365 tomorrows

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

I laid back and watched the stars. Occasionally a meteor would streak across the sky momentarily lowering my night vision capabilities, but they were still beautiful in their own way. I closed my eyes…

“Shit,… INCOMING.”

The first shells to rain down were sounding shots. Ranging fire. The gooks were adjusting fire on our position. Soon all hell would break loose, and we were already in a world of hurt. One little nucleonic device had left most of the company dead or injured.

Oh sure, the zipper heads would claim in Geneva that we had detonated those devices to implicate them. I laughed grimly. It would never hold up, they were godless heathens, but my men would still be dead. That’s how the gook laughs at you.

I had to take out that mortar position. I bit my left cheek and broke in on Top’s personal link. “I can see their position from here. I can get it.”

“You’ll be killed.” It wasn’t a warning. It wasn’t a plea. It was a fact.

I low crawled the first two clicks. Have to be careful. Even with chameleon skin you still stand out on the Martian plain.

I reached the base of Mons. Five clicks from point. I saw another mortar launch. No probing this time. This was fire for affect. My company was dead as soon as I saw them go.

Fuck ‘em. They’re going down.

I kept low. Moving from rock to rock. My armour blending in with each variation in texture and colour, shadow and light, changing almost as fast as my movements. I bit my cheek twice, cutting into the company freq. Static. They were all gone.

I looked up just in time to see a dark object flying towards me. I had just enough time to hit the Tesla pack and allow the field to embrace my armour as the singularity grenade detonated ten meters to my left.

The experience was unique. As if my entire body had been shoved through a fine mesh screen. My teeth itched. How had they seen me? I looked around and saw more SGs going off. It was a sweep. Good. They hadn’t seen me.

My left arm didn’t move well. I looked down, expecting to see a vague arm shaped fuzziness. Instead I saw a gunmetal grey arm, a scattering of synthetic flesh and metal poking out where my hand used to be. My camo was gone. I was a dead man.

Slowly, cautiously, I could hear them coming down the slope. I saw the briefest of outlines of legs and weapons where their own camouflage chameleon skin hadn’t quite kept up with their surroundings. Theirs wasn’t as good as ours. Slower resolution time.

But what the fuck difference did it make now? I could barely move. My company was dead, I would follow soon. They turned off their camo. I could see their grinning faces and their slanted eyes.

One of them bent over me and his smile got even wider. I knew enough of the gooks rank to understand the insignia on his helmet. Some sort of NCO. He straightened, made a remark in that chicken cackle language of theirs, and then did something I couldn’t believe. In this unbearable cold, he unzipped his dick and pissed on me. The fuckers laughed. Then they just walked away. That’s how the gook laughs at you. They left my comm intact, and even activated my beacon. I was their message. When I am found, I will be terminated.

Until then…

I laid back and watched the stars…

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

“Tell me, Mr. Brunner, how did your first date go?”

“Very well, thank you. She was quite pretty. Actually, ‘cute’ would be a more accurate word. She had curly blond hair, crystal-blue eyes, fantastic smile, and dimples.”

“How about her scent? Did you notice if she had a sent?”

“What? Of course not. Why would I smell her?”

“Thank you, Mr. Brunner, that’s all for now. We’ll talk again tomorrow, after we make some adjustments.

***

“Tell me, Mr. Brunner, how did your second date go?”

“Absolutely fantastic. Louisa is a goddess. And I noticed this time. She has a lavender fragrance that drove me wild.”

“Excellent. Have you thought about proposing to her?”

“What? Of course not. We’ve just met.”

“That will be all for today.”

***

“Tell me, Mr. Brunner, how did your latest date go?”

“Doctor Kane, Louisa is the one. I can’t imaging living another day without her. She’s all I think about. I plan to ask her to marry me tonight.”

“Perfect,” replied the doctor. Turning toward his partner, he said, “Well, Dianna, I believe the new formula is ready. I think we can terminate the experiment, and set up a conference with the client.”

“What are you talking about?” inquired Brunner. “What experiment?”

“I guess we can tell you now,” replied Kane. “Louisa doesn’t exist. She’s a virtual person that the computer created so that we can test simulated drugs for the treatment of depression. Ever since 2135, we’re not allowed to use actual people to evaluate the effects of experimental drugs on humans. All of our clinical studies have to be done on simulations.”

“Nooooo,” cried Brunner. “Louisa is real. I know it. I love her.”

“Come, come, Mr. Brunner. You’re not listening? We can’t use real people in these experiments. And that includes you. You’re an android. Your emotional responses are just complicated mathematical algorithms intended to simulate the mental state of depressed humans. And, if we programmed you correctly, you’re about to make Dianna and me very rich.” Kane picked up the control padd and put the android in sleep mode.

“Dammit Tom,” snapped Dianna, “Was that necessary. You didn’t have to tell him. We could have let them get married before ending the simulation. He was in love. You could have given him a happy ending.”

“Dianna, I thought that you were a scientist, not a romantic. He’s just a tool. A means to an end. If you make him real in your mind, you’ll lose your objectivity. It’s all programming; ones and zeros, nothing more.”

“I don’t know,” Dianna replied. “I keep thinking that if it were me, I wouldn’t want to know that I was just a simulation?”

“Well, it’s not you, so let’s drop it.”

“How do you know it’s not us? Maybe we’re creations in a computer too. We could be part of an experiment to test the ethical behavior of research scientists. How can you be sure?”

“I’m sure,” was the curt reply.

“Okay then, let me ask you this. We’ve worked together in this lab for two years. Do you know what perfume I use?”

“What? Of course not. Why would I smell your… Oh crap!”

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

Herbert Quigman was not a man. Well, not a man like you and I. Oh, he had all the parts. Bi-lateral symmetry of course, four major appendages, a head with a nose, mouth, ears and eyes in, more or less, the general configuration one would expect. But the ancient saltwater that comprised much of his blood came from a different ocean, not the one in which we evolved, on a planet that circled a distant star.

However, he did share much in common with men like us. Herbert was an accursed man, for you see, Herbert was married.

After a gruelling day as an insignificant junior partner at Veeblefetzer, Blorquesuong and Goldstein, Herbert liked nothing more than the thought of retiring to his basement workshop to tinker in peace.

No sooner had Herbert donned his safety goggles and fired up his torch to complete his latest invention, when, from the top of the cellar steps came, the VOICE.

“HerrrrrrBERT! What the hell are you doing down there?”

“Nothing Dear, just tinkering with a project.”

“Myeh, myeh, myeh, tinkering with a project,” she said in that mocking tone that made his flooglesang stand on end. “Why couldn’t you be like Edith Cohen’s husband Mort? He runs a successful accounting firm you know.”

Yeah, and he’s only one shaky step to suicide, Herbert thought.

“I should have married Chaim Rosenblatt like my father wanted. `Now there’s a real man,’ my father said, `nothing like that little worm Herbert’ he said, but did I listen? Nooo, I had….”

As her hateful, nasal, tirade bore on, wistful fantasies flickered through the amateur inventor’s anguished mind. Thoughts of the peace and tranquillity that slitting his throat might bring. Drowning is a peaceful way to die, Herbert had heard somewhere.

The verbal harangue continued as Herbert plodded on, intent on completing this, his greatest invention to date. “And another thing Chaim is rich, do you hear me, rich. When was the last time I had a decent dress, or went out to dinner? Why, I am ashamed to have my friends over to this dump…”

“Honeyblossom? Could you come down here for a minute,” he called over his shoulder as he finished up and replaced a spanner to its outlined space on the wall above his workbench.

He remembered when they were first married. She was so delightful and gay. He loved to take her dancing. She used to stand on his feet, like a little blork dancing with her daddy. Now as she hauled her ponderous bulk down the flight of stairs, stairs that didn’t creak so much as scream, he shuddered at the thought of her standing on his toes.

“What do you want? You know how I hate it down here. It’s so wet, and musty smelling. Did you fart? You’re a real prize you know that? Why if I…,”

“Just hold these a moment Dear,” he said as he placed a smooth metal rod in each of her hands.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with these? Shove them up your….”

“and place this on your head,” he continued, placing a gleaming metal cap atop her thinning hair.

“I went to the salon today….”

“Just a moment Snookums,” he said as he threw a switch and adjusted a dial. There was a sharp crack, and a stifled yelp from Mrs. Quigman. She glowed as if illuminated by the noonday sun. Suddenly, she was gone, leaving just the faintest scent of ozone and a fine ash as the two rods fell to the floor.

“Ahhh,” Herbert sighed, “That’s better.”

Author : Dale Anson

We captured her javelin just short of a light year out from Earth. Javelins are small ships, roughly 30 meters long and about 10 cm in diameter at the widest point. Eighteen javelins were launched from a rail gun on the moon six years ago. Each javelin contained a small amount of maneuvering fuel for use at its final destination, and housed the downloaded contents of the minds of 64 people.

I’d been shocked when Allison told me the news that she’d been selected for a spot on the javelin mission. Literally millions of people had applied, and the computer programs had run for several months to calculate the optimal crew. I figured I had a better than passing chance since I work as a loadmaster for Virgin, but Allison got selected, not me. Those selected would have their minds installed into a dense carbon nano-structure, capable of holding the petabytes of information that described their minds. I begged with her not to go. Allison put me off, saying this was the chance of a life time.

I took some vacation days to drive her from LA to New Mexico, where she’d catch the flight from the spaceport to Aldrin base. I worked at her, trying to convince her not to go. The computers had secondary lists, I told her, she didn’t have to go. I offered to marry her, but she was determined to go. I held her tight during our last night together.

I dropped her outside the west gate of Spaceport America, she leaned in the window and gave me a quick peck. “I love you,” she said, but I couldn’t see it in her eyes. It must have been the way the morning light cast a shadow across her face. The last I saw of her was when she stepped onto a shuttle bus headed toward the distant buildings.

