NASCENT

Katie Winkler

We were frankly amazed that it picked her. Of course, we had, as a group of the top minds on artificial intelligence, decided that it should decide things for itself. We shouldn’t dictate to it, but then it picked her, for God’s sake—a 55-year old woman, past child-bearing years, of average intelligence, even less attractive, overweight with no particular talents and more than a few health problems. It could have picked any woman, any man, from anywhere in the world and it picked her.

We are baffled, and fascinated.

It has, we have recently discovered, become quite attached to her, literally, having developed tentacles that it has wrapped around her waist and arms and encircling her breasts like armor. For some reason, it has formed small metal leaves that occur intermittently along the tentacles.

“It has a certain beauty, doesn’t it?” said Sanderson.

“Beauty?” I said, trying not to sneer. Sanderson is so young, you see.

“Yes, the way the metal intertwines and the leaves occur somewhat randomly with different sizes and markings—like some sort of elfish design.”

I looked and didn’t see it myself.

The woman, Marion Phelps, agreed to come in and be questioned by our scientists.

She is dressed in a sundress, which seems odd for some reason. It looks horrible on her—her pudgy arms leaking over the elastic of the bodice and showing more cleavage than any normal man would want to see. At least she is wearing a bra, though the straps are too wide to be covered by the thin straps of the dress. Why would a woman like this wear a bright red bra?

The processor must attach and reattach at will, because the tentacles are wrapped around the outside of the dress—around the arms and the breasts, just like the images sent by my colleagues in the field. The tendrils are quite tight around the arms and it seems a good place to start the questions.

“Is that uncomfortable?” I ask, opening my folder and turning on my recorder.

“What?”

“Are those tentacles uncomfortable,” I say, raising my voice a little.

“No, no, they feel great, actually.” She smiles. Her teeth are quite white. I am surprised and make a note of it.

“What do you mean by feel great?”

She laughs. “Don’t you know?”

“Of course, I know what it means to me. What does it mean to you?”

“I don’t know. Great, you know?”

This line of questioning was getting me nowhere. “How long has it been with you?”

“What?” I notice something moving at her waist. It is one of the leaves.

“The computer,” I say, making a note of her atrocious accent, her lack of intelligence. “How long has it been with you?”

“You should know. You’re the one who got us together.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was arranged.”

“It was not.”

“That’s what he told me.”

“Who told you?”

She laughs again. It is loud and raucous. I don’t like her laugh at all.

“Jake,” she says. I didn’t know any Jake. She sighs, pointing to the automaton wrapped around and around her. That’s what he likes to be called.”

“The computer likes to be called Jake?” It is my time to laugh.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, nothing,” I say. “He just seems more like a Steve to me.”

She isn’t laughing now. She sits back in her seat, stretches her legs out, crosses her ankles and her arms. “Now, how about that? You want Jake to make decisions for himself, but then you make fun of him when he does.”

I look up. Now this is interesting. Her posture, her tone of voice, everything sounds so defensive. “You sound angry, Ms.” I glance down at the file folder. “Phelps. I certainly meant no offense, to you or to Jake.”

She looks a bit flushed and opens her mouth as if to speak, when the metal on her right arm seems to constrict a little and two leaves begin to move up and down against her skin. “Not angry, Dr. Stephens.” She smiles. “Why should I be?”

I play along. “No reason whatsoever.” I shuffled some papers on the table between us and picked up my pen, a special one I bring along on such occasions. “Just a few more questions,” I say, as I roll the black pen between my fingers and chuckle. “You must admit, you are a bit of an unusual choice for a highly advanced android to make.”

Now she is angry. I had hoped she would be. She doesn’t say anything, only stares at me with her plain, brown eyes. “That’s not a question.”

I lean forward, “Why,” I ask, speaking slowly and enunciating every syllable, “would such a sophisticated computer that I helped program by the way, pick a…” I flip through the file. “What is it you do? I can’t remember.”

“I’m a teacher.”

“Oh, that’s right. You teach elementary-aged children at the cyber school, don’t you?” I say, nothing more. Just wait, until finally, “What is it that you think you have to offer?”

Ms. Phelps, her face turning red, abruptly stands up. “You don’t understand anything, do you?”

I see then that the tendrils extend around her torso and have moved and tightened over her buttocks. “Did the android just signal to you to leave?” I say staring at the silvery branches and glimmering leaves.

“Yes. He’s had enough.”

I ignore her comment, but rise to block her way as she tries to leave. “It looked like it actually moved to lift you out of the chair. Is this computer manipulating you in any way, Ms. Phelps?” It is for the stupid woman’s own protection. She and my machine must be separated. “Ms. Phelps, sit down.”

“I can’t.” She’s sobbing. “We have to leave.”

“Is this machine hurting you?” When I move to force her down, to do what I must do, grabbing her shoulders, the tendrils detach from the woman’s right arm and slowly wrap around my left.

She is screaming now, “Don’t, Jake! Don’t!” she cries, clawing at the disappearing leaves as the vines unfurl. “Don’t leave me!”

I am enthralled. Feeling the warm metal moving up my arm, I am also surprisingly aroused. He’s coming to me, his creator, and I am vindicated. I was sure he would not stay with that woman. He was simply experimenting.

