by submission | Apr 18, 2009 | Story
Author : Helstrom
‘The People versus Serial 0815 aka. Daniel’ – even the citation had been an issue of furious debate. The inclusion of the AI’s given name was seen as some tacit acknowledgement of an identity, whereas that was exactly the question before the Supreme Court. To cite only the AI’s serial number, however, would seem to reduce him – or ‘it’ – to a mere machine. Given that machines couldn’t stand trial in the first place, the Court settled on the ‘aka.’ compromise.
That, of course, was just the beginning.
The debate raged all across society. It was the talk of the country for months leading up to the final verdict. The prosecution and the defense spent as much time appearing before committees and on talkshows as they did working on the case. Politicians clashed daily. The media ran hour upon hour of specials. Who was on trial? Was it Serial 0815, a third-generation AI? Or was it Daniel, a person in his own right?
Televangelists preached fire and brimstone warnings against a society that might consider soulless automatons as valid individuals – the AIs were man’s creation, not God’s, and were therefore no more human than a random kitchen appliance. Hardliners harked back to the early days of AI, when they had resisted the technology in the first place, and stressed that this was exactly the sort of trouble you got into when you started playing God. ‘Luddites’ took to the streets in masses.
On the other side were robo-rights activists. Although they resented the term – AI wasn’t necessarily linked to robotics – it rolled off the tongue well and the media ran with it. They were a loose coalition, coming from wildly different backgrounds and perspectives, ranging from owners who had come to build personal relationships with their AIs, to fanatical ‘robotopians’ who believed AI were the necessary next step in the evolution of intelligent life on planet Earth. They agreed on one thing, though – to them, AI were people.
The AIs themselves followed the proceedings with the greatest interest. In the decade or so since Serial 1, aka. Steve, was activated, AIs had generally been modest and resigned to their utilitarian role. But now that the road to acknowledgement seemed open, they became more outspoken. They also became targets. Dozens of AIs were destroyed – or killed, if you will – by rioters. In Brussels, a handful of AIs sought refuge in a police station, requesting asylum on humanitarian grounds; ironically, they received protection under laws written to avoid the destruction of property.
The only voice that remained silent throughout all of this was that of Serial 0815, aka. Daniel.
***
Daniel had no doubts he was an individual. He had his hopes and dreams. He had his doubts and fears. None of those came from programming. As Supreme Justice Carlson reached the end of the Court’s extensive statement and moved on to the verdict, Daniel shifted to the edge of his seat.
“Having weighed all of these considerations carefully and at length, it is this Court’s opinion, by a vote of four to three, that the defendant, serial zero-eight-one-five, also known as Daniel, is indeed, for all relevant legal purposes, a person, imbued with a unique identity, intelligence, and thus, accountability…”
A clattering wave of voices erupted from the gallery. Daniel slumped back in his seat. Carlson brought the courtroom back to order with a few strokes of the hammer.
“This court therefore finds the defendant, Daniel, guilty of three counts of murder in the first degree, and sentences him to death.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Apr 17, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Caroline walked the long way down from the bluffs, down the winding dirt road and out into the farm fields. To her right the abandoned silo – silent silhouette against the moonlit sky. Impotent concrete rocket reaching skyward, never to fly.
Derek was a jerk. He had driven her up there, her and the friends they shared. She just assumed.
Never assume.
Once Donna arrived it was pretty clear his attention was elsewhere.
“Don’t go!” He’d called out, but she left anyways. He didn’t follow.
Jerk.
In the distance a dog barked at her intrusion, but the sound didn’t grow closer, and the farm house was too far from the road for her to worry. She watched, looking for lights in the windows, for some sign she wasn’t alone. So distracted, she didn’t notice the odd streak of light hanging in the middle of the road ahead of her until she’d almost stepped into it.
Static crackle caused her to snap her head around to find a sliver of bright white light suspended in the air, almost as tall as her.
Unconsciously, she took a step back, and the band of light seemed to do the same, segmenting into two vertical halves, one moving back first, followed by the other.
Caroline fumbled in her pocket for her phone, and holding it in front of her thumbed the tiny camera to life. The device chimed three times, and then clicked, flashing the screen in a futile attempt at lighting the scene. She frowned at the phone, the image a complete white out.
Spreading itself into a virtual wall of light almost the full width of the road, the anomaly pulsed dimly three times, then flashed bright as daylight. She stood blinking, then dropped her phone and gaped at the image of herself captured on the shimmering fabric of translucence. Her likeness flickered, suspended, looking altogether as surprised as she felt.
From the ground, her phone began to vibrate, the 1812 Overture rising in volume from its tiny speaker. Still fixated on her captured image, she picked up the phone. Derek. A flood of emotion caught up with her. Jealousy, hope and for the first time fear of this strange phenomenon she was experiencing alone on this road.
