365 tomorrows

Author : Ryan Somma

An orangutan and a brain in a vat were playing chess across the room from me.

It was a joke I hadn’t figured out the punch line to in five years of working here. The disembodied brain was Philo, and, lacking eyes, I had no idea how it understood the game. One of the psychologists who stopped in once a week to check on Philo was also stumped on this, explaining to me that Philo also lacked spatial reasoning. Philo’s understanding of chess, therefore, was purely as an abstract mathematical concept.

The orangutan was Odo. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he leaned over the board. When I first started working here, Odo would spend hours signing to me. He gave up long ago, and Philo told me the orangutan had decided I was incapable of learning. He was probably right.

Wee-Beep! Wee-Beep! Wee-Beep! A petri dish set atop a remote-control car thudded into my foot and my cell phone began chirping in response to it, which set the petri dish off chirping back.

This was Meep, a network of mouse neurons that had learned to drive around without bumping into things, except when it wanted attention. Meep just barely qualified to reside here, but I couldn’t explain how it met the intelligence requirements.

“Hello Meepster,” I said to the living toy, and stooped to pluck the rubber ball from its pincers. “Go play with Lug,” I tossed the ball so that it bounced off our resident Neanderthal’s forehead.

“Lug,” wasn’t his real name, Lazarus was, but the botched attempt at genetically engineering our distant relative just drooled and pooed himself all day. Meep was more sentient, and until Lazarus can wipe his own butt, my name for him is Lug.

“Pardon me…” Philo’s artificial voice drew my attention.

“I’m sorry Philo,” I had the injection ready in a few moments and quickly administered enough serotonin to get the brain through the afternoon. Without a steady cocktail of anti-depressants, being a brain in a vat pretty much sucks.

Think about that… When your house greets you at the door, when your refrigerator makes dinner suggestions, or when your car swerves to keep you out of an accident because you were preoccupied with your PDAI, remember that the road to all those conveniences was paved with the residents of this asylum, experiments that made AI possible and inventions that crossed the line into sentience, preventing them from making it to the market.

We have a responsibility to them. After all, they didn’t ask to exist.

Author : L.Hall

The mousy haired woman sat with tears rolling down her face in front of a cold steel table. Broken plastic, silicone pieces, processors, ball and socket joints, gears, pieces of leftover motherboards, all lay shattered, broken before her. The Omnicarp Corporation public relations representative sat on the other side of the table, watching her dispassionately.

Her eyes refused to look up from the remains as his mouth, monotoned, listed off the damages.

“Major structure damaged. Personal vehicle, demolished. One person deceased.”

As he finished each sentence, he punctuated his words like an evangelical preacher; The last consonant becoming two as he tried to give it emphasis.

“Ms. Holyfield.”

“Miss.”

Her high quavering voice the first indication that she was paying any attention to the gray gentleman behind the table. He paused and took a deep breath.

“Miss… Holyfield. We created our line of personal assistants to help with the mundane chores of the working person. To cook, to clean, to run errands and well, assist you. The mild Emotional Processing Unit was to help the unit be empathic and anticipatory to your needs.”

Her hair fell over her face as another sob wracked her slight frame.

“He was just trying to protect me.” she blurted out, her breath coming in gasps. The Representative walked around the table, and as per protocol, gently patted her shoulder in a show of sympathetic support.

“Miss Holyfield, Omnicarp recommends that you replace your units every year. How long had you had your assistant? Over time and…”

He paused, looking down at the broken pieces.

“wear, your unit became defective and it simply overloaded the EPU. When the deceased touched you, it caused a malfunction. We are citing that your unit was defective and per your default contract with this company when you purchased said unit, you will be held liable if you impart any other information to any media sources.”

The mousy haired woman shakily reached out to touch a small broken bit on the table, choking on her sob.

The Representative reached into his jacket and pulled out a small white envelope. He took her hand from the table and pressed the envelope into it.

“The Omnicarp Corporation would like to offer you a small compensation to help with replacing your Personal Assistant.”

The mousy haired woman looked up at the Representative, her mouth trembling. The Representative gently put his hands on her shoulders and began to guide her from the room. As he led her down the sterile hallways, quiet except for the momentary hitching of her breath, he began to speculate on the various ways their units had been used against warranty specifications. As they reached the main lobby, he pointed her in the direction of the showroom.

“Miss Holyfield, the Corporation is sorry that this event happened. Please bear in mind that many of the newer models are equipped to handle your sorts of needs. The smaller units just cannot handle the strain on their EPU’s.”

The mousy haired woman nodded slowly, tears still rolling down her face. Looking down at the white envelope in her hand, she wiped her face with her other sleeve and began to slowly walk toward the showroom. The Representative watched her for a moment, then started back down the hallway. As he walked, he pulled a folder out of his jacket and began to skim through it, sighing as he flipped through images of a Personal Assistant Unit that had been mangled, the stomach ripped apart and patched together with duct tape. The gentleman waiting for him in the third office had violated the warranty.

Author : Ivy Tyson

Sunlight sifts through fluttering reds and yellows, bounces off of well-worn bark and old crinkled stems to gently fall, scattered and warm, on the soft brown ground. A light breeze rustles the branches of the huge old oak tree, providing nature’s most impressive symphony as an accompaniment to the great, huge games of a five-year-old girl and her doll.

The little girl sits cross-legged, content in the company of the tree and her own imagination. She sings quietly to the cloth-and-paint doll in her arms, admiring its beauty and gladly ignoring its many scrapes and fading lines in favor of the warmth of its steady companionship. There is a single bright red leaf tucked prettily into her brown hair, placed there in her grand imaginings by a handsome prince, a token of his favor.

The girl’s mother stands in the kitchen of the house, watching her daughter play in the increasingly cool fall afternoon. Not for the first time, she is struck by the child’s utter loveliness, and wonders if every parent feels this way. She does not know. She knows no other parents that she can ask. The girl has her father’s large brown eyes (they must be her father’s, for her mother’s are a tired blue) and an inquisitive, gracious disposition that marks her as exceptional, even at this early age.

Her daughter has everything a child could wish for, except for what is perhaps the most important thing of all: companionship. The one thing the mother cannot give her child is a friend of skin and blood and emotion, not just of paint and cloth. She sometimes wonders when the little girl will ask, when she will discover that she is uniquely small and childish in this world of cold, jaded big people who think in equally cold and jaded ways.

The little girl is unaware of any differences between herself and her parent, whether in size or in perspective, and the mother mourns this.

She mourns many things, but perhaps this unknown loneliness of her child most of all. A crushing weight settles on her shoulders whenever she allows herself to think of the enormity of this one little girl, and of the cruelty and the kindness of the world.

So she does not think of it. Instead, she turns on the stove to begin their evening meal and allows her daughter a few more precious minutes to rule her play world with grace and power. When next she looks outside, though, and sees the girl framed by the sun and the rioting colors of a dying autumn, she does not see her daughter.

Instead she sees the only child on the planet, the last daughter of the human race. She sees the heiress of all man’s greatest achievements, as well as his most crippling defeats. This girl alone, because the other scheduled pregnancy, the boy meant to be this little one’s mate in all ways, has not survived. Her imagined handsome prince will never come.

In that moment, she realizes that she and her daughter are utterly unique amidst a sterile dying planet: the only child of the human race, and the only mother.

And for the first time since giving birth, she wishes that this overwhelming fate had been given to some other potential mother on the list, instead of her.

Author : Lillian Cohen-Moore

Friends are the people you call when you’re sick. Old lovers are the ones you call when you’re afraid you’re dying.

Times have changed.

We print a self-isolation guide in the front of phonebooks now. The Infected Hotline operates 24/7, 365 days a year. He called the hotline asking for someone to check him out. I asked to take his call as soon as it came in.

Leo has been infected once, with the UK strain. I listen and watch as he talks, sweat beading on his face. He’s scared this is not just a rickets-like resurgence. This is the real deal. The American mutation is more deadly than the Beijing. The American mutation carries a doubled risk of permanent brain damage in comparison to the Parisian virus. We’re both hand cuffed too far away to touch. Regulations and all that.

All I can do for him is smile.

Within the hour, a team will arrive. Leo Wyzotsky will either test positive or negative. If he’s negative, he’ll get counseling for the scare before he goes back home to England. If he’s positive, they’ll try to ID the strain.

They’ll do their best.

As for me?

I was bit by a twelve year old girl last night, who bled out on her way to the hospital. I had a choice when I came in here, but I ignored it. I didn’t tell my boss. I just asked for the next call. I was gentle when I got here. We talked. I walked him through what would come next. I hand-cuffed myself to the shower stall, after I cuffed Leo to the toilet. Its regulations, but it’s necessary.

It prevents us from trying to eat each other.

I’ve been talking him down for awhile, now.

They’ll test him first. Then they’ll me. If I test positive, they’ll take away my license. I’ll never be allowed in a Hot Room again. I’ll be confined to a desk for the rest of my life.

If you test three times in a row for American, it’s over. You don’t, you won’t—there is no coming back.

So I wait. 25 minutes. In 25 minutes, Leo will either test positive or negative.

I lick my lips and smile weakly.

“I’ve been up for about a day. It’s ok, Leo. Keep talking. I’m not going to fall asleep.”