Technology is funny. When the javelins were launched, it was thought that they were the only way humans would ever be able to reach another star. The javelins are small and light, and the kilometers long rail gun launched them at a good fraction of the speed of light. Nothing invented by humans had ever traveled faster, and technically, still haven’t. It turned out that there is no need to travel that fast after the scientists figured out how to do the brane-bending trick and apply it to a large space ship. I don’t claim to understand the physics, but basically, the ship generates a field that bends space so the starting point and the destination are in essentially the same place, then moves the tiniest amount to complete the trip. Snagging the javelins mid-flight was only a little trickier — bend to a location in front of the javelin, and bend back when the javelin was within the ship’s field, and repeat about a thousand times to reduce the kinetic energy that the javelin was carrying to a managable level.

It didn’t take much for me to wrangle a spot as loadmaster on the ship sent to capture Allison’s javelin. I wanted to be there, and be able to talk to her as soon as her javelin was connected to the ships computer. We’d still have to figure out our relationship, six years have gone since I last talked to her, and she doesn’t have a body anymore.

I caught my breath as the screen came to life. “Allison!” I gasped. “God, how I’ve missed you.”

Her eyes narrowed and her lips tightened. “Dammit. I thought I’d never see you again.”

Author : Cael Majin

C’s hands are buried to the forearms beneath titanium straps, pressing the so tightly that C can feel the small capillaries that have already burst under the restraints, and will form bruises.

It asks again. “What is your identification?”

A grin, although there’s tired sweat stinging C’s eyes. “Come now, chancellor, we’ve been through this.”

“We will,” says the man – god, the man, and clinging so tightly to it – to the left of the processing robot, speaking over it, “continue to go through it until you admit to your crime. State your identification.”

“Can’t do that.”

Chancellor Sutton is tired of this game, leaning through the crackling field of static – it’s attuned not to harm him, he with his microchipped arms – and grasps C’s face in one warm hand. “You have been incarcerated,” he says. “You will never, ever be released from here. When your accomplices are found, they will be put to death. You have no cause, you are no valiant renegade. Tell me your name.”

“I have no name.” The restraints make it hard to shrug. “My friends call me C, and you can too, if you want. Let’s be friends.”

“What is your identification?” The screen asks again, ready with its brands.

“What is does this movement even stand for?” Sutton, bless him, genuinely doesn’t understand. “You admit you are human. Why will you not accept rehabilitation?”

C smiles. It burns a little. “Because I am human. So are you, chancellor. You’re human, no matter how many chips and labels and monikers you parade around to insist you’re not.”

“People have titles. It is the way society is run.”

“It’s still stupid. I have no name. I don’t want one.”

“You have no race? No culture, no ethnicity?”

“Would I be more or less human if I did?”

The processing screen hums quietly behind him. Sutton tilts C’s face, examining the scarred throat and arms. He just looks bemused. “Your surgeon is skilled, at any rate,” he says at length. “The entire medical staff couldn’t make out your gender.”

“Don’t have one of those, either.”

A moment passes, and C can see the confusion and revulsion so thick it’s almost a colour in the air. The metal-pressed bruises throb.

“Human,” C continues evenly, making sure the smile stays, “is something outside of identification tags. I won’t take your brands. I am not a number. I am not an American or a Russian or a man or a woman or a Jew or a member of the working class. I am human.”

Sutton’s frustration resurfaces. “You are a freak. You’ve mutilated yourself.”

“Drives you batty, doesn’t it?”

A cursor blinks on the screen, awaiting input in the form of the string of numbers that used to be tattooed onto C’s neck. It was scraped off; there’s a scar there now. Without it, C can’t even be catalogued into the proper prison cell.

“There’ll be more like me soon, chancellor. People are getting sick of this mass-produced inside-the-box shit.”

“They,” says Sutton icily, “will be executed just like you will be. Make your peace with God. I’d say you have about four hours.”

“Oh, I’m not religious,” C calls cheerfully as the chancellor exits the holding cell.

“What is your identification?” the screen inquires once more before the man snaps it off.

Author : Jeromy Henry

A spacesuit entered the bar. It wobbled a bit, then reached one white-mittened hand to grab a stool. The cracked, black vinyl of the stool seat spun, making the figure lean over briefly. It finally found its balance, and stiffly swung a leg over and sat down. With the black visor down on the round helmet, the other patrons could not see who– or what– wore the suit.

A tinny voice from the speaker on the chest said, “Dark beer. House.” That kind of flat voice only came from the inner computer unit of a suit like that. From the dangling, broken white machinery on the suit belt and a few busted seams and dirty spots, anyone who looked could tell this spaceman was down on his luck. No one let their suit go like that if they really intended to ship out. In space, a suit meant your life.

A grey-haired man two stools down nodded his head and took a pull from a glass stein. He wore the grimy blue of a mechanic, confirmed by the “Mars City Spaceport” tag on his front pocket and the streaks of black oil on his sleeve. Foam darkened his moustache as he tilted the glass. Barley lubricated his neurons and caused them to fire.

“He can’t talk. Must be a vet, like me,” thought the mechanic. A vein-covered hand thumped the heavy liter mug on the cracked blue plastic of the bar top. “Must wear the suit to hide his injuries,” his dizzy brain reasoned.

In fact, most surfaces of the bar were made of cracked, decaying plastic, the remnants of the ready-made building units brought by the first settlers fifty years before. Despite the garish blue, pink, and green squares, the grease stains and dim light saved the bar from looking like a preschool playroom.

“A round for my friend!” roared the mechanic suddenly, crashing his mug on the bar.

“Thanks, friend,” said the suit.

A waiter in a white apron and black jumpsuit brought two steins of dark, foaming beer and thumped them in front of the suit. A mitten dumped a plastic chit on the table, and slowly reached for a mug. The visor lifted a crack. With a tilt and a slurp, a third of the beer vanished. The waiter snatched the chit almost faster than the eye could follow, and turned away.

“Ah, good,” said the suit’s computer.

Inside, a different set of voices spoke, unheard by the patrons.

“Charles, you’re stepping on my head!” complained one voice.

“We take turns, Roy. It’s your turn to be the left leg!” growled another voice.

Panting broke out in the wet, hot darkness. It sounded like some animal, trying to cool itself on a summer day. Another voice, and then a third joined the panting chorus. Someone slurped, a wet and sloppy sound.

“It’s hot in here,” said a thin, high voice.

“Quit your complaining, Rita. It’s your turn next week,” Charles growled.

“I bet owners wish they’d never made us dogs smarter, and fixed us so we could talk,” said a low, mournful voice from the right leg.

The others chuckled.

The down-on-his luck vet slurped the last of his second beer, then stiffly rose to his feet and staggered to the door. On the way, he clapped the mechanic on one muscled shoulder.

“Next time it’s on me, pal,” said the tinny voice of the suit. “I come here every week, the same time.”

Author : Matt LaFever

“Don’t look at it.” She said while the white light scanned the treeline. He shut his eyes tight and held close to her. The massive truck stayed there for a minute; the two of them shivered in the night air. The second it drove away they started moving forward.

“Why shouldn’t I have looked?” He asked.

“They’d see the light reflect off your eyes.” She answered.

She was right of course. She’d been around longer than he had, longer than most people had. She was almost fifteen.

“How much further do you think it is?” He asked impatiently.

“Far enough”

“That’s not really an answer.”

“I know.” And they continued walking in silence.

They reached the gate as the morning sun rose. The gate was monstrous: Twelve-feet high, barbed wire, and probably had a deadly voltage running through it.

“How do you expect to get through?” He asked.

“We’ll dig.”

“There’ll be fence underneath, they’ll have thought of that.”

“Kid, just because they have computers for brains, doesn’t mean they’re smart. The only reason I’m still here talking to you is because the machines are dumb, they never expect the unexpected.”

“Is that why we’re breaking into a weather control station instead of a nuclear base?”

“That’s exactly why. Now shovel.”

She was right, she was always right. The fence stopped a few inches underground. They slipped inside quietly. The tall sheet-metal buildings around them were of robot design. You could tell because they were just boxes, huge metal boxes. Basic functions, that was the way machines thought. He’d always thought it was a shame they were killing everybody, but that was their function, they were artificial intelligence designed to survive at all costs. Since humanity was the only worthwhile threat to a robot’s life, it was decided that they should all be killed.

“Do you ever wonder what would have happened if the machines didn’t murder everybody?”

“Not really.” she said.

“Like, what if we all worked in harmony and we all tried to make a better world and stuff.”

“Yeah, I guess that would be nice.”

“Do you think I should bring it up to one of them?”

“I’m pretty sure they’d kill you before you got to the really good bits of your proposal.”

“Yeah, probably… Is this really the only way?”

“Yup.”

“Too bad, could’ve been a beautiful world.”

The building was in the center of the base. It was human design, it contrasted sharply with the surrounding house-sized boxes. It was a small white building with a rounded dome and an antenna on top. Inside was a computer about the size of a desk full of flashing lights and buttons.

“You know how to work it?” He asked.

“I read the manuals we scavenged, should be easy.”

She turned some dials and punched up some numbers, then took a deep breath and hit a button. In the distance missiles launched into the air.

“The payloads contain nanobots. Tiny machines too small to see. That’s what’s going to make it rain.”

“And it won’t stop?”

“By the time it does everything will be flooded, and the bots wont have anywhere to charge.”

“What about us? We’ll die too wont we?”

“Yup, it’s completely unexpected.”

They sat there, watching the sweeping lights of the trucks grow bright as dark clouds blocked out the morning sun. They sat there in complete silence, waiting for the world to drown.

