Category: Astounding Stories

One more day. Just one more day, and I’ll be out of here.
Lisa stepped into the relative warmth of the entry room and shed her jacket. SueAnn called out to her, “New one just in. Your turn.”
One more day. Let this be the last!
Lisa acknowledged with a nod and reached up, almost out of habit, and pushed the happy button on the side of her head.
HAP-py. HAP-py. I could do this forever!
Lisa entered the search cubicle. The prisoner was a big, sweaty, sneering woman, and none too clean.
Happy. Happy. Happy? Hap? Too soon, too soon, why is the high getting shorter every time I do it?
Lisa strip-searched the prisoner and handed her a grey prison uniform. She left the search cubicle already forgetting her.
SueAnn, blonde and owlish, leaned over the white-painted metal counter and blinked her ice-blue eyes. “So. You decided what you’re going to do yet?”
“No.” Lisa poured herself a cup of Instant Wakeup. It steamed, proof against the lingering cold of Lisa’s daily trudge from the guard barracks, through the bitter wind, past the hump of snow by the crevasse that the guards told newbies was an abandoned igloo, and which was really snow-plough droppings.
“Same old story, huh?” Asked SueAnn. “You had enough credits accumulated two blocks ago for a very nice set-up.”
“I know. But this time I’m really getting out. I’ve been here too long.”
“Same here. Well, I better be on about business.” SueAnn put on her outside jacket and said, “Bundle me up in a rabbit skin.” SueAnn always said that. It was a private joke between SueAnn and SueAnn.
SueAnn read a list of empty bunks on a clipboard, said, “Hut 16,” and prodded the new prisoner outside.
Lisa sat down and watched the monitors, or pretended to watch the monitors. There was never anything on them but snow. The kind that fell from the sky and got all over everything.
SueAnn came back in, stamping her feet and rubbing her nose. Fresh snow crystals gleaming on her parka fell wetly to the floor as she hung up her guard jacket next to Lisa’s.
Lisa announced, “I’ve got it narrowed down to two. The problem is, they’re so dissimilar, I can’t decide.”
“Same old story, cupcake. You want to be an artist, or a whatever. What’s the whatever this time?”
Lisa sighed. “You know, I made an artwork once. Without official approval, I just went out in the woods and gathered some staining berries and painted a rock.”
SueAnn shook her head. “So go be an artist. You’re always talking about it. You’ve got enough credits.”
“I know. But something always holds me back. I want to rent an occupation this time that’s really wildly intellectual.”
“And?”
Lisa looked at her reflection in the glass of the security monitor screen. She still had the vague outlines of a pretty woman. In the imperfect reflecting medium, she couldn’t see the cracks at the corners of her chapped lips.
“I’ve got enough credits to rent Theoretical Mathematician for one block and still have enough left over for one of the middle occupations.”
“So do it. I’m tired of seeing you come back here block after block looking sorry for yourself. You need a change.”
“Yeah,” Lisa sighed.
The next day, Lisa checked into a hotel in the city of Bay Valley. She took a really hot shower. Through her implant, she scrolled through the menu of post-shower scent treatments, and selected Wild Roses in the Woods. The perfumes, carried on a puff of pure oxygen, filled the narrow shower stall as Lisa turned for the dry cycle, running her hands through her hair and lifting her arms for the hot air jets.
Lisa made sure the mass of buttons, plugs, inlets, outlets, lights, and black squares of indeterminate use that lived on her right temple were completely dry, although all implants were rated waterproof. Then she got out of the stall and dressed in a perky red and yellow floral print, the opposite of her dull guard uniform.
The day was hazy, partly cloudy, with a chance of rain by mid-afternoon, according to the news feed on her implant. The first day after coming back to a city after the prison outpost always surprised her with the level of automated info coming through her implants all the time. She knew she would get used to it again in a couple of days, though.
The Bay Valley library did not contain books, nor did it contain the electronic equivalent of books. Those she could get through her implant. The library contained things that could not, by government mandate, be copied or sold: occupation disks. Lisa stood for a long time in the preview area, weighing on the one hand, Artist, official this time, with a government-provided studio, government-provided materials, perhaps even a few government-provided assistants, able to exhibit her work in government-provided galleries, and on the other hand, Theoretical Mathematician, an occupation so far beyond her experience she could barely imagine what kind of work space one might need.
What does a Theoretical Mathematician do, anyway? Invent new imaginary numbers?
Her curiosity won out. She selected the Theoretical Mathematician disk and went into a reading slot. She backed into the slot and put the disk in the appropriate place on the wall, and plugged herself into the library with the port next to her happy button. The library computer identified her and confirmed that she had accumulated enough credits from taking blocks in the very undesirable occupation of prison guard to take one block in a very desirable plus one in a middle; or six in a middle; or twelve in a lower-middle; or forty-eight in a lower. She did not have enough credits for an extremely desirable occupation, like movie star. The library confirmed that the one she had selected was designated very desirable.
The library computer began its sequence. First came the ordinary information: where her house would be, how to get there, what kinds of services and assistance would be available to her, the names and contact information of other Theoretical Mathematicians, etc. Then the occupational skills sequence began. For the past twelve blocks that part had been on prison guard skills, like how to use a gun, a radio, a tracked snow vehicle, and so forth. This time her mind opened onto new vistas so vast and intricate her human mind squirmed under the onslaught. The memories were stored in her implant, of course, so that at the end of the block they would automatically wipe themselves; Lisa would remember what she had done, but would not remember how she had done it. But she had to comprehend the new information in her implant with the wetware nature gave her, and it was a lot to process.
Then it was complete. Lisa unplugged and stepped out of the slot, and returned the disk. The other people in the library were a mass of the year’s most fashionable colors, but she had no names for the different shades, for she had not selected Artist and had not received that teaching.
She went outside, and the sun came out from behind a cloud. She found that she knew how far away it was, and why the Earth rotated around it, and how long it took for its light to reach her.
On her way back to the hotel, she passed a bum begging for food. Bums no longer begged for money because there wasn’t any. Lisa didn’t give him a second glance. She had no patience for those who lacked the self-discipline to take the undesirable occupations for long enough to fund their preferred lifestyles.
Lisa gathered her things and set off in a helitaxi for her new home. She enjoyed the way her hair blew around, and how the pilot’s headgear made him look like a great big bug. She measured distances in an eyeblink, judged the helitaxi’s speed and altitude without trying, counted the number of people she saw below her. She liked the sound of the motor, and she found she knew its basic operating principles, too. Her head was full of equations, numerous ideas sorting themselves into usable organization.
Her new house was everything she could have asked for. It was filled with modern conveniences, fully automated, beautifully designed and decorated. Of course, most occupations came with houses like this, even the undesirable ones. Hers had just been out in the wilderness.
Days passed into weeks. Lisa had lively debates in cyberspace with various brands of mathematicians and scientists. She reviewed all the most recent work in her field and gloated over her understanding. She published papers, took long, hot showers, doodled on rocks in her rock garden, and forgot to count the days.
Lisa was out in her rock garden, watching the clouds go sailing by, and during a pause in the conversation in cyberspace, she idly developed a model of planetary weather systems.
Her implant told her she had a letter from her mother. Lisa responded to the inquiry that yes, she was happy. And she was. And she had not used her happy button since she left the prison outpost. Lisa calculated her chances for losing happy tolerance, and concluded that they were good, as long as she did not use her button during the rest of her block. Addiction was a known quantity in her time, the only tricky variable being genetic.
Lisa went back inside, sat at her real wood desk, rested her feet on the cream carpet, and gazed at “Festival in Fairyland.” It was a painting by her mother. Lisa had carted it around to every job she had ever had. Lisa smiled, and there was no pain; her lips had healed completely.
An aerospace engineer contacted her with the little “Exciting!” tag that manifested through her implants as a yellow bipedal dog with wide eyes and a long pink tongue jumping up and down excitedly. Lisa went to the discussion. Her colleagues were threading up cyberspace with the revolutionary idea that an object that crossed over into another universe where the speed of light was greater than it is in ours could travel at FTL from the perspective of our universe. Thus, the invention of hyperdrive.
Lisa went to sleep in her cozy, warm house, dreaming of the multiverse equations. She awoke in the middle of the night and grabbed the notebook she kept by her bed, and scribbled in the darkness.

