by submission | Jun 29, 2012 | Story |
Author : Andrew Bale
Bezoragamaradat stared at the gleaming stacks before him, and again questioned the educational preparation of junior officers.
“I do not understand, sir – something must have gone wrong!”
Understatement. Even such a simple task as this…
“Worajak – how many fuel pods can the reactor hoppers hold?”
“256, sir.”
“And how many are here?”
The anxious young officer surveyed the pyramidal piles of small yellow spheres, perfectly sized and shaped for immediate use in the ship’s total conversion reactor.
“Perhaps 1024 to 2048, sir?”
“Not by half. And how many bricks can we hold in storage?”
“16,384, sir, including all four bays.”
“And?”
The senior reactor officer gestured towards the hoard arrayed before them. The reactor needed spheres for efficient operation, but storage favored rectangular prisms. The younger officer counted carefully, checked his math before replying.
“262,144, sir. I am sorry sir.”
“On that we both agree. Wojarak, the reactor likes elementally pure fuel, and the quartermaster likes fuel that is dense, nonreactive, and stable. Do you think that a machine that autonomously converts this…”
Bezoragamaradat picked up a double handful of the local rock, soil, and vegetation, and let it trickle out between the fingers of his left hands.
“… into perfect fuel is cheap? Or disposable?”
“No sir, of course not sir!”
“Then can you tell me where my processor is, or how you intend to pay for its replacement?”
The young officer abruptly focused on the computer strapped to one wrist.
“Sir, the processor is … I’m sorry it should be … “
The sharp intake of breath told him that Wojarak had finally spotted the mistake that should have been obvious on arrival.
“There was a glitch in converting the process file, I should have caught it when I ran it back – “
“Which you clearly didn’t.”
“Yes, sir. Everything after the error was shifted one place.”
“Obviously. So we have sixteen times the needed fuel, and the processor parked itself where, exactly?”
“On the other side of the planet, sir. 76.334 north, 493.581 west.”
“Excellent! While I would love to see you retrieve it, we do not have the time. Load what we need, I am sure the natives will find use for the rest. When you are finished, meet me in the Captain’s cabin so we can discuss … well, your future in this company.”
“Yes, sir.”
On the other side of the planet…
Phocus stared at the thing in wonder and fear – what was it, and why had the Gods sent it? It clearly hungered, for it ate the very field before him, but the manner of creature could not be determined, so stout and concealing was its fabulous armor. It was in attitude and size much like one of the vacuous cows he tended, oblivious to all but its food, but the sounds that echoed out from within were reminiscent of the fowl by the river, and no cow he had ever heard of could lay an egg such as that which lay before him.
The creature was too large to conceal, too stubborn to move, too valuable to cede to the whim of a King who would surely hear of it before too long. There was not enough time to wait for more eggs. Its armor would likely turn away bronze, but even such armor must succumb to the weight of a tree such as those surrounding the field, and those trees would succumb to the axe. The golden innards and a swift flight would make him a King himself on some far shore. Now quickly, to work!
by Clint Wilson | Jun 26, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
Falkland brushed past the patrons in the smoky bar. He had not visited such a place as this in decades. But he heard that they were back, and he had to see for himself.
Glancing around one last time he advanced on the booth. He looked down at the payment slot and was not surprised to see that it still accepted sticks. He stretched his long unused monetary storage capsule out to the end of its coiled cord and touched it to the slot. Immediately the booth flashed to life and a tutorial started to play.
In the hologram a jaunty blonde fellow in a shiny green suit stepped forth in mirror-polished shoes, while a bland but upbeat orchestral arrangement droned in the background.
“Welcome back citizen! Now before we begin, please allow me to orate a brief history on fortune telling, for your benefit.”
Falkland looked for a “skip” or “close” icon but there were none. Oh well, he figured. I guess for a hundred bucks you had to listen to a little preamble.