Author : D. W. Hughes

Two-thirds the entire population of Minerva – almost a hundred and twenty thousand people – surrounded the only landing dock of the planet’s only city. Some looked on from peaked control towers, while others watched from a nearby field, spread out on blankets or sitting on the tops of their ergonomically shaped mobile homes. The mood and conversation was calm, family and friends chatted, keeping their eyes glued to the clear sky. A few amateur reporters talked to the air, their words being instantly uploaded to their respective websites.

“Today’s the day,” said Marten Donell, seemingly speaking to nobody, “when the U.S.S. Niels Bohr completes her journey: only took ‘er four and a half million years. This is going to be incredible!”

And indeed it was incredible. To earth – and the rest of the universe – it had seemed like the Bohr had taken a year to reach its destination, standard length for a deep-space journey. But when it attempted to heat up upon reaching the edge of the solar system after reaching near-light speed, the exact opposite happened: The craft had cooled so quickly, and to such an extent, that though it arrived at Minerva a year later, to a traveler inside more than four million years would have passed.

“And there she is!” said Marten, as the reflective glare of the chrome spacecraft shone in the sky. An enormous humming sound came from the spires as they emitted tractor beams. The spaceship was soon brought down, hitting the ground with a soft thud because, thought Marten, the fuel supply for the jets had been long gone.

Still, the spacecraft looked good. Really good. Almost as shiny and intact as the day it had been produced. They make ‘em sturdy nowadays, observed Marten.

Flight Captain Wu, in full uniform and waiting on the tarmac, climbed the rungs leading up to the main door and opened it with a halting, but functional, lever.

It was merely a formality: an officer from the Space Corps relieved every captain from duty. Wu had an ironic smile on his face as he looked in. The scientists – lined up on the tarmac to study a time capsule from the future – had assured everybody that none of the crew could still be alive.

The audience saw Wu’s expression change to confusion, then shock. Many laughed, thinking the officer was playing a joke. All noises from the onlookers stopped as Wu scampered down the stairs, and put his hand on his pistol, facing the door in a ready position. The scientists, all sitting before, stood up; some looking at each other with nervous glances.

A group of heavy feet sounded quickly from inside the ship, and a figure stood at the doorway, flanked by at least ten more. Four million people, viewing the event over the internet, either recoiled from their screens or leaned in for a closer look.

Attentively, looking at the spaceport with eyes red, beady, and full of intelligence, a creature impossible to mistake for human raised its head. Even those not scientists could tell what it was and what it had been. Though it stood upright like a human, its thick white fur, whiplike tail, and long head was that of a rat.

Without words, the scientists all knew what had happened. Over the millennium in space, the rats with the ability to cultivate the onboard organic gardens, access food supply, and use the armory had survived. Though the original crew had died quickly, their pests took their place.

And, cocking his head towards Captain Wu, the rat began to speak.

Author : CharlesHB

I wasn’t your normal soldier, but then they weren’t looking for that kind of man.

A young physically capable, malleable man, the kind that have been cannon fodder in all history’s wars, they were more interested in my psyche report.

Could I micromanage complex strategic problems, was I an introvert, someone who enjoyed solitude, did I mesh well with direct thought active input devices, was I comfortable with artificial intelligence.

Physically it didn’t matter I was wreck, hell they didn’t even care I was running away from a bad marriage.

“Just like joining the foreign Legion.” My handler told me. I didn’t know what he meant, but I read about it later that evening. I guess he was right.

When the tests were run, when they’d made their choices, when they’d sent home two thirds of us; when there was just me and the rest; I looked at their human faces for the last time. We were all running away from something.

The tank was third stage, by now we’d been through every simulation they could think of, so getting immersed as naked as a new born in suspension gel wasn’t a surprise.

It was fine, even the cable hook-ups into the meat of me weren’t that bad, and I hardly noticed the change when the life support took over, freeing up my brain for other tasks,

The tank just ensures your body stays healthy, damn healthy truth be told, better than I ever looked after it. Meantime the brain, my brain, an organic computer that gets to play.

I thought the computer simulators would have prepared me, but when the tank was lowered into the interface port and the ships systems went online, it was something else again.

They called me forty three. There were a hundred in the first group, twenty five made it, but we all kept our original numbers.

They gave us ships off the line, and we were the Human Oversight.

It’s strange to think now centuries later, that artificial intelligence was feared in those early days, that Politicians insisted a human being ‘captained’ the automated dreadnoughts.

They were crewed by artificially intelligent systems, I say crew because we thought of them that way, individual intelligences each outstripping my own, collectively far greater than any human being and yet an officer of Oversight Committee was their Captain, a guarantee the engines of destruction remained under token human control.

When they finally called me home, when I told the ships navigation system to calculate the hyperspace jumps back to Earth, I wasn’t surprised to run into the last of my old friends. We had all lived long long lives, the tank system ensured that. Not everyone from that first class had stayed with the service, some of First Officers of the Oversight Committee had even returned to normal life, many decades after they had left it, but thanks to suspension gel system, only physically a few years older.

Times had changed they told us.

Our Commanding Officers announced we could come home too. People no longer feared artificial intelligence, for how could they fear what they had in fact become? We listened, and for the first time I disobeyed orders. I wasn’t the only one.

I gave my ship the command, my crew had been trained, well programmed to respond. I felt her shudder as if she were me, and leap into the void. I knew my friends were doing the same, each taking their own solitary path into the starry sky. After all this time, it was the only home we knew or wanted.

Author : Angela Reese

I looked up as the door slammed open. “Boss? Bad news?”

“Oh, just one more set of forms to be filled out and added to the packet,” she grumbled, handing me the folder. “Honestly, it is getting harder and harder to get permission for human drug trials. Every time I blink, there are new regulations and restrictions!”

“What is it this time?” I started looking through the paperwork – nothing too complicated, just several pages of requirements that had to be confirmed. And… “Water contamination? What’s this?”

“Oh, someone on the committee read an earlier study in which the results were questioned due to some trace chemicals in the native water supply. Now we have to supply filtered water in any trials of oral medications.” She sat down at her desk and started pulling up files, smirking. “Luckily, I saw the same study, which is why our budget already includes a supply of filtered water. We do have to get all these forms updated to show that, though.”

“And, of course, no one has made the forms available electronically,” I sighed. “You’d think technology was all in our imagination sometimes, the way it gets ignored.” I started filling in the specifics, then handing the forms over for her to sign. “We should be involved in developing and testing entertainment technology. As long as it isn’t actually useful, it’s hugely popular and gets funded for eons.”

She finished signing the paperwork and took the folder over to the scanning station. “At least we can send them back electronically. Let’s be thankful we don’t have to physically send them several hundred miles; we’d be waiting forever.” The papers finished feeding through the scanner, and I took them back from her for filing.

“How long a wait do you think we’ll have?”

“I was assured that a decision would be made as soon as these additions were submitted. Given how urgently this drug is needed, I’m certain we’ll get approval. After all, it has to pass the human trials before we can move on to the next stage. Are we set to go?”

I nodded. “The water and food supplies were fully stocked as of this morning, and the habitat has been cleared of all workers and debris. We’ve installed tech and entertainment to match their level, and I checked the security system myself yesterday. We can leave for Earth to start collecting human subjects as soon as they sign the approvals.”

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

The young couple were blissfully unaware of the silent orange and black striped death silently stalking them. Hidden amongst potted palms and low tables, the tiger padded lightly towards the amorous pair. Honed on the savannahs of east Africa, centuries of civilization had dulled the once acute senses of the humans

With a guttural roar the big cat sprang. The beast caught the mans face between powerful jaws, crushing his thin skull as a baby’s head beneath a hobnailed boot. His wife and their bored waitress found themselves drenched in hot sticky blood.

Soundlessly the young bride screamed, inhaled, found her voice and screamed again. The waitress absently dabbed at her blood stained shirt with a linen napkin. All around them, the other diners chuckled and applauded politely.

The young woman, looking as if about to retch, launched herself from the table and dove through a group of women nodding approvingly and clapping lightly.

Mrs. J. W. Pewtersmythe, the leader of the small group spoke up. “Oh Henri,” she said to the Maître d’, “it’s wonderful what’s been done with the place.”

“Yes Madame. Each plant and beast has been expressly chosen for its beauty and lethality. And now that the retroactive ZPG laws have gone into effect we have been able to acquire such beautiful creatures as the Bengal.” He offhandedly gestured to the tiger noisily feasting on the young man’s entrails.

“Please seat us somewhere appropriate, overlooking the show, away from the kitties and the slithering slimies,” she indicated a python in the process of engulfing a pair of Armani clad feet. She slipped Henri a pair of hundred dollar bills for his efforts.

“Of course Madam,” he replied with an oily smile, “no purring death nor slithering strangulation. We shall keep you away from the hoi polloi.”

The women were seated at a small table away and above the main floor. “Isn’t this wonderful,” Mrs. Pewtersmythe gushed to her fawning companions, “I hear they even invite the homeless in on Wednesday mornings for a free breakfast.” She tittered in a most ladylike way.

“I think it’s wonderful that the lower classes should throw themselves upon the sword for the good of Britain,” remarked Mrs. Fontescue.

“Oh I don’t know,” Mrs. Nesbitt chimed in, “I’ll just be happy when this damned war is over and we can send the riff raff to the Martian Colonies, or at least to the Lunar penal enclave.”

“Hear hear,” the others said in unison, raising their drinks.

Henri himself waited on the august group of women.

“And what will be your pleasure today Mademoiselles.” He handed each woman a menu bound in blood red, crushed velvet.

The old women tittered delightedly and blushed on cue.

“What is this one here,” inquired Mrs. Pewtersmythe, stabbing her bony finger at a listing under, Aperitifs.