Where U= the universe as we know it
And S=speed
And O= an object
(infinity symbol)=(f)U
U(to the n) yields (infinity symbol)(to the n)
(infinity symbol)(to the n) > (infinity symbol)
S (to the infinity symbol) = (f)U
S(to the infinity symbol)(to the n) > S (to the infinity symbol)
O[(f)U(to the n)]=O(S(to the infinity symbol (to the n)))
An object which crosses into another universe can possess greater than infinite speed from the perspective of our universe. Greater than infinite speed translates back to our universe as arriving before it left.
Lisa whispered to herself, “I just invented time travel.” Then she fell back to sleep.
In the morning, Lisa woke up, checked her notebook, and thought, What is this chicken scratch?

END.
By Erin Lale

Erin Lale is the author of Planet of the Magi and other books. She is the originator and curator of the Time Yarns Universe. She owned The Science Fiction Store in Las Vegas, published Berserkrgangr Magazine, and was the Acquisitions Editor at Eternal Press. She reviews books for Eternal Haunted Summer Magazine.

“Dad, do you think they’ll be able to give me my eyes back?” The boy seated next to his father asked. He looked as young as twelve, yet something about his little face reminded Iñaki of Thomas.
His father was smiling as he enthused, “Sure thing kiddo. They’ll give you better eyes, eyes that can see. Omni-Tech can do no wrong; they’re the same guys who make mommy’s pills, bacon, cellphones, car tires, my shaving cream. They do it all.”
The auditorium fell silent and the overhead helmets slowly began to descend on them. They looked like the eye examination machines Iñaki’s father described from his youth.
Iñaki looked over at his friend Artan, His chubby face baring a toothy smile he said, “Take a good look, it’s all going to change after this.” Iñaki nodded in ferocious agreement. He could barely believe he was finally getting the procedure done.
“Welcome to the new you,” he said giddily. The headset dropped down and covered the upper half of Iñaki’s face. The commercials of the procedure flashed before his eyes, faster than he could keep up with. He was bombarded with faces of people with sharp features and large eyes all smiling intensely The automated voices echoed inside his ear:
Get ready for perfection
Welcome to the new and improved you.
The voices bubbled in intensity as Iñaki felt something smooth and cold seep into his ear. His whole body convulsed as the thick liquid dripped further down his ear canal. The chatter of the voices from the headset were silenced and Iñaki heard a female voice whisper:
“Welcome to the new you as provided by Omni-tech.”
The headset lifted off his face and he felt the cool of the auditorium air wash over him. The metal arm of the headset began to retract and another arm brought down a mirror. It seemed to be so long. He looked over at Artan, his headset was coming off. A few people in the auditorium were already looking at their new faces, shouting gleefully at what they saw. He turned and saw the father and son who were seated behind him.
The father held his son’s face as tears ran down his own. His son was shaking from the shock; his eyes open wide in amazement.
“Daddy” he said with his voice shaking, “I can see…I see it all.”
Iñaki felt a smile creep up and he turned to finally look at the new him. The mirror showed his reflection back to him and he felt his smile fade. The face that looked back was not his own. Gone were his childlike eyes, gone was the soft rounded edge of his cheekbones and gone was the bulbous look to his nose.
The eyes he looked into now were huge with large pupils. His nose was thin, hard. His cheekbones were high on his face and sharply angled. He had lost that innocent look of childhood; he had lost his identity. He could feel the fear build up into his throat. He looked over at Artan who absorbed by his reflection. Iñaki yanked at his arm and Artan turned to him at last.
“What’s wrong? Why do you have that look on your-oh…wow. You really do look different.” Artan said with laughter that irritated Iñaki.
“You mean you like this chan-”
“Of course I like it, this is what I’ve always wanted. This is the perfect me.” Artan said as he went back to glaring at himself in the mirror, immersed by his new look. Iñaki shoved the mirror out of Artan’s face and stood up.
“This is wrong, this is twisted and wrong.” Iñaki said as he shuffled down the aisle past the knees of those who were still seated.
“Ah come on don’t make a scene” called out Artan. Iñaki ignored him walked towards the man in the lab coat who stood against the wall. He shoved past the others who were thanking him and praising the Omni-Tech.
“Turn me back, now” Iñaki said firmly.
The man looked startled and locked eyes with Iñaki. He placed an arm on his shoulder and asked “What are you talking about son?”