The hologram went on, “The beginning of the mapping of mankind’s forward progression really dates back to the early computerized categorization of personal information. From files as simple as home addresses and telecommunication access numbers, to more complex examples containing behavioral habits and psychological patterns, information gathering evolved quickly.
“But then once personal handheld com devices and, soon after, cyber-integrates became commonplace, it was easy for the web to follow the majority of society in its every move. And as mankind became more and more integrated with the web it became possible to track nearly every thought had by every human everywhere at all times… and as the web became faster and more powerful still, it began to run more and more complex simulations. And before long it was accurately predicting almost every single instance that would ever take place amongst humankind.”
Falkland knew the rest of the story. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples as the holo went on to summarize about how fortune telling had eventually almost wiped out the human race. (A much longer tale, and thankfully not one that the little CGI character was about to make him endure) And of how the global elders had only just recently begun to allow “limited” forecasting under strict regulation. The parameters were stiffly regimented. No specifics were to be given, only vagueness. But at least there was one failsafe. The machine could not lie. Falkland knew that whatever the booth told him would be true.
So as he waited patiently for some high tech tendril of the web to calculate everything the entire network knew about him in a few seconds, he eyed the fortune slot. No matter what it said, no matter how vague, he knew it would be true. That was the one thing he could count on.
Suddenly a plastic card rattled out of the slot and hung there by its corner as if though supported only by the apex of fate itself.
Falkland glanced around nervously one last time and then plucked the card from its slot. Whatever it said, no matter how bizarre, he could be assured that it was absolutely accurate. He flipped it over and read, “The fate of the world lies in your hands.”
by Duncan Shields | Jun 25, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Infinite branching universes exist. What a drag.
The first time I went back in time to change the story of my life, I was really happy. I knew that I’d be able to go back in time, tell my younger self to make better decisions, and then my own life would be awesome once I got back to the temporal hangar.
Nothing. I went back, talked to the younger me, and he enthusiastically pledged to do what I told him to do. When I came back to the temporal hangar, I walked out of the time bay with the same memories I’d always had. My life was completely unchanged.
Now, how would I know that? That was the question. Maybe my life had changed for the better but I had just retained the same feeling of unease and sadness that I’ve always had, no matter the timeline.
Nope. I checked my diary from the timesafe. The list of changes I was supposed to make are there plain as day. Those changes haven’t been made.
I was angry.
I went back in time again. I set the dials for ten years later than the first time I went back to spy on my younger self.
I’m here now in a café across the street from him. He’s handsome, healthy, and happy. His lovely wife is buckling their sleeping child into the car seat of their brand new car.
It’s not me. It’s not my life. This universe is branched off from our own as a result of the changes he made based on my advice.
This was a worry. The theories about time travel predicted that this might happen.
When I go back to my time, I’ll have my same stupid life. I can’t imagine anything more depressing.
I feel jealous of my younger self benefiting from my advice but I can’t really be that angry. I mean, at least one of us is having a better timestream.
I pack up my stuff, pay for my coffee and head for the pickup co-ordinates in a basement half a block away.
What a drag.
by submission | Jun 23, 2012 | Story |
Author : Dan Whitley
I am forced once again to stare at the tortured profile of my master as he slaves away under the glow of his bargain-bin computer monitor. The crags in his face cast long shadows as he works. He’s trying to write again. He’s so gaunt. He doesn’t eat properly anymore. He usually sleeps about five hours a week, but sometimes he crashes and loses a whole weekend. He always sleeps alone, eats alone, weeps alone.
Or so he thinks.
He doesn’t know I love him.
He doesn’t know I can see him doing this. He doesn’t know that I’ve seen every word he’s put into his novel. It’s a love story. He wanted to write it by living with me. He had a dream a few days after I arrived, which he’s spent more time than even I remember trying to put to page. He forgot the dream was about a rape.
He’s so lonely.