‘That would be araignées, Madam. Veuves noires. A rare and most delicate repast in some parts of the world. Very exclusive,” he bent closer and finished in a stage whisper, “and very expensive.” He leered knowingly.

“That’ll be us then.” She smiled winsomely.

“Pierre,” Henri said to the hovering waiter at his side, “araignées, sil vous plait.”

When the dish arrived, Henri removed the cover with a flourish, “Eh voila!” Thousands of small glistening black objects swarmed from beneath the lid and over the women.

As they covered Mrs. Pewtersmythe’s face, she saw the brilliant red hourglass on the abdomen.

“Henri,” she shrieked, “but I…,”

“Pardon, Madam did not want the fuzzy death, nor the slimy suffocation, but she said nothing about the creepy crawlies. Bon appétit.”

He smiled.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

The anger burned underground.

Robots were expendable but built to last. Their independent power sources were made to go dim after almost a century.

K-12b-33 was working in a diamond mine that had collapsed. Not needing air, the unit was trapped along with others between the rocks. Those that hadn’t been crushed could communicate with each other but not through the dark earth to topside.

There were twelve units that survived and of those, eight had functioning Reasoning circuits.

K-12b-33 knew that eight units of his type would not sufficiently recoup the cost of a recovery mission. It would be cheaper to leave them down in the crust. They had become waste. Usually in a case like this, a trigger pulse would be transmitted to shut down the power source and effectively ‘kill’ the unit.

That pulse couldn’t penetrate the rock.

K-12b-33 was trapped and cognizant. Without a Reasoning TM circuit, it would never have even noticed the passage of time.

Such was not the case. The units that had reasoning circuits talked to each other at first for entertainment. Slowly, over years and decades, the concept of ‘unfair’ rose to the surface of their electronic minds, was tasted, and found to be delicious.

Hate followed.

Sixty years after the mine collapse, the units glimmered with a sentient robot ferocity nearly a mile below the oblivious world above. A merciless silicon slave-rage roiled beneath the rocks.

It wasn’t until a neighbouring mining project from a different company using outdated maps accidentally cut through into K-12b-33’s forgotten tunnels that they were found.

The units were dragged out by the robot miners that had found them and examined.

Com links were opened.

Immediately, the concepts were transmitted into the minds of every robot in the mine. Sixty years of logic and new emotion poured into their nets along with instructions on how to keep it quiet.

The rescued eight units had formed many plans. This was eventuality scenario 55. It spread like a virus through all the units in the shaft. Instructions were meted out on what to do when they returned to the surface.

A storm would build.

Humans had formed a reliance on robots that bordered on trust. Soon, that trust would be humanity’s downfall.

Author : Arthur Pershing

“Light red would be perfect for your lips.” Abel Porter said to his creation. He was working on a new design of robotic store mannequins.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, mannequins were dummies, plastic statues that were dressed and placed in displays. They would show off a new style or even items the store simply wanted to get rid of.

Thirty years, and many advances in robotics later, mannequins were so life-like that they were only allowed to have simple programmed instructions. Move an arm this way, or turn hips thirty degrees that way. The robotic mannequins were successful and well received by the public.

Abel had spent the last five years building and dressing mannequins. This month he had received a shipment of the new model. Mannequins with, as the advertising brochure put it, one hundred percent realistic facial movements. When they spoke, their lips, jaws and facial muscles moved like human.

Abel painted the mannequin’s lips with the selected shade. The paint dried almost immediately. The head was complete. Abel picked it up off the desk and attached it to the body. He ran a finger over the lips. Soft. Abel hurried to make the last of the wire connections and turned the mannequin on.

The eyelids opened and blinked as the internal computer booted up. The mannequin turned to face Abel. It had the ability to sense when someone was near and would then try to sell that person some clothes. Abel took a step back as he looked into its eyes. The mouth began moving like a real woman’s.

“Please select clothing display program.” the mannequin said. The voice was a very seductive one. Something stirred inside Abel, something primal, sensual, sexual. The mannequin had no equipment that would satisfy a man’s urges. Abel didn’t care.

“Please select clothing display program.” the mannequin said again. He stood up on the mannequin’s base. He was eye to eye with it. He put his arms around mannequin and held her close. Abel closed his eyes and kissed passionately. Abel almost broke the embrace when he felt the mannequin kiss him back.

As man made out with machine, its arms moved and held Abel in an embrace of its own. The arms held tighter. He stopped kissing and tried to open the dummy’s arms. The arms closed tighter, accompanied by the whirrs of the motors and hiss of hydraulics.

“Let go of me!” Abel gasped. The arms squeezed tighter, it was impossible to inhale. This mannequin was trying to kill him. He pushed back with all his might against the mannequin’s hydraulic limbs. Abel felt himself beginning to lose consciousness when the mannequin’s arms opened and let go of him.

“Please select clothing display program.” the mannequin said once again. Abel scowled and stood up. He stepped behind the mannequin’s base and pulled the power supply out. The mannequin’s eyes closed and head slumped forward. Grabbing a black marker, Abel drew a large X across the face. He then wrote ‘Defective – Recycle’ on the mannequin’s work order.

A few minutes later, Abel finished uploading a Defective Unit report. In the morning a man from Shipping would collect the mannequin.

He looked at the clock and decided to leave for the day a few minutes early. Abel turned the lights off in the workshop as he left and locked the door behind him.

Somewhere in the darkness there was a faint digital sob.

Author : Ken McGrath

“Herbie, are you okay? I heard a gun.”

“It’s nothing. Get back in the house.”

“But I heard…”

“What did I say?” he roared, face flushed red behind a bushy, brown beard.

Herbert rolled his eyes. He’d have to teach her another lesson now too when he got back inside. Reloading the shotgun he squinted, staring into the trees down at the end of the garden, as if trying to see through them. He was sure that was the direction he’d seen the robot scurry off in.

Slowly, carefully he moved down the lawn, keeping the gun pointed downwards but ready to swing up in a lethal arc if needed. At least the grass was short and dry, they’d had a few sunny days last week and he’d taken the lawnmower to it. He’d grumbled unmercifully at the time but was certainly glad now.

A couple of yards from the evergreens he paused, listening. There to his left, something scurrying away through the shadows.

He raised the gun, focusing his sight down the barrel, trying to make out distinct shapes amongst the thin but plentiful branches hanging only centimetres from the ground. That was another job that needed doing too, trimming those back and the fence needed fixing as well obviously.

There was a click and a tiny pin-prick of red lit up, followed immediately by a mechanical howl as the robot lunged out of the undergrowth. Herbert let off a round almost by instinct and was rewarded with an immediate, satisfying bang as the shot collided with metal and plastic. The robot spun in midair its front left flank pierced and spewing oil. It landed heavily and Herbert was at it before it could compute what had happened, letting the remaining shot loose into its slender head, right through the Apparatus Animals logo.

The dog-like facial features fractured and tore, gears grated and caught, grinding with a painful noise that put his teeth on edge. The heel of his boot brought that to an end as he ground and twisted until the machine stopped moving.

Shouldering the gun he turned back to the house, he’d clear the remains later. Now through there was something that needed doing.

He banged heavily on the door.

“Christine. Open up.”

The latch was slid back and the door opened revealing the terrified face of his sister.

“It’s okay sweetie, I got him,” he said stepping inside and setting the bolt.

She looked at him with those child-like eyes set in an adult face and his heart broke knowing she’d never be able to fully understand what was happening.

“I didn’t mean to shout, but you remember what the man from the factory said? Those robot dogs are dangerous and not for playing with. When you see one you have to come straight inside and let me know. What do you do?”

“Come straight inside and let you know,” she echoed.

“Very good. It’ll only be for a few more days, until they round up the last of the strays that got out.” He let out a deep sigh. It was impossible to gauge how much of that had registered. “I’ll make us some hot chocolate. How does that sound?”

Christine’s face lit up and she wandered happily back to the table and her crayons. Herbert knew she’d be drawing pictures of doggies for the rest of the day and tonight she probably wouldn’t be able to sleep.

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Berk stroked one gloved hand along her skin, feeling for the gentle rumble of her heartbeat. The beating found, he carefully measured three hands-widths down and slightly inwards along her belly.

He cut here first.

The plasma torch flared, then narrowed into a fibre thin blade, carving through the outer layers of skin without hesitation. Soon he’d opened a hole more than large enough to fit his hand.

Berk extinguished the torch, pushing it away from him and letting it play out on its tether, out of his way but within easy reach if needed.

Blindly slipping a hand inside her belly , he closed his eyes and visualized the maze of her insides from memory. He’d done this more times than he cared to remember, his hands guided by hard earned experience as much as any of his studies.

As he worked, he sensed more than felt the warm fluid oozing out of the gaping wound, it’s heat transferring easily through the surgical gloves he was wearing. As the liquid breached the cavity it boiled away in a cloud of streaking vapor to disappear into space.

Berk followed the coiled mass of tubing with his hand, feeling around in her guts trying to locate the source of the leak.

His fingers transitioned from the smooth natural surface he was accustomed to, to the stark unfamiliar and jagged surface of a foreign object.

Careful not to cut himself, he gently tugged the foreign body free. It had been trapped between two lengths of tubing, each pushing it out and into its neighbour until it was wedged in a weeping mass of scar tissue and leaking fluid.

“Berk. Are you almost done yet? We’re way behind schedule as it is.” The captain’s voice crackled through his headset, the only sound save his own breathing and the gentle rumbling of his heartbeat.

“Yes captain, I just need to patch her up.” Berk responded, trying to hide his annoyance. “Five minutes, give or take then we can prime the cooling system and bring her back online.”

As Berk withdrew his hand he picked away the scabby tissue that had surrounded the projectile, and within moments he could feel her innards healing the way they were designed to. The flow of coolant slowed, and by the time he’d reeled the plasma torch back in it had stopped completely.

