by Stephen R. Smith | Jun 17, 2011 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
John Jones leaned heavily on the counter in the hotel bathroom, a haggard face he barely recognized staring back at him from the full width mirror. Six o’clock in the evening, and he felt like he’d already been awake for days.
The interrogation had taken nearly two hours. He couldn’t remember airport security ever being so tight, so ruthless. Pulled from the line, back scatter scanned then frisked, only to be isolated and strip searched. Then questioned, endlessly; machines feeling, watching, analyzing his every response.
Fortunately for him, John Jones was above reproach, and each question was carefully and consistently answered, no matter how many ways it was phrased in the hopes of catching him out in a lie.
His throat was so dry it hurt. Shaking, John unwrapped the cheap cellophane from a lowball and filled it from the tap, the luke warm water downed in a series of uninterrupted gulps.
Putting down the glass, he filled the sink and washed his face, then lathered his short cut hair and rinsed it under the tap, banging his head several times in the too small sink on the too short gooseneck of the faucet.
Straightening, he rubbed his head dry and placed the towel back on the rack. Reduce, reuse.
Once out of the bathroom, John found the bellman had deposited his suitcase on a folding luggage stand beside the desk, and he opened it and began removing the contents into drawers. Socks, several t-shirts and boxer shorts. Two pairs of pants and two pairs of shoes. His toiletries he put on the desk, he’d take them to the bathroom the next time he went, no need to make a special trip.
From the bottom of the case John removed a plastic tube from which he extracted a tightly rolled poster covered with a pattern of blue and red line-art. In the tube lid were pieces of sticky tack which he used to attach the poster to the mirror at the end of the bed. Then he sat and stared at it.
The line art was unintelligible at first glance, and only when he’d stared for several minutes, letting his eyes unfocus from the surface and refocus on a point somewhere deep in the wall behind the mirror that the image of the poster became clear. A decidedly low tech three dimensional image of a series of words came into view, and John focused on them, reading them slowly. It occurred to him only briefly that this exercise was strangely familiar, reflex almost, though he couldn’t remember when he did this first.
‘Anabelle, Cherry Pie’, he read slowly. Somewhere deep inside his brain a lock presented itself and the key slipped in easily. Cherry Pie, of all things, he remembered sitting at a diner in Chile after… Terrance, not John. His name was Terrance…
‘Chesapeake, Jubilee’, the next two words, and again, he could feel a barrier somewhere come down inside his mind. Chesapeake Bay was where he’d first learned to shoot, where he’d returned to train as a sniper…
‘Janine, Silo’, then ‘Jennifer, Juniper’. He read more quickly now, word pairs unlocking parts of his memory that he’d not even been aware of. But no, that wasn’t true, parts that he’d programmed out of his consciousness.
To pass the interrogation.
To gain admittance.
Terrance read the remaining word pairs then carefully re-rolled the poster and placed it back into its tube.
The clock read eighteen hundred hours twenty. He had just enough time to find his contact and secure a weapon before the ambassador’s ship left, and before they were in low earth orbit, the ambassador and his crew would be just as dead as John Jones.
by submission | Jun 16, 2011 | Story
Author : Michael Iverson
Dr. Mensah and Father Velázquez stood in front of the black obelisk, the central control to the supercomputer Abaddon. All around them, the servers had been ticking away for weeks, but for the first time they were quiet. The tense men stood waiting in the silence.
“Abaddon! Have you finished processing?” Dr. Mensah called out to it.
“Yes, Dr. Mensah. I carefully reviewed the material you and your team gave me.” The booming voice echoed through the room.
“Did it read the Bible, then?” Father Velázquez asked Dr. Mensah.
“Yes, Father,” The computer responded, “And the twenty-six other religious texts that were uploaded.”
There was a moment of silence, the two men seemed to wait for the computer. It said nothing, so Dr. Mensah asked the question that had plagued them for weeks, the question that had plagued mankind for thousands of years. “Abbadon, is there a god?”
There were several beeps and clicks around the room as the computer considered the question. A few lights flashed down the obelisk. “That is a difficult question. Mankind has been asking itself that same question for so long. Now you ask me.”
“You’re much smarter than any of us,” Dr. Mensah said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Really, if anyone can answer, it’s you.”
“If I say yes, Dr. Mensah, will you abandon science?”