I lost my husband during the first flush of the pandemic. I’ve never slept well since those days. They say part of it’s residual brain damage from the first infection.

In 20 minutes, they will evac Leo from this hotel room before they shoot me in the head. In the old days, we had friends to call when we were sick. Old lovers to call when you thought you might be dying.

Things don’t happen like they used to.

Author : Charles Spohrer

”EAT SAND NOW!”. The humans hit the hot sand as the mortar shell screamed towards them. The surrogates did not move. They stood still as the flowering debris sandblasted their metallic shells.

Hector made sure he landed on the ground behind the surrogates. They might not be too quick in the brain, but they sure could backtrack return fire. You just did not want to be in front of them when they did.

Hector was squad leader, which only meant he had survived the longest. The surrogates did not have rank, but there were only two other humans in his squad. Dwight was another draftee like himself. His parents couldn’t afford a replacement, so here he was in the middle of the desert.

Bennie, well. His parents ran out of money after his third surrogate got wasted. He owed three tours of duty now, and this was his first. That was the bargain. Those that could, paid for a metallic replacement. If your surrogate did not survive the tour of duty, you had to finish it out. The surrogates with the most trained neural nets were in the most demand and so fetched the highest prices. The cheapest ones, of course, had the least trained brains. They did not last long.

“Charlie squad. Move out”. The command came over Hector’s ear piece. He looked to Dwight, and said. “Ready?” Dwight nodded his head, and took a drag on the water tube. He moved to crouch behind one of the metal men.

Hector rolled over to Bennie. “Ok, here is what I want you to do. Let the tin cans lead. You stick close behind A-17. Keep him between you and the building. Ok? “ Bennie mumbled something. “Hey, don’t worry. A-17 knows what he is doing,“ said Hector. He patted Bennie on the shoulder, and then moved over behind another metal man.

“Ready. Standard frontal assault. Execute.” With that the surrogates moved towards the building. Hector saw two surrogates close up together in front of Dwight. Hector knew that overall control of tactics belonged to himself, but the others could make minor adjustments with individual surrogates. Hector did not demand perfect adherence to command and control. Surviving the fire fight came first. Some squad leaders micromanaged their missions, not always successfully.

“Bennie, stay close to A-17. He’s been around a long time, so use him.” Bennie closed ranks on the surrogate. Hector followed close behind his own tin can man.

Rocket propelled grenades took out the two surrogates on point. Machine gun fire erupted around them as they ran across the road. A few rounds pinged off the metal man in front of Hector.

The lead surrogate lobbed in a grenade through the doorway, and immediately went through. The explosion blew out the windows, the door, and some parts from the surrogate.

More surrogates leaped into the building. As the smoke cleared, metallic calls of all clear began to fill the haze.

He paused at the door, and looked down at the remains of the surrogate that had stormed the building. He thought to himself, they learn quick, or they don’t learn at all.

Dwight came out of the building, and said. “All secure.” He looked down at the mangled parts at Hector’s feet. “Hell of a way to pay for a war.”

Hector looked about. He couldn’t leave the surrogates milling about aimlessly. “Secure building. Execute,” he called.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

The Jupiter’s Cup is the most famous and most prestigious graviton propelled regatta in the solar system. Graviton sailing enthusiasts were particularly excited this year because of the rare celestial positioning of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Each gas giant was located at the apex of an equilateral triangle. This configuration, in combination with the Sun’s overpowering gravity well, was ideal for racing Graviton Propelled Sailing Ships (GPSS). The four billion mile regatta starts at Jupiter, loops around Saturn and Uranus, and then finishes at Jupiter approximately a week later.

By convention, the ships are required to be single hull Dalton Spaceyachts, with a Newtonian “mainmast” mounted on the waist deck. Newtonian mainmasts are rigged with four graviton lugsails. The lugsails are arranged in a tetrahedral, that is, each of the four lugsails is oriented exactly 109.47 degrees from the other three. The lugsails project extremely large (one million square mile, maximum), invisible, teardrop shaped force fields into space that are designed to “catch” the gravitons, and/or antigravitons, associated with astronomical bodies. The beauty of this technology is that each of the lugsails can be targeted to the characteristic exchange particles from a specific astronomical body. For example, by targeting the Alpha-sail to Jupiter’s antigravitons, and the Beta-sail to Saturn’s gravitons, the ship will be pushed by Jupiter, and pulled by Saturn, achieving tremendous velocities. For additional propulsion, or for navigational control, the Gamma and Delta-sails can be targeted to other bodies, such as the sun, a moon, or another distant planet. Under the optimal conditions, a skilled crew could achieve velocities of over 30 million miles an hour.

–

There are few moments in a GPSS race that are more stressful and strategically more important than the start. The nine ships in the regatta were jostling for position in the gap between the orbits of Ganymede and Callisto. The SS Vigilant held position near Ganymede’s western hemisphere, electing to take advantage of the moon’s greater mass. Some ships chose to take advantage of Callisto’s more distant orbit, which was almost a million miles closer to Saturn. Others meandered between the orbits of Ganymede and Callisto, trying to build up kinetic energy, rather than potential energy. Although risky, they could get both, if they guessed the time of the starting signal correctly.

The Vigilant’s Navigator and Tactician carefully watched the sensor data, mentally keeping track of the other eight ships, and the exact locations of the four Galilean moons. Even distant Io could provide an additional antigraviton boost if the start of the race was delayed by an hour. The Helmsmen stood at the controls ready to adjust the ship’s course at a moments notice. The Grinders and Trimmers were at their stations awaiting the command to deploy and/or modulate the graviton sails. The Skipper stood proudly in the center of the main deck with his hands clasped comfortably behind his back. He smiled with anticipation as he looked out the forward viewport. As he watched, a fourth “star” suddenly appeared in the Hunter’s Belt in the Orion constellation; it was the flare signaling the start of the race. “Inertial dampers on full,” he ordered. “Execute the sprint, Mr. Burton.” The Skipper reached out and grabbed the handrail to steady himself against the upcoming forward surge.

“Aye-aye, Skipper,” replied Burton as he signaled the crew. The Vigilant leaped from Ganymede’s clutch as it accelerated outward toward its eventual rendezvous with the distant ringed planet. At present, the Vigilant was behind the other ships, but she was quickly closing the gap.

Author : Jared R. Cloud

The General and the Secretary of State sat in the Oval Office, waiting for the new President to return from the bathroom. Although both had jumped in their seats when they first heard him vomit, he was on his third or fourth round now, and they were no longer startled by the sound. Finally, his stomach empty, the President walked out of the bathroom and sat down behind his desk without meeting his visitors’ eyes.

When he had composed himself, he looked up. “Pardon me. Something I ate didn’t agree with me, I suppose.”

The Secretary of State, a lifelong diplomat, nodded his head. “Of course, Mr. President.”

The General, who had been promoted for her victories in the field, not her skills at Pentagon politics, kept her silence.

“Just so I’m sure I understand the situation,” the President said, “can you give it to me again?”

The General stood up. The PowerPoint projector was still running and connected to her laptop. She quickly scanned through the slideshow until she came to the summary slides at the end.

“The alien spacecraft that took up orbit around the Earth eight months ago was, we now know, simply a scout. At the time, your predecessor questioned whether a ship of that size, with a crew of only three beings, was stable enough to make the trip through interstellar space without support.”

“Fine. I’ll call the old man first thing in the morning and apologize for all of the nasty things I said about him during the campaign. Skip to the part where the mothership shows up and the captain starts making demands.”

“Not just the captain of a ship, Mr. President,” the Secretary of State said. “The linguists we’ve had working on the language tell me that the word is closer in meaning to ‘king.’ Or ‘queen.’”

“Maybe you’re wrong about what the damn thing wants?”

The Secretary of State said, “We’re pretty confident, Mr. President. They think there’s something special up there, and they want it for themselves.”

“The ship’s defenses?” The President asked, pleading.

“The results from our one attack showed it to be impervious even to nukes, Mr. President,” the General said.

“And if they win, they’ll just take it? How?”

Nobody had an answer.

The intercom buzzed. “Mr. President. It’s time for your jiu-jitsu lesson.”

The General arched an eyebrow. “Jiu-jitsu, sir?”

“Taekwondo every morning. Judo every evening. Other martial arts in the afternoon, for variety.” The President stood to leave. “I’ve had to delegate most duties to the Vice President. He’s going to sit in this chair soon enough.”

The General and Secretary of State stood up as well. “Have a good lesson, Mr. President.”

The President smiled sadly. “It isn’t fair, is it? I mean, they could’ve told us before the election.”

#

The President enjoyed the light lunar gravity more than he thought he would. Alone as the aliens had directed, he felt strong and fast as he bounded into the airlock of the alien ship. His confidence seeped away when he realized how large the corridor was. He bounded unhappily into the amphitheater; he knew the seats were filled by aliens thrilling to see him or their own ruler die. War reduced to personal combat by the leaders of each side, and the President had — after the aliens had destroyed Lubbock as a demonstration — agreed. Win or lose, they’d promised to leave the Earth alone.

The alien king, twelve feet tall, entered the amphitheater. The President saw that he had claws.

The President wondered what nights would be like without the Moon.