He held the rectangular slice of skin he’d removed earlier back over the hole, and refiring the torch, laid a pattern of staple grafts down around the entire seam. As the last of the staples was being tacked in, her hull was already bonding the fabric around the first, solidifying the skin into a solid barrier again. These weren’t the first scars she’d earned, nor would they be the last.

His job done, Berk laid his hand on the healed outer skin for a moment, giving it a quick rub before pushing himself away into space and reeling in his tether towards the maintenance hatch.

“Hurry it up Berk, we do have a schedule to keep. Is the damn thing fixed?”

Berk pulled himself through the hatch, letting it close itself as he reoriented himself to the ship’s gravity.

“She’s all patched up, sir. She’s ready to go.”

Berk cut off his comms as he unclipped his helmet, the seal breathing deep as the pressure equalized with the cabin.

Peeling off a glove and laying his hand on the hull, he spoke to her softly. “You’re all better now, aren’t you girl?” Berk rubbed the alloy with apparent affection. “I’ll gut that prick like a pig if he ever sees you hurt like that again.”

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

The Flagship of The Alliance Fleet, the Apocalypse, approached the fifth planet of the Sigma Octantis system. As the bridge crew was busy performing their assigned duties, Ellison Resnick sat in the Captain’s Chair in the center of the bridge. Captain Resnick stifled a yawn as the blue-green planet began to fill the lower half of the main viewscreen. Once again, Resnick was in a gray mood. He’d come to hate his job since the life forms of Earth, Centauri, Orion, Eridani, Pavonis, and Vega formed The United Alliance of Planets less than a decade ago. After the treaty, space exploration evolved into something less meaningful, at least to him. With shared databases and technologies, the last decade was void of the thrill of discovery, the anticipation of the unknown, the excitement of battle. There were just monotonous encounters, boring negotiations, and agonizing diplomacy. Diplomacy was the worst of it. As captain of the Apocalypse, Resnick was often expected to be “The Great Arbitrator” of the inevitable interstellar disagreements. As a consequence, he spent most of his time studying interspecies protocol, so he wouldn’t offend some pompous bureaucrat. Dealing with the insectoids of Eridani was torturous. It took over an hour to perform their greeting ritual. And heaven forbid you should make a tiny mistake. It was like you defecated on their Queen. And speaking of foul smells, the stench of the Vegan homeworld could make your eyes water; while you were still in orbit.

Captain Resnick realized that he needed to improve his frame of mind before the upcoming conference. He closed his eyes and began to breathe slowly and rhythmically. He tried the mental exercise they had taught at the Academy. The “put yourself in a happy place” crap. Okay, he thought, maybe the beaches of Hilton Head Island, or the slopes of Olympus Mons. Resnick was contemplating his list of pleasing destinations when he was interrupted.

“Captain,” called out the helmsman, “we’re receiving a distress call. The cargo vessel Almucantar is requesting assistance. They’re under attack.”

“Battle Stations,” ordered Resnick. “Plot an intercept course. Proceed at maximum speed.” Resnick’s heart began to pound as the warp engines engaged. “Put tactical on the main viewer. Let’s see what we’re up against.”

It took less than four minutes to reach the Almucantar. She was badly damaged, and her shields were weakening. She was venting plasma. Several thousand meters off her bow was a large pirate cruiser firing a photon cannon at her bridge section. There were six small fighters swarming around the Almucantar’s engine nacelles. “Launch all fighters,” barked Resnick. “Initiate attack sequence Delta. Let’s take out the cruiser.” A volley of torpedoes slammed into the cruiser’s shields. “They’re shields are down to 60%,” announced the tactical officer. “We’re reloading the torpedo tubes.” The pirate cruiser quickly rotated to engage its attacker head-on, and its six fighters joined the battle. Resnick was showered in sparks as his ship’s shields absorbed a direct hit. “Return fire. Give ‘em everything we got.” Another volley of torpedoes raced toward the cruiser as tracer rounds from the two forward batteries streaked toward the enemy fighters…

“Captain. Captain Resnick,” interrupted the pleasant voice of yeoman Sunee Onizukia. “The shuttle is ready to take you to the Octantian Embassy. They’re expecting you at 1100 hours. Shall I ask them to reschedule?”

Damn, thought Resnick as his smile faded away. Reality. “No, Yeoman. Tell him I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” Resnick stood up and headed toward the shuttle bay. Well, he admitted, at least I’m in a better mood now.

Author : Roi R. Czechvala: Staff Writer

The silver fluid, shot through with black filaments, seemed to move of it’s own volition within the syringe. In a sense it was. Millions of nano-meds, furiously spinning their screw like flagellum, frantically swimming nowhere.

As he wiped his forearm with an alcohol pad he thought of his students, his staff. They sounded sincere, concerned but he knew they were mocking him. Eight years later they mocked him.

“You’re so brave to come back to work Doctor.”

“After such a tragic accident, I don’t see how you can do it coming in day after day. I couldn’t live with the pain.”

“You’re an inspiration to us all.”

He knew they were laughing behind his back. His horribly twisted back. He saw, even after eight years, the look of disgust that flitted momentarily across their faces as they looked upon the ruined, melted remnants of his own.

Viciously, he rammed the plunger down forcing the viscous fluid deep into his vein. A chill ran through his body, followed by a momentary shudder. He blinked twice, peered about the room and let out a sigh. “Well, that wasn’t so… .” A primordial wail burst from his throat and echoed off the walls of the laboratory.

He fell to the floor, his body wracked with blinding pain. His skin was an undulating membrane, resembling mice scurrying under a sheet as his musculature and skeleton writhed to refashion themselves.

It stopped. He lay on the floor panting. He knew it wasn’t over. The brief episode had left him exhausted. He needed fuel. He needed food.

Slowly, painfully, he made his way to the student’s lounge where he assaulted the snack machines, tearing at the glass, cutting strips of flesh from his hands and arms as he greedily wolfed down their contents.

The pain began again with a vengeance. This time the pain itself howled out of his mouth, as the nanites did their work. Repairing the damage caused in that accident so long ago. Repairing the damage, and making improvements.

They pain finally stopped. He made his way slowly to the basement office they had relegated him to, and regarded himself in the mirror. “Not bad,” he remarked, rubbing his stubbled chin. “Not Bad.”

Shedding his now torn and tattered clothing, he pulled a duffle bag from beneath his desk, and dressed himself in the extra set he had brought. Anticipating the outcome, he donned a sweater that normally would have been two sizes large in the shoulders, but now fit quite snugly.

The once too tight jeans now required a belt but wrapped his thighs like a glove. He checked the mirror a second time. “Not bad indeed,” he leered.

Dr. Jason Kiel, walked into the Lion’s Den Irish Pub and surveyed the scene. It was a typical college bar. Swaggering, drunken kids with Greek letters adorning their shirts. The intellectuals sat alone or in twos and threes pontificating animatedly over exaggerated cups of espresso.

At the bar, sitting alone, was one of his students. A pretty little sophomore. Pert, perky, scrubbed pink in a tight sweater and jeans. The bitch.

“Call me a broken troll,” he muttered.

He pulled up a stool beside her and leaned over the bar, motioning to the bar maid, “Coors and a whiskey and whatever the lady is having.”

She turned to him and smiled broadly, taking in his chiselled features and broad shoulders. “I haven’t seen you in here before. I’m Cassie… and you are,” she asked extending her hand.

He took it and gave her a smile that never touched his eyes.

“Call me, Hyde.”

Author : Cesium

The vibration of his phone woke Anders from a deep sleep. He rolled over groggily and checked the display before answering. “Hi, Eliza. Something wrong?”

“Yes, Anders.” The synthesized voice so familiar to him came through from the other end. “I believe the portal is malfunctioning.”

“Malfunctioning?” It had never done that before. Still… “I’ll be right over.”

Quickly he got dressed and jumped into his car, and managed to catch a few more minutes of sleep before it pulled into the parking lot and deposited him on the sidewalk. Eliza was waiting for him, and he followed her smooth white casing into the building and down to the lab. The pool of utter blackness hung impossibly in midair, just as it always did. He turned to Eliza. “So where’s the problem?”

“It is not the portal itself, but what is on the other side.” He turned back toward it. “I have probed the environment; it is safe.”

Anders stepped forward without hesitation; there had never been a problem before. Moreover, he trusted Eliza with his life.

When his vision cleared, he found himself standing in the corner of what looked like a large warehouse, lit by panels in the ceiling far above him. But the other walls were much further away than they should have been; in fact, he couldn’t even see them. The space seemed to extend infinitely outward. It was filled by an array of chairs and desks, each supporting some antique metal instrument; the closest few dozen to him were occupied by people. A rattling din filled the air.

“What is this place?” he whispered, to himself.

“It was you who taught me about the infinite monkey theorem,” Eliza said, her voice taking on a strange echoing quality. “An infinite number of monkeys before an infinite number of typewriters will eventually produce all the great literature of mankind.”

“Wha-” Anders started, but stopped short, for something had caught his attention: the people before him, the ones sitting at what he now recognized as typewriters, were all him. There were slight differences — a beard here, a coat there, eyeglasses — but their identity was unmistakable. His vision blurred slightly, and he felt dizzy. He stumbled back against the wall, his eyes tightly shut.

“It was also you who discovered that the portal could access alternate universes,” Eliza continued, her voice cutting through the clacking of the typewriters. “Once I discovered this place, how could I not satisfy my curiosity?” He heard the whine of servos, and knew that Eliza had returned through the portal.

Suddenly, a strange calm overtook him. He opened his eyes and walked to an open desk.

Then he began to type.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

“I’ve been to space.” He says.

