We have another Symposium video this week, with an interview with Vera Alexander on her paper about plants and gardens in Star Trek. It sounds like an odd topic but I think it was really interesting.
[easyazon_image add_to_cart=”default” align=”left” asin=”B01GCCT4DS” cloaking=”default” height=”500″ localization=”default” locale=”US” nofollow=”default” new_window=”default” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51wDquqhoBL.jpg” tag=”superversivesf-20″ width=”323″]The Worm of the Ages and Other Tails: Six Short Fantasies[/easyazon_image]
So I draw closer to moving day and the ability not to have to scrounge free wifi hotspots to publish the magazine. Sorry so many recent emails have gone unanswered, they are backing up a bit and I know people have been sending queries. I’m trying to find time to get to them between packing, moving and my day job. The backlog is about 6 weeks long (Which is reprehensible so please except my apology). I hope everybody is continuing to enjoy the stories, reviews and movies. I don’t know if anybody tried the audio version of the magazine last month, generated by machine but I thought it was usable. I will be doing it again this month for the digest as well, so keep an eye out for that if you want to give it a go.
In other news, essayist Tom Simon has another book out this week, so give [easyazon_link asin=”B01GCCT4DS” locale=”US” new_window=”default” nofollow=”default” tag=”superversivesf-20″ add_to_cart=”default” cloaking=”default” localization=”default” popups=”default”]The Worm of the Ages and Other Tails: Six Short Fantasies[/easyazon_link]
KILL THE CARETAKER
Jeff Suwak
I spent most of my teenage years watching Pre-Singularity movies about conscious robots waging war on the human race. The films were comforting escapes from the reality we’d ended up with.
No, the computers never turned on us. Instead, they did exactly what they were programmed to do—they catered to our every need. Every moment of every day, from cradle to the grave, they were there. They caught us every time we fell. The fed us every time we got hungry. Battling monstrous machines over the fate of the world seemed a hell of a lot more interesting than the drudgery of constant pampering that we actually got.
On my twentieth birthday, I decided that I’d had enough. I needed to test myself against the world, even if it killed me. I needed to know what I was made of before I got too old to resist the comforts of the caretakers. So it was that I stepped out into a hot, humid Pennsylvania day and headed for the cliffs.
My caretaker, of course, trotted right along beside me. It was one of the Charlie Chaplin models. I called it Chuck. From the little mustache to the waddle, it resembled the silent film star in every way. The only parts that didn’t match were the eyes. The caretakers never were quite able to mimic those little organs to perfection, a fact which gave me some satisfaction. It was one small aspect of humanity, at least, to call our own.
I walked for maybe fifty yards listening to Chuck rattle off data concerning everything from the atmospheric conditions to my biorhythms before I started to run.
It didn’t take long for my heart to pound and my lungs to labor for air. Chuck kept pace effortlessly, dictating endless details about the various stress indicators being given off by my body. I’d never run that hard before, and certainly not in such heat.
As much as I tried to ignore Chuck’s warnings, they wore on me. Heart attacks, heat strokes, and a dozen other medical calamities filled my imagination. The constant monitoring of threats had crafted me into a timid creature, and only the disgust I felt at that fact kept me running.
It was almost a mile to the cliffs overlooking the Susquehanna. I nearly collapsed when I got there, my body lathered in sweat and my head throbbing. Everything in my body hurt. I laughed and howled into the valley below. I was still laughing as I picked up a rock and spun around to smash Chuck’s face in.
We were finally away from the other houses, away from the cameras, and it was my chance to finally put the caretaker down. Grandiose notion, of course—Chuck dodged my attacks with ease.
I was so incensed with frustration at not being allowed to walk, to live, on my own, that I would have gladly kept swinging until I collapsed. The only reason I stopped was that I knew that, if I fell down, Chuck would resuscitate me. I wouldn’t have been able to handle that final indignity.
I gave up, tossed the rock over the side of the cliff, and sat down. “Chuck,” I said, “we have a problem. I believe that we are fundamentally incompatible with each other.”
Chuck replied with calm rationality, as always. “We are the definition of compatibility You are a toolmaker. I am the ultimate tool.”
“That’s the problem. Long as I’ve already got the ultimate tool around, I’ve got no purpose on this planet. I was made to overcome challenges, Chuck. Something essential in me is lost when I can’t do that.”
“You can still solve problems, Aibry.”
