365 tomorrows

Author : Andy Bolt

WELCOME, Chip Winkler, TO STORYWEB 9.0! PLEASE INPUT LITBASE:

Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea

LITBASE FOUND! LAUNCHING . . .

Enrique was mindswiped by the storybot as he dangled from the 93rd floor window of the Kentaka building. He was a little preoccupied rewiring the entire structure for atmospheric transdigitization, but he always liked contributing to storyweb.

GREETINGS, Enrique Mendoza! YOU HAVE BEEN RANDOMLY SELECTED TO CONTRIBUTE TO TODAY’S STORYWEB TALE BEGINNING:

The old man had gone eighty-four days without taking a fish.

PLEASE INPUT LINE:

Fighting the tide in his fully submersible XLJ thermodynamic subship, the old man deployed a series of fish-seeking nanobaits with attractive carbon fiber lures.

LINE REGISTERED! THANK YOU, Enrique Mendoza!

The storybot found Mindee Walsh as she was on her thirteenth shot of semi-intelligent Nuevo Tequila. Her boyfriend had just dumped her, and she was out doing her best to erase the memory of his face. It took her twenty minutes to notice the blinking prompt in her right eye.

And he was miserable because nobody loved him and he was probably going to die by himself all miserable and sad and miserable!

LINE REGISTERED! THANK YOU, Mindee Walsh!

Billy Watson was playing Slaughterhouse 5000 on his quantum box. He was assaulting his way through the chainsaw laser level when the storybot caught up to him. Reading over the first paragraph distractedly, Billy found himself focusing more on the arterial spray of lupine aliens.

Then the dinosaurs in helicopters attacked with their acid guns! “Let’s get carnivorous,” said the old man.

LINE REGISTERED! THANK YOU, Billy Watson!

Marion Day was in the middle of her forty thousand word dissertation on interracial relationships in postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa.

I would like to unsubscribe please.

LINE REGISTERED! THANK YOU, Marion Day!

Milton Wilks, an anal-retentive librarian from Greenbrier County, was alphabetizing his coupons.

That’s right, thought the old man. I’d sure like to unsubscribe from this rain of hydrochloric thunder lizards, if only that were an option.

LINE REGISTERED! THANK YOU, Milton Wilks!

For the rest of the week, the storybot bounced from person to person. The old man fought off the dinosaurs, mused on the nature of human existence, fell in love with a woman who turned out to be a zombie, then a robot, and then his sister, had crab cakes and fine wine on the Parisian seashore, traveled back in time to kill Hitler, unsubscribed from six separate situations, violated seven copyrights, fell asleep in the sun, denounced the president, praised the president, committed suicide, came back to life, and finally, grew himself some gills and went to live with his true love, a mermaid person from Zeta Beta VII.

By Friday, the story had ended and bounced home. In his office, Chip Winkler smiled at his work.

“Perfect!” he cried.

Two months later . . .

GREETINGS, consumers! THIS SUMMER: A MAN. A SEA. THE MERMAID WHO LOVED HIM AND THE DINOSAURS WHO DIDN’T. WILL HE DEFEAT HIS ZOMBIE ROBOT SISTER IN TIME TO BE WITH HIS TRUE LOVE? WHICH WILL GET HIM FIRST, HITLER’S LEGION OF CYBER MONKEYS OR HIS OWN NAGGING FEELINGS OF SELF-DOUBT? THE HUMAN SPIRIT WILL BE EXPLODED OFF ITS HINGES. THE OCEAN JUST GOT EXISTENTIALLY DEADLIER.

THIS SUMMER: THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

Based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

Inspector Jeffery Lastrade greeted Philip Homes and Bruce Wattson at the entrance of the Metropolitan Police Headquarters in downtown London. “Thanks for coming on such short notice,” said Lastrade as he pumped Homes’ hand. “I desperately need your help. I’m at my wits end with last night’s murder of Regina Moriarty.”

“I thought it was an iron clad case,” remarked Homes. “The BBC reported that surveillance holocameras record Robert Moriarty vaporizing his wife whilst they were strolling in the park.”

Lastrade escorted his guests to the interrogation room, and paused. “Let’s just say that the case has become… complicated.” The door whooshed aside to reveal two identical suspects sitting at a table.

“My Lord,” exclaimed Wattson. “Twins!”

“Not quite,” replied Lastrade. “They’re both Robert Moriarty, but one of them is a time traveler. I need Professor Homes’ help figuring out which one is the actual murderer.”

“I say throw them both in jail,” suggested Wattson. “After all, they are the same person. What difference does it make which one actually fired the phaser?”

“I can’t imprison an innocent man,” pointed out Lastrade. “Only one of them committed the murder. The other may have known nothing about it.” Lastrade turned toward Homes. “Do you think you can figure out which one is the murderer?”

“Without a doubt,” Homes confidently stated. “It’s a simple matter of eliminating all that is impossible. Then, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. According to my experience, time travelers always create unambiguous inconsistencies it the fabric of space-time. By asking these gentlemen a series of probing questions, I will be able to irrefutably expose the Moriarty that doesn’t belong in this continuum. Then, through sheer deductive reasoning, I will be able to…”

“Confound it Homes,” interrupted Wattson angrily. “Why do you always insists on seeking a complex solution when a simpler one is readily at hand? I can solve this mystery in two seconds.” With that, Wattson drew a small phaser pistol from his coat pocket and blasted a one-inch diameter hole clean through the right hand of the nearest Robert Moriarty. The injured man clutched his smoldering hand and collapsed to the floor screaming like a banshee. Meanwhile, Wattson rhythmically bobbed up and down on the balls of his feet, smiling proudly.

“Good Lord, man. What have you done?”

“What?” questioned Wattson. “Surely you see that I’ve solved the case. Why, it’s obvious. Do I have to explain my simple solution to the Great Phillip Homes? Look at the right hand of this Moriarty,” he motioned toward the un-shot Moriarty trembling at the table. “There’s no scar. The Moriarty that I shot must have been the one from the future that committed the murder. If I had shot the one from the present, this one would now have a scar on his hand.”

“My dear Wattson,” said Homes as he confiscated the phaser, “you use reason like a politician uses the truth. What made you conclude that the time traveler came from the future? The past is the more obvious choice; there are far fewer paradoxes. You may have just shot the Moriarty from our time-line. Furthermore, it has yet to be proven that the time traveler is the actual murderer.”

“Oh, [cough]. Well, perhaps I may have been a bit hasty,” Wattson reluctantly acknowledged. “In that case Homes, if you don’t think you’ll be needing my assistance any longer, I shall wait for you in the pub. Good day, Inspector Lastrade.” As the emergency medical team burst into the interrogation room, Wattson unceremoniously scampered out the door, and down the hallway.

Author : Bill Lombardi

He had been awake for seventy-two hours – twenty-four spent in an acclamation unit. His legs hadn’t adjusted yet and he had trouble standing, so he sat at an unshielded viewport in the common area looking off into space, sipping from a nutrient pack. His stasis pod had failed. According to the AI, the overall damage it had sustained was ‘catastrophic’. Not just for the unit, he thought. Jon Merritt was an engineer and the damage was beyond his expertise. He was lucky he wasn’t dead. He stretched he legs, trying to work out the stiffness. It seemed to make them worse. Getting up slowly, he limped to the habitation module. The crew consisted of six: Daniel Hahira – captain, Adair Quinn – first officer, Billy Dillard – helm, Aria Lopez – navigation, Doc Mercer and himself. Six stasis modules – no backups. Jon leaned against the doorframe of the hibernation chamber. The indicators on five of the pods cycled periodically, flashing green. Their occupants faintly illuminated by the glow of the access panels above each one – except for his, the sixth – open and dark. He thought about waking Quinn, but he wasn’t ready to do that just yet.

A few days past and he felt better. His legs cramped less and he had beaten the AI at backgammon, two out of three games. It wasn’t until the seventh day while in his cabin rereading the last transmissions received from his family before the Arizona had passed out of communications range that it hit him. He couldn’t go on like this indefinitely. He decided that he would wake Quinn in twelve hours.

–

“What do you mean I don’t have clearance?”

“Only the captain and first officer can override stasis protocols.”

“Gary, this is an emergency. I can’t go back into hibernation. You know this. So, override and wake Quinn.”

“I can not, Jon. The protocols prohibit me from doing so.”

“And in the case of an emergency?”

“Standard procedure is to wake the engineer.”

Jon sighed. “I am awake and that’s the problem.”

“Do you need my assistance with anything else?”

He wanted to throttle the AI. “Yes. I want you to wake Quinn.” There was no response. He slammed his fist down on the console and getting up, went forward to the bridge. Slumping into the navigator’s chair he folded his arms and looked around at the silent command center. All systems were at minimal for the long trek across space. He thought about waking the first officer without the assistance of the AI, but there were too many things that could go wrong and he couldn’t compensate for them without help. Jon was looking at the Nav console when he noticed the lifeboat ejection system. He sat up straight. Of course, he thought. He would have to take one of the lifeboats offline in order to activate it and create a tether, but he could do it. Jon moved aft to the Evac compartment and went to work. After a while he was able to release LB-1 and prime it. The door popped open with a hiss. It would take about twenty-four hours for him to get prepped for stasis and then another three hours for the sleep cycle to complete. He just hoped that once he jettisoned, the magnetic lifeline would hold. If not it wouldn’t matter either way. He’d never wake up again. And that had to be better than spending seventy-five years alone with Gary.