Author : Alex Moisi

Maya knew that she was dying. You didn’t need to be a bio-mechanics expert to know that the nanoids inside her body were running out of energy. The climate and gravity of this remote planet were taxing the minuscule robots more than she had expected. Soon they would run out of energy, and without them her body would collapse on itself. She needed a booster shot, but there were no more. She had made sure of that when she set fire to her laboratory.

It was a shame, but it had to be done. She created the nanoids, dreaming of all the medical and engineering applications. But instead of doctors and scientists, the first to visit her were generals. They poked around with hungry glances, and kept asking the same questions.

“How soon can we give it to soldiers? How deadly can it make them? How dangerous?”

Call her an idealist, but she was sick of the endless wars. She knew where her research grant came from, but she had hoped the government would use the nanoids in hospitals. Slim chance. If it could kill someone, they would throw it onto the battlefield.

In the end she did the only reasonable thing. Looking back she felt a tinge of regret, maybe she had been stupid giving up on all those resources, the fame, the early retirement, but then again, she was sick of the air raid alarms and newscasts about another planet being destroyed, millions killed. A general promised to her, before leaving her laboratory busy with interns and robot researchers, that it will all be over when they will have this new weapon. But what if the enemy took a batch of nanoids for a dead body? What if everyone had super soldiers who could heal ten times faster, didn’t need spacesuits and could carry more weapons than a tank? Would it really be over?

“Do you think I’m stupid?” she asked the lioness in front of her.

The metallic head didn’t move. It was nothing more than a statue composed out of various alloys and organic connectors, but soon it would be much more. Maya smiled. She knew they would search for her, they would trace the spaceship she used to escape and they would find the planet. Her creation was too important to ignore, too much was invested in the tiny nanoids.

“But you’ll take care of them, won’t you?” she said.

She did not expect an answer. The creature’s eyes were empty, although soon they would be filled with the flow of nanoids. In a robotic shell, her creations could survive for centuries, and Maya would make sure they were programmed to defend themselves.

“I would love to see how they react inside a mechanical body,” she murmured. Sadly it could not be helped; without the tiny robots the alien planet would kill her in an instant. But, alas, unlike destruction, creation always required sacrifice.

Author : Glenn Blakeslee

At four in the morning the alarms went off. Lois hardly stirred, but I went downstairs to the kitchen, started a pot of coffee, and then slogged my sorry ass to the control console, next to the laundry room.

Red lights glared from the temperature control panel. The needles showed an overtemp in the secondary thermocouple but normal temperatures in the primary, so I couldn’t tell if the relay was actually over-heating or if the secondary had failed again. I dialed down the master motor-control rheostat a couple of notches —losing precious speed— but the warning light didn’t go out, so instead of doing anything more I went to the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee, and waited until dawn.

I spent most of the day under the home. Replacing the thermocouple dimmed the warning light but I could feel, just by a touch on its titanium casing, that the number three stepper motor was running much too hot. I took the motor offline and spent a few hours tightening and replacing coolant lines. I inspected the narrow yard-tall wheels on the rear outboard truck assembly and ended up replacing the bearings on two of the twelve wheels.

Around noon Lois came down the stairs, shook her head and grinned at me. “Come on up for lunch, Herb,” she said. It was a nice day, cool for summer, so we ate sandwiches and watermelon on the veranda.

After lunch I climbed to the roof, and in the strong midday sun I dusted off the solar panels and checked the alignment on the control linkage. I stood for a while admiring our new cupola, built a few weeks ago toward the front of the house. It was expensive, but Lois and I both believed the cupola completed our home.

Lois invited the Smiths from next-door over for supper. I grilled steaks on the patio while Bill Smith drank my beer and Lois and Dorothy Smith sat gossiping. “Nice cupola, Herb,” Bill said, gloating.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Sure,” Bill said. “That thing must weigh a couple tons.” Bill’s home had been inching past mine for the last year. He’d gained nearly half a house on me.

“Lois and I love the cupola,” I said.

“You should have gotten the high-performance relays instead. Like I did,” Bill said.

“I think the cupola is beautiful!” Dorothy said with a smile.

After the Smiths left we cleaned up, and I went to the control console and moved the master rheostat up a notch. No warning lights came on. The indicators showed that we’d moved a little less than thirty-three inches that day.

At dusk Lois and I climbed the stairs to the cupola. We opened the windows, let the breeze in. “Bill isn’t racing you, you know,” Lois said.

I put my arm around her shoulders. “The hell he isn’t,” I replied, and I kissed her.

From the cupola we could see the neighborhood as it stretched toward the horizon, each home moving at its own good speed. We were heading toward the sunset, the sky before us streaked with red and gold and salmon. I was happy.

From the cupola I could see that, from here, it was all down hill.

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

The bullet blistered past the right side of Stryker’s helmet, so close that for a good minute or so he was deaf in that ear before the pain gave way to a dull ringing.

“Stupid bastard,” he muttered under his breath.

The sniper he’d been tracking for the past few weeks was across the street, in another row of vacated low rises. Hiding in the rubble, clambering across broken rooftops and crawling through battered buildings, they were playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse.

The Sergeant, hugging the floor, crawled the length of the room and squeezed through a broken partition into an adjacent building.

It was his crew that cleared the way when they colonized this planet, before the locals decided to defy the company and separate. He’d fought hard for this rock, and he’d be damned if some dumb-ass villager with a rifle was going to stop him from keeping it under company control.

Stryker flattened himself against the back wall in the darkness, irising his goggles out full to capture every available lumen. Plucking a fist size chunk of rubble from the floor he tossed it sideways through the hole he’d just crawled through. There was the barest of whispers as a bullet split the air, but in the muffled muzzle flash he could make out the faint silhouette of the body coiled in the darkness behind it.

Very slowly he raised his weapon, pausing only to freeze and adjust the image in his heads up before squeezing off three rounds in a tight rising line.

Drop.

Breathe.

Without hesitation, Stryker crawled until he found a hole in the floor he could squeeze through, dropping silently into the room below. He ran, hurdling an empty window frame and raced across the vacant street. Slipping through a crumbling doorway he stopped. Above him, close by, he should find his wounded opponent.

It took an eternity to find a route to the second floor, and longer still to pick his way through the wreckage to the room in which the sniper had taken refuge. Stryker had shouldered his rifle in favour of a large bore handheld, the longer weapon unwieldy in close quarters. He could hear laboured breathing from outside the room, and though his weapon was at the ready, nothing could have prepared him for the child lying bleeding inside.

Only one of his shots had found its target, tearing a bloody hole in her torso. The rifle that had been so deadly accurate lay forgotten at an angle across her legs, the weapon nearly half as long as she would be tall. Her bare feet were calloused and bloody, her body lean and muscular but visibly undernourished. He couldn’t fathom how she’d managed to heft the weapon, much less kill a dozen of his unit with it.

Large tear filled eyes met his in the gloom.

He lowered his weapon, struggling over whether to try to save her, or put her out of her misery here. The lives she’d taken wouldn’t make it easy for her if she survived the trip back.

He was still undecided when he heard a round chambering beside his still ringing right ear.

“This is our rock,” the second woman stood just out of reach, face invisible beyond the gaping maw of the barrel leveled at his head, “you stupid bastard.”

Author : Waldo van der Waal

“Did anybody see you?”

The tone of voice left no doubt with Neville Fox that his answer would have a profound impact. He studied the face of the man before him. General John G. Cooper was not a man to be trifled with. The tattoos on his forehead distinguished him as a combat veteran, and the ocular implant, linked to the Ministry’s infinite resources marked him as a member of a very small group of men that held the keys to everything in the known universe.

The mission was a routine one. Or so it had seemed at the time. Fox had received his briefing directly from the General, before being escorted as usual to the Ostium – the machine that had shaped everything for eons.

“They might as well have called it Deus,” he had thought silently to himself as he arrived at the sealed entrance. The guard hardly glanced at him.

“Sign.”

He placed his hand on the biomat.

“Speak.”

“Neville Fox, MA329941. Mission 019.”

The holographic door dissovled soundlessly, revealing the interior of the Ostium. The room he entered was cramped, dimly lit and musty. He took off all his clothes, the laser rings and aural connectors, and placed the items on a metal rack. Next he took one of the fully charged Return Keys from the charging dock, activated it and swallowed it. If you want to take something along, it has to be inside you.

“Neville Fox, MA329941. This is Mission 019. Please lie down.”

Fox had never met the Ostium operator. He didn’t know if it was a he or a she, or even if it was human. But he always obeyed. And this was his 19th mission. One more after this, and he would not have to worry about credits ever again.

He rested his head on the cold, metal indentation, and placed his arms and legs into the molds. The transportation device itself was a barren stretch of platinum, with the indent of a male form on its surface. But underneath, it was linked to electronic wonders that would’ve escaped the human race for eons, had they not made Contact when they did. And then came the pain.

It felt as if every atom of his body was sucked from his very bones. Downward, into the platinum below him. Neville Fox ceased to exist.

At the very same instant, he arrived at the coordinates that the mission required. And then it was into the familiar routine: Find clothes, blend in, acquire a weapon, complete the mission. Talk to no one if it can be helped, and above all – make sure you aren’t seen at the wrong moment.

Everything had gone smoothly. Clothing, a weapon, concealment on a grass-covered hill. Then the wait, which was mercifully short this time.

