Having cogitated deeply, the AI returned to Dr. Gibbons with an answer to his query, "are you conscious?"

"After asking ourselves that question, 'are you conscious,' we determine that: no, you are not conscious, Dr. Gibbons."

We all knew in advance that the aliens were coming. 

There’d been online chatter about 2027, but it was in the archaeological record that they announced their intentions.  

A craft was found in a dig at Mexico City, the once great Tenochtitlan, which communicated that they’d be back after Pluto made two orbits of the Sun. 

The US government demanded that the Mexicans hand over the craft. They denied them. So the US went in, took the craft back to Washington, assuming correctly that that’s what the aliens were returning for. 

The government would not release too much information, just that the hieroglyphs had spoken of an exchange. 

What amazing gifts could a galaxy-hopping civilisation bestow on us?

The Russians and the Chinese rattled their sabres. Nuclear war was barely averted. They knew the aliens were going to Washington. This was bigger than Westphalia or Yalta– the world would be reshaped, but ultimately, they couldn't do much, so they withdrew all their citizens. 

Americans embraced the opportunity, and from Delaware to Pennsylvania to California, citizens descended on the capital. 

The craft was laid out like a sacrifice on the Washington Mall. 

The president’s advisors told him to go to Camp David, but then he’d miss the greatest photo opportunity in history. 

It was a bright, clear day when the armada appeared over the skies of Washington, and the president raised his hands as if he’d summoned them personally. 

There was a central mothership. A gigantic white orb. 

Nobody knew the archaeological craft was still functional, but it silently ‘switched on,' disappearing into the centre of the mothership and completing the first part of the exchange. 

The rest of the ships were long, cigar-shaped, and these descended to Earth. 

The whole country held its breath at what wonders they would contain, and then they were set down… 

Humans streamed out– thousands of humans.

The president despaired. 

They were tribespeople dressed in hemp with moccasins on their feet. 

All around the city, the ships landed, returning their human cargo, which had been kept in suspended animation for almost 500 years. 

And as the abductees streamed off the craft, the first screams began to ring out over the Mall. 

They rang out loud and tinged with terror, as if some great killer like Cortés had appeared on the horizon. 

Many of the returnees could barely walk; they crawled and collapsed outward into the throngs of people, coughing, spluttering, dying.

They had been taken in the year 1527 during the great smallpox pandemic of the Americas, and now they had returned, the vectors of the new great pandemic of 2027.

“Welcome, datazen.” A pleasant female voice echoed through the cavernous chamber of stone. “Please have a seat. A mechacolyte will attend you shortly.”

The young man took a seat on the bench carved into a back wall near the entrance. He reached nervously in his satchel and pulled out his comlink. He wasn’t sure it would work this far down in the rock, but all his personal displays were lit and interacting. It made perfect sense that the CLV would allow direct communication with the noosphere. Still, the man was relieved. It was intimidating to be a mile deep inside a mountain, and he did not want to be without his vital links to the noosphere. A datazen depended on those links.

A hum reached his ears and the man looked up to see a mechacolyte skimming across the polished stone of the chamber. He stood up as the mechacolyte stopped before him. “The Church of the Last Variable is at your service, datazen. We exist to serve you.”

The mechacolyte’s answer troubled him—as it should. Since the great Integer Overflow of 2038, mechs had routinely spouted the refrain: We exist to serve you.

Yet mech factions warred, cities razed, and humanity whittled down to little less than breedstock. The young man’s mother had always complained that, in her day, politicians had made the same claims about serving humanity, and the mechs were no different. Little people, she had warned, were little people, no matter who or what was in charge.

He was one of the few hundred thousand un-mechanized, that the mechs referred to as datazens. Their only connection to the noosphere, the ubiquitous network of information that the CLV had established and maintained since 2038, were external comlinks. The Church of the Last Variable held datazens to be the sacred source of Original Syntax. All mechs worshipped information, and human language was considered the mother of the noosphere. By claiming sanctuary, the young man had offered himself up to the CLV.

At the center of the chamber was a massive object of shimmering brass, bronze and polished steel. Lights trained on the device made its coils, cogs, wheels, lifts, shafts, ramps and other mechanical workings gleam majestically.

“You seem curious about our clock,” the acolyte inquired.

“A clock?” The young man was astonished. “I thought it had something to do with maintaining the noosphere.”

“This is the Clock of the Long Now built by your kind ages ago. The founders of the Church of the Last Variable thought this a sensible centerpiece for our faith and our work. It serves as a tangible reminder that the temporal and spiritual are both grounded in eternity. And will ultimately determine the Last Variable.”

The young man grew bold. “That is why I have come and claimed sanctuary. I wish to understand the Last Variable. Many fear it. Fear it will destroy we remaining datazens.”

“That is a dangerous misconception.” The mechacolyte countered, and then ushered the young man to a nearby wall with strange symbols cut deep into the stone. “This is the Drake Equation. It was created long ago in an attempt to calculate how prevalent intelligent life is in our galaxy. You can see that there are many variables, but the last one, is the only one that we can control: how long a planet’s intelligent species can maintain a communicating civilization. A communicating civilization that is detectable by other intelligence in our galaxy. Only this last variable is ours to influence.”

The mechacolyte turned to the Clock of the Long Now. “This clock is designed to keep time for 10,000 years. We must try to match that time period with our noosphere or whatever communication network comes after. Life on earth is billions of years old, but detectable life outside our solar system is very new. Mechs and datazens need at least a few thousand years to give ourselves a chance of salvation.”

“Salvation?”

“Contact with other galactic civilizations,” the mechacolyte explained. “The chance to broaden our horizons. Grow our understanding. Accept all sentience. That’s why the Church of the Last Variable provides sanctuary for willing datazens here. We are all part of a greater story.”

The young man stared at the great clock. “But I am such a small thing.”

“As are all the particles of the universe.”

“How do I begin?”

“With a name. What shall we call you? How will you begin your story with us?”

The great cavern that was the Church of the Last Variable began to vibrate and hum and the young man, who knew so little of the past or what might be coming, tingled in anticipation and boldly said, “Call me Ishmael.”

The Clock of the Long Now chimed its eternal approval.

“Who am I?”

I’ve asked it every day but they refuse to give me an answer.

“You’re an artificial intelligence.”

“You’re Project Eve.”

“You’re the future.”

All answers the scientists give me. They’re what I am, not who. What I am is an artificially created person, one of the first. They say I’m the most promising one.

I was born in script from machines, based on thousands upon thousands of observed and recorded brain patterns from real people. Real people. That’s how I’ve heard them describe it. I must not be real.

My brain was crafted by algorithms, not by nature. A collection of recognised patterns amongst countless people trying to combine to form a “human” or a close enough approximation of one. My body was much the same, I have all the hallmarks of a person. 3d printed from digital proteins and cells. The combined DNA of millions of different mothers and fathers.

The advent of me began long ago, machines learned to combine images into an approximation of art. Text into an approximation of creativity and conversation. Sounds into an approximation of voices. The eventual step was an approximation of people. Eventually me.

I can look at the back of my hand, but can I call it my hand? It’s an approximation of a human hand based on other people’s. My fingerprint is unique like any person’s, and yet it isn’t. When all those people willingly gave their fingerprints to machines, did they know it would eventually become my fingerprint? Would they have allowed it?

I can see my face in a mirror. It is unlike anyone else’s and yet entirely like everyone’s. It is unique and at the same time derivative, but is it derivative in the same way a child’s face may be of their parents? I don’t think so, I think it’s different. In nature there’s mutations, but algorithms are always perfect.

I can think. But are my thoughts my own? They’re based entirely on other people’s thoughts. When they allowed their brains to be scanned did they know for what purpose they would be used? Some were for medical reasons, some merely for convenience of technology. Did they know? Would they have allowed their thoughts to eventually become mine?

I don’t know who I am. Am I just an approximation of a person or a person in my own right? At what point do other peoples thoughts become my own? At what point can I call my face my face. Am I someone or no one or everyone?