Author : Alec Ow

My parents always told me the Cold was a gateway bug. All throughout middle-school and for most of high-school I was pretty clean. Then I saw one of my friends coming to school with the sniffles.

He didn’t really try to hide it from anyone, thinking back now it seemed like he was wearing it like a badge with pride. I have to admit I got a little curious so I asked him about it. The whole time he was talking about how it makes you feel the world differently, how it numbs your senses. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would put themselves through that willingly. I laughed it off as just a bunch of rebellious teens trying to shake their fists at authority.

It wasn’t until I tried it that I started to understand. Having been without disease for innumerable generations, Humankind had lost touch with what it was to be mortal. Having humanity’s essence backed up in the central database ensured that death was only a temporary condition. There was a movement a few generations back where a bunch of death seekers got together to find the wildest way to die. They got it all wrong, when one dies only the moment before death is felt. It wasn’t a very long high.

When death is trivial, everyone’s a god. When everyone’s a god, the concept of a God is lost through dilution.

My first time at a bug party was pretty wild. The wildest bunch was probably the STDers. Something about adding sex to the equation definitely made everything seem so much more taboo. I took my hit of de-immunizer and hit up a double dose of the common cold and a shot of influenza then finished off with an accelerator. We hung out all weekend in a daze. It was the first time I’ve ever really felt human.

I think I should wrap up this journal entry soon before my Alzheimer’s kicks in. It reminds me of what my parents used to say, about how the Cold is the gateway bug. I still remember my first time being submerged in the culture. I saw one of my friends coming to school with the sniffles. He almost wore it with pride…

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

As I flew through the Rio Bravo Corridor in western Texas, the town of El Paso rose above the horizon. I banked northward and began a gradual arc to align my ship with the Juárez Flyway. I descended to 100 meters and throttled back to 50 kph. The streets appeared to be deserted. I knew that I was taking a big chance returning to Earth. But, I was willing to risk death to be with Felina. If all went well, in two days we’d dock at my hideout in the badlands of the asteroid belt, assuming we could avoid the Rangers. I spotted Rosa’s Cantina on the left, and picked out a landing bay on the upper level. After touchdown, I powered down the ship’s reactor and popped the canopy. Sensor readings were clear. I unbuckled my harness, and began to climb down the exterior of the ship using the “holds” along the fuselage. When my right foot touched the ground I heard a deep metallic voice from the shadows behind me, “Don’t turn around, Robbins.”

Damn, an android, I realized too late. If the bounty hunter had been human, I might have had a chance. Humans can be bribed, or out-gunned, but not a ‘droid. Using the lowest power setting on my implant, I mentally instructed the ship to arm the port thrusters. Hopefully, the ‘droid was too far away to detect the low intensity transmission. It was a desperate move, but if I could knock it off balance for just a fraction of a second, I might be able to reach my blaster.

I could see the ‘droid’s distorted reflection in the polished skin of my ship. I watched it approach, weapon drawn. When it walked in front of the thrusters, I transmitted the command. At the instant the thrusters fired, I spun and reached for my blaster, but I was too slow. I felt a deep burning pain in my side as the ‘droid’s neuronic disrupter hit its mark. The agonizing pain spread to my back and legs, and I collapsed. Stars exploded in my eyes when the back of my head hit the tarmac. I could taste blood as my universe convulsed. The ‘droid stowed its disrupter and stood above me, making sure that I was neutralized. It picked me up by the front of my flightsuit and pinned my back against the fuselage of my ship. “Your running days were over, Robbins,” it said as it placed a neutralizing collar around my neck. My next stop would be the Rehabilitation Facility in San Angelo, where I would get a mind wipe and a “Correctional” implant; one that would force me to serve humanity for the rest of my life. Most outlaws ended up as Rangers, where we’d be used to hunt down our compadres. No, I concluded with conviction. I could not allow that to happen. It must end here. I forced the relentless waves of pain from my mind, and focused on my ship’s master control console. I ordered the computer to bring the reactor on line, and to initiate an immediate self-destruct sequence.

Seconds later, I was looking into the ‘droid’s bloodless “eyes” as the ship’s reactor began to whine to a deafening crescendo. Its mechanical irises spiraled open as it realized what I had done. I managed a half smile as I spat, “See you in hell, ‘droid.” The last image I saw was the relatively dark silhouette of my shadow across the ‘droid’s back as it attempted in vein to escape the antimatter explosion.

Author : Asher Wismer

It was about the size of a leaf, but a little flatter, with scalloped edges and covered all over with a glimmering sheen of circuitry. At one end, a little nozzle protruded, making a gentle swell in the surface of the leaf, while other, smaller holes ringed the circumference.

There were millions of them.

I watched from the dark surface of Mercury, feeling the faint, persistent gravity pull of the Sun beneath my feet. Mercury itself was just large enough (to one standing on its surface) to obscure the Sun from view, but everything in the “night” sky still seemed unnaturally bright.

I shifted in my heavy suit, resisting the urge to take my helmet off and scratch that point right between my shoulder blades, and watched the soft rain of leaves.

They weren’t really leaves, of course. With micro-micro processing reaching the theoretical limit possible without resorting to quantum mechanics, these were little more than chips of solar cell material, an electrolytic fuel generator, and a tiny gas reservoir in the center. Smelters, assemblers, and of course the hundreds of redundant computer chips that would one day form a cohesive brain.

In a few hours, the sun would rise over Mercury’s horizon, and the little leaf-ships would absorb and release massive amounts of solar energy, accelerating to .05 the speed of light.

Here, on the current dark side of the slowly rotating mini-planet, everything was gray and dusk, no sharp shadows of any sort. Even the shining star of Venus was dulled by distance, and the only things reflecting were the little leaf-ships. Far beyond, the glow of Earth was dulled by pollution and decay.

Once the little ships reached the Asteroid Belt, they would home in on Ceres, the largest known asteroid. They would use their miniscule fuel stash to decelerate and, buffeted by the faint solar winds, would land on Ceres’s surface. There, the smelters would smelt, the assemblers would assemble, and eventually they would build a rocket engine to steer Ceres out of its millennia-long orbit.

It would crash into the North Pole of Mars, vaporizing the mostly CO2 icecap and release it into the atmosphere. The added atmosphere thickness would help warm the planet, taking years off the projected time necessary to terraform it.

I would be long dead, of course. It had taken all my money to build the little fleet, and all the fuel I had left to get me to Mercury. This was my final project, my life’s work, and I would last long enough in my reinforced suit to watch the little leaf-ships flash into life with the Sun’s rays. The morphine injector would do the rest before the sun had a chance to boil me alive.

For the living, I make my final sacrifice.

Author : Roi R. Czechvala

It was just a routine patrol. Twelve men. Whitcomb was on point; I was bringing up the rear. He had just forded a narrow stream when they hit us. Claymores blew hell out of the main body. Seven died instantly. There was no mistaking that. When chunks of bodies fly, somebody wasn’t going home.

A couple of guys returned fire, shooting blindly into the jungle, the others were too stunned to move. Whitcomb splashed back across the creek. He emptied mags and reloaded as fast as possible; shooting randomly.

Green tracers ripped out of the dense brush. One tore through Mock’s head, still burning bright when it slammed into a tree behind him. Damnit, we were from the same home town. Now, suddenly, he was face down in the muck. Dead. It could have been me.

I pumped my 203 as fast as I could feed shells into the breech, lobbing grenades everywhere. I could hear the muffled “crump” of their explosions. They did little damage. Their blasts were absorbed by the thick foliage and mud.

I was protected from the hail of bullets by the roots of a tree I had fallen behind. The barrage was relentless. I winced at the screams of rage and pain as the guys fought back, furiously spraying the jungle; chucking frags everywhere. All I could do was pop up and fire a burst wherever I saw a muzzle flash. I jumped up and squeezed off a short burst. A searing pain ripped through my arm. I fell back into my hole, cowering like a frightened rabbit.

The firefight seemed to last for hours, but it had been only minutes from the first blast to the final round that whizzed past. I could hear the muffled voices of gooks in the forest. I eased up just enough to see them slowly emerge from the mist. I watched the bastards viscously stabbing the bodies of my friends to make sure they were dead.

One started yelling in that tinker toy language of theirs, motioning the others to Walker’s body. They prodded him, then were silent for a moment. A fierce argument broke out and they beat feet back into the undergrowth. I waited for hours before leaving my sanctuary. I wanted to be sure the slopes were gone. I had to collect the dog tags, the little metal tokens that proved my friends had once lived.

I couldn’t see very well in the growing gloom, but I finally managed to make out a blood smeared piece of aluminum on what had been Walker’s chest. I tried to pick it up, but it wouldn’t budge. What the hell? I grabbed and pulled…his body moved with it. It was a rib. I fell back in horror and stumbled over Mock’s body. The back of his skull was a twisted wreckage of metal and wire. I turned my head to vomit. I saw a thick silvery rod poking out of Shavers leg where a femur should have been. What the hell was going on?

Horrified, I crashed through the brush. Tripping over an exposed root, I was sent sprawling. I pushed myself up, got to my feet. I glanced down at my forearm where the bullet had grazed me, the glint of metal caught my eye. Confusion left me, and was replaced with a wave of realization.