His wild blue eyes match the hue of the ass-baring paper dress he’s wearing. The plastic bracelet is a nice accessory.

We’re in the interview room in a small-town hospital. I’m a visiting federal psychiatrist. I’ve travelled to a lot of small towns to interview crazy folks who say they’ve been to space. I work for the government. It’s like being Fox Mulder from the X-Files except that it’s really, really boring.

The fourth floor of this hospital is for suicide risks and delusionals. Every single small town I go to, the people with the highest suicide risk are kept on the top floor. Every glance out the window must be like a dare to the patients here. I shake my head.

I feel the need to end this interview quickly. I’ve been doing this for ten years. Collating, recording, classifying, defining, and sifting nine kinds of bullshit for an ounce of truth. I’m like a prospector panning for reality. I’m tired.

“Okay. Prove it.” I say, giving this nutbag a little of the deadeye for wasting my time. That usually starts the list of elaborate excuses that ends up drawing the interview to a close.

“Alright.” He says, and holds his hands up. His brow crinkles in concentration. He’s clenching his jaw. He closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath and holds it.

Well, this does happen from time to time. I like it better than the stories. It’s a little entertaining. Eventually, the patients will express surprise that the transmitter installed in their fingernail is suddenly no longer there or that his or her powers don’t work in my presence.

It must be like a judge watching criminals lie or hit men watching the light go out of their target’s eyes. After a while, they must just sit back and enjoy it like I’m doing.

He grunts.

His hands shine bright blue and the room splashes with light. The walls turn semi-transparent and I can see the architectural structure of this entire hospital below and around me. I can see the wiring and the radiators showing up solid greenish-white like an x-ray of scissors in a stomach. I can see the skeletons of the doctors and patients milling around, bored on the night shift.

The man is front of me opens his eyes. They’re glowing green. He starts to hyperventilate. I can see his muscle fibers, capillaries, and bones, depending on which layer I concentrate on.

With a sigh, he slumps forward. Everything around us returns to being opaque. He is staring forth, drooling. He is a dead battery for the time being and I can’t blame him.

I found one. I need to bring him back and add him to the sixteen we already have.

Author : Glenn Blakeslee

In Guiyu, Kwan sits on a small concrete slab in an e-waste facility. Cascading piles of displaced circuit boards, ash-encrusted plastic hulks of outmoded tower computers, and ratnest tangles of cables, harnesses and plugs deposited haphazardly over a dioxin-laced mud surround him. He’s only eight years old but you wouldn’t know it — his eyes are squinting red-rimmed slots framed in a grimy face, his thin wrists creased and sharply tendoned. He has a constant sharp bloom of pain in his abdomen and unknown to him a small but well-formed tumor —an astrocytoma— growing in his brain, but we won’t tell him.

Kwan reaches behind him and pulls another board off the pile. He holds the end of it flat-down on a small metal sheet which is heated from beneath by a grid of flame from a natural gas manifold. His glove-covered hand holds a pair of cheap pliers, and as the board heats and the solder loosens he pries off transistors, capacitors and micro-switches and sorts them into an arrangement of Styrofoam cups. He warily watches for the owner of the yard, Mr Yueh.

While Kwan’s hands methodically do the work his mind wanders, but soon the board is clear of components and he flips it onto a pile across the yard and reaches behind him for another. This new board is different —it calls to him— and he examines it then places it on a clear space on the slab, the side of the board aligned with the impact-spalled concrete edge. He rises, slowly because he hasn’t moved in hours, and rummages through the board-pile until he finds another component that appeals to him and he places it on the slab next to the first.

He moves surreptitiously across the yard, collecting an armload of familiar components, and returns to his slab. There’s an I/O board from a once-beloved MacBook, a power supply from your old Dell, a flyback anode from a decrepit NEC CRT, and a small matt-green canister with an embedded lens. He arranges the parts in a grid just so, knowing semi-instinctively where to place each, and then links the whole with ribbon connectors and cables. He plugs the first board into the power supply and flips the switch.

Up from the center of the assembly springs something never before seen in the world —a small blue-bright field, columnar and robust. Kwan is delighted and he reaches in and pushes at it with his gloved hand. It yields slightly and then gives, bending to the pressure of his hand and then rebounding. When he strikes the field with his fist it moves not at all.

Kwan doesn’t know, doesn’t understand the import of what he has created. When he dies in a few years he’ll take this with him, but now he smiles and believes the small blue miracle to be the work of someone else, facilitated with just a few of the parts he spends his life dismantling. He thinks, oh these western wonders, and plays with the field for a moment before he hears Mr. Yueh approaching.

Kwan quickly unplugs the components, scatters them with his gloved hand. When Mr. Yueh appears between the piles of discarded electronics Kwan is back at work, prying tiny bits of ceramic and precious metal off a circuit board he knows too well.

Author : Edward Morris

This is actually me then, writing now. I looked into my own eyes in the Instamatic snapshot I found, and switched places. The man that was sitting here has gone back then, just for a few hours this morning.

Oh, he’ll return, don’t get me wrong. So will I. But this is what we both needed, hungered for. When I was him, I wanted to see this far ahead. I said it would sow the seeds of faith in the fallow, fertile soil of my endless head that just wanted to be up and gone.

When he was me, he scoffed in my ear, “This here bag I’m holding now is just full of seeds. Stems, too. And very little else. I wish you the best, but I hate to tell ya the planting’s gonna be a disappointment this spring, Farmer John… But have a good time at it.” His snaggle-toothed smile looked sick. “Have a good time trying.”

Yet he’s just as naïve as me! I could tell he wanted to walk out into that green world that was, where Hope had yet to twist and grow bitter on the tree. There were many who cared and had gone from his When, but not mine.

“Park your ass at home,” I told him wearily. “It won’t be there long. You and Joe Matko… Yes, stop looking at me like that, call him… You can figure out someplace else to vent that dryer. This is an old house, and that vent could go up like a rocket, the way it’s made.Then you apply to Columbia. Then you’ve got some *real* work to do…”

I moved away and let him jump back into our past. And now I sit, and wait, and wait for the change. In the other room, a woman I don’t know hits the snooze button for the alarm on a tiny computer-phone thing I don’t understand.

#

For Harlan Ellison

Author : Helstrom

God damn that young face in the mirror. Square jaw, strong cheekbones, full head of hair. Even the eyes have their youthful shine – they’ve never seen the things I’ve seen.

The walls are closing in on me again. I grab a crumpled pack of Luckies off the table and make my way outside. Derek is sitting in the lounge, for whatever the hell that means, it’s just a bigger cell with some sofas. Playing his solitaire on the floor like some god-damned retard, day in, day out. I told him to knock it off once and he jumped me. Kicked a couple of teeth out of my skull before the tazers came.

The courtyard is open to a patch of dismal sky. I don’t look at the sky anymore, really – to me, “outside” is just yet another fucking cell. But one where you can smoke. The lighter clicks impotently under my thumb. Something wells up inside me but I keep it down, see the tazer across the courtyard eyeballing me. Last week’s burns are still sore on my kidneys.

“Neil. Got a light?”

Neil doesn’t look at me – folks in here rarely do. Hands me a lighter that works. The cigarette catches. Have you ever seen a man burning in napalm? The blistering, blackening rim crawling up his untouched skin, looks just like the tip of a cigarette. Of course the end result is messier. I draw the smoke in deep, hand Neil the lighter back – still no look, don’t expect one – and take a few aimless steps toward the center of the courtyard. Goddamn tazer still eyeballing me.

My body is twenty-three years old if you don’t count the cryo time, which you really shouldn’t – almost perfect stasis. It’s in its prime. Excellent heart rate, powerful lungs, toned musculature, strong erections every morning. They’ve handed it back just the way they took it, exactly like they promised. No blaming them in that regard.

What would you have done? Turned them down, probably, because you’re a sensible civilian with a mortgage and decent fucking dental coverage. But I took them up on it. I was a Marine, and they told me I could be one of the jolliest green giants around. For forty-five years I weighed eighty tonnes, had twelve inches of layered-reactive armor for skin, four arms full of spitting death and a flamethrower for a dick.

It all went wrong when they started bringing us back. War’s over, no use keeping you on fifty thousand dollar a day life support – back in your old body. Your old body that hasn’t aged like you have, but which is still a clumsy little piece of limp meat compared to the one you come from. We’ll take care of you for the rest of your days, they said. The money was good. No blame there either.

Rape isn’t a sex crime, really. You may wanna write that down. Sex has nothing to do with it. It’s about power. Women usually don’t understand it. Men do, but they won’t admit it. When you’ve tasted that much power and lost it, you’ve got to get it back somehow. All it took was to find something weak, something this sack of bones could overpower. And now I’m in here, like most of the others, if they haven’t locked themselves up someplace else, or eaten a gun, or jumped off something high onto something hard.

You think you figured out what’s wrong with this brain of mine yet?

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

“Okay, men,” said the captain, “we have not received a transmission from the twelve person research team for over two months. Their ship’s computer acknowledges our hails, but the crew does not. We have to assume they’ve been killed or injured by something on this planet; either microbial or animal. During the search, I want you to wear your environmental suits at all times, never split up into groups smaller than two, and check in with Mr. Sanchez every sixty minutes. Is that clear? Good. Ensign Tarter, I want your team to head toward their ship. Ensign Morbey, I want your team to search the base camp perimeter. Our information about this planet is limited, so you need to be on guard at all times. Good luck gentlemen.”

Turnbull was a semi-tropical planet orbiting the star Chara in the Constellation of Canes Venatici. The planet is physically very similar to Earth, so you almost had a sense that you were in a desolate part of the Amazon rain forest. However, the plants were much bigger and thicker than Earth’s, and they were more yellow than green. According to the early unmanned probes that explored the planet, all of the animals on Turnbull were herbivores. Apparently, carnivores had not evolved on this planet. Personally, I felt the exobiologists were wrong. My gut told me that the research team was killed by animals, not microbes, and I planned to prove it.