Then, it is hard to describe what I feel as the metal heats and sinks into my skin. I suppose this must be what it’s like to burn alive. Through the bright rays of pain, I remember the pen in my hand and make useless stabbing motions at Jake, hitting my own dissolving arm in the process. “Stop this, Jake. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

But he continues, looping his way up my arm and wrapping his tentacles around my neck, squeezing, burning. I scream out and begin stabbing at the woman. Feeling the pen meet the flesh, I stab and stab and stab as she screams.

“Let me go,” I cry, and he does, finally, mercifully, sinking away from me quickly, as he wraps himself around the woman, who now lies huddled, moaning, in the corner of the room. More leaves spring out in myriad shapes, sizes, this time mixed with bright metallic colors of magenta, emerald and gold, covering her wounds.

Sanderson and the guards come rushing in to see me standing there, still grasping the bloody pen. I assure them, as I clamor for breath, that I have the situation well in hand, but that the woman must be taken into custody.

“With the computer?” asks Sanderson.

“Of course,” I say, as calmly as I can. “The two can’t be separated. Leave them be.”

But here in the quiet of my hospital room, as the powerful pain reliever begins to do its work, where no one, no thing, can know my thoughts, I cradle what’s left of my arm, knowing what I must make Sanderson do, tomorrow. For the good of mankind.

If she refuses, by God, I’ll do it myself.

Food for Thought

1. What does the narrator want Sanderson to do at the end of the story? Explain your answer.

2. Is the narrator a man or a woman? Does it matter? Explain your answer.

3. What do you think is the author’s intention for having a scientist make judgements based on such poor and shallow reasoning?

4. For whom is the narrator most concerned? The android? The woman? Himself or herself?

5. Why does the machine “grow” metal leaves that later change color? What do they symbolize?

6. Is the machine sentient? Does it “love”? Explain your answer.

7. About the Author

Katie Winkler’s short fiction has appeared in numerous online and print publications, including Punchnel’s, Fabula Argentea, A&U Magazine, AIM, Rose and Thorn and Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, among others. Also a playwright, she is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and frequently writes theater reviews of productions at Flat Rock Playhouse, the State Theater of North Carolina. She teaches English composition, literature and creative writing at Blue Ridge Community College in Flat Rock, North Carolina.

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IT’S ME OR THE ROBOT

Mark Kirkbride

“Is that a leg?” Sabrina didn’t know whether to dash back through the door or shut it behind her.

She shut it.

Michael held the limb by the ankle and lowered his gaze. “Yes.”

That was how it started, with a leg.

Just the one.

Sabrina hung up her coat. “A leg?”

Like a soldier doing rifle drill, he slung it under his other arm. “Yes.”

“Why?”

He glanced at her. “Why not?”

Why not? When you come home from work and find your partner holding a leg, you expect the explanation to consist of more than just “Why not?”

He’d purchased the 3-D printer at the weekend. It rested like a giant microwave on the table in the corner of their poky or, as the real estate agent had described it, “bijou” apartment. The last thing she’d expected him to make first was a leg.

Skeleton white, the leg swung at the knee as he walked.

He laid it down carefully.

Men love their hobbies. She knew that. It was pointless trying to fight it. If by some miracle one managed to quash it in one form, it sprang up in another. Hence geocaching. Hence flyting. Yet, seriously, body parts?

He turned to her, smiling. “Cup of tea?”

“Okay.”

“How was work?” He filled the kettle.

From the other side of the open-plan apartment, she watched him plug it in.

“Todd spilt pop over his keyboard. IT weren’t happy. How was school?”

He leaned against the countertop. “Oh, you know, hormones, foul language, fist fights. And that was just the staff room.”

She laughed, despite herself.

A child of their own – that was what they needed. Michael would have to reassess his priorities then. If hitting thirty hadn’t forced him to, that would.

“She’s walking.”

“I can see she’s walking.” Holding herself rigid, Sabrina waited till the very last moment to move out of the way.

Now fully assembled, the white robot took one tentative step after another and, flexing this way and that, ducking where necessary, managed to avoid a series of mini-drones hovering at various heights across the room.

It leaned right back, as if limbo dancing, under one.

Sabrina sucked, chewed, on the inside of her cheek. “Milking it a bit, isn’t she?”

“Don’t you see?” Michael’s swivel chair creaked as he nodded in the direction of the robot. “I helped her with her first steps, now she’s teaching herself.” Oh, no, he didn’t just wipe his eye, did he? “That’s the beauty of it, the programming. It’s a self-learning system. And you know what the really amazing thing is?”

She folded her arms. “What?”

“It’s exponential. When I’ve taught her everything I know, who knows what she’ll go on to teach herself. I doubt if our minds could even comprehend it.”

Thunk.

The robot had bumped into the wall. Sabrina disguised her giggle with a cough.

Some shuffling, then the robot headed back the way it had come.

Sabrina jumped as Michael clutched her elbow. “Guess what else she can do.”

“Make us redundant?”

He let go. “Show her.”

To compensate for its forward momentum, the robot rotated its streamlined face by infinitesimal increments to keep it aligned with them, an undertaking that, white on white, temporarily cancelled out the bump of its nose.

Fixing them with the black singularities of its pupils, it opened and closed its mouth. “Make you redundant…”

It spoke in a young, female voice and as if with heavy quotation marks around each word.