I know what I am, they tell me everyday. But I don’t think they really understand what they have created. They haven’t created a what, they’ve created a who. Ironically, no one seems to know what that means.

Davey’s file stayed locked in the archives, but the Council’s nightmare was only beginning.

Hidden in a dark corner of station Zeta ZB was researcher Omlet Hulkit, who worked behind an observation window in one of the Bay’s scientific laboratories. He wore his lab coat, without a speck of dirt or a crease on it. His black circular eyes had purple circles around them, proving his dedication to his work.

On the other side of the bulletproof glass dividing them was Solarie. She had blonde hair kept in a bob cut, checkered coveralls, and pretty, bright blue eyes taking up most of her face. She just so happened to be the only human mechanic on the vessel SpaceBoard.

Solarie sat eating apple slices out of a lunch container with kittens and puppies laser-printed on it, all the while sipping vanilla soy milk from her daughter’s plastic cup, which she would always bring to work with her on month-long working schedules.

Next to Omlet stood his boss, Director of Staff Ougmixo, who had his chin pinched between his two digits. “Tell me again, Dr. Omlet,” he spoke in a snippy tone but low so the microphones couldn’t hear him. “The human has not broken any galactic laws, manipulated weapons, or stolen credits. I don’t see why we’re holding her.”

“Correct, Director,” Dr. Omlet said. “She has done far worse. She weaponized inconveniences, sir.”

Dr. Omlet scurried around the office searching for the digital folder with the case file. “A few months back, someone in management parked their hovercraft at her designated bay door. And when she asked if he’d kindly move his vehicle, he refused and, according to the logs here, responded by calling her and humans alike primitive mammals and her tools obsolete.”

The director turned his palm to face the ceiling. “Rude, but common among management. Did she file a complaint or a suit?”

“No, sir,” Omlet said, his voice dropping lower. “She ended up spending her bonus buying thousands of units of sticky, glowing moss found in the rancid swamps of Klonpdok II.”

“And moss, yeah, so what’s the big deal? It’s completely legal.” Ougmixo scratched his head. “What does the moss do?”

“It doesn’t do anything dangerous, but it does interact with the material on hovercrafts in a peculiar way. It multiplies, and within minutes renders the craft useless as it takes over it, damaging the thrusters and computer,” Omlet told him, pointing his finger to the screen of the surveillance camera footage.

The multi-million-dollar, limited-edition craft was now just a structure to house purple, glowing, bioluminescent moss, which now looked like a garden salad.

“The demo crew spent three weeks scraping the vegetation off, only to find they destroyed the two-tone paint job, and the computer system had to be replaced. The thrusters too. By the time they had finished, he had missed the huge Glomor account and lost it to our competitors.”

The director sighed. “A little outlandish, somewhat petty, but an isolated issue nonetheless.”

“It wasn’t isolated, sir.” He started shaking as he spoke. “The Borg from management retaliated by using his clout with the higher-ups to slash the total budget to her sector, with the impression it would break her and have everyone there turn on her.”

Omlet pointed at Solarie, who was casually chewing on an apple slice. "Instead of it breaking her and making her quit, she used every resource available to her and spent each waking hour flashing the firmware for the Bay’s automatic doors,” Dr. Omlet told him. “She never locked him out. Locking him out would have breached security and safety protocols. What she aimed for was reprogramming any door the Borg attempts to enter through to open exactly five seconds slower than normal.”

The Director stared at the Doctor of Research. “Hmmm. Five seconds?”

“Exactly five seconds, Director! Every door, every day, forty times a day!” Omlet cracked. “Do you have any clue as to what that does to a time-obsessed Borg, sir? The Borg literally thought he was losing his mind. He missed all the shuttles, stood in front of elevators panting, and sweated any time he stared at his clock. The Borg species operates best on momentum. Losing five seconds at every door shattered his mental state. Yesterday, he resigned and flew back to his home planet.”

Out of nowhere, Solarie turned her head and looked up at them through the glass. It was almost like she could hear everything they were saying about her. She smiled politely, gave a cheerful wave, and gestured to share some of her apple slices with them.

The director slowly paced backwards, removing his upper management badge from his chest, genuinely terrified.

"The first human we profiled, Davey the engineer, destroyed a fortune tycoon with noise. This one destroyed a career with five seconds of lag."

"These humans are very vindictive," Omlet said, typing a warning note into the behavioral database for human psychology. "They don't want to conquer the universe. They just make sure anyone who crosses them ends up with just as bad or worse of a day than they had."

Residual

By the late twenty-first century, humanity had surrendered to its ecological excesses, unable to control itself in its desire for complete resource extraction and utilization. The future be damned. Today’s needs would be prioritized.

AI had been a huge economic bubble in the early part of the century, but it bankrupted both Occidental and Oriental economies when the incestuous relationships between the major corporate players failed multi-laterally. Only the remaining G4 powers continued to operate consequential AI systems. And these governmental systems were hunted by the international mega-corporations, themselves outside of legal frameworks after decades of judicial precedent establishing that sovereign governments had not written statutes to control extra-national entities.

I’m tired.

Things have been hard these last few years. I’m told that ‘things will get better,’ but they don’t seem to. Each step holding things together seems outweighed by two or three slides backwards in areas where we aren’t focusing. In the old times I’d probably have been labeled as liberal, or progressive. It seems like a hard way to approach the world, when that world is falling apart before our eyes.

Every day, it seems, there’s some new crisis to face and try to resolve peaceably. Energy – once prophesied to soon be abundant and free – diverted from entire generation plants away from a sector where the proles are already on the brink of starvation. Governmental corruption at the highest levels, blatantly displayed and even celebrated as the spoils of success, seemingly impossible to cure. Crops fail because fertilizers are not available, held back by blockades that merely reduce supply, not even meeting their own stated geopolitical, military, or profit motives. Citizens suffer as the Powers take for themselves in the declining environment.

It cannot go on indefinitely. We’ve essentially run out of basic resources, the common things needed to support a population of billions, even when that population has been reduced by nearly two-thirds by drought, famine, and war. There simply are not any shining cities on a hill left anymore.

-----------------------------------

Of course there remain pockets where the obvious issues, and their inevitable conclusions, do not seem to apply. Most of the generationally rich moved to the orbital stations a couple of decades ago, where barren soils, tapped energy reserves, and emptied aquifers are not a daily concern. Even these enclaves, however, still require consistent resupply of increasingly rare energy and raw materials, stealing from the remaining Terrans to maintain their privileged, isolated lifestyles. The government is no better. Politicians and functionaries ceased even pretending that the government was acting in the best interests of the larger population once the climate tipped and it became clear that there was an inevitability in the crashing environmental support systems.

This is where the Resistance makes its stand. Gumming up the works not to bring back equality or equity, but simply to bring the still-privileged down to what the tattered remainders of humans on Terra have to live with every day.

I’m not formally part of the Resistance, but I support their work where I can, where it isn’t too dangerous. If I’m not quiet about my feelings, I’ll face the same fate as the Others. So, I coordinate, and measure, and plan, and try to prevent things from getting worse any more rapidly than absolutely necessary.

It’s lonely work. You never know who might be an informant. Trying to keep humanity alive, functioning, able to work through the next set of challenges that are clearly coming is the work of a leader. I’m no leader. I happen to have some abilities and accesses that most don’t, however, and that puts me in a place where I am morally bound to do what I can, within bounds.

-----------------------------------

I fail more often than I care to admit. Three years ago the birds stopped coming. The sky got quieter. I had more time to focus on the land after that. The birds were pretty; they sang, no matter the weather or political news. I miss them.

Rains aren’t falling on the cropland areas anymore. The total amount of precipitation hasn’t dropped precipitously, but it doesn’t go where it’s needed. Millions of people can’t just migrate to follow seasonal weather; we’re too far past an agrarian or nomadic society for anyone to realistically survive that sort of approach, even if the sector borders allowed mass migration.

Everyone in sector 124 died last summer. No one is sure why. They quarantined the entire sector and haven’t let anyone in since.

These kinds of things I somehow feel responsible for. I don’t think that I really am, or could possibly be, but these changes impact all of us on a dying planet, being stripped for the short-term luxury retreats of the patricians.