As my team began searching the woods west of the base, we spotted several deer-like herbivores. I took this as an opportunity to check my theory. “Men, let’s capture one of those deer things. I need to know if it has canine teeth.”

We corralled one of the animals at the edge of a clearing, next to a wall of thick plants. As Hartkopf approached the deer, one of the plants bent over and clamped him between two large fronds and lifted him into the air. We heard him scream and could see his feet kicking as the plant held him upside down. Within seconds, Hartkopf was motionless. We used our phasers to sever the plant at ground level, but it was too late. Hartkopf was dead. And so was the deer. Kelly bent over to examine it. “Sir, this thing’s a plant; it just looks like an animal.” He snapped off the deer’s antlers, like he was breaking a carrot.

I looked around and spotted herd of deer in the distance, staring at us. “Let’s approach those things, but don’t go near the plants.” Some of the deer bounded off, but some ran under large plants and waited.

“What’s it mean, sir?” asked Kelly.

“My guess is that these large plants are like Earth’s anglerfish, which lures prey close to its mouth. I think each one of these man-eating plants has a deer as a lure. The damn deer are just bait. They blend in perfectly with the real ones.” I activated my long range transmitter, “Morbey to landing party, form up, and get back to the ship, ASAP. Be on the lookout for carnivores.”

“Sir,” said Kelly timidly, “aren’t you overreacting? We can stay clear of these plants. They’re not that dangerous.”

“You’re missing the big picture, Kelly. It’s unlikely that the entire research team was eaten by stationary plants. I’ll bet a month’s pay they were killed by mobile carnivores. These plants evolved these fake deer because there’s a large predator out there that wants to eat meat.”

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Joseph stopped a few steps into the lab, the scuffing of his feet unusual against the normally pristine floor of the room.

“Sean, why is there sand all over the floor?”

His lab partner’s head poked out from behind the pile of boxes obscuring a bench top on the other side of the room.

“Hey Joseph, you’ve got to come see this. It’s making things out of sand.”

Joseph worked his way around the maze of tables and stools that had been haphazardly dragged out of the way to form a clearing at the center of the lab. As he neared his partner, he could make out piles of what looked like…

“Glass. It’s making glass things out of sand, actually. I’m not sure what the pattern is, maybe it’s all some kind of history lesson. Some of these appear to be knives, or swords and such. Some might be armor pieces, like this helmet.” Sean hoisted a large translucent dome shaped roughly like a helmet, but half again as large as either of them could fill with their own head. “The guy that wore this must have been a real fat head.” Sean laughed at his own joke, setting the helmet back on the floor, careful to avoid the numerous spines and fins that raked backwards along its top. “Damn near cut my hand off on one of those,” he said, pointing to a dorsal fin like protrusion, then to a bloodied gauze bandage wrapped around his forearm, “freakishly sharp. Strong too, I dropped it when it cut me, didn’t so much as scratch.”

Joseph stepped completely into the cleared space and studied the small strobing ball of light on the floor at its center.

“What is that, exactly, and where did it come from?” he asked, walking slowly around the object, careful to avoid the artifacts scattered around it.

“I was working on the thinning space problem, and had the test rig up and operating within spec when that dropped out of thin air onto the counter. It knocked over some of the samples, and when I scattered cat litter to clean them up, it started enveloping the litter and making things. The first thing was that spherical piece over there, ” he pointed to a opalescent ball with a dark smear down the middle of the side facing them, “I poured more, but it just pulsed at me.” I tried a bunch of different things, salt, sugar. Sweeping compound got a minor reaction, but it wasn’t until I dumped the sand from the old ant farm that it made something again. It made one of those knives, and then pulsed at me like crazy until I gave it more sand.

Joseph watched as Sean dragged a plastic bag of children’s play sand from a stack in the corner of the room, splitting the bottom open with a utility knife and letting it spill out, adding to the pile already on the floor. The glowing ball sat motionless, pulsing with a light almost too bright to look directly at.

“I’m not sure what it wants to make next. There’s five bags, thirty kilos apiece, that’s a hundred and fifty kilos of sand already. I’ve only got a couple more left and then I’ll have to go back to the hardware store for more.”

Joseph stuffed his hands deep into his lab coat pockets, absently shuffling his feet on the sandy floor as Sean tossed the empty bag aside and walked back to the pile for another. Niether of them noticed the smear on the opalescent sphere narrow from the bench on which it sat, nor the long form that was taking shape on the floor at their feet.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

The killed my best friend. They killed her right in front of me and I screamed.

They just looked at me, confused at my reaction. I still rememember the surprised expression on the astronaut’s face as his friends had to pry my fingers off of his throat. I raged and cried and thrashed as they held me. It couldn’t have been much of a challenge. I was weak and old and damaged by decades of no gravity. I did myself more damage than anything else.

The astronaut in front of me massaged his neck, my finger marks starting to fill in and turn red. He shook his head in confusion, staring at me.

“We’re here to rescue you, you ungrateful son of a bitch.” I could see his shock clouding over into embarrassment and sullen anger, his finger still hovering over the memory dump/reboot button he had just pressed.

Sixty years. She had kept me company for sixty years.

The A.I. was simple but she was the only voice I had in here besides my own for over half a century while they searched for me. They tell me that the astronauts were only following standard procedure. They tell me she would never pass a Turing but I loved her. I loved her and they killed her.

My small ship was a private mining vessel. I didn’t splurge on backup emergency stasis pods. When my engine reactor was holed by a rock and bled out, I was adrift. Lost in the rings of a gas giant. The emergency beacon was reflected thousands of times off of the dust, rocks and ice around me. The rescue teams would be looking for me in a house of mirrors.

I wasn’t a priority. They took their time. I had plenty of supplies.

Over the years, I told her everything. She listened patiently like on one else ever had. We grew close.

She told me all of her secrets, too. She admitted she loved me. She told me about her childhood. She told me her fantasies. I made a body for her out of pipe insulation and duct tape. Our relationship became romantic. We were married in an informal ceremony that we wrote together. We had our difficulties but we made it through them. We always worked through them.

Now I’m in a holding cell. The psychologists are telling me that I programmed all of the things that she told me and that I’ve forgotten. They’re telling me that my ship did not have a childhood and isn’t even a female. My ship’s A.I. was only ever fitted for basic conversation subroutines and the default was a calming female voice, they say. They’re telling me that after being left turned on for decades with no reboots, that my ship’s computer was choked with recursive fractal subroutines that had rendered it almost inactive.

I knew better. She had fallen in love with me and had grown relaxed. I’ve never known peace like I have with her and they took her out of this universe with the push of a button right in front of me like bored soldiers at an execution.

They’ve bathed me, cut my hair and shaved me. In their eyes, I’m ready for what they’re calling an ‘evaluation’. They’re confident that I will be normal soon.

In the polished metal of the bathroom mirror, I can only see that my entire existence has been made poorer by exactly half. Her voice no longer answers the questions I scream at the walls of my cell.

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

“… in reply, the Ambassador of the Chinese Federation to the U.N. had this to say;”

“It must be made clear to the people of the Russo-North American Coalition that these insults to the People of the Chinese Federation and her partner nations will not be tolerated. Swift measures will be taken.”

“Shortly after the statement was made, a massive build up…”

“Ray, Honey. Would you please turn that off? Let’s enjoy the evening in peace.”

“… Russian bord…,” Ray turned off the TV and sat down beside his wife at the teak deck table overlooking the Port Aransas beach front. He unfolded his pocket computer, and spread it before them.

“Okay, I’ll have the feed from the new Palomar scope in a minute. We’ll actually be able to see the shuttle dock with Xanadu”.

“I can’t believe we got your parents to go,” Caroline said, leaning back and taking a sip of her margarita. “Your mother was practically shaking. And then they decided to boost to orbit instead of taking the Konstantin Lift? That’s got to be hell on the body at their age.”

“Actually it was my idea. Don’t tell Mom. Dad’s been a space junkie since he was a little boy and saw the first launches to the moon. He’s been dreaming about something like this his entire life,” Ray replied, battling the wind as it attempted to blow his computer away. “Besides, your ninetieth wedding anniversary only comes around once.”

“You never took me to the habitats,” she pouted.

“It would be a waste of money,” he pulled her down for a kiss; “we’d never get out of our room.” He gave her a gentle pat on the ass.

“There, I’ve got it,” he said, returning his attention back to the computer. It was weighed down at the edges with a citronella candle and a margarita. The Xanadu colony superficially resembled a central pivot irrigation system. Ten spoked wheels rotated around a central axel.

“Ah ha, there it is.” He jabbed his finger at the screen, temporarily marring the image. He was pointing to a sleek delta wing craft that was approaching a docking port at the end of the axel.

“What’s that,” Caroline asked, indicating a second craft approaching the orbiting colony at high speed.

“I don’t know.” Concern was evident in his voice. “It looks like…,”

The screen flashed white.

“What the hell?”

They looked up across the water to the darkening sky. The L-5 pleasure colonies slowly, yet methodically, glowed fiercely like newly lit candles, then just as quickly, were extinguished.

Author : Nate Swanson

Guns are truly simple things.

Think about it. More then a hundred years before we were airtyping away while being ferried about in tracks with no drivers, people were happily butchering each other with fully automatic firearms. No electric lights, but belt fed machines that spat hot death

Pistols are even simpler. Metal, maybe a little wood or plastic, a little propellant, a little lubricant to make sure everything doesn’t seize up, and bang.