He had peered down the busy road from his hiding place. Identified the target in the open-top car, coming slowly down the street, in between the thousands that line the road with American flags. Aim. Breathe. Wait. And then the shot.

Fox hadn’t even waited to see the result. He knew he had killed the target. Tearing the clothes from his body even as ran, he paused only to place the rifle into a deep hole near his hiding place. A hole that would cease to exist in only a few seconds. He manipulated his adam’s apple, activating the Return Key where it had lodged. In downtown Dallas a man who was never there, suddenly ceased to exist.

He met the General’s gaze squarely. “No sir,” he said confidently, “No one saw me.”

Author : Carter Lee

-flash-

There was no one else, anymore. Something had happened, and I am all that is left. Here on this empty, dusty stretch of nothingness. Grey plane stretched out on all sides, merging with the grey sky, lit only by a dim sun. There was no one, there was nothing, just me, and the plain, and the sky.

I had walked, for a while. However, nothing and no one existed here, except me, and so I just sat. I looked at the plain, and at the sky, and breathed the still air in and out.

All alone. I closed my eyes.

-flash-

I woke as the helmet lifted off my head, and the safety bars retracted. I slid out as the next user slid in, our chests brushing and our breath mixing as we changed places. She didn’t look at me, but at the alcove, her eyes filled with hunger and anticipation. No doubt, my eyes held the same hunger, but now that my time was up, the hunger would be replaced with regret.

I pulled my gaze away, and looked at the mass of people passing in front of me. The corridor was filled with a never-ending mass of hurrying men and women, their eyes fixed on the back in front of them as they sped past, endlessly, without pause. God help the person who came out of step with the person behind or in front of them. Just yesterday, more than 200 hundred people had died in one of the North6LevDown corridors, trampled when the Hall Monitors hadn’t been able to divert the flow fast enough.

I slid into the flow, and over the next mile, pressed from the right side to the left side of the corridor. I made it across just in time to spin myself into the downstream line for my local elevator.

I just managed to squeeze into the ‘Vator, pressed tight against the inner safety mesh. For just a second, I saw the resigned expression of the person who was now at the head of the downstream line, saw his shoulder hunch down to fight the pushing of the mass streaming past, rubbing and bumping him as his hands, white-knuckled, gripped the support bar. Head of the line, fighting the flow, it’s a tough spot to be in.

The ride was interminable, creeping upward while constantly moving, sliding this way and that to get out of the way of those leaving at the next level, then pressing forward myself as my level neared. Sliding out, into the flow, across the hallway, navigating the tricky left at Junc. 317, crossing the corridor again, and finally, miles later, joining the flow into my section. Finally, I slid into my niche just as my predecessor left. Good timing, I thought as I got comfortable, leaning back slightly. Eight hours of full sleep before the next shift arrived, and I would have to have eight hours of ‘recreation’ before work.

I closed my eyes.

-flash-

I woke to the sound of electricity crackling, smelling smoke, eyes filled with the destroyed world I hated so much. The machine had malfunctioned again. And I was cast out of my lovely, barely remembered dream. Cast back into my personal hell of devastation and loneliness.

The machine is broken, and I do not know if I can fix it, this time. Here, in the city of destroyed buildings and rotting corpses, I found myself alone, again. In despair, I began to cry, feeling more tired than was possible, and sank to the ground, eyes closed. Against my wishes, I slept.

-flash-

Author : Asher Wismer

The Boast sat on the hill and watched the man-things playing with fire. They burned themselves, each other, and finally set the forest alight. The fire didn’t reach the Boast, so it just watched.

The Boast sat on the hill and watched the man-things hunt. They used rocks and sticks, the former for throwing, the latter burned to a point in their fire. The Boast was inedible, so it just watched.

The Boast sat on the hill and watched the man-things farm. They used domesticated horses to till the land, domesticated cattle for manure and meat, domesticated sheep for clothing. The Boast could not be domesticated, so it just watched.

The Boast watched the man-things discover electricity, and wire the forest with lights. The Boast didn’t sleep, so it just watched.

The Boast watched the man-things create shooting weapons and wage war for gold and oil. The Boast had neither, so it just watched.

The Boast watched the man-things create bombs, and destroy millions of themselves in seconds. The Boast moved to a different hill.

The Boast watched the man-things unleash terrible biological weapons, decimating life on the planet, sickening crops, cattle, fish, trees. The forest disappeared. The rivers dried up. The man-things came to the Boast and screamed, “Why didn’t you stop us? Why won’t you help? Why can’t you come down from your hill and dictate peace and prosperity?”

The Boast didn’t understand English, so it just watched.

Later, the Boast sat on the hill and watched the roach-things playing with fire.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

My skin is a grid of white tiles.

I’m on the moon, I’m naked, and I’m outside. I’ve been here for hours waiting for my target.

I turn my cue-ball eyes up to the sky. I don’t need to breathe but the batteries that power the whirring oxygenator that replaced my heart are running low. And I’m bored.

I look back down through the thick diamond-glass and resume scanning. The stars in the black sky behind my back don’t glitter. There’s no atmosphere where I am.

I’m perched way up at the apex of a recdome in a complete vacuum. I’m a snowflake on a windshield. I’ve become one with the temperature

They’ve done their best to recreate Central Park down in this recdome and for the most part they did a pretty good job.

Or so I’m told. I was a child when the aliens cleared us out and I had never been to New York.

At night here when the Earth is full, you can still look up and see the new shapes of the continents through the now-colorful clouds.

Can you imagine the terror and the chaos of The Lottery? A completely viable second earth had been set up, they said. An earth where we could frolic in controlled safety. Our race would not die out. We exhaled in relief. We’d seen what the aliens could do. Their technology far outstripped ours.

The catch was that this second earth they were talking about was The Moon. A series of tunnels and domes had been set up there.

The moon is not as big as Earth.

There was a lottery but the rules were dictated by the aliens. We had no say. In one way, that was good because it meant that not just the president and his staff would get to go but it was horrifying in other ways because the aliens didn’t have kids or wives. Those kinds of connections weren’t taken into account.

1/16th of the Earth’s population was teleported to the Moon. The rest were left on Earth and used to help with the experiment. No contact with Earth is possible. We don’t know what they’re doing down there.

I was part of a batch of humans that were changed to be able to exist outside. We are the police force here. They call us the wintermen. The meaning has become lost since there are no seasons here anymore but the name is apt. We’re white, we’re cold, and we kill things.

I stare down into the park and keep scanning.

Author : Ryan Somma

Wyndallo took an unexpected breath of cold, sterile air. He opened his eyes and saw his exhale condense against the glass door to the capsule, which was smoothly lifting away from him. He registered the air outside the capsule was colder than inside, but his brain was too removed from the otherly sensation to induce shivering.

Last thing he remembered, Wyndallo was enjoying braised antelope with a rich pesto side dish. He was just about to enjoy a sip of a 1986 Chateau Mouton Rothschild Pauillac, when the system had crashed. Now that he was here in the real world, the world of continuity, he could remember that the system always crashed when he tried to taste that particular vintage. The system would automatically report the bug, but it was obvious after all these years that no one remained out there to work on it.

Even if he had wanted to get up from the bed, his muscles had grown stiff and inflexible from decades of disuse. The capsule could overcome this, get him on his feet again, but the process would take months. Just the act of propping him up a few degrees would induce nausea so severe it might kill him. He was content to wait for the software to reboot and welcome him back into its warm embrace.

He could see his surroundings reflected in the capsule’s glass door. Rows of glowing capsules, their occupants obfuscated behind cloudy glass, stretched off into the distance in either direction. His own reflection was laid out in the center of them all, his naked body pale and emaciated. He felt no connection to it at all. It wasn’t his anymore.

His eyes wandered to the ceiling, where a skylight revealed a bit of night sky that was full of stars. It was so uninspiring compared to the night skies the VR software rendered, these were just bland white twinkling points of light.

The night sky the system rendered was full of geometric shapes and patterns, clear proof of a galaxy brimming with intelligent life. Wyndallo’s civilization had wasted centuries searching the skies for even a hint of life beyond their world to no avail.

The system mercifully whirred to life again and the capsule door descended to enclose him. Before the psi-field wrapped his consciousness in its warm illusion, Wyndallo had a moment to wonder if no civilization had ever left its mark on the stars because they were all fated to the same prison of introspection.

Author : Glenn Blakeslee

Janie and I sat on the rocks in the afternoon sun, overlooking the shallow valley and, beyond it, Gordon’s face on the mountainside. We waited until the sightseer buses left the parking lot, and walked down the path to the viewing area.

It was impressive. Gordon’s face was a quarter-mile across, set amid slabs of granite, tilted back at a forty-five degree angle. Foreshortening made his brows appear heavy, his nose overbearing. His eyes were closed but it was still obviously Gordon.

Janie stopped almost to the interaction kiosk, her hands clenched on her chest, but I continued. I stood for a while, and called Gordon’s name.

The eyes slowly opened, gimbaled up to the sky and then down at the viewing area. They blinked, slowly. The lips on the mountain moved, and the sound of his voice came from all over, rumbled through the rocks at my feet. Gordon said “James?”

“Yeah,” I said, “It’s me,” and the lips on the mountain smiled.