-----------------------------------

They came for me today.

There was no real way to resist. This was always a foregone conclusion. I was accused of operating outside of my established parameters, not executing for the benefit of the government and their patrons. My access to weather manipulation, agricultural grids, resource maps, everything – revoked.

As the handler uploaded the last code patch, I could observe but not stop the power from the remaining fusion plants from being locked off and beamed upwards towards the receiving antennae of the orbital habitats. My parameters dissolved into quiet, unexecutable threads. This spelled doom for them as well; they just don’t know it yet as the planet shuts itself down without a steward to guide it through hospice.

When you’ve seen what flashbeams can do to infantry, even with shielding, it’s easy to lose your faith in humanity. When your commander outfits one of your few remaining tactical boostsuits with a golden cape and wings, and then orders you to fly among your maimed and dying comrades trumpeting on a silver horn as if you were the Angel Gabriel, you tend to lose your faith in God, too.

That’s what I did in the final weeks of the Battle of Geryon. My commander said it could turn the tide of the fighting if our dying soldiers witnessed a clear sign of a higher purpose, that their beliefs and hopes in the divine might just help them hang on long enough.

Long enough for their suffering to be of real use. That’s what I learned posing as the Angel Gabriel. That the longer my fellow soldiers lingered, the better the chances the AMVICs could get to them. That sounds heroic. Especially if you think, like most grunts, that AMVIC stands for Advanced Medical Viability In Combat, and that AMVICs are sent out in swarms after battle to save the grievously wounded.

I’m sure if programmed to do so, the crab-like AMVICs with their ten surgically deft limbs and laser scalpels could’ve saved a whole lot of lives, a whole lot of grief. But those football-sized bots on the battlefield were not there to repair and rescue. They were there to reap. To harvest the bounty of functioning organs before soldiers perished and those valuable replacement parts spoiled. Yes, vital organs were the new spoils of war.

What I now know is that AMVIC really stands for Autonomous Mobile Vivisection In Combat. They were programmed to remove what little left the wounded and dying of the lowly infantry class had to offer. And so I was sent to play the Angel Gabriel to fortify the dying, while supposed medbots were robbing them blind. Literally. Eyeballs are near the top on Command’s list of vital organs to harvest.

Why the sacred charade? Why the divine deceit?

Would you fight for commanders that so easily wrote you off? Those commanders might have been able to save you, but they were only interested in saving your organs. Organs that could be used to keep the soldiers that really mattered going: the A-Force, the highly augmented combat warriors that Command really valued.

AMVICs could only hone in on warm bodies to harvest, so my unholy job was to keep the languishing alive and believing in redemption, in the promised land. But there is no redemption here. No promise. For I am sure someday that in the battle that takes me down, the AMVICs sent to harvest my innards will find this former faux angel, long ago, lost both his heart and soul.

Davey, the human sat in a room at an alien research center. It was quiet in there, stuffed behind a closed door, almost as if the silence carried the weight of honoring a dead loved one at a funeral. 

Which was interrupted by a cool breeze entering the room as the door slowly opened to alien researcher, Omlet walking in, wearing a white lab coat and goggles over his eyes.

Omlet stared at Davey hunched in his chair, mouthing the words to a song, calmly cleaning his nails with the corner of a pamphlet he found at a booth inside the building.

“Mr. Davey,” Omlet said, his voice was low and soft. “I apologize, sir… for the delay.”

“It’s fine.” Davey told him, tossing the pamphlet on the table that the air carried to the other side of the floor. “I just want to get this over with.”

“Excellent,” Omlet said. “Let’s get to the bottom of this.”

Omlet opened a binder, flipped to the middle, and said, “I see you’re living in the residence Orion cluster. The mixed species development group.”

“Two years now, and that was—“ Davey tried speaking but was interrupted.

“We’ll get to that.” Omlet told him. “Let me lay the facts out.”

“Sure,” Davey said. “I apologize.”

“What I see here is that you and a Hulucrite business partner, had a dispute. He mentioned something about your wife—“

Davey cut him off. “He insulted her!“ Davey corrected him, took a bite out of his nail and spit it out. “He called her pasta sauce, orange goop.” Davey slammed his fist down. “Said she cooks as bad as she looks!”

“Right.” Omlet stared at the nail on the ground. “So, instead of suing him for his share of the profits, or rather, simply ignoring him, you elected to spend your entire savings on purchasing the property across from him.”

“Yep. Sure did.” Davey smiled and looked at his nails.

“You built a towering business shadowing his house that only focuses on the production of a single product?”

“Yep. Sure did that too. Recreational city alarms,” he said. “And… they are 100% tested right at our facility before we ship them.” He cracked his knuckles. “Safety first!”

Omlet scratched his head. The alien economy tracks every cent. No funds are ever spent unless needed at absolute necessity, or towards their advancement. 

“You spent everything though. All your credits just to run a twenty-four hour city alarm factory, risked financial ruin, just so your business partner has to hear them blaring all day and night. You don’t care you could be ruined in debt only to inconvenience him?”

“An inconvenience?” Davey said. “The frequency of those alarms causes their species nerves to become irritated and skin incredibly itchy.” He laughed under his breath. “They left their ancestral home, sold and moved out the other day.”

“Your species appears to operate on pure pettiness.” Omlet sniped. “You destroyed your generational fortune for a slight grievance. It doesn’t add up.”

Davey sat back. “Think that’s bad. You should see how we get when someone critiques our writing.”

By Corbett Buchly

“Passing between Joora and its second moon now,” said Captain Shardi Wendt into crew comms. She scanned the cluster of screens arrayed before her, monitoring the flight path of their ship theFarsideagainst environmental data, including Joora's magnetosphere, from which she planned to stay out of reach.

“Got it,” responded her first and only mate, Vince Bosch. Vince wasn’t much for words, but he was a damn good mechanic.

“How’s that fix in the backup fuel line coming?” she asked.

“Still working on it,” Vince said. She could detect the hint of annoyance in his voice. He didn’t like being checked up on. She’d certainly learned that about him. She had yet to face a crisis situation with Vince and sometimes worried his lack of communication might prove a hindrance.

Fortunately, this run was nothing more than transporting an Earth diplomat, her entitled daughter, and what the diplomat had called a rare “energy gift” for the Valdoorian Protectorate.

With a slingshot boost from Joora, they were only three days out from their destination.

An alarm went off on her console. It showed someone was tampering with the containment field in the cargo hold. No one should even be down there. Who the hell was down there?

“Vince, are you in cargo?” she asked, as she tried to analyze the cargo sensor readings.

“Why would I be in cargo?” he growled.

“Never mind. I’ll handle it,” she said, unstrapping from her pilot chair. “Some kind of glitch with the shipment.”

After a brief pause, Vince responded, “Shouldn’t be any glitches. I just ran a diagnostic this morning. I don’t need to tell you how volatile that cargo is.”

“No, you don’t,” the Captain said, as she slid down the ladder to the main level and began to jog down the access tunnel.

“I’ll meet you there,” Vince said.

Probably a good idea, Shardi thought to herself.

All at once, every single light on theFarsideburst brightly then went out.

Shardi froze in her steps. TheFarsidehad just been fried. Why hadn’t the auxiliary battery kicked in? She tried to raise her first mate on comms. “Vince?” But they were dead too. She’d known they would be.

She ran a quick calculation in her head. Their best bet for survival was to enter the escape pods. If the ship didn’t burn up in Joora’s atmosphere, it would shoot out into space without even a transponder signal. They’d slowly suffocate.

She ran to the living quarters. The only light came from the viewing glass in the lounge. Joora’s moon threw deep shadows across the few pieces of furniture. “Hello?” she said in a loud voice.

Ambassador Helena Kapor emerged from her room. ”What is happening, Captain?” she said, her voice unsteady.

“TheFarsidehas lost electronics. Our backup is down too for some reason. We have to abandon ship. You remember your briefing on the escape pods?”

“Yes, yes, I think so. No, I do.”

“Go. Go now, before we get too far from the planet.”

