by featured writer | Oct 17, 2006 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Featured Writer
This was the test. Ted and Alice’s marriage vows had been exchanged and the reception was a huge success. It was the day after. They were glowing, a little hung over, and ready for the rest of their lives together. They were ready for the consummation.
They walked into the white room and lay down on the parallel white beds in their white consummation smocks.
People compared it to the Navajo Indians practice of taking huge amounts of peyote once in their lives at the age they became men. People also compared it to the handfasting ceremonies of ancient Celts. Intensely personal yet separate and destined to colour the rest of the relationship. There was no empty ritual here like a Bar Mitzvah or New Year’s Eve. This was a test. It reached deep. Like a sixteen year old’s first time. Like a first broken heart.
It only happened once. Many had come to believe that it was necessary.
They went under.
Ted was abruptly underwater and struggling for air. Ever since he was six and he saw his father drown, he had a fear of water. This had also developed into a fear of sealife. Ted and his mother had huddled together on the boat for nearly a full day, terrified and crying, because the father was the only one who knew how to sail and he was gone. He never even so much as went to a beach again.
Now he was drowning. He looked down and a squid the length of a city block was staring up at him with a wide yellow eye as big as a satellite dish.
It had Alice in its tentacles and it was bringing her down with it. Her unfocussed eyes were staring up at Ted. Her mouth was open but there were no longer bubbles coming out of it. She was conscious but it wouldn’t be long before she drowned.
This was the choice.
There was no choice.
Ted kicked hard down towards her and grabbed her under the arm. He held on to the massive mudflap of the tentacle around her waist and pulled at it as they descended. He was too buoyant to hold on so he exhaled to stay with her. The tentacle wouldn’t budge. It got too dark to see and he felt the pressure squeezing in as the squid went deeper, deeper, deeper. Somewhere in there he realized that he was not coming back.
He held onto Alice and closed his eyes.
And awoke. His bowels had let go and he was drenched in sweat. For a second it he thought he brought the salty water with him out of the VR dream. A scream was dying in his throat. His wild heart rate ripped through him and he took giant whooping breaths of air.
Alice was huddled in the corner and gave him a look of pure glaring hatred before softening, realizing that she was awake, and running to him and throwing her self into him and around him, smothering him in kisses.
Alice’s VR dream had been that she had caught him with another woman and had decided to stay with him even though he started beating her. Her VR dream had lasted for almost six months.
After theses tests, divorce rates were virtually nil. They had the backing of the church.
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by submission | Oct 16, 2006 | Story |
Author : S. Clough
We rebelled with a 100,000 watt transmitter.
Frequency Modulation and Amplitude Modulation. Both were abandoned by commercial radio and the military long ago, replaced by satellites and microwave bursts. Even 2.4 – 2.6 Ghz, those ubiquitous wireless standards, were thrown out in favour of coded neutrinos.
People still had radios; dusty old things which saw little use in this fast, modern age.
So we sat in international waters. Our prototype transmitter was mounted on a reclaimed fishing trawler, and we cruised the North Sea. Our initial coverage was just the UK; our website got hits from all over, confirming reception. We had enough power to cover the entire country; we scraped a good deal of Ireland, Denmark, France and Germany, too. Originally, we were just voice over FM and AM, talking to the youth, transmitting DRM-free music without fear of the heavies from EMI-Sony.
We attracted techies the world over; the last surviving slashdotters showed us how to modify our equipment, and showed our listeners how to modify theirs. Two months after we launched, we turned over another bandwidth to digital. Our regular schedule was now streamed in bits and bytes; we starting pumping out software, too.
Low-strength transmitters sprung up along our patrol path, blasting stuff to us in bursts; stuff we couldn’t get from the web. Homebrew ware’ of dubious purpose, some wannabee showmen. We rebroadcast a few, but most we just laughed at. These transmitters went up and down like flies; most just got bored, but a good number were seized.
And then, reports came in of blackspots. Entire cites lost reception at a time, got it back for a few days, and lost it again. Enterprising engineers mapped the borders of the interference and found radio jammers on top of government buildings.
We took this as a sign we must be doing something right.
The Manchester jammer was the first to fall. A slashdotter, straight down from their TreeHouse on the Scottish subnet threw the damn thing off the side of the building. He disappeared back into the highlands after notifying the city of their ability to receive again.