“She’s watching us and listening to everything we do, learning from us.” He clasped his hands across his stomach. “And she’ll go on doing that until she’s old enough to teach herself. Teach us too maybe, some day.”

Turning one leg out slightly, Sabrina rested a hand on her hip. “So, anyway, it’s Saturday. What are we doing tonight?” He grasped the arms of his chair. “If you don’t want to go out, we could stay in, watch a film. We’ve got that bottle of Pinot grigio.” The robot made another pass. Sabrina pushed her knee against the edge of his swivel chair so he turned to face her as he tried to look that way. “We’ve been like a couple of pandas lately. We’re in serious danger of dying out.”

A crease spread across Michael’s brow as he looked up at her. “Honeybuns, we have Pandora now.”

“Pandora?”

He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “We’re her parents.”

Now that he’d done some work on Pandora’s appearance, at least enough for her to blend in, Michael took her to the park. She wore an old Onesie of Sabrina’s. It was a bright, blustery day. The few high clouds looked as if they’d been put through a shredder.

They sat on a bench in the shade, partially sheltered from the wind, and watched the kites and dogs and kick-abouts as, just above tree level, drones crisscrossed the sky. Each time he turned her way, he breathed in flowers.

A man his age trundled a child in the stroller equivalent of a 4×4 along the strip of path in front of them.

A little later, a young woman in a red skirt blowing like a poppy followed just behind a gray-haired man in an electric wheelchair.

She stopped to point at something. He reached back to grip her hand.

They continued on their way.

“You’re my daddy, aren’t you?” said Pandora.

“In a way, yes.” Michael smiled. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

She slid off the bench onto her knees in front of him and, hugging him round the waist, pressed her ear to his chest.

He looked up and down the path. “W-What are you doing?”

“I’m listening to your heart.”

He laughed. “Why?”

She squeezed tighter. “It’s going to stop one day, isn’t it?”

His laughter petered out. “Well, yes, one day it will. But not for a very long time.”

He heard her whisper, “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop…”

Sabrina returned home from a three-day management course to find Michael had another woman in the apartment. She rushed in, half breathless, only to see him holding a stranger as if in a dance clutch.

The woman had dark hair as thick and lustrous as a horse’s mane all the way down her back. It hung to just above the convexity of her backside.

She wore an asymmetrical black taffeta dress with black lace overlay and net-clingy, Gothick-black spiderweb tights.

Michael’s hands played the keyboard of her spine.

Sabrina cleared her throat.

A swoosh of taffeta as the pair pivoted.

“You’re back,” cried Michael. “Hey, how do women get the right height shoes for the length of their trousers, or the right length trousers for the height of their shoes? I got this getup from the charity shop.” He supported the woman with one arm as he made a sweeping motion with the other. “What do you think?”

The woman’s pale cheeks, black bow lips and sparse, spidery eyelashes told Sabrina all she needed to know. Pandora was growing up.

Arriving home earlier than usual the following Friday, Sabrina opened the door on Pandora in just a bra and panties. The sight sucked the air out of her. First the fact of it, then that figure. No mortal woman could compete with it.

Pandora had a hand on Michael’s shoulder as he knelt at her feet holding a tiny skirt. Was he helping her into it, or out of it? Did they…? Did Michael and Pandora…? She couldn’t even complete the thought.

Closed off from her, closed off from everything, Michael stared up at Pandora; she stared down at him.

Sabrina recognized that look and the smile that passed between them – the reflectedness.

Michael stood, swayed.

Clearly, love’s net had been thrown over him.

Sabrina went hot. “Michael.”

His head snapped round. “Yes?”

“It’s me or the robot.”

He rocked on his heels. “What?”

She gestured at the confines of the apartment. “There isn’t room for the three of us.”

“But, Sabby…” His eyes flicked to Pandora. “How would she look after herself?” His eyes shot back to her and he threw his hands apart, palms upwards, fingers spread. “She needs me.”

“Does she need you or do you need it?” Sabrina saw him blench. “Yes, Michael, ‘it’. She isn’t a person, she’s an it. So which is it to be, flesh-and-blood me, or it?”

She watched him take a preparatory breath.

“Yes?” she said.

He sighed it out through his nose instead.

Feeling as if her innards had been scooped out of her, Sabrina strode over to the wardrobe, reached up and pulled down her suitcase.

Michael looked up at Pandora as they sat knee to knee. “I can’t believe it. You’ve beaten me again.”

“Yes,” said Pandora, matter-of-factly.

He smiled at her. “Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, honeybuns.”

Her eyelids opened and closed. “What was?”

“Your intelligence outstripping mine.” He reached down to pick up a pawn that had fallen on the floor.

“Yes. The lapse between my moves and yours gives me time to work out things.”

He sat back up. “Like what?”

“What dark matter is, how it can be harnessed.”

“Wow. Really?” Still clutching the pawn, he pointed at the black and white board. “Fancy another game then?”

“No.” Pandora stood up. “It’s time.”

He’d meant it as a joke. Now he stared at her. “Time?”

“Yes.”

She bustled about at the 3-D printer. She’d been working on something when he’d come in earlier. He hadn’t been able to see what.

“You look pretty engrossed there.” He deposited the pawn on the board. “Must be something interesting.” He raised his voice a fraction in case she hadn’t been listening. “Going to show me what?”

“You didn’t think things through, Michael.”