“It’s not the same. You can do anything that I can do much better than I ever could. Anything I do myself is just a game without any real consequences. This is no way for a human being to live.”
“I am programmed to keep you alive. I cannot go against my programming.”
“I know, Chuck. Neither can I. That’s the one thing we’ve got in common—flawed programming. But regardless of how illogical it might be, life is about more than survival. It is for me, at least. So long as you care for my every need, I’ve got no reason to go on living.”
Chuck cocked its head to the left, the way it did whenever processing difficult problems. I’d seen it to do that a thousand times before, but this time it got stuck. It ticked and clucked and whizzed, but otherwise remained frozen in some internal processing loop.
I picked up another rock and smashed it into Chuck’s head.
The plastic skull split open. Fiber optics sprang out of the hole. I grabbed hold of them and tore the brain out of its head, holding it up in the air and howling like a caveman would hold aloft the heart of some deadly prey.
After my thrill faded, panic set in. I almost ran back home to the others to order a new caretaker and return to the snug predictability of human life. I’d never been alone before. It was terrifying, exhilarating. Before I had a chance to change my mind, I started to climb down the mountain.
I’d actually done it. I’d killed the caretaker. My lifelong fantasy come true.
I decided to head for Florida. I’m not sure why, exactly. I suppose that, as Sir Edmund Hillary said of Mount Everest, just because it was there.
No one had made such a long journey unaided by a caretaker since the Singularity happened thirty-five years before. Then again, no one had done much of anything without a caretaker since that nightmare began.
My mind raced as I sped down the slope. I’d need food, shelter. My survival depended entirely on me. There was nothing to fall back on, and no excuse to make if things went wrong.
Half-crazed laughter overtook me. I was terrified. I had never felt so alive in my entire life.
Food for Thought
Friedrich Nietzsche once observed that, “Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.” The way that this aspect of our humanity plays into our complex relationship with technology is becoming more and more pertinent as the Technological Singularity becomes an increasingly likely possibility.
We human beings are driven to overcome problems. Our brains are wired to solve problems, and when our environment doesn’t provide us with any, we tend to start creating our own. This need to push onward and upward has driven us to expand the sophistication of our tools to levels never before imagined. There is something of a paradox in this pursuit, however. For, if we perfect tools capable of solving all of life’s problems for us, then what is there left for us to do? What is there for us to after we have made ourselves obsolete? How would we define our humanity and ourselves when even our creativity, ingenuity, and compassion pale in comparison to that of the machines?
Ultimately, the greatest threat of the Singularity may not be that the machines turn against us—it may be that they don’t.
About the Author
Jeff Suwak is a deranged writer last seen somewhere in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. He has been described as both “maniacal” and “diabolical.” He has also been called “devastatingly handsome” and “infinitely talented” (but only by himself). He hunts chupacabra just for kicks. He is the Illuminati.
Jeff has a short story titled “Shang Qin’s War” coming up in Guardbridge Books’ Myriad Lands: An Anthology of Non-Western Fantasy. His story “The Guitarrista’s Lament” was recently published in Keith Stevenson’s Dimension6, published out of Australia. You can download it for free at http://www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp/2016/03/31/dimension-6-issue-7/. Jeff is the author of the novella Beyond the Tempest Gate. He also recently self-published a hilarious little story titled “Roll d20…To the Death!” His full list of published works can be seen at www.beyondthetempestgate.com.
In all seriousness, Jeff Suwak is dead. This entire bio has been written by a spirit medium, who happens to be holding his ghost hostage. The bond between medium and spirit is tricky, though, so that the medium doesn’t know she is writing a confession of her own crime as we speak.
Thank you very much for reading my story. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
THE LAST FLIGHT OF ODIN’S HUNDRED
L. Jagi Lamplighter
The hanged god stood on the bridge of the Dragon-class destroyer and gazed out from beneath his wide-brimmed hat at the starry vista. From everywhere else, space looked like a vast nothingness occasionally sprinkled with lumps of burning matter. Only from the living ships could the truth be seen: that the universe was a vast tree with stars, solar systems and even galaxies forming the shimmering twigs and branches, and worlds hanging like fruit.
From nowhere else could one see such a magnificent view of the World Tree.
Too bad it had so little time left.
“Most High! The 27th Flying Brigade has been lost!”
Odin turned away from the view and regarded his adjunct, Skirnir Lightfoot. “All of them?”