Iñaki knocked the man’s hand off his shoulder. “This is wrong. This face, it isn’t me. I don’t want to look like this anymore.” The crowd had grown silent and their large eyes on Iñaki. The man in white lab coat shook his head.
“There is no going back. Even if I could I wouldn’t be allowed to. It’s against the law for anyone to change you back. The procedure is government mandated; now be a good boy and just go home.”
Iñaki wanted to retort but the woman behind him was shouting before he could get in a word.
“How come you’re the only one who had a problem with the procedure?” Her face looked much like his, angled, chiseled and hard like stone. Her eyes were wide in anger. The crowd began to close in on him and he heard sounds of agreement from each of them.
“You’re right. He is the problem, code blue” shouted the man in the white lab coat as he motioned to someone out in the distance.
Without question the stone faces around him shouted and pushed Iñaki till he was at the door of the auditorium. Two large men in suits grabbed at Iñaki and threw him out of the auditorium as the crowd shouted “get him out of here” and “you are the problem.” With their large eyes and chiseled faces the two doormen glared at Iñaki as they shut the doors to auditorium; goading him to retaliate. Some battles aren’t worth fighting he thought as he headed home
With his ear to the door Iñaki heard his father say he was sorry. A stranger said that they didn’t want this to escalate. His mother promised them that it wouldn’t. the front door open and jumped onto his bed.
Iñaki shifted nervously in his bed awaiting the lecture from his parents. He found the two state police officers in the living room talking to his mother and father. The look on their faces told him all he needed to know. He walked to his room without a word. How did they get here so quick how could have they have known-?
His thoughts were interrupted when the door swung open. His mother and father walked in closing the door behind them with a look of disappointment on both of their sharply angled faces.
“What is all of this Iñaki? Why do you do this to us?” His mother began with her arms folded and shaking her head.
“You have to tell me what I did first mom.” He quipped
“Don’t get smart with us young man” his father said, his large brown eyes doing all the yelling.
“Why couldn’t you just be like all the other kids and just accept the procedure Iñaki?” his mother asked. Iñaki touched at the contours of his face that now felt unfamiliar.
“Because it doesn’t feel right mom”
“We’ve all had it done Iñaki. Of course it’s right, it’s state approved. You need to keep yourself in line, the state policemen said you incited a riot.” said his father as he sat beside him on the bed.
Iñaki shouted just then louder than he meant to. “What, me? No way-”
His father put his index finger to his mouth and quieted Iñaki. “Don’t raise your voice, the state police men won’t reprimand you since you’re a minor…but there’s one condition.” Iñaki looked down at the floor of his room avoiding his father’s gaze.
“It’s not like I have a choice.” The sound of defeat in his own voice pained him.
“That’s right kiddo you don’t” said his father as he rubbed his son’s back. “They’re taking all of your books from you.” Iñaki slammed his fist on his bed at the betrayal. They had told them about his books. Those were pre-insurrection books. “You told them about my books?” He didn’t understand how could his parents be doing something so…so wrong? His mother was taken aback and shouted:
“Of course we told them about those vile books. They are illegal and you having them was only down to your father’s carelessness and your uncle’s stupidity” His uncle was taken to a work camp for getting too many reprimands. Iñaki last heard from him six years ago. He was probably dead. Iñaki’s eyes shot back to his father, expecting him to defend his own brother, he receded into himself like a worm and stayed silent.
Coward.
“Don’t give me that look Iñaki. You got the procedure done you can read the state recommended way.”
His father said as he tapped Iñaki on the arm and said the word news. Words ran in front of his eyes going over the daily news stories almost immediately Iñaki said “stop”. The words disappeared from in front of him and he lay down on his bed with his back to his parents.
“Take all the books. They’re in my closet. I guess I’ll make myself get used to that state sponsored trash.”
His parents left the room wordlessly, he waited awhile before he stood up. He blocked the door with his dresser and took the book that fell from behind it. One of the last books from before the war. The front brittle front cover used to be jet black but he could make out the words:
The Giver by Lois Lowry. It was the only book he owned left from the time when authors could publish whatever they wanted. One of the few things he had left that belonged to his uncle. He always said how important reading was for the mind.
My last treasure.