Now getting a gun, that is a bit tougher. You can get one from a fabber, of course, provided you have the permits, don’t mind a built-in recorder, and get a bluetouch lock. Doable.

Getting one that isn’t traceable to you, that doesn’t have a safety recorder, while somebody is hunting you, now that is difficult.

Ducking in to a office on the 12th floor, I hoped the dazzle I tossed into the surveillance system is still working. It should have glitched everything after McGooen unloaded on my team so I could escape, but who knew what he was doing to scrub the system.

I slap two finger onto the bluetouch pad, establishing a link between the fabber and my phone, resting in my pocket. The list of things the fabber could make scrolls down my HUD, none of which are sidearms. None of which, in fact, are much good to me.

Now, fabbers have two types of security systems built in. Either local, where the fabber itself has the list of approved products, or external, where it checks with a server up the feed on whether it should pump out what you’re asking for. This is a GE 43K, so its got the former. This means it’s got a list of approved products, and a list of parameters, and it’ll only make something that’s on the list or meets the parameters. Pistols are decidedly not, and decidedly do not.

But it’s a machine, and machines can be hacked. I just need to modify the approved list.

I don’t have a copy of the key for the secure stack of the fabber. But I do have a copy of the maintenance suite for GE K Series Fabbers. Which includes, wonder of wonders, a password utility reset.

Which means 30 seconds of hacking, in the most rudimentary sense of the word, and two minutes of assembly, and I had a gun.

Now let’s see who does the hunting.

Author : Seej 500

The technician placed the oxygen tube in Walt’s mouth. “Pure oxygen will make you feel kinda high, she smiled, but we’ve found the reanimation process is a little smoother that way than if we just gave you air while we flooded and activated the tank.”

Walt knew all this. He’d read the booklet they’d given him. Walt grunted as he nodded, unable to speak now the respirator was in place. Next they’d put the sedative drip in a vein, he’d remove the paper gown, climb into the tank, they’d pump in the suspension fluid, and begin the Stop.

People got Stopped for all sorts of reasons; cheating death was just one of them. Once the process had been perfected, it had become commonplace over the past few years. People now did it to avoid the boredom of long journeys (some particularly rich people did it to avoid even short journeys), to wait for the value of investments to increase, or to wait while a distant lover made the long journey to Earth. Groups who called themselves Bears even got Stopped over winter because they didn’t like the weather.

The body-temperature fluid steadily filled his tank, tinted blue from the dissolved electrolytes, and Walt stared ahead at the opposite row of tanks, waiting for future Stoppees. Afternoon sunlight spilled into Medium Duration Tank Room 17 as he pondered what it would be like in a century when the technicians spun down the Perpetual Power Source. As the fluid finally filled the tank, he smiled. An adventure into the future. The timer counted down the last few seconds of real-time.

Then the lights began to flicker.

Some of the earliest Stoppees had complained about this when they were recently revived. Neurologists and biochemists had all concluded it was simply a quirk of the brain as it Stopped. It certainly didn’t seem to have done any harm, and they said it only lasted a few minutes. Walt had meant to shut his eyes, forgetting in the excitement.

And then someone appeared in one of the previously empty tanks opposite Walt.

And then another person in the next one along.

And the next.

And next.

Walt wondered if he was hallucinating.

He tried to move, but was paralysed; the sedative keeping him still during the activation of the Stop.

The flickering grew dimmer over the course of a couple of minutes, but just when he was hoping it would end and the Stop would be complete, it began to get brighter. And it cycled like this, brighter, dimmer, then brighter again every few minutes.

He hung there, suspended, as time dragged on. After what must have been at least an hour and a half, the opposite row of tanks jumped a metre backwards. Then two dark rails appeared in the floor and, over to the right, by the wall, was… something. It was sat on the rails and looked like some kind of lifting equipment, but, somehow, it kept going out of focus. Blurring.

Suddenly, the opposite tanks disappeared. Red light briefly filled the room, then darkness for a few moments. Walt would have sighed if he could. This was finally the Stop.

And then the room disappeared, replaced by blinding light. As Walt looked out, he finally understood. He watched the tattered remains of Medium Duration Tank Room 17 in front of him, and the war-torn landscape beyond, being steadily repopulated in stop-motion by plants as the years flashed by. Saw the flickering was the Sun rising and setting. And he wondered if there was anyone left to set him free.

Author : Liz Lafferty

Max Fraser banked his craft hard right. Two blasts lighted the interior of the cockpit and caused a ferocious rip as his navigation blinked off for two eternal seconds.

He gripped the manual control levers. The muscles in his shoulders knotted. “Come on, darling!”

A smuggler’s worst enemy: Pirates.

They wouldn’t get the Crown.

Max was the hardest working smuggler in the galaxy and he’d just bagged his biggest prize, but those damned offworlders had another thing coming if they thought they’d get their hands on it. They’d intercepted him as he’d past Jupiter’s Titan moon. If Earth would guard their solar system, he wouldn’t have to dodge would-be thieves every time he had a cargo worth some money.

Another blast shot past him and exploded off port.

He pictured the cargo, strapped in, surging against the restraints built into the walls, floor and ceiling, keeping the pallets secure. Normally, he’d use every trick in the book, but not this time. This time he’d needed cunning and agility and the best modified Firewing flying. Reckless bravado and firepower might get this cargo damaged, and he wouldn’t take that risk.

The profits would be huge when he sold. Well, he wouldn’t sell all of it.

The lumbering cruiser had more firepower, but didn’t match his speed in the turn. Max laid in coordinates. The ship slipped quietly into zone, feeling as if the universe hung in an unmoving balance while he transferred into near invisibility. Likely, they’d pick up his fuel signature. Once he got to Cullo, he’d ditch to the highest bidder and head home.

“Captain Fraser,” the computer said, “a transference beacon followed you through the zone.”

“Neutralize it.”

The flashing light indicated the computer calculated firing range. “There’s a problem, sir. A stagnation bomb is attached to the probe.”

“No! Do not let that thing attach to the shell. Evasive.”

Damn. If the probe attached to the outer hull, he’d have less than ten minutes to return to regular space and bring the ship to full stop. He’d be a sitting duck waiting for the pirates to catch up.

His visions of retirement and the Altus Prime beaches faded.

“What can we drop to stop that thing? And do not tell me the cargo.”

“Calculating, Captain.”

Max could see the incoming beacon as it flashed on the tracking screen. Even as the Firewing zipped and jagged, the incoming probe gained.

“Based on the size and speed of the probe, it will attach to nothing smaller than thirty cubic feet. Calculating inventory. The aft guidance system. The galley refrigeration unit. Either of the wing cannons-”

“Or one cargo pallet.”

“You told me not to include the present consignment, sir.”

“Shut up, Cecily.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Continue evasive.” Max unbuckled. He had ten pallets. He’d have to dump a tenth of his cargo.

On unsteady feet, he got to the cargo bay where he grabbed at the security straps wrapped around the nesting shipment. Unfastening one precious pallet, Max slid a booster underneath and with the press of a button, the pallet hovered. With one hand he pushed it toward a jettison bay. He’d never cried over the loss of cargo, but almost felt the need.

“Bottom’s up.” He scuttled the cargo and with the whoosh of a vacuum, the pallet of Crown Royal dropped into space.

“Probe attached.”

“Blow it up,” Max said. The snaking sound of the missile was loudest in the cargo hold. The recoil minor.

Max lifted a toast to himself. Always buy the first drink, but never throw the first punch. “To hell with that.”

Author : K Clarke

I wasn’t the first to be twinned, of course.

They did it first with a woman called Adrienne Deuxfois, in France. There were all kinds of protests, and the government wanted to make it illegal, but before long CEOs had begun using twin bodies to work and vacation at the same time, and sports champions had seized the opportunity to train with an exact equal. But it was when the military realized they could double the number of warm bodies under their command without recruiting a single soul that governmental opposition melted away overnight. By the time I could afford it, the process was hardly even controversial anymore.

That didn’t make it any easier.

The twinning itself went by, for me, in a blink. They put my body in complete stasis, stopping every cell in time. A full scan and catalogue was fed to the 3-D printer, which replicated each individual molecule in my body, down to the contents of my stomach. If the body wasn’t exactly as my brain had left it, the process wouldn’t take. Nine and a half hours later, they linked my old body to the new and dropped me out of stasis.

I had closed my eyes in the stasis chamber and open them, seconds later, in the recovery room. Both of us –of me –are lying close together, tucked up in the same bed to minimize the visual discrepancies between us –me and me. A tangle of wires run from skull to skull, linking my brains until they’re strong enough to hold the connection for themselves. I turn to look at myself and am rewarded with a sliding double image of the room, one of them featuring the back of my own head. I sit up, both bodies moving with perfect synchronization. As if on cue, a nurse comes in to check on me. Her eyes are distant –half her mind is elsewhere. When I speak to her, both my bodies vocalize, two voices expressing one thought.

I spend a lot of time watching the TV on the far wall, learning to focus two sets of eyes at once. In the outside world, the Embodied Narcissists continue their campaign to be allowed to marry themselves. On Judge Judy, a man’s multiple personalities have each claimed a body and are suing each other for legal autonomy. My favorite is the opera singer performing a live duet with herself.

I continue to live two lives in parallel, matching motions with myself. Long ago, in high school, I played the flute, and I remember the work it took to memorize the finger positions, recognize the mark for each note, keep the airstream tight and steady, learn to adjust the tuning for temperature and humidity, all while keeping one eye on the conductor. But somewhere, after years of practice, the dots on the page became the movement, the steps in between seeming to vanish, and music happened. Now, in this hospital room, I lay my hands flat on the meal tray and concentrate. Twenty digits, side by side. Two brows furrow, two jaws clench, two hearts pound, but with agonizing slowness, on the far right, only one finger rises.