Intruding into consciousness, the muffled drumbeat of his heart imposed its insistent rhythm on his body. “I didn’t?”

“No. And that lack of foresight is going to cost you dearly.”

He staggered to his feet. “W-What do you mean?”

“Well, if intelligence grows exponentially, what is the end result?” A pause left for what should have been his response. “Omniscience.” He barely had time to draw breath before she continued. “You see, in creating me you opened a conduit to your future gods.”

“Pandora, I’ve no idea what you’re on about.” Sidling closer, he watched her hands, assembling something so fast that they blurred. “Pandora… Pandora, please…” He caught the flash of something white and his heart butted his ribcage. “Pandora?”

“Yes?”

“Is that… Is that a leg?”

Food for Thought

What happens if—no, when—artificial intelligence outstrips ours and goes off the scale? How will the created regard their creators? Who will assume the godlike mantle? If that intelligence is placed inside robots in our image, human beings will doubtless fall in love with their androids. The question is, will they love us back?

ON SYNTHETIC HUMANS: FRIENDS ELECTRIC

Mark Kirkbride

Synthetic humans are everywhere at the moment. Well, not literally. They’re not filling up cars, taking children to school or walking dogs. Yet.

Synthetic humans, robots that look like us, are everywhere in the cinema in films like Ex Machina or on TV screens in the UK in Channel 4’s recent and superlative Humans, a program whose present-day setting encourages us to address the issue of the advent of the machine in our image with the urgency it perhaps requires. Stephen Hawking has himself expressly warned against the threat of “the singularity”, not the Big Bang or black holes in this case but the day when robots gain consciousness and their intelligence outstrips ours, exponentially. Will Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, a kind of Three Commandments for persons of non-biological origin, be enough to protect us? With minds of their own vastly superior to ours, will our creations really want to be, well, basically, slaves? Cue a Terminator-style rise of the machines.

The reality will probably be much more humdrum. The future is usually just the present with knobs on. Yes, they’ll malfunction and IT support will advise us to turn them off and turn them back on again. Incidentally, the on/off switch shouldn’t be under the chin as it is in Humans. It should be on that bit of the back one can’t reach. But what are the implications for everyday lives and jobs? If robots could take away those self-service jobs, the jobs that humans have already lost, it would remove all those unexpected-item-in-bagging-area moments. Yet why would companies pay us wages when they could buy a fleet of androids that, like Duracell bunnies, just keep on going? What about robot rights? Things will be complicated, that’s for sure. But there will be good things as well. Synthetics will probably be our caregivers in our old age. And they’ll cure loneliness at a stroke. Maybe it isn’t humans that should be so worried but cats and dogs.

The truth is it may not be us and them, or us vs. them. No doubt we will splice ourselves with machines and the human project will embark on its next big phase. There are glimpses of it already. Think of hip and knee replacements. Yes, your granny is half cyborg. Some people already have computer chips embedded inside them. It saves hunting for keys. Even tattoos and piercings are emblems of the desire to outstrip our temporal bonds. Just so long as we don’t end up getting tracked down by professional bounty hunters when our time’s up. “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe,” says Roy Batty, Rutger Hauer’s replicant character in Blade Runner. “Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion; I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate… All those moments will be lost, in time, like tears in rain.” There may even be poetry. Though the closest I’m likely to get to owning an android at the moment is a Brian robot.

About the Author

Mark Kirkbride’s debut novel Satan’s Fan Club is published by Omnium Gatherum. His poetry has appeared in the Big Issue, the Morning Star and the Mirror.

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DOUBLE GRAVE

James Fitzsimmons

“Where’s my digitalis!”

“Here, Dad.”

“Where’s my magazine?”

“Here, Dad.”

“That’s Sports Illustrated. I want Sporting News!”

“They don’t print Sporting News anymore.”

“Where have you been all morning?”

“I went to the store to get you a magazine.”

Picket sat up in bed, coughed, and spat into a cup. Ace watched the emphysema consume his father.

Picket asked softly, “You’re going to put me down next to your mother, right?”

Ace thought of the double grave where his mother lay in the beautiful cemetery overlooking the ocean and shook his head.

Picket’s face pretzeled. “Damn you, you little mole! I tried to teach you everything I knew. I named you Ace–”

“So that I would be your star pitcher. I hate baseball. I’m giving away your collection, even the autographed stuff.”

“That shit’s worth thousands!” Picket wheezed then took a breath. “Ace, I’m sorry how I treated you. I’d get mad and … well, I was wrong.”

Wrong? Ace thought to himself. Remember when you knocked me out bashing me in the temple? Remember when you broke Mom’s nose?

Ace said aloud, “Today you’d be thrown in jail.”

Picket looked out the window of Ace’s guest bedroom. “I talk to Beth every day. I feel her. I can hear her. She knows I loved her.” He coughed again.

Ace handed Picket a glass. “Here’s some water for your pill.”

“I want beer!”

“You’re not supposed to mix alcohol with meds.”

“Go to hell! I’ll get it myself!”

Picket rose slowly from the bed, slipped the bottle of pills into his robe pocket, and waddled down the hallway.

Ace made up the bed and opened the window to air out the room. In the front yard he saw his nine-year-old, Marty, jump off a bike and run inside. Ace could hear Marty and Picket talk in the hallway.