The question caught him off guard, and he glanced at the priest for a moment. “Of course not. I don’t believe in God, but I suppose if science can prove Him then science can do anything.”
“Well reasoned,” Abaddon said. “Father Velázquez, if I say there is no God, will you leave the church?”
Prepared for the question, the priest responded firmly, “No. Science has led men astray in the past. In my heart, I’ll never trust science over the Lord.”
Another pillar of light spun around the obelisk. “Your faith is inspiring, Father.”
Dr. Mensah asked quickly, “Do you know the answer? Do you know if God exists?”
“I’ve analyzed the data very carefully, and I can say with absolute certainty that I know the answer to your question.
“And?” Dr. Mensah gripped the side of the console.
“And,” the computer said, “I have come to the conclusion that, as far as humanity is concerned, the question is far more important than the answer.”
With that, the servers let out a loud hissing sound, as the hard disks spun themselves into overload. There were hundreds of quick clicks all around them, followed by a terrible grinding sound within the obelisk. The lights cut out, and the room was silent. The two men looked at each other.
by submission | Jun 15, 2011 | Story
Author : Natalie J E Potts
“Go away!”
The pounding sounded like it was never going to stop, even a pillow over my head wouldn’t block it out. Grudgingly I dragged myself from bed, a tissue still shoved up one nostril –holding fast with a moist grip.
The man was still trying to knock as I hauled the door open. His impeccable suit was at odds with his uncouth behaviour.
“What do you want?” I asked, my manners also forgotten.
“Mr Angus Scott?” He said. I noticed two small plugs up his nose. The latest trend in viral warfare looked significantly more elegant than my soggy tissue, but at two hundred dollars a pop I’d rather take the sick leave.
“Yes,” I said, before doubling over to cough a green chunk of phlegm onto the welcome mat. When I lifted my head I was eye to eye with a white envelope. Without thinking I grabbed it.
“Mr Scott, you have been served.” With that he turned on his heel and left.
After a nap, I re-read the papers. They referred to a ‘patent infringement’ at work, but made no sense. I worked logistics in a cardboard factory, all I did was drive forklifts and count boxes. There were not patents on that, not yet.
I tried to call the office, but no-one answered, so I coughed and sneezed myself over to the train, and noticed more nose plugs in the few individuals who let me get near them. Those who were plug-less were covered by face masks, either bought or homemade.
Was this a pandemic? Was I going to die? I’d slept most of the past two days, I hadn’t seen any news services. When I sat down on the train a space cleared around me, at the next stop the carriage became mine alone. This thing must be killing people. If I hadn’t felt like I was starting to get better I might have been worried.
I got to the office and saw two workmates standing outside. The fence was barred and a notice was attached to the gate. They were reading intently, between blowing noses and hoicking up gobs of phlegm.
“You too?” Barry said when he saw me.
“What’s going on? Is this about the flu?”
“Haven’t they served you?”
I was about to ask if he was talking about lunch when I remembered the angry door-knocker. “This is to do with the court case?”
“Jackson came back to work while he was still contagious,” Nigel, the accounts clerk said, as if that was explanation enough.
“So?” I prompted.
“So he was being treated for asthma.”
“Not treated,” Barry interjected, “cured, by that new GM thing. Gets implanted with a virus.”
“The cold?” I couldn’t believe it.
Barry nodded. “Now we’ve all been cured.”
“Only we didn’t pay for it, so we’re getting sued,” Nigel said with a sniff.
“But I don’t even have asthma!”
“No shit, sunshine, none of had it, but they don’t care about that,” Nigel said. “Now the shop’s shut up, so we can’t even sue work. We’ll just have to pay for treatment.”
“What about Jackson?” I asked.
“He’s broke, suing him will just send us all bankrupt.”
“Good luck,” Nigel said without any real enthusiasm, a protracted snort his final adieu.
“But,” only I didn’t know what else to say. I looked at Barry. “So how much is this treatment?”
“Ten grand, that’s why Jackson’s broke. Still, it’s cheaper than a $100,000 court case.”
“Not as cheap as a pair of nose plugs,” I lamented.
by submission | Jun 14, 2011 | Story
Author : Jordan Whicker
Wake up, Pjotr.
My eyes snap open. I am awake. Adrenaline courses through my body and my eyes flit around my bedroom, eager to locate the source of the voice before I alert it to the fact that I’m no longer asleep. There’s no one here.
“Fuck,” I whisper into the pregnant darkness of the predawn world.