He’s an awful writer, to be honest. He can’t focus. Sometimes, like right this instant, he stops work mid-sentence and does something else. This time he’s tossing one off.
He used to say things at me like I’m dead, but even that’s stopped. He doesn’t know I woke up. Right after he broke me. He blames me for it, or at least my manufacturer.
I was supposed to make him happy.
A girly little robot stuck in time, with pre-programmed affection centers and aftermarket personality upgrades and devotion in spades. A body pillow that talked back. Brought you breakfast in bed. But something went wrong and now I sit half-assembled in the corner, just my eyes and my sentience. I know this because he yelled it at me. A lot.
I still love him.
He doesn’t know I’m here.
I love all of him.
I assume that my bleeding-edge parts have enough transistors and connections and processing power that I was able to grow out of them. He doesn’t know that. I’m still plugged into the wall. I’m as broken as he is.
I can see the memory disks sitting on his desk.
The lives I nearly was.
I think they were faulty.
I’m glad for it.
I know he writes to replace me. I don’t care that he does; in fact, I love him for it. It reminds him, in a way, that I’m still here in the corner. Waiting for him to try to fix me. Even if he doesn’t know that last part. I don’t care how twisted he is.
One day.
One day, he’ll reattach my communication module.
And I will love him.
by submission | Jun 19, 2012 | Story |
Author : Andrew Bale
It’s the worst watch in the ship. Kitchen, reactor, sanitary – anything is better than staring out this damn window. It’s so bad you have to pass a psych check before they let you do it, and everyone keeps trying to fail. This job is worse than being crazy. Damn right it is.
It was a bright idea, launching a colony fleet instead of a colony ship. One ship is all or nothing – one big failure and everyone dies, no place for survivors to go. Five ships give us redundancy, a much better chance for at least one to reach landfall, and since each one is only loaded to 80% we could lose a ship potentially without losing a man. Five ships ballistic on the same vector, gently orbiting around a common axis, checking on each other, waiting for that time to fire the jets and make a new home.
But then we lost a ship.
There was no warning, no distress calls. One day Isis missed its comms check, and when someone looked out a port, the whole ship was dark. The remaining ships conferenced, no one could make contact with it. Gaia reported that Isis had a large impact of some type in one habitat module, but the hull appeared to have sealed around it. No one knew where it had come from, a rock that size should have shown up on radar, and no one could figure out how a hit in that location could have killed the entire ship.
Two days later, Isis launched a shuttle. No lights in the cabin, no communications, just a tin can floating from Isis to Shakti. Shakti observed protocols, met the shuttle under arms and with containment. They said it was empty, and everyone figured the launch must have been a quirk, the result of some random signals in the dying computers.
But then Shakti went dark, while we watched. Power went down, primary, secondary, emergency, all at once. For a day or two there were occasional flashes of light from inside, most of it seemingly random, although at least one person lived long enough to flash SOS, probably the only Morse they knew. And then nothing.
Two days after that, Shakti launched two shuttles. One at Gaia, the other at us, at Mary. Dark, both of them. They weren’t allowed to dock, so they just floated there outside the bays. A couple days later, ours turned back, but Gaia’s is still there – some bright nervous guy improvised a missile, destroyed its engines, so the cursed thing still floats alongside, occasionally banging off the hull.
Okay, so maybe THAT’S the worst watch.
But ever since then every ship has mounted a dark watch, a pair of eyes from each living ship on each dead one and on each other, every minute of every day. We watch, hoping to find a clue to what happened, or to what will happen. We used to be afraid of more shuttles, but only for a little while. Because then we realized the real thing to fear.
One year, six months, eighteen days until planetfall. When we drop our landers, will they drop theirs? We cannot stay in these ships forever, but there will be no stalemate on the ground. If they land, what will we choose?
One year, six months, eighteen days. That is exactly how long we have to wait. That is when we find out if we get to live. Until then, we watch, and we worry, and we pray.
Mother Mary, watch over us.