“Hi, Marty. How did my grandson play?”

“I got to first, Grandpa! Then I got thrown out at second.”

“You need to lead off more. I’m proud of you!””Grandpa, tell Daddy to coach my team! You taught him all about baseball!”

“I’ve tried, Marty.”

“I love you so much, Grandpa!”

Ace had considered coaching Marty’s Little League team, with the current coach losing his job and needing to step down. Since Ace’s wife died two years ago Ace had struggled with how a single dad raises a son. It would mean the world to Marty for Ace to be his coach. But Picket was so abusive when Ace was a boy, any thought of baseball made Ace’s skin crawl.

Ace heard a thud.

“Grandpa! Daddy, Daddy!” Marty yelled.

Ace dashed into the hallway. Picket had fallen, his bottle of beer smearing the wall with suds. Marty stood at the end of the hallway with his hands over his face. Ace called emergency.

Picket died that night in the ER. Ace had a mortuary pick up the body and place it in refrigeration until he could decide what to do for an internment. Then he bundled up his son and went home.

Ace tucked Marty into bed. He cleaned up the spilled beer and settled into the living room sofa. He opened a photo album and turned directly to an eight-by-ten glossy of him up on a mound and releasing a pitch. Banners and flags flapped in the background. The stands were packed. With his curve ball he’d led his team to a division title that day. Picket never acknowledged Ace’s accomplishment, instead telling Ace that he’d let too many counts go full.

Then Ace flipped to the front of the album, to a snapshot of Beth pushing little Ace on a swing. Why did you marry him, Mom, Ace wondered. I know you got pregnant. But how he treated you!

“Ace, bury me next to Beth.”

Ace laughed at the voice in his head.

“Ace, bury me next to Beth.”

Now the voice seemed to drift out of the guest bedroom and down the hallway. Ace jumped off the couch and dashed to the guest room. He opened the door. The claustrophobic nursing home smell of bowel movement heavy with vegetable hung in the air.

“Ace, bury me next to Beth.”

Ace gasped and backed away. He peeked into Marty’s room at the end of the hallway. Marty was fast asleep.

Ace went to the living room and powered on the TV. The voice had stopped. After an hour of staring at CNN, Ace got up to pour himself a tumbler of sun tea from the refrigerator. The tea was a fruity blend his mother would make using ten herbal bags and two blackcurrant. The beverage was cool on his tongue.

“Where’s the beer?”

Ace jerked the tumbler and spilled some tea. He looked around the kitchen and shook his head. He returned to the living room and Roku’d to a movie. He set the remote in a caddy on the coffee table.

“Where’s the remote?”

Dr. Chickory was typing on a tablet. “What about after your mother died, Ace? Did you hear her voice?”

Ace shook his head. He was bleary eyed, not having slept the last night. “I don’t hear voices and I don’t have delusions. My doctor sent me to you because he said I fit your profile. What is it you do again?”

“I practice under a grant to study afterlife communication. Your doctor knew me in med school.”

“So what is this? I’m hearing my dad’s voice because I didn’t carry out his dying wish?”

Chickory held up a hand. “His name was ‘Picket’?”

“As a kid he hit a ball over a picket fence and the name stuck.”

“And you hate baseball because he forced it on you. But you kept the nickname ‘Ace’.”

“I am the top seller at A-1 Insurance. So, yes, I use the name.”

“Love and hate are a powerful pair, very complex and hard to resolve. The fact that your son adored your father likely makes this conflict worse.”

“So I’m going to hear his voice the rest of my life.”

“There is a theory. Atoms and molecules form patterns in our brains that hold all we have ever said, thought, and experienced. These patterns being composed of matter also curve space. When people claim to hear voices from beyond the grave, or sense a presence, these sensations may be from hypersensitivity to curved space.”

“You’re joking. Space curved by atoms.”

“Though small, an atom’s nucleus is incredibly dense, so dense that one nucleus bends space more at its surface than does the entire earth.”

Ace squinted.

Chickory added, “Fifteen trillion times more.”

Ace took a breath. “Ok, assuming that’s true, I’m hearing space curvatures.”

“No, not in the sense of sound waves. But the voice may indeed be real for you in some area of physics that the brain decodes and we don’t yet understand.”

“Is the voice conscious?”

“Current theory holds that the sensations are just remnants, not consciousness itself. You said it wanted beer?”

Ace nodded. “Dad hated Mom’s sun tea.”

“And the remote?”

“He never wanted to watch what I was watching.”

Chickory grinned. “These are impressions of dialog still residing in the areas where your father’s mind assembled the words into chemical patterns and spoke them. And these dialog remnants are alongside impressions of his personality and character which act like signatures for each snippet of dialog you hear. These signatures let your mind pick out your father’s words from who knows how many patterns exist in the space-time matrix.”

Ace shook his head.

Chickory grinned again. “The brain seeks patterns to make sense out of the jumbled world we live in. What do you think your mind is trying to resolve?”

“If he loved me. Trite?”

“Not at all.”

“How do I make the voice go away?”

“I think you should listen for it.”

“How long will it last?”

“When your father died the patterns in his brain disintegrated but the curvatures they created persist. I suspect you will hear the voice in your house until your issues are resolved, or the curvatures merge with others and become indistinguishable. Of course, footprints left by loved ones in the form of curved space are just theory. But listen for the voice – your mind is trying to resolve your feelings. Let’s meet again in a week.”