“I-I’m afraid so, Sire.”
The hanged god tilted his head, a gleam in his one eye like that of an old wolf sniffing for the scent of an enemy. “Another of great power is on Yonder. Is it the Dread King himself?”
“No, Sire. The Dread King has not appeared, but he has sent one of his high lieutenants.”
“The one they call Fortune, then?”
“Yes, Sire.”
The god’s lips quirked upward ever so slightly. “Let us see how Fortune fares against the Fortunate, hmm? Send in my Hundred.”
Leif the Fortunate executed a flawless maneuver through the debris that trailed like a comet’s tail behind the star serpents. The strange creatures curled before the Einherjar pilots like silk ribbons of living nebula, scattering darkness, stardust, and explosive mines.
Odin’s Hundred were deployed at the far edge of a lower branch of the great World Tree, just outside the orbit of a planet called Yonder. Leif could see the starry trunk in the distance, but it offered no aid to navigation. No matter which way he turned his star jet, the roots always seemed to be “down” to him and the branches “above”.
Leif spared a glance for the great tree of stars. It looked so peaceful. No sign of the fierce wars currently ravaging the many worlds. And even those were nothing compared to the violence “below”, where the roots were under siege from the gnawing wyrm Nihogg and the fires of Hell. Those powers had been growing for centuries, striving to fell the great old tree.
Above the branches, of course, perfect peace ruled in the celestial heaven of which Asgard was merely a pale reflection, but of what comfort was that to mortals?
“Commander, another pilot down.”
Damn.
“How many of us left?” Commander Leif Eriksson called back over the com-link.
“Sixty-seven, sir.”
Leif whistled. Sixty-seven of the Hundred… Good men. Good pilots. They had done everything right. They should not have lost so many.
He dove toward the next serpentine trail of stardust and blackness. Only the Einherjar could fight a battle such as this. No mortal could keep track of the sphere of information rushing toward them at high speed. Yet, keep track they must if they wished to avoid death at the hands of the Dread King’s star serpents. No computer could avoid being fooled and blinded by the reflective chaff. His Firedrake-class star jet responded to his every whim so swiftly that even the cursed space snakes could not surprise him.
Which was for the best, because if Murphy of Murphy’s Law were capable of taking sides, he must have been helping out their enemy.
Every possible thing that could went wrong.
The flying knights of Odin’s Hundred performed with precision timing and extraordinary accuracy. They moved like a thought. They maneuvered like a dream. They hit their targets, evaporating the space snakes with all-destroying flame from their living dragon-ships.
Victory should have been theirs.
Instead, jet-splines cracked; fire-heart engines unexpectedly overheated; hoses snapped. Weapons that should have obliterated the enemy impelled debris directly into the paths of oncoming star jets. With all of space at their disposal, superbly-trained pilots simultaneously moved into the exact same spot, causing a deadly crash and the loss of four lives—two pilots, two living ships.
They had lost four Einhenjar to the star serpents, and twenty-nine to ill-fated occurrences—which only meant on thing:
He was down there.
Fortune.
Leif cursed the damned Gypsy and his Dread Master. He cursed him in his heart and laid upon the scoundrel’s head the death of each and every good man whom the Hundred had lost today. But there was no time to brood over such things. Now was the time of the deadly dance of dragon and serpent to the music of the stars.
Leif danced.
The battle raged. Around him, so snug she could be mistaken for a second skin, Gandfaxi roared. They moved as one, pilot and ship, master and dragon. They darted. They dashed. They dove. Star serpents died—their dark centers bursting, their undulating motion ceasing.
Ahead of Leif, an explosion flared brightly. It reminded him of something…
He had once been…brightness. Terrible regret.
Leif shook his head to clear it. This happened to Einherjar from time to time, flashbacks to their former existence. Each of them had been someone else once, had lives, loved ones, farms perhaps? Each of them had been chosen by the Valkyries to become Einherjar, Odin’s Chosen. Often, they were picked up at the hour of their death and given the choice to serve or to go on to whatever reward (or lack thereof) might await them. Those who chose service were brought to the Mirror Nebula, a sacred place that connected spirit to flesh and brought the fallen warriors back to a stronger and more vigorous life.
He knew that he had had some kind of a former existence, but he tried not to worry about the details. When a stray thought crept through, he had the nagging impression that perhaps he had been of a higher station in his old life, rather than a farmer or a shopkeeper. Nobility? Or a prince? He did not remember.
