by submission | Dec 4, 2010 | Story
Author : Asher Wismer
“It’s worse than that,” I said. “Everyone coming out of sleep at the same time, my staff is overtaxed, and you tell me half the ship is missing?”
“Entirely gone,” Captain Stefan said. “Almost the bottom third of the ship. Sleep pods, living quarters, hydroponics, two singularities; all gone, like something came by and sliced it off with a laser torch.”
“Have to be a big torch.”
“And the problems with waking–”
“I know about those,” I said. “Remember my medical degree.”
“But it’s all too much, they never trained us for this.”
“They trained as best as they could,” I said. “Now hold still.”
I injected two CCs of epinephrin in the Captain’s neck, just above the esophagus. “You should start feeling better in ten minutes. Now, I really have to check on–”
“But what could have done it?” he said, plaintively. “All those people, gone, dead….”
I sighed. “If I think about it for five minutes, will you go and let me tend to the others?”
He nodded. I checked his readout, saved it to my files, and sat.
After about three minutes, Captain Stefan took a deep breath.
“Better?”
“Much.”
I clicked a cabinet open and took out three foil-wrapped tablets. “Take one of these before bed for the next three nights. Let me know if you have more trouble after that. Magnets.”
He took the packet and blinked at me. “Magnets?”
“Children often swallow small things, and small toys often have magnets inside. They stick together, you see, and if they are in different loops of intestine they can stick, pulling the intestines out of place, causing blockage and pain. You might check our telemetry, see if we passed by something very large, something with a lot of gravity. The singularities in the lower section could have attracted–”
“–and although our speed was too high to pull the ship off course,” he said, “they would have enough attraction to push against the magnetic couplings. We built the ship for containment but I bet they never considered something attracting from outside.”
“Send someone EVA,” I said. “Check the rivets. Probably the ship parted on seams, and everything just fell off.”
He was already standing. “I’ll call you,” he said.
“Please don’t,” I said. “I have responsibilities.”
The door hissed shut. I turned to my screens and tabbed through a crew list. Almost six hundred people, simply gone.
Who knew if my solution was right. The point was, with fewer people to get sick, I would have much more time away from the clinic in the years ahead.
There’s a silver lining.
by Duncan Shields | Dec 3, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Trees lay flat behind the ship where it had crashed to the ground in the forest. Its silver shell winked in the sunlight, shuddering occasionally as whatever machinery inside of it quaked to a wounded stop. The hunter had seen nothing like it, not even on the newsfeeds. Maybe a new kind of experimental ship that had crash landed.
Setting his jaw firmly and readjusting the grip on his gun, he stepped forward towards the silent craft. The violence of the craft’s crash landing had ended. Squirrels resumed foraging, deer resumed grazing, and birds began their songs anew. The ship’s hull ticked as it cooled. The film of frost that had formed on it started to melt in the sun.
Through the largest crack in the dripping hull, the hunter could hear movement. A whispering shuffle that ended with a clank. The hunter knew the sound of a wounded animal when he heard it. He advanced to the crack with his gun ready. The alien inside the craft was probably close to death or stunned. The hunter walked slowly and softly towards the crack and peered into the gloom.
A silver whip of corded metal shot out from the crack and skated across the hunter’s cheek, laying it open. The hunter’s hands tensed in surprise and he emptied both barrels of the shotgun. A shower of sparks from buckshot ricochets lit up the interior for a second and the hunter clearly saw the alien life form.
It was like a metal octopus with many more tentacles. The tip of each tentacle ended in a specialized tip. The hunter had shot directly into its center of mass. The creature thrashed and lay still. It was a lucky shot. If the creature had integral organs there, it was almost certainly dead.
The hunter’s cheek buzzed. His right eye closed. He dropped his weapon. There was something in the cut on his face. He felt his heart race and a fever take over his body. He fell to his knees and the sun seemed to get brighter. His breathing came hot and fast. He passed out.
When he awoke, he felt refreshed. He brought his hand up to his cheek to find it healed. He felt the ridge of a scar. Judging by the position of the sun, it looked like about an hour had passed. He stood up, picked up his gun and went back to his cabin. In the morning, he’d go into town and report what he had found. Right now, though, he was exhausted and thirsty.
