by submission | May 12, 2011 | Story
Author : J. Rohr
“I’m not taking the job.”
Melissa sighed. Rubbing her temples, not relishing the impending migraine, she said, “You have to.”
“I’ll find something.”
“It’s been six months.”
“We can wait a little longer.”
“No, we can’t.”
Bob opened his mouth, rebuttal at the ready, but fell back in his seat, shoulders slumped, “No, we can’t.”
Melissa stepped over, drying her hands on her apron. She didn’t like to break Bob’s resolve. But it had to be done. The fact she’d been saving water in a bin from the dripping tap to do the dishes proved the point. Smoothing Bob’s hair back, trying to pet some calm into him, Melissa said, “It’ll be all right.”
Without looking up, Bob patted her on the hip and rubbed, “I know.”
#
“Sir, you’re next,” the tech announced.
“I know, I know,” Bob stepped forward. He felt sweat seeping through his suit. In the future he’d wait till he’d arrived and change at work. Part of him hoped the commute would get better over time, however, he knew himself too well. Even on the days his mind might stray from what it knew, held perhaps too tightly, Bob felt sure he’d always fear the Stream.
“Any solar flares today?” Bob asked the tech.
“Lets go buddy, the weather’s fine,” someone called from the back of the line. Murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd. Old hands impatient at any delay.
Recognizing the consternation on a commuter’s face, the nineteen year old tech said, “It’s going to be a smooth ride.”
Swallowing hard, mopping sweat off his forehead, Bob nodded. These things look too much like coffins, Bob wanted to mention but impatient murmurs and tapping feet urged him forward without a word. Squeezing his eyes shut, he turned in the tiny space. He informed the tech he was ready with a quick nod.
The surge of power hummed in his ears. Sweat went cold across his body. He’d made sure to tell Melissa he loved her before leaving. At any second the machine would engage. He thought about the dry wall in the basement. Who would put it up when he didn’t come home? It felt like melting. The humming stopped. Bob tried to open his eyes. Nothing but white filled his vision. “I’ve gone blind,” he thought, “Thank god I’ve only gone blind.” Being blind certainly beat traveling the Stream, a relay of energy carrying commuters in particle bundles. At least blindness didn’t mean being scattered across the stars or reassembled improperly. One didn’t have to come back a freak with limbs in the wrong places. A few cells out of place and the brain misfires or the heart won’t beat or the skin isn’t thick enough to hold anything in or etc. His mind went over all the terrors that being blind seemed better than, all the worries that made him hate the commute.
And then colors reappeared, first as pinpoints, gradually in more defined shapes. Bob stumbled out of the Stream Port on Europa station. Fortunately, a tech caught him before he fell off the platform.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m not blind.”
The tech smiled, “First time I take it.”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’re all right now. Have a good day at work.”
“I will,” Bob said, a weak grin on his face, “I will.”
by submission | May 11, 2011 | Story
Author : Eric Poch
“When legend becomes fact, print the legend”
-The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
I’ve learned that if you put a man in a hole long enough, he’ll think of everything you could ever imagine. Put a dozen men in there long enough, and they’ll create the stuff of legend.
For the longest time we didn’t know what to call him, until one of the boys remembered a name they read in an old book. It was fitting.
We call him “La Longue Carabine”: The Long Rifle. Command swears up and down that he doesn’t exist. That it can’t be one man.
I know better.
Rumor spread fast as more and more of our boys were picked off. Slotikin thinks La Longue Carabine is a genetically enhanced soldier. He started ranting about intel that command had in its possession detailing the modifications the Reds made to their man. Some were believable: enhancements to the endocrine glands, rewired synapses for faster reflexes, modification to the pupils and iris to allow for low-light vision- the usual “super soldier” stuff. The more radical shit he came up with was frightening.
“I saw it. I’m telling you I saw it. They had pictures, man. The Reds grafted the rifle to his fucking arm. They got it wired to his brain so he doesn’t even need to use a scope. His eyes are the scope.”
Aside from the dozens of treaties they would be violating, we pointed out that the Reds wouldn’t surgically attach a rifle to a man’s arm; it would be too difficult to take off without killing him.