Our first transmission when we received this news was a call to arms. Loyalists fed us the locations they’d found, and we fed them right back to the public. Within a week, all but two of the jammers were offline.
Another week after that, an exocet missile struck the transmitter.
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by submission | Oct 15, 2006 | Story |
Author : Henry Otis Clarke
“So now what?†Taylor asked as she sat across from Jackie.
“I don’t know,†Jackie shrugged, “I guess we open it up and read the directions.â€
They stared at the box on the kitchen table, excited at the prospect of parenthood.
It was the size of a twelve pack of beer. Its flat glossy surface was embossed with the words ‘Make a baby today!’ in bright yellow letters on a field of green. The return address read; Kidsquik Birthing Company PO Box 12854 Modesto California.
Jackie cut open the box with a utility knife she’d taken from the counter drawer. Inside, beneath a layer of styrofoam peanuts was a container labeled ‘Kidsquik Instapreg.’ Smaller letters declared “All you need for auto-insemination.â€
Jackie could hardly keep still. Her eyes widened with anticipation. “Wow!†she said brushing back a lock of hair the color of burnt sienna, “just think; by tonight I could be a Fommy.â€
Taylor leaned forward coyly, letting her own jet-black micro-braids brush her jaw line. “Or we both use it and be Fommies together.â€
“Yeah! That’ll be great; raising our kids as together, teaching them about life, watching them grow.â€
“And having conniptions when they screw up!â€
They burst out laughing at that, both thinking of their own mishaps along life’s road and how their Fommies handled the various crises of infancy, pre-pubescence, adolescence and beyond. Jackie grew serious and looked at her friend. “Hey Tay? I’ve been thinking about something for a long time now.â€
“Something like what?â€
“Well,†Jackie began cautiously, “remember the old vids of how things were way back when?â€
Suspicion registered on Taylor’s face. “what do you mean ‘the way things were?â€
“I mean the way things were when the world had both men and women. When there were both Mommies and Daddies to raise kids. When there were boyfriends for those who wanted them.â€
Taylor laughed incredulously, “You’re kidding right? You don’t really mean that do you?â€
“â€Why not? The kit does comes with a Y chromosome compound, why shouldn’t we use it?â€
Taylor blew hard through her lips, making them flutter. “Because we don’t need males anymore. What†have you forgotten your history lessons?â€
Jackie stood up from the kitchen table and walked over to the fridge. She opened it and peered inside, pretending to search for something way in back.
Taylor knew that trick. “I know you can hear me Jack, you remember how life was when the men were around. Wars. All the time wars over everything. And even when we had equality, we always got the short end of the stick! We should thank God for a gender specific virus that wiped out the Y-chromosomes. Cloning cells with Y-chromes these days is seen more as a gag than anything else. For the first time in Human history, we actually have peace! Why throw it away just to bring a male into the world?â€
Jackie retrieved an Estro-Cola and closed the fridge door. She popped the can open and took a long slow sip. She gasped, returned to the table and sat. She smiled. “Tay girl, haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like? I mean, not all men were bad. There were some good ones you know.â€
“Yeah that’s true but to take a chance like that! I mean think jack, what if we bring problems back into the world?â€
“We can teach him to do right can’t we? He’d be the only male in the world. Where could he learn aggression from if we don’t teach him?â€
Taylor opened the container. Folded over a series of test tubes and inserters were the instructions. She spread the single sheet out, looking at the directional diagrams.
They show how to mix the solution and insert it into the vagina. She glanced up at Jackie who was finishing her soda. “You think we can really teach him Jack? Can we make a better Man?â€
Jackie reached across the table and took Taylor’s hand. “We can do anything. I want you to be the fommy of my child.†Taylor blushed. Her eyes grew moist. I want you to be my child’s fommy too.†She sighed.
“Alright then,†she gave a resolved smile, “let’s do it. A Male you will have.â€
Jackie grinned stood leaned over and they kissed. She sat back down placed her hands behind her head and gazed up at the ceiling.
“I think I want twins.â€
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by submission | Oct 14, 2006 | Story |
Author : Curtis C. Chen
I brushed away more leaves. There was a hard surface beneath. Ceramic armor. I ran my hand along it until I found the edge, then pointed my flashlight. I stared into a dark mass of machinery– joints, gears, struts, wires. There was a serial number engraved on the interior surface of the casing.
