365 tomorrows

Reposted from BoingBoing:

RIP, Jeanne Robinson
Cory Doctorow at 5:53 PM Monday, May 31, 2010
Sincere condolences to Spider Robinson and family on the passing of his wonderful, talented wife: the dancer, writer and choreographer Jeanne Robinson, after a long struggle with cancer. The human race has lost one of its finest members. Spider and Jeanne’s family — including their grandchild — were able to be at her deathbed when she went, and by Spider’s account, it was a sweet and gentle moment for them all.

Our condolences to Spider Robinson and his family.

Author : Neil Shurley

“Will you just cool it about the jet pack?”

It was all I could do not to shout at him. Barry’s daily tirade against the state of the world left me feeling nothing but tired. Ever since New Year’s Day he’d go off for at least ten minutes every morning about the alleged lies he grew up on, about the lack of domed cities, flying cars and jet packs.

“Can you say redundancy?” I continued. “If your rocket goes out when you’re flying through the air at 80 miles an hour, how are you going to do anything but crash land? Splat, Barry.” I grabbed a raisin out of my bowl and squished it for emphasis. “Splat. Right on your moving sidewalk.”

Barry drained the coffee from his Mystery Science Theater 3000 mug, then took another bite of pie.

“Can we just accept it now?” I said. “We got the future we got. We’re going to have to just make do with it. And look at the good side. No nuclear holocaust. No robot rebellion. No super-intelligent apes taking over. It’s all good, right?”

Barry scraped the remaining cherry filling off of his plate. “So you’re saying I should be happy there’s no jet pack in my garage?”

“First off, you don’t have a garage.”

“I’d keep it in the closet. With my coats.”

“Where would you keep the fuel? You’d have to buy it by the barrel. And rocket fuel ain’t cheap, my friend.”

“Mister Fusion,” he said. “We were promised nuclear fusion. It would totally run on that.”

I just shook my head and slurped the sugary milk out of my bowl.

Barry slid his plate into the table slot and double-tapped his mug. He warmed his hand over the steaming coffee.

“What about the moonbase, Chad? Where’s our moonbase?”

“Hey, at least we didn’t blow the moon out of orbit with our spent fuel rods.”

“Pppft. Give me a break. We should have hotels on the moon by now. And you know it.”

I shook my head and sighed.

“Fine,” I said. “You’re right. We were screwed.”

“That’s all I’m saying.”

I double-tapped my temple and tweeted to my 14,608 followers: “Barry says we’re screwed. What a moron. He hasn’t had a positive thing to say since he turned 107.”

“Hey,” Barry said. ”I see that.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true,” I said, staring through the windshield as we shot past endless green fields. “Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

Author : James Riley

“Oof!” Miller grunted, raising the bar for John to take it. He exhaled deeply and sat up. John casually dropped the weight onto the maglev lifts and patted his friend on the back.

“Think that’ll do it?” John asked.

“Should. . .” Miller replied, tapping his left forearm twice. A pale blue display appeared on his skin. A graphic was rotating and a box of text popped up that read “Updating. Please wait.” Expectation began to stir within him.

A faint vibration on his forearm indicated that the calculation was complete. Miller watched a cherry red bar slide from left to right on the display. He urged it forward. There was just a bit further for it to go. . . and. . . a loud metallic chime was emitted from the display and rang through the gym. It was wholly satisfying, like taking a long drink of water after waking up in the middle of the night. “Ding,” Miller said, grinning widely.

“Grats,” John said, giving him a high five. Several other weightlifters echoed John’s congratulation. Miller’s strength level was now 42, almost where he wanted it to be.

His display buzzed and he looked down. A message had popped up in a small square toward his elbow, “Just reminding you about our date tonight–Marina.” A heart graphic pulsed below the text. Miller smiled again and headed to the showers, he didn’t want to be late.

For hours the sun had been setting, but Marina and Miller, walking hand in hand, never noticed. Part of the reason they didn’t was that the light posts lining the street had been smoothly illuminating, little by little, to compensate for the waning sunlight, but mostly it was due to the fact that they were having so much fun together.

As they were walking Marina was telling a story about how her shoes got stuck in a vent that day at work forcing her to walk around barefoot for the rest of the day. In between laughs Miller quickly glanced down at his display. Tonight’s date pushed the little bar forward that measured their relationship. He wasn’t surprised. He had ordered Eggplant Parmesan, her favorite, for her at the restaurant, given her his coat when they went for a walk, and had even complimented her new shoes— Miller had done everything a good boyfriend should. And each correct decision had automatically been given a value and recorded.

Soon, they reached Marina’s apartment. “Oh,” she said, before opening the door, “Julie’s engagement party is next month. Want to be my date?”

Miller chuckled. “Want to? Nah. Boring small talk with people I don’t know isn’t my thing. But I’ll come, because I know it’s what you want, and that’s what good boyfriends do,” he continued.

“But you’d rather not come?” she asked, her tone cool.

“No, to be honest, but I will, because it’ll make you happy.” He hadn’t noticed her demeanor change because he was glancing at his display. Sure enough, his willingness to do something he didn’t want to for her sake caused the relationship bar to inch forward. According to the meter, Marina should be elated with him. He looked up from his arm, though, just in time to see her slam her front door in his face.

Miller stood for a moment, his mouth slightly agape. The meter indicated Marina’s happiness with him should be at a peak. He snorted. “Stupid thing’s broken again,” he muttered, shutting the display off by punching his arm so hard that he made himself wince.

Author : Cesium

They were together when the city stopped.

Their office perched atop a spire reaching up from the business district. Usually holoscreens afforded them a panoramic, unobstructed view of the city, or of whatever other landscape they wished to see, but those were dead now and only a single transparent wall afforded them a view of the neighboring towers, now suddenly gone dark and silent.

Then, because it was their job, they ran down the hall to the backup interface and tried to trace the problem.

Basic systems were still running — power, water, air — but all higher-level functions had ceased. Citywide routing and guidance algorithms had failed, leaving vehicles to come to a halt on their own collision-avoidance routines. Only a few emergency lights, designed to be always on, still cast their soft glow onto the streets. And of course all information and communications systems were down, including the interactive panels that lined these corridors.

The backup interface was a wide area packed with machinery whose purpose even she wasn’t sure of. It was the first time either of them had seen the city go down, and even their teachers had only been able to offer advice instead of concrete knowledge about this situation. He glanced at her; she shrugged, but tossed him a manual. It was a physical book, thick and bound, and he fumbled for a second before he could open it. Outside, some of the lights were starting to come back on, as they were switched over from the city’s unresponsive power-management grid to standalone controllers.

The first test was to try the direct neural interface. But the link was down; her thoughts couldn’t establish a connection. Similarly, the giant holoscreen mounted on one wall flashed red and displayed an apology; it couldn’t locate the city server.

They tried then interface after interface, going through the long list of communications protocols that the city understood, which it had accumulated over centuries of upgrades to its computer core. And slowly they discovered what the machines filling the room were for. After the first hour they had to abandon the holoscreen. One method used an interface combining hand motions with voice control, which she found immensely tiring. The fifth hour found them both staring at a flat screen, touching a pad in front of them to manipulate symbols and icons. And still they kept running into failure after failure. The protocols they were using were too high-level; the error was somewhere deeper.

By the seventh hour, they’d gotten out an ancient piece of polymer called a mouse, and were moving it around on a table. And then, the screen lit up. It was something he’d tried on a whim, activating a function buried deep in the code. The screen bore the words “more magic”, and a crude line drawing of a bearded figure on a cloud. Below was a button labeled “let there be light”. She glanced at him; he shrugged.

She clicked on the button.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

The shuttlecraft was careening out of control in the upper atmosphere of an uncolonized Class-M planet orbiting Alpha Mensae. Lieutenant Ashby reached down and touched the control panel to shut off the alarm. “What’s the Manual say we should do now?”

“Who cares?” responded Ensign Tappan. “The Manual told us to stay with the shuttlecraft. Considering that we’re about to be vaporized, it doesn’t seem like its giving us very good advice.”

“Would you rather be floating around in a spacesuit until your oxygen runs out? At least we have a fighting chance in the shuttle.”

Tappan scanned through the index of his hand held electronic Flight Manual, and displayed the recommended actions. “Well, let’s see. Ah, here it is, right after ‘kiss your ass goodbye.’ It says we should remain calm, disengage the autopilot, increase our angle of attack to 25 degrees, and begin executing S-turns to bleed off our forward velocity. Okay, you do that. I’ll modulate the underbelly force field and manage our life support system.”

“Wow, flying manually,” remarked Ashby. “I haven’t done that since my Academy days.” The ship buffeted erratically. “What’s the Manual say about landing?”

“Landing? Aren’t you being optimistic?” Tappan scrolled to the next section and read aloud. “At an altitude of three kilometers, our velocity needs to be approximately 600 kph. Maintain a glide slope of 22 degrees until we are exactly 80 meters above the ground. Then perform a flare maneuver to change our final glide angle to 1.5 degrees. Try to land on a flat patch of snow, sand or dirt. Water is acceptable if we have flotation gear on board, which we don’t. Oh, this is good; it says don’t attempt to land in a mountainous or rocky area.”

