by submission | Oct 31, 2015 | Story |
Author : Ashley Spinelli
Brittney was crouched in the corner of her bedroom. Her mouth trembled. She couldn’t deal with the thought of not having it. She looked like she hadn’t shower in days. Brittney slowly got up from her crouched position and walked over to her desk. The clock read 5:45 p.m. Her stomach rumbled like a lions roar.
She went down to the kitchen to try to make some food. Her hands fidgeted with the knife that she was holding to make her sandwich. She realized she was too sick to eat, so she threw the sandwich out. The house phone rang.
“Hello?” she asked.
“I have it. Do you need it now?”
“Oh my god you have it? Yes. Yes please! I need it,” she exclaimed.
“Okay I’ll come by soon to drop it off,” he whispered into the phone.
“My address is 42 Smithson Street,” she said and then hung up the phone.
After she got off the phone, she became even more anxious. Her cold sweats got worse. Just think happy thoughts. She paced the room because she could no longer sit. This is what her life had come too. It was the drug she needed and nothing else.
Just the thought of it in her hand made her go crazy. Going on the computer didn’t help, neither did watching TV or calling up friends. This man was a savior. She would owe herself to him. He was the only person she could think about.
Her prayers were answered when the doorbell rang. It has to be him. She opened the door and there was a man, dressed in ripped blue jeans and a black t shirt.
“Brittney?” he asked.
“Yes that’s me,” she said.
“Here you go” He extended his arm and held out his hand. In it was the white heaven she’d been waiting for.
“Oh my gosh, thank you so much. I owe you big time,” she told him.
She took the phone with the white case out of his hand and closed the door. The cold sweats stopped, her hands stopped trembling and her blood pressure decreased. She headed back to her corner where she was perfectly okay.
by submission | Oct 29, 2015 | Story |
Author : Nicolas Frame
“How many people have you successfully implanted this in?”
The man chuckled. “I’m an engineer by trade,” He held the small robotic eye up between his fingers, examining it for imperfections. “Not a doctor.”
“How many?” Blane sat nervously on the makeshift operating table. The bright lamps all around were causing him to sweat.
“Two so far.” The man set the eye on a metal tray next to a scalpel and other painfully sharp looking tools. “One lived.”
“One lived?” Blane scoffed and stood up. “You said this was foolproof,” he hissed, “a simple procedure with just a few hours recovery time!”
“It is, my dear boy!” He clapped Blane on the back, grinning. “You’ll be perfectly fine.” The man shuffled to an unlit corner where a generator purred. “Please lie down on the table now, I’m getting your anesthetic.”
Blane rubbed his worried face. “Let me see it again.”
The engineer chuckled, walking back, needle in hand. “All right, but then we begin. After you pay there’s no refunds so…just relax.” He set the needle on the tray next to the tools and carefully picked the eye up raising it for Blane to see.
“It looks so…normal, almost real.” It did. The iris was even the same dark brown as Blane’s. “Can it really do everything you’ve said?”
“Trust me, this thing is solid. It’s loaded with three and a half exabytes of memory, full infrared and night vision capabilities, complex heads-up display, up to 70 times zoom, and of course picture and video taking features.” He gleamed at the eye. “It’s perfect, and it’s going to make me a fortune.”
“Alright. Let’s do it.” Blane tapped the ‘transfer funds’ button on his phone and settled down on the table. The needle stung as it entered his arm. Blane began feeling numb, but didn’t pass out as he expected. “Hey, doc. I-I’m not going out. Are you-are…you sure you gave me enough?”
“Oh you won’t be completely out during the procedure. But you shouldn’t feel any pain. Don’t worry, this isn’t my first rodeo. It’ll be over before you know it.” The man winked, grabbing two pair of forceps which he quickly clamped onto Blane’s eyelids, forcing his eye to remain open. “Your eyelids and, well, the whole general area might be a little sore afterwards. Not that it really matters.”
A scalpel and hook tool appeared in Blane’s vision, silhouetted by the bright lamps aimed on his face. He wanted to look away, but couldn’t with his eye forced open as it was. The hook tool plunged directly into his pupil, followed by the scalpel which began carving in quick saw-like motions around the edges of his eye. Blane flinched uncontrollably on the table, clenching his fists, though there was no pain. The vision in his left went black.
Blane strained his right eye to watch the procedure and wished he didn’t. The man plucked the left eye out, its optic nerve still attached and trailing behind it.