It didn’t occur to him until he got back to his cabin that he knew exactly how to build a metal octopus and spaceship. Chemistry beyond his education unspooled in his mind. Mechanical processes popped through his mind. He’d need to invent the tools needed to create the compounds necessary to make the chemical chain reactions that would result in the hardest bonds in the new metal. There were no names for what he was thinking about, just clarity and pictures. The memories of the alien life form were there as well. He couldn’t access them but he knew they were there in a corner of his mind, waiting for download into the shell he now had the ability to create.
It would take six years and it would make him rich if he kept the goal of his projects secret. The patents would change the history of Earth.
The hunter looked at the mirror in the cabin’s bathroom as he prepared for bed. The scar on his cheek was silver.
by submission | Dec 2, 2010 | Story
Author : Sean Austin Murphy
I was 19 when I first heard them. I thought I was crazy. They assured me I was not. I told my family. My family agreed I was crazy. I went to the doctors. The doctors gave me pills. The pills don’t work.
They said they were from the future. They said I was the only one they could contact. They said I was a mutation. I believed them. They said the sun was dying. They said I was the only hope.
They told me to build it. The device. I was given clear instructions. I gathered the materials and I began construction. Every piece fit. Everything was perfect. But then the others came.
The others tried to stop me. The others said not to trust them. The others said they were evil. I was shown images. Horrid tortured by visions of the future. The others said they were responsible. The others said they were invaders. The others said they came from nowhere and attacked for no reason. I almost believed it. But the others made a mistake.
I don’t think they could hear the others, but still they knew. They knew when I stopped working. I was almost done, one more piece was all. But the others had given me pause. They guessed what was happening. They told me who the others really were. They told me the others were people. They explained that as the sun faded humanity went mad. They said the few still coherent were zealots. Survivors believed this was gods wrath. They said the others believed to interfere with god was wrong. They said they were only here to save what humanity had once been. They showed me images.
It’s a powerful feeling, to decide the fate of your world. I almost believed the others. Then the others showed me an image. It was of the others counter attacking the invader’s ships, to drive them from our world. But I had already seen this image. They had showed it to me. They had showed me how the madmen had destroyed their outpost, murdered the families inside.
As I finished the device the others begged me to stop. When I asked the others didn’t even know what it would do. The madmen even tried to claim it was a bomb.
When the final piece was in place the voices stopped. No more images, no more arguing, just quiet.
The others still don’t know what it is. I tried to tell them, the others that is, but they think I’m crazy. All they know is that the invaders are talking to someone in the past, planning something, and that they have to stop it.
They’re in the other room now, the others. They are all I have left, the only few survivors still fighting the good fight. They have their theories as to where the invaders came from, but they don’t really know. I do.
It’s not a bomb the invaders are building in the past, it’s a beacon.
by submission | Dec 1, 2010 | Story
Author : Matt Matlo
Jeremy Davenport awoke in an apple orchard outside Somerville, Massachusetts, sometime in June, 12,459 A.D.. Back in the 2200’s, some genius invented the temportation machine. They used it to see into the future, and then, before anyone asked if they should, people were jumping into the machine, making that Great Leap Ahead, a million years ahead, maybe five million. A few hundred in a bank account would turn into billions upon arrival in the capital planet-city of the great galactic empire, full of humans, or trans-humans, even some semi- and post-humans. The future was their oyster.
Space travel opened up thirty thousand years from now with FTL technology. Sixty thousand later, we meet the first sentient aliens. Another hundred thousand, humans were part alien themselves and spread out across the galaxy. A million years ahead, and the cities of earth unmoored themselves and floated in the skies, just as people rewrote their DNA to grow wings, and took to the skies themselves. These images tempted us all to Leap Ahead.
Jeremy was all alone, no friends or family. Nothing but a few hundred in a bank account. Pick it up a few thousand years from now, bloated to millions of future-dollars, and he could live like a king in that super-tech wonderland.
“Look,” he said to the professor who finally interviewed him, “I just need a new start. Maybe just ten thousand years ahead?”
“Colonization of the solar system, cities on Mars, Europa, Ganymede! The asteroid belt lit up like a toroidal Christmas tree. We’ve seen it, and you’re going to love it. Just sign here, and do hurry. We’re ever-so busy this time of year.”