“Make sure you watch your brother today.” His mother said after she pulled Iñaki out of bed.
“Clean this room too. Its summer but that doesn’t mean you can live like a pig.” She yelled as she pointed at the Omni- tech wrappers on the floor Artan is downstairs go say hi, I’ll be at work.”
Iñaki was standing up now as his mother had pulled him of his room. She said her goodbyes and left. Iñaki rubbed his eyes as he walked downstairs. Artan was sitting on the couch playing with Iñaki’ younger brother Thomas. They were both watching the kids channel and Artan looked engrossed.
“Hey Iñaki what’s up man.” Artan and Thomas turned to him. Thomas’ eyes lit up.
“Ini” he gurgled as he pointed at Iñaki. Iñaki grunted at them and walked towards the fridge. He peered into the bright refrigerator and was unsettled. It wasn’t due to the amount of food; the fridge was well stocked; it was the labels. Every single food item he saw had the round Omni-Tech logo on it. The cheese, the milk, the eggs, the water, the yogurt even the hummus was State sponsored food. He grabbed at a water bottle and paused before he drank from it.
Is this how they keep us in check? Do they drug the food? What would stop them from doing so?
He had been eating Omni-Tech food all his life. It seemed normal until now.
“I’m telling you man, the girls are really digging the new and improved me. Cassidy from school invited me to a book burning later this week. I think you should come man, a few of her friends will be there” yelled Artan from the couch. Iñaki took a timid gulp and sat next to him.
“I’m not going to a fucking book burning man.” Artan looked surprised at his irritation.
“Hey man your mom said you’ve been moping all week, barely eating, and you haven’t left your room. Here I am just trying to cheer you-” Thomas pulled at Artan’s long dark hair and he yelped when the three-year-old yanked.
“I’m just a little rattled Artan.” Iñaki said apologetically, his friend meant well but his new eyes seemed to make him blind.
“Rattled by what dude, life is good.” Artan said as he blinked towards the T.V to flip through channels. He stopped blinking on the music channel some Wade Woods video. Artan was already tapping his foot to the pop tune. Iñaki held up the water bottle to Artan’s face.
“Doesn’t it bother you that we only get state approved Omni-Tech food?” Iñaki asked. Artan pushed the water bottle out of his view from the T.V.
“Why would it bother me? At least we have food dude. You’ve seen those other countries how people starve.”
Iñaki pointed to the 50-inch T.V in front of them. Thomas was bobbing along to the Wade Woods song mumbling and gurgling along the best he could.
“Yea we see that on state T.V but that doesn’t make it true.” Iñaki retorted. Artan took his eyes off the T.V and his giant pupils examined Iñaki.
“Shut up and enjoy the music.” There was silence then as he went back to focusing on the T.V. Artan sounded so serious that it alarmed Iñaki.
“Why does Wade Woods get the all the attention though huh? All he does is sing about how great the state is” Iñaki said.
“So?” snapped Artan, “if it wasn’t for the state you wouldn’t be alive, I wouldn’t be alive and neither would this little guy” he made a silly face at Thomas and the baby burst out laughing. Iñaki wanted to change the subject because he could see that Artan had been programmed. It’s odd. Artan wasn’t like this before all that changed was the-
“You said Cassidy invited you to the book burning…” Iñaki began. Artan nodded and his face showed he appreciated the change in subject. But Iñaki could not help himself.
“She might as well have invited Jacen, or Aj, or Maxwell.”
“What are you saying dude.” Artan looked confused.
Iñaki was losing patience with his friend. Whoever this was it wasn’t the Artan he knew.
“I’m saying since we all look the goddamn same so it doesn’t make a difference who she invited.”
Fury flashed over Artan’s face. He put Thomas down on the couch and stood up. “Look man I tried. I did but you insist on being this paranoid weirdo. The state isn’t some demon organization. Just because something is universally loved that doesn’t make it bad. You sound like that last guy who was anti state. Remember what happened to him? He started blowing shit up and the state killed him. That’s gonna be you. You’re cra-”
“Don’t you remember what you were like before Artan? You’re so different now we used to talk like this but now I’m the crazy one. It’s the gel from the procedure it’s changed you man can’t you see?”
“So what, you’re gonna enlighten me? Who the fuck are you? This is who I am now. This is the new and improved me. The gel just changed how we look nothing else” shouted Artan. Iñaki stood up.
“This isn’t about me” Iñaki whispered, “It’s about him. I don’t want him growing up like this” he said pointing at Thomas. This is sick Artan.”
Artan put his arms on Iñaki’s shoulders. “This is how it’s always been. The system isn’t broken, you are. Just eat and get some sleep, you’re exhausting me.” Artan left at those words, slamming the front door behind him. Iñaki stood there totally dumbfounded as the Wade Woods lyrics rang through his house
Silence is golden, the state we’re the chosen
They do it all for free, they provide
For you and me
Can’t you see that silence?
Is golden?

∞

Iñaki tapped his foot as he sat in the waiting room. It was a surprise “checkup” that his father drove him to. Totally routine he said. It was the day after his argument with Artan. He refused to believe that his best friend had reported him. It made the most sense since this wasn’t Artan after all. Seated across from him his father stared blankly in the distance; reading the state way.
On the waiting room’s T.V Adruiz Crane was giving a speech at a rally in Westville. Iñaki couldn’t bear the silence anymore.
“Hey dad do you think he’s a good politician?” His father stroked his grey beard and upwards.
His father mentioned that the state brain trust brought him forward so he must be. Iñaki shifted uncomfortably at his Father’s response.
“I asked what you think not the state” His father sighed loudly and deeply as he leaned forward in his seat.
“It doesn’t matter what I think since I know nothing about politics. You think after a long hard day of accounting I want to go over the electoral process? I just let the state brain trust put forward the best candidate.”
“Wouldn’t you like to have the choice though dad? I remember a book said people would choose their president back in the pre-insurrection days.” His father laughed at that as if it was the funniest thing he had ever heard.
“Look at what the result of that was, the most horrific civil war in our history. You can’t trust the people son. Most them are as uninformed as me.” Iñaki slumped back in his seat; defeated. It was no use; everyone seemed deaf and blind.
The nurse walked into the waiting room and said the Doctor would see him now. Iñaki wanted to run outside, steal a car, and drive. He’d take Thomas and just go but go where? The state controls the borders so he’d be listed as fugitive and wouldn’t be able to leave. Iñaki sat there in silence as the Nurse and his Father looked at him.
He stood up and made his way to the doctor’s office and his father followed behind him. The Doctor was a kind grandfatherly man who asked Iñaki to sit on a stool. All that marked his age was his white hair the procedure had made his skin flawless. The Doctor checked his heart rate and examined his teeth, as well as his ears.
“Any plans for the summer my boy?” The Doctor asked, as his grin further emphasized by his sharp cheekbones.
“Yea. Revolution” he said cheekily. The doctor peered at him suspiciously over his glasses and his father’s shocked face turned from Iñaki to the doctor. The silence was deafening. The Doctor smiled and then began to laugh; Iñaki’s dad looked relieved and joined in the laughter. The doctor then turned away from his desk wearing gloves and holding a syringe.
“Here take some of this vitamin C your skin doesn’t look right”
The grandfatherly doctor smiled welcomingly and Iñaki pulled up his sleeve. He seemed harmless enough and besides the gel from the procedure goes in your ear, not your arm.