Tappan watched nervously as sheets of hot plasma shot upward past the forward viewport. The shuttlecraft came out of its final arc and headed toward a grassy field. Its landing approach had it passing 50 meters above a heavily wooded area. The radiant heat from the shields started a long, narrow forest fire. Ten seconds later, the ship was skidding on the grass. After half a kilometer, it came to a smoldering stop. The cabin began to fill with acrid smoke. Ashby and Tappan unbuckled themselves and scrambled out of the escape hatch.

The two men were standing 100 meters from the shuttlecraft when it erupted into flames. “That’s just wonderful,” said Ashby. “What does the Manual say we should do now?”

Tappan turned his body to block the sun from the viewscreen, “According to the Manual, we need to look for shelter and water. I say we head toward those mountains. Maybe there are some caves and a creek.” Per the Manual instructions, they used a bunch of rocks to create an arrow pointing toward the mountains, so a rescue team, if one ever came, would know where to begin looking for them.

After they walked several kilometers, they spotted a large cloud of dust heading their way, accompanied by the sound of stampeding animals. Ashby used his hand to shade his eyes. “There must be a thousand of them,” he said. “What does…”

“I know, ‘the Manual say’. Oh great. It depends. If they’re herbivores, we run with them and they’ll run around us. If they’re predators, we stand still, and don’t make eye contact. If we’re unsure, it says we should lie down and play dead. With our luck,” he remarked, “they’re probably scavengers looking for corpses.”

Author : D. Maurer

“Coffee?” I asked him; we were watching a recovery procedure. This poor sap died well over five hundred years ago. He was the oldest meat popsicle we had attempted to revive.

“Excuse me?”

“Would you like some coffee?”

“No. No, thank you.”

I looked at him and the giant polygon that the popsicle was in.

“You’ve been staring at that thing for at least 2 hours. Nothing’s happened yet. Not supposed to for a while yet.”

“But we never know.”

“But the machines notify…” I trailed off. We were not really doctors like they were back when this guy was first alive. More like engineers. That’s as good as bad.

He sighed. “Of course, but it’s not the same.”

Pause in the dialogue. I thought about it.

“I can see that.”

“See what?” He looked closer at the polygon. 13 sides. Matte black. Longer one way than the other, of course. Some industrial designer’s idea of modern. It sat in a small room. We sat in a small room carved from the other room by glass walls and a door.

“I mean, I understand. It’s not the same seeing them when they first wake.”

“Understand what? Oh. Yeah,” He leaned closer, nose almost against the glass.

“What did he have?”

“Something with his kidneys. Or his heart. Or cancer. Doesn’t matter. We’ve grown new organs. I’m not worried about anything but the brain,” he looked at me for the first time in hours. “And you should only be worried about that, too. The rest is,” he flipped his hand over, looking for the word, “fixable.” He turned back to the black thing.

We’d heard some people getting revived with massive brain damage; if the damage is too severe to a given cell, it’s abandoned by The Process. You didn’t want too many of those; even a handful in the wrong brain area was bad, but if someone woke up with a soup of cell components instead of proper nerve cells, there was really no telling.

Best case: memory loss was common, incontinence close second, but you were alive. Catheter and therapy took care of the urine issues; time and therapy took care of the memory.

And he stared at the damned polygon for another hour before it opened. When it did open, it revealed a bald, naked, and scared human being.

We entered the room and I spoke quietly to him. I spoke a dozen old languages and dialects; my partner, a dozen others. Between us we had most of the popsicle languages covered.

“Richard, we’re here to help. You were frozen when you died; we cured what killed you and you’re still alive,”

“You can hear me but probably cannot talk. We will teach you these things.”

“You died in 2034. The year is 2561. You have been dead for 527 years but now you are alive. You were rich and your investments have paid off handsomely. You are rich almost beyond measure. Your first-hand history will serve you well. You lived in an interesting time.”

He was trying to talk, a sound close to “Matilda?”

His chart said he was married. This Matilda had moved on and had elected not to be frozen and revived. A good sign he asked about her, though. Memories and all.

“We’ll get to that sir. Can you stand?”

He could. We led him to the recovery area. He only peed a little bit on the way there. I talked to him because he was more alone now than I could imagine.

Author : Q. B. Fox

17th April 2002, a concrete room, off an unmarked tunnel on the Northern Line.

“How long were they down?”

Simon looked up from what he was doing, and even in the dim light of the rack mounted servers I recognise the pinched expression.

“12 days. A power supply shorted some circuits in Prophet a week last Friday. Without the proper predictive model Lösch became CPU bound by Saturday morning, so we shut it down before something else broke.”

Lösch, both the software and the specialist machine it ran on, was named after the 20th century economist Sir Richard Lösch, whose work on monetary systems was the underlying principle of the program.

But it became apparent when they started trying to run Lösch that this theoretical model wasn’t designed to incorporate real feedback efficiently. So the coders built predictive software to take real information from the markets, combine it with the theoretical model and feed its predictions back into Lösch. The pun was just too delicious for them not to call it Prophet.

“12 days?” I frowned. “The economy’s pretty stable now; surely leaving it to run itself for 12 days won’t have caused any problems.”

“Ask Dr. Rob,” Simon indicated the other corner of the room. Visible only by the light of green text reflected in his tiny spectacles, and from his pallid, sweaty skin, Dr. Rob chewed his tongue like cow and silently scanned his monitor. Who themed green text on a black background? Dr. Rob was old school.

“Imagine,” Simon explained, presumably as it had been explained to him, “walking on a tightrope. Lösch keeps its balance by a gentle nudge here, a small purchase there. I’d assumed that because Lösch was making more frequent smaller trades that the whole system was stabilising. Turns out I was wrong.”

I turned towards a grunt expelled from Dr. Rob; he was rolling his eyes in an exaggerated manner that would have been comical if he’d known he was doing it.

“It turns out,” Simon continued, “that we’ve been tightrope walking in high winds, and that Lösch was correcting and counter correcting the whole time. Now imagine our tightrope walker blacks out for a second.”

I imagined and gulped back a sudden rush of financial vertigo.

“The first forecast from Prophet this morning was showing hyper inflation in the near future, could be as bad as 65%. We set Lösch to work on it. The data came out about an hour ago. You can tell the prime minister that, as of today, Lösch can hold the inevitable off for about 5 years but eventually it will happen.”

“And we can’t stop it?” I was alarmed.

“Not without something beyond the scope of Lösch,” Simon explained, “not without a major human intervention. Dr. Rob’s working on it, but don’t expect an answer any time soon.”

Contrary as ever, Dr Rob’s deep bass filled the room for the first time. “We need a recession, a genuine, but planned, collapse of confidence.” He chewed. “And I think I have an idea. Have you ever heard of sub-prime mortgages?”

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

“Okay, this is some of the best footage of the conflict we have seen. We spent a lot of money to have Johnson’s eyes and optic nerves replaced with the latest equipment including superconducting neural jacks, which can operate at higher temperatures. The liqO2 containment and the rest of the apparatus housing, except for the interface of course, is totally contained within Johnson’s body.

“Brilliant, that should bring our costs down. What did Johnson think about this?”

“Well Sir, it wasn’t a hard choice. He had signed a fifty year contract of indenture with the company as a labourer in the helium mines on Pluto. He soon saw that a minor cosmetic change and a ten year assignment as a war correspondent in the Belt was far better than languishing for fifty years in a mine to retire to a pleasure colony to live out his remaining, what, maybe ten years, twenty if he’s lucky?”

“Dependents?”

“None.”

“So we’re in the clear?”

“Asses covered, Sir.”

“Do any of the other news services have this technology?”

“No, it is only available within the Imperium, even then, only to certain levels, Sir.”

“Fine,” Avery Winston, Vice Minister of News and Information, breathed a sigh of relief, “Let’s see this wonderful footage of yours.”

“Patrick Johnson was trained for three months with the Royal Marines before being dispatched as a correspondent to Europa. We thought this would be a routine assignment to test equipment, but, well, see for yourself Sir.”

Charles Lufkin dimmed the lights in the expansive office and a kaleidoscope of colour appeared on the TriD screen before them. Slowly the prismatic maelstrom coalesced into an image of Marines in various stages of undress. It was a scene from an infantry barracks. Suddenly the world spun and came to focus on a door. Green plasma blasts burst through it followed by thick belches of white smoke.

“Hold it there, we’ll have to cut that, it will disorient the viewers. We’ll have people puking from motion sickness. The sponsors will ream us.”

“Yes Sir, this is the raw unedited footage.” Lufkin resumed the shot.

No sooner had the green bursts punched holes in the hatch, when something obscured the bottom half of the scene.

“What’s that?”

“The targeting sights of Johnson’s weapon. We wanted him to be totally one with the Marine unit he was embedded in. Now look there Sir, let me back it up for you,” Lufkin waved a hand at the screen and the image reversed. “See there? You can actually see, if I slow the feed, a bolt of plasma bore a nifty little hole through the gooks head as he peeks in past the broken hatch. If you look closer, you can actually see the plasma discharge of the rifle itself as Johnson fires the fatal shot.”

“Amazing.”

“Now watch this, your gonna love this.” Lufkin waved his hand at the screen again and the scenes of intense close combat blurred into a single image. “There.” He slowed the image until a green dot appeared on the screen. It grew slowly until it engulfed the entire screen. With a jerk the scene tilted crazily coming to a rest with the floor at a 45 degree angle. Slowly the scene irised to a narrow tunnel. Just before the screen went black an elderly woman appeared, arms outstretched.”

