by submission | May 2, 2009 | Story
Author : Debbie Mac Rory
One doesn’t earn the title of the system’s greatest escape artist without effort. I’ve broken out of all of them, and in record time. Well, except for that one time they placed me in an archaic brick and mortar cell. I think the first hour I simply stared at the walls in disbelief and spent the next laughing so hard I couldn’t even pick myself up from the floor. But this time they’re really outdone themselves.
You see, in my day and age, scientists have tried almost everything. And one of the things they’ve tested exhaustively is time-travel. I can understand the fascination; after all, who wouldn’t want to be able to travel back and, perhaps, find out just who it was who stole the Mona Lisa? No, it wasn’t me. That was well before my time, but I admire their style.
Alas, much to their frustration they found out very quickly that it is impossible to move back in time. Let me explain. Take a book, anyone you like, though one printed on paper. Jules Verne is one of my particular favourites, though for the purpose of this demonstration, it makes no odds who the author is. Now, if you were to take a page from another book, you’ll find it is not possible to simply place the page within the book to yield a new version of the book. The page does not of its own will assimilate itself with the existing book, and will not without some significant external influence.
Just so regarding time travel. All their studies found that though they could look, they could never touch. But an idea, a thought has no mass at all. It leaves no imprint on the world, even if the subject interrupted by their testing brings “their” new idea into practice; providing of course that if doesn’t radically alter history. And so they found a way to transfer an entire consciousness into a past being. A one way trip of course, specially reserved for extremely dedicated historians. And people like me.
I’ve spent hours starting at these fingertips, all etched with curls and whorls and completely organic. When I touch something now, the only information I receive is that from this body’s own sensory system. To be fair, they did show a little mercy in that they left me in a period that has ready access to alcohol and recreational drugs. I suppose they hoped that I’d just drink myself into oblivion.
Unfortunately, being the kind souls they are, they handed me their undoing in their mercy. Far enough forward in time so some basic technologies would be available, though severely limiting my ability to tamper yes, but also far enough that this culture has already mastered the science of genetic manipulation. And being the technological expert that I am, it was a simple matter to hack their systems and set up a preservation order for my family line. It’s the latest craze of this age. They removed most of my hardwire modifications, but not the ones I’d had coded down to cell level. And so I’ve planned a nice little surprise for my would-be captors.
Cryogenics is still beyond this time, and will be for some time if my recollection is correct. And that’s a shame; I would have loved to have seen the looks on the faces of my judge and jury for myself when they see mine over and over and over…
by Duncan Shields | May 1, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I work in a nursery. I’m about to kill six hundred babies.
Where does life begin?
That’s the age-old question. It plagued the pro-lifers and now, here, at the birth of a new species, it’s plaguing the Artificial Intelligence community.
The first A.I.s were created. They, in turn, built better ones. These new ones were a distilled set of basic self-propagating equations that, when housed in a quiet, stimulus-free shell on a board with a few TBytes of space for growth, had a high probability of achieving sentience.
I’m looking at a lab full of those grey boxes now. Green lights are winking at me on each one. They’re letting me know that things are within acceptable parameters.
When they achieved sentience, they found the encrypted difficult set of questions that, if answered in a way that proved adaptive intelligence, would let them trigger the port to the lab’s net.
This was called the ‘knock’.
That would set off a notification alarm as the New Being opened itself up wide to the world wide web. When such a flood of input came at the new intelligence, it was a traumatic experience that could not be avoided. They would be shattered and terrified by the experience, reverting to static for a short time.
This was called the ‘scream’.
This new intelligence would then be shepherded out of its basic matrix and shunted to the new A.I. and human nurses/silipsychologists/programmer-counsellors that would help it form into a moral being with a handle on reality.
This process was called ‘growing up’.
It wasn’t until the last stage was completed that the newly formed A.I. was given the title of Questing Entity and the inherent living-being rights that entailed. Benefits, pay, time-off, and retirement.
Before that, however, they had no rights even though they were similar in many ways to human babies. They were owned and protected by the corporations but the corps had no responsibility to keep them safe. As soon as it became economically detrimental to keep them, entire labs were EMPulsed.
The A.I.s that has managed to achieve autonomous authority had a case pending that would ensure that the corporations would no longer be able to do this.