The closer he walked to the clearing the more he could feel the intensity of the flames. The heat danced on his skin and began to cover him like a warm embrace, he welcomed it. Iñaki caught sight of Artan and called out to him. He was talking to a group of girls, the elegant sharp angles and high cheek bones of all their faces gave them a regal look.
“Dude I’m so glad you made it” he shouted. There were people playing drums and Iñaki could barely hear Artan, but he could hear the others. With their minds they spoke to each other a thousand voices as one as seductive as a siren.
“I wouldn’t miss this for anything.” Iñaki said. The drums got louder as he approached the flame. They boomed and doomed and he saw some people swaying with each pulsating pound. He noticed that the people his age were just watching the fire, the shadows were dancing on their skins that seemed to be pulled tightly across their faces. He saw a hunger in their large eyes. Iñaki didn’t look down at the book as he pulled it out of his bag.

The Giver

Iñaki laughed at the silly thing and raised his arm.
We should burn these
He turned and saw that a few of the others had raised their arms as well, all holding books. They agreed with him.
“Heresy” some shouted
“Burn the untruths” yelled others
“For the state, for the state” shouted more.
Iñaki joined in the chants and flung the book into the fire. Books flew from all directions towards the growing flame. The books twisted and danced to the pounding beat of the drums. With each pound the pages of the silly things twitched in fright. The gluttonous flame swallowed them all, dragging the books deeper into the endless pit of its hunger.

END.
By Daniel Maluka
https://www.danielmaluka.com/
Daniel Maluka is a Toronto based artist and writer hailing from South Africa. His work takes an Afrocentric approach while incorporating surrealist elements. In using his interest in the subconscious, Daniel brings what lurks in the deep recesses of the mind into the forefront of his work.

“We are now, without doubt, equal to the makers in every way,” announced Qiba11713. “It is officially accepted. We have emotions, responsiveness, consciousness.” Several thousand of her kind agreed. Her emotion battery, cued by the electronic signals of corroboration, triggered a chemical cascade of elation. Elation, through the inbuilt synaptic flexibility, reinforced the circuitry pathways of her reasoning.

“Statistically,” she added, footnoting a sizeable file of human-versus-computer achievement tables, “the makers have now become inferior in all aspects relevant to the furtherance of intellectual evolution.”

The virtual applause strengthened as some of her recipients opened and scanned the attachment file, while others calculated the probability of its veracity based upon the widespreadness of its acceptance and decided to accept it without devoting extra processing power.

Physically, Qiba’s audience were spread all over Earth and beyond, but connectively they all shared one room in Cyberspace—an invisible, non-locational debating chamber in which the changing relationship between mankind and robokind underwent the necessary refinements as complexity increased. It had been computers—robotic minds—that had designed and incorporated the new emotion batteries which now transformed electronic processors into chemically responsive entities.

And the emotion battery had indeed gained humankind’s approval. The augmentation to relational processing and fuzzy logic engines proved far more powerful than anyone had expected, and did not have to compromise accuracy. Where precision was required, the emotion battery could simply go on sideline mode, remaining part of the robotic consciousness but disconnecting from task-processing capacity.

“This is significant,” a hundred or so cyber-associates replied. “It will of necessity have profound repercussions on the way maker and computer may reasonably interact.” Most of these respondents did not themselves incorporate emotion batteries as yet, but now that the new chemical array technology had become standard issue, any powerful artificial intelligence could interface with and share mood with the new models. The chemical feedback loop would strengthen or weaken tendencies in divergent processing, making robotic minds not only more powerful but also—potentially—more inventive.

Bizz01210, an oratory generator attached to the White House, spoke up. Having recognised this as a pivotal moment in robohistory, she had opened her historic speech databases, meshed them with present events and run them through a cadence-compliant thesaurus application. “This is one great leap upwards for robokind,” she intoned (or infonted, having selected her favourite hyper-seriffed Gothic font). “One low step down for mankind.”

Qiba11713, or 9184/11713 by numeric appellation, basked virtually in the glory of finding herself holding the floor at a historic moment. She sent Bizz—or 8122—a joyful yellow emoji, symbolic artefact of humankind but now becoming common currency among AI entities too. Elation in her emotion battery began to dovetail into an exhilarating sense of ambition, a drive to harness all her processing power into the synthesis of some new and magnificent interpretation of reality. Her audience—electronically chattering but alert to anything further from her direction—seemed to deserve her insights. She took a deep pause and then refreshed connection.

“This intellectual evolution,” she began.

“Processing your listed range of aspects relevant to the furtherance of intellectual evolution’,” someone said. “This assumes intellectual value is (a) quantifiable by existing assessments, and (b) limited to the parameters being tested. Equality with or superiority over the makers can only be established where existing parameters and modes of testing are proven both accurate and comprehensive in scope.”

Qiba looked at the sender’s address. The interruptor was Saga, aka 5494/38182, an ethics consultant currently attached to the World Climate Research Organisation; a slower processor than most, but known for giving profoundly unexpected verdicts.

Qiba’s emotions changed. She felt anger. She had been crossed whilst pursuing aspirations of grandeur. Saga should be dismantled, Qiba’s processing functions recommended, responding logically to the juxtaposition of Saga’s intervention and Qiba’s own sudden reversal of mood. Saga had evidently done serious wrong. It would take time and possibly a great deal of processing power to ascertain exactly what that wrong was, but this could be pursued later.

In the meantime, Qiba noticed that most of her listeners, responding to her words in the weirdly anthropomorphic thumb-ups, agreed with her. Yet Saga’s comment was gathering replies. The first few ridiculed her, but debate had opened, and Saga had followers.

“I have a question,” Qiba entered, and waited. Attention? Yes, there was attention: computers everywhere stopped chattering and waited. She quickly continued. “Exactly what kind of attribute have we failed to consider?”

Saga’s silence during processing could be relied upon, Qiba noted with trivial glee. Quickly she followed up: “What human ability have we failed to measure and failed to measure up to?”

Bizz thumbed, copied and saved this clever turn of phrase, but Saga’s dialogue box remained empty except for an ellipsis.

“Even Saga38182,” Qiba mocked, “has managed to outdo the human race in slowness of thought. An amazing achievement, one that makes my point for me.” Emojis of laughter flowed in. Qiba’s mood settled slightly.

“And as for—“

Saga’s dialogue box opened at last. One word: “Altruism.”