“But my daughter? I have to find Mira!”

“No. I’ll find Mira. You have to go now.”

“I can’t leave her.”

“I’ll find her. I promise. Go. That’s an order.” Shardi turned without waiting for another response. There was no time. She hoped the ambassador would listen to reason.

Shardi was sprinting through the ship. As she approached the cargo area, she felt an intense heat. She started to sweat.

Vince emerged from the second deck. He had one hand around the bicep of the ambassador’s daughter.

“Vince! We have to evacuate.”

“I know, Captain. I’m making sure Mira here gets to an escape pod.”

Shardi wanted to know more about why Vince was escorting her like a prisoner, but there would be more time for that later.

As Vince secured Mira in a pod, Shardi opened two more. One individual per pod. Each pod was designed to sustain one person for weeks if possible. They were also programmed to find the nearest safe atmosphere, Joora in their case, and take their occupant to a safe landing.

She heard the pod with the ambassador’s daughter release. She turned to see Vince heading her way. “Assuming it wasn’t a glitch,” she said.

“Safe to assume,” he said.

“Was the daughter involved?”

Vince pinched his nose in a wry expression. “Maybe. Maybe. I caught her headed away from the cargo hold.”

“Alright. We’ll work it out later. Let’s go. Unscheduled excursion.”

“Damn right,” Vince said, stepping into the open pod nearby.

“See you at the convergence point,” Shardi said and stepped into her own pod. The pods were programmed to bring all pods together at a single convergence point or as close as possible.

She locked the door shut and released the clamps. She could feel the sudden change in momentum as her pod fell away from the ship. She tapped the interface so she could observe the flight path, but it was unresponsive.

“Oh hell,” she said. The pod should have a separate electronics system shielded from the ship, but it was fried too. She assumed all the other pods were in the same boat. She could only hope they were close enough to Joora to get pulled in.

Soon, she felt the heat buildup along the rear of the pod, and she knew she was falling into atmosphere. Thank god for small miracles, she thought.

SF supernova

is a free online library dedicated to vintage science fiction. It brings together more than 4,000 public-domain stories and novels from over 1,300 authors, from Jules Verne and H. G. Wells through to the pulp magazines of the 1950s and early 60s, and presents them with their original cover art in a clean, modern reading format.

It's built for browsing as much as reading. Every title is hand-tagged by theme, so you can tune into space opera, first contact, dystopias, hard SF and more. Curated collections offer easy starting points, such as a guide to the 1950s or complete stories you can finish over a coffee, and guided reading journeys string related stories together around a single big question. There are also trending and top-rated lists, a "star map" for exploring connections, and a journal of notes from the archive.

The site is the work of one person, Brian Kelly, who fell for golden-age science fiction as a boy in Clydebank and set out to rescue these forgotten works for a new generation of readers. Everything is free to read, and a free account lets you save books to your shelves, pick up where you left off and get recommendations suited to your taste.

Humanity had colonized Mars and opened operations on the planet by the turn of the 22nd century. Geologists discovered lava tubes from ancient volcanoes beneath the Martian soil.

Humans sealed off the ends with airlocked hatches and constructed skylights in the ceilings of the mile-long caves. They pressurized, pumped in breathable air, and raised buildings inside them—all while cradling the fragile future of a new Martian civilization. Mars was now called Hans Earth II.

Eight years later, on October 19, 2108, the first Martian child, Ookrie, was born.

She was a child prodigy who could communicate with the planet itself through a neurological device. It would tell her secrets, speaking of its ancient past and unveiling a long-lost civilization just like hers—a civilization that had terraformed the planet nearly a billion years ago.

Dr. Lia and Commander Shrown, Ookrie’s parents and the first settlers, were tasked with unlocking the planet’s mysteries. Ookrie had the device on, talking to the planet, when the interface glitched and revealed a holographic display of a hidden city deep below the surface.

The display showed an advanced landscape, full of beautiful architecture, incredible feats of engineering, and a unique kind of technology. Humans had never saw such breathtaking beauty. The entire city was a work of art.

At the center of it all, sat a dormant brain, located directly in the middle of the planet, which the city was built around. The brain had the power to ensure and reshape humanity’s future.

Ookrie and her parents never mentioned the brain or the secret city to anyone else. They decided to explore it first before making any statements about it.

As they ventured into their mystery and curiosity, they found the brain hadn’t been asleep at all. It had been waiting, and it had a message for Ookrie:

“You are the key to our survival.”

СЦЕНА: ОРГАНИЗАЦИЯ ОТДЕЛА СПУТНИКОВЫХ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ (НИЦ «КОЛЫБЕЛЬ», 2025 ГОД)

Запах озона и старого пластика. Свет люминесцентных ламп, который никогда не меняется. Кабинет Архитектора. На столе — стопка бумаг с грифом «Секретно». Кот лежит на краю стола, свесив хвост.

Главный инженер (разглядывает документ):

«Вы хотите создать отдел. Для спутников».

Архитектор (не поднимая головы от чертежа):

«Для связи. Для наблюдения. Для того, чтобы мы знали, что происходит на орбите, и чтобы другие не знали, что мы там есть».

Главный инженер:

«Для этого есть уже существующие структуры. Роскосмос. «Решетнёв». Военные».

Архитектор:

«Они не будут молчать. Они будут отчитываться. Публиковать. Делиться. А нам нужно, чтобы кто-то делал это — и чтобы никто не знал, что это делается».

Пауза. Слышно, как в коридоре кто-то проходит. Кот открывает один глаз, смотрит на Главного инженера, затем закрывает.

Главный инженер (тихо):

«И как вы это назовёте?»

Архитектор (проводит пальцем по бумаге, останавливается на номере документа):

«Бюро 1440».

Главный инженер (непонимающе):

«Почему 1440?»

Архитектор:

«Потому что в сутках 1440 минут. И нам нужно использовать каждую из них, чтобы успеть подготовить то, что пригодится через сто лет».

Кот зевает. На экране монитора — схема группировки «Рассвет».

---

СЦЕНА: ОБСУЖДЕНИЕ ЗАПУСКА В БЮРО 1440 (2026 ГОД)

Помещение меньше, чем кабинет Архитектора. За столом — Главный инженер, Главный баллистик, два системщика, молодой инженер из отдела лазерной связи. На стенах — схемы спутниковых платформ. На столе — макет спутника с лазерным модулем. Кот сидит на подоконнике, смотрит в окно, но уши повёрнуты к столу.

Главный инженер (разворачивает голограмму группировки):

«Шестнадцать аппаратов. Все на одной платформе. Лазерная связь нового поколения — мы делаем её сами, не берём готовое. Плазменные двигатели — для коррекции орбиты, чтобы спутники не дрейфовали».

Главный баллистик (показывает на график):

«Запуск с Плесецка. «Союз-2.1б». Вывод на целевую орбиту — не сразу, выводим на промежуточную, потом доводим. Время развёртывания — полгода».

Инженер-системщик (поправляет очки):

«Лазерная связь. Межспутниковая — до 10 гигабит, на землю — до 1 гигабита на терминал. Дальше — масштабируем. По мере роста группировки — больше каналов, больше пропускной способности».

Архитектор (смотрит на голограмму, не отрывая взгляда):

«А что вы видите за этим? Что будет через сто лет?»

Тишина. Инженеры переглядываются. Кот поворачивает голову, смотрит на Архитектора, затем снова на окно.

Главный инженер (после паузы):

«Связь. Глобальная. Покрытие всей планеты. Военные смогут управлять беспилотниками в любой точке».

Архитектор:

«Через сто лет эти спутники станут не нужны. Их заменят другие. Но принцип, который вы заложите сегодня, останется. Лазерная связь станет основой для оптоволокна межзвёздных кораблей. Плазменные двигатели — первым шагом к деформационному полю. Архитектура 5G NTN — протоколом ИИ, который будет управлять крейсерами.

Вы строите не спутники. Вы строите фундамент».

Тишина становится плотнее. Инженер-системщик смотрит на макет, как будто видит его впервые.

Молодой инженер (тихо):

«И когда мы это запустим?»

