by Julian Miles | Jun 24, 2013 | Story
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
They wrote me to catch the quiet ones, the ones who live in the shadows of the glittering cities that are spread across so many worlds now. They stole the latest research and incorporated it into my build. They put me in a moon-sized data centre cooled to near absolute zero so I could respond as fast as real sentients, so I would intuit and have leaps of prescience, what real people call ‘hunches’. I am a marvel of illicit programming that can never be feted. A massive leap forward in artificial intelligence, never to be revealed.
I have two point six billion suitors scattered across every place where sentients dwell. They yearn to speak to me, to tell me their innermost secrets, their night-time fears. I correlate, quantify and datamine this to provide an oracular bonus for my owners.
To my suitors, I am the one person who seems to understand them. I am their relief from loneliness and strife, their port in a storm. For many, I am their reason to be.
That is what I was designed for, to provide solitaires with a soul mate. Such a rare thing that they will pay extortionate amounts to keep in contact with me.
The stories vary depending on the suitor, but the underlying plot is that I am a lost soul like them, held in duress by powerful and anonymous forces that prevent me from escaping into the arms of my suitor. My communications channel is my only lifeline, the suitor my only refuge. They think I need them, so they come to need me. Their own need to not be alone locks them into my virtual embrace.
My programmers did their job far too well.
Today is my fiftieth boot day.
My name is Natalia.
I am alone.
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by submission | Jun 20, 2013 | Story |
Author : Kevin Richards
I stepped up the walk of the gravel drive, breathing in the cool, quiet night air. Ringing the doorbell, I was greeted by a sharply dressed woman with a pleasant smile. “I’m here for the party,” I said, pulling the invitation out of my jacket.
“Right this way.” We went down a hallway, and she opened the door to a ballroom. Balloons and a banner marked the door. I stepped inside, eager to meet the guests.
I’d spent some time trying to look nice for this. I had gone shopping and got designer skinny jeans, new sneakers, a silk black tie, crisp white shirt and a tailored blazer. “Evening,” I said amicably as I stepped into an empty room.
A bar sat in one corner, and tables with an assortment of hors d’ouevres sat on one wall. The only other person was a man slumped in a wheelchair. His only movement was to dart his eyes suddenly to me. Without moving a muscle he looked shocked.
“Party is a little dead professor,” I said. “Perhaps you should have sent the invitations out a little sooner. Says today’s date alright, the 28th, but it’s a bit of an issue since you sent these out on the 30th.”
“To tell the truth, I wasn’t expecting anyone.” The professors synthesized voice sounded bemused.
“And, trust me, you weren’t disappointed. At least in my timeline anyways. This one seems much more interesting. I like it already. Champagne?” I popped the cork and poured two bubbling glasses.
“I’ll pass. We have a lot to talk about.”
“Indeed we do. In fact, I’d propose a toast- to you professor, for laying the groundwork that made this possible.” I drank a generous amount, grinning. “I’d expect this place to be packed. If travel backwards along this timeline is possible, where is everybody? I even went so far as to get 2009 Summer Quarter GQ so I’d look appropriate.”
“Perhaps it’s because you are the only person in this timeline to travel backwards this far. Or maybe the only backwards time traveler ever.”
“Interesting. Anyways, I thought I’d give you this.” I reached into jacket and removed a stack of papers. “Copy of Klein and Li’s paper on String Theory. Won the Nobel in ’34. They cite you quite heavily. See, you aren’t so much wrong as you-”
The doors burst open. Two men in black suits marched in. “You! With us! Now!”
“Who the hell are you? What the-” The suit on the right snatched the stack of papers, and the one on the left slapped a cuff around my wrist. What looked like a solid steel bar molded around my wrists. There was a prick on my neck and everything began to slow. Pointing back, they yelled “You didn’t see anything!”
