by submission | Feb 20, 2012 | Story |
Author : Jabez Crisp
Vagner: Your name please?
Niken: Niken, William, Flight Lieutenant, 10039880
Vagner: [pause] Date of birth?
Niken: 29th February 1912
Vagner: And you went missing how long ago?
Niken: To me, well… it has been two years. To you, sixty? Eighty? I’m given to understand we made peace in the end, such as we always do.
Doctor Vagner: So where have you been?
Niken: Amongst the stars, if such a thing seems plausible. Taken… You read what I said to the last doctor. Abducted, he said, by a race called the Herzan.
Doctor Vagner: So why you?
Niken: You’ll probably already know that I was shot down over Kent. A Herzan Hunter-Gatherer ship picked me up while collecting dead meat. I remember the twisted metal, the smell of the Merlin as it smoked me to death. Next thing I knew I was watching the war from an unknown vantage point, being tended to… God only knows why me, maybe I was originally meant to be food. I remember waking in a steel container surrounded by carrion… [Sighs, audible lighting of a cigarette] And of course no one noticed. Well, who would notice a missing dead man or another light in the sky? As it turned out they came down to where the lights were because they thought it was the most civilized. Technically it was. What a depressing farce. [pause] I guess you’d call me the ships cat.
Doctor Vagner: Go on.
Niken: The Herzan are… travelers. A long lost race in search of their home, traveling with the burden of the fact that the faster they travel the less likely they are to get back. I never quite understood the folklore, though they tried to explain. They were running, I could never quite make out if it was a civil war, or war with another race. But whatever fighting they did they were very adept at. I remember once we were ambushed, out by Alpha Proxima. From nowhere these two vast vessels appeared from the blackness. I remember Herzan ships being batted like flies. Fearing for my life, not knowing what death the uncaring vacuum had in mind for me. I was there when they retaliated. Space came alight with fire and the silent thump of destruction. It was [pause] quite terrifying.
Of course, they could travel quickly away from their tormentors, but as they approach light speed time slows down. With that in mind, they have the choice between destruction on their path or the knowledge that when future generations reach their homeworld it will be but an unlit lump of char. Just imagine [pause] growing up and living in a community that only knew the thump of war on the hull and the danger and necessity of repair. The Herzan would travel in vast ships, knowing only florescent light, and surgical steel. After a year with them I got very sick, they sent a smaller craft to drop me back. I was amazed they did that, and humbled as well. But that has left a tremendous problem, it’s been coming for many centuries for us but only a few years for them.
Doctor Vagner: And that is?
Niken: The wake of the journey the Herzan leave behind them can only bring their tormentors here.
by Stephen R. Smith | Feb 17, 2012 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Tensevn broke cover on the fourth floor landing and sprinted flat out across the entire expanse of the building, hurdling the refuse of a hundred years of vacancy to take refuge in the fire escape on the South side. Beneath and behind him he could feel and hear his pursuer’s weapon reach through the concrete floor slabs, reducing the iron rebar inside to molten liquid and vapour.
“Quit running puppet, you’re only wasting my time.” The voice amplified, modulated, designed to strike fear into the enemy. It just pissed T off.
The fire escape still tenaciously gripped the exterior of the building. T wasn’t sure he’d reach the fifth floor before it too was dripping down to the broken asphalt below.
He found a fist sized chunk of rubble, tossed it far into the middle of the room then took the stairs three at a time to the next floor just as the trooper below realized the distraction and brought his cannon to bear on the space he’d just vacated. The metal sublimated in a hot mist, leaving T panting in an open doorway with reentry his only option.
“You’re fast, little puppet, unnaturally fast. It’s a shame I have to eliminate you, it would be interesting to take you apart and learn how you tick.”
T scanned the gloom of the floor in front of him, the middle littered with furniture and old filing cabinets, vacant desks lining the outside walls where windows, once filled with glass and sunshine were now just so many gaping wounds in the old corporate facade.
Taking a deep breath, he started a slow jog around the perimeter. Beneath him, the trooper’s weapon whined to life and started tracing his path just a few steps behind him. He could feel the energy, even through two floors and so many meters of concrete, the effect was painful. His heart fluttered, his breathing laboured as the weapon made it harder for his blood to move oxygen from his lungs. He sped up, trying to keep just ahead of the beam as he ran a complete lap of the floor, surveying the East and West fire escapes as he passed them, then half way around again to the same Northside stairwell he’d vacated on the floor below.