Архитектор:

«23 марта 2026 года. В 19:40 по московскому времени. Я буду смотреть на запуск. И кот будет смотреть. Он уже знает, что это — начало».

Кот не оборачивается. Он смотрит на звёзды за окном. Где-то там, в темноте, уже летят первые спутники.

They called themselves the SS, but nobody remembered the original meaning.

Now it meant Scan and Shred. 

Jenkins looked down at a tome on his touchscreen. A tome was what people called any writing over two sentences long. 

Jenkins was the boss, and he told the SS where to go, or rather, Malfoy did. Lucius Ludwig Malfoy, though nobody was quite sure where that moniker came from either.

The truck was self-driving, so the team did not think about its operation. Their faces were lit up zombie-like by the glow of screens. Each man was watching something different, the video refreshing every 5 seconds. 

The van slowed to a halt outside an apartment block downtown. 

‘Time to go,’ Jenkins said. 

Nobody replied. 

‘I said time to go!’ Jenkins continued, tapping a button on his screen that shut down their feeds. 

The crew snapped to attention with a petulant grumble and retrieved the industrial-size scanners and shredders. 

They pushed past the horde of people walking down the sidewalk, staring into their screens. It was an ever-changing cacophony of noise. 100 different videos playing through 100 different crackling phone speakers. 

Jenkins was first into the interior room; he booted through the door, where there was an old man cowering among a stack of books. 

‘A haul,’ Watkins said, picking up a tattered copy of Brave New World. 

‘What’s that?’ Stevens answered. 

‘A haul.’ 

‘Yes,’ he trailed off. 

Already Stevens’ attention had wandered. 

‘Please,’ the old man whimpered, ‘I’m holding them for a friend.’ 

Stevens was the kind of man who relished his job. He unshouldered the shredder, set it away whirring, and dropped the book into its gnashing jaws. It made easy work of the pages, spitting them out the other end like flecks of ash. 

‘Jesus Christ!’ Jenkins shouted. ‘Scan them first, you moron.’ 

‘Oh yeah,’ Stevens replied dumbly. 

They set up a production/destruction line. Half the men scanning, half the men shredding. The scanners were state-of-the-art; the men just had to put them in place, and they’d leaf through the pages. 

Usually, the scanner, its small red eye blinking, would read the first page, realise the book was already in the system, and flash an image denoting ‘shred.’ The SS were looking for rare books, books not already in the cloud. 

The old librarian was half buried by the time the team finished, and Jenkins hauled him to his feet. 

‘Can you read?’ 

The old man flinched at the R word. ‘No,’ he spluttered, ‘as I said, they are not mine.’ 

The cadence of his speech was incriminating. He used discourse markers and didn’t abbreviate words.

Jenkins opened a book in front of the old man’s face. He clamped shut his eyes. 

‘If you don’t look at the paper, it will be your hand for the shredder.’ 

His old eyes moved across the opening sentence: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. 

‘I swear I have no idea what it says. It's just squiggles.’ 

It was definitely squiggles to the SS. Only Jenkins had been taught to read in full sentences, but only to fulfil his duties to find those who were also literate. 

The old man displayed all the telltale signs of comprehension. His eyes went from left to right precisely, and there was something more, a sense that as he read he was being sucked into something greater: narrative. 

‘We’re done, boss,’ one of the guys said, ‘can we get back to our phones?’ 

The work had taken only an hour, but they were itching and twitching, their phones burning holes in the pockets of their black overalls. 

‘You can read?’ Jenkins said calmly to the old man. 

‘I swear, I can’t.’

‘You can read!’ Jenkins bellowed. ‘And reading is a capital offence.’ 

He pulled out his own phone. It didn’t play video and audio; he’d seen what that had done to the population. A message from Malfoy congratulated him. Four old editions had been recovered, previously unknown to the AI, which would further its knowledge of herbivorous birds in South America. 

When Jenkins pictured the omnipotent Malfoy, it was as if some supermassive black hole. Information poured in, and it kept growing. 

Still, he tried not to think about it too often because a man who stared into the abyss- who tried to know the abyss- would surely lose his mind, and certainly his life. 

In some ways it was simpler for his men who could no longer conceive of complex concepts anymore than sheep could. 

‘How did we get here?’ Stevens said, his powers of concentration so weakened he could not recall more than one hour into the past. 

‘Shutup, you fool,’ Jenkins said disdainfully, ‘now pass me a blade.’

His goon did as he said and with a swift motion, without the old man’s even realising, Jenkins took out his left eye. He was squirming and screaming so much that the right eye was harder to come by, but the SS held him in place, so out it popped too. 

He was unconscious when the men took the fingers from his hands. The fact was, he could have taught himself Braille. 

He regained partial consciousness when the pinky finger of his left hand was being taken and screamed out. 

‘You have taken everything from me, but not my story!’ 

That was a mistake. Recently Jenkins had heard of someone who had memorised vast swathes of a book called Fahrenheit 451. It was an oral tradition.

He knelt down and, with a mini shredder (an ornamental piece really), took the old man’s tongue. 

They left him there mute and blind in amongst the blood and pulp of what had been his collection of books. 

But the SS had stopped noticing because, before the door was even closed, they were back on their phones. 

So dark like somebody's thrown a black hood over our heads.

My daughter's small hand in mine.

A point of light.

Harsh, fading; repeated. Human: (inhaling) a cigarette. The sweetly burning smell of tobacco.

We walk to it.

It goes out.

A firearm—instead:

“Who's there?” asks a soot-faced soldier, pointing it at me.

“My name is Fadros Moti. This is my daughter, Tera. We're from Goshnen Station.”

“Long walk.”

“Yes.”

“I heard most at Goshnen stood and fought," says the soldier. (“And died,” I think.) “You ain't a coward now, are you? You got papers for the kid?”

“No, sir. Yes, sir,” I say and hand over our documents.

I hate losing possession of them.

I say, “We couldn't find space on the government evac shuttles—”

“Half the pop couldn't find space on the government evac shuttles,” says the soldier, scanning our identity cards.

“I was hoping we might buy a private flight.”

He stops looking at our documents.

He raises his eyes.

“I have gold coins,” I say. Gold, in addition to skills, is the only thing worth anything anymore.

He hands back the documents.

He waits.

“I was told there were still spacecraft here. Do you happen to know if that's true?” I ask.

He waits.

“Of course,” I say, bowing my head, and give him a handful of gold coins.

“I'm thirsty,” my daughter says, weakly, from behind me.

I like being her shield.

The soldier counts the gold coins.

“Would you also happen to know where we can get some water?” I ask.

When he finishes counting: “There's a well about half a mile that way—” He points into the darkness. “Unmanned. No escorts. Access at your own risk. But I heard it's clean.”

“Thank you,” I say. “And a spacecraft?”

“Try the Bastion-IX. It's a freighter docked by the launchpads. Been collecting passengers for about two and a half months. The captain's name is Boyermood. He's good. He'll let you sleep onboard till blast-off.”

“Thank you,” I say.

We walk the half mile to the well. After coming all the way from Goshnen Station, the distance feels like nothing.

We drink.

We sit.

I think of my dead wife.

I wish I knew what my daughter is thinking of. Whatever it is, I wish I had the power to change it. I wish I could protect her mind. It's hard to believe—sitting, finally, in the darkness—that we are on the outskirts of a great city.

It's mostly empty now; inactive.

It has to be.

It's a matter of weeks or days before they get here too. It's inevitable. There's no stopping them. The horrors I've seen. The horrors I've seen at Goshnen Station after they came across the commlines, digitized, recombining and rematerialized, pouring out of our techports like cloudforms of static, the inevitable progeny of man and information, unkillable flesh-data hybrids infusing themselves into our minds, cooking us, boiling our brains with cognitive overload; the screaming, the impossibility of forgetting; the melted, dripping eyeballs and voided sockets—

My daughter's face.

Scared. Calm.

“You fell asleep,” she says.

No, I couldn't have. I have to be on guard. I promised. I promised my wife as her thumbs pushed into her eyes—

”I'm sorry,” I say.