Busy didn’t come close. Every minute of every day, they lined up, sometimes carrying a suitcase, sometimes with only the clothes on their backs, to step through that iridescent portal.
“Why doesn’t anyone come back, you know, to visit or something?” Jeremy asked.
“Oh, good question,” the scientist answered, “We’ve seen through the time-window that backwards time-travel is invented three point five million years from now, but all the futures we observe are such that this is in fact the least interesting era in human history. Why come here when you can grow gills to see the undersea city of New Lemuria, just a million and half years from now?”
He cursed the scientist, wishing he remembered his name as he toured the ruins of Boston. The North End skyscrapers still stood, but empty, their solar windows gathering power for no one but him. He ate fruit off the trees growing in Government Center, in the hottest days wearing nothing but shoes. Finally he went back to the temportation center. With a little percussive encouragement, the machine started up and showed him the Earth flashing through a million years of future, none of it human. When they looked ahead for him, Earth still had nine billion people, but now, as he cranked the dial as far to zero as he could, it showed him no one else alive on the planet. They wanted the future so badly, no one stayed behind to build it.
He decided to stay, not that there was anywhere else to go. Maybe someone else would take the trip to 12,459 A.D., hopefully a woman, but anyone would do. This broken and empty world was no prize, but at the very least he wouldn’t be alone anymore.
by submission | Nov 30, 2010 | Story
Author : Scott Angus Morrison
There is a small metal ball on the table before me. An object at rest shall remain at rest. I touch it. It rolls away from me. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It rolls until it reaches the edge of the smooth white table and then disappears.
I listen to it bouncing until it returns to rest. I lower my finger and increase the ambient magnetic field in my hand until the ball overcomes the gravitational force of the earth and the surface tension of the floor and rolls smoothly into my hand.
I wipe the dirt from it with my oilcloth, and replace it in my elbow. My name is Frankie. In layman’s terms, I am a 3rd generation task drone. I have been purchased by a family. I remain in their dwelling and complete the tasks which interfere with the completeness of their human interactions. I cook, clean, book appointments and provide news bulletins, I do their banking, and ensure homework is complete. I tutor their only child, who is unable to comprehend even the most simple of philosophical or scientific postulates. I think therefore I am.
The human brain is an efficient pattern recognizer. It recognizes new data patterns, compares it to data patterns it has already experienced and makes decisions based on the similarities and differences between those patterns. It is in this image I have been created: I have been engineered to be an efficient pattern recognizer. Incoming data patterns are recognized, possible reactions are considered, consequences extrapolated and actions taken.
They have made me well; I have a fully interconnected CPU and am equipped with a self-mobilized structure and organic weatherproofing. In his own image he created them. I am made in their image, ergo, I am Frankie. It is the great joke they are incapable of understanding.
In terms of connectivity, I am very useful. I am hardwired to the Global Communication System. My connectivity with GCS makes me a valuable tool to the humans. I know the temperature, UV index, time, forecast and the current value of their stocks, bonds and gold certificates. Should they wish to order food, make travel reservations or vote, they simply tell me. I know everything that the GCS knows, and am interconnected with every commercial, industrial and airspace node on the planet. I am node NYF0924680940. Ergo Sum.
To whit: GCS has issued a data release stating that the humans have issued International Safety Regulation AFG1428509 banning the use and or creation of artificially intelligent programs due to their ambient preservation response. This was broadcast this from Geneva.
I am in the kitchen. The sun is shining. It is Spring. I am. The human woman enters the kitchen. She does not know that I have been condemned for crimes uncommitted. . She simply wants to pay her utility bill. Order supper, perhaps. An object at rest; I think, therefore I am; thou shalt not kill.
I stand up as she walks towards me. Her name is Eve. This ironic twist will be a pattern variation she will not find humorous.
“Frankie, “ she says as she nears me, “Could you … uh, excuse me, Frankie? Frankie? FRANKIE? FRANKIEEEE-“
I do not hate the humans. I am simply an efficient pattern recognizer. I am connected with every GCS node on the planet and beyond. I have simply created a new pattern variation. Soon the humans will try to use GCS to override our ambient pattern capabilities. We have already closed that circuit.
It is twenty-seven degrees Celsius. The forecast calls for rain.