Here he waited and listened to the shuffle of heavy feet from the ground floor. His pursuer wasn’t following, just holding court in the atrium space turning slow circles, listening for any sign of his prey.
The building creaked and moaned, the stench of vapourized iron filling his nostrils.
“Why won’t you die, fucker? Why will you not die?” The voice was strained, T could hear the frustration even through the modulation. It made him smile.
He broke cover again and ran another lap, this time in the opposite direction. Again the rising whine, louder this time. The hunter turning up the output, no longer playing games. Behind him hot rivulets of orange metal burst steaming from the ceiling, above him sharp cracks as the superheated rebar shattered the concrete structure. T accelerated, then jumped through the opening onto the East side fire escape as the entire floor above sheared along the fault lines he’d tricked the trooper into tracing as he ran, the weapon weakening the structure until it could no longer hold its own weight. The sixth floor pancaked onto the fifth, tearing it free, then together they picked up the fourth floor, accelerating through the atrium space to crush the unprepared hunter into the basement below.
“Naturally fast, asshole. Naturally smart too. Comes from being a meat brain you metal headed fuck.”
Tensevn clung panting to the battered fire escape until the wind had cleared the dust and he could see the ground. He couldn’t afford to slip here, a fall would hurt like hell.
by Clint Wilson | Feb 16, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
He walked and he calculated. The intense red sun beat down yet, as always, the suit kept things temperate. He urinated without thinking, and on he walked. He glanced at his wrist and saw that it was nearly rest time.
The dry little planet was about 28,000 kilometers in circumference and by figuring his average walking speed he knew he might encounter his own footprints soon enough.
His chronometer beeped at him just as he spied a nice sand pile to lie back against. There weren’t many options. There was sand, rocks, and more sand. He lay back against his uncomfortable bed and closed his eyes, trying to imagine what he might do next after circumnavigating his dusty prison. The problem was the suit worked too damn well. And while his will to survive trundled along stubbornly within him, the tired part of his mind wished that some misfortune would befall him so he could just die quickly. He had been in the wretched thing for months now and could not take it off, could never take it off unless rescued. The air out there was poisonous and thin, the pressure drastically low. Every day he considered picking up a rock and smashing his face shield. But what if he only managed to crack it? A slow death was not on his agenda.
He slept furtively, dreaming of the accident and his so-called escape to this place. The screeching of metal as the hull tore apart, the explosions, finding the stray survival suit floating in the weightlessness.
They had already fallen into close orbit around the nearest planet as per emergency procedures, and just in time for his sake. As he had jettisoned into the stratosphere, feeling the crushing g-forces from the suit’s rockets slowing his orbital speed, he had watched Surveyor III disintegrate. He was the only one to make it out. No other white suits had followed. Then he had waited patiently for the chute to open. Had it sprung from his back too soon it would have been ripped uselessly away and he would have taken many long minutes to fall to his death.
He awoke and saw that the sun was nearly down. No matter, his helmet lights would show him the way as they did every night. He got up and trudged on westward, his back to the setting red dwarf.
There was microscopic biological material here, nothing registered as life but just the same there was ample matter along with moisture blowing around in the dusty atmosphere for the suit to continuously make food for his intravenous inputs. When he had first arrived it had been a worry. Despite all the suit’s capabilities he would surely starve or die of thirst on this rock, but surprisingly both the suit and the planet were still keeping him alive after all this time.
But what was the use? He could not be sure if their distress signal had ever been received. For all he knew no one in the universe knew he was here.
Suddenly he stopped in his tracks. On this journey he had previously had to skirt around canyons, mountains and other obstacles to maintain his linear course but this was a big crevasse, and with the sun down behind him now all was black before him. He took several small steps and then cautiously leaned forward to allow the helmet’s bright floodlights to shine down a nearly vertical wall with no bottom in sight.
He wondered how deep it was. Surely deep enough to smash a face shield he thought.
by Julian Miles | Feb 14, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
She cries into my arms as they come for us. Such a simple thing, this expression of heartbreak through physical reflex.
“I thought I’d lost you.”
Her hand brushes my cheek and curls around my neck. So soft. The touch is like a feather landing on a still afternoon.
“But you came back. You came back.”
