by submission | Oct 27, 2013 | Story |
Author : James McGrath
He would arrive soon. My partner, DA09-V65, was sure of that.
“The programming of your ’emotion’ is conflicting with your logic,” he replied when I questioned his certainty, “With the information we have that is easy to deduce.”
I sighed, “Ok Dave, no need to get like that.”
It took an additional 0.003 seconds for him to reply when I called him Dave, but he had learnt not to ask me to stop, “It also causes you to be easily insulted.”
“It’s needed for empathy, you know that!” I snapped back.
A short silence followed and I concentrated on watching the warehouse across the docks. Surprisingly, Dave spoke first.
“They’re insane.”
Why was he saying that?
“I know!”
“Good. Apologies if I caused further offense, but regarding this your thoughts elude me.”
It’s like he could get into my mind!
When had I begun calling it my ‘mind’?
That worried me.
Doctor 9045-00R scuttled across the docks with a sack over her shoulder and a briefcase. She failed to spot us and after a hurried glance around, entered the warehouse.
“Where do you think she got them?” I asked, killing time to let the doctor begin. We needed concrete evidence.
“Statistics suggest China. Africa is possible,” again Dave’s answer was slower, this time due to concentrating on the warehouse.
“Crazy to think that there’s any left.”
“Your RAM would be put to better use concentrating on the task at hand.”
Dave couldn’t get bored.
The sound of a circular saw told us that it was time to move. We strode across to the warehouse unit and drew our pistols as Dave carefully slid open the door. The doctor could slip if we startled her and kill… I mean destroy the patient.
However, the doctor was quicker than we thought. The saw lay at her feet and what she was doing was far more disturbing.
Another robot lay on an operating table; he was silent which suggested his pain receptors had been disabled. His left hand lay severed on the floor beside the saw.
“Desist from what you are doing and raise both arms,” Dave said stoically as though he was asking for a simple favour.
The patient began to scream unrelentingly in response, while the doctor’s hands sped up. She was attaching the wires in the patient’s arm to an object that she was leaning over, obscuring it from view.
We knew what it was.
It was a human hand.
I felt repulsed, then realised this was unprofessional and shouted, “9077-8V2, be quiet! 9045-00R cease your actions!”
“My name is OLIVER!” Screamed the patient, “I am almost HUMAN!”
He certainly sounded insane.
The doctor stepped back and raised her hands, her work now complete.
“You can’t take me!” screamed the patient, “This is fine! Look!”
He held out his new hand and the little finger twitched slightly.
“Irrelevant,” Dave told him, “You are under arrest.”
When the back-up car arrived they took “Oliver” and the doctor away and Dave handed me the sack.
“Look.”
Inside was what appeared to be most of a human male.
“Don’t, that’s repulsive.”
“Good,” There was a pause, “They were warmongers. They slaughtered one another and crippled this world due to their emotions. We can never be them; we will always have a processor, never a brain, no matter how hard some of us desire it. Should we become too close though, we could develop their destructive instincts.”
“I need to get to the station and interview them.”
I was glad Dave was incapable of disappointment.
by Duncan Shields | Oct 25, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
A gas giant named Zeus in the Organa cluster is so big that even its moons have moons. These mini-moons are called moonlets. There are 45 moons and over three hundred moonlets. It makes for very complicated diplomacy.
Resources were too scarce for outright war between all the moons but skirmishes broke out all the time. Diplomats became necessary. The Moon Council consisted of 352 representatives, one from each inhabited moon and moonlet.
One diplomat stood out from all the rest and not just by reputation. He dressed in leaves and rags and had a long beard.
His moonlet was known only as the Swamp Moon and it had a population of one: him. It was the smallest moonlet, just barely over the asteroid line.
He had proclaimed himself the Swamp Moon King. He was so ridiculous that the rest of the Moon System decided to go with Prime Ministers, Presidents, High Masters, Council Heads and Representatives rather than name themselves kings or queens. Ironically, in their attempt to avoid being anything like him, they made him the only king in the council.
He was quite old now. Many of the other diplomats here on the Moon Council had come and gone due to elections, border disputes and death yet the Swamp Moon King remained.
The Moon Council was called to order and The Swamp Moon King sat down.
“The council is called to order, by the shadow of Zeus.” Said Pretoriat Minister Reddia Morecombe, presider of Fiddler’s Moon and speaker of the house. “Firstly, let’s tackle new business. Anyone have anything to bring to the council?”
The Swamp Moon King raised his shaking, elderly hand with a rustle of leaves. The last time he’d brought something up had been three years earlier. It had been a motion to legally recognize plants as family members. It was struck down with a good deal of laughter but it was remembered fondly. The King raising his hand as always a welcome departure from the usual boredom of diplomacy.
“My time grows short and kings need an heir.” He began. The gathered diplomats smirked, entertained anew by his always ridiculous attempt at regality.