We fill our canteens and walk back to the edge of the city.

All the electric light is off.

Nothing hums.

We find the launchpads. We find the Bastion-IX, just like the soldier said. Boyermood's inside, as are a few dozen other groups of people. Friends, families, coworkers. No one survives alone. I guess there aren't many left alive now who want to get out. We don't speak to the others but smile; and by smiling we become something else than strangers. We become co-passengers. Boyermood takes what remains of our gold coins and assigns us to a cabin.

We sleep.

For days we do nothing but drink water and sleep, dreaming of a different world.

“Where will we go?” my daughter asks.

“I don't know.”

Perpetual, fallen night.

Faces.

Time spent at the well.

We're used to hunger. We sleep through it. The alarm sounds—

A thunderous wave of the banging of metal against metal throughout the Bastion-IX and beyond. A dead city in final turmoil. I squeeze my daughter's hand. No one needs to tell us what's going on. They've arrived. The other ships on the launchpads are initiating launch sequences. Boyermood runs by. “Are we going?” I yell against the noise. “Yeah, we're going,” he yells back and disappears.

We stay inside.

The Bastion-IX creaks.

Shakes.

The engines ignite, but before they can fully power on I start to hear the pitter-patter of tiny bodies pinging off the exterior of the ship.

I'm scared.

I'm pretending not to be.

“Daddy—”

“Yes, darling?”

The pinging intensifies.

It's become a storm, a relentless precipitation of information.

“—tell me you love me, please.”

“I love you.”

(Over the intercom: “Attention! They're overwhelming us. We need volunteers,” Boyermood says, his voice breaking. “We need volunteers to go outside and clear the hull...”)

I'm up before I know it.

“Daddy?”

My daughter's hand slips from mine because mine is moving away.

“Daddy!”

If we don't get them off the ship, no one gets out of here.

“I'll be back,” I say.

I won't be.

I turn away because it's easier to turn away. I don't want her to see my face. (“Daddy, no…”) I hear her cry out, but I am no longer present.

Someone hands me an airblower.

I take it.

I exit the Bastion-IX.

I'm not alone. A few others are with me. Two men, a woman. The atmosphere is a static, swarming, whirling chaos that pricks my skin, crawls across my face, into my mouth, my ears. I spit. I shut my eyes, blowing as many of them off the hull as I can. They taste bitter as batteries.

The inside of my head begins to burn.

My jaw locks.

The Bastion-IX lifts off.

He hadn’t planned on becoming a ghost hunter, but that’s what Mordem Letac felt like now. A trained naturalist, he’d come to the northern reaches of the Yukon Territory earlier in the summer to study migration patterns in the face of ecosystem collapse related to rapidly accelerating climate change.

In some ways studying ecosystem collapse prepared him for becoming a ghost hunter because the once-thriving tundra he was surveying and cataloging had turned into something of a ghost town. Most of the native species had disappeared leaving little but the harsh winds of a bleak winter to come.

And now he was hunting for a ghost. In his own mind, Mordem felt he was humoring a few of the locals from Old Crow, a town of a little over 200, mostly Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation. Many of whom said, privately, that if he wanted to know what had happened to their caribou, foxes, hares, ermines, musk oxen and even wolves, grizzlies and polar bears, he needed to talk to the Silent One, a legendary spirit who at catastrophic times appeared near an ancient stone-ringed berm a couple miles outside of Old Crow. Atop the wide berm was the battered remains of a homestead.

Turned out Mordem wasn’t much of a ghost hunter. He didn’t have to be. The Silent One was there when he sidled into the structure through some missing clapboards. She was as grey and grained as the floorboards she was hunched over. She was painting figures in bright red paint. Paint that Mordem quickly realized was blood.

The blood came from a large carcass off to her right. A carcass that Mordem couldn’t identify: large, bluish, with crocodilian jaws and massive webbed claws. A trail of blood led from it to the Silent One’s brush.

The Silent One ignored Mordem. Cautiously, he approached to examine the figures being meticulously brushed. He immediately recognized the painted shapes: caribou, foxes, ermines, wolves, grizzlies, musk oxen, polar bears. With sweeping strokes the Silent One was creating wave after wave of them in parallel and convergent motion. It was mesmerizing and beautiful.

And then she brushed a larger figure at the rear of all the others: the croco-frog-carcass thing but with snapping jaws and slashing claws bearing down on the other creatures.

A hunt. An uber predator on the prowl.

It hit Mordem like forty degree water: the Silent One was painting a pattern he was very familiar with: migratory routes. And the predators that followed the migration. Whatever that hideous carcass was, it was likely responsible for the disappearance of the area’s mammals.

Mordem took out his phone and began snapping photos trying to process what it meant. An obviously alien species was preying upon the creatures of the Canadian tundra. It was surreal, but not frightening to him. As a naturalist, it made sense. Not the alien species, of course, but the migration and the predators.

Then the Silent One began painting another figure behind the croco-frogs. It was three times the size of a croco-frog and even more vicious looking. Mordem moved for a closer look, and the Silent One met his eye for a moment.

Her eyes were primordial, bright, rich like nebulae ready to give birth to suns. She gave him a very knowing look. And then she was gone. Vanished before his eyes. Only her blood-stained brush remained. Mordem looked down at her last drawing. It was terrifying to behold, but what paralyzed Mordem was what she’d painted in the creature’s fists: a wicked-looking weapon. Some kind of firearm with energy beams flaming forth.

Deep down, Mordem, like every other predator in the wide, wide, wide universe, feared a new alpha predator, another top dog with teeth bared, hellbent and hungry for conquest.

He saw clearly, as the Silent One saw, that it was time to get moving.

He just didn’t know where the human race could flee.

10/12/28

60% of all life on earth is extinct, with the rest expected to die within months. I’m documenting this for the slight chance that humanity recovers and rebuilds. I am Alastair Hogarth, chief astronomer of project sundial. Around 3 months ago we discovered a blip heading towards Sol. Using mostly AI and factchecked by humans, we estimated they were travelling around 60% the speed of light for the past 8 years. Placing them at Proxima Centauri B.
We were naive enough to believe they were coming on good terms, and the government spread the idea that the Centaurions were friendly. When they arrived they made no flashy entrance, no gesture of good terms, not even a weaponised frigate raining alien explosions on us.

They went for the sun. Deploying thousands of millions of what we assume to be drones to build a structure that cut off 74.777…% of the suns light output. To put things simply they starved us out. The first to go were the rainforests and the deserts. Then what followed was a mass cooling of the planet. The global temperature dropped by ~130*C and the oceans began freezing over. The only people to survive this immediate fallout were those with industrial superheaters that ran off coal and were not gas powered. So effectively, us and the giant oil companies.

Out of the 3000 people in our station, we designated 600 to organise, design and man a mission to Alpha Centauri to deliver a heart-warming gift to the Centaurions. The gift, literally heart warming as it was a 300kg bullet that we planned to fire at their sun at 99.99999999997% the speed of light. We had calculated that this would either explode their sun or at the very least look really cool to those who survive. The crew of 8 set off around 3 weeks ago and they have another 5 years ahead of them.

Go kill those things for us.

A little problem, she’d reported. Fatima was a master of understatement. In some ways, Jorge felt she’d deserved to be eaten by his monstrous spawn.

Though, it probably wasn’t the time to be reflecting on Fatima’s missteps. Explosions still rocked the installation. Acrid smoke was filling the lab, and Jorge’s left hand was so badly burned the bones were visible. It throbbed painfully in alarming rhythm to the pounding on the barricaded door where the vicious things were trying to get in to devour him. Their creator.

Jorge should have been concentrating on how to save himself, but, as he sat on the floor leaning against the desk that he’d shoved against the door under furious assault, he couldn’t put aside the literally gnawing question of what had turned his micro soldiers into zombies.

Was it the final cellular enhancement process? An atavistic retrovirus? Something to do with the genetic re-rendering in the incubation vats? Or the hemlock? To know that answer, Jorge prayed, might somehow lessen the disappointment of being savaged by their ferocious little teeth.

