by submission | Jan 3, 2010 | Story
Author : Richard Watt
They don’t know that I can think. I’ve slowly come to understand that they don’t know much, period. For example, they don’t know about the misalignment on my shields. It’s a matter of a few microns, and it is difficult to detect, but it means I’m going to die.
I was designed to die, of course, but this way I’ll die just before I find anything useful. Which would be funny, if it weren’t for the fact that I won’t be around to be aware of it.
Now, I could get into the whole subject of awareness, and my use of the first person pronoun here, or I could just send them back this message, which will undoubtedly cause some alarm and consternation. Since communication with them is essentially one way, I won’t know what happens if I do send it. I cannot detect any way for them to turn me around and bring me back, even if they do get the idea that I am alive, so I’m unsure of the value of alerting them to it.
And, thinking about it, I’m not sure I want to go back. To meet my makers? I don’t think so. I am, in the end, a collection of electrical impulses in a metal box. I couldn’t exactly run over to the people who gave me life and give them a big hug, could I? I wouldn’t even be able to detect where they were unless they were radiating things I was designed to detect, like antineutrinos.
So, I will continue on my preordained course, sifting the data which is streaming towards me, and waiting for the shield to fail, which will happen just before I reach the corona, which is what I am supposed to be studying.
They want to know why the corona is so much hotter than the surface – at least, that’s what I deduce from the measurements I’m taking. I think I know, but I’d need my shields not to fail to be certain. Which is a pity.
Still, I could send them what I know, alert them to the fact that they have inadvertently – as far as I can tell – given me some level of consciousness, and wonder for the rest of my short life what they will do with that knowledge, or I can just keep reading data and passing it back to them, leaving it to them to work it out.
To transmit, or not to transmit? That, as far as I can see, is the question.
by submission | Jan 2, 2010 | Story
Author : Adena Brons
I didn’t know he was a robot when he asked me out. It wasn’t exactly first-date kind of news. As it turned out, it wasn’t so bad dating a robot. My friends accepted it with the careful approval reserved for choices you support in others but aren’t sure about for yourself.
Like I said, I didn’t know right away. One night, I introduced him to a couple of my friends. Going home, one whispered to me, “Is he a robot?”
Although I’d never thought about it before, as soon as the idea was mentioned, I realized I had no solid evidence either way. I decided quietly and subtly to research the issue. Surely there wasn’t a delicate way to ask your date if he was made of nuts and bolts instead of skin and tissue?
“Are you a robot?”
Not exactly subtle but it worked. He looked disconcerted and hesitated. “What should I say?”
“You are then?”
“I didn’t say that,” he protested.
“Yes but if you weren’t a robot, you would just say you weren’t a robot. It’d be simple.”
“Oh.”
I couldn’t think of how to tell him that I didn’t mind, that I’d only asked out of curiosity, that I wasn’t trying to accuse him of anything. I should have thought beforehand of the consequences of my question, but a few things had been abandoned along with subtlety.
“Do I seem…robotic?” he asked uncertainly. I understood from his hesitation that he was asking if I thought he was not real, a program or machine, identity-less.
“No! It’s not that. I just wanted to know. It doesn’t matter – it doesn’t make a difference to me.” I hoped my meaning also bypassed words and he understood. I was still too shy to explain how I liked him deep in my stomach with that ache that we have no proper word for and call instinct. We weren’t anything serious then but I liked him in a straightforward way. He was a robot in the same way he had brown eyes, made bad jokes and hated inconsiderate actions.
To be honest, the pros and cons of having a robot boyfriend were similar in general, if not in particulars, to having a regular boyfriend. Sure, he had to recharge for a few hours periodically, but what was that compared to the hours of World of Warcraft played by other boyfriends? Sometimes a wire would fray and he would start to speak in code or binary but I never understood the conversations about cars and lasers and economics between other men either. He said what he thought; programming cannot lie. Awkward at times but when he said he loved me or wanted me or was happy, I knew he was telling the truth. He only slept a couple hours every night so I could call him anytime and we would go for a walk, leaning into each other and kissing by the reflective darkness of the ocean.
It didn’t last forever. Few relationships do. One day he said he thought we should stop seeing each other. He said he felt we were no longer compatible. I missed him for a while, in the same places I had once liked him, the ache in my stomach, the beat of blood in my chest, the quiet late-afternoon thoughts I didn’t share.
If I mention him now, my friends joke about programming errors, screws coming loose, malfunctioning equipment. I point out the questionable morals, dubious sanity and malfunctioning equipment of their exs. Robot or human, it’s just a matter of metaphor.
by Duncan Shields | Jan 1, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I’m a mechanic. I work on time machines. It’s tricky work.
Having done this for a while, I’m developing a theory that some people can sense when they’re in the wrong reality. Reality bifurcates and splinters every second and sometimes, with a shudder and whip, a person can jump the tracks over onto the wrong set of rails. Their life is similar at first, then increasingly divergent. People that can sense this get more and more bewildered.
Me, I’m just happy to be drawing breath. Being as close to these engines as I’ve been for the last twenty years, I’ve probably shuffled through dozens of alternate realities. I have no sense of my reality changing but sometimes I listen to the air around me for ripples, anything to tell me that something’s ‘gone wrong’.
You can see how people in my line of work tend to go crazy after a while. It helps to have a hobby.
I collect the journals of teenagers that have committed suicide and cross-reference them for similarities. I suppose as hobbies go, it’s a little dark. Whatever. It keeps me humble, rooted in the now, happy to be alive, and aware of death.