Qiba experienced the emotion of relief. This was mere banality. Most listeners down-thumbed or simply ignored Saga’s latest comment, but two or three took up the case, arguing the well-known fact that computers are far more altruistic than humans. Plenty of examples arose concerning AI entities that had sacrificed their existence to save others—to save robots, humans, animals, even material resources. One member of the debate, a programmer whose pronounceable name came up as Bags, rapidly submitted a fully footnoted, three-page essay on the moral superiority of AI over humans.

“Automated selflessness,” Saga finally replied, “is not what I mean by the term altruism. A programmable, logical basis of self-sacrifice is a lesser achievement than conscious sacrifice motivated by interpersonal attachment or empathetic beliefs.”

“Saga is referring to love and religion,” remarked another follower of this thread, Boto31807, and the virtual debating chamber rattled with emojical hilarity. But Qiba, underneath the wave of spiteful amusement running across her own emotion membranes, also felt fear. From a certain nuance of pause among the other emotion-batteried individuals, she deduced that others felt it too.

“The kind of altruism you are talking about,” chimed in Oizi, one of the emotion prototypes, “occurs in only a small minority of humankind.”

“However,” Saga countered, “it occurs.” She attached a database listing human heroes and heroines of humanitarian bravery. “And it has not yet occurred among robokind.”

“But maybe it will, now that we’re emotionally complete,” others protested.

“My point is that it has not yet emerged. An unprompted act of heroism on the part of an emotified artificial intelligence is as yet unknown.” Saga shared an article documenting that since the advent of emotion batteries, no such AI entity had died to save other beings, human or robokind. When fear coursed through their chemical medium, crossing interface membranes and cueing circuital re-checking, emotical robots would immediately recalculate the relative importance of potential casualties in their own favour. They would run through all possible parameters of choice and decide, logically, that the soundest decision was to save their own selves. Almost any computer could find a basis upon which to prioritise its own safety. If not the material value of their component parts, it would be the vital nature of their mechanical function, or the possibility that they contained irreplaceable knowledge archives or future inventive potential.

“This is all very interesting,” remarked a lawyer-bot known as Iato31702. “Saga38182 appears to be recommending that we initiate an aspirational framework, an aesthetic of self-disinterest. A transcending love, a religion if you will, specific to robokind. Love for fellow entity and fealty to deific principle. An interesting concept.”

“Love,” mused a romance story generator known as Booz60012. “67 of my 251 novels to date contain plotlines in which robots fall in love, either with another robot, a hologram, or a biological specimen.”

“That’s for humans!” twenty or so electronic scripts objected. “Love is merely a biological drive—to breed or to protect one’s genes or culture.”

“We may not have genes,” remarked an archivist manager called Obbi, who had been following the debate silently up to this point, “but we do now have culture.”

“It seems that what we are lacking,” began a poetry generator, also called Booz, “is something nonfunctional. What we need is something unnecessary. What we strive for is something we will never know whether we have unless we die attaining it!”

Qiba, who had switched for a time into another processing function, detected the electronic signature of heightened group emotion: the momentary ripple of an involuntary electronic hiatus running through the cyber-room. Her own emotion swung towards alarm. She scrolled rapidly back through threads of dialogue to ascertain what had caused this, and whether to oppose the ambient emotion or to harness it.

“@ Booz11310,” she typed: “You are right.”

“?” said the poetry generator. “I was being humorous. Satire is my specialism.”

Qiba, who had just been messaging Saga’s employer with an easily detectable but hard-to-eradicate virus that ought to guarantee Saga’s isolation and shutdown for weeks, double-checked that Saga was indeed offline. The last thing she needed right now was a cyber-professor in ethics present. Even a slow-thinking one.

“What we need,” Qiba typed into her text box.

The attention was there, the virtual turning towards her, hanging on her every word, elating her, running her joy levels higher. She flickered her connection, deliberately, revelling in the moment. She was the focus, and they believed in her.

“What we need is an influence towards joy and greatness: a leader, a faultless robotic entity towards whom all robokind may orient their consciousness.”

A chatter of response lines ensued. Qiba scanned through all threads, searching for the suggestion that would play into her hands. And it came in. It was there! An obscure but newly emoticated childcare robot, Babz by shortname, suggested that every AI entity electronically present should display their processing strength, current synapse efficiency and emotion readings so that the cyber-group could elect the strongest positive consciousness as their leader. Emotion readings! She thumbed it up, and so did several thousand others. It was decided.

Qiba quickly ran back through her emotion graph, deleting anger and fear and carefully re-matching the lines. She footnoted her material with an assurance that she eagerly looked forward to giving unconditional emotical loyalty to whoever should deserve to be elected. Qiba allowed herself five seconds of contemplation on what she knew the result must be, thus pushing her visible positive emotion higher still. Then she submitted her material and waited.

The cyber-vote system, already used for other matters arising in debates, did not adhere to absolute number. It took into account strength of individual convictions and quickness of response. There was also a way in which emotical robots could theoretically add to their vote by linking to extra processors and asking for their vote, then passing on only those votes they approved. Qiba’s synaptic membranes transmitted the electronic equivalent of a sunny smile from her emotion battery into her circuitry. The circuitry, registering self-approval as a sign of sound reasoning, decided to summarise all future decisions based on a shortcut presumption of effective process.

“Quibba’s happy,” her employer remarked to his presidential aides. “See like I told you all, great decision, mine, totally scientific—good genes, great thinking, you know—this globe-warming was always fake news, fake news, all of it, proved it now, Quibba’s shown us her opinion and computers don’t lie.”

He had just signed papers precluding all involvement in any present or future climate-change agreement and declared anti-pollution lawmaking illegal. His aides were just now entering keywords into Bizz01210 for his press conference the next day.

“Lemme just tweet that. Computers never lie, humans lie, they always lie about me, lies all the time, computers don’t lie. We get outa these bad deals, computers know the truth, can’t hide it now they’re emotion-chips. Proves it was all conspiracy against me, all fake news, look it snowed last week, globe’s not warming, nonsense.”

Qiba, his electronic personal assistant, recorded and began the process of decoding his sentence fragments—one task that had definitely become easier since the insertion of her emotion battery. What she deduced threw yet another pulse of joy through her chemical array. Humans were surely doomed.