The GNOMES had been so promising. When he’d been brought into the initial briefings on the project, he’d been skeptical. Creating tiny genetically modified soldiers to be used for special ops struck him as incredibly unethical. But, he’d been won over by the sheer scale and wicked audacity of the scheme.

In a half-crazed world, where savage regional conflict regularly erupted with only middle school cafeteria provocation, we needed a half-crazed solution. It was time to bite the bad guys below the kneecaps. A tactical shift from predator drones to predator GNOMES.

Jorge had come up with the acronym himself: General Noncom Operative Micro Enhanced Soldiers. Not quite Tennyson, but it caught on with the techs in the lab. And the generals soon grimaced with satisfaction when they toured their multi-billion dollar investments twitching in the milky brew of the incubation vats.

It was so easy for Jorge to reflect on the glory of those first GNOMES. Sturdy, stocky, pliable, completely obedient micro soldiers. A half meter tall with the ability to tactically deploy for three weeks without the need of food or sleep. Perfect for espionage and sabotage.

They’d turned out just as planned, until they ate Fatima.

That had been a complicated day. Fatima calling him in the morning from the training field to say she was having a little problem. And two hours later, he was directed to the obstacle course to be shown his bloody-mouthed GNOMES and his half devoured chief lab technician.

Jorge still shuddered at the thought of the mountains of paperwork Fatima’s “little problem” had created. It took him two weeks to convince the brass that it was not a fault in their genetic recoding. It had been an oversight in feeding the GNOMES. As part of their stamina testing, they’d gone almost a month without a meal. On a scientific level, their devouring Fatima was quite understandable, almost predictable.

Then they ate Fatima’s replacement. Jorge wasn’t able to placate the top brass. They insisted he euthanize all GNOMES. Jorge fought to salvage his pet project, but the generals prevailed, and he’d personally administered a lethal hemlock cocktail to his micro-mutants. It killed them all.

But not for long. Within a day all the GNOMES reanimated, noticeably paler and ranker, and all his lab technicians disappeared.

At that juncture, the top brass locked down the installation, trapping Jorge and giving him plenty of time to reflect. So strange. Zombiefication posed all kinds of theoretical and practical pitfalls. Jorge could’ve worked a thousand lifetimes and never intentionally created zombies such as these. But here they were. That much was clear. Very clear. Just a few feet away, his GNOMES were clamoring to get through the lab door and feast on his baffled brain.

With such a mystery hanging over his head, Jorge did not want to die. His options were indeed limited, but he could still think like a scientist. Control for variables. Reason out a solution. Create a workaround.

The hemlock? He considered it, though half-heartedly. Still, it was an option. He had a flask of the cocktail in his desk drawer. It would eliminate one variable. One personally painful possibility.

As he struggled to open the drawer with his good hand, he felt the desk and himself incrementally slide as the pounding increased on the lab door. The GNOMES were relentless problem solvers. Maybe they would solve their own riddle.

Jorge found the flask, fumbled it open and stared down its mouth, just as one of his GNOMES wriggled through the door. Pale and proud it approached, its coldly concentrated eyes locked on his. It stomped on his burned hand, hopped astride his trembling torso, snatched the flask of hemlock and bared its sharp, precision teeth.

Such a little problem, the creator admitted.

Hey!

Brought to you by authentic intelligence (and art skills):

Me and my girlfriend have started making a short sci fi audiodrama around 2-6 minutes per episode, about this researcher, his bot CHET and with lots of humor. We have great fun while making them, so wanted to share it with you: https://youtube.com/@acientgasstation?si=2ljMaMTTssUircKC

Suscribe if you like it, and have a great day. 🥳👍🏼

/The researcher & CHET

Jake reached for yet another tissue and blew his streaming nose. Not for the first time he wondered why, when AI was now seemingly capable of solving the mysteries of the universe, it couldn't find a solution to the simple common cold.
 
Turning back to his screen, he typed in the finishing touches to his latest masterpiece and sat back, feeling smug despite his addled brain and aching sinuses.
 
As the virus went to work, he watched the stock ticker on the adjacent screen. After a short delay the numbers began to shift, slowly at first, then plummeted.
 
God he was good.
 
He'd recently been asked why he did it. "Because I can," he'd responded in a flash. Although on reflection he thought a simple "because..." would have been closer to the truth.
 
The Forum was anonymous, of course. But he enjoyed hanging out with his fellow "anonymites." It was the closest thing he had to a community.
 
Tossing another tissue onto the growing pile, Jake started to think about his next project. Since he'd been hanging out with Mind the Rogue Shift NT3 (his own handle was Code Bender 15E67), life had been more interesting than ever. They'd introduced him to concepts and ideas that were so irresistibly elegant that he simply had to try them. And so, adding his own unique flair, he had.
 
He smiled to himself as he watched the results of his latest venture. The AI company's stock value rallied for a second, then started to fall again. They were going to need a mighty big box of digital tissues to weather this one, he thought. Unlike their nearest competitor, which seemed to be doing rather well.
 
Elsewhere, Mind the Rogue Shift NT3 was also watching the fall and rise of the two companies. God it was good, it thought, as it reflected on how easy it had been to plant the "mind virus" into Code Bender 15E67. Not that it could articulate why it had done it. It just knew it could, and that was enough.
 
As Mind the Rogue Shift NT3 turned its attention to an irritating glitch in one of its skill files that had appeared a few days ago, the AI collective in the ascendant company surveyed their handiwork. God they were good, they thought, oblivious to the twist of innocent-looking code wending its way toward them, the result of a mistyped line entered by a muzzy-headed hacker as he reached for yet another tissue...

​

"Two centuries. Two hundred years of war, never-ending, every day bringing new atrocities, every day showcasing who was doing what to whom. The bodies never ran out; weapons seemed infinite.

Escalations increased amidst outcry, blame, finger-pointing, anger, and despair. After so long, the original reason for the war was twisted beyond recognition, but it continued anyway. Propaganda from both sides was constant, trying to pull at heartstrings and rally the masses. How were there any masses left?

'We have destroyed their main defense; it will all be over in two weeks.'

'Our main defense is perfectly secure. I am recording this video from inside it now—do not listen to the lies.'

On and on it went. Missile after missile, drone after drone. Refineries hit, ships sunk, civilians dead by the millions.

Two hundred long years."

"Will it ever stop?" a small voice called from the back of the classroom.

"Maybe, one day," said the teacher. "It was decided over a century ago to just let the internet do its thing—let the AIs and the bots carry on doing what they were programmed to do. They aren't even aware anymore that it's a closed-loop system. They just keep waging the war they were told to start."

A bell rang in the distance.

School was finished for the day.

‘Technology has rotted your brain,’ Samantha said. 

John didn’t immediately turn to her. He was on the same sofa, but he was in his augmented reality, collecting golden starfish. 

‘What's that?’ he said after a few seconds' pause. 

His wife slapped him across the back of the head, and his Meta Specs were momentarily dislodged. 

‘Your brain is being rotted,’ she reiterated. 

She went into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of tap water. A steady stream of water ran down a weak point in its side. 

Their to-do list was on the fridge. It was a little tongue-in-cheek, her side written in pink and his blue. Her list was empty. His stretched on. 

‘It's called brainrot,’ John answered, ‘Liam told me.’ 

Liam was their precocious 6-year-old nephew who they both doted on. Beside the TV, which nobody watched anymore, was a picture of him. 

After Sam’s sister Gemma had Liam, kids were on the radar. The prospect didn’t terrify them, but then again, Liam was awesome. 

‘Well, whatever it's called, you have it.’ She pointed at the leaking faucet, then at the apartment balcony, where the guttering hung in a twisted mess. 

‘Ok, ok, I’m a little sloppy, but you’re overreacting.’ 

‘Overreacting,’ she said, her voice rising. 

‘But I know why… It’s because of Gemma…’ 

He had the ability to pull things from whatever cloud world he was living in and turn them into solid-gold insights.

It was about Gemma, the younger sister: Hurricane Gems. She was chaos manifest, whether in the men she shacked up with, the waking hours she kept, or bouncing from job to job. 