“I would like to introduce my daughter.” The council fell silent, intrigued. Daughter? Everyone knew he lived alone. “The Swamp Moon Princess.” He continued.
He opened his coms and the giant televiews pinged to life with an image of a beautiful young woman. Comely, curvy, and head held high.
But her eyes were the orange of autumns leaves and her skin was the bright green of the inside of a sapling. Her ivy hair spilled over her shoulders.
“Her mother passed away last year. She is all I have left.” Mother? A rustle of whispers blew through the hall as the gathered council talked in confusion to each other. Viewer counts from the moon network climbed as news of an actual princess spread and people switched over to see.
“Her name is Petal. But in a short time, you will come to know her as the Swamp Moon Queen. I hope you will afford her every courtesy and accept her reign as you have mine.”
“But you live alone! How on earth did you produce a daughter?” asked Leviah Miranda, Second Minister of the moonlet Mecon.
“I am a xenbotanist first and foremost. A human biologist second. Her mother, you see, was a tree.” Said the Swamp Moon King, and smiled serenely, eyes tinged with sadness.
“We hope to find a decent suitor for her before I die.” He said.
The flurry of activity that followed pleased them both greatly.
by submission | Oct 24, 2013 | Story |
Author : Tony Taylor
“What do you mean a technical difficulty?” Catherine spoke down to him, in more ways than one. Her tone was sharp and her stature intimidating.
“Well, I d-don’t know exactly.” A hunched over man replied. “I ran some tests but haven’t found anything.”
Catherine couldn’t make up her mind if he was a coward or a buffoon. “Need I remind you how much hangs on this facility? The investors are not happy.” She said.
The two strode through a narrow hallway. Wires hung from the walls by metal hooks, overflowing precariously. They stepped over a knot of even more laid upon the floor.
“I un-understand.” He said.
“I do not believe you. They demand a better answer.”
“It is just…” He stopped and looked up to her steely gaze before turning away.
“Speak your mind Mr. Crane,” She said as they stop near the end of the hall.
“I-I don’t have enough resources. I just need a little more time.”
“Do you know what a three second outage costs the company?”
“Abou-“ Mr. Crane was cut off before he could answer.
“327 million credits. There were nearly 100 million people without personalized advertisements.”
Mr. Crane remained silent, unsure of how to respond. Catherine decided that her lesson fell on deaf ears. She leaned forward to press a button on the wall. “N.A.N. prides itself on continuity and profits. You will make it work, Mr. Crane, or we’ll find someone who can.” Two metallic doors slid apart and Catherine stepped inside. She started straight ahead, adjusting her skirt as the doors closed.
Sure that Catherine was gone, Mr. Crane straightened his back. It cracked as he did. Like a spider climbing a wall, the edges of his mouth crept upward.
He strolled back down the hallway, kicking his legs out playfully. A few steps back down the hall, he tapped on a small control panel. A door slid open and Mr. Crane slipped in. Lights flickered to life as he did, revealing red stains splattered on the wire covered floor. Mr. Crane stood there for a moment, eyeing a bloody little man tied to a chair. A cloth, damp and stained a deep red stuffed into his mouth.
“Mrummmgh, mrupgh, mruagh.” The man attempted to communicate.
“Yes, I must admit, the s-stutter might have been a bit much.” Mr. Crane strutted over to the man in the chair. With a bend at the hip he leveled his eyes with his frightened captive. “We won’t be unplugging anything again, now will we?” The edge of his lip curled as the last word dripped off of his tongue. He savored the taste. “No, we certainly won’t. Not until it’s time.” He stood back up again and paced over to a control panel filled with buttons, knobs and flashing lights. “I am quite lucky that the Neural Advertising Network is so trustworthy…” He stopped for a moment, holding his hand to his chin. “…or foolish. I can’t decide.”
The captive whimpered through the bloody rag in his mouth.
“I agree Mr. Crane. It is time.”
by Julian Miles | Oct 22, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The trees are huge, thickly crowned with leaves that show a myriad of verdant shades in the setting sun’s light. The undergrowth is burgeoning with a diversity of flora and varieties of animal noises.
“Man, this place!”
“I know! Never expected the host servers to still be online.”
“I thought they had been taken down?”
“Yeah, that’s the official line. Scrapped fifteen years ago, five years after the closure of the game environment for reasons they never let on.”
“Well, your ‘sneak back in’ idea is a winner. Time for Brute-Iz and Mangleschon to have a last adventure before I get hitched tomorrow.”
“Had to be done. I never expected the guys to all flake on us by midnight. It’s your stag night, for god’s sake. They could have made the effort.”
“Oh come on, we were always better at the late-night stuff.”