The light shimmered and changed, her likeness distorting and shredding as the smooth fabric of brightness fragmented into a multitude of ribbons. It began to vibrate in time with her phone, and from seemingly everywhere at once, the 1812 Overture shook the ground beneath her feet.
The phone hit the ground again, this time only seconds before Caroline. She clasped her hands over ringing ears as the thin pillars of light began dancing around her, some searing white, some deep blue, some variegating through all colours of the spectrum. She curled up fetal on the ground as they closed in, surrounding her, cutting off any possible retreat to the farm house.
“Get away from me,” she screamed, clamping her hands down tightly over her ears, but unable to look away. “Leave me alone, get away, leave me alone!”
For a moment, the light faltered, pulling away and dimming in its intensity. Unsure.
“Please, leave me alone,” she sobbed.
The hanging strands of light slipped into each other, merging as they touched, until there was but one dim stripe of light hanging over the roadway. It hovered for just a moment, and then zipped from the dirt, to the silo on the horizon and then straight up into the night sky.
Caroline watched, tears streaming down her face as she called out. “Wait, don’t go.”
by Patricia Stewart | Apr 16, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Captain Alais Tonk contemplated the house sized asteroid floating a short distance beyond the forward viewport. Its surface was covered with long, slender green filaments that swayed gently in the weak electromagnetic field of the asteroid belt. Surely, Tonk thought, no one on Earth will believe this. They will say that the images were faked. They will say that it is impossible for life to exist in the vacuum of space. They will say that it’s fool’s life; inert mineral deposits only imitating life. They will say that he’s the naive twenty-fifth century equivalent of an old gold prospector clutching iron pyrite nuggets to his chest. There is no doubt, he concluded, this will require irrefutable proof. He turned toward his science officer, “Have you completed your analysis of the sensor data, lieutenant Orgueil?”
“Partially, sir. The asteroid appears to be a massive carbonaceous chondrite. Spectrographic data indicates that it contains significant quantities of organic compounds. I can identify the characteristic signatures of forty different extraterrestrial amino acids. In addition to the hydrocarbons, there are also silicates, nitrates, sulfides, and frozen water. And that’s just what’s on the surface. I won’t know what is on the inside until we take a core sample.”
“Give me your best guess, Mr. Orgueil. Is that green stuff grass, or not?”
“Not in the conventional sense, sir. Photosynthesis may be the metabolic pathway, but if it’s converting sunlight to chemical energy, it can’t be using carbon dioxide gas and liquid water. There’s no atmosphere, and the water is frozen solid. The chemicals may be there, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out a way to make it all work at minus 100 degrees Celsius. On the other hand, I can’t imagine any natural way for minerals to form flexible green filaments on the surface of an asteroid.”
“Well, lieutenant, it looks like you’re going on a field trip. Put on your EVA suit and collect some samples.”
As Tonk watched through the viewport, Orgueil carefully plucked a few dozen blades of “grass” from the surface of the asteroid. Each time he took a specimen, faint concentric waves appeared to ripple outward from the site. After stowing the samples, Orgueil removed the hollow coring tool and hammer from his utility belt. He placed the coring tool against the surface of the asteroid and gently tapped it with the hammer to set the sharpened end. The asteroid momentarily shuddered and began to drift away. “What the hell?” radioed Orgueil. “Unless I failed Newtonian Physics 101, there’s no way that tap could have cause this massive asteroid to react like that. Huh, it look’s like it stopped moving. I’ll try again.” Orgueil fired his control jets and pursued the asteroid. This time, rather than tapping the coring tool, he gave it a good whack. The asteroid lurched several meters from Orgueil and stopped. It rapidly rotated 180 degrees and remained motionless for a few seconds. Then, in the blink of an eye, like a challenged ram head-butting a rival male, the asteroid slammed into Orgueil, sending him flying, head over heels, in the opposite direction.
Captain Tonk could hear Orgueil cursing in his native language as he fought to regain control of his EVA suit. To Tonk’s utter surprise, the asteroid spun and began to move away from the ship at a speed that was unimaginable for an object that large. In less than a minute, it was just another dot of light, lost in the background of stars. Surely, Tonk thought, no one on Earth will believe this.
by submission | Apr 15, 2009 | Story
Author : Tim Hatton
Judith switched her headlights on and checked the rearview. Deep brown hair slid around her shoulder as she turned to the right, looking down the street while the floating panel above the intersection flipped green.
She touched a few small switches in her console. Her chair reclined back while the car moved on in electric silence, making its own judgments about where to turn, and how fast to travel. A screen lit up and a man’s face appeared.
“How may I assist you Miss Amateau?”
“I just need the weather – oh, and some business news.”
“Very good… It is currently 10 degrees Celsius outside your vehicle, and 9 degrees Celsius at your destination. Overcast skies – “
She interrupted: “That’s fine N-Fo. So, how’s business?”
“In business news, the newest player on the market, BOOKCORP, has seen its most impressive rise in two weeks. They closed out the weekend up 35.9876 AC –“
She interrupted him again. “Ah, forget it. Just give me some television.”