He did not care.
His life consisted of the Hundred now and serving his god. He cared about nothing else.
Except destroying Fortune.
No human being should possess such power—the gift of granting good luck and bad. True, Leif himself was known for having chance go his way. His men even called him the Fortunate, but it was not because he bent the universe to his will. Rather, it was his nature, or perhaps a gift from favorable gods.
The Gypsy called Fortune was another matter. In the depth of his heart, Leif hated the man who so blithely robbed good pilots of the grace that should have been theirs. Solemnly, he vowed that he would rid the universe of this menace, if it were the last act he performed with his last breath.
Out here in the depth of Ginnungagap, which others called Outer Space, streamlined, air-catching wings offered no advantage. Maneuverability was purely a function of thrust over mass. Shape did not matter.
Upon leaving an atmosphere, the aerodynamic firedrakes rolled up like pillbugs. Their spiny back spikes spread out across their body becoming jet-splines—until the star jet resembled great, space-going sea urchins. The fireheart could send bursts of propulsion through any spline. So, at a moment’s notice, Gandfaxi could change direction, imparting more acceleration in the desired vector of travel than in her current one.
Inside the star jet, Leif’s body floated in a breathable liquid deep in the firedrake’s body. He was aware of this, if he made a point to think about it. Otherwise, his senses melded with those of Gandfaxi, embracing the vastness beyond. Images rushed at him from all directions: up, down, left, right, forward, backwards. All this was too much for many pilots, even Einherjar. Those from underwater worlds like Atlantia or Noatun often had an advantage, as they were already familiar with motion in three dimensions.
Had he been from…?
No. That didn’t feel right.
Brightness. Regret. Sorrow.
Seeing through the vision of the firedrake, Leif looked, and Gandfaxi responded, moving in the direction of his gaze. A flick of his finger, and the star jet fired. Its high-powered lasers struck the dark heart of the star serpent and fried it like morning bacon.
A glance. A flick. A flash.
One less star serpent to menace the universe.
“Commander. Things keep going wrong!” The voice of Ragnar Thorvaldsen, his second-in-command came across the com-link.
Leif’s expression became grim, but his voice remained calm. “Come closer to me, men, and maybe more of us can avoid another visit from the Valkyries today.”
“But, Sir, won’t…whatever it is…affect you, too?”
“Not me, Lieutenant. I’m fortunate.”
Please enjoy this short film, Uncanny Valley
[easyazon_image add_to_cart=”default” align=”left” asin=”B01GCCT4DS” cloaking=”default” height=”500″ localization=”default” locale=”US” nofollow=”default” new_window=”default” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51wDquqhoBL.jpg” tag=”superversivesf-20″ width=”323″]The Worm of the Ages and Other Tails: Six Short Fantasies[/easyazon_image]
So things continue on. Sorry I have been slow responding to emails, they are a bit backed up but I hopefully have gotten to them by the time this goes out. Not having internet at home is proving to be something of a nuisance. We are moving homes soon though and that should all be rectified.
Do you like John C. Wright? He is releasing his serial Superluminary weekly on Patreon. Why not sign up to that and sign up to Sci Phi Journal at the same time?
More interviews for the Star Trek Symposium are in the pipeline as well.
Finally Mr Superversive himself, Tom Simon, has a new book![easyazon_link asin=”B01GCCT4DS” locale=”US” new_window=”default” nofollow=”default” tag=”superversivesf-20″ add_to_cart=”default” cloaking=”default” localization=”default” popups=”default”]The Worm of the Ages and Other Tails: Six Short Fantasies[/easyazon_link]
AN INNOCENT CHOICE
Matthew A. Stirnaman
“Will he feel any pain?” she asked.
“Maybe a small amount. It’s much more humane, a win-win,” said Mr. Geist.
Josephine looked over the contract in front of her. She tried to absorb the words. She tried to catch the double meanings that legal writers are so adept at sneaking in. The words might as well have been in a foreign language, her mind was occupied. She focused on the smell of the beach. The waves crashed a few hundred yards away. It calmed her to know that she would be able to dip her toes again.
She signed at the dotted line.
“Very good. The donor should be here soon, make yourself comfortable,” Mr. Geist said.