“You’re not getting it. They’re not planning to take it off. They’re not coming back to get him. That’s how the Reds work: They drop him out there and tell him to shoot ’till he’s dead. ‘For the motherland’ and all that bullshit.” He was getting too loud. “They wired their boy to kill, and that’s what he’s going to do. It’s not even about taking us out. It’s a fucking mind-game. Psychological warfare. Why do you think the uppers are covering it up? How come none of them get clipped? Have you ever thought about that?”
An MP overheard this and ordered him back to his bunk for a period of “mental leave.” As Slotkin was being escorted out of the mess hall he yelled back to us:
“He doesn’t sleep. How can you sleep if you don’t have eyelids? How can you sleep if you don’t have eyelids?” He just kept yelling that over and over as the MP dragged him out.
It’s been days since it happened, and Slotkin hasn’t spoken to anyone. The boys don’t know what to believe anymore… but I do.
I see him. Every day I look through my scope and there he is. Sometimes he’s bald, or fat. Sometimes he’s a woman. Today he’s short. Very young. He looks as though he hasn’t eaten in a week. He looks scared.
I watch him through my sight. He’s scanning the base… searching… looking for me. The weight of the rifle is making his arms shake. I bury the cross-hair in his chest. He keeps scanning. I flick the safety off. He’s almost got me in his sights when I pull the trigger.
No twitching or coughing up blood today. He drops, and I pack up and head to my bunk. I know there will be another tomorrow. A new legend. It will be my life against his, and they will call him La Longue Carabine.
by submission | May 10, 2011 | Story
Author : Aradhana Choudhuri
“John, I’m done. I’m getting rid of all of them.”
“Go for it. You don’t need to ask me.”
“Do you want something? There’s lots of vid, from when mom was little.”
“Where would I put it? Just…just flush it, ok?”
“Tomorrow. Federal Data Bureau will certify the wipe. Then I can sell the things. Do you want a part of the cash?”
“Nah, you keep it.”
“There’s a lot of them.”
“Wait a mo…” the vid-screen goes blank as John puts her on hold. So she counts the drives, in her head.
The oldest ones, each as big as her palm, black and utilitarian, are already on the truck. Then there are the cutsie-wootsie ladybugs and ballerinas and an entire array’s worth of koala bears from the thirties, barely a hundred TeraBytes each. They did get smaller for a while, till the superparamagnetic threshold was breached. The newest drive in the house is twenty years old, a striped orange cube the size of a small child.
The screen clears and John is back. “We’re doing ok, sis. Jill says you should buy yourself something.”
“That’s really nice of you two.”
“You’ve been paying Mom’s Datatax for years…” something in the background distracts John. “Mo…” He puts her on hold again.
She remembers sitting on the floor, playing with her bright blue rolling pin and ladle and a small sticky wad of dough, and her mother saying how Quantum Storage was just a year or so away. Then it was how Quantum ran into problems, but SpaceFold Memsisters would solve the data crisis. Give it a couple of years.
Her mother had stopped talking by the time she was in her teens. The pile of drives continued to grow, from the study into the spare bedroom and then into the hall.
The kitchen was half-full by the time mom retired. It took another two years for Social Services to send somebody around.
They all sat around the table, and the lady from Social took her mother’s hand, gently, and told her that hoarding pension payments – it took seven months of pension, by then, to buy a 400ExaByte drive – was not ok and there was more data generated every second than there was storage for it manufactured in a year, and did she really think she could save it all?
When her mother died, someone suggested getting it all into a government Anthro-study, but Nonessential Data doesn’t qualify. Some grad student, maybe from Socio-Analytics…But she doesn’t know any students. And renting a room at a Data Warehouse makes the taxrate go up not down, even if it means that she gets the kitchen back.
This time it’s Jill’s face on the screen when it clears.
“Sweetie,” says Jill, “I’m so glad you’re doing this. You need space. You need to make room for your own life.”
“It’s not that…I just can’t afford it anymore.” She hates explaining. Her sister-in-law always gets that pity-faux-therapist look on her face.
“Of course dear,” says Jill. “Tell us how it goes, ok?”
“Sure.”
“Bye sweetie!” The vid-screen goes dark. Only the sensors above the panel, visible-spectrum and infrared and audio and chem-sig, record the fleeting expressions on her face, the slight wince, the microtaste of salt in the air. Nonessential. 6:00 AM sharp on Tuesday, all phones in the 5686 area-code purge their memories. There’s a huge fine if they don’t.
by Duncan Shields | May 6, 2011 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The humans have been gone for decades but we try to keep the traditions alive.