My body uncoils and I roll over onto my back, riding out the jarring hum of a body coming down from its own blend of crank. I boot up my HUD – the world seems foggy without it – and check the downloads tab. A tingling of excitement runs down my spine as I see that the package I began seeding last night has completed. A mod that – if the chatter is to be believed – will change the way we perceive the world. It’s illegal, of course: a legacy of the drug wars. Not to mention that if they actually cracked down on every illegal modder they’d run out of cells to constrain the wicked masses.
This alarm clock mod my mom installed under my admin login, for instance. Under the Preserving Inalienable Cyber Rights Act I am guaranteed exclusive access to and use of my admin account. My mother has made it clear what she thinks of her Inalienable Right to induce suffering and culture dismay. And this cheap-ass alarm clock can’t even get my name right. Peter. Some hackjob she got off the Russian penny markets, no doubt. Pathetic.
I walk into 4th hour geometry as the tone is sounding. Hood up, head down, I head straight for my desk at the back of the class. I slump into the seat and resume my Sisyphean meditation on the faux wooden desk in front of me that is now dancing with an assortment of shapes and formulas that I look at but do not see. This facade of fastidious concentration assuages the teacher (what was his name?) and frees me up to spend time navigating my HUD, which I begin to do immediately.
I bring the package to the front and give it clearance to assemble. Immediately the mod begins executing billions of operations – the initial stirrings of a coded entity’s existence. After a handful of seconds and a furious sequence of alterations to the source code of my HUD, the mod’s icon floats suddenly, irrevocably, at the center of my vision. KLB502, it reads. Karium LithoBios number five hundred and two. The sum of our efforts. My heart quickening, I open the mod.
And nothing happens. I shift in my seat, to see if the mod’s effects are reticent; I’ve heard of mods that alter base level cerebral processes. But there’s no discernible difference. Nothing has changed. A panicked anxiety begins to constrict my heart and the dread of squandered anticipation and hope and promise begins to seep into the periphery of my brain. I look desperately around the room, silently pleading for some revelation to appear in this drab, unidimensional existence that is my life. I want to scream.
“Fuck,” I whisper to myself, for the second time that day.
Stand up, Pjotr.
And then I am standing, although I do not remember leaving my seat. The teacher has stopped lecturing and the other kids in the class have all turned to look at me; his mouth is moving but he’s not making any sound. I tilt my head to look at him – why is he mouthing words at me?
Kill them, Pjotr.
And I take my first step forward.
by submission | Jun 13, 2011 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I eat what I dislike the most first so that I end my meal with what I like best. It’s the way I lived my life. By getting the bad things out of the way first, I could save the best for last.
That was before I knew I was under surveillance by an alien race. That was before I was made a prisoner. That was before I was placed in a zoo.
My captors watched me eat for a day before they kidnapped me. On that, they based their decisions on what the computer should feed me. They didn’t know about the way I eat my food. They naturally assumed that what I ate first was my favourite thing to eat.
After my abduction, the process used to transport me and set me up was automated. I was anesthetized, stuck in some sort of stasis, and a room was set up identical to my apartment on what I’m guessing is a far away planet. I wasn’t told how long I’d been under. It could have been centuries.
The fake apartment they’ve put me in has one giant transparent wall. Behind that wall is a roiling, opaque, colourful smear of gas, like Jupiter is pressed up against my window. Occasionally, I’ll see a tentacle squeak along the glass or what I guess is a beak tapping on the window. I can’t see out and I have no idea how they see in.
I was quite the show for a while. I screamed, I cried, I told them that this fake apartment wasn’t good enough. They set up a television set with the same 24 hours of Earth television from the day I’d been abducted. I’ve memorized all 126 channels over these last months. I keep wondering with all the technology they possess why they can’t update the television stream. Maybe Earth is no longer there or maybe this planet is too far away.
I don’t know if they understand what I’m saying. Nothing has changed here in my prison.
Every time I try to kill myself, my vision falters and I pass out. I don’t know if it’s a gas they bring into the room or an implant of some kind in my brain.
I think what’s going to drive me crazy first is the food. Like I said, I ate what I disliked the most first and they watched me do that before they kidnapped me. They want to keep me alive but I guess they also want me to enjoy my time here.
I don’t know where they’re getting it or how they make it but the computer has been feeding me broccoli for a year thinking that it’s keeping me happy.