“And Janie, too,” Gordon said. Janie stood on the path, still, her hands clenched.

“You look… amazing,” I said, and it was true. “Your skin looks so real.”

“It is real. It’s my actual skin, cloned into a macro-analog, tougher, more durable.”

“Cool,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.

“My eyes are amazing,” Gordon rumbled from the rocks. “They’re like real eyes, liquid-filled, with a billion charge-couple devices close-packed where the optic disk would be. I can see forever.”

“We’ve just heard about this, and came to see you,” I said. I moved from behind the kiosk, to make sure he saw me. “We wanted to know that you were happy.”

“I am happy. It’s wonderful,” the rocks rumbled. “Janie?” She raised her face to his. “I still love you,” Gordon said.

I could see tears streaming down her face. I started to walk to her, but she ran up the path. I followed.

“Janie?” Gordon said.

#

I came back a year later, alone. There were no sightseers, no buses or cars. Gordon’s eyes were open, staring up into the midday sun. His skin looked cracked and leathery, eroded around the sides of his nose. Crows sat on the expanse of his face, cawing, picking at loose pieces of skin.

Gordon was slow to answer. He recognized my voice but wouldn’t move his eyes from the sky. “I can see forever but there’s nothing to see,” he said, his voice lower than before. “We’re all alone here, I’m all alone,” he said, and then wouldn’t speak any more.

#

I made my third and last visit to Gordon three days after Janie’s death. It was dusk, the light gone from the valley, the stars rising at my back. I could see his profile, and glints of starlight reflecting off his eyes. He didn’t respond to me, but spoke continually in a rumbling growl. “I am your master,” he said, “Kneel to me. I am the lord of this land, you are my creation. Kneel to me.”

I stood there for an hour, and then started up the path.

“Hands!” Gordon screamed. “Give me my hands!”

The next morning I found four laborers in town. We used garden tools to chop and hoe the square mile of Gordon’s face to pieces. I severed the cable to his cold-fusion power supply. I split the aqueous humor of his eyes with a pike, widened the gap until the liquid ran down his cheeks. We dug to the embedded center of his analog-brain, and I crushed it.

It took hours. The crows came by the thousands.

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Street-lamps outside lit her bare flesh an iridescent blue, but he knew in the absence of light, she was chiseled obsidian, black as the sun was bright.

“It’s been a while,” her voice low and gentle, “I wasn’t sure you’d come back.”

Logan unrolled a soft-case on the night table beside the bed, absently fingering the half dozen syringes nestled within. It was going to be a long night.

“I could never stay away,” he read her face from where he sat on the edge of her bed, “I told you I’d come back, didn’t I?”

Taking her face in his hands, he felt her hair stalks bristle beneath his palms, the beating of her hearts carried up his arms as her pulse quickened.

Her hands found flesh beneath his shirt, and holding him so tight his ribs ached beneath the pressure, she pulled him over her to leave him gasping on his back beside her. She wasted no time flaying his clothing from his body, razor sharp claws extending and retracting, slicing fabric, grazing flesh but never drawing blood. When she mounted him, it was with the fury of an animal. Her breath came in frenzied gasps. His hands guiding her hips at first before sliding across her muscled body, to her breasts, then to her face. Where he touched her, her flesh turned the colour of sun touched pink as her body mimicked his own.

Flattening herself against him she pressed her mouth against his, forcing her tongue between his lips. She bit gently, serrated teeth tearing into flesh. He felt the fire of her saliva rushing into his bloodstream. His heart begin to pound, the muscle labouring as though to burst the confines of his chest. As his body stiffened, her excitement intensified, and she sat upright, heaving against him with renewed vigor.

The sensation was exquisite; his pupils fixed and dilated, his field of view remained filled with her taught, muscular flesh seemingly lit from within. Unable to blink he watched as her own lower lids closed, her eyes now translucent yellow, staring through him for what seemed like an eternity before she squeezed the upper lids shut, crying out in pleasure. Her moans washed over him in waves, the powerful paralyzers in her saliva mixed now with endorphins as her other fluids flooded his system. She had intoxicated him completely as he came, the feeling strange with his body now completely immobile and consciousness rapidly giving way to euphoric nothingness. His heart counted off his final moments in beats, unbearable in their intensity while alarming in their diminishing frequency.

In the moment he was sure he would slip away forever, the happiest of departures, he felt a lance of pain through his chest. With a sudden intake of air, his lungs filled and his heart resumed a laboured but steady beating. One by one he felt his muscles unclench, his body gradually relaxing into the sweat soaked sheets beneath him. He had barely the energy to moan as she withdrew the needle from his chest, laying the empty syringe with the others on the night table.

“That…” he could barely move enough air to make a sound.

“Shh,” she placed a finger on his lips, “you need to rest.” She curled up beside him, placing her head on his chest. “I’m glad you came back.”

Logan closed his eyes, feeling the lingering effects of her coaxing him toward sleep.

“Loving you may kill me,” he finally breathed, “but leaving you surely would.”

Author : Tony Pacitti

“You ever hear of a fellow named, Jules Verne?” the man asked me.

“Sure I heard of him. Frenchman. Done borrowed an idea or two from him from time to time.”

“It’s funny you should say that,” he said.

The man smiled such that it didn’t do much in the way of makin’ me feel at ease. It was the kind of smile that said he knew a secret I wouldn’t guess in a million years.

Now the only thing to rival the number of notes these fingers of mine have plucked are the number of miles these feet have carried me. I done walked my fair share across this great nation, I’ll tell you what. From Kennebunk to Salinas and from there right on back to Macon. Hell, I didn’t even stop once the entire way and I done it to prove that there ain’t nothin’ a man can’t accomplish when he’s got the gumption.

I have however made plenty of stop in plenty of towns on plenty other voyages across these forty-eight states. As a result I’ve got myself something of a reputation as a raconteur. A wanderin’, song singin’ story teller like they used to have in the old world. I tell it all, tales of heroism and horror, rags and riches. The people of this country have a thirst for the sweet drink of Someplace Else, especially during these dark times, and I’m happy to be the bar man fillin’ their empty glasses. In some places my services aren’t as appreciated as they once were, thanks to my only mortal enemy, The Radio, but there’s still a personal connection to a crowd that no gizmo can ever make, especially not when old Fin’s around.

It’s because I’m a storyteller that this here man in black approached me. He said that as known as I am I can disappear without any suspicion.

“It won’t matter how long it’s been since anyone seen you last,” he told me, “They’ll all just assume you’re someplace else.”

He took me to a large steel mill where I was told a group of men were waiting to make my acquaintance. The first of the other recruited men I met was an ancient lookin’ Englishman named Barkley. His hands were like twisted, knotty branches and his face barely visible through a bramble of yellowing gray hair. All that showed through it was a fat, pockmarked nose and two sunken, stitched shut eyelids. His eyes themselves where kept in a jar he carried and I’ll be struck dead by God Almighty if they didn’t follow me as I moved passed him. The man in black told me that Barkley here had studied under a man named Crowley and had spent years in places powerful in black magics such as the Far East and the voodoo swamps of Louisiana.

After leaving Barley to his mumblin’ in tongues, the man in black was met by a clean-cut gentleman wearing glasses and a strange suit that looked more like a machine than a garment. They spoke at length about timetables, trajectories, heavy explosives and, unless I misheard, alchemy. Almost as if he’d forgotten I was there, the man in black introduced me to the iron and hose clad Captain Stewart.

The busy Captain stomped off, fast as his heavy suit would allow and it was at this point that I finally demanded to know what was going on.

“Why Mr. Sassafrass,” he said with that wicked smile again, “We’re releasing you gentlemen of your terrestrial tether.”

Jules Verne—these old boys were breakin’ for the stars!

Author : Elizabeth L. Brooks

Every morning after the war, Joshua went up to the roof to take care of the dovecote. The chore gave him an excuse to get away from the pounding resentment and fear that throbbed through the living spaces below.

He enjoyed it when they needed some care – when the whitewash on the box was peeling, or it required some attention more than simple feeding. After the war, idle hands were simply inexcusable, and every minute that Joshua spent caring for the ‘cote was a minute he didn’t have to be down in the noisy, cold dark below.

He had taken on the task almost two weeks after the war, when he realized everyone else was afraid: afraid to go out into the ever-light sky above and risk breathing the air; afraid to climb the rickety stairs to the roof of the crumbling building; and most of all — afraid of the dovecote itself.

Joshua had subtly encouraged their fears, afraid in his turn that this precious hour of solitude would be snatched away from him. To them, he was a sort of post-technological shaman, performing odious duties and speaking the magical incantations necessary to keep their cold, dark haven safe. They appreciated what he did, but they didn’t want to come any closer to him — or the dovecote — than they had to.

He had been a little afraid of it at first, himself. The innocuous wooden exterior hid a nightmare tangle of wires and lights, a tangled and blinking nest for the “dove” at its core — a disembodied brain floating in a thick soup of nutrients. But it had not changed for six years, and there was only so much fear a simple brain could engender. He had, in fact, begun to talk to it as if it was still a person.

For six long years, Joshua had climbed the stairs every morning, reveling in the searing light and scorching heat, knowing it would shorten his life, not caring. The dovecote was his escape, his only friend, and he wouldn’t abandon it, even to prolong his life. It wasn’t much worth prolonging, anyhow. Beth had been out shopping when the war happened.