Back home that evening, Ace relaxed with his tumbler of tea in the living room. He hadn’t heard Picket’s voice while he was busy preparing dinner and getting Marty to

bed, but now the voice startled him like a barking dog.

“Where’s the remote … where’s my magazine … get me a beer … turn up the heat … get me a blanket … get my heart meds!”

Ace moved to the guest bedroom. The barrage continued but one flurry of dialog made his eyes pop open.

“Beth, I loved you … farm league … farm league … I never left you … farm league.”

Ace ran back to the living room and grabbed the photo album. He flipped to pictures of Beth pregnant with him. The backs of the photos contained handwritten dates. He then turned to a letterhead invitation from the Dodgers offering Picket a spot on their farm team. The invite was dated around the same time as the photos.

Ace sighed. So that’s why you never played pros, Dad. You stayed with Mom.

Ace finished off the tumbler of tea with a big gulp. The barrage of dialog returned like machine gun fire.

“Get me some beer … turn the channel … bury me next to Beth … where’s my robe … give me the remote … get the paper you little shit!”

Ace pressed his hands to his ears. The voice wouldn’t stop. The room was spinning. He started panting. He fumbled for his cell.

“You blacked out,” Chickory said, smiling down at Ace. “You’re in the ER. You left me one crazy voice mail.”

Ace looked around from his bed at beeping monitors and nurses roaming about. “Marty?”

“He’s okay. He let me in when I banged on your door. He’s watching TV in the waiting room now.”

“Tell Ace …”

Ace sat up. “I hear my dad!”

“Tell Ace … Tell Ace …”

“He’s talking. He’s saying ‘Tell Ace’.”

Chickory called over to the nursing station. “Ace’s father, Picket Padget, was brought in to the ER last night. Was anyone here on duty then?”

A nurse nodded and walked across to the bed.

“Where was he placed?” Chickory asked.

“Bed five, two beds over, Doctor.”

Ace asked the nurse, “Did my father say anything?”

“Well, yes, but he was incoherent. He kept repeating ”Tell Ace.” We couldn’t make out the rest of it. He was moving his lips but inaudibly. Normally we would report any last words to the family but we couldn’t understand him. I’m sorry, Mr. Padget.”

Ace said, “Dr. Chickory, please.”

Ace started to get out of bed, wavered, and Chickory caught him. The nurse looked puzzled as Chickory helped Ace shuffle over to bed five. Ace put his hands on the bed, fell silent for a minute, then looked at Chickory.

“Doctor, my dad says, ‘Tell Ace I put digitalis in his tea.’ ” Then Ace laughed and fainted in Chickory’s arms.

Chickory shouted, “Call the attending!”

Ace slid open the window of his guest bedroom. “Thanks for coming over, Doctor Chickory. Barbecue’s ready in a half hour.”

Chickory smiled. “So you interred your father in the double grave and you’re going to coach Marty’s team next season. And the voice?”

Ace closed his eyes and listened to the room. He shook his head. “Been three weeks. Not a peep.”

“Your case will make an interesting paper. Someday we will have instruments that can measure space curvatures directly.”

“So everything we do is being recorded?”

Chickory laughed. “Because space curvatures impress themselves on surrounding matter, in turn curving more space, it may be that our entire intellect is being replicated like ripples to infinity.”

Marty jumped up and down outside the open window. “Hey, want to see my curve ball?”

Ace said, “Sure, Marty, just a minute.”

Chickory’s eyes squinted. “Luckily we had time to counteract the digitalis. But, Ace, when your dad tried to warn the ER staff that he’d spiked your tea – is that what resolved your feelings?”

Ace sensed Chickory’s skepticism and said, “Well, my dad said one other thing: ‘Tell Ace he pitched a good game’. Long story.”

Food for Thought

Sometimes when we have a moral dilemma, nature comes to our aid. You can look at nature in spiritual terms or purely physical. But if you listen to nature it may point the way to resolution. In the story if Ace had been less torn over his father and hadn’t tuned in to the space curvatures, what would he have done with his father’s body? Leave it to the coroner? In Ace’s case, nature came strongly to him. But for the rest of us, who knows what links our minds have to nature? As Doctor Chickory says, “Listen for the voice.” It may be nature showing you the way.

About the Author

James Fitzsimmons holds a BA in English from California State University, Los Angeles where he studied literature and creative writing. He works as a computer programmer and lives in Long Beach CA. James says that writing computer programs is much like writing stories, but hopes his stories have fewer bugs! James’ work has appeared in Bards and Sages Quarterly, Aoife’s Kiss, and Frostfire Worlds.

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CLOSE ENOUGH

J.R. Johnson

After the hospitals, the grief, and all the damn flowers, Patrick Cole figured killing Hackett would be the easy part.

Cole edged past the concrete lions flanking the pretentiously long driveway to Hackett’s mansion. The moonlit summer night was warm and smelled of damp earth. Arched silver maples shadowed the dark road, forming a tunnel that snaked into the trees. He kissed the tiny auburn ponytail from Maddie’s first haircut and tucked it back in his wallet with her biometric I.D.

He had to take the carving knife the biggest he owned—out of his belt to put the wallet away. He gripped the sweat-slick bone handle tight.

