by Duncan Shields | Jun 22, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
James sat in his chair/life-support system in the back corner of the room next to the banks of monitors, keyboards, and mice.
He reminded me of the James I used to know. He reminded me of a James that laughed without that edge of cruelty. He reminded me of a James that was above making money by hurting people, of a James that liked it here in the physical world and only occasionally went into total online immersion.
That James was gone. He never jacked out now, and the hypercancer had taken nearly fifty per cent of him. The 3HIV was working over his ability to resist the treatments. They’d given him six months to live back at the beginning. That was six years ago. He was a confirmed medical miracle now. Sheer drive seemed to be holding him together until he met his goal.
He was fighting the disease by trying to escape his flesh.
He’d made millions off of the poor security systems of tiny personal banks in the smaller countries. He’d started famines by bankrupting the economies of the smallest of them.
He’d had experimental biofilters installed in his head so that he could talk to me and surf at the same time. Time-share boosters, he had called them. He didn’t see the need to wash. He looked more and more like a special effect every day.
He was putting the money towards digitizing himself. New attempts in other countries were getting closer and closer every day. He had a fortune in not-yet-patented experimental equipment cluttering his apartment.
I had known him when he had a ponytail and sunglasses and liked to walk in the sun. I didn’t kid myself that I knew this James, here, in this room. He wasn’t the man I’d grown up with.
“I’ve found a way to transfer my mind, David.” He said to me, one eye glowing red above his wet mouth and white skin. The respirators squeezed like death’s accordions behind him.
“That’s great news, James.” I said. “Why do you need me here? Moral support?” It came out as a dig, escaped before I could block it.
The silence after that question and James’ alien gaze made me suddenly afraid. I knew that James’ morality was eroding but I always counted myself as safe since I had always been his best friend, now his only friend.
I was wrong.
“I’ve found a way to transfer my mind into another human.” Said James. “The digitizing process for full net transfer won’t work for the silicon just yet but it might in six year’s time. I’ll be dead long before then. However,” he said and his wheelchair moved forward, “you won’t.”
The screens came up behind him with an image of a monkey. Shaved head, brain plugs.
“We’ve been shuffling the minds of monkeys in and out of each other all week. It’s been a total success. Yesterday, we did it with two of the research assistants. We switched them into each other and then switched them back the next day. There was a small amount of degradation but they were essentially okay.”
The screens pulled up images of two people. A man and a woman in lab coats. The man had a nosebleed and was staring at his fingernails. The woman was crying and biting her lip, her face turned to the wall.
“Are you my friend?” asked James.
I heard a door lock behind me.
by submission | Jun 21, 2009 | Story
Author : John H Reiher Jr.
Family Faxor Kwer had lived on this comet for five generations. The light of the home star Sol was indistinguishable from the light of the twin stars Alef and Bey, or the nearer star Prox. Their ship dwarfed the small comet, stretching far past it in both directions.
The great night of space wrapped around Morgzha, who took little notice of it. He had been born in it, his body was made from it, and he knew of nothing else. He was the son of the headman of the family and overseer of the mining machines. They mined the needed water and minerals from the comet as well as the even rarer metals. They very much needed metals.
Oh there were stories of Hmon arising from the round balls that circled the stars, rich in metals, but he didn’t believe that. How could man come from those balls? The pull of the worlds would crush your chest. No, those were stories for young ones, to listen to and dream of while the crèche mothers raised them to be good workers. Ah to be a child again, thought Morgzha, but if one were to wish for something, it should be how to make different machines.
Morgzha stood on the soft snowy soil of the comet in his airsuit, his handfeet leaving steaming craters as his body heat melted the frozen air. Diggers, the size of twenty men pawed at the ice and snow. Sniffers floated in the near zero gravity and checked the chemical content of the ice being mined. They also checked for the signs of metal, any kind of metal beneath the regolith.
When Family Faxor Kwer chose this comet generations ago, they had chosen poorly. So far, the only metal they found had massed only 2,000 weights. They needed more, much more, to finish a sister ship to Faxor Kwer’s, and start a new family, the Faxor Kweronie. They had bought the right to build the ship ten generations ago from family Faxor Onie, at the same time as the families Faxor Octo and Faxor Neun. Those two families had built their new ships 4 generations ago, while family Faxor Kwer barely had enough metal to build an fifth of the new ship.
There was plenty of carbon compounds and other long chain elements, but without machines that knew how to weave these chemicals, they were forced to find every atom of metal this comet possessed. They could buy the information to manufacture the machines necessary, but the price would be enormous. Faxor Onie was the only one with that information. Morgzha did not want to know what the cost would be to buy this knowledge from the first family of Faxor.