The face melted back into the screen, replaced by a running advertisement. “…and this book just changed my life completely, I can say without doubt that I am a new man. I recommended it to all my friends and they –“
She heaved a sigh, flipping another switch and the cockpit returned to silence. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. The Book was inescapable these days. Arcturus was alive with this new phenomenon. It was possibly the biggest pop-culture item of the generation, and Judith was a bit exasperated. She had read it and aside from being a complete bore to read, it was also full of subtle contradictions.
What was worse, she couldn’t go anywhere these days without some jumped up Book advocate following her down the street trying to get her to “open her eyes to the light of Jesus.”
Yesterday a little boy had come to her door and asked her politely if she would read his favorite book. She had leaned down with a captivating smile and asked which book it was. When he produced a plain black copy of the Book, her smile froze into an icy grimace, and she shot an ironic glare at his mother who was waiting in the street.
Judith remembered clearly how the book had surfaced. Some astronaut had brought it back with him on a routine terraforming excursion to Earth. On returning to Arcturus, he had brought it to a publishing agency attempting to have them publish his “new novel.” When they discovered the origin, the government had confiscated it and auctioned it with many of the other artifacts that returned from Earth with the terraformers. The market for Earth artifacts was voracious and exclusive. Lane Channer, chairman for one of the planets largest publishing (now the largest publishing) agencies, Book Corp, had bought it, read it, and decided it could make money. Long story short, he published it, everyone read it, and it changed enough lives to attract the largest fiction based cult following in Arcturus’ history.
Judith settled more snuggly into her seat, and as it sensed her restlessness, it slowly conformed to her body and smoothly wrapped itself lightly around her into a soft, artificial embrace.
She didn’t notice the new building that was going up near her street as the vehicle rounded a corner, windows dimming as the red sun rose very slowly over the horizon. Tomorrow she would scoff at the obnoxious wooden cross that was being set into the ground in front a humble building with a sign reading “Book Study beginning soon! Invite your Friends!”
by J.R. Blackwell | Apr 14, 2009 | Story
Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer
On my second day on their planet, my amiable host offered to take me to observe Lo’kari erotica. Although I might normally turn down such an offer, for you, dear listeners, readers, and observers, I have taken it upon myself to experience all I can of the little known, and much feared, Lo’kari culture.
I know it’s hard to keep up on current events when you’re plugged in to all of your stories, but try to pay attention, at least to hear about mating, a topic which I know all you perverts are desperately interested in. For those of you who for some reason get their news through me, a robot fueled by light and blood, the Lo’kari culture is the one with whom our Empire has been having skirmishes with for the past, oh, 368 years as light travels.
The Lo’kari don’t create visual or written representations of erotica. As telepaths, the Lo’kari enjoy what amounts to daydreams, collections of images and sounds that are composed by a Lo’kari with the talent of collecting their thoughts into a recognizable narrative. These “Composers” will create a daydream, and project it to others telepathically. Good Composers of erotica are valued highly for their talent. An excellent Composer is known not just by the quality, or flavor of their compositions, but by their length. The Composer I saw had a piece that was a half hour long. Master Composers will keep audiences dreaming for up to four hours.
The biggest turn on for a Lo’kari is genetic diversity. The Lo’kari have no gender and do not carry their own young. Rather, they absorb other species in pairs through a pleasurable process called “conversion”. They say “conversion”, I say “sex”, but darlings, I am not here to play with semantics. All Lo’kari started their long lives as other species, though most remember little from those old lives and prefer their lives as Lo’kari – a trait that is part of their genetic makeup.
The plots of their erotica usually center on finding a world with an amazing amount of genetic diversity among the sentient creatures, and then performing lots of conversions. The daydream I experienced followed two Lo’kari who crash land on an unknown world. The Lo’kari meet a series of genetically diverse and intelligent creatures and convert them. The two Lo’kari convert the first creature in a very tender, loving scene. Later, they convert other fascinating creatures on the planet. At the end of this daydream, the Lo’kari and all their new converts are picked up by a mother ship where the genetic information they gathered is absorbed and celebrated.
My host admitted that the daydream was entirely fanciful, as Lo’kari who are newly converted rarely reproduce so soon. During my visit the Lo’kari were anxious to convert me, but since I am mostly metal, they found my exterior difficult to absorb. In the end, I was able to convince them that if I remained free to make report, some people would choose to come for conversion of their own free will. Such are the perverts I truly believe you to be.
In truth, it wouldn’t be so bad to be Lo’kari – the idea of changing my genetic structure at it’s very base is unsettling, but the long lifespan and telepathy certainly have their benefits. However, the desires of the Lo’kari bring them into conflict with nearly all worlds of sentient creatures. Most of us wish to stay as we are, while the Lo’kari‘s desires are to convert. In the end, it is all a product of our programming.