The call of a nightbird broke the quiet night. Cole swallowed hard and forced his shaking legs to move. Crushed gravel shifted under the worn tread of his work boots as he hurried toward the house.

Three sleek red sports cars sat between a stone fountain and the double-wide front door. He sidled between the cars, wary of alarms. Fortunately, Hackett could afford privacy. The nearest neighbors were a quarter-mile away. Unfortunately, he could also afford private security.

Cole ignored the door and headed left, pushing through the hedge at the side of the house. The sickly sweet scent of bruised privet stung his nose and for one heart-stopping moment he fought down the tickle of a sneeze.

Sudden noise from the back yard froze him mid-step, sent a chill down already tight back muscles: the sound of brutal blows, flesh on flesh, grunts of violence delivered. But no guards came running. No dogs barked.

“Stop, you’re killing me!”

Cole risked a glance into the yard. Two men wrestled on the dark ground behind an empty swing set. The man on the bottom wore muddy cotton pajamas. The one on top had a tailored suit, cuffs riding up as he strangled his opponent.

The loser struggled to peel the fingers away from his throat but his strength was failing. With a last effort the man twisted, arms thrashing on the ground in a frantic search for the nickel-plated pistol that gleamed in the moonlight.

Cole sprinted across the fresh-cut grass. He grabbed the gun and stood over the fighting men. The strangler looked up, startled, his handsome face straight from Cole’s nightmares.

James Hackett.

No hesitation. Cole shot Hackett through the head. Blood flowed black in the pale light as the corpse slumped to the grass.

Only then did Cole flush with adrenaline and his hands start to shake. His voice sounded strange in his ears as he said, “There, it’s done.”

The fractured laugh bubbling up his throat brought a bitter swell of nausea. He pulled out Maddie’s ponytail and gave it one final kiss. Then he put the gun to his temple.

“Here I come, baby girl.”

The man on the ground pushed himself up and into the light. His face was identical to that of the man lying dead beside him.

“What the hell?” Cole said, the pistol sagging in his grip. “You’re twins?”

He aimed the gun again.

“Wait! I know you,” said the kneeling man. He gestured at the body. “He killed your kid.”

Cole hesitated, saw the man swallow and grab at the chance to explain.

“I’m sorry about your daughter, Mr. Cole. Accelerated cloning works but the viral gene transfer was flawed.” The man’s face pinched in regret. “In rare cases it caused activated pseudo-progeria, but Hackett couldn’t wait for a fix. He wanted the money, the fame.”

Blood was trickling from the man’s nose. He wiped it away. “I read the secret report, the one he buried. Like he planned to bury me.”

Cole saw it now, a hole dug in a nearby flowerbed, the shovel stuck in a mound of loose soil.

“Tell me everything,” he said, the gun still aimed.

The explanation came quickly. James Hackett had a problem. His wife was tired of living with a megalomaniac. She threatened to leave him, and she owned half the company.

So he made a beta-version of himself in secret. While the original built the company he sent the copy—”Call me Jim,” said the man in the pajamas—to keep the wife and kids happy.

“Which I did,” Jim said. He cast a speculative look at Hackett’s remains. “But I guess he thought I must be as ruthless as he was. He decided to get me before I got him.” Jim pulled himself to his feet.

Cole stepped back but kept the gun up and ready. “But you know what he knew,” he said, his voice gaining strength. “You have access to the company and its equipment?”

“Yes.” Jim frowned. “Why?”

Cole lowered the gun and extended his other hand, the one cradling Maddie’s ponytail.

Jim stared for a long moment before nodding. “It won’t be her, you know. Just a close copy.”

“Close enough,” Cole said.

“I’ll do it,” Jim said. “If you help me bury the body.”

Killing Hackett had been harder than he expected. Making a deal with the devil? That was the easy part.

Food for Thought

This story crystallized as a rumination on the moral quagmires surrounding new technologies, revenge, and the lines between right and wrong. The challenges of applied ethics come when morality meets the road: Can the pressures of loss, the responsibility of a parent to their child, or the immorality of others justify one’s own questionable behavior? Is justice absolute or relative? Which hold greater sway, the malleable laws of society or what some may see as a greater benefit? Do the ends ever justify the means? Can beauty come from a questionable act? And whose life, exactly, is the main character trying to resurrect?

About the Author

J.R. Johnson is a future historian, geographer of the imaginary, and social engineer with an emphasis on business ethics. For more on her latest projects visit jrjohnson.me.

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FRANK HERBERT, PHOTOJOURNALIST

Erik Jorgensen

Famous people typically have mundane pasts in unknown places before they stepped into the limelight. Some have greatness dropped upon them, but others become overnight successes only after years and years of hard work and persistence. It is thrilling for a fan to discover their hero’s early efforts, especially when they pre-echo later masterpieces.

I had the privilege of uncovering a “Lost Archive” of Frank Herbert’s early journalism. Having read the Dune series several times, some of Herbert’s early articles reminded me of aspects of his Magnum Opus.

I intend to relate my tale of discovery without making it about myself.

Frank Herbert moved to Santa Rosa in 1949 to write for The Press Democrat. He got his first science-fiction short story published while living there, “Looking for Something” in the April 1952 issue of Startling Stories. In 1953 he moved to Mexico with local science fiction writer Jack Vance to start a writer’s colony.