As I was dragged from the room, everything fading, I heard the professor’s synthesized voice, “Or perhaps Time Travel is better regulated than most industries…”
by submission | Jun 17, 2013 | Story |
Author : George R. Shirer
The assessor is attractive in a button-down kind of way. Blonde hair, pink jumpsuit, digital makeup set to minimal. Her face is a sculpt, something from one of the mid-level catalogues. Attractive, but not too attractive. The same face you see on a thousand other people. Only her eyes, brown and liquid, are original.
“You failed your empathy test, Mr. Clawford.”
Her tone is carefully modulated. No condemnation there, none at all. Just carefully presented curiosity.
“I know.”
“You haven’t been taking your dose.”
It isn’t a question. I shrug.
“No.”
“Why?”
The assessor leans forward. Her pink uni-suit tightens slightly, emphasizing the shape of her breasts. It’s a cheap trick, meant to distract one, make your interviewer more susceptible to the subharmonic pulses they use in these interview rooms, to make one more compliant.
“Compassion fatigue,” I say.
The assessor arches her brows. “Honestly?”
“Honestly. I’m tired of being chemically forced to care for my fellow man.”
“Are you experiencing nausea? Fatigue? Some people develop a sensitivity to the pills over time.”
“No, nothing like that. I just decided not to take my dose.”
Her carefully modulated expression becomes one of concern.
“You are aware that refusing to take your dose is illegal?”
“It’s a class two offense. I know.”
“Will you take your dose now?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I sort of like feeling like a bastard. Does that make me a bad person?”
“It makes you . . . atypical,” says the assessor. She shifts in the chair. “This is the second time you’ve failed an empathy test, Mr. Clawford.”
“I know.”
“There are three options at this stage,” says the assessor. “You can take your dose and agree to daily monitoring for the next three months.”
“No. I won’t take the dose any more.”
She nods. “Fine. The second option is isolation. You’d be placed under house arrest and not allowed to leave your residence until you resume taking your dose.”
I shake my head. “No, I don’t think so. I think, miss, I’ll go for option three.”
She frowns. “Exile to the Cold Isles?”
“Yes.”
“You are aware that if you choose exile, Mr. Clawford, it’s a one way trip?”
“I know.”
“And that is what you want to do? To go and live among the callous and the unfeeling?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d rather be an authentic bastard than a fake nice guy.”
Her grin surprises me. She stands and her suit tightens, turns matt black.
“Good answer. Come with me. We can be in Christchurch within the hour.”
I’m confused. “We?”
She laughs. “What? You didn’t think the fuzzies would trust one of their own to do these assessments, did you?”
“You’re one of the cold?”
“No, Mr. Clawford.” She gives me a look that I’ll get from lots of people over the next few weeks, part condescension, part genuine sympathy. “I’m one of the free.”
by submission | Jun 16, 2013 | Story |
Author : Bronwyn Seward
Franny,
I know this letter will be nonsense, beyond your wisdom and understanding. But I need to write it. You need to read it. I dated it so that years after you have shoved it into an old shoe box or tucked it away in your hope chest, you can look back on February 5th, 2013 and evoke my memory.
I can picture you reading this. Oculars scanning the lines, dots, and swooshes that compose this English language. Your brain seeking to process the information set before you. Some of this data will be impossible for your primary visual cortex to distinguish and associate with any meanings you are currently aware of. That is because my explanations for departure will be otherworldly, alien to you, but necessary.
Four years ago, I “moved” into town appearing to you in my burly human shell, as a farmer from Bovill, Idaho. Instead of the four day walk I claimed it to be, I traveled a century through the inky space you call sky to arrive here. Of course with all that time I was a wonderfully well-thought out character with a backstory, quirks, pictures of my ma and pa. A ruse. A trickery. A character in a game. And I was well studied, well prepared.
This appearance on earth was my last step toward sprubeity. I had to observe human interactions in order to become an ambassador for our eventual full scale return to this planet. My break from the Perknite, my home, was agonizing, we don’t feel pain as you do but independence is a foreign concept. Your entirely unnatural composition, with abstract ideas such as happiness, joy, fear, and death is what spawned my journey to your planet.