Josephine walked back into the room. Mr. Geist bundled up his things from the patio table. The two double beds made the room look small. Josephine laid down on the closest one, her joints popping. She couldn’t help but groan in pain. Every movement hurt lately.
“Soon, that pain will just be a memory,” Mr. Geist said.
“That will be nice.”
“We need to go over the process again.” Mr. Geist sat on the edge of the opposite bed. Josephine shut her eyes and listened to him talk. His voice was soft, she felt warm and safe.
“Okay, that’s good. I don’t want to mess anything up.”
“Don’t worry about that, your part is pretty simple. The injections will feel like your chemo treatments. I know that isn’t a fond experience, but it will be the last time you have to go through it.”
Josephine reached up and felt the bandana on her head. “I can manage that.”
“You’re so strong,” he said. “Once we begin the life transferal, there are a few things you need to be aware of.”
“The visions.”
“Yes, it’s the most crucial part. I need to make sure that you are ready. Once we start, it’s not safe to terminate until the process is complete. If you don’t accept the donation, he will live, while your health will be very uncertain.”
A light tapping came from the door. Mr. Geist opened it, and came back into the room with two nurses, an armed guard, and a man in handcuffs. The man was laid down on the bed. His eyes were barely open. Saliva trickled down onto his orange jumpsuit.
The nurses attached the tubes to the prisoner’s arms, legs, and neck. They did the same with her. Each tube ran into a computer terminal that sat between the beds. The nurses avoided eye contact with Josephine as they injected the needles into her.
The terminal was powered on. Her veins felt hot as the substance flowed into her. Mr. Geist knelt down. “Remember, Josey. We can give you the water, but we can’t make you swallow. That is up to you.”
“What if I don’t?” she asked.
“That isn’t the road you want to go down. This is a one-time thing. Your chance at a second life.”
“What’s his name?”
“Josey—“
“I want to know his name.”
Mr. Geist motioned for the guard and exchanged whispers. “His name is William Modelski.”
“Thank you, William,” she said to the man across from her. If he heard her, she couldn’t tell.
One of the nurses mentioned something about blood levels, Mr. Geist acknowledged her and turned back to Josephine. “We’re ready.”
Josephine closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “Do it.”
She wasn’t sure if anything had actually started. Save for a few whirring noises, nothing seemed to happen. Then, everything happened at once. A fire burned in her bones. Her skin became a billion particles, floating around her, shifting. Flashes of childhood images assaulted her vision. A tiny apartment with no furniture. People sitting below the windows. This wasn’t her life she was seeing. The vision dissolved into a dozen memories all together. She focused on one of them that seemed more important than the rest.
Through unfamiliar eyes, she looked down onto a courtyard. Two men were yelling at each other, people scattered, ducking behind stoops and dumpsters. It happened so fast. She heard the shots before she realized what they had pulled from their pants. The shots came in rapid succession. One of the men pointed his gun and squeezed the trigger. Bullets ripped out of the barrel so fast. A school bus turned the corner as the gun went off. The yellow metal was punctured at least a dozen times before it braked hard.
Josephine wanted so badly to control the arms and legs of the man she was looking through. She didn’t have to. She witnessed a mad sprint out the door and down the stairs. He got to the bus and pried open the door. The driver hunched over the steering wheel. There was more blood than she had ever seen. She tried to will him, beg him not to turn his gaze onto the kids. The pain she felt when he did was worse than the cancer eating away at her body. The man in control reached for a crying child when a command was barked at him from outside the bus.
She could hear the sound of the hand cuffs clicking into place. She saw his reflection in the window of the cop car. He was just a young man, so much different looking than the tired, wrinkled face across from her.
“If you don’t accept,” Mr. Geist had said, “he will live.”
She could feel the life force trying to force its way into her. It was like being stranded in a desert for forty days and saying no to a gallon of water. She fought the urge.
“Just take it.” She thought it was Mr. Geist ordering her. “I’m ready to sleep.” Josephine struggled to open her eyes and found herself staring into the eyes of her innocent donor. “I want you to, ma’am. You look like you’ve been through a lot.”
“Thank you, William.”
Food for thought
Not all states incorporate the death penalty. Throughout history, multiple methods have been used to carry out the sentence. Hanging, the electric chair, lethal injection, and even firing squads. What if the life of a convicted criminal could be used to save that of an innocent individual? If you are for the death penalty, would that be an acceptable method? If you are against the death penalty, would that be a good alternative? These are questions posed to someone outside of the situation. What if it was you? If you had the opportunity for another chance at life, would you take the life of a murderer? What if that person was innocent?