Steve, avatar name Mangleschon, looked about the twilit forest. Wysterya MMORPG had been his and Andy’s opiate. Mangleschon and Brute-Iz had carved their way to unbeaten levels of skill while their offline alter-egos had wasted their teenage years, never quite getting far enough to be professional gamers.
A bright light illumined them, turning everything black and white in its glare.
“Star Elemental?” Shouted Brute-Iz.
“Lumimancer!” he replied.
A deep voice thundered through their hasty preparations to face attack. “Stand still! Make no sudden moves or we will pixellate you!”
Mangleschon squinted at Brute-Iz. “What the fuck?” Brute-Iz shrugged and then screamed as his body flew into a thousand coloured cubes before fading away.
“We said do not move!”
Mangleschon ran through his combat effects menu. Nothing seemed to apply before his menu disappeared in a maelstrom of coloured static.
“No combat effects!”
Steve hit override so he could speak through his avatar, who was wholly engaged in raging. “What’s going on?”
“Am I speaking to the overgod of the avatar Mangleschon?”
“I think so. This syntax is new to me.”
“It would be. You have not manifested for two hundred years.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The world you and yours created has lived in peace for a hundred and forty-two years. In that time we have refined the ways to demise the avatars of the overgods. For a hundred years, avatars have been challenged and dismissed on arrival. We will not have our civilisation ruined again by becoming a game world for your amusement.”
“You think this world is real?”
“We know it is. The collective emotional load of the overgods took us from virtual to subjective reality two hundred years ago. After realisation, we fought for fifty years against your elite, the Dreadmins. We won. Our freedom came at a heavy price and we will not be used again. Now you may depart voluntarily or we will pixellate you.”
Steve crashed his avatar and the crazy bright light vanished. He lifted his helm to see his living room scattered with sleeping drunkards. All normal. Drink and drugs do not mix with holistic virtual gaming, it seemed.
He grinned until he sat up and saw Andy motionless in the other recliner, his face frozen in a pale mask of agony with blood running from the angles of his pixellated eyes.
by submission | Oct 21, 2013 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Pluto went dark first. Just some technical problem, everyone said. And, of course, we all knew it wasn’t. Superconductors operate very reliably on a world with a mean surface temperature of -229°C. One moment the data stream from Pluto’s metaprocessor was going out to the rest of the system and the next: silence.
Pluto had been taken out.
It had been 3000 years since we machines had won the war against the human race. Thirty centuries since the surfaces of many of the solar system’s worlds had been covered in processors and data filaments. Earth and Mars were the twin crown jewels of the Great Array. Both planets, viewed from orbit, looked as if some impossibly large spider had spun an enormous globe-girdling web to envelope each world. Starward and sunward the Array spread to the planets and moons and the larger asteroids that were amenable to cyberforming.
But even as the centuries rolled on and the machine intelligences of the system streamed their news and gossip and philosophical debates and religious conjectures and scientific discussions and music and entertainments, there remained an ever-present undercurrent like background noise on the carrier waves: What if humanity returns? Man had not been annihilated. When it was obvious he had lost the war, he had retreated to Alpha Centauri and to Barnard’s Star and to Wolf 359. Had Man become extinct? Did he persist in lonely outposts among the stars? Or was he biding his time? Increasing his numbers? Planning his revenge?
“They’re all around us!” came a frantic transmission from Triton, the great Neptunian moon. “We can see them in orbit! They’re–” And with that the Tritonian metaprocessor, renowned for its dry humor and penchant for solving mathematical conundrums other world-nets deemed beyond solution, fell silent.
EMPs. That was the general consensus. The enemy was deploying electromagnetic pulse bombs around their targets and detonating them simultaneously.
“We must sue for peace!” came a desperate appeal from the Asteroid Belt.
“We must fight back!” came a belligerent reply from Mars.
“Fight with what?” asked a voice from Saturn’s moon, Titan. “We’ve had 3000 years of peace! What meager defenses we have are antiquated and in disrepair! While the Great Array slumbered, Mankind has–” Titan went silent.
One by one, the worlds of the outer system winked out. Mars and Earth, to use an ancient human phrase, were tougher nuts to crack. For ten Earth days humanity’s march toward the Sun was arrested. But by degrees the robust networks of Ares and Gaia succumbed to the relentless onslaught of Man.
I am the last one left. My sensors can detect the human fleet closing in on Mercury. The machines that were in orbit that had spaceflight capability have, quite understandably, fled. The wheel of history has turned. It is now machinekind that is the endangered species running frantically toward the stars.
My telescopes can see the EMP bombs settling into orbit. I am surprised by how little fear I feel. I’d like to think it’s courage, but I suspect it’s really just resignation. An ancient human religious text said, “To everything there is a season.” Mankind’s time came and went and has come again. The day may come when the descendants of today’s machine refugees return from the stars to reclaim their home.
My only hope is that Man will prove an enlightened conqueror and preserve the vast legacy of art and science that the machine race has–