“Yuck!” The man slashed at the nerve a few times before it gave. “Ah, and there’s your brain. Exposed, unprotected, vulnerable…the smartest organ in your body. It’s funny that sometimes our brains make us make stupid decisions; like trusting people we really shouldn’t.”
Blane felt a clammy shiver run through his body.
“I am sorry to do this. I’m not even really an engineer, you know. But thanks for the funds…really, thank you.” Blane watched as the scalpel raised high in the air and closed his remaining eye as it came down hard through his exposed socket into his brain.
by submission | Oct 28, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
QM-451, wrists and ankles shackled, sat outside the conference room where its fate was being debated. A uniformed officer in full riot gear sat next to it. The officer’s helmet was on the floor, testimony to his trust in 451, despite the recent head-crushing incident.
The two could see through the conference room window but couldn’t hear a word from the soundproofed interior. Bored, the officer shuffled through magazines on an end table, selecting one for himself and offering another to 451, who declined.
“ROBOT COP KILLS AGAIN!” shouted an online tabloid headline displayed on a screen. “Crushes human head like melon” read the secondary headline.
“We have to DO something this time,” said the mayor. “That robot out there needs to be scrapped, along with the so-called ‘Robo-Detective’ experiment.”
“‘Scrapped?’ I must remind you that QM-451 is the property of Quantumind Industries,” said the QM attorney. “You may terminate the lease with 30 days notice, but if 451 is…” she zoomed in on the small print in a document before her, “rendered inoperable for any reason, the leasee agrees to surrender its remains and remit its full retail price to the leasor within 72 hours.”
“It would be worth it.”
“A million bucks?” scoffed the city attorney.
“The Robo-Detective project has been a success,” interjected the captain. “451’s performance is exemplary…”
“Exemplary? It killed a human!” screamed the mayor.
“A cop-killer… in self-defense…”
“What about that previous victim?”
“Suicide by robot…”
“Crushing human heads…”
The door opened and a man pushing a cart with coffee and donuts entered the room, closing the door behind him. In silence, conference participants helped themselves to refreshments.
The captain noticed that a plainclothes detective from his precinct was now seated on the other side of 451. He had picked up the uniformed officer’s riot helmet and was putting it on.
“You idiot,” the captain said out loud. Those were his last words.
The man from food service pulled a pistol and got one shot off, missing his target, the mayor, and grazing the head of the QM attorney across from him, before the captain threw himself on the assailant, taking a fatal shot to the heart.
While its colleagues on either side continued reading magazines, 451, seeing what had transpired, broke free of its shackles, crashed through the window, and grabbed the head of the killer, crushing it like a melon.
The officer and the detective, misunderstanding the situation, drew their weapons and emptied their clips into the robot, abruptly ending its law enforcement career.
In the chaos, nobody noticed sparks and smoke emanating from the side of the QM attorney’s head. She rearranged her hair strategically and retrieved her left ear from the floor.
After human fatalities had been removed, the press was allowed to photograph the mayor with his arm awkwardly around the defunct robot, but neither the mayor nor anyone else from city hall or the police department answered any questions.
For hours, while media and the public were in a frenzy of speculation as to what had happened, the mayor met with his public relations head and those involved in the conference room incident, including the detective and uniformed officer. Nobody seemed to think it was odd that the QM attorney had developed a stutter and accompanying head twitch. Their focus was on a deal to avoid a million dollar payoff by the city to Quantumind. Finally, the mayor cleared his office and granted an exclusive interview to the reporter who had written the “ROBOT COP KILLS AGAIN” article.
The online tabloid’s front page that evening was headlined, “HERO ROBOT DIES SAVING MAYOR,” with “Shot to death by assailant” as the second headline.
by submission | Oct 26, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
I extend my hand to Jerry. He decides a handshake won’t suffice and gives me a hug. I return his embrace while I roll my eyes.
“Will I see you again, Chris?” he asks.
“Of course you will,” I lie.
Jerry turns and walks through the entrance to the hospital. They’ll take good care of him. They specialize in NAFAL Depression. As the car drives me back to the spaceport, I think about all the people like Jerry I’ve known over my career. I’ve never understood why they decided to become space jockeys.