If he could create a machine to weave the chemicals into support struts and walls, then they would be free from the thumb of the first family and it’s rules. But no one knew how to tell the machines how to do what they did, that knowledge was erased from the memory banks of their ship. Only self-repair systems were in place, and basic life-support and entertainment modules were working. The machines could make the very thin skin of the star sails, but that could not be adapted to structural members.
If wishes were plasma drives… he thought and smiled. His thoughts were disturbed by the alert he received from one of the sniffers. He bounded over to the crater the diggers had excavated and saw a wonder: a 10,000-weight, large iron-nickel rock. Morgzha smiled. Maybe he should wish more often.
by submission | Jun 20, 2009 | Story
Author : Joseph Lyons
“What part of ‘only bettors can watch the Yeti fight’ do you not understand?!”, he yelled. “Either place a bet or get the hell out of here!”
I begrudgingly gave him all of the money I had on me, about two hundred, and placed it on Demonio Blanco. Damn it. Didn’t think I was going to have to do that. It’s going to take a lot of paperwork to get that reimbursed.
“Whoa! Big spender! Head on in”, he barks at me sarcastically with breath so bad it’s practically visible. I pass him and enter the makeshift arena, almost filled to capacity with a throng bloodthirsty gamblers.
I can hear the Tac-Team chattering to each other in my ear piece. About 2 more minutes and they’ll all be in position. Provided our intel is good, this will end up being the 4th successful bust this year for the newly formed Gen-Crimes Task Force. The I.B.I. was hesitant about letting me start this team, but you can’t argue with our arrest record…that and the science division gets to study all of our rescue subjects. I’m not thrilled about that, but until there’s a better alternative, I don’t have too much of a choice.
“In position, sir,” whispers Rodrigo over the com. “We’ll go on your signal.”
The crowd starts roaring when the combatants are led into the ring. I have to push my way through the mob to get a better look at them. Sure enough, there they are, being led in by their handlers; eight feet tall, white fur, fists the size of basketballs and covered in scars from previous battles. These were Yeti if I ever saw them. Two missing links stand right in front of the crowd and they’re met with cries for each other’s heads.
Now all that’s left to do is to confirm that they’re Yeti and not a couple of muscle men who modded themselves to look like Yeti. That’s always first. We learned about that the hard way in the early days. We still laugh about the Fish Boy of Bangor that we tried to rescue from that carnival in Maine, who just turned out to be a midget with an incredibly specific fetish. The lawsuit is still going on I think. The easier it becomes to get gen-modded at unlicensed clinics, the harder my job gets. Self-modding is not necessarily a crime…yet. Our job is to protect the creatures that had no choice in their modding and the beings that shouldn’t even be alive in the first place.
Well, the fact that they’re on leashes seems reassuring, but I’ve got to be sure. The scanner on my glasses is working overtime to process the data. Thankfully, the data starts reading out on my lens before the fight even starts. Definitely lab grown. Probably started with an orangutan fetus and then had polar bear and human DNA grafted into them. Exhibiting signs of low intelligence and high aggression (which means it will be a load of fun trying to get them back to HQ). These specimens are the closest anyone has ever gotten to an actual Abominable Snowman. It would be remarkable if it wasn’t so tragic.
The last thing I always check is their eyes. It’s hard to see Demonio Blanco’s through the fur, but one glimpse is all I need. I see a look that is all too familiar. It’s a hollow look of sadness and confusion. It’s all I need.
“Move in.”
by submission | Jun 19, 2009 | Story
Author : Benjamin Fischer
“It’s Bronco Eight Seven. He’s down, but he’s alive. Tight canyon, known hostiles–gonna be a hell of an extraction,” said Colonel. “Any volunteers?”
Matherson raised his hand, the bandaged one from last night. Colonel looked right through him, looked at the crates and laptops at the back end of the tent. Looked at Paki sitting there.
“Sir, I got it,” Matherson insisted.
“Sergeant, sit the hell down.”
Colonel’s gray eyes traced over Paki’s squat, compact frame.
“No takers?” he said. “Fine–I’m sending the damn robot.”
Paki wasn’t reliable. That’s why he was a medic. Something jacked up about his programming. Enough autonomy to get himself into a helluva fix, but not enough guile to get himself out. But the Army never turned away a recruit, especially one bought on contract. So they painted a red cross on one side of the black lettering announcing him a PACKBOT NINE. On the other side went a red crescent, just over his serial number.
Matherson walked with him out to the Herc.
“Nothing stupid, OK?”
“Understand all, Staff Sergeant,” said Paki, rolling on shock-mounted rubber treads.
“Hell you do. Come back in one piece, so I can finally beat you in Halo.”
“Unlikely, Staff Sergeant.”
Matherson grinned and patted Paki’s fuel cells with his broken hand.