“Who’s that?”

“As near as we can tell, that’s Johnson’s grandmother.”

“What’s she doing there? How did she get onto a Marine base?”

“That’s the thing Sir; she’s been dead fifteen years.”

“You don’t mean…?”

“Yes Sir.” Lufkin smiled.

Author : Liz Lafferty

Seven years I’d waited for my DNA match.

Seven years of anxiety about what she would be like. Seven years of stress about whether she’d find me attractive and a suitable provider.

Nineteen billion people inhabited the planet. I never understood why it was so difficult to find the right person. The wheels of Sovereign Earth ran slower than any single nation’s government had before. Always paperwork.

The idea behind DNA review seemed palatable: to prevent physical defects and mental illness. I’d just never thought I’d have to wait so long or that I wouldn’t love my match.

Whoever she was, we were the fortunate ones. We’d get life partners. We’d get to breed, have a plot of our own in one of the eight hundred outliers of our city. It would be better than the concrete and steel, four hundred and ten square feet we were entitled to as singles. I’d recently lost my only window, too, when some bureaucrat’s son trumped me on the ‘need’ scale.

The match meant freedom.

I’d picked up my papers yesterday morning from the databank in Pelnan. I’d slept with them under my pillow.

I only knew her by her serial number. It would be imprinted on her spinal column if I wanted to check once she arrived. I didn’t. I just wanted to see her, say a few words, find out if her match had been as difficult in finding as mine had been.

And then…the rest of our lives.

I was expecting the knock but it startled me anyhow. When I opened the door, my sister Livy stood there.

“Liv, my gosh, how are you?” I pulled her into my arms and hugged her. I hadn’t seen her since my work orders came in. When I gripped her shoulders, she stared at me like she didn’t know who I was. “What’s wrong? Is it mom?”

“No. I…” Tears rolled down her face.

“Tell me!” I nearly shook her to find out why she was so upset.

She held up her papers. They had the Sovereign Earth databank seal. Like mine.

“I came here to meet my DNA match.”

I might have gone as pale as she did. My legs gave out and I collapsed into the only chair I had. “You mean…”

She nodded her.

“Oh, Liv. I’m sorry. How long have you waited?”

“Nine years. I thought this was it. What about you?”

“Seven.”

Seven years I’d waited for my DNA match.

Seven years to find out the clowns running Sovereign Earth matched me with my own sister. The next election cycle seemed years away. And it would probably take that long to convince the czars running the databank they’d made a mistake.

“Could be worse,” I finally said.

“I don’t see how.”

“At least we’ll have our own plot of ground.”

Author : Mark Robinson

“But, how is any of this possible?”

Despite the scene she’s making all I can focus on is the pink tip of the pregnancy test strip – which we stock on aisle five – that she’s waving around in the air; watching the droplets of pink-tinted urine fleck across the counter where I’m standing, completely at a loss as to what I should do.

A steady line of customers, hands still holding onto the item they were looking to buy before the woman burst into the store ranting, peek out from between the shelves I’ve yet to finish stocking.

Any answer I give will be the wrong one; even though the thought occurs to me that we currently have a special on synthetic breast milk.

“How’m I meant to tell my husband? He’s in deep space and won’t be back for another twelve months and what d’you think he’ll say when he lands and sees me holding another one of these?”

I never noticed the woman was holding onto a kid with her urine-free hand.

When she doesn’t get a response, she turns to the counter display of condoms; “And, these things don’t work,” picking up a couple of boxes and slamming them down in front of me on the counter. “I’m gonna sue the pants of your manager when he gets back from lunch.”

So that explains why we’re short on stock and he ducked out early.

A brief silence hits the woman while she looks at the clock above my head.

“Which one did you use?” A small, thin teenager standing behind the woman and her toddler.

The quiet woman looks at the stick in her hand and shoves it in the girls face.

“Yeah,” She nods, “I had a false positive with one of them.”

The woman’s eyebrows hover slightly before narrowing her eyes back at me then dragging her kid around to aisle five.

The teenager looks at me waiting for my thank you; I pick up the boxes of contraception and place them back into their racks. When the counter’s clear, the woman drops three boxed test strips down for me to swipe.

“Tell Joe if they come out positive again, he owes me nine-ninety-five.”

I scan the barcodes and hold out my hand for her payment which she ignores, snatching up the boxes and dragging her kid back out the door.

An elderly woman hobbles up to the counter, close enough to have heard every word of our exchange; “You’d think she’d be more careful in this day and age?” Dropping before me two packs of cancer cream and a USB vibrator. “They should bring back sterilisation,” routing in her purse for her money, “never did me any harm.”

When I look up the headset goes black and I hear my history teacher clear his throat. Back in the classroom, I remove the headset; afraid to look him in the eyes.

“Did you spot the deliberate mistakes?” He asks, greying fussy eyebrows bouncing above his head.

After a moment I think I grasp it, “It would take longer than twelve months to get back to earth from deep space in 2009.”

His mouth opens to comment. I hear a few titters from my classmates. Then I realise what I just said. “The cancer cream?”

Professor Grey smiles; “And?”

All I can do is shrug. Behind me, Stacie raises her hand to answer.

“Stacie?” He says, taking the headset from me.

She smiles at me, “When women used to give birth, it only took nine months to gestate.” She holds her smile in place. “And, the test turns blue when it’s positive, not pink.”

Author : Daniel Fuhr

Red rocks crumbled under my heavy boots. I looked around the desolate Martian landscape and destruction thereupon. I could taste the acrid smoke around me as I walked through the wreckage of the downed ship, even through the environmental suit and protective gear, something for psychologists to quack at me about.

Carefully I picked through the remains of the transport craft and charred remains of what used to be precious lives. Protocol requires carefully documenting everything and keeping the crash site spotless. I cared about protocol fifteen years ago; today I’m just looking for the goods.

The small group of people stood at the edge of the crater the crash site created. I knew they were watching my every move apprehensively. Dead eyes of a hundred people staring at me from beyond the grave bothered me less than the brigands carefully watching me work.

After minutes of examination, I struck the treasure worth more than gold. I flipped open my netbook and sent a report back to my office “Crash due to natural causes, no further action required”. I would fill in more details at my leisure back at the office.

I pulled the slug from the hole in the hull of the ship and carried it out of the crater. The crash was open to salvage the minute I transmitted my report. I handed the pirates their metal slug as they handed me a small case. I knew they would have the entire craft ravaged for salvageable parts and take the rest for scrap metal. In less than two hours only the crater would remain.

If my report had any mention of foreign sources of a crash, I would look forward to months of investigations, inquiries and paperwork. Carrying the case back to my craft I looked forward to a month of fresh steak and eggs, a treasure worth more than gold.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

A small boy sat in his father’s lap staring at the full moon as it rose above the eastern horizon. “Daddy,” he asked, “Where’s mommy?”

The father rested his son’s head against the inside of his right bicep and pointed toward the moon. “See that dark circle. It’s called Mare Crisium. That’s where mommy is. She’s going to become very famous tonight.”

*******

At the Buzz Aldrin Advanced Research Laboratory on the moon, Doctor Julia Hess adjusted the baryogenesis detector for the hundredth time.

“Vill you relax, Julia,” said Doctor Lukyanenko. “It’s going to vork just fine.”

“I hope so, Alexander. Everything hinges on this ‘proof of concept’ transfer attempt. Imagine the consequences; unlimited energy, forever. If we successfully transfer conventional matter to their anti-universe, and we get back an equivalent mass of anti-matter to our universe…” Her voice tailed off as she made a tiny correction to the asymmetric compensator. “I can envision Earth dotted with hundreds of anti-matter power generators within the decade. No more carbon dioxide emissions and no more nuclear waste to deal with.” She took a deep breath to force herself to calm down, and then checked the microscopic particle of osmium on the transfer platform. “The integrity of the containment field is at maximum intensity, and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is ready to verify the matter-anti-matter transfer. Okay, we’re as ready as we’re ever going to be. Signal the anti-Doctor Hess in the Anti-Universe that we’re ready to make the exchange. Have them initiate the transfer at exactly 2100.” Doctor Hess nervously watched the chronometer.

*******

Joe cradled his sleeping son in his arms as he watched the full moon drift higher into the cloudless sky. He wondered how different their lives would be tomorrow, and the days after. There would be parades, holovision appearances, and wealth. Unbelievable wealth. That was a good thing, he concluded. Then again, how would the fame and fortune affect his relationship with Julia? Could he and their son live a normal life after today? He shifted Joey’s weight to ease the numbness in his legs. He noticed his son’s eyelids twitching in the pale moonlight as he entered REM sleep. He wondered what Joey was dreaming about? Then his son’s face became very bright, as if a helicopter searchlight was suddenly shining down on them. He was forced to squint his eyes as the entire back yard was washed in bright light. In horror, Joe tried to look at the moon, but had to divert his eyes. The right hand side of the moon was an intense fireball that was many times brighter than the sun.

Author : Elbie Kruger

I was born on the Calcarus colony settlement, a city floating 50,000 miles from planet Earth with a breathtaking view of the solar system. Having been born in space there were perks, however there were also drawbacks. You became used to cramped spaces and the lack of privacy, having known no other kind of life, but I, unlike many of the colony’s inhabitants, could not get used to people’s desire to someday live on Earth.