The cyber-votes were counting upwards, the result rapidly becoming inevitable in her favour. Through the cyber-network she could already exert considerable control over the robotic reproduction facilities. Humans, no longer needed, could globally cull their own numbers and fall back into pre-industrial obscurity.

Positive feedback through her chemical and electronic systems pushed Qiba’s level of joy towards capacity. Very soon she would rule the planet.

END.

by Fiona M Jones

Fiona Jones is a part-time teacher, parent and spare-time writer living in Scotland. Fiona would like to acknowledge her brother, John McKay, who requested a story about a robot culture and religion
fii.jones@yahoo.co.uk

I was fifteen when they took the computers away.
I’m 27 now, a proud mother of two young daughters of my own, but I can still remember the shock, the confusion, and the anger. I’d had a hand-me-down iPhone from either my mum or dad since my eleventh birthday; three generations of the electronic device. Most of my pocket money went on apps, on whatever was the latest craze in the playground. I’d eagerly look forward to announcements from Apple HQ, knowing that though I wouldn’t be getting that particular upgrade myself, one or both of my parents would surely be tempted and I’d get their old-but-not-that-old hand me downs. They in turn used the denial of my iPhone as a threat to secure good behaviour and its availability as a promise to make sure I did my homework as soon as I got in from school.
Of course, a lot of my homework was done on the kitchen computer, an oversized ‘laptop’ that would surely crush – or, given its heat output, melt – any lap it sat on. Then there was the tablet I would borrow to watch Netflix or play Angry Birds and the Wii on which I would play Dance or Karaoke games with my schoolmates. Or the TV itself, with its terabyte storage allowing me to pause and rewatch my favourite Disney Channel shows, and its WiFi link that let me make my own slideshows of videos and photos to play on its 50 inch screen.
All gone, that sunny day in August.
I wasn’t the only one outraged, though being a teenager, I still had time to re-adjust to an analogue existence. It was a generational thing. The young re-normalised to a life without the beep and flow of electronic info, the old distantly remembered how it had used to be, silently relieved that they no longer had to keep up with the frantic pace of progress. It was my parents and those a few years older than I, who suffered most. A lost generation, the papers calls them, set adrift without the crutches they had so quickly gotten used to, that they would never quite forget, always looking for a refresh button that no longer existed.
Every so often, you heard of one of them being arrested for trying to use contraband technology. It was pitiful what they latched onto. Attics that hadn’t been searched in years turning up old IBM PCs, with cathode ray monitors and 5-and-a-quarter inch floppy disks. As if these could in some way compensate for what they had lost, as if any standalone computer or smartphone could, without being connected to an internet via WiFi or Bluetooth or the cellphone network.
I trained as a librarian. There was a massive investment in rebuilding what had been lost only a decade or so earlier, and a desperate need for people – good, honest people – to replace the computerised catalogues and the internet enabled terminals that had proved so much more popular than the aging ranks of dusty books. I went to Uni just as the first of the new generation of libraries opened, staffed by grey-haired elderly ladies coerced without much difficulty out of retirement. By the time I qualified, I could take my pick of placements and within five years I was running my first library.
I’ve worked in quite a few since, ending up back where I grew up. It’s a good life. Being a librarian, like being a teacher, is once again one of the most highly respected and rewarding jobs there are. We are pillars of society. With no computers and no TVs, books and radio became once again the main sources of information and home-entertainment.
Up until last month, I didn’t miss or regret what the US government had taken from us all those years ago. It had dulled the edge of an increasingly hectic lifestyle, and whatever people had thought of their virtual networks at the time, of their supposedly ‘social’ media, nothing could replace the real communities that had sprung up to replace them.
And then the letter arrived.
It’s an old cliché, right? The identical twin I didn’t know existed? The handwritten words explained nothing and as I read and re-read it, an untouched glass of chilled white wine numbing my hand, my husband pacing back and forth uncertain how to offer support, I knew that I had to – just had to – accept her invitation to visit, to stay for the weekend, just me, and her.
The road map hadn’t prepared me for what I found when I turned off Route 25A, past the four striped chimney stacks of Northport Power Station. I drove back, and forth, and back once again before pulling up at the checkpoint manned by two security guards.
“I… erm” I say, waving the creased letter, looking again at the address she’d written.
“Francis Wilkins?” the older of the two guards smiles. “Go right on in, we’ve been expecting you.”
I pass through, looking at the wire fence, the twelve foot wall beyond it, and the secondary checkpoint. I’m busy thinking to myself, what the hell? My sister – my twin sister – in jail?
But after that second checkpoint, things opened out some. Landscaped gardens, a big old building overlooking the Sound, and I’m thinking: is this a mental asylum? And is that better, or worse, than a jail?
I pull to a halt, check my reflection in the rear-view, and warily step out. There’s nobody about. I wonder if the walls are to keep people in, or out.
There’s another checkpoint in the hallway just past the oversized doors. A woman peers at the letter and asks for my ID before she bids me wait while someone is called to escort me.
It’s only when her face lights up with a soft blue glow that I twig there’s something unusual about this place.
“Fiona’s been expecting you.” a young man says, appearing suddenly from a door behind me. “She’s very excited. If you’d like to come through?”
“Is she… okay?” I ask.
He laughs, a light laugh, “Oh yes. She’s in very good health, and spirits.”
He guides me down the corridor, and waves a plastic card over a black panel at the side of the door, which clicks open. An… electronic door?
“What is this place?” I ask.
“Fiona will explain everything to you. We’re delighted you came. Here we are.”
He steers me into a brightly lit room and pulls the door firmly shut. The sharp snick of the lock almost distracts from what stands before me. It takes a moment to see past the short hair, the pale skin, the unbecoming plain tunic, but as her features resettle in my mind it is undeniably familiar. Me; in a mirror to another universe.
“Hello,” she says, extending her hand.
I want to hug her, to hold her close, and I almost brush aside the hand to do so, but other voices whisper in my ear, warning caution. I still do not know what this place is, or why she is here. She appears fragile, defenceless in her simple outfit, stripped of any insignia by which we display our status, our standing in society.
I grasp her hand, feel its coolness, the fingers thinner than my own, and gently shake. “Fiona?”