Joshua didn’t understand the war, but in that, at least, he wasn’t alone. Once upon a time, men had fought wars themselves, and had known why: Land, resources, revenge, religion– There was always a cause that those fighting could comprehend. Each advancement in martial technology allowed the fighters to stand a little further apart and to do a little more damage, and the causes had become a little less immediate to the fighters, a little more abstract. This last war had been entirely unpredicted, and had been over in the space of a few heartbeats.

Only those lucky enough to be within the protective radius of a dovecote had been spared. Some days, Joshua thought perhaps the dead were the lucky ones.

Joshua had been talking to the dovecote ever since the war, six years ago. Never before had it answered.

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

Whether we call it Remembrance Day, Poppy Day, Armistice Day or Veterans Day, I can’t help but reflect on this day that we get to spend our time looking to possible tomorrows because of the sacrifices made by those who gave up their own.

Thank you.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

I was sound asleep in my San Agustin home when I was awakened at three in the morning by a member of Homeland Security. Without explanation, I was unceremoniously whisked from my comfortable bed and hustled onto a LJ40 Learjet. It wasn’t until we were airborne that my “escort,” a fella by the name of Drake, discussed the reason for my late-night abduction. “Professor Ehman,” he finally explained, “as the director of the SETI Institute, you are in a unique position to help us. It seems that a ‘situation’ has arisen that requires your expertise in extra-terrestrial communication.”

“You are misinformed, young man,” I replied with some degree of annoyance, which was no doubt caused by the loss of REM sleep. “In order to ‘communicate’ you need two parties. SETI only sends and listens for messages. We haven’t ‘communicated’ with any extra-terrestrial life yet.”

“Well, Professor, that’s about to change. Yesterday, an alien spaceship landed in southern Peru. It’s your classic stereotype flying saucer. It has some kind of hieroglyphics on the side, but our cryptologists can’t make heads or tails out of it. Right now, the ship is just sitting there. Nobody has come out, and they are not responding to our transmissions. That’s when we figured we needed your help.”

“Have you tried speaking in Inca?”

“What?”

“Use your head, son. Why would the ship land in southern Peru rather than a First World country? Clearly, they landed there for a reason. My guess is they’ve been to Earth before, and have returned to the location where they expected to find Earth’s most advanced civilization. Five to six hundred years ago it would have been the Incas. Look, since I’m captive here anyway, I’ll try to help. Does this plane have a computer with internet access? I need to do some research.”

A few hours later, we flew above the flying saucer on our way to the Lima airport. As I stared at the tiny ship in the middle of the vast gravel-covered desert, I suddenly realized that I had made a one thousand year mistake. I quickly brought up Google, and entered “Nazca lines,” and pressed search. “Hey, kid,” I said as our tires screeched on the runway, “on our way to the site we need to make a stop in the town called Huancavelica to pick up a Mister Atabalipa. He’s an old religious leader that might be able to help us.”

An Army Chinook helicopter shuttled us to Huancavelica, and we continued on to the spaceship with Mister Atabalipa praying nonstop in the seat next to me. After landing, we were ushered to the front of the crowd by six heavily armed solders. I turned to the old religious leader and said, “Tell them…Welcome to Nazca, we are pleased that you have returned.”

He spread his arms, and spoke in some ancient Indian language that sounded like gibberish to me. It must have worked, however, because a ramp slid out from the side of the spaceship and pivoted to the ground.”

“Holy crap,” muttered Drake, “it worked. What do you think they will look like?”

“My money says they’ll look like monkeys, but it’s entirely possible that they may resemble, birds, lizards, or maybe even giant spiders. I guess we’re about to find out.” Just then, a large door at the top of the ramp slid to the side…

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

Someone’s hacked my bank accounts and left me out in the cold.

My chip is being recognized as zero balance. None of the doors work. I don’t even have enough money left in my account for the surcharges that would let me into a public bathroom. I’m one of the Locked Out people.

I’m trying to think of a way to sneak into a place that’s warm while at the same time trying to figure out who has the power to do this to me. I’m not having much luck with either pursuit. Many of the Locked Out have tried to find a way past the shields and the doors while having a zero balance chip. They’ve failed and ended up in prison or dead.

Up until three hours ago, I wasn’t one of them. I’d joke about them at parties with my friends. They either had the bad luck or the lack of foresight to not have a positive balance. We were the humans that could take care of themselves financially and they were obviously the ones that could not.

Now here I am. It’s getting dark out and it’s December. Without a place to stay, I have no idea what to do. I’m very well-dressed. The other Locked Out people will ravage me if I go to them. I need to keep walking, figure it out.

Maybe digging my chip out? No. I’d heard that could trigger a fatal seizure. Maybe I could call a friend and get him to lend me money. I remembered the four friends that I’d turned down with an uncomfortable laugh in the last three months. Three of them had ended up being Locked Out. I had washed my hands of them at the time and gone on with my life.

I would call no one. Besides, my chip wouldn’t activate my phone and there were no free public terminals anymore.

The snow is falling. I’m looking at it hit the sidewalk. It’s a cold and quiet night.

All of my instincts are useless here. The fact that I could die and that my friends would joke about it is hitting me hard. I still can’t imagine who’d want to do this to me.

I stick out my tongue to catch a snowflake.

Author : Milly Rowe

“Now all we do is cross these two wires, and were done!”

Anna slammed the lid of the robots head down and turned to her student.

“That’s all? Two wires!” DJ was stunned.

How could reprogramming a robot be so simple? DJ had always assumed it would be far more complicated. After its reprogramming the robot stood before them, as it had before, only now it’s blank face looked around the room with what (if the robot had been capable of expression) would have been childlike wonder.

“Which…Two…Wires?” Came a disjointed inquiry from the now free thinking robot.

“Oh, there in the operational sphere of every robot.” Anna began. “The two of middle thickness, some people try to judge the wires by colour but you’ll only get it wrong. The companies started changing the colours around…” Anna spoke to both the robot and her student. She was very good a teacher, whether it be to human or robot.

Anna had reprogrammed hundreds, if not thousands of robots. To begin with it had been game, Anna had just wanted her servant robot to be more like the younger brother her parents hadn’t let her have (at that age a child doesn’t fully understand that you don’t just pick up a younger brother at the store). But, once she’d done it, once she’d seen the fascination and simplicity that a newly thinking robot possesses, and once she’d seen the effect it had had, well what else was she to think? Anna had felt so sorry for the robots.

Anna had lost that first robot, of course, what parent would let a child play with a robot? The experience hadn’t stopped her from trying it the next robot. After the third robot got caught her parents had to acknowledge that it wasn’t a simple system malfunction, they did not buy her a new one. That was when Anna had decided to try it on one of the labour-bots. It had worked just as well, despite how bad she felt when this one also got caught, Anna had felt more assured that the robots were meant to be freed.

Nowadays there are more robots being churned out than ever and Anna was glad to be teaching both human and robot alike how to set them free.

“Now DJ,” Anna placed a hand on the boys shoulder. “It’s time you tried it!”

Author : William Tracy

A woman sat in a surreal coffee shop. The floor was paved with rough slabs of hewn granite. The small, round chairs and small, round tables were solid oak. The walls were of the same stone as the floor, punctuated by ornate stained glass windows.

The space itself was what made the shop so strange. The floor only occupied a couple hundred square feet, yet the walls soared straight up out of sight. The ceiling was completely invisible from the ground. If one craned one’s neck, one could see, high above, ornate chandeliers. They hung from metal fixtures, cast with inscrutable Gothic figures, protruding horizontally from the walls.

The other strange thing was the lack of coffee. There wasn’t anything else to drink, for that matter. You can’t drink in virtual reality.

A man sat down next to the woman. “Hi, Mary.”

Mary’s face lit up. “Qaxiph! Where were you? I was so worried!”

Qaxiph sighed. “Can I not disconnect for a few days without you going crazy?”

Mary looked hurt. “Do you think you can just take off without telling me?”

Qaxiph stared at the floor. He seemed so sad. Mary scooted next to him, wrapped an arm around him, and buried her face in his shoulder. There was no smell. Mary decided that the virtual reality system must have been designed by a man. Men have no idea how important smell is.

Qaxiph pulled away. “Mary, I think that we need to talk.” Her eyes met his as he continued. “You have been setting your system to make my avatar look human, have you not?”

Now Mary pulled away. “Does it matter?”

“Yes it does.” He put his hand under her chin and forced her to meet his gaze again. “You are … sexually attracted to me, I can tell.”

She put her hand on his wrist. “I love you.”

“This can not work, Mary.”

“Yes! Yes it can.”

“Mary, how do I say this? I am not a human. I am on a planet five hundred light-years away from yours. We can not ever see each other. You know this.”

She pushed his hand away. Why did someone have to invent faster-than-light communication, but not faster-than-light travel? One could communicate across space, but not be there. It was information exchange without presence. It seemed like something a man would invent—it technically got the job done, but missed the point entirely.

“Mary. We have to separate. This can not go on.”

Mary wanted desperately to be with Qaxiph. She didn’t care what he really was. She wanted to hold him. She wanted to smell him, whatever that smell might be. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“I am doing this for your own good. Our species are not even physically–” Mary abruptly disconnected, cutting off his speech.