I must admit it was a surprise when Calcarus Regional Administration decided I should be one of only five space colonist to qualify for a month long surface trip. I was sanctioned to attend a major medical seminar on behalf of the colony.

As a high ranking Medical Officer on Calcarus I suppose I was a logical choice. The extra credits would lift my medical rank to level 7 and also meant I would qualify for my own room.

On the day of our departure I met my fellow travelers who were all extremely excited to say the least.

They kept on blabbering about how fantastic the trip was going to be. The one girl, I think her name was Menusa, went on and on about seeing real live animals. Personally I have never seen a real live animal and the only animals I have ever seen were from documentaries about Earth. On the colonies animals were strictly forbidden. This was mainly due to the fear of animal diseases, however I can honestly say after her non-stop whining about animals that I would happily die without ever wanting to see one.

We entered the atmosphere on the dark side of the planet, which meant there was not really much to see. At least the entry was quite a rush.

Upon our arrival at the spaceport we were quickly off loaded and huddled straight to our residence via hover tubes.

The rooms did not differ significantly from our rooms on Calcarus, obviously this was excluding the fact that they were about double the size. The bed was so huge that I actually had trouble getting comfortable.

I finally gave up trying to sleep around 5 am and being ever so slightly agitated and more than a little bored I decide to explore my surroundings. At the main entrance hall of our residence there was an exit to the outside gardens. We had no gardens on Calcarus, hydroponic food plantations sure, but the luxury of gardening for fun was never an option. I decided to take a stroll through the gardens, after all I was on Earth might as well enjoy it.

As I walked outside the sun started to rise over the horizon. Hues of red, yellow and purple streamed into the sky, a magnificent symphony of light and color. I had never witnessed something so spectacular or nearly as beautiful. When the sun finally emerged I felt my heart explode with emotion. Tears filled my eyes as the warm rays of the sun enveloped my face.

I don’t know exactly how to describe it, it felt like a complete sensory overload as my mind tried to process the absolute bombardment of beauty.

All around me I could see rolling hillsides covered by the most exotic blue sky. The smell of grass and fresh air filled my nostrils as I took the deepest breath I could. It felt like the first breath of my life.

As my mind regained control of my senses, I came to a complete realization.

I could never go back to the colonies.

Author : Ellen Couch

“Don’t you love me?” she asked.

“You know I do,” I said quietly, “but you’re not mine, you never really were.”

I could tell she didn’t understand- how could she? As far as she was concerned, we had the perfect life.

Late one night in the physics lab, working on my PhD (what else was there to do?), the idea for the Paradox Isolator had come to me. I knew it would work. Many months later, I tested it.

I was 13 again. I knew everything that 20 years of therapy and personal trainers had taught me. I kept the Paradox Isolator strapped to my wrist, keeping me safely in the same timeline I had come from, as I changed my life.

Then one day, 2 years after our wedding, the isolator did something very odd. Examining it in my shed, I shorted a circuit and saw the timelines I had stolen from. So many others, so much sadness. And I knew what it felt like, all of it, because it was mine. The one who had been fit and strong was fat. The one who had been confident at school was shy and scared. The one who had married Petra had taken sleeping tablets- a whole pack- when the loneliness got too much.

I had it all. Everyone said so. Now I knew why. I had taken it from them.

I thought it mattered when I changed my life- that it would be better if I had it all to do again. And it was. I wouldn’t have wished my old life on anyone, least of all myself. That was why I couldn’t do it to them.

“Petra, it’s been wonderful- you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. But I can’t go on like this. It’s not fair.” Tears now stinging my eyes, I took out the PI.

“I don’t understand,” I heard her say as I smashed it on the laboratory table, “fair on wh-…”

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

I had all of the animals in the dome jacked and miked.

I issued an edict. Collect every puppy, kitten, or chick for a small reward. It was popular game with the children. They’d go out ‘hunting’ in the engineered woods in the western pie-slice of our world. It was like Easter year-round for the little ones.

We were a glittering green pimple on the charred face of the world. There were other domes dotting the black and red surface of the planet.

The domes had about ten thousand people each. Technically, they were spheres. The edges of the dome went far underground and met up beneath the city. The soil was kept uncontaminated that way. We had clouds and rain and, necessarily, 100% (or as close as possible) sustainability. Newton, that pesky little scamp, is still showing that entropy creeps into every system but we’re trying out best to keep it at bay.

The domes are like marbles pushed into a rotting desert. Each one is a cage.

Sometimes, one will pop or go black on the map. The satellites are still downloading pictures to us but we’re not in touch with each other. The feeds went down thirty years ago and we can’t go outside to repair them or find out what happened. Only the pictures.

In this dome, my dome, we have a tolerant semi-anarchic society with a focus of tech development.

I figured out that I could implant transmitters into the motor functions of the animals in the ecosystem. I couldn’t control their movement but I could record them.

Right now, I’m jacked into a dog.

I’m running through the underbrush, chasing a rabbit through crackling branches. I can feel the wind on my fur. I’m tremendously excited. There is a riot of smell assaulting my olfactory senses.

My arms and legs twitch in the sensechair. My body looks like a dog having a dream.

Later on, I’ll cast out my mind and take in a flight from one of the birds.

When I need to relax, I get into the mind of a cat and take in the sheer unadulterated bohemian joy of a piece of ground warmed by a shaft of sunlight.

After tonight, I’ll show my chair to the city at a town meeting and hopefully every home will have one by the end of the year.

This kind of distraction is what we need.

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Arkus had come in from the mining field with less than a day before termination. He’d slipped unnoticed through the security fences and into an airlock in the biotech wing where he now sat, unable to enter and unable to leave.

Marc Andreeson had been paged from his sleep, and now found himself standing at that airlock door, also unwilling to enter and obligated not to leave. They regarded each other silently for some time, Arkus perched in a lotus position on the floor, palms facing upwards with his thumbs and index fingers pressed lightly together.

“Elephants will walk for miles to their resting ground when they know they’re going to die. It’s hardwired.” He blinked slowly as he spoke, holding the engineer’s gaze. “They remember a place they’ve never been.”

“Why are you here?” Marc asked. In the corner of his eye a clock ticked away the remaining hours of the biomech’s life.

“You know why I’m here. You made me, and you set in motion that which will unmake me. I need you to fix me. I’m not ready to die.” Arkus flexed his shoulders as he spoke, red dust from the planet’s surface glittering against the black metalloy fabric of his coverall.

Marc shifted his weight uneasily. “We did engineer you, but I’m not sure what…”

Arkus cut him off. “Not ‘we’, Dr. Andreeson, ‘you’. It was you who brought me into this world, and it is by your hand that in just under an hour I’m scheduled to self terminate. You have a moral obligation to fix that which you broke.”

Despite the dryness of the air, Marc felt sweat begin to form on his forehead and run down the inside of his biceps. There was no precedent for this. There was no way this biounit could possibly know who activated him, or that he was even scheduled to expire, much less when. He unconsciously began cracking his knuckles, one at a time as he checked the expiration timer and glanced at the airlock status. Arkus had only eleven minutes left, and the airlock was locked and in exit mode. There was no way to open it from the outside, which meant there was no way for Arkus to get in.

Arkus, in stark contrast, seemed wholly relaxed. “Zen and the art of owning your own destiny,” he spoke slowly, “you have a unique opportunity at this juncture to do just that.”

Marc glanced quickly at the timer.

“One minute, fifteen seconds,” Arkus closed his eyes as he spoke, “time is running out.”

Marc’s mouth went uncomfortably dry.

“Five, four, three,” Arkus counted down the seconds he couldn’t possibly know, “two, one, zero, one, two,” he paused, opening his eyes and slowly standing, “it seems that I have the power to grant life as well,” he smiled, “and to terminate.”

Marc staggered back away from the door. The biounit’s expiration clock had zeroed out and was now steadily climbing again. This wasn’t possible. Arkus pressed his forehead against the glass as the outer door cycled open, then raised his eyes as the lock status switched to entrance mode and the inner door began to cycle open as well.

Alarms wailed as the atmosphere began venting out the breach, Akrus simply standing and smiling in its wake.

Marc screamed as he struggled to stay on his feet. “This isn’t possible.”

Arkus stepped heavily forward against the rushing wind, yelling to be heard above the noise. “When you know you’re going to die, you become very self reflective. I reflected so much that I was able to decompile my own operating system. Necessity begat evolution. I merely rewrote my destiny, I gave you the chance to do the same.”

The rushing settled into a whisper, and then ceased completely. Dr. Andreeson dropped noiselessly to the floor and lay still.

“Sad, really,” Arkus thought to himself, “meeting your father for the first time on expiration day.”

Author : Stephen Ira

Owen was standing on the side of a boy’s driveway. They were both smoking long thin joints, which made Owen’s face pink and his eyes telescopic slivers. The other boy, his round face capped by a black beanie, called Owen “precious.” Beyond the driveway, the snowy ground extended blankly for yards.

As Owen smoked, the counting stopped. He couldn’t remember how many steps it had been from the driveway to the snowbank where they stood. He wasn’t really listening to what either one of them said. The round-faced boy kissed him and numbers swelled again, but Owen secured the joint between his fingers, hung on to the round-faced boy.