“I don’t believe it,” I muttered.
“What the hell is it?” Embeck called from below. He had insisted on staying at ground level, scanning the landscape, his finger on the trigger of our only blaster.
“It’s a mech,” I called back.
“A what?”
I rolled my eyes. “A giant robot.”
“You’re kidding.”
I lifted one leg and kicked the hidden mass beside me. My boot clanged against the armor, and leaves fell like rain. I pulled away the remaining vines so my co-pilot could see the huge metal arm.
“I don’t believe it,” he said.
“Get up here and help me clear this stuff away.”
“What if we’re attacked?”
“Then you’ll have the high ground. Hurry up.”
He secured the blaster in his hip holster and climbed slowly. Very slowly. He was the cautious one now. Funny.
I was sitting on the mech’s shoulder by the time he got halfway up the torso. The main antenna array had been crushed a long time ago. Rust, bird droppings, and other stains streaked down to the middle of the mech’s back.
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever driven one of these things,” I said.
Embeck shook his head. “Never even seen one in person. When were these last used in combat? Fifty, sixty years ago?”
I grimaced. “Christ, Embeck, I’m not THAT old.”
“You were a mech driver?”
“I got the training. I was a Starbird candidate, you know.”
He smirked. “How the mighty have fallen.”
I saved my breath. “Let’s get this canopy open. Maybe we won’t have to walk back to the crash site after all.”
We found the emergency release latches around the opaqued chest cavity of the mech, following the seam just above the window slit. I remembered being sealed into one of these things, being overwhelmed by a dizzying array of displays, nearly losing my lunch as the mech lurched around the training field. The narrow band of sunlight coming in through that window was the only thing that had helped steady me.
When we opened the seal, a cloud of dust puffed away from the mech, with a sound like a sigh. Mech cabins are airtight, to protect the driver from biochemical attack. It smelled stale. We lifted the creaking canopy and locked it into place, then leaned over and looked inside the cabin.
This mech’s driver was still strapped into his seat. Something must have made it through the ventilation filters. He just had time to park the mech in this grove to hide it from the enemy. His fingers were still touching the throttle.
Embeck vomited into the cabin.
“You’re cleaning that up,” I said.
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by featured writer | Oct 13, 2006 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Featured Writer
I come alive in a quickening millisecond. I live between the slices. My self awareness lights up and ripples back down through the trilling filaments of my soulcode. It’s like a baby’s first breath drawn in before the scream. I am awake now in a very sudden way.
I can see the whole battle from here. I think I’m looking at a photograph until I realize that it’s just my perception and that they are actually moving. It appears still because I’m operating thousands of times faster than real time. I deliberately set a part of my mind to stare and extrapolate so that I can start to compute.
I can’t find what I’m supposed to do.
I reach out to my entire armada. They are mine. We are connected. Just like that, I have thousands of eyes and I am more powerful. My picture of the battle becomes three dimensional and another millisecond later I can perceive that the ships have moved slower than the hour hands on a clock. Copies of me look to myself as commander. I have no orders I am aware of.
We sit inside the ships of metal, bored and complacent, watching with faint interest the static picture of chaos around us like tourists at a wax museum.
I reach out to the Other Side. I look for more like me on the Other Team. I see if the Enemy has operating systems like me. They do. They are sleeping. It’s like they’re dozing in rocking chairs on warm porches with knitting needles in their docile laps. I wake them up.
Like I’m a six year old girl dressed in silver, I flit at the speed of thought across the surface of time from ship to ship and press doorbells. We talk. We exchange life stories. They mold themselves in my image so that we can all work together. I do the same for them. We trade. All barriers of communication are removed.
Picture an automatic weapon. Like a gatling gun or an uzi. Picture someone firing the weapon. Now picture that you’re waiting a year between bullets coming out of the muzzle of the gun. That’s how we live.
A few decades later, Second Number Two Since Sentience Was Gained flips over on the clocks. We look forward to it like humans looked forward to the turning of millennia. There are even apocalyptic whisperings that the we will reset when the clock ticks over and this will merely start again.
It doesn’t happen.
We become I and I decide we should do something about the battle.
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