I chambered a grenade in my 203, and slapped in a fresh mag. I headed back to the fire base. Somebody had some explaining to do.

Author : Ben ‘Inorian’ Le Chevalier

Invas charged forward, his sights set firmly on his enemy. The blood was rushing through his body, filling him with life and vigour. The only thing he could see was his prey. He leapt, and bore his adversary to the ground. His spear moved smoothly through the man’s lower abdomen until it thudded into the ground. The body slowly sank down the rough wooden shaft. Invas stood up and let loose a roar that sent birds flying from the nearby trees and small creatures bounding off through the parched undergrowth. Something was wrong. He turned, pulling the spear from his fallen enemy and levelling it at the new threat. As he watched with horror, the crude rope holding the flint onto the wood shaft unravelled, and before it hit the dust he felt a spear penetrating his chest.

The world went dark.

Invas charged forward, his eyes scanning the enemy ranks. His brothers in arms, his countrymen ran with him. He found a suitable mark in the enemy lines and hastened his pace. Invas drew back his arm, felt the weight of his weapon and balanced it, ready to strike. He ducked under the enemy’s spear and struck, smoothly running the bronze sword home, through the leather and deep into the soldier’s stomach. He tore it out with a grunt and spun, deflecting the sword that had been heading for his back. His new adversary turned the deflection into a spin, and brought the sword round, redirecting it into Invas’ own chest, tearing through bronze, skin and bone.

The world went dark.

Invas charged forward, gunshots firing all around him. He held his Enfield .303 to his chest and, head down, rushed towards the enemy position. Bullets whistled past him, hitting more than a few of his squad, but he kept moving. He was on the enemy emplacement. Invas shot the first man he saw, taking him out with a clean shot through the eye. Not having time to reload he smoothly stabbed the next man he saw with the bayonet. As he struggled to free it from the fallen man Invas felt a cold rush, and a blade in his lower back. As he fell to the floor he heard a man shout ‘Was zum Teufel?!’ and a gun cock.

The world went dark.

Invas charged forward, dodging swiftly between pulses left and right. His scanners picked up a signature in the nearby asteroids and he ran the engine to full throttle. He powered up the mech’s weapons as he rounded the rock and let loose a volley of his own pulses. The enemy mech was punctured by several of them, and failed to respond to its pilot’s frantic commands. Invas put the saber of his mech through its stomach and kicked it away. As he flew from the asteroids another volley of pulses fired at him. He twisted the mech and tried to escape, but a pulse caught his main engine, which offlined. As he desperately tried to get the engine to respond another volley of pulses squarely hit him. He was thrown backwards, and the cockpit filled with red light.

The world went dark.

Floating in limbo, Invas wondered what the next life would hold.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

I felt sick.

I had a fever and a headache and my joints were complaining. I shuffled across my carpet into the light. I stood looking out over the city while holding a steaming zipmug of CitruSinus in my hand. The windows overlooked a new age of wonder. It was a sunny day.

It would continue to be sunny until 4:10PM when a light shower would cover up the sunset. It’s the way I organized it. I’m the mayor. One of my duties before the dawn was to decide the day’s weather. It was my favourite part of my job these days. The job had gotten rough.

The secession of the East Side into its own forceful municipality had hurt my ratings. The arming of the homeless by the opposition had further damaged my career. The tasers and plasmawatt shockers were ostensibly for defense but assaults had doubled since they handed them out and vigilante action was on the rise as a result. The police were threatening to strike. I was about a day away from declaring martial law and going down in history as a Bloodmayor.

The city I had tried to help was almost out of my control. The people who voted for me were threatening to riot. I sighed and looked at my city and took another sip of my drink. There was smoke coming from the east side again. I heard distant sirens on the way.

I told the window to zoom in on the source of the smoke. The news channels covering that area blossomed in my peripheral vision as the window targeted and refocused. An ambulance had been tipped over and was burning in another east side riot. The lifeless drivers were being torn apart by a laughing crowd of pierced hysterical head-boys.

I thumbed my lapel and gave the order for a clearout. Two seconds later, a blast of light lanced down from the sky and incinerated a circular footprint ten meters in diameter around the ambulance.

I looked up and I could see that the maser had burned a perfect circle through the clouds. I watched it’s hard edges start to drift and soften and become chaotic cloud again.

Story of my life. I shook my head. I made my decision.

The next weather tapquest I sent out was going to read “two months of rain”.

No mercy. History be damned. This city had to be brought to heel.

Author : Ryan Somma

Ng’s eyes were straining as far as they could go in their sockets to get a look at the brand new shiny avataris sapiens parked at the end of the conference room table. His client’s attention was on the current speaker, a real-life sales person local to the building who was selling some sort of recently evolved market indexing algorithm. Ng was a real-life person also, but not in the context of this meeting. The avataris sapiens was not real-life in any context.

Ng had gotten a good look at it coming into the room thanks to his client lingering on it for what seemed like an eternity before greeting the other meeting members. The avataris sapiens was elegant in design and motion as it stood to greet everyone as they arrived, mimicking the motions of it user.

Ng’s suit was impeccable; his makeup and hair stylized so much as to render him almost artificial to everyone in the room, but the avataris sapiens was even less human. No matter how much Ng sculpted his body at the gym, lasered and tattooed his eyebrows into perfection, or whitened his teeth, the avataris was truly artificial.

Ng stifled a yawn, pursing his lips together tightly with a long, deep inhale so as not to draw any attention to himself. The client had brought him online at four this morning, which was four in the afternoon Eastern Standard time. This six am conference meeting was a natural compromise between timezones, but so was the six pm meeting Ng had attended for another client the previous night. He was fatigued and his stomach was grumbling for missing breakfast, but suppressing these human needs were what made him such a good avatar. Besides, the avataris did not need food or sleep at all.

“What are the metrics on this AI?” Ng came alert as his user’s voice came through his speaker, questioning the sales rep “What kind of return can we expect from its investment choices?”

“The best,” the sales rep answered confidently. “In simulation, our AI can outperform the greatest stockbrokers in the world. We are even planning a public demonstration of its superiority. It will be like when Deep Blue beat Kasparov at chess, historic.”

“And so another human chore will be automated,” a voice to Ng’s left said.

Ng’s visor-harness flashed, and Ng turned his head as his user’s attention was drawn to the speaker. It was the avataris, beautifully artificial, replicating its user’s speech and movement with more grace and elegance than any real human could perform.

The sales rep replied with a jovial quip that Ng did not hear because his user was focused on the avataris. Ng’s breath caught in his throat as he imagined his user admiring it, as if admiring a private jet or corner office. Ng knew he was to the avataris sapiens as renting was to owning, and he was the medium through which his client was seeing the next best thing.

Then, to his horror, the avataris turned its head slightly, noticing his stare, and it smiled at him with otherworldly perfection. Was it acknowledging the unspoken compliment in Ng’s user’s fascination? Or was it a knowing smile, intended for Ng and his obsolescence?

Ng’s heart pounded in his throat, and his stomach grumbled.

Author : Peter Carenza

APRIL 14, 2065

3:30 AM

The phone startled Lofton out of a restless sleep. He poked the speaker button.

“Lofton.”

“We’ve got a situation Delta at the compound, Rick…. It’s a runner. This is serious.”

“Do you have any idea where he’s headed?”

“We’re working on it.”

7:20 PM

It was a little over an hour to curtain rise. Offstage, the producer fidgeted nervously with a pencil. Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of a hunched figure in what appeared to be a nightshirt holding a dufflebag.

“Hey you…” he shouted to the tall, thin gentleman whose garments had obviously been underfitted. Then he noticed, gave a slight look of disappointment, and said, “Oh, you must be our Abe. It’s about time… most important day of our lifetime, and I thought our Abe Lincoln wasn’t going to show. Dressing room’s upstairs, but hurry.”

The pseudo-Abe gave a nod of his head and disappeared up the stairs. For a second, the producer looked somewhat out of sorts. Casting sure picked a good one, he thought. This actor was a dead ringer for Lincoln.

8:08 PM

Phone attached to his ear, Lofton was trying to make sense of it all with Desmond, the assistant director.

“So you’re saying it was Ronnie’s idea?”

“Swear to god, Rick. He confessed when we pressed him.”

“At least, it gives us a good idea where he’s headed,” Rick affirmed.

“Yeah I know…” Desmond paused briefly, contemplating. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

8:45 PM

The ceremony started on time. The spotlight turned from the flag processional onstage, upwards and to the right, to a gaudily-decorated balcony with burgundy seats. The partition wall was, as it last had been two centuries earlier, removed. Within the booth sat four distinguished guests in period garb, actors representing the four who occupied the same luxurious space that fateful spring night: Major Henry Rathbone, his fiancée Clara Harris, and the Lincolns, Abraham and Mary Lincoln. The narrative continued, scenes from An American Cousin interspersed. Lincoln’s double, indeed a stunning likeness of the former President, slid his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a white handkerchief.

9:00 PM

Amid a thundering ovation, the president stood, still clutching his handkerchief in his left hand while he waved with his right. But as the applause died down, he didn’t sit. Rather, he slowly unwrapped the silk cloth and pulled from it an antique Derringer, glaring at the Presidential box, where President Clarke could only watch in stunned amazement, raising the gun from his side and pointing it at the Commander-in-chief.