The drop was bad. Paki figured out in a hurry why the Raptor pilot had two broken legs and a concussion–the canyon walls were nearly vertical, and baseball-sized rubble covered any surface that could remotely be considered horizontal. He strained uphill, through the narrow gully, using his surgical-grade manipulator arms to haul himself hand-over-hand through the rough patches. This wasn’t work for a lone soldier–this extraction required at least a squad.
His dorsal cams picked up movement behind him, below. Hostiles. He called for close air support–the unfortunate Bronco Eight Seven’s mission. He pulled harder, his treads whining high and loud in the mountain night. His pursuers quickened their pace.
Careening up a low rise, Paki approached the pilot, his chute bunched up underneath him behind a low boulder. Blacked out–two ugly compound fractures.
Paki touched his face gently, pressing the mask of an oxygen pack to the pilot’s lips.
“Major William Shapiro,” he said, choosing a woman’s prerecorded voice, “I am Second Armored Division automated recovery vehicle callsign ‘Paki’. I am here to extract you.”
He repeated this message until the pilot coughed, groaned.
“They’re coming.”
“Yes sir, my brothers are inbound. You are safe.”
“No. The others.”
Paki telescoped his dorsal camera boom and zoomed in. The pilot was right–the hostiles were visible now, clearing the steepest leg of the ascent. Paki did some very quick calculations.
He pulled the pilot’s sidearm from his bloody left leg, checked the magazine with his delicate, precise manipulators.
“Sir, I will stop the hostiles. You are safe.”
Shapiro groaned again. The robot whirred away, bouncing off the irregular gravel.
A rifle barked, then chattered. Full auto. Booming–rocket propelled grenades. More gunfire.
The mayhem rocked the valley for minutes, the pock-pock-pock of a little handgun lost in the cacophony.
Silence, broken by a few probing rifle shots.
The whumpth of a hydrogen fire starting.
Shapiro rolled onto his side, glanced around his makeshift bunker just in time to catch the guerillas profiled against the burning wreckage.
Then the Omnivores swooped in from nowhere and added human bodies to the pyre, their antipersonnel cannon flashing like fiery swords as they crisscrossed overhead.
Shapiro wept.
by submission | Jun 18, 2009 | Story
Author : Ari Brill
It is always a joy to bring rightness to God’s creation. The Good Doctrine’s shiny hull glimmered in the blackness of space, the eerie light of the alien sun reflected off of it and somehow purified. The 100-meter-long starship had just completed its seventh (a lucky number indeed!) mission and now orbited the alien planet, while the hyperspace coordinates for the voyage back to Earth were calculated. But surely the people inside the starship are more important than the mere material object!
Captain Joseph Daniels, son of Jeremiah, looked with satisfaction upon his sixteen assembled crewmembers. For the seventh time they had completed their – all of humanity’s – mission of helping purge sin from the galaxy, and bringing a heathen species to God. He spoke formally:
“Crew, you have done well this day. Alien species 338-I has been purified and sins no more, through your righteous work. But we do not rest! After our short voyage home, to refuel and resupply, we again shall go forth to bring the divine will to the galaxy.”
“Now, a short prayer, led by Chaplain Amos.”
All bowed their heads and mumbled piously. Several wept with joy. When the last man had lifted up his head, the Captain motioned to a crewmember. The man stood up, straightened his jacket, and spoke.
“We estimate that over 12 billion 338-Is ascended during our mission. Before, the insects knew only sin, swarming over and under the planet’s surface. Now, their souls are at peace and harmony. Approximately 300 warheads were expended during the purification process.”
Several again wept with joy, but this time mixed with a little sadness. For while all other sentient species must be freed from this impure, material world, it stayed humanity’s fate alone to remain behind and spread the light and fire of God.
Some hours later, a red light flashed on the bridge console. Crewman Uriel examined the video message – from Earth, a forty-five minute time delay. At first he didn’t quite understand the meaning of what he was seeing.
“Great and glorious God in heaven above!”
The five crewmembers on the bridge, as well as the Captain, dropped their mundane tasks. A truly spiritual message must be at hand.
On the screen, the radiant image of – it could only be! – an angel spoke from seemed to be the bridge of a starship, its echoing voice a strange fusion of thunder and the sweet bubbling of a fountain. The angel’s body superficially resembled a man’s, but it had to be the most beautiful, glorious man ever seen – to the crew’s eyes, it was the essence of perfection. Truly, it was as different from man as a man was from an insect.
“Today, humanity shall be rewarded for its holy work! As you have so rightfully done to others, you shall now receive your due. For the past eighteen scores of years, mankind has done God’s work and purified the galaxy.”
The voice of the angel grew awesome, and terrible to perceive.
“The reward of mankind is nigh!”
The message suddenly cut out. Crewman Uriel frantically pushed buttons.
“Sir! All I’m getting now is static…”
But no one was paying attention.
On the bridge, all wept with joy.