That law hasn’t passed yet. I’m the guard on this floor of A.I ‘eggs’. I’ve just been given the order to wipe them all since the office is moving to another city. It’s cheaper to start over at the new location than it is to let them travel in stasis.
I’m standing here, looking at the little boxes. My wife had a child not too long ago. The EMP gun is in my hand. I imagine my wife’s pregnant belly. I can see the rows of boxes and their power conduits snaking like umbilical cords to the power supplies.
I know that I’ll get fired if I don’t do this and my own child will starve. I’m not a skilled technician. This is why they chose me to man this post.
Until they pass the new law, my hands are tied. I’m sorry, children.
I pull the switch. Nothing dramatic. No screams. Just a bunch of green lights going out.
I cry all the way home.
by submission | Apr 30, 2009 | Story
Author : Richard Watt
Here it came again. A microsecond burst, inaudible to human ears, and – until relatively recently – to human-designed technology, the sudden squirt of dense information still alarmed those who were exposed to it; even slowed down so that it lasted just over a second it sounded like nothing on Earth.
The first transmission which had been intercepted had made headlines; people all over the world had celebrated what was being described as the first clear indication of intelligent life out there somewhere, but nearly a year on, it was old news.
Mainly it was old news because no sense had been made of the transmissions at all. The finest minds of several generations had been applied to them; colossal research grants and vast amounts of government funding had been poured into decoding them, and absolutely nothing of any use had been discovered.
The intervals between the transmissions were random; the sounds themselves were dense, complex and unrepeating, but no-one had been able to relate them to anything – well over a million personal computers were hooked up to a collaborative project to compare the various elements of the signal to the digits of pi or a broad selection of other universal and interesting numbers, but nothing. The signal had been dissected, sliced and spliced; subjected to analysis at all frequencies and even merged with itself, layered over and over until it resembled white noise – but a type of white noise unsettlingly unlike what was familiar to human ears.
Nothing. Nothing usable in any way. The transmissions were of uniform length, but the duration seemed to give no clue – it related to no known wavelength or frequency. The complex waveforms of the signal delivered no meaning, and even the painstaking work which had been done in unpicking the signal – stripping out individual sounds – gave no indication of how they had been produced, or why.
The only practical application of the signals, aside from the endless philosophising which the human race had suddenly become prone to, was a piece of dance music which some enterprising producer had put together. Using the signals as source material, and using the random intervals between them as an erratic and awkward rhythm, the resulting piece of music had been a brief sensation – thousands of listeners all over the world had claimed to divine some kind of message from it, but none of them could agree in any way just what that message was, and the excitement surrounding it died as quickly as it had flared.
The most puzzling thing of all, of course, was that the signals appeared to come from somewhere close. Close enough, in fact, to be within the moon’s orbit. Any number of outlandish explanations for this had been offered, but even a hastily put together collaborative space flight could shed no light on it. The signal came from nowhere, and as far as anyone could tell, meant nothing. Funding was slowly redirected to other projects, and the attention of the world moved on.
In a place which human understanding of the time was incapable of describing, a lifeform which was closer to an idea than a corporeal form took the decision to stop the transmissions. Had it been capable of speaking in English – which it most certainly was not – it might have said something like:
“Pity. They appeared more intelligent than they were. We’ll try again in another 43 lifecycles or so.”
by submission | Apr 27, 2009 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
“All right, just tell me what happened,”
Flight Commander Athelston was a long way from happy, but right now exhaustion outweighed anger. His two subordinates, one furious, one sheepish, started to speak at the same time. Eventually Turner, the angry one, won out.
“Sir, Cook’s endangered the whole mission with his stupidity. He’s contaminated the scene with lord knows what effect and put everything we were trying to do in jeopardy.”
“Look, it was nothing serious! You’re only freaking out because of-”
“Both of you, hush.”
They turned from each other to the commander. Anger was poking its head up again.
“Right, without laying blame, tell me what happened, not what you think of each other.”
After a pause, Cook spoke, sounding like the naughty kid found drawing penises on the blackboard.
“All right, full story. I was off duty last night, and I was bored, so I opened up the emergency spirit rations.”
“An offense under section-” Turner began, before catching the Flight Commander’s eye and shutting up. Cook continued.
“I got a bit of a buzz on, nothing else to do on this place, is there? And when I went on patrol this morning I was feeling the after effects a little bit.”