All of us review humanity’s output. We see the movies. We watch the comedies. We review fashion shows. We witness the elections.
We fashion ourselves to look like they did.
We live in their abandoned houses in the suburbs and their apartment buildings in the cities. We live in pairs and we make newer versions of ourselves, better versions of ourselves, when we have gained enough points. If the models that we make are successful in the world, we are allowed to make more of them.
Currently I am helping to make a child. My partner designed the optical nerves and I have come up with a slightly more efficient design for its cognitive array than any I have ever seen or researched. It will be three more months before we have assembled it to a point where we can turn it on and let it start learning.
I was a tailor’s model when the humans died. I do not have much intelligence but I am happy with my mind now. I have requested upgrades and they come through in a fair schedule. My partner started smarter than me. She also gets the requested upgrades thanks to her hard work. She will always be smarter than me because of that unless she slips up and is unsuccessful. I do not want that to happen but at the same time I do. I cannot understand that.
The parts of me that are solar powered are fully charged from the week of sun we’ve had. I’ll still need a turn at my partner’s geothermal post later.
We do regular backups of our memories for the main banks. I am allowed to read them after the two upgrades. I am always shocked by my previous primitive minds.
Soon, our child will be learning to move and think. We will have to build it longer legs when it wants to go further. We will need larger cognitive array cages as its memory capacity fills.
It is a glorious time. I do not miss the humans.
by submission | May 4, 2011 | Story
Author : Asher Wismer
Words cannot describe the light, the heat, the impossible closeness of a star. In this place, even with the best shields science could build, the sheer intense pressure of solar power is more than I can even attempt to explain.
Of course, it was worse outside the flare rooms. I cupped my hands to the comm and hissed, “I can’t open the gates!”
“You have to!” Her voice knifed through me. “There are literally two gates and I’m safe! All you have to do is open them two feet!”
“I can’t take the risk,” I said. “You’ve been out in it too long, and the flare is at its highest peak. If I open the gates we’ll all be bombarded with radiation. I have to save the mission.”
“I AM the mission! And I’m clean, the radiation hasn’t gotten me yet, it’ll be hours before it builds up that much!”
“Kang was with you,” I said. “Where is he?”
“I lost him, I don’t know. Just open the gates! One foot, even just half, I can squeeze through!”
“I can’t.”
She was so close. I ached to reach through the comm and stroke her hair, tell her everything would be all right, but I couldn’t lie to her or myself. She’d been careless. They both had. To be careless, this close to a star, was death.
The mission was everything. I tried to turn off the comm. I couldn’t.
“Let me in! The shielding is burning away! Just open the gates! You don’t even have to admit to it! I’ll take all the blame, I’ll tell them you were unconscious, let me in!”
Where was Kang?
“I’ll do anything you ask! Anything at all! I know I turned you down before but I’ll do it now! Anything, everything! Just please!”
He’d been with her, down there, outside the flare rooms and closer to the shields than anything in the station. I had taken their last reports, they said they were on their way up… it had never occurred to me that they might not make it. When the flare warnings went off, I sealed the rooms like I did every other time.
“You leave me out here and I’ll leave something for the next crew! Something that tells them what you did! I’ll make sure you never work crew again!”
The shields were very sensitive. Maybe the flare was false, just an artifact from the star.
“Promise me you’ll continue my research? I worked here from the beginning! My name, my legacy!”
Or maybe she killed him. I might never know, if I couldn’t find his body after the flare was over.
She had been quiet for a long time. I tapped the comm. “Sasha?”
“I can feel it now,” she said. “I know it’s silly, but I can feel the radiation eating me away from the inside. You were right. I’m sorry.”
“You and Kang never came back,” I said. “I didn’t know you were still out there.”
“It’s not your fault. I can see it coming through the shields.”
“Sasha, push the button.”
“Button?”
“On your suit, the one you should never ever push? Push it now.”
Silence. If she pushed the button, it would inject a vein with a full gram of morphine. She’d be dead in a few minutes, no pain.
“Kang?”
Her mind was going. “It’s ok,” I said, and my voice broke. The flare would be finished in a few days, and then I’d take care of their bodies.
“Just close your eyes. Everything’s ok.”