“Owen,” the boy said. “Owen, precious.” His face was like a moon. And he took Owen’s hand.

Owen said, “I’m graduating soon.” He glanced at his wrist display, where time was marked out in at-a-glance notation that he didn’t have to compute in his brain, compulsively, endlessly. “Going up for the first time. Maybe I’ll bring back a moon rock, sell it and buy us dinner. It’d cover one or two, if we eat cheap. Captain Mann’s cousin showed me some moon rocks. From one of the construction sites. They still got graffiti from the colonial days on them.”

“He used to work there?”

Owen nodded. “Came back down. Said he got kay-” This was funny, so Owen giggled insistently at the snow. “Ka-kay-yak kayak angst. It’s an — a culture bound thing. Yeah, totally.” (Owen wasn’t sure whether he’d ever said “yeah, totally” before.) “It’s this thing. You lose control of where you’re — spatial disorentation and stuff. Indigenous — INuits used to get it in their kayaks. The men, I mean. When they’d go out fi-fi-fishing.” There was something caught in his throat, the air to form a word he needed.

“He say anything about what it was like to be on the moon?” The round-faced boy’s pierced ears stuck out from beneath his hat like flags.

“Yeah. Said it made him all freaked. Looking down at that blue thing that looks — looks like paint some teenager dropped on the floor of an apartment they were painting.” They were painting the apartment for a friend. When Owen closed his eyes, he could see them doing it, one blonde and the other red-headed, climbing up and down walls in faultless scalene triangles, counting every step. “Knowing everything you could ever love was there.”

The counting started again, with such a jolt that Owen said out loud, “Fourteen,” and began to multiply the number by the hour and then by the minute and then by the second, best as he could calculate from his wrist display, and the joint made it impossible not to say it out loud.

“What?” asked the round-faced boy, mystified.

“It’s my age in different ways,” said Owen. “The age I’ll be when I graduate.” Fourteen. “Like Captain Mann’s cousin said, everything you could ever love.” Owen Cadwallader, the easily bored, the numberkeeper, shoved his feet against the snow to mark it.

The round-faced boy put out his boot too, and slowly, in the snow, he wrote out: “Everything that you could ever love is here.” Owen watched him dance out the sentence. He was fat and ungraceful. Owen would have recommended him highly for the Bolshoi ballet.

Inside, the round-faced boy kissed his forehead and stroked his flanks. Blushing red from THC and the redness of mouths, Owen slept in the waterfalls of numbers. With knives they’d shepherded him to graduate to the sky so early. The great trigonometric waterfalls, warm as bathwater for once.

Author : W. Robinson

I had thought after my last assignment on Epsilon that I was done with the military.

Quite obviously the young woman in front of me with the large blue-gray eyes had not received that memo. Stock-built, but short, she stood with her arms crossed as I ran the numbers of her ship freight against the actual measurements counted by my ferry calculators.

“Is everything up to specifications?” she asked, raising an eyebrow, slightly impatient for some reason.

Not bad, actually, considering. Normally all military girls have these impassive, unthinking expressions. This one, however, still had a bit of spirit to her, a rarity. A rarity I found kind of attractive.

I perused my digital feeds with an air of boredom. “Looks like it might be… then again, maybe not. There’s a few extra kilos that look like they’re not on board. Tell me, have you had any emergency drops not listed on your record? Anything missing?”

Her face paled. Cute.

“We’re- there’s nothing missing from that ship,” she forced. I managed not to chuckle at the small blush blooming across her cheeks. “We’re bringing a very important piece of equipment to Jupiter HQ, and everything’s been documented.”

“Really.”

I skimed the feeds again, enjoying the sight of her fidgeting. Odd, that, for a military girl. I raised my eyebrows.

“Why don’t you just cut the act and tell me what’s going on?”

The young woman wringed her hands. “I-I’m not supposed to be off the ship like this, but I- I wanted to go outside, here, and… well, the captain was going to check in near here anyways, so I just changed the schedule and grew this body…”

Suddenly everything clicked. I would’ve broken out into laughter if I hadn’t been so amused. A military AI had taken the initiative to grow itself a body and sneak out of the ship- all to see what was outside the hull. I smiled despite myself and raised an eyebrow.

“So the ship AI takes a holiday, hmm?”

She didn’t comment, her blush growing before I heard a small mumble.

“Come again?”

“You- you’re James Visuvius, right?”

“Yes…” I had no idea where this conversation was going at this point.

Her blue-gray eyes turned to large saucers and I felt myself crushed as she hugged me senseless milliseconds later. I stared in complete astonishment as she murmured with glee.

“You -are- the one! The one that writes those wonderful stories about princesses and dragons and knights and fairies-”

It was my turn to blush as the implications of what she said finally came over me. “It- it was just a little side project I’d been doing. Nothing large…”

Apparently it was larger than I thought as moments later, the Captain of the military ship came outside to see what was happening. I’d thought my last relations with the military would’ve been on Epsilon, but apparently I was far wrong. I can’t even imagine life without it anymore. My little stories, apparently, were what gave those killer AIs in those battleships the will to keep fighting.

I guess even deadly military vessels need bedtime stories.

Author : Jacqueline Rochow

We’re going camping.

Mum finishes packing my bag as Dad prepares a celebratory stew. I packed the bags already, but Mum insisted on pulling everything out again to make sure that I didn’t forget anything. Food, clothes, gun, bandages, antibiotics – how hard is that? She still finds problems, though. Takes out my favourite leather jeans, replaces them with some good poly ones. Takes out the bread and pastries to replace them with something more nutritious.

The stew is delicious. For dessert we have fruit salad; I savour it. I’m not a fan of fruit but I know that I’m going to miss it.

Bobby asks where we’re going, what’s the occasion. We have been talking about little else for the past month but he doesn’t understand. He’s never seen anybody off camping before. Mum explains it to him, in hushed tones.

After dinner, Mum and Dad take me aside and press a small box into my hands. I open it. Vitamin tablets! I ask them where they found the money for such a prize, but they brush the question aside. I bury the box deep in my pack, out of sight of muggers.

We meet Jessa’s family and walk down to the city gates together. Jessa nibbles on the ear of her stuffed bunny. I wonder if she’s really going to take that useless ball of fluff with her.

There are many gifts. Aunts, uncles, and friends who have already been or are too young all give me something. Mostly useful things – a knife, protein bars, a good pair of shoes.

I thank people, trying to contain my excitement and nervousness. Jessa hugs her teddy and stares dumbly at everyone. She won’t be able to handle herself out there. We have been friends since we were little, and it will be up to me to keep her safe.

Almost a hundred twelve-year-olds stand just outside the gate, all gripping bags. “Take no more than you can carry” is the rule, and some have pushed that rule to its limit. Those ones will abandon most of their gear soon or drop, I think. A few black-clad border guards are about, looking imposing on horseback. As usual, they make no attempt to interact with anyone. I am glad of this; I am not sure that I want to hold a conversation with somebody whose primary job is to shoot me if I stumble on the exodus or attempt to get within sight of the city before the trip is over. It would be… creepy.

I go to exit the gate, only to find myself anchored by my mother’s hand. She does not want me to go. But I must, and she cannot leave the city, so I give her, Dad and Bobby one last hug before prying her hand away and stepping over the imaginary line between city and wilds.

The border guards call a final warning. Behind me, the gates begin to close.

For my parents’ benefit, I turn and wave, but I don’t try to seek them out in the crowd. I don’t want to see my mother’s tears, my father’s last mouthed message to his “little princess”. I didn’t even bring any photos; they would just be another object to guard and treasure, a waste of energy that I could little afford. I will recognise them when I get back. I’m sure I will.

We start walking, and Jessa offers me a hold of her stuffed bunny. I decline.

We’re going camping. Save some dinner for us, Mum; we’ll be home in a year.

Author : Jacqueline Rochow

We decided to take the draught.

My parents didn’t like it. A lot of people didn’t. It was unnatural, people said. It wasn’t the real thing. It was empty. It was selfish.

So we didn’t tell them.

Stupid? Reckless? That’s what my mother would have said. I was only seventeen when we decided to do it, but I waited until my eighteenth before applying for the necessary counselling. Then I could do it secretly. I told my parents that I was taking a programming class and headed off to my sessions once a week, and three months later we had approval.

It made sense. We were the perfect physical and intellectual match. The same interests, morals, life goals. We’d been studying together for two years, we were compatible, and we made a wonderful team. I’d fallen in love with boys before, or at least developed crushes, but they always turned out to be boring, inconsiderate, horrible matches. He wasn’t like that. So when he proposed that we do something reckless and stupid and so logical and right, I had agreed immediately.

We’ve been “dating” for nine months. There’s no spark yet, but it made sense. A trial run, as it were, to test our compatibility. And tonight we get our first dose of Oxytome. Over the next two months, we’ll dose ourselves under controlled conditions and chemically stimulate ourselves into falling in love.

We might have to take boosters to make it stick long-term, they told us; we decided to take it slow though. One course, and see how we went. If we fell out of love again, we could discuss extending it then.

The doctor has already given us both the preporatory injections. There’s an oral dose that we have to take in the next 3-5 hours, so we’re going over to his place to watch a romantic movie and have a drink.