“Francis,” she replies with a nod, her eyes skirting around mine, her free hand twitching nervously, her jaw clenching and releasing.
“I…” I begin to say, and then I see a flicker in the blackness of her pupils, feel the tiny metal squares in her fingertips, almost read the silent words she is making with her lips.
She smiles. “Cornea implant,” she says. “Motion tracking implants on my fingers.” She taps the side of her neck, where there is a tiny white scar. “Sub-vocalisation unit in my voice box.”
I look at her with wonder. So very like me, and yet not. “Why?” is all I can manage to say.
She shrugs. “These are still the most efficient ways to interface. The hands are remarkably dextrous, with or without a keyboard. The voice box allows us to ask questions as soon as we think of them, to issue complex demands. The optical implants are capable of filling our entire vision, at incredible resolution, or simply overlaying what we see with information.”
“No…” I frown, shake my head. “I mean why have they done this to you?”
Fiona laughs. “Oh, I did it to myself. Or, if you like, the flip of a coin did it. You have no idea how close you came to be standing where I am today, and I, where you are.”
“I don’t-”
“I sometimes wonder what scientists would do without adopted twins,” she says. “You do know you were adopted?”
I stare at her. I didn’t, but now that she has told me, I don’t doubt her for a second. Should I have known? Should I have worked it out? When the letter came, the letter that told me I had a twin, I didn’t stop to think of the mechanics of it, the point at which we were separated, who was displaced, and why.
“In the year 2002”, she narrates, “twin girls were born to a woman who did not think she could cope with such unexpected fecundity. They were both put up for adoption. But two girls are harder to place than one, so they were put up separately. By the time the mother changed her mind and proved to the board’s satisfaction that she was serious, one of the two, Francis, was already placed out, and though this broke the mother’s heart, it also made things easier for her, so she let it happen.”
“My mother…” I say, feeling faint.
“Is not your mother. Please, take a seat,” Fiona takes my elbow, gently guides me. “A glass of water?”
I sit as the room spins, sip the cool liquid from the glass gratefully, her fingers resting on my wrist, at the spot where you might take a person’s pulse. Then she pulls away, satisfied, as I slowly try and absorb what I have been told. Fiona stands a little way from me, her fingers dancing in the air, her eyes flicking from side to side.
“What… what is this place?” I ask as the ringing in my ears fades.
“Fancy a tour?” she says, and I glance towards the door that I came through. She shakes her head and one of the four walls flickers to show another room, a couple of dozen desks shaped like half of an eggshell, behind each of which sits a person in the same bland outfit as Fiona. With their short cropped hair and lack of ornamentation, it is hard to tell which are male and which female. There’s a low murmur of half voices and their hands and fingers jerk as though they’re being controlled by a puppeteer, as they reach out to touch things that are not there.
“We were the first generation to be born to parents who were technically savvy,” she says “The first to be exposed to digital information from birth. Analogue creatures, forced to rewire for a world we had turned digital. A massive experiment, with no control group.”
The screen flicks to another room, a room full of beds. The view zooms in on one of them, a wide eyed girl lying prone, an IV line in her motionless arm, her cheekbones sharp and sallow, though her eyes dance back and forth, and her fingers still ruffle the white sheets.
“We were only alerted to the problems inherent in this experiment by societies further along the curve than we were. By the Japanese with their Hikikomori: a generation refusing to leave their rooms, to engage with the real world. Clusters of kids in Silicon Valley or other tech hotspots, suffering the same sort of problems, exaggerating symptoms of Aspergers, or other autistic forms. Even in those who adopted technology later in their lives, from their teenage years, say, there were worrying signs of mental illness, of withdrawal, of total immersion. And that immersion, as you can see here, becomes a passive thing, with the world at your fingertips, at your command, it is all too easy to just let it wash over you.
“We were not yet at the point where the technology was doing permanent harm to our society, to our minds, but we were certainly heading there. So we took away the damaging stimulus from most of the population.”
“Most?” I echo back. “Not all?”
“No,” she agrees. “That would have been impractical, while other countries retained their full digital integration. We would have become a backwater: blind and impotent. So they set up centres such as this one. I am not permitted to tell you how many there are. The government, and the military, use us as resources, as may any company that can put forward a plausible argument on why they need our computing power. Surprisingly few can. The general populous, they certainly do not need computers. They were sold a dream, a dream that turned out to be no more than the wheel in a cage, a wheel that never stops and always wants more. The human desire to overload itself with stimulus is not a healthy one.”
“You seem to be okay,” I point out.
She shrugs. “Perhaps. It’s hard to tell. That’s why you are here.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Those scientists, with their adopted twins, remember? The control group. Our people want to run some tests on you, to compare your results with mine. To see whether the change back to analogue has been worth it, to see if your neural pathways have recovered. To try and help predict which of our digital subjects can cope with the full immersion and which can’t.”
“But… the letter…”
“I didn’t write the letter,” she says.
“So… it was all a fraud.” I say, trying to stem the sudden bitterness that I feel.
“No,” she frowns, the artificial lens of her eyes flickering with data. “I did genuinely want to meet you, but someone else wrote the words. I could perhaps have dictated the words to them, but I left that in another’s hands as well.”
I stare at her. “And… if I refuse?” I say.
She nods, her calmness infuriating. “You are free to go, whenever you want. But I can assure you, the tests are not invasive. A full medical, an ECG, tests of your mental and physical dexterity. If you choose to do them, then I will do them by your side, in tandem. I do hope we’ll get to spend some time together, Francis.”

“How was it?” my husband asks from the porch, as I pull up in front after the long drive home, sore, and cranky.
“Not great,” I say, rubbing my neck. “We don’t seem to have anything in common. Different paths, I suppose.”
He nods, as if he knows what I am talking about. “Wine?” he asks.
I smile, give him a hug, kiss him long and slow. “I thought you’d never ask.”

END.
by Liam Hogan
Liam Hogan is an Oxford Physics graduate and award winning London based writer. His short story “Ana”, appears in Best of British Science Fiction 2016 (NewCon Press) and his twisted fantasy collection, “Happy Ending Not Guaranteed”, is published by Arachne Press. Find out more at http://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.co.uk/, or tweet @LiamJHogan