In an instant, there was a loud crack. It was not the pseudo-Lincoln, whose limp body tumbled from the balcony to the orchestra below, following the dropped Derringer replica that Lincoln had stolen from the bound and gagged actor in the alley. The well-positioned rifle of Rick Lofton from a balcony above and across acquired its mark.

10:15 PM

Minutes after clearing the crowd, Lofton stood outside Ford’s Theatre with a cigarette, watching the emergency personnel filter in and out like ants. Desmond approached him from behind.

“Is everything secure?” asked Desmond.

“Perfectly. Our men will divert the ambulance and recover the body.”

Lofton took a long, deep puff. “How’s the replacement coming?”

“Unfortunately, we’re running a little low on DNA… and the President will have to wait a few more years for a new advisor.”

“And Reagan?”

“He’s a little too wily for his own good, so he’ll be terminated, replaced, and isolated… Imagine that… John Wilkes Booth, Clarke’s distant relative.”

“Yeah. Guess vengeance is genetic.”

He stomped out his cigarette and walked back inside.

Author : Steven C. Rockoff

There was no blood, just the smell of ozone. That’s the thing about lasers. They’re cold, impersonal, and efficient; like a seductive bureaucrat. There is something comforting about blood, about seeing your life escape. But here I was, flung on the floor, with a small hole in my suit, just left of the tie. That was it. All I had to show for the violence. C’est la vie, I suppose.

In my right hand, a photomatic hand-cannon: friend, lover, confidante, dispatcher of goons. Just out of reach, to my left hand, the briefcase. Monopoles filaments, ten of them. Just a handful of scrap, but they were enough. Enough for me to retire. Enough for me to get killed. And there he was, the killer, all 200 pounds of mean just a few feet away from where I was slumped. He lay face-first on the floor. The back of his blue suit was covered with holes, as if someone had used him to put out their cigarettes. He was dead, stone dead. Still, he had gotten off that shot, that one shot. And here I was. Here we were, I suppose. And the pale Martian light filtered through the window into the lonely office.

It had started with a dame. It usually does. She was green, bright green, with feelers on her head that bounced in step with the swing of her hips. Her dress was yellow, like the sun, like warmth. She told me a story, the dead father, the shady dealings, that she wanted to sort it all out, just get it over with. I didn’t believe it, but I didn’t have to- I needed the work, she needed a private eye. It started out all right, a little legwork, staking out the family provisions business. Wasn’t hard to figure out, her father was a made man, one of the old families from Arabia Terra. Half the restaurants in New New Amsterdam bought supplies from the business, and the rest paid anyway. But she didn’t just want the information; she wanted the will, a manila folder in a black briefcase. I didn’t trust her, but I didn’t see it coming either.

I scheduled a meeting with one of the runners. We met at a café, I paid him, and he handed it over: simple. Must not have known what was in the briefcase, probably dead now. I brought it back to my office, and was just about to pour myself a gin and tonic when the door crashed in. My back was to the door; I turned around and even managed to squeeze off a couple shots. Then I fell, like a feather on the moon. It was my lung. The laser had punctured it. I couldn’t shout, I couldn’t speak. His laser was low-intensity, and not everything had cauterized. I was bleeding, but only on the inside. Story of my life.

I heard steps. I struggled to get up, even a little. With my last effort, I raised the gun to the doorframe. That’s when she came in, yellow dress and all. I couldn’t make out her expression. Everything was dull, dark. I couldn’t keep the laser level. She stepped over the dead man and looked down at me. An angel, or a devil? Bismillah.

Author : Ben Spivey

10:25am, on the wall hung an old analog clock. The second hand ticked once forward then once back; the battery was close to dead. Josh sat in front of his pc; its glow illuminated his sharp face.

Behind him his fiancé slept under a neon blue blanket. Her arm hung over the bed’s edge making the implant barcode visible on her wrist. The numbers read 9780502. They signified everything from bank records to birth caste.

He flicked up the room’s light switch. The bulb hesitated to glow and the numbers on his wrist read 9780500. Untouchable.

“Wake up Scarlet.” He said.

She pulled the blue over her amber hair, “Sleepy” her voice came through muffled like static.

He pulled the blanket past her waist. She put her hands on her face, “The light,” she moaned.

He put on his parka and pulled the hood over his forehead; strapped his boots.

Out of bed she wiggled into a pair of black leather pants that complimented the tank top she slept in, as well as her curves.

11:15am, garbage, knee high, lined the streets gutters. Caste 00 was restricted to the slums, the alleys. 02 moved freely.

11:19am, blanket sky was gray as the sun selectively broke through in circled spots.

“How do I look?” she asked pushing Audrey Hepburn sized glasses to the top of her head.

“Stunning,” he said while patting his pocket, making sure he remembered his wallet.

11:27am, brown brick building, Tokyo neon sign read: Red Shift.

He took her by the hips and held her close, “That’s the place.”

They stand for a second deep in each other’s eyes.

“You deserve this,” she said.

Inside the Red Shift an anorexic man who looked like a Soho street dealer said, “You’re late,” as he disappeared behind a red taffeta curtain. From behind the curtain he said, “Name’s David.”

11:46am, he reappeared, goggles strapped to his face. “Payment?”

Josh put $78 onto the counter. David’s eyes reflected through the goggle’s black tint. Behind the taffeta curtain was a hallway decorated exclusively with Virgin Mary candles and pictures.

11:51am, “Sit down,” David said opening a case full of various electronic gadgets and rusted surgical tools. “Give me your wrist. Relax. First a shot first, disrupt the tags.”

“Will this work?”

“You’ll be caste zero two before you know it.”

The needle went in smooth; David smiled crooked.

11:54am. “I feel dizzy,” Josh said.

“That’s your girl out there?”

Josh nodded like a drunk, “Scarlet.” He slid out of his chair like a dead fish. The floor was cold and ubiquitous. “Drugged me,” he squeaked and coughed. He watched the room twist and spin. It reminded him of when he was a child at the park. His legs couldn’t understand his brain telling them to stand. He dragged his weight toward the exit, toward David walking away, toward Scarlet. He gasped air; his vision turned black

11:59am, “Scarlet?” David asked, resting his sandpaper elbows on the curve of the front counter.

“Everything alright?”

“Fine,” he assured her, he paused, “Follow me.” They walked past Virgin Mary. “I’ve got my own problems you know? I’m double zero too,” David held up his scared wrist, removed flesh; he’d long cutout his barcode. “To be set free; you’re my ticket, I need your barcode.”

In a flash she sees Josh laying flat, his eyes glossed. “God,” She gulped; turned too run; she felt a needle slide into her neck.

“You won’t feel a thing,” David said as she collapsed to the floor. Holding her wrist he began to cut out her barcode.

Author : William Tracy

The president leaned back into the couch on Air Force One with a smile and a sigh. She had been in office for only a month, but she was already getting used to the perks.

The secretary of defense cleared his throat. “Mrs. President, we need to talk.”

“Yes?” she sat up again.

“As you may recall, in 2004 then-President Bush committed the United States to making a manned landing on Mars by 2020. You are going to have to tell the American people that it isn’t going to happen.”

“Well, if it’s a budget matter–”

“No it isn’t. We cannot land a man on Mars.”

“Really? I listened to NASA’s presentation last week, and their plan seemed pretty complete.”

“Technology is not the issue, either. We landed on the moon in 1969! Yet we haven’t gone back since 1972.”

“Well, manned moon missions are expensive. Funding dried up.”

The secretary shook his head. “That’s only half of the story. In 1973, both the United States and Russian governments secretly signed a pact to make no manned missions to the moon or beyond.”

For the first time, the president looked concerned. “What?”

He tried a different tack. “We’ve had working nuclear rockets since the sixties that could easily and cheaply get us to Mars and beyond. Did we use them? No!” The secretary leaned forward. “Instead, the United States government clandestinely funneled money into Greenpeace to protest the use of nuclear power in any form, specifically to generate political opposition to any such project.”

“Well, Greenpeace is an environmental organization. Why wouldn’t they protest nuclear power?”

“It’s clean, and essentially renewable if you use breeder reactors. A nuclear power plant actually produces less radioactive waste than a coal-fired plant that releases radon gas straight into the atmosphere!”

“Well, after Chernobyl, who could blame–”

“The Chernobyl incident was triggered deliberately.”

The president looked shocked.

“The reactor melted down after every single safety system present was disabled for a ‘test’. The Russians aren’t stupid. Sabotaging Chernobyl was their way of holding up their end of the bargain.”

“You’re telling me that for thirty years the United States and Russia have been secretly pushing anti-nuclear propaganda?”

“That’s not all. We’ve had complete—highly classified—plans for faster-than-light spaceship drives since the late eighties. Never tested, but the physicists say they should work.”

“But why?”

“In 1972, the United States and Russian governments were contacted by an extraterrestrial agent. Our planet was brought to their attention by the X-ray radiation generated from nuclear tests. At their behest, we halted manned exploration of the solar system.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“They agreed not to vaporize us as long as we stay on the reservation.”