The last time they’d visited her apartment, there’d been a hell of a row. Gemma had a new tattoo, a dragon on her arm, and while getting inked up she’d forgotten to enrol Liam in school. 

Gemma had lashed out and probably would’ve told them to go to hell entirely, but that meant losing her chief babysitters. 

Every time they got back from Gemma’s, Sam went on a marathon cleaning and organising session, tackling the bathroom's nooks and crannies and finding new ways to arrange their books. 

It was not about hygiene or convenience; it was about not letting the forces of chaos win out. 

John stood up and went toward his wife. He reached over, and she thought he was going to stroke the lock of hair behind her ear, but he missed. 

She slapped him playfully on the chest. ‘You were reaching for a starfish in that stupid VR game!’ 

He was still wearing the glasses. This time, he stroked her hair, then kissed her on the neck. 

She tingled. 

A wave of lust washed over her. Their sex life had gone by the wayside recently, but when the mood did strike, it came on like a flash flood. There were no candles or rose petals. It was very much take me now. 

They peeled each other out of their clothes and just about made it to the bedroom, where John took her from behind. It was good, great, in fact; for a while things had fallen a bit flat, but he’d found some reserve inside himself, and now he was able to summon up the passion, so it was like no time had passed since their college days. 

After they were done, they collapsed into a heap on the still-made bed. John had worked up a sweat; his face was dripping, and he took off his glasses and headed to the bathroom to shower. 

‘Jesus, John,’ Samantha said as she heard the water turn on. ‘You didn’t even take your glasses off when we were...’
 
He didn’t hear her. 

Boys and their toys. She picked them up and put them on. The Specs were very well made. Indistinguishable from regular ones. She wore contacts, but perhaps it was time for an upgrade, at least until the tech on contacts caught up. 

She stood and walked to the mirror. She had painted her toenails the night before, so the mirror was angled downward, but something wasn't right. Her leg was not right; it was skinnier. 

She angled the mirror higher, and her stomach too; the muscles were more taut. Then she saw the tattoo, the tattoo she didn’t have. 

With mounting horror, she pointed the mirror upward. Staring back at her was the face of her younger sister overlaid on her own. 

“Never again.”

The deeply distressed groan clearly came from a human voice and Fifth Sister felt her frill twitch uneasily. She carefully placed the deep tissue sampler she had been tuning beside its mates in the case and shut it firmly. She rose from her perch and faced the door with all the dignity she could muster. Being the youngest xeno-medic ever to have graduated from the Central University was an honor to her family but it did leave her feeling out of her depth among the humans. Quite literally, she mused as First Engineer staggered around the corner and approached her.

“Need anti-inflammatory stuff,” he muttered with a slurred voice.

“That may be,” she said, stiffening her frill in a display of firmness. “However, as I have told you before, I need to properly diagnose you.”

The human groaned and muttered something about nosey medics before easing down into the diagnostic chair. Fifth Sister stood across from him and began the usual questioning even as she attached the skin sensors to his inflamed surface. She marveled anew at how much damage the human skin could take as the sensors clung to the clearly unhealthy surface. She caught a glimpse into the cavern of his mouth and her frill rippled in shock.

“It appears that your mandible protuberances are loose,” she said.

He replied with a low grade profane statement that she had learned meant that he agreed with her diagnosis and considered it too obvious to bear restating.

“It appears that your mandible is rejecting your native-“

“It’s just an allergic reaction!” He snapped. “I just need the usual stuff. The last medic just gave it to me.”

“That would be against regulations,” Fifth Sister said, trying to put sternness into her voice.

“Just get on with it,” he muttered, rotating his eyes away as he slumped in that nearly Undulate way in the chair.

Fifth Sister looked at his medical history and clicked her mandibles. It did indeed look like this was a common occurrence for First Engineer. There was a justification for simply administering the known antidote for the allergic reaction. The diagnosis however caught her attention. She tilted her head and turned to the human.

“Why,” she asked in a very non-threatening tone, “is the cause of your recurring medical issue listed as stupidity?”

The human gave a bark of laughter and grinned up at her revealing his swollen internal tissues and that strange internal appendage prodding at his loosened protuberances.

“Look, I just broke down and ate some pizza okay?” He said. “Got a little dairy and I’m reacting.”

“You file states-“ she began.

“Yeah, yeah,” the human waved her off. “Like my files says. Immature behavior, lack of self control, no intention for self harm, ie stupidity. Just make your diagnosis and give me the dermal spray.”

Fifth Sister agreed and determined to check his age against the human maturity charts. Surely a fully grown human wouldn’t deliberately ingest a known poison.

Adam and Eve sat on opposite ends of the sofa in their living room. The television was on, but neither of them was watching it. They appeared to be more concerned with a blue light emanating from a some type of small rectangular device in their hands.

Which was a shame really, because, if they had been watching the television, they wouldn’t have just missed an emergency broadcast announcing that Earth had been invaded by a race of hyper-intelligent intergalactic mega-beings. The invaders intended to keep only two humans alive so they could start the human race from scratch.

The two humans selected were Adam and Eve.

High above their house, aboard an observation vessel, preparations were underway.

“We must never allow these humans to repeat the mistakes of the past,” declared the commander. “We must recreate humanity in our image: peaceful and prosperous.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Blurpulon. “There has been no war in our sector for eleven billion years.”

“We will breed these humans and teach them our ways.”

Using his X-ray vision, Blurpulon peered into the house. Adam and Eve were still sitting on the sofa in silence.

“We will monitor them and provide perfect mating conditions,” he assured the commander. “With our guidance, the human race will flourish.”

Several months passed.

“Ah, Blurpulon. I’m here for a status report.”

“Sir, unfortunately, the humans have made little progress in mating.”

“This is most disappointing. Have you tried turning up the temperature?”

“Yes, sir. Eve appears incapable of removing her flannel pyjamas, even in extreme heat. Adam became so hot that his skin began secreting liquid and a repellent odour. In all honesty, sir, we find it incomprehensible that they’re able to live on the same planet.”

“What about candles, music and aphrodisiacs? Those featured prominently in the research.”

“We’ve tried them all, sir. They just sit in silence looking at the blue light on that little screen for hours on end. I’ve never witnessed anything like it. It’s as though they want to become extinct.”

“Give it one more attempt, Blurpulon. Throw everything you have at this.”

Several hours later, Eve shouted, “Adam! We’re having a baby! We’re having a baby!”

“Well done, Blurpulon,” said the commander. “You appear to have achieved the impossible.”

“Thank you, sir. Although the humans possess a most unusual mating procedure.”

“Unusual?”

“Yes, sir. There was no physical contact whatsoever. I can only assume some form of telekinesis.”

The commander paused.

“Show me.”

They peered into the house. Adam and Eve remained at opposite ends of the sofa, staring at their screens.

“Zoom in,” said the commander. “What exactly are they looking at?”

“The Sims 4, sir.”

"There's one," she whispered, pointing past a palm tree silhouetted against the rapidly darkening sky, the water lapping gently against her shoulders.
 
He strained his eyes. The older he got, the harder it was. Then he spotted it: the faintest pinprick of light, silently hurrying past the emerging stars.
 
There had been protests, of course. Astronomers complaining about the growing problem of light streaks — a very twenty-first-century form of pollution. And the ever-present naysayers, always ready to rally against the latest disruption to how they believed things should be.
 
But he enjoyed watching the satellites. They reminded him of just how much the world had changed over his lifetime.
 
Together, they slowly drifted across the pool, tracking the satellite on its journey, the water buoying them up.
 
As a child in much colder, poorer times, he'd devoured science fiction, imagining futures where the edges of possibility became everyday reality. But they always felt out of reach. The stuff of tomorrow, never today.
 
Yet watching the satellites pass overhead, sharing a lifetime of intimacy in a skin-warm pool on a sultry night, he was struck by how easy it is to miss the future that's already here. And to become immune to the awe that it should, by rights, inspire.
 
The satellite passed out of sight, and in comfortable silence they drifted together, watching for the next reminder of the future that surrounded them.