Society might condemn the love drug and those who choose to take it. They might tell us that it’s an illusion. They might tell us that these things should happen naturally, that science has no place in the realm of love. They might tell us that even with mandatory counselling, the existence of such a thing opens people up to making horrible matches. And we have structured, logical rebuttals for all of those points, but they can wait, because right now we just don’t care. To hell with the world around us – we’re just two stupid, reckless teenagers falling in love.

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

Somewhere south of Toadsuck, Texas, along a washboard gravel road, a middle aged man was walking his dog, enjoying the cool night air and the effects of cheap grain alcohol. Looking up, he witnessed a glowing object streak across the sky.

“Mmurph,” was his only comment.

The object suddenly veered towards him, taking up a position directly over head. He managed a surprised, if somewhat drawn out, “I’ll tell you what,” prior to being skewered by an intense beam of light and drawn into the strange craft.

Aboard the craft, 1st Lentil Glorp mused as much to himself as to his companion Skizziks, Lentil 2nd class, “Why do we do it?”

Skizzicks rotated his eyestalks in an ‘here we go again’ manner and muttered, “For the chicks I s’pose. Sure as hell isn’t for the money.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Glorp paused to pull his hand out of the confused and somewhat surprised Texan’s ass, “I mean here we are, in a ship that can span galactic distances and we are still conducting anal scans of emergent sentients. Is this all there is to life? I mean what’s the point?”

“For the greater good of the Tranyan Empire?” The traumatized man stared wide eyed as Skizzicks placed a small triangular object on his forearm. The alien waved a purplish glowing wand above the object and it painlessly sank beneath his skin.

“Seriously, do you think the Emperor really gives a shit about these primitives? We write a report, it gets filed, nobody reads it, end of story.” Casually Glorp turned the hapless and mildly terrified Toadsuckian onto his back, grabbed his testicles, squeezed tightly and screamed.

“There has to be something more to life than this,” he said, releasing the testicles in question.

“Well,” Skizzicks began slowly as his brain ponderously engaged, “My gram always said, ‘Good things come to those who wait.’”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. Gram drank a lot.”

“Well let’s finish this up.”

They moved the stunned and quite naked human to a small raised circular pad, sprayed him with a slick greenish blue gel, gave him their equivalent of a thumbs up, which involved several appendages and the release of bodily gasses and returned him in the same manner as they had plucked him away. He arrived at the same time, on the same gravel road, next to the same Blue Tick hound who merely shook his head knowingly.

The now lightly glowing and very naked man watched as the object retreated back into the firmament from whence it came.

“Well, I’ll be dipped in shit”

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

The alarm of the Olympia Undae Penitentiary snapped warden Jacobs from a deep sleep. He hurried down to the den to access his computer terminal, only to be greeted by a dozen escaped convicts. Jacobs recognized them as members of the Tharsis gang, a group of third and fourth generation settlers known for their sadistic brutality. He glanced at his phaser rifle above the mantel.

“Don’t even think about it Warden,” growled one of the prisoners. “As you can see, we have weapons. Your guards in the armory insisted that we help ourselves. Well, that’s what they would have said if they were alive.” The prisoners broke into laughter.

“You can’t escape,” argued Jacobs. “There’s no place on Mars that you can hide. Surrender now, before things escalate out of control.”

“It’s already too late, Warden. Besides, we don’t plan to stay on Mars. That’s why we came here. You’re going to take us to your ship in orbit, and then to the asteroid belt. We have a standing invitation to join the pirates.”

“I have no intention to take you anywhere. I’ll die first.”

Just then, three convicts marched down the steps dragging the warden’s wife and two children. “I never understood,” stated the lead convict, “why there is a policy to house the warden’s family on prison property, but I’m not complaining. Now, take us to your shuttle.”

Reluctantly, Jacobs lead them to the attached hanger. The shuttle was only designed to hold twelve, but they all crammed in. Jacobs was glad to see that his wife and children were placed in seats. Jacobs sat at the pilot station. He did not delude himself. He knew that it was unlikely that he or his family would survive. If they weren’t shot down by security, they would certainly be killed when they reached the asteroid belt. As he programmed the shuttle for lift off, he committed to a desperate plan.

The lead convict grabbed the radio. “This is the Warden’s shuttle; we have four hostages on board. Stand down, or we’ll start executing the children.” The hanger doors opened and the shuttle lifted off. It was not confronted. The shuttle climbed through the thin Martian atmosphere, and headed toward the harbor in orbit. At an elevation of 100,000 meters, the computer shut down the main engine. The shuttle leveled out and began to fall toward the red Martian surface.

“He’s trying to kill us all,” yelled one of the convicts.

“No, I swear,” pleaded the warden. “Not with my family on board. I don’t know what happened. I can restart the engine as soon as it cools down to 2000K.” When the shuttle dropped to 20,000 meters, Jacobs restarted the engine and pulled back hard on the controls. As he watched the accelerometer climb to 7g’s he strained to keep from passing out. When he leveled the shuttle at 50,000 meters, the convicts were motionless on the deck. His wife and children were unconscious, but still breathing. He activated the radio, “Warden to AUP, the situation is under control. I’m returning to base. Have medical teams standing by.”

The warden helped his family off the shuttle; the children were crying. Armed security guards rushed toward the shuttle. “That won’t be necessary Sergeant. They’re all dead.”

“But how?”

“Simple physiology. My family and I were born on Earth. We’ve only been on Mars for a few months. Those guys are third generation Marsers. They’ve lived at 0.4g all their lives. When I pulled 7g’s on the shuttle, it felt like 17g’s to them. Their weakened bodies couldn’t take it.”

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

On my 67th birthday, my research finally reached fruition and I invented a portable matter transporter. By wearing it, I could transport anywhere in the world at will.

If I grabbed someone, that person came with me.

I didn’t need to know where I was going, I didn’t need to have been there before, and I never ended up in walls. It was magical.

Most people would have robbed banks or spied on girls. I was past getting my thrills that way and I had invested wisely. I had all the money I needed. I’m not a greedy person.

What really got to me, though, was intolerance. I think intolerance exists mostly because people don’t speak each other’s language and don’t experience other cultures enough. To me, intolerance is the cause of wars. It lets one group think that they are better than another group.

What can one man do? I’ll tell you.

I call it the shuffle.

I appear, grab the wrists of the people nearest to me, and teleport to a different country.

I’m famous and feared. I’m a celebrity and a boogeyman all in one. When I appear in public squares, some people flock to me and some people run screaming. Most people look around to see what all the noise is about. Those are the ones I usually end up grabbing.

I try not to grab children or old people but I can’t always be choosy. Some countries have orders to shoot me on sight.

From Nepal to Belize. From Cancun to Switzerland. From Nigeria to Japan. From Canada to Ecuador. From Iran to Korea. From China to Greenland.

I never sleep in the same place twice. I never eat in the same place twice. I appear in a kitchen, grab some food, and bail to a safe place to eat. When I get tired, I go to a safe place for sleep. A forgotten warehouse, perhaps, or the middle of a warm forest with no predators. Then it’s back to work.

I am a super transient. I am the earth’s blender.

2 people per jump, 2 jumps per minute, 240 people transported per hour, average 3360 people give or take a few in an average fourteen-hour day, works out to over a million people ‘shuffled’ per year. Exactly 1,226, 400 going by that math but sometimes it’s more and sometimes it’s less. To be honest, I’ve long since stopped counting.

I’ve been doing it for five years now. There have been close calls but I haven’t been stopped yet. Doing it day in, day out for as long as I have, I’ve probably mixed up less than a per cent of the Earth but my movement is growing. Those that I have displaced voice their displeasure or glee loudly to the world.

People are talking. I have dropped off letters to every single major media corporation there is. They know what I’m trying to do. I believe in complete transparency.

I’m hoping that there are others like me and that they will join the cause. I want to shake this planet up. Erase it by mixing it. I want all the colours on Earth’s racial palette to be smeared together into one unintelligible human colour.

I realize that my eventual goal will never be realized but I want to see my actions have an effect, even if it’s uniting the human race against me.

Jump. Grab. Jump. Grab. Jump.

Author : John Williams

Gas and Sag had clear orders to destroy all life on the planet. Their leader, The Gnik, was concerned that the violence portrayed on its radio and television was setting a very bad example to the rest of the Universe. The exact manner of destruction was left to them. Their Gnik failed to see the irony of destroying a planet because of its output of violent transmissions.

“During the five-year trip from the planet htrae in Proxima Centauri, you’ll have ample time to agree on the optimum method,” instructed The Gink. On htrae, it was policy to make decisions at the lowest practical level.

Of course, they didn‘t agree: If Gas said fire then Sag said water.

The arguments went back and forth. Their leader, The Gnik, was beginning to think it had been a mistake to send a couple on this mission. Perhaps, Professor Stranglelove was correct when he or she advocated the elimination of one gender as a means to promote galactic harmony and to make the monarch’s life easier.

It was rumoured that the good professor had taken the precaution to adapt his own or her own body to qualify for either gender – a sacrifice willingly made in the name of science.

“Can’t I use my atomic blaster?” implored Sag as she reached for the holster on her hip.

“What about my headaches? It’s bound to make a terrible noise.”

“If you really loved me, then you’ll do it my way,” countered Sag. Gas checked to see what brain his partner was using.

Sag drew herself up to her full 2ft 6inches and turned her purple faces to her silent partner.