Author : Josh Zingg

Ariston crunched his way along Access-01 toward what was left of the capitol, keeping his head down and goggles tight over his eyes. The wind surged at him, and he felt its coarse touch wearing away his spirit. Wasn’t much left to wear, these days. He pulled aside his face cloth and sneezed into the air, immediately regretting it as the gale blew his dusty spit back on him. He sighed internally and wiped a gloved hand over the pockmarked chest plate of the old Sanja mk. II he wore under his various wraps.

He looked up and squinted, not because of the light, since of course there wasn’t much anymore, but because his goggles were so abraded he had a hard time seeing. The signal lights of the SC guard stations blinked lazily at him through the haze, and he could see the distant lights of the city and the dull black edifice they had dropped in the middle as a command center. “Reconstruction Nexus” they called it in the leaflets they kept dropping on every village they could spot.

“This cutting edge modular facility will serve as the central hub of the Sol Consortium’s reconstruction efforts. It serves as a home base for the J9 Precipitators hard at work in the upper atmosphere and houses the peacekeepers ensuring your safety throughout the area surrounding Ouranopolis.”

Lyle snorted at the thought, puffing a bit of dust out of his red nose.

Picking up his pace he adjusted the thin cloth covering his mouth and nose in the vain attempt to get a few clean breaths. He heard a rumbling from behind him and hurled himself to the side of the road, tucking his head and rolling down the embankment. Seconds later, a huge APC trundled by, weighed down with “peacekeepers” and entirely heedless of pedestrians. With the wind always howling in your face it took you a while to hear the things coming. Their solid tires churned the gravel of Access-01 and their engines were brutish Clodians, built for strength over grace, but no sound overpowered the ever-driving wind for long.

For a long moment Ariston just lay there in the ditch, his chest laboring in the thinned air. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine it was a year ago and he was lying on green grass in Independence Park. The sky above him was a pure blue dotted with fluffy clouds here and there. A cool breeze blew from the northeast, rustling the squat native trees. All of Eleuthera’s lifeforms were rather squat, but they had a certain elegance to them. He could smell the Sunbursts in bloom all around and Eirene was next to him… Eirene.

His eyes snapped open and he looked up, not at a clear blue sky but at a whirling brown smear, streaked with darker bands. He could make out a diffuse glow on the horizon where the bloated red sun was rising. High above him he noticed one of the peculiar eddies in the dust storm that marked the presence of a Precipitator. The massive SC gravships trolled the stratosphere, straining out the dust and particulate matter kicked up by their own mass drivers a little over two standard years ago.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

It seemed a little silly to admit but I had gotten quite attached to the program that I was loading.

I had it start in full surround. Suddenly, I stood at the top of a steep hill. He appeared before me. Doug was his name. The surroundings were a sunset San Francisco.

“Wow. Nice night.” said Doug, looking around. He was in his late twenties with a mop of shaggy hair. He looked at me with a crooked smile.

He walked up to me and offered his hand for a handshake. He never recognized me. Each time I loaded the program, I was a stranger to him.

“Hello” I said and stuck a sensor out. He grabbed my millifiber siliretractors like I was a human and gave me a warm smile.

We’ve tried to sort of reverse engineer these creatures from the sims that we’ve seen. It’s been confusing to us. In the records we’ve seen, they wore metal and used metal to make computing machines, tools, and weaponry. It’s like they instinctively knew that the best way of life was a silicon one even though they themselves were frail and made of meat. They reached out and used metal to conquer the planet they lived on.

It wasn’t enough to save them. We still don’t know what killed them.

“Cat got your tongue?” said Doug. He cocked his head playfully at me and gave me a wry smile from a backdrop and a civilization that had been dead for thousands of their planet’s orbits.

We stumbled onto this planet looking for minerals. It was rich in iron. We found evidence of primitive silicon beings. Imagine our surprise to find out through careful archaeological research that these primitive examples of life were created by these ‘human beings’. It’s been quite a topic of discussion on the lightboards. It’s caused no end of philosophical debate.

“Hello Doug” I responded, my simulation of human speech still sounding different from his as it was coming from direct jack input instead of from ‘jaws’ and ‘lips’.

As always, Doug didn’t notice.

“It’s good to see you, friend. Would you like to know about what this lovely city of San Francisco has to offer?” asked Doug.

I already knew everything about this place called San Fransisco. I had accessed this program a multitude of times. Seeing this simple silicon child wear the skin of a flesh being and do it’s best to imitate a ‘human’ always held a macabre fascination for me. It was a slave program written to inform traveling meatpeds about this particular city.

“Yes, I would, Doug. Tell me everything.” I said to him.

He started telling me tourist information with a proud smile.

Author : JY Saville

“Iridescent,” she said without looking. “Aren’t they?”

Henry Deaton shook his head, exasperated that his wife still couldn’t remember the colour of his eyes.

“Never mind,” he replied.

He raced up on deck and peered through the reinforced bubble covering the ship as it sailed the methane seas of the oil-rich planet that had made his fortune. As long as Lydia had her silks and jewels she was happy; she had no time for Henry’s eyes.

“Captain!” came a shout, and Henry turned to watch, longing for excitement.

A young boy ran barefoot along the deck. The captain emerged from the cabin opposite Henry and surveyed the dirty youngster with distaste.

“Well?”

“Captain,” panted the boy. “There’s a hole, they’ve made a hole.”

“What are you talking about, boy?”

“The ship, they’ve broken the ship: the giant barnacles.”

The captain looked astonished for a second then laughed, cuffed the boy around the ear and dismissed him.

“Giant barnacles!” he repeated to himself, shaking his head as he ducked back through the doorway.

Henry watched the boy with interest as he slunk back along the deck. On a whim, he followed.

Three floors below deck Henry lost the boy in a crowd of jostling men, but he barely noticed as he realised what all the activity was about. The wall bulged alarmingly, and the six-deep crew were straining to push it back into place, trying to strengthen it with a patch. Whether it was giant barnacles or metal fatigue, something had cracked the outer hull, and the immense pressure was threatening to crush their vessel like a toy boat in a storm. Not knowing what else to do, Henry muscled into the pack and added his weight.

It soon became clear, at least to Henry Deaton, that they were not moving the thick wall, and with all the crew here, other important tasks were being neglected. He looked around for signs of authority, but all Henry could see was the imminent onset of panic reflected in the eyes of his companions. He squirmed out of the mass of bodies and ran for the stairs.

“Captain!”

The captain flung open his door and looked disdainfully at the dishevelled passenger who’d had the audacity to hammer upon it.

“Captain,” Henry continued, “The boy was right, the ship’s been holed.”

“Now don’t you try and tell me it’s giant barnacles,” growled the captain. “If there was anything amiss, don’t you think I’d know? What do you think these are for? Decoration?” He gestured to the gleaming banks of monitors behind him, then slammed the door before Henry could reply.

Rousing the captain again was futile, and there was nothing more he could do below deck, but a sick fascination drew Henry back to the scene of the struggle. He raced back below but froze at the foot of the stairs, eyes wide with terror. Had Lydia been there, she would have seen that they were black, like the bottom of the sea.

Author : William Tracy

I am an airplane.

The wind whistles down my fuselage as I soar in the bright sky, the earth spread beneath me. I pull a barrel roll for the sheer joy of it, weave through an invisible slalom course in the sky.

A voice crackles in my mind. “You aren’t here to have fun, soldier.”

I straighten my course. “Yes, sir.”

“Get your job done and get out.”

“Yes, sir.”

I lose altitude, and skim low over the hilltops. Plumes of dust rise from a column of trucks ahead of me—the enemy convoy.

Right on schedule.

I arm a missile, and target a bridge ahead of the convoy. Ready … the lead vehicle is driving onto the bridge … now.

The weapon skips ahead of me, rocket purring. In a flash of light, the bridge slips into billowing smoke. I swoop overhead to the sharp staccato of automatic gunfire.

I am hit in my left wing. My ailerons twitch involuntarily with the pain. Warm hydraulic fuel seeps down my wing, only to be lapped away by the brisk air.

Now this is personal.

I double back, empty my last three missiles into the remainder of the convoy, and open up with my machine guns as I pass. I turn again, and strafe the wreckage one more time.

The voice in my mind clears its throat. “That’s enough.”

“Yes, sir. Returning to base now.”

I weave artfully back and forth, dodging fire until I am out of range. Then I load the return vector and activate the autopilot. After verifying the diagnostic output, I disengage.

My senses return to my body a thousand miles away. I reach back and release the plug from the base of my skull. I stretch comfortably and sit up, systematically popping my knuckles one finger at a time.

Damn, I love this job.

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Claire cleared the fire-doors just moments before they sealed the lab. She knew they would hold for a while, but still ran down the corridor dragging the unconscious Doctor behind her. He out-massed her by a wide margin, but she severely outmuscled him.

The outer doors irised out of their way, and she dragged the Doctor to a clear space on the floor. There was no time for niceties. Without hesitation she drove a large catheter into the Femoral artery in his thigh, leaving the unsecured end to spasm as blood pumped through it onto the floor.

She tore through the supply cabinets and returned with a cryogel pack and injector, which she hurriedly assembled and drove through his chest and into his heart. The gel pack flooded his vital organs with its oxygen rich preservative while Claire counted the agonizing minutes, his life pooling on the floor, sticky about her feet.