Shortly after Kern Drive was perfected, the first case of NAFAL Depression was diagnosed. The patient had been an astrophysicist who had made the short trip from Earth to Proxima Centauri. From his perspective, he’d traveled under Kern Drive for about 12 hours, conducted his research in the Proxima system for three weeks, then travelled back for 12 hours. Of course, each subjective 12 hour leg of his journey, due to relativistic time dilation, was actually about four years and two-and-a-half months back on Earth. Naturally, he knew this would happen. But returning home nine years later and actually seeing his “13 year old” daughter now 22 years old and married was too much for him. It didn’t help that his wife had taken a lover and had a child, now five years of age, during his “three weeks” away from home.
The mission I’d just completed had been Jerry’s first. He was okay as we flew out to Kappa Ceti. And he was fine during the six months we helped set up the research base there. Then as we flew back to Earth, something happened. After the first couple of days under Kern Drive, Jerry would sit and stare at the relativistic chronometer, watching the time from the point of view of someone on Earth zoom by. He’d occasionally remark about a missed birthday or a forfeited anniversary of a loved one. After a week of travel, Jerry would do little more than sit on the edge of his bunk and mutter “sixty years” over and over. Sixty years was our round trip travel time.
It takes a special kind of person to do this job. Some people say we’re sociopaths. They’re probably right in a way. If you value friends and family, if you can’t accept that you may be away for a few months and return to discover that you’re a hundred years out of date or that the infant grandchild you kissed goodbye now has his own grandchild who’s older than you are, then this isn’t the job for you.
The car pulls up to the curb and the door opens. A young woman wearing a crisp grey-green uniform stands waiting. Jerry’s replacement. She looks to be about 23 years old. The next mission is to the Algol system, 93 light-years from Earth. Everyone she’s ever known will have been dead for decades when we get back. I hope she doesn’t have a friend in the world. I hope she hates her family. It’ll make things easier for her. I’ve been doing this job for 20 years. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way 900 years ago.
by submission | Oct 24, 2015 | Story |
Author : Beck Dacus
A problem philosophers have had for a long time is the difference between consensus and truth. In a court, for example. One can present evidence, call witnesses, and use common sense to confirm the perpetrator of a crime. But they will never really know. There is no possible way to determine who is actually guilty– unless you have a time machine. Which Mallory Thurson happened to have.
When time travel was invented, it was thought that the possibilities would be endless. You could fix all the mistakes you or anyone else ever made. Then anti-paradox laws were put in place, and the possibilities were somewhat limited. Next, people moved on to research and tourism; definitively discovering what took place in the past and just seeing it for kicks. Finally, man discovered its usefulness in law. From this point on, time travelers would solve crimes by going back and filming them, but preserve anti-paradox laws by never interfering. It was hoped.
This case was personal to Mallory; it had happened right in her own neighborhood. She was frustrated that she herself couldn’t find the culprit, but then realized that she was in the perfect position for this– a Timeroller (camerapeople who film crimes). She reported to work immediately, donned the suit, and used it to go back three hours, 21 minutes and 11 seconds. It was here she learned that, despite all our efforts, there will never be true justice.
She arrived just in time to see a masked murderer barge in to a young man’s apartment. She filmed from a window as your typical exchange unfolded. The murderer threatened, th man cried, the killer gave a middle finger to any Timerollers that may be nearby. All that time, Mallory couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew that voice. Somehow, she thought she had heard it before, long ago. Finally, she realized that this man, Ronald Azermov, was the man that had gotten her involved in Timerolling.
This man had killed her father.
She remembered walking down the alleyway, when this man jumped her father and shot him to death. Then he found all the Timerollers that had been summoned to the scene, and shot each one in the face. She understood why there were so many– each one was there to witness how the previous one was killed. That was also why they never found out who he was. Why her dad’s death remained one of the only unsolved cases in the world.
In surprise, she dropped the camera. Thankfully, it didn’t attract attention. But now she couldn’t present the film to the court. Damn!
Suddenly a shot rang out, and the window smashed. Someone had tried to shoot her because she was a Timeroller. But they had missed… and shot the owner of the apartment. Her father’s killer was innocent.
But why should that stop her? It was her almost-assassin’s lucky day.
“Mallory?” asked the judge. “Where’s your camera?”
Huff, “your honor,” huff, “the perpetrator,” huff, “shot it.”
“But you know who they were?”
“Yes, sir. Ronald Azermov. The same man who shot my father.”