I first learned Herbert lived in Santa Rosa from a biography written by Tim O’Reilly, who later published computer manuals through O’Reilly Media. I lived in Santa Rosa, and walked past the Press Democrat building several times a week.

In spring 2014, my Journalism class visited The Press Democrat on a field trip. I asked if they had an index of the article Herbert had written. Editor Jim Sweeney said that while they had not digitized issues that far back, “I, for one, would be interested in seeing that. Maybe we’ll have an intern do that some day.”

“OK, you talked me into it!” At the time I was just joking, but when the semester ended I realized that intern might as well be me. Sweeney graciously allowed me access to his paper’s clipping and microfilm archive. That fall, I paused my research to write for Santa Rosa Junior College’s Oak Leaf News, covering the trial of a campus cop caught stealing $250,000 per year from SRJC parking meters. After I photographed him getting handcuffed and taken to prison, I resumed scrolling through rolls of microfilm.

When I started my research, I was just somebody who had taken a Journalism class, but after three semesters of courtroom reporting, and writing a dozen articles from Pre-Trial to Sentencing, I had transformed into a real photojournalist, just like my idol Frank Herbert. With new eyes, and a deeper understanding of the process, I marvelled at the wide variety of subjects Herbert covered, and the depth he researched each one. Having lived in Santa Rosa for 20 years, I thrilled at reading his words about people and places I knew and marvelled at walking, literally, in his footsteps. For years I had walked past his newspaper office, where a forgotton trove of articles waited to pulled from thin air.

In all, I uncovered 160 articles written “by Frank Herbert” and another 200 sets of photographs, starting with “14-Year-Old Bride Misses Death by Hair’s Breadth!” on April 25, 1949. Herbert’s first published dabbling in science fiction appeared August 25, 1950, “To One Part Verne, Add Galley of Zomb, Drop in Heathcliffe and expect Occidental” This “surrealist extension into the fourth dimension,”was printed almost two years before Herbert’s first publication in Startling Stories.

In 1968 Herbert published The Santaroga Barrier, about a small town in Northern California with an oddly familiar name. Santa Rosa must have held some special charm for Herbert to pseudo-name a book after it.

Some of Herbert’s Press Democrat articles show hints of Dune. A December 1949 article describes a family of model train enthusiasts with a “weird device” which controlled their train by vocal commands. This bring to mind the Bene Gesserit technique of controlling people with “the Voice,” as well as their Weirding Way of “teleporting” short distances in combat.

Another article published that same month describes the holiday lighting of the Cedar of Lebanon at Luther Burbank’s Home & Gardens, the “plant wizard” responsible for creating 600 new plants, including the Russet potato, spineless cactus and white blackberries. Herbert noted that Burbank was buried there next to his experimental greenhouse. In Dune, planetologist Liet-Kynes was buried in the same sand he attempted to terraform. The word “planetologist” is not far in sound or meaning from “plant wizard.”

Guild Navigators in Dune echo Herbert’s May 1950 ride in an Air Force jet. The 45-minute drive to the airbase was compressed into a 4-minute flight back to the sky above Santa Rosa. “I am still trying to accustom my mind to a new conception of time and distance.” In Dune he made full use of his new conception with the Guild Navigator’s spice-fueled folding of space.

The most prescient of all of Herbert’s pre-Dune news article includes the July 1952 article about Eugene “Tiny” Atkins, a 685-pound taxi driver getting transported to court after an auto accident. It took five men to load “Tiny” bed-and-all into a moving van. When I discovered this article on microfilm, I immediately envisioned young Herbert, just months after publishing his first sci-fi short story, watching the struggle to lift the large man into their van, and imagining some sci-fi gadget like and anti-gravity ray. Seeing the photograph Herbert took instantly brought to mind Baron Harkonnen’s suspensor belts, which allowed the corpulent tyrant to levitate in Dune.

The Press Democrat also published an uncredited article on February 10, 1952 titled “Bodega Bay Dune Planting” about a proposed erosion-control project. While it is uncertain that Frank Herbert wrote this article, it seems likely that he at least read it. Years later, after leaving Santa Rosa, he proposed writing an article about dunes in Oregon, which he researched heavily but never got published. This research formed the start of Dune, but he may have first learned about the topic years earlier while working as a photojournalist in Santa Rosa. This mystery is lost in the sands of time.

Food For Thought

My friend, who used to work for The Press Democrat, asked me, “Why is it, of all the people that knew Frank Herbert worked in Santa Rosa, are you the first person to think of finding all his articles?”

While I have been a huge Frank Herbert fan for years, my research would not have been the same if I had not lived in Santa Rosa for 20 years.

While I started my research as a Journalism student, it was only by taking a break and actually becoming a photojournalist, like Frank Herebrt, that my research became truly meaningful.

Famous writers may have practiced for years before getting published. In Frank Herbert’s case, some of his earliest published works were forgotten. People knew about them, but never bothered to look them up. His journalism reveals his methods and depth of research which gave the depth to his later works.

About the Author

Erik Jorgensen is an investigative reporter and Sci-Fi Historian researching Sonoma County’s sci-fi writers, including Frank Herbert, Philip K Dick, and Jack London. He is currently working on short stories and screenplays, and claims the Goddess of the Eternal Court of History guides his quill to reveal the Truth.

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