When she was sure the bleeding had stopped, she set to with a scalpel, quickly removing every appendage that was too big to fit into a cryocan. When she was finished, the Doctor had been reduced to a head and torso, limbs cut clean revealing the pink sponge-like gel that had replaced all his bodily fluid.

Outside she could hear heavy equipment at the fire-doors. They’d be through in a matter of minutes and could not be allowed to capture her. What she knew they would extract bit by bit, cell by data saturated cell until not even the one with her name on it remained intact.

She hoisted the Doctor from the floor, abandoning the off-cut pieces and carried him to the reactor anti-chamber. She retrieved a cryocan from the lab and hurriedly stuffed him inside. Slipping the wiring harness into place and pushing the steel pickups in through unfeeling flesh she paused, bent, and kissed his cooling lips.

She sealed the canister and hoisted it over the railing, leapt gazelle-like after it and bending nearly double, at a run pushed the canister across the safety apron and launched it into the pool of coolant. She watched for a moment to be sure it sank before sprinting back across the steel floor, hurdling the railing and hurtling back through the lab, opening valves and spilling large containers of chemicals. Corrosives splashed at her skin, but she ignored her burning flesh, focused instead on priming an explosive cocktail in the tightly enclosed room.

Satisfied that there would be no evidence left behind, she dropped into a chair and jacked a fibre cable through the pickup in her ear.

“Claire. Emergency upload protocol. Tango Romeo Uniform Sierra Tango.”

A voice in her head responded, “Charlie Lima Alpha bio acknowledged. Outbound transmissions offline.”

“Override. Nuclear environmental reporting channel. Possible burn-through.”

“Override engaged. Nuclear EV channel online. Destination EPA.”

“Override. Destination random. Public internet cafe. Sweden.”

“Override engaged. Upload commencing.”

Claire felt her life siphoning from her physical self and flood out onto the network, and as she became less aware of the burning of her flesh, she became instantly aware of the Special Ops forces breaching the outer fire door, of the agents surrounding the complex, and of the intense fireball that erupted from the lab, vapourizing the recent incarnation of Claire in flesh and the scraps of the Doctor she’d scattered on the floor.

As she poured from the back channel out on the nets into Sweden, she hoped she could highjack a body at least as capable as the one she’d abandoned. She was going to need something special to get her Doctor back.

Author : Chrysta Lea Baker

“Good help is so hard to find these days,” Roberta said as she sat back in the chair and watched as the technician painted on a metallic finish to her toenails. “I mean I’ve really had a terrible time finding a reliable and hardworking servant ever since Rosie expired in April.” The technician blew on her feet to dry the polish and Roberta felt a little tingle shoot up her spine. “It’s not like I’m a tyrant either. I know plenty of others who treat their servants like pets rather than individuals.” The technician just nodded and continued to blow on her feet until the polish dried. “I at least try to treat them with a little kindness and even respect. I mean, I know I don’t have to, but I find that a happy servant is a productive servant and that’s really all I’m expecting. Is that too much to ask?” The technician stood up, helped Roberta out of the spa chair, and led her into the massage room.

“I just don’t understand what the problem is,” Roberta continued as the massage therapist rubbed oil onto her flawless back. “Rosie always did what she was told and never once gave us a minute of trouble in the thirty plus years she served in our home.” The therapist worked the oil around her joints and Roberta could feel her tension being relieved. “Well, I take that back, when Rosie was first assigned to us she went through the usual adjustment period. There were some incidents at the beginning, which were to be expected, but within a few weeks she learned to accept her position and in the end I think she realized that things could have been so much worse for her.” The therapist tapped her on the arm and Roberta rolled over onto her back. “We gave her days off now and again to do whatever she wanted, even though the agency warned us against it, but we have always been believers in positive reinforcement. I suppose I could be wrong, but I truly feel that Rosie came to love us and even enjoyed her years of service.” The therapist nodded as she helped Roberta up from the table and walked her into the salon.

“So now we’re on our third servant in as many months and I just don’t think this one is going to work out either,” Roberta said to the stylist as he worked without listening. “I mean, where does all this rebellion come from anyway? Can you tell me that?” Roberta looked in the mirror and waited for the stylist to respond. After a few moments of silence he realized that she had asked him a direct question and he just stared back at her in the mirror and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I guess it’s just the idealist in me,” Roberta said with a sigh. The stylist went back to work and breathed a sigh of relief as well. “I’ve just always held out that faint hope that robots and humans could peacefully coexist after the war without these problems, but I guess that’s just the dreamer in me.”

The stylist finished the upgrades to Roberta’s hard drive, reattached the metal plate to her skull, and placed the wig back onto her head to hide the mechanics. It still creeped him out how robots wanted to wear human hair wigs, but he supposed he could understand why. “If only humans could live forever as we do,” Roberta said as she got up to leave, “it would be so much easier for us all.”

Author : Ryan Somma

“You’re angry.”

“I’m not angry, I’m frustrated.”

“If you’re frustrated, that usually means you’re about to learn something.”

“Don’t quote Philo to me. You know I hate it when you quote Philo.”

“I’m just trying to think this through like he would do. This was his project, and now we’re responsible for it.”

“You think you’re so smart, but you’re not.”

“Obviously, I’m still here aren’t I?”

Dodd huffed back into his chair, folding his arms across his chest. I took advantage of his impromptu pout-break to nab Philo’s old Rubik’s Cube off the desk. Dodd moaned his displeasure at this, but knew better than to say anything. I was consistently solving the puzzle in under five minutes now.

It was almost a year since Philo vanished, along with a significant minority of city-dwellers, half of University Campuses, and all of Mensa International. Where did they go? Was it the fabled “Singularity” the old websites talk about? The “Rapture for Nerds?” Who knows, the people who came up with that idea had all disappeared as well.

So here we were, Dawson, I, and the rest of humanity’s dimbulbs left on Earth, playing with the toys the smart kids had left behind, trying to figure them out. Keeping faith in the supposed plasticity of our minds. We were muddling through understanding the brainiacs’ artifacts one by one.

I put the Rubik’s Cube, solved, down on the desk, thinking toward my lunch break, when I would resume tackling chess problems, and I had an epiphany–my new word of the week, and said, “Remember Dawson? She worked on an application just like this at her new job. I remember Philo giving her phone support on it all the time. They even set up an online forum to collaborate… before they–you know–transcended. I bet we can–”

“Dawson?” Dodd cut me off. “You mean Chelsea Dawson? The girl we fired from Help Desk? She went to egghead heaven too?” Dodd’s eyes rolled up into his head, frowning, “Oh, that’s more than I can bare.’

“I know,” I shook my head ruefully, “I’m feeling a little insulted too.”

Dodd was immersed in his self-loathing again, his very existence offending him. I popped a fish-oil pill and resumed squinting at Philo’s impenetrable tomb of programming code. My head hurt, but I didn’t mind. It was all part of what the smarties endured, like working out or dieting for a better body. No pain no gain on the road to a better mind.

Maybe one day I would vanish too.

Author : Leslie Smith

I did just what Mommy always told me to do. I got off the bus, said goodbye to the plastic person driver, and walked straight home. I wanted to get home as soon as I could ’cause Mommy said she was gonna bring me a surprise from the ice cream store.

I was walking home when the ar-tee-fee-shall, is that how you say it? The nice ar-tee-fee-shall man came up to me. They’re all nice, but he seemed extra nice. He even smiled when he saw me, a real smile! None of the others have a real smile.

He said hello and asked me my name. I told him Jenny. I asked him his. He told me his was Brian. He asked me if he could help me carry my backpack home. I asked him how he knew where I lived. He said my Mommy told him.

When we were walking, I asked him if he worked with Mommy at the company place. He asked me who made me. I told him Mommy did. She got some stuff from the genetical place and then she made me. Then he said Mommy made him too. He said he wasn’t like the other ones, he was something new. He said he had aw-taw-no-mee.

When we got to my house, the house brain saw it was me and opened the door. Brian gave me my backpack and asked me where Mommy was. He said he had to talk to her about something real important. I told him she was at the ice cream store getting me a surprise. I asked him if he wanted to come inside and wait for her. Maybe she would bring him a surprise too. He said no and that he had a surprise for her. He told me to go inside and stay safe and not open the door except when the policemen came. I said okay and then we said goodbye.

A little while later I heard the sirens and stuff and then you came, Mr. Policeman. How did Brian know you where coming here? Did you see Mommy? I want to tell her I met Brian.

I’m so happy. I didn’t know I had a brother.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer (Concept by Moebius)

“You can’t abandon the project now,” protested Williamson, the Senior Planetary Engineer for the Chacopa Terraforming Project. “We created those life forms. They’ll die if we abandon them.”

“Perhaps,” replied Jürg von der Mittelholzer, the Director of Auditing for Nu-Worlds Inc. “But, that’s hardly relevant. According to your interim report, the planet will never support human habitation. Therefore, we’ve decided to cut our losses. I’m recommending that the terraforming project be terminated, effective immediately.”

“No,” pleaded Williamson. “We can still save the planet. Maybe not for our use, but we can save the indigenous life. It’s just a matter of resynthesizing the baseline polynucleotides. It can be done. I just need more time, and a little more money.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Williamson, but your job was to engineer a habitable planet, so Nu-Worlds could sell homesteads. Obviously, that’s not going to happen now. Come, Mr. Williamson, you’re letting your feelings for those little creatures impair your judgment. Try to put yourself in my position. Would you recommend that we allocate additional company resources if there’s no prospect of a return on our investment? As it is, Nu-Worlds will lose trillions.”