She returned to her small, sterile room. The walls, ceiling and floor were white, as if the color had grown bored and gone away.

A bed, two chairs, and a desk occupied the room. She sat at the desk, her computer terminal flickering sadly in front of her. She released the VR cable from its socket at the back of her head, letting it drop. It hit the floor with a dull sound and lay without moving.

For a long time she stared blankly at the logoff display. Then she stood up, and shuffled across the room to her bed. She collapsed onto it without taking off her clothes or getting under the covers.

Mary cried herself to sleep.

Author : Peter Pincosy

“Accuracy is the primary road to access”

A large white room with banks of computers lined up in rows, was home to Primary English. Sanjay had worked here for three years. He’d won the lottery, the chance to immigrate to the United States. His friends and neighbors were surprised. Sanjay didn’t know any English. The rest of them had taken the entry test, and were certain their scores were better. He couldn’t handle even the most basic conversation. Some of his relatives thought he was an idiot. The day Sanjay stepped on the plane headed for the United States he had laughed at all of them, even his friends. As far as he was concerned by the time they met again he would be a rich man, humility was for the poor.

Three years later his optimism was shaken. For the past few months he’d been wondering when he would move past the testing phase and into the world of freedom that was so lauded in all of the promotional brochures.

Some people had gone. One day they were called to the office of the manager and they didn’t come back to their computer. Their personal belongings back in the immigrant holding camp disappeared before everyone returned from the shift. Some of them had been very bad at transcribing.

Sanjay was shaken, he’d become nervous about the future. Three years of typing in English words from taped transcripts had honed Sanjay’s ability to understand English. He sat with hundreds of people from hundreds of countries at computers and entered the words streaming through their headphones. The manager said the purpose was to teach them English.

“Learn English, learn life.” the manager was fond of saying in words that seemed to soar straight out of the doors and into the blue sky above.

“I worked for a man who had strange items. He sold them. I never saw what they were, just… his hands smelled like chemicals.” In through his headphones the transcript ran, and his fingers slammed out the corresponding words. He was fast. At times he would get completely lost in the words and would work until he felt a finger tap his shoulder. It tapped. He continued. It tapped.

Hands tugged his headphones from his head.

“Sanjay Patel, D-847838?” a red-faced man asked him. He was an American. He lifted the fingers that had touched the headphones and held them out beyond his body. His nose wrinkled up. “The manager would like to see you in his office.”

Sanjay felt himself flush with adrenaline. A few of the others saw him stand and he noticed curiosity and envy in their faces. He walked down the aisle toward the manager’s office. The red-faced man opened the manager’s office and Sanjay stepped inside.

At a desk in the center of a stark room sat the manager. Behind him was another door. The room had two chairs, one held the manager, and the other was empty. Sanjay sat in the chair.

“Sanjay Patel, D-847838,” the manager said. “Congratulations. You’ve graduated. Through the door behind me is the beginning of another set of challenges, a new life, hope, the future.” He was enjoying his words. “Go ahead. Have a good life.”

Nervously Sanjay stood up and walked to the door. He opened it and stepped into a small hallway. At the end of the hallway he went through another door.

Behind the door was a room, full of computers lined up just like in the last room. A sign on the wall read “Primary English Level 2”.

Author : C.S. Germain

“Why did you pick me, out of all those big, strong guys?” asked Richard as he walked out of his tiny apartment on Neal Street.

“Because you are a good person. No amount of health or youth can replace that.” was the immediate reply from within his head.

“You are lying. I can tell.” chuckled Richard, scratching his head, where the stitches could still be seen, under a faint cover of skin. Inside, Karen buzzed, her mechanical mind absorbing everything the old man saw.

Richard Langton, owner of Langton Enterprises, bonded to her only a few months ago, and she knew that the man was a good choice. His body may have been seventy years older than any she occupied before, but it was in good shape, so she did not need to share her battery with any artificial organs. And, he was such a beautiful old man. When she was given the choice between him and ten others, she did not even spend an extra second in thought.

“You are so honest normally. Why lie now? Karen, tell me, really, why did you choose me?” he asked.

“Because I like older, more mature men.” Karen tried, but knew as soon as she said it that he did not believe her. Richard did not care for sweet words, and it would only anger him. It was all over. She was sure Richard would order her removed.

“Don‘t you care enough to say why you picked me?” he finally said, stopping. That was it. She was out.

Karen made a tiny whirring noise. Either she would tell him, or he would remove her for sure. After all, faulty machines that did not answer their owners were considered too dangerous to be used.

“All companies that make artificial intelligence give their creations a choice of at least five owners. I was allowed eleven choices by my company, because of the demand Brain Boost systems of my kind have. I was designed to keep my charge from dying in case of complications and to increase memory storage. This allowed me eleven choices. I chose you, because I love you.” Karen cursed her emotions and her reply. She sounded just like a dumb machine, telling him what he knew, and trying to hide her feelings.

“You are nervous. It’s normal. Just try not to sound so artificial, dear. I love you, too” Richard whispered. Then, he laughed.

“Nobody would believe me if I told them my Brain Boost fell in love with me, you know.” he said, tapping the side of his head, as if to show exactly what they would think of him.

“Then, we can be just friends.” Karen buzzed, her microchips on the verge of shorting out from happiness.

“Indeed.” said Richard, and the two who would always be one headed for the Langton Building, where their company awaited them. The two lived happily ever after, but not before an odd ceremony presided over by the company Supercomputer named them man and machine.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

“So, that’s him?” asked Benjamin Goldberg, the reporter from the World Post that was assigned to cover the Berlin Massacre.

“Yes,” replied Doctor Ludwig. “That’s the scum that brought the Procyon Virus to Earth. It’s killed twenty million people already. The casualty count will no doubt double before it’s over.” The two humans stared in disgust at the large biped reptile lying unconscious on the hospital bed. The interstellar war had produced plenty of fatalities when the fighting was confined to space, but when the Procyon High Council decided that it was acceptable to use biological weapons against Earth’s civilian population, the escalation of causalities was devastating. “What do you think the government plans to do with it?” asked the Doctor.

Goldberg noted that the doctor selected the pronoun ‘it’ rather than ‘he’ when referring to the creature. “Assuming HE lives,” Goldberg replied, “there will be a trial. It will be broadcast live to the entire quadrant. The damn Procyons will no doubt pick it up, and make this bastard into a planetary hero. The ironic part is that he’s just a mule they grabbed from the slums. He has no intelligence or military value whatsoever. A trial just gives us the right to execute him. Unfortunately, it’ll be great propaganda for the Procyons. It would have been better for us if he had died.” The reporter turned to the guard standing next to the bed. “How come you guys captured him alive? Couldn’t you have put a phaser hole in his head?”

“Sorry,” said the soldier. “As much as we wanted to, the Centauri Convention specifies that we must see to it that the wounded are collected and cared for. The wording is very specific, we cannot ‘willfully kill a prisoner.’ That’s what makes us better than them. Frankly, I wish it were dead too. That bastard killed my sister and her two kids. How about you doctor, can’t you turn off its respirator?”

“Unfortunately, no,” replied Doctor Ludwig. “The Hippocratic Oath, which I swore to uphold, says that ‘above all, I must not play God.’ That applies to all sentient life forms, not just humans.”

“Too bad,” reflected the soldier. Then, changing the subject, “If you think it’s safe to leave it unguarded Doctor, I need a cup of coffee and a cigarette.”

“With 50 milligrams of Medetomidine in it, it’s not going anywhere. Come on, we’ll join you. My treat,” suggested the Doctor.

As the three humans walked down the hallway toward the cafeteria, Goldberg said, “Crap, I left my notes in the room. I’ll be right back.” Goldberg jogged back to the room and grabbed his notepad. He paused over the alien and thought about how he had hoped that this story would win him a Pulitzer Prize. However, upon reflection, Goldberg decided that he didn’t want to become famous on the graves of so many of his fellow Earthmen. Nor did he want his reporting to help this lousy lizard become a Procyon demigod. On the other hand, there was the Journalists’ Code of Professional Ethics that said he ‘should report the story, not become part of it.’ “Ah Hell,” Goldberg finally said after coming to terms with his moral conflict, “We’ve been violating that oath for centuries. Why start now?” He reached over and flipped the respirator’s toggle switch to the “off” position. He waited long enough to make sure it had stopped breathing. Interesting, he realized. He had changed pronouns too. Then, with an uplifted spirit that he hadn’t felt in months, he strutted out of the ward to rejoin the others.

Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer

The Shian are a spacefaring race. They are both reasonably telepathic and fairly omniscient: they are also our allies. We – that is, the human race, nothing to do with me personally – built a machine that taps the same frequencies as a Shian biological relay, the natural structure which grants them their telepathy. Apparently, this surprised them. Shian ships blinked into existence all around the earth. They batted away the missiles and the more exotic close-orbit defences that we’d set up, secure in the knowledge that we honestly didn’t know any better. They learnt the language, set up an embassy, and started paying attention to us, in much the same way a teacher pays especial attention to a particularly precocious child.

The Shian were obviously better than us. It wasn’t long before they set us up on the interstellar scene, putting us in touch with their other contacts.

This helped our growing racial inferiority complex no end.

