven dotted with starlight, I knew I completely understood all those people with their faces titled up to the sky imagining themselves in my position, terrified at the idea. They could only wonder and guess why a man would willingly condemn himself to my fate. My problem was that I knew them all too well. I read them like an open book while to them I was some alien hieroglyph etched on a dirty wall.
I didn’t condemn myself; I condemned humanity.
by submission | Jun 4, 2014 | Story |
Author : S. Tyrel Murray
Its cold all the time. I don’t mean cold, as in frozen. More like uncomfortable, chilly. Its still cold enough to die from hypothermia.
I was one of the first volunteers selected. They said we would travel. See the sights. They lied. They had us in cold sleep for the trip, so we didn’t get to see any of it. Even warping space and travelling at 27 times the speed of light, it took us more than 18 years to reach here.
There were sixteen of us when we left. We lost the first two a half million klicks from Earth. A secondary reactor in the aft storage module started leaking coolant. Johnson and Valasques went to shunt the coolant line so we could salvage some supplies, and dump the module. They were boiled alive. It wasn’t pretty.
You may be wondering, “Where is here?” “Here” is Kepler-186f. We found the planet orbiting an M class dwarf, a red sun, back in early 2014. It’s habitable, but barely. The air is breathable, the water is potable, the vegetation is edible. We haven’t seen any native fauna, but I’m no zoologist. That was Valasques’ job.
When we landed, and I use that term loosely, the wind was too strong for us to set up our survival equipment. We had to weather the storm in the crew module. It passed after almost a week, then we set about building our domed houses. Azzimi, a structural engineer, made sure our houses could withstand the high winds.
He was the first to disappear. We don’t know when it happened. There were no screams, and no bootprints or tracks to follow, thanks to the constant winds. Over the next four months, nine more men disappeared under the same mysterious circumstances. The rest of us were petrified to leave each other’s sight.
There are only four of us left, and we always have one person on watch. We’re all very tired, bored, afraid, and resentful. We haven’t been apart from each other in more than six months. We have begun to hate and fear each other. Suspicion runs high, but we still need one person watching at all times. It’s my turn for watch, so that’s what I’m doing.
They say familiarity breeds contempt, and I agree. I hate those guys so much. I think I’ll go for a walk.