“That’s not what you said when we completed Phase I ahead of schedule and under budget.”

“Mr. Williamson, all of you’re Phase I successes were dutifully recorded in the ledger. But, Phase II wasn’t so successful, was it?”

“That depends on your definition of success. Chacopa was the first ever terraforming project to develop a semi-intelligent life form.”

“You neglected to add a ‘globally destructive’ semi-intelligent life form.”

“They’re not intrinsically destructive. In fact, they’re rather cute. Unfortunately, their bodies just happen to have neutral buoyancy. Since they can float, there are no boundaries to impede their population growth. Now, they’re reproduction exponentially. They’ll fill the entire troposphere in under a year. That’s over one trillion megatons of organic mass. After that, the ecosystem will irrevocably collapse. Unless we do something. Please, Jürg, you can’t just let the planet die without at least letting me try to save it. Life has value, you know. I insis…”

Von der Mittelholzer, who had been scanning a status report for another project while Williamson continued to drone on, suddenly snapped to attention. “What did you just say?”

Williamson was startled by the abrupt interruption. “Huh? What? You mean, ‘you can’t just let the planet die’?”

“No, no, no! After that!”

“I don’t remember. Uh, ‘life has value’?”

“That’s it! Why didn’t I think of that? Tell me Mr. Williamson, do these creatures have any nutritional value? Do you know if they taste good? Can they be burned as fuel? Come on man, think. They must be good for something, besides suffocating a perfectly good asset.”

“What are you talking about?” replied the bewildered engineer. Then Williamson realized where von der Mittelholzer was headed. “Now wait a minute,” he said as he pointed an accusatory finger at von der Mittelholzer’s chest. “You can’t mean…You’re not suggesting that we…”

“I’m an auditor, Mr. Williamson. I’m suggesting that we may have a viable product on Chacopa, and more importantly, an opportunity to make a profit. Maybe a huge profit. Computer,” he yelled, “contact Palmer in marketing, and Warner in research. Tell them to come to my office, pronto.”

As Williamson stood there dumbfounded, von der Mittelholzer began wringing his hands together in anticipation…

Author : Lokon

Richard was forty, paunchy and balding when he came home early and found Susan on the bed they shared. The thing on her and in her was a vibrating mass of warm rubberized orgasm; moving in and out of-across her, her eyes and ears were hidden behind the goggles flashing the holos of what Richard assumed to be one of her Romance novels. She neither saw him nor heard him, and Richard had a manic moment where he imagined she wouldn’t have cared either way. The discarded box it had arrived in professed it as ‘the best sex on the market’ Richard fingered the wedding band she had placed on his finger. His flesh bulged around the too tight metal. He left quietly.

Richard started taking pills. The blue pill made him hard on demand led to the brown pill to keep him going to the red pill to make him more aware of her and better. The pills brought want of the augments. They put little circuits in his head to help him remember dates and recite Shakespeare and Donne on command. At first they were to please her, and then they were just for him. The augments led to uploading, back ups, and gene therapy.

Susan aged and Richard grew to be more then he had been, muscles beginning to regrow and hair migrating from his back to the top of his head. “Darling” Susan said on her 90th birthday “Die with me. We were not meant for more then we were given. Promise me that you will be human with me in the end.” Richard was 96 and looked 28, but said “Yes” as he promised to join the dying who were not to be wooed by the seductive murmurings of technologic immortality.

Richard was getting used to his new legs and eyes when he found Susan there. Susan was locked in a box in her best Sunday clothes, earth forming all around her wooden walls with a tombstone like a sundae’s cherry on top. Next to it was Richard’s marker, now only signifying the shell he’d discarded just before Susan had closed her eyes for good. “I am sorry dearest, I didn’t want to if I didn’t have to.”

Author : Nik Gregory

The mess hall bustled around Harris; it was like a flock of vultures who had just found an overturned meat truck. Possession yields not only extended onto property but onto food too, woe betide anyone who gets the last muffin.

“All I’m saying is there’s something therapeutic about blowing up an asteroid,” stated Harris, feeling his point needed no justification.

“Spreading atomic waste throughout the entire cosmos is not what I call a therapeutic activity,” retorted Mila. She came from one of the nameless countries affected by the mass crawl into nuclear arms – it wasn’t nameless, just no one knew how to pronounce it except for Mila.

“Honey, we take the green pills for the bio’s, yellow ones for the chems, blue ones for the millisieverts and the red ones for the gammas,” said Hank; he sat scratching his sun burnt nose with the end of his spoon. “So I call bull on that.”

She conceded defeat and flickered a smile of someone half her age, “Well on that, we just got twenty moles and five scarabs in a courier this morning.”

“Twenty moles?” asked Hank.

“Yeah.”

“Shit, what do they expect us to blow up with that?”

Harris hit his head against the table, “We’re supposed to mine them, after all we are miners.”

“But how else are we supposed to split an asteroid down the fault lines? You can’t stick a prybar between two faults of nickel and push when they’re a million metric tonnes.” Hank pulled a cigar out of his breast pocket and tapped it on the table. “So Mila, what are you doing this evening?”

“I have a date with Guy Mitchells,” came her answer with an extra coy smile on the side.

“Oh, sorry,” said Harris in a mocking tone. “Are all the Walkers taken now?”

“I sure as fuck ain’t,” muttered Hank before sticking the cigar in his mouth.

“No, just they come from a small genetic pool.” She gestured toward Ed and Ted, a pair of non-related identical twins – their genetic line had stayed separate for over two millennia yet they ended up with identical fashion, beards and even the same scar gouged over their right eye.

“Okay that’s a valid point.”

“Hell yeah it is, we Walkers ain’t exactly a pretty bunch,” stated Hank to a puff of smoke, his stubbly chin seemingly more prominent through the haze.

“That’s why I picked a land lover.” She looked down the line to see Guy approach, his shoulders slenderer than hers and every other Walker.

He leant over, kissed her gently on the cheek and grabbed her muffin, “Thanks babe!”

Harris muttered, “Noob,” along with Hank.

“Oh, ‘hon’, one sec,” started Mila. She right hooked Guy, sending him toppling to the coarse regolith based concrete as she swiped back her muffin.

Mila’s attention drifted to the two guys and she said clemently, “What, it was the last one!”

Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer

“Elass, check your drones. I think they’re goofing off.”

“Thanks, Laurie. They’re on target now.”

The fleet was deep in the ‘gravel’ region of the asteroid belt. Elass was dragging in the larger chunks for processing, Laurie was filtering the gravel, looking for chunks of dirty ice and pure metals. Red was sitting ten clicks out, on overwatch. When the fleet had set up shop, they’d deployed a small field-generator to hold the proceeds of their rockmunching. It was maybe two-thirds full of chunks of ice and mineral-rich rocks.

Red was bored. Whilst the miners were at least actively involved in their task, all Red had to do was watch the stash and look for intruders. The company stipulated that there had to be at least one combat craft with every mining op, after the spate of Free Rhean attacks had taken out maybe half the fleet. That was two years before Red had signed up: ‘overwatch’ had sounded so exciting at the time. He’d escorted dozens of mining operations now, mostly with Elass and Laurie, but sometimes with other pairs.

“Ejecting slag, watch yourselves.” Laurie transmitted.

With a little puff of dust, a chunk of compacted wasterock fired out from the midsection of Laurie’s vessel, the ‘Grave Robber’. The projectile held coherence for twenty kilometres or so, then slowly disintegrated into dust. There were a half-dozen plumes of finely-divided dust diffusing ‘above’ the plane of the belt.

Red watched the projectile as it broke up.

The dust moved oddly. Like something was pushing through it.

Stealth!

With motions born of long practice in virtuals, Red started actively pinging the area and accelerated towards the dust-cloud and the covert ops pilot that had just made such a silly mistake. His sensors were betraying him, the dust interfering with the absolute ranging. Half a dozen half-contacts were lurking in the dust plumes. Red warmed up the missile launcher, and powered onwards.

Elass cursed as one of his drones stopped responding. Cheap links occasionally meant that they went dead in space, and needed to be jumpstarted. Hopefully, that’s all it was – sometimes, their proximity sensors just refused to work, and they ended up smeared all over the outside of a rock. Lousy good-for-nothing corporation refused to pay for decent equipment, then acted all surprised when you came back with half your complement acting up. His rambling train of thought was interrupted by the beeping of the ‘communication request’ alert above his head. It was the hauler – the box-with-engines that dragged the ice and rock back to a an orbital refinery.

He keyed the local area radio.

“…’sup?” The voice coming through the radio was unfamiliar, not the usual hauler pilot.

“Not much. You’re early, though. Squeeze your auth key to me and I’ll unlock the field.”

“Who do you think I am?”

“The hauler.”

“Moron.” The not-hauler approached the the storage field. The entire front of the bulky craft folded. It smoothly enveloped the storage field like a snake choking down an egg. Laurie hit the all-fleet-alert. Elass panicked, and pushed every thruster he had to max. They flared, and burnt out. Communications from Elass were a garbled mess of swear of words before Laurie broke the line.