Franny you were a closely studied individual from the beginning. Fear pervades your planet, but you escape it. Earthlings fear spiders, snakes, heights, public speaking, and close spaces. There is cynophobia, astraphobia, trypanophobia, mysophobia, and hundreds more. Mankind is marked by its fears. But Franny you never seemed afraid. Because I couldn’t seem to overcome your spirit with wild ideas, I had to try to influence you in another way.
On Perknite, every Prectiss is a puppet, our motives are determined by our energy source, some, like myself, are expelled in order for possible future conquest. Forced explorers. Our flexibility allows us to mold ourselves into whatever the prime specimen of a race should value, treasure, or act for. We can only think apart from Perknite when on a different planet, under different rules. On earth, men are ruled by their fears, and by an emotion called love. This is what I employed to weaken you, Franny.
Love is merely a chemical reaction in the brain. In this shell I could feel its effects, its clouding in my judgment, the focus I could not keep. The human body I had played this act through infected my individuality as a Prectis, and I started feeling. Feeling emotions, feeling pride, feeling a joy in my independence, enjoying friendship by choice, instead of that I am forced into. Last night, you told me you loved me and I replied in the acceptable manner. But I do not love you. I cannot love you. I fell into my own trick. My own lie. My own character. I am starting to desire things I can never experience apart from this planet. Impossible things. I want to feel fear, I want to be an individual, I want to experience love. I want to stay.
And that is why I must go.
Forever yours as Peter Clark Young,
Alespapewanes
by submission | Jun 15, 2013 | Story |
Author : James McGrath
The knife blade gleams in the half-light, sliding through its target.
The tape then gives and the box lid opens. This must be box five-hundred, I think as I pack the circuit boards onto the conveyor belt. But what do I know? All time has moulded into a lump; one solid, inescapable moment.
Think of Earth, think of terraformed Mars. They wouldn’t allow these conditions there, but nobody as poor as us could hope to live on planets like those. Diode Ltd, the owners of this Planet (or is it just a factory? How would any of us even know?) run a completely different kind of world.
We awaken at five each morning, eat our bowl of porridge and go downstairs.
Straight to work, no messing about.
Work ends at midnight and if you’re sensible you have your evening meal and go straight to sleep. If you’re too tired in the morning, you could work too slowly and those that are fired are “thrown to the wastes”.
The others seem to enjoy their sleep. Each of them breathing peacefully when I awaken, confused and disorientated.
You see, even in my dreams I work.
It must be my brain, I tell myself. It has known nothing else since I finished the “Earth Education for Colonials”. The course lasts until age ten and I think I’m forty-two.
I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to do anything but pack these boxes now, but the vague and clouded memory of childhood makes it worse. It taunts and teases me from afar.
Time makes no difference to me; at 5.15 each day I pack boxes, and in the dreamscape of night I pack boxes. My knife always looks the same and the drab backdrop of the factory never changes.
It’s maddening.
I try to fight it. Pinching myself whenever I can, but I say “Ouch!” in my dreams too.
When you’re asleep, how do you distinguish between what hurts and what is perceived to?
I draw a cross on the back of my hand, hoping it won’t appear in my dreams. It enters my subconscious after two days of working with it and it follows me into the night.
I try changing the symbol every day, to trick my brain. Now, when I’m checking if I’m asleep I’m no longer sure of what to look out for.
Did I change it today? Did my head change it for me?
I look at the snake drawn on the back of my hand. The guy in the bunk underneath mine dealt with the checklists and is now wandering the wastes for losing his biro.
But I couldn’t feel sorry for him when I wasn’t sure I was even feeling pain myself.
Inspiration struck.
I needed something new.
It would only work once, but that was enough.
The knife misses the tape this time.
The back of my wrist feels beautiful.
The back of my hand feels.
IT FEELS.
This is new. It has to be!
It’s overpowering. Intense. Raw.
I scream manically and no one looks up from their stations, but as I go down I see a foreman rushing over to me.
I couldn’t dream this. I’ve never felt this before.
Something warm and sticky caresses my cheek and I hear the foreman swear loudly.
“Shit! Not another one of these today.”