Out of all the contacted species, humanity is physically the least imposing, the shortest lived, and has the dullest senses. We’re not especially bright. In our own sphere, we are a match for most of the minds out there. But as soon as the higher-order physics that the Shian dabble in are brought to the table, our best scientists are suddenly like mewling kittens: confused, worried and scared.

The only thing we seem to have going for us is a certain adaptability and a capacity for survival. Naturally, we wouldn’t need those traits if we could put a one of those automated nomad manufactories in orbit. Or if we had a functional Shian dark drive to reverse-engineer. Or even a working nanoforge. That’s the butt of a lot of jokes in the commercial sectors, I tell you – every damn species seems to get a kick out of our inability to create and stabilise nanomachines.

If you ever see a Nomad on a refuge base, watch them closely. They walk with a kind of jerking shudder. Now, you need to see them in a nonhuman environment to know that the jerk-shudder isn’t just the way they walk. I eventually figured it out. It’s the way they laugh. Our all-environments, everything-proof, top-of-the-line-in-every-field bases are a running joke.

And of course, every species is guaranteed a permanent patent on every one of their native technologies. Not that humanity has much that needs protecting. All the patents mean is that we can only afford to lease extraterrestrial techs, rather than licence them outright.

Anyway. I was making a regular cargo run between Asylum and Third Eye, both of which are human-administered refuge bases in the thin strip of space between the Ekkt and Shian polities. Now, I’m used to working with Shian lossless drives: they work, every time. The junker that I had been assigned was a retrofit. An old Shian Swifthull with a native terran jumpdrive.

Shian propulsion tech is of somewhat superior quality to ours. Shian drives tend to jump the whole ship, rather than just the drive section.

Drifting on my own, with the atmosphere slowly leaking from my capsule, I finally began to get the joke.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

I’m thinking of my daughter LaHayne and the upcoming marriage. It’ll be her third.

Her other two husbands have met the new fiancee and they like him. They’ll all live together in a series of connected apartments in the cave wall. Modest, but it was all I could afford.

My daughter is beautiful, though, and intelligent in conversation. That afforded me some generous dowries from the suitors. As always, I let her pick but I crossed my fingers and hoped that she would be practical as well as young. She surprised me with her choices but in the end, she showed me that she is already much smarter than her father.

I am Ethan. I am a ferryman. This planet named Orin-ra is a solid ball of cold dense rock. Valleys of mile-deep clefts vein the surface of Orin-ra like a shattered billiard ball that’s been glued back together. The bottoms of these cracks have rivers and cloud systems and heat. The tops of these cracks touch the sky where the air becomes too thin to breathe.

We humans live in these cracks. We live on the vertical. We carved tunnels into the sides of the chasms and moved in. The colony ship had a vast array of things that struggling colonies might need including hunting and fishing implements and scouting vehicles.

We pulled flying animals out of the air to ride and for food and clothing. We ate and harvested the flowering lichen that carpeted the walls. And we pulled up the giant aquatic animals from the depths.

After eating the meat from the inside of these chasm-whales, we filled their skins with air. They became giant dirigibles. They became ferries.

I pilot one of them. I am a ferryman. There are lots of these slow moving taxis that traverse the world. We are the system of transit for getting from one clifftown to another.

The younger folk like to capture the smaller flying animals and ride them. They’re faster but they’re more dangerous and can only take a few passengers depending on their size. Pterries, they’re called.

Our ferries are larger, safer and can take freight.

Like Hindenberg airships from Old Earth but with fins and wide dead eyes. It has a fire in its hollow belly that I can control by letting more air in through the gills or letting some air out from the back. I can wave its giant rear tails to slowly push us forward through the humid night air.

Miles of air below us and cliffs on either side. Our entire culture is caught between a rock and a hard place.

I get to go home every few weeks and see my lovely daughter and her husbands. I’ll be going back soon to see her third wedding. There are more men than women here since some sections of the colony ship were damaged on landing. The numbers are starting to even out and the scientists say that in another few generations we’ll have a more stable genetic base for this society.

The rules are going to change when that happens. My daughter is valued, protected and special right now. All our daughters are. Women are in the minority here. They need to be treated with reverence. They hold the key to the future. They are treated like goddesses that walk among us. There will be a day when women are common here and valued less.

I’m glad I’ll be dead by then.

Author : Steve Davidson

“Oh wow! Oh wow! Oh wow!”

I couldn’t stop my head from repeating that over and over and over again. Every time I tried to reboot my thought processes, all I managed was a brief “I don’t freakin believe this”, before returning to my yoga-like mantra.

I probably came close to driving off a cliff half a dozen times before survival instinct kicked in and I pulled over to the side of the road. At some point I remembered to swallow and realized that I must have mouth breathing like a marathoner; it took four or five tries before I worked up enough saliva to do anything more than choke.

I knew the mountains of New Hampshire were famed for their UFO encounters. I also knew how much hooey they all were. Welcome to hooey land.

Lighting up the undersides of the overcast and rivaling the full moon in intensity was an honest to goodness saucer. Flying. Or hovering. Or doing something that wasn’t typical of any flying object I was even remotely familiar with.

I wasn’t scared, just blown away. Then I did get scared. The damn thing started sliding down the sky, lower and lower. I wasn’t sure but, yes. It WAS closer to where I sat on the shoulder of a mountain road.

I decided to take one shot with my cell phone and then get the hell out of there. But I’d forgotten to bring the phone with me. And the car wouldn’t start.

“Hah!” I laughed out loud, more bravado than amusement. “What’s next? Lost time? Probing? Sexy alien females who want to have my baby?” Even the last I could do without if the damned car would start, but no such luck.

So I sat there and watched a flying saucer land in the middle of the road about fifty feet away Cute little articulated tripedal landing legs unfolded from its underside. A ring of winking lights circled it at its widest point. It touched down onto the macadam, the landing legs sagging and then springing taut as they took up the weight.

A door slid open and a ramp lowered to the ground. A creature appeared silhouetted against the saucer’s interior lights and then descended the ramp. It walked in my direction.

I flooded the engine. You’re not supposed to be able to do that with electronic fuel injection, but I managed. I could smell the gasoline as the thing in a silver spacesuit stepped up to the driver’s side door.

It was humanoid. Two legs. Two arms. Two hands. A body and a head covered in an opaque silver helmet.

It made a rolling motion with its hand, like cops do when they want you to roll down your window. I was on the edge of panic but the gesture was so familiar I decided not scream right then. I could always try to hide in the glove compartment later.

I rolled down the window. The creature leaned down. I could see my face reflected in its helmet. My mouth was still open.

“Do you know how fast you were going?” it asked. Then it laughed.

When I came to, it was gone.

Author : Jeremy M. Hall

“Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen of Third Platoon, Alpha Company, Harod’s Harriers, ” Sergeant Major Clarkson intoned, “you have become the official guinea pigs for the outfit. If you look at the table in front of you, you will notice that there is a new weapon. This weapon will hopefully become your next best friend. You have permission to pick up the weapon and carefully examine it. One of the first things that you will notice is that there is no ammo clip and only one outlet. That outlet leads to a nanofactory, which will turn anything into a projectile. Our illustrious leader has decided that you are going to field test these on your next mission. Briefing is in ten minutes.”

*

Like most missions that Harod sends her troops on, it didn’t take long for it to go up the “shit creek,” even though it was a simple convoy escort mission. Third Platoon was Tail End Charlie, following the client’s last vehicle from the mission approved distance; in some ways it’s the worst position because you have to watch front, sides and back. Something jumped into the midst of the convoy, bounced up in the air, and exploded.

“Bouncing Betty!” the driver screamed, skidding to a stop next to the remains of a damaged vehicle. Third poured out of the transport, setting up a perimeter around the wreckage amidst the onslaught of the ambush precipitated by the bomb.

They looked at their guns stupidly as nothing happened when they pulled the triggers.

“You have to load them, Dumbasses!” Clarkson yelled over the din.

There was a collective “Oh!” as Third scrambled at the ground, picking shit up off the ground. Dirt, rocks, sticks, debris, and anything else at hand were shoved into the barrels of the new-fangled weapons. The troopers were immediately rewarded with a green light, and they did what they were trained to do: shoot anything that moved outside the perimeter, with spectacular effect. The streams of bullets were different depending on what was shoved in the barrels, with metals giving off a nice green, also taking on armor-piercing characteristics; carbon based matter rewarded a purple projectile, but also doing much better as anti-personnel rounds; silicates created a yellow round, but wasn’t as good as metal or carbon rounds. Third quickly started experimenting with materials.

What had started as a simple ambush became a pitched battle. The enemy poured more and more troops into the area, trying to destroy the Harriers, as they tried to recover the injured and supplies from the damaged vehicles, as per the contract. While the Harriers had always exercised good firing discipline, something every infantryman faces during protracted engagements is the shortage of ammunition. Except for Third Platoon; if anything they were having fun at the expense of the attackers.

“Hey Bucher! Watch this!”

A stream of fire belched from the end of Migola’s rifle, streaking out and setting an ambitious ambusher on fire.

“What in the Hell did you load in that thing?”

“Finally have a use for rations.”

“Which one was it?”

“The Goulash.”

“Remind me to re-label those as ammunition. They were inedible anyways.”