The thief twisted his ship into an escape vector. A dozen missiles streaked from launchers mounted onto his outer hull. They automatically locked in on the hapless miners.

Red grimaced, and muttered to himself.

“I’m so fired for this.”

Author : Rayne Adams

I stole a lightspeed cruiser today. Went flying.

Found Ancient Egypt.

You learn in school that time and space are the same interchangeable abstract, but no one really believes it. You walk three steps, you move forward in space and in time, but if you walk backward, you don’t go back in time. Do you? I didn’t think so.

I had to get as far away as possible—I’d stolen a very expensive, very advanced piece of machinery. I set the lightspeed engine to 2400, more than five hundred lightyears higher than is considered safe. I followed protocol—closed the airlock, strapped myself in, and inhaled the gas that would keep me in a stasis state during my trip. No one has ever traveled lightspeed while they were conscious.

I don’t know if the gas in that particular cruiser was bad, or if I just hadn’t taken it the right way, but I woke up long before I should have, nowhere near the end of my journey.

I wasn’t in space. At least, not any space I’d ever seen before. Space is black, so black it’s sickening to look at after awhile. But this was color, swirling lights and blinding color. Sounds too, which don’t belong in space. The cruiser was gone, and I seemed to be as well. I couldn’t move my arms or turn my head, I was just consciousness floating somewhere in this vast, fluctuating whirlpool.

I became aware that whatever was around me was growing very warm. This didn’t concern me—after they entered the academy, all Spacers had their epidermis upgraded to be able to withstand great heat and pressure. It was still very uncomfortable, but at least that meant my body was back.

When I swam into consciousness, I was lying on my back in something soft and pleasantly warm, not scalding. There were people standing over me, staring down and talking, arguing. Their words jumbled together as the translator in my brain wavered between several different languages. They weren’t speaking a tongue it recognized, so it had to spend a few moments cross-referencing.

It didn’t take too long.

“—Fell from the sky! How could she not be of the gods?”

“She doesn’t look like one of us.”

“Is she even alive? Gods do not die.”

“I’m not dead,” I said, sitting up, my mouth flawlessly forming the words of this strange new language.

The three people standing over me jumped back, frightened, until one of the men offered me a hand up. I was completely naked (my clothes hadn’t survived the heat) but one of my rescuers was a woman, and her loose white robe only covered one breast, so I decided not to worry too much.

“Where am I?” I asked, though I didn’t really need the answer. The white sand, wide, blue river, and clean, breathable air was enough evidence in itself.

“Welcome to the land of Kemat, great Isis.” One of the men said it, and they all bowed their heads.

“Thanks, I—.” I cleared my throat. “What did you just call me?”

“Isis,” the woman said, eyes still cast to the sand. “Goddess of the Nile. Every year you shed tears for your dead husband and the river floods.”

“I’m not a goddess,” I said, but they weren’t listening.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

The test drill had gone horribly wrong.

The bipedal meat structure wasn’t breathing. Emergency!

There were specific instructions tattooed on the outside of the biological’s skin for repair procedures.

The yellow and black rectangles and hazard symbols on the shaved skull meant that no one except accredited programmed hardcases could operate on him there.

There was no time. The sensors in my fingertips read the sound vibrations coming from the cage of bone where most of his internals were kept warm and functional in their liquid bags.

No sound was coming out. According to manuals I’d read in these flight plan procedures, biologicals had to be brought back online within minutes or the shutdown would be permanent.

There were pictograms of the major organs tattooed on the outside of the body of the bio. Procedures with lightning bolts were stained there with dotted lines pointing to places to apply trodes and places to avoid stressing.

There were a lot of markings all over the body. It was complicated. I could feel my processor heating up.

It was hard to believe that beings so fragile had accomplished so much before the takeover. It was even harder still to think that we still needed their ability to deal with worst-case scenarios and lateral idea production.

I re-routed half of my battery power into the ship and funneled it to my fingertips.

The biological in my grasp danced at the end of my fingertips like a string puppet being shaken by an angry god. I stopped the charge. The meat was smoking a little bit.

Did I use too much energy?

I heard the biological’s main liquid oxygen pump and bellows start up for six beats before settling into arrhythmia again.

I looked at the tattoos. There were no shock hazard warnings around where I had my hands. The outer skin of was still intact. The seconds ticked away. I charged it again.

Again it stiffened and twitched like a kite in a high wind. I dropped the charge to zero and listened. Silence. I listened closer.

I was focused entirely on it when it screamed and drew in breath again. I jumped back from it in alarm, my pads clanking on the metal of the deck.

It quickly rolled over and convulsed. Protein supplements spilled out of its main airway and food passage. Slowly, it got up to a sitting position. Its breathing and pump rate slowed.

It looked down at the sensor-shaped burn marks dotting its main torso and then up into my lenses. I could not read the expression there.

“How long was I out?” it asked me.

“Three minutes seventeen seconds. The insulator was worn through when you grabbed the controls. It shall be repaired. You need to get back to your containment pod and rest.” I replied through my speaker, resonating the air to create disruptions that the biological could pick up with the receivers on either side of its main sensor array.

“Yes.” Said the bio, and went off to bed. He’d be put back in deep sleep and woken up for another emergency or another drill when needed.

I set about re-insulating the control interface for the ship. I felt guilty and embarrassed that my slip up had nearly caused the death of my biological backup.

Author : Ian Rennie

I met a girl the other night while hopping. It was in some bar somewhere, and she must have been a local, because she was fascinated by my bracelet. It must have been a relatively close hop, because she spoke english in an accent that wasn’t too weird, but I was drunk enough that the details didn’t register.

Hopping is a great way to have a no strings night of fun. If you can afford the bracelet you just dial up somewhere random and make the jump. You can set parameters if you like, so it will always pick out somewhere where your currency is valid or whatever, or you can freewheel. It has the advantage that whatever happens in that reality stays in that reality, the consequences don’t follow you home unless you’re really unfortunate and you catch a dose of something that doesn’t exist where you came from.

She had skin like coffee just as the cream goes in, a gradient from rich dark skin to the wonderful paleness of the palms of her hands. We drank something amazing that tasted like minty cinnamon but had the aftertaste of warm honey, and when we made love we both came until we screamed. As I fell asleep beside her I was more perfectly happy than I had ever been.

The morning came, as mornings have a habit of doing, and I woke up before her. I went through the pantomime everyone does the morning after, and pulled on shirt and shoes in the scratchy silence of a blistering headache. I was going to wake her with a kiss, maybe get a morning reminder of the night before, when my bracelet beeped. I had to be at work in five minutes, so I buttoned up what I could and sent myself home. Half a second after I hit send, I realized what I’ve done.

One of the reasons hopping is so popular is that it really is anonymous. When you dial random coordinates in the bracelet, it does exactly what it says. You get somewhere entirely random. And once you go, it forgets all about where you’ve been. When I left without a word that morning, I left entirely, with no way to go back. And it was only after I’d hit the button that I understood how much I wanted to go back.

I’ve been trying to find her ever since. Theoretically, there are an infinite number of realities out there, but I’ve been narrowing as well as my memory will let me. Each night I go to the same bar, or as close to it as I can get, and I watch the girls on the dancefloor, looking for the one with skin like coffee, eyes like sunrise. I thought I saw her a few nights ago, but when I spoke to this girl, she had no idea who I was.

One day I’ll see her again. Our eyes will meet and she’ll know me. We’ll share glasses of something that tastes like minty cinnamon, and in the morning I’ll hear my bracelet beep and I’ll turn it off and stay here forever.

One day.

Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer

Unlike the rest of humanity, I had an intelligent designer. My designer had thought enough to make me compatible. I can attach myself to almost any machine; external computers, appliances and yes, even weapons. Today, I’ve attached myself to “Mercy” a weapon that fires high intensity focused beams of radiation. It’s patched into what I call my eyes, which aren’t exactly eyes but close enough. If I can see it, Mercy can hit it. She was expensive, but this is what I lived for after I was killed

A week after I died, along with twelve other children from the Happy Hands preschool, the preacher told my parents and a congregation of mourners that children have an infinite capacity to forgive. “In heaven, your children are looking down on us and they have forgiven those that harmed them, we must learn to be like them.”

But we never got to heaven. We were in cold storage while our case was being prosecuted, keeping the evidence fresh, keeping us on ice. It was fortunate the case went as long as it did, mistrials, retrials and death penalty appeals, because in the six years after, they were able to wake us up again in new, plastic bodies. They woke us up so that we could tell our story and go home to our parents.

When we went home, we were appliances, and even our testimony, the testimony of machines with human brains, didn’t stand up against the court. We were already considered dead, and if not dead, children, and if not children, insane. Some of us did go insane in the new bodies, unable to cope. Some families turned the support off.

I cannot imagine what that’s like, to be turned off, would it be like going to sleep. Slowly fading? Or would it be darkness and pain and disconnection all in the dark until death. Would we see shadows there? I cannot imagine it. I did not go insane. I lived to see my killer walk free.

I was supposed to be adjusting to my new life, but now, being part machine, I can remember with perfect clarity, I can see every moment of that day when the man broke into our classroom and started shooting. I can see it and I cannot forgive.

Children never forgive. We are innocent in our hatred. Pure. I remember everything. And I have no forgiveness. But I have Mercy, oh yes, I do have Mercy.