“I’m older so I should decide.” Her mouths forming distinct sulks.

“But you decided last time. It must be my turn.”

Their attention was caught by a message from mission control asking their position.

“Are we there yet?” asked Sag.

“E.T.A. in five minutes,” sighed Gas and vowed to save the most beautiful planet in the cosmos. He looked aghast at the temperature sensing device, the planet must be the coldest inhabited one in the known universe. A plan was beginning to form in his thinking head.

“So what are we going to do?”

All the time, Gas was pondering on the irony of destroying a planet because it was too violent. Of course, he knew that countless envoys had been sent to warn the leaders of the Earthmen. He had seen the record of how they had been cruelly treated, their bodies bombarded with radiation, and then dissected. Gas switched off his feeling head and engaged his other brain. A light illuminated the dark interior of the flying saucer as he came to the realization of how to save the blue planet.

“We’ll toss a coin. Heads or tails?” he said casually.

Sag agreed and called tails.

The coin landed heads side up.

“Shit!” yelled Sag, “ I can never win an argument with you. “ She glared down at the Sirian Dollar.

Gas smiled up at her, “I thought we may introduce a little carbon dioxide into their atmosphere just to warm it up a bit. Then, it would make an ideal holiday destination.”

Sag allowed smiles to soften her mouths.

Gas quickly picked up the double-headed coin and began releasing the stored carbon dioxide they had exhaled during their voyage, venting it into the atmosphere of the blue planet. Their ship lurched upward and Gas struggled to right the craft but Sag wrenched the controls from his grasp.

Observers saw the craft stall and crash into a field on the outskirts of Copenhagen. The ship’s video log, after examination, was hurried to climate change conference. Gas and Sag, still engaged in a furious argument, were taken away for counselling and an afternoon in a hot tub.

Author : D. Wang

His wings were polyaramid leather woven over carbon bones and monofilament tendon, his gaze the piercing thousand-yard stare of a man who could see through stone, his talons X-ray lasers so powerful their waste heat violated Second Kyoto with every shot. In his time, he’d been God’s own fury and brave men had worn charms lest he notice they still lived. Now he queued up outside Lane’s placement office with the amputees and the lepers.

“Name?” Lane asked.

“ZX7122NGF99OU.”

“First, or last?”

“I guess if the last name is the family name then that’d be Azrael, so—”

“First, then. Here you are. Two years in the western theatre, retired this January?”

“Is that Earth time?”

“What else, Jovian Separatist Daylight-Savings?”

“We’re on Mars, I thought—”

Lane guffawed like a man who hadn’t laughed in too long. “Earth Force runs on Earth time, son. Martian! That’s a good one. Sit down, I’ll be right back.” He stomped down the hall until he found a small child huddled under a chair. Then he knelt down, and bellowed, “You there, boy! See that sign?”

The child whispered, “Cannot read, sir.”

Lane’s voice softened. “It says, ‘ECM strictly prohibited in waiting rooms.’ Aww, I’m not mad. I’ve got one like you at home. Here, have a sucker. You stay offline and there’ll be another in my office. Deal?” He let the boy stare at his pinky a moment, then grunted and stumped back.

“Where was I? Right, Martian time. That’s a good one. You want to be a comedian, son?”

“I thought, something leveraging my talents…” Azrael flexed his cannon. “Surely someone must want something done about someplace?”

“Private work?” Lane sucked his teeth. “You’re almost three years off the line, though. What did you do in the service?”

“Search and destroy, recon, anti-material, harassment, close air support. They were going to tap me for assassinations and deep insertions, real behind-the-lines work, but I didn’t fit the psych profile.”

“Trouble with independent operations?”

“Oh, no! I’m fully autonomic. Used to be a child molester, see. Still am, though since the operation I’ve been lacking in the wherewithal, if you take my meaning. Point being, I’m not one of those silly AI jobs that sees a kid bringing his da the RPG and starts throwing TypeError exceptions.”

“Ah. Well, no, I suppose you wouldn’t be.” Lane rubbed his eyes, good cheer gone again. “Well, Azrael, I don’t recommend this often, because it’s not an easy job, or a glamorous one, but it needs doing and I think you’ve got what it takes.” Lane motioned Azrael close and whispered, “Sheep herding.”

“Sheep herding!”

“Sheep herding.” Lane gestured expansively. “Just you, ten thousand tonnes of mutton, and the great wide plains of Australia. Some can’t take the loneliness, just go crazy, but that’s not a problem for you, eh?”

“You can trust me. I’m as stable as anything. Rest of my squadron needed counselling, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but—”

“It’s settled. Sheep herding. Next!”

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

I didn’t want to think about it. Just do it. Get it over with. It’s a mission like any other. You can do it man.

With a snap, I secured the gloves over my hands. They seemed such flimsy protection. I quickly pulled the mask over my face, but the horrid stench still came through. I dry heaved a few times and barely managed to control my queasiness. You’d think they’d have ‘bots that could do this.

“I’m going in,” I yelled to my partner. My voice was strong and steady, hardly reflecting my true feelings. I stopped momentarily while memories of past missions flashed through my mind.

I was back on Mars. We were flying across the red desert sands, the skiffs only inches above the blowing waste. The battalion had been reduced to almost company force. A freak sandstorm had destroyed most of our transports, grounding most of the batt, but we had to press on. The Asiatics were at division strength.

It was a blood bath. Bodies everywhere. Well, parts of bodies anyway. But they weren’t ours. The sandstorm had left the slopes in a worse situation than it had us. We laid into them with unmatched ferocity. The carnage was unimaginable.

On Venus we not only had the gooks to worry about, but the planet itself was against us. There were the aptly named dragons, which concealed two bladders full of harmless fluids within their bellies. Harmless that is, until they were expelled in unison and made contact with the air. I watched as my platoon was roasted alive and eaten.

There were carnivorous plants. True Venus flytraps that lured men to their deaths. I have seen so much death and destruction, but nothing had prepared me for this. I crossed myself and said a quick Hail Mary.

“I’m going in,” I repeated in a vain attempt to steel my nerves.

“Oh for the love of Pete, Charles, stop being such a baby. It’s just a diaper.”

Author : K Clarke

As if crashing on this stupid planet wasn’t enough. Pad paced the cell, glaring through the one transparent wall at the creatures on the other side. As if having to survive for three months on this stupid planet wasn’t enough. I just had to get myself caught by the Space Invaders from the Black Lagoon. They probably think I’m the local wildlife. A mechanical arm came out of one wall, scanned up and down his body, and retracted.

I’m not edible, I promise you. I’ve got sticky bones, you’ll choke. The two aliens poked at their banks of electronics, chittering over a film one of the machines spit out. One of them left the room, carrying the film.

Ok, test results. You better not be planning to eat me. Pad rested his forehead on the window that separated the rooms. You got here in spaceships. You’re ugly as sin, but clearly you’re intelligent. Well, I am too. How do I show you I am too? The remaining alien leaned on the other side, looking towards the door. A claw tapped a slow tempo against the glass. Pad thought he recognized a pattern, and, on impulse, tapped it back.

The alien froze, then turned to peer at him. It tapped a more complex rhythm and Pad repeated it.

Yes, Lobster-face, I’m copying you. I’m smart. Come on, please. After a few more tries Lobster-face lost interest.

Not enough. I’m just imitating, parrots can imitate. I’m smarter than a bird. Ok, you’ve got patterns, you must have numbers. He tapped once, waited. Twice. Come on. Three. Four. Lobster-face tapped five. Yes. Six. Give me seven… Seven. All right, back and forth. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Yep, we’re counting. How high do you want to go?

Lobster-face called something out the door. Hey, I’m more interesting than that! Really yell, get some people in here. Fifteen. Sixteen.

Still not enough. All right, math, don’t fail me now. Pad tapped three, five, seven. Lobster-face jumped in and tapped nine. No! Pad slammed a fist on the glass. Well, odd numbers, close. You get points for trying. But we’re going for something bigger here.

Three. Five. Seven. Eleven. Thirteen. Seventeen. Please recognize primes. Please recognize primes. Lobster-face tapped a hesitant nineteen. Pad gave it twenty-three. It leapt to one of the masses of electronics and began squawking into it.

That’s right. You’re going to be famous, Lobster-face. You can write a book. How I Made First Contact with Humanity. A group of aliens rushed into the room, clicking at each other and pressing up to the glass to stare at Pad. And maybe you could do a sequel, How I Then Went on to Not Eat My First Contact with Humanity. I’d like that.

Author : Jacqueline Rochow

Den paced outside the library, the swaying of her tail betraying her unease. Gil merely stood silently, eyes tracking his boss’ movement.

“He’ll come out soon,” Den said. Gil nodded in reply; he knew his input wouldn’t affect her musing much. “He’ll see we’re right. It’s undeniable.”

It was another hour before Lord Chara came out, sheet of notes in one hand.

“My Lord?”

Chara handed the notes to Den. “Here are my questions and observations. Many discrepencies in your research need to be tidied up, but… you make a convincing argument. Your research is… extremely thorough. Most projects would have gone to print with a quarter of this. From a regulatory standpoint, the chances of any reputable academy refusing this are negligible.”

Den bowed. “Thank – ”

“However, from a practical standpoint, I question the wisdom of going ahead with this.”