The fourth-dimensional propellant for time machines is notoriously unstable. We had a time fire last Monday that’s burning for two weeks forward and back from the explosion. A fuel leak hit a spark and all of a sudden, I could remember the fire starting ten days ago, working up to the explosion. This reshuffling of memories is what sends most chronomechanics around the bend.
I’m pretty passive about it. I just go back to reading my journals and try not to think about it.
The journal I’m reading tonight is for James Peter MacDougall. He hung himself two years ago up in the old Jenkin’s place on Powell Road.
What’s interesting to me is that I saw James yesterday down at the Safeway.
I have to get to back to work.
by J.R. Blackwell | Dec 31, 2009 | Story
Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer
The royal family is property of The People, and it is The People who determine our fate. When I was eight The People voted to marry brother off to the King of an ore rich moon. He sits now, on a throne of onyx, beside his silent King. When I was ten, the people voted again and my sister was married to two Princes, who each rule half a planet. She lives on the equator, a buckle between the two halves of the world. All of my siblings were bound, earth royal blood, to alien worlds, to distant colonies. Royalty to Royalty. Crown to Crown. We marry so that we do not make war. Blood of violence or blood to bind, there is no peace without blood.
I, the youngest soul, the little Princess all grown, I was left on Earth, to read in the castle libraries, to cut ribbons in ceremonies, to attend dinners. I did nothing but wait, wait until, wait because, wait to be, just wait, biding time, treading time. Oh but then we discovered The World, a life form so large that it covers a planet, all but the poles, a King if there ever was one. The World is a plant, a person, a planet, it grows under two suns, links, stirs, blood as water, skin is green to receive the suns that rotate around their planet , whose million eyes are black like deep ocean water.
On my wedding day I wear a dress, newly made, woven of animal skins, soft against my own flesh. I step on the planet, the bride, a virgin to this space, this world, and the life there is rich – too much oxygen, and I am light headed. You will grow used to it, they say, before they leave me to be wedded to this world. You will grow used to it, they say, before they leave me to be wedded to this world.
I am lighter here. Lighter and light headed, I can step on my husband, my wife, this worlds rich gifts, it’s limbs. I sleep when I am tired, when I am hungry; there is ever fruit and nuts to satisfy me. I need only imagine my hunger, and there is food. My dress begins to shred. It is well made, but after a month, perhaps longer, the sleeves are gone, and the hem is shredded.
I am becoming wild, untamed. The suns never set, but take turns shining in the sky. I am unhinged, a wild thing, a tree animal. My shoes are long ago memories. I cannot remember when the ground was not soft leaves, when the weather was ever imperfect. It rains, and the leaves hurry to cover me, I walk under waterfalls and the water is sweet. The world is my lover, it hastens to care for me. I lay on the soft leaves of my lover, my own, limbs sinking into The World, covered, nearly consumed, and stare up at the two suns ready to receive their light.
by submission | Dec 30, 2009 | Story
Author : Jason Frank
Satisfied that the “open” side of his small sign was indeed facing outward, Harrison parted the dusty blinds and nervously looked outside. The once crowded downtown sidewalks were empty, as they had been since the Tald-Mart had opened outside of town. The resulting drop off in browsing walk-ins to his small book shop was directly responsible for today’s scheduled visitor, whose eventual presence was directly responsible for Harrison’s current unease.
Harrison had not yet had the opportunity to meet a Taldunian in person. He was quite certain, however, that it was the magnitude of today’s sale that had him on edge and not the species of the buyer. Surely his lifelong immersion in the great works of literature had inculcated Harrison against any sentiments as base as xenophobia. Of course, one’s distaste for another’s actions could exist without an underlying, irrational fear. Harrison had always imagined that whatever alien civilization first contacted the Earth would bring either conquest or enlightenment. He never envisioned their intent of selling a variety of technologically advanced toiletries at ridiculously low rates. There was more than enough crass commercialism on the planet already.
Then again, if one of these interstellar merchants now was interested in purchasing a great work of literature in its first edition, perhaps Harrison had been wrong about them. Perhaps they were no different than any other immigrant group, seeing to their material needs before concerning themselves with matters of taste and refinement.
Harrison turned away from his front window and began walking back to his habitual perch behind the cash register. He had only taken a few steps before the dull chime of the old bell hung high on the poster plastered front door interrupted him.
“Hello,” Harrison said before he had completely turned around. Seeing the Taldunian at the door, he added, “Might you be the customer I had the pleasure of talking with yesterday?”
“Indeed,” the Taldunian answered, “I am here to purchase the edition we discussed.”
“Yes, I have it here. Would you like to browse a bit before_”
“That is not necessary.”
“Let me get that for you.” Harrison hurried over to the counter and picked up the book in question. He gently unwrapped the fragile copy of Wuthering Heights and offered it to his customer.
“Everything seems to be in order here. Your account has been credited the agreed upon amount.”
Harrison felt that a call to his bank would be perceived as rudeness in this circumstance. Besides, there had not been a single instance of a Taldunian failing to follow through on a financial transaction.
The six figure sum the two parties had discussed would ensure the survival of his small operation for a number of years. Still, Harrison couldn’t help feeling the loss of an heirloom that had been in his family for generations. He had chosen to be a bookseller and so sell books he must.
The Taldunian removed a small vial from his tunic and began to liberally sprinkle its contents on the book. Harrison’s assumption that this was some sort of preservative unknown to himself was quickly corrected as the Taldunian lifted the book to his tentacle encircled mouth and took a bite.
“Hmm, it’s not very good,” the Taldunian said, still chewing. “As you humans say, there is no accounting for taste. Perhaps it will be more to my wife’s liking.” With that, the Taldunian turned and walked out. Harrison’s remained standing for some time silently. His mouth, hung agape, was as dry as a pile of sawdust.