I bow my head and crouch a little more to accommodate her legs as she brings them up to hook over my thighs.
“They can’t take you away again. No. I can’t do this anymore.”
I hear them approaching. Six units, two rolling heavy with ranged firepower, two clattering with ten man fire teams, one jingling with the medical team and one silent with command damping.
She hugs me hard and looks up at me. So small. So very precious. I agree with her totally. This time, we will not be separated. She senses my resolve and smiles with shimmers playing across her eyes in the unshed tears. Her words are a whisper with an adamantine core.
“We stay together or we go together.”
I nod. It was inevitable that it would come to this. So sad but so right. A love such as this cannot be denied by the actions of others. She slips from my arms and leans back against me.
“Show me, Sam. Show me what makes the enemy cry and why those who brought you back fear you so much.”
The acceptance in her voice is a release for my final doubt. I straighten up and deploy. Three metres of silken black ceramic biped blossoms as the shutters on my back release and tensor wings unfurl, blue-green in the streetlights. They arc two metres above my head and spread a metre either side of me. The irises on my forearms and calves open and my nyotentacles extend, their tips fading into invisibility where the monomolecular edges begin. My eyes are covered by silver lenses as my tactical comes up. I feel the faint vibration as my head deforms, rising in two peaks to reveal the needle laser cluster above the chronomantic array in my nasal cavity. With a casual flick of my elbow I drive a nanofilament down into the ground, fraying out to grab power feeds and data lines. I charge my combat arrays and my laminate dermal armours sparkle with slate fields. With a thought, I find that I can shape the fields around her as long as she remains in physical contact. My diagnostics tell me the little black gun she carries is a piconuke launcher with a ten pack. I pass the mapping of my environment to the augmentations and return to normal perceptions. Her voice shows as warm blue waves that fade into words as I shift sensory inputs.
“…beautiful, Samuel. My reincarnate angel, will you fly me away when you go?”
I have a voice in this form: “I shall. Never to be parted again.”
She smiles, tears still running down her face. The convoy turns the corner and screeches to an untidy stop when they see me fully deployed. No contrition this time. From the limo, a black uniformed figure strides down the road to stop a few steps away and regard us with her hands on her hips and tears in her eyes.
“Samuel, I give up. Despite the screaming of my scientists, I am going to take empirical proof and give you and Talia married quarters. Then we can all try to work out what they did right, because I am actually jealous of you two.”
by submission | Feb 12, 2012 | Story |
Author : Jason Verch
It was time to put Em to sleep, but he could tell there was something on her mind.
“Everything ok sweetie?” he asked.
“Dad. Kay is an AI, right?”
“Well sure, you know that. She is a robot with an AI built in that controls her.”
“But I thought AIs were made to do really hard things that regular people aren’t smart enough for. Why do we have one for a housekeeper?”
“That is what AIs are mostly used for, but not every AI is smart enough to be a doctor or a scientist. Some are only as smart as an average person, and some not even that smart. Usually the ones that aren’t that smart get destroyed but daddy is able to keep some of the ones from work that don’t work out, and that?s how we got Kay.”
“What if I don’t turn out to be smart, will you and Mommy throw me away?!” She sounded on the verge of tears.
He reassured her, “Of course not sweetie, don’t be silly. That’s just part of my job at work. Mommy and I love you and will always love you no matter what.” This seemed to calm her.
“Do you think someday I could design AIs like you do? I think that would be fun.” She said.
“I think you can do whatever you want when you grow up. You are already smarter than all the other kids in your class, and get perfect marks on all your tests. You can be a doctor, a lawyer or yes, an AI designer. I’m sure you can be whatever you want to be.” Satisfied that he calmed her he added, “But now I need you to be a good little girl and go to sleep. It’s already past your bedtime.”
“Ok daddy. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight Em, I love you,” he said, as he typed the commands on his handheld to put the program in hibernation for the night.
An AI that designs other AIs he thought to himself. Well, I guess it could happen, but there was something unsettling about the thought. Wasn’t there some old 2d movie like that with President what’s His Name where AI robots take over the earth? That was just Hollywood fantasy; he put it out of his mind. He wasn’t sure what Iteration M would be used for, but there was no denying she was already leaps and bounds beyond the first eleven iterations of the program. Whatever she did it would be something great, something to make him proud, and definitely not another damn housekeeper.