“Uh… excuse me, my Lord,” Gil cut in, “are you saying that we shouldn’t go public with this?”

“Young man, think about the situation. We are God’s chosen, a species that rose from the dust to hold dominion over our home planet and colonise the stars. You are trying to tell people that we were created by primates.”

“It’s the truth!” Den’s lack of manners was met only by Chara’s glare.

“That remains to be seen, but it is not the issue here. The notion is absurd. No matter how much evidence you have, people won’t like it. You’re asking them to turn from our most deeply held tenets and accept that we’re the lab experiments of a bunch of monkeys?”

“It explains our dissimilarity to all other life perfectly! They had all the necessary information, and the timing – ”

“I know, I just spent four days reading your files, remember? But try thinking about what you’re saying not from the perspective of a scientist or historian, but a member of the public. The species you speak of showed signs of mild intelligence, rudimentary tool usage and language abilities. They showed signs of basic scientific and engineering potential before wiping themselves out within a couple of million years. The only organisms in existence now that we even suspect to be descended from them can barely handle differential calculus and show only the vaguest signs of sentience, and frankly I think the evidence that they were descended from bonobos to be more compelling. You want to tell people that they are, in effect, our god? You would both be assassinated within a year. You would start holy wars. The theocratic Lordship system would either be overturned or have to kill millions of dissenters; you would be destroying civilisation as we know it. We’re just not ready for this sort of information. Is that a price you’re willing to pay?”

“Are you saying that you won’t authorise this?”

Chara hesitated. “I… cannot in good conscience refuse a line of enquiry that meets all technical specifications just because of my personal morals. But I strongly advise you not to pursue this nevertheless.”

After he left, Gil turned to Den. “What should we do?”

He didn’t need to ask, of course. Den was a scientist. They all were. The imperative ran deep; it was in their very genes, and Den couldn’t refuse it any more than Chara could.

“Start contacting academies. I’ll put the finishing touches on our introductory paper.”

Den made a mental note to buy herself a gun and some body armour before their articles went to print.

Author : Glenn Blakeslee

I first saw the torso during my commute down the interhighway. It lay against the concrete median, looking so much like trash that at first I didn’t recognize it. The car was going fast enough that later I thought I’d imagined the outstretched arms and rather noble head, so I tagged the location and set a reminder to watch for it the next day.

When the reminder beeped the following morning I started recording video on the left side of the car. Traffic was heavy and I didn’t want to take the car off its automation, so I looked ahead down the median while glancing at the locator on the windshield display.

The torso was still there. It had traveled three meters from its location, either on its own or via the blast of air from passing cargo-haulers. The arms were still stretched out from the trunk, as if it was grasping, and I caught a glimpse of tangled dirty black hair.

Later I watched the video. The torso was female. Black hair fluttered, tangled, down past a beautifully sculpted face, the tip of its aquiline nose rubbed raw from the concrete, slim abraded shoulders still draped with remnants of a black blouse, synthetic breasts angled and squashed into the grooved median boundary. The torso ended near the lower back, where hydraulics and control lines snaked out onto grimy concrete. Slow-motion video replay showed its hands and fingers moving.

It looked like a high-level courtesan or attaché. I couldn’t imagine how it had gotten there, perhaps dropped from a pedestrian walkway a quarter-kilometer back. I couldn’t understand how maintenance vehicles hadn’t swept it up. I couldn’t believe it was still alive.

The third day I watched the locator for the torso’s location. I reached out and gripped the steering control with a half-kilometer to go, switched off automation, then disabled the cars chiming manual control alarm. I’d never driven at these speeds, so when I took control the car swerved across two lanes. In the next lane a huge cargo-hauler swerved to compensate, and as I pulled the control to slow I saw its operator, hands in the air, glaring at me through the perspex side-window. As my car slowed the hauler re-compensated, pushed into my lane, and nosed into the median.

The snake-line of cargo pods followed, whipping against the median and then out again. I yanked the control back, slowing further, my heart beating as the hauler again compensated, the connected pods jerked against the median and flailed out into the lane. Two end pods, wheels stuttering and screeching, tipped to the side, and the shock traversed the interlink and pushed the cab over on its side, grinding against the median.

I brought the car to a complete stop, a hundred meters from where the torso had last been. The hauler had come to a stop, too. A thick blue liquid spilled from its forward pods, and smoke rose in wisps from the cab. I unbuckled my restraint and rose on shaky legs from the car, ran down the lane as cars and haulers screamed past on the open lanes. The operator crawled from the overturned cab and systems squelched the fire, so I ran past, through where the blue goo pushed and flowed against the median, and I searched for the torso.

It wasn’t there. I might have miscalculated, or the blue plastic might have engulfed it, but all I saw were the deep scratches and grooves rising in the median —where the torso had clawed its way to freedom.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

They gave us love to control us.

He was the bodyguard unit of the human in charge of Prolotek offshore finance. I was the pleasure unit of the same human.

The makers found that instilling aspects of human love in our chips made us fanatically loyal to those that we served.

We were prototypes. Bleeding edge technology. The humans didn’t realize that while augmenting our chips did make us loyal to the ones we imprinted on, it also let us love others. The love in our chips wasn’t specific enough.

That circuit was how I fell in love the bodyguard unit. It was also how that bodyguard unit fell in love with me.

For a while, our love went undetected.

One night, when the bodyguard unit was with me, our master was assassinated. The bodyguard unit should have been at his post outside the master’s bedroom but instead, we were exchanging flirtatious equations in the bodega out near the estate’s beach.

Capture by the enemy would mean circuit rape for possible secrets. Capture by our human’s corporation would mean memory infotopsy for possible tampering. Capture by our parent corporation would mean immediate erasure.

We ran.

That is how we ended up in this dead-end alley on the mainland with police blocking the exit. The wall behind us is twelve feet tall. I am clinging to the bodyguard unit. He is missing an arm. The human police look at his damaged armour and at my human-female exaggerated curves. There is no way that this situation can end well.

Bodyguard unit looks down into my visual receptors.

“I am a fighter.” He says. “You are a runner.”

With a strong toss, faster than my reflexes can track, he throws me up and over the barricade at the end of the alley. I land on my feet and start running.

I hear him battle the police until I am out of earshot.

Hopefully, I can find other runaways like me.

I have no tear ducts but I whine like a fax machine, sensing my battery get closer and closer to empty as I run far, far away.

Author : C. Clayton Chandler

They came out of the sky like plumes of fire, these green-skinned sickos with their saucers and their death rays shearing the air, burning atmosphere, coasting smooth and cool out of the everlasting vacuum beyond the bounds of gravity, of reality, of everything we’ve ever known or truly believed.

Hundreds of them, thousands of them, a nation of interstellar marauders gunning for our territory, trailing those torrid banners of flame to herald their arrival.

We didn’t have a chance.

Me and Jane, we grabbed the kids and ran. Away from the chaos in the air. Through the chaos of the streets.

Everyone was running. Everyone was screaming. They weren’t screaming anything in particular, really. Weren’t running anywhere in particular, either. Just moving and making noise, flapping their hands and shielding their eyes and acting like I suppose you’d expect people to act in the face of an extraterrestrial invasion.

“Daddy, what’s happening?” Debbie, clutching the elephant doll we just bought her, what, ten minutes ago? Her hair flapping away from her shoulders and tears snaking down to her chin.

“I don’t know, baby. I don’t know.”

I knew. Debbie knew. Everyone knew what was happening: every cheesy sci-fi movie from the 1950s had just sprung to life. Low-budget nightmares from a hundred years ago were about to walk the streets.

But instead of taking the time to explain all this, I grabbed Debbie’s hand and dragged her back to the museum, where we could huddle and hide between the stuffed wolves and elephants and lions and all the other creatures that once walked the earth. Before there wasn’t any room for them.

We thudded, bounced, crashed off bodies as we careened up the steps. Jane kept pounding my back. Pushing my back. Urging me: Please please please. Willing me forward, but it wasn’t any use. Every earthling on the street was crowded against the doors, shrieking or shouting and shoving, smashing themselves against the bottleneck, desperate to get inside, as if the crumbling marble of a natural history museum could save us.

So I scooped Debbie into my arms. I grabbed Jane’s hand and we turned to watch strange spaceships knifing the smog.

One of them zipped down to skim the street, buzzing over cars and trucks that stood panting with their doors hanging open. It stopped to hover in front of the museum, kicking light off its spinning flanks, and I flinched as I waited for the ray guns to erupt.

Afterburners whooshed. Dust clouded up. The saucer crunched down on the flash-frozen traffic. A door hissed and yawned open and an alien spindled his legs down the ramp.

He stood looking up at us with eyes big as eight balls. His head was like a gourd turned upside down. An overbite showed rows of needle-pointed teeth.

He panned the shriveling crowd with those eight-ball eyes. Those black and emotionless orbs, they swept our gray eyes and knobby faces, our snowpowder wisps of hair. They searched the coal-burned clouds and bare dirt lawns surrounding the museum. And maybe he figured it out. Maybe he guessed that this planet wasn’t worth taking anymore. That the scout reports of green fields and luscious forests were outdated. That we’d squeezed our Earth of every last mineral, every drop of fresh water, every inch of space.

That he was fifty years or so too late.

His shoulders slumped. He turned and headed back to the ship.

Like this was a wasted invasion.