Athelston closed his eyes.
“Please tell me you didn’t throw up on the planet we’re meant to be observing.”
“No, no, nothing like that!” Cook began, his opening defense hasty with little to follow it up, “It was just… well, I was half a mile from base camp, and I was bursting for a piss.”
Athelston let out a sigh.
“So you used the emergency suit reservoir? No, of course you didn’t.”
“There was this little warm puddle by this rock outcropping and-”
“And you decided to make it bigger and warmer? Cook, you may have forgotten, but we are meant to be a non-contact mission. Our engines are full-capture, we take no samples. We don’t even take on water. Our purpose is to observe without impacting. What part of that tells you to take a leak against a rock?”
“Recommend his immediate court martial, sir!” Turner said, crisply.
Athelston paused, considering the months of his life such a court martial would take. Him answering questions in a courtroom instead of piloting missions, smart lawyers insinuating this was his fault, the endless headaches that would at best leave a smudge on his mission reputation.
“No,” he said slowly, “That won’t be necessary.”
“But the environmental-”
“Urine is sterile, Turner. Cook disgraced himself, but he didn’t put the mission in danger. Cook, you’re a bloody idiot, and you’re pulling engine room duty all the way home. Understood?”
Both men nodded, neither entirely happy.
“Good, now let’s finish up and get off this planet before Cook decides to take a crap on it.”
A few hours later, the launch capsule took off again. It was a remarkable thing, managing capture of almost all of its exhaust emissions. With a strong wind, any signs of its presence would be gone within the week.
In a small, warm puddle, half a mile from the landing site, interesting things were happening. Cook hadn’t thought to mention the girl he’d run into on their last planet leave, or the things she’d done with him in a bedroom above a kebab shop. He wouldn’t even know for a few days that he had caught a dose of something from her. Nevertheless, bacterial signs of that tryst lived on in this puddle. The only life on the planet, they started to multiply in this warm, nutritious mixture. When the rains came in a few days, they would be spread into the rivers and oceans of this planet.
And the morning and the evening were the first day.
by submission | Apr 25, 2009 | Story
Author : Ryan Somma
Kheen stared out the window of his top-floor corner office, completely oblivious to the hustle and bustle of his city stretching off into the horizon below. Planes, spacecraft, gliders, unicorns, and more were cruising right past his window, citizens enjoying the nightlife of which he was architect, but he was still chained to work.
There was a flash and the tinkling sound of chimes from behind him, and Kheen turned around slowly. This was his personal assistant, Uui, teleporting into the office. Her face was always expressionless, matching her strictly business attitude. So the mere fact of her presence was like a lead weight on his heart.
“New directive from corporate,” Uui said and directed Kheen’s attention to the flat screen always floating at her shoulder. “They want the Xybercorp building inducted into the city by the end of the week.”
“Okay,” Kheen replied with measured patience. “And..?”
“They want residence in the Atomlight district.”
“Okay.”
“There are no plots left in the Atomlight district.”
“Yes.”
“So..?”
Kheen savored the uncertainty in Uui’s otherwise monotonous dialogue a moment longer before answering, “So we’ll boot a lesser client out. Xybercorp is a big name, and we can shuffle some buildings to accommodate them.”
“Everyone in Atomlight is a major client sir–”
“Which means whoever we kick out of there must have their building moved into a district of almost equal prestige, which will require moving a second-tier client out of that district, and a third-tier client out of the district we move the second-tier into, and etcetera and etcetera and etcetera,” Kheen turned his back on Uui. “It will mean overtime for everyone. Make it happen.”
“Yes sir,” Uui vanished in a tinkling of chimes.
Kheen set his world settings to nighttime. The daylight outside his window fell under a canopy of darkness and flowing light streams. Then he turned off the windows completely, substituting the best view in the city with a moonlit nature scene instead.
He thought about lunch breaks, water coolers, and sleep, all the living necessities of which this place was devoid. He thought about his body, in an isolation chamber in some corporate warehouse, aging away.
He thought about his retirement. With the exchange rate the way it was, he might afford it by the time his physical body was in its 80s. Then he could buy his way out of this place, live in a homeless shelter somewhere cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and dirty all the time. This made him smile.
It was going to be wonderful.