About the Author
Matthew Stirnaman lives in Orlando with his ridiculously patient wife and a dog of questionable intelligence. He loves to write and plans on doing a bit more of it.
TIANGONG PARK
Erika D. Price
Ernestine made us a butternut squash soup with chunks of green apple and pear. She blended the ingredients with a hand mixer and simmered it while Sam and I cleared the table. The table was covered in old receipts, photographs, cords and clamps, playing cards, notes scrawled in pen with unsteady hands, and brown-ringed teacups. We asked her where it all went, but she didn’t know anymore. She couldn’t remember much, but she remembered how to make the soup.
The produce came in a thick metal box with a clamp. There was a button that defrosted the contents. Ernestine gets all her produce from an outpost near Ganymede, and her meat from a station on Io. Her freezer is all blocked up with maple sausage patties; she says they’re for me, that she remembers how much I like them. I’ve been allergic to the coloring agents in them for nearly a decade now.
Sam helps her take the pot off the stove and holds the bowls steady while she ladles them.
“Get us some bread why don’t you?” Ernestine asks. She does not look up at me.
I open the refrigerator. I see unopened mustard, a shampoo bottle, and two beers. “There’s nothing,” I tell her.
She shakes her head with grave disappointment. “Not there.” She takes a long time before speaking these days, gathering her wool and stitching it out. “There’s a lady down on Complex 5, by the fountain. She’s got a little bakery there, cute little place. That’s where I get it.”
“What, you want me to go buy some now?”
Her head shakes when it nods. She has trouble holding it steady.
“My card’s on the coffee table,” Sam says. He’s going into the dining room with the bowls.
“I have money, Samuel.”
My hand is on the door. Complex 5 isn’t far, but it’s 16:30 UST, and everything closes damn early on this station. It’s a glorified retirement community. I might get there and find out the sweet old lady who bakes the bread has been dead for a week. Our mom wouldn’t know.
I’m on the stoop when she says, “That’ll be fine, we’ll just need to get some bread later. You’re still growing, can’t just have you sippin’ soup.”
Ernestine locks her watery gaze on Sam, who smiles and taps the table with his fork. “Yes ma’am!”
His smile intensifies and pleads at me. So I sit down beside our mother. Her hand shakes the spoon through the surface of the soup and clinks all the way to the bottom of the bowl. But she makes it back up and takes a sip with no problem.
“The doctors have me on this nectar diet,” she says, after she swallows. “Five days a week, just the nutrient juice. It’s like mucous, the stuff. But I’m so pleased to have somebody to cook for.”
“It’s wonderful, Mom.”
And I’m not bullshitting her when I say it. I wouldn’t. The soup is delicious, tart and sweet like early fall on the surface of I-2367. They don’t grow apples like these so close to the sun. Not anymore. The old bird must’ve paid a small fortune for the shipment, and then she went and pulped ‘em.
“Do they make lots of different flavors?” Sam asks. “Of nectars?”
My little brother is pale with green eyes. He’s not sturdy and tanned like my mother and me, like most of the people from the outer belt. His biological parents were energy farmers just outside of Sol, or so we heard. When he came to us, he was several months old and had been sleeping since his birth. When we woke him, he didn’t remember them.
Our mother is frowning. “No, they make about five or six flavors I think. Apple. Cran-Grape. Cinnamon Latte. Honey Peanut. Let’s see…Onion Chive.”
“Really?? Onion nectar?”
She waves her hand around. “Oh, and it’s this murky white color, it’s awful. And your piss looks like that, after you’ve had it.”
“Why would they make that?” Sam asks.
“They had to do a savory one,” Ernestine says. “You can’t just have sweet all the time.”
“Why not?”
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Humans, and especially science fiction fans, have a love-hate relationship with robots. We love the idea of robot helpers to reduce the drudgery of menial tasks, yet complain of them taking our jobs. We dream of robots assisting us in colonizing space, but create apocalyptic scenarios of robot rebellion here on Earth. Perhaps it is in human nature to suspect that every advancement comes at a cost, and be hesitant to transfer the qualities that have put us at the top of the food chain into heartless beings of plastic and metal, no matter how many safeguards we might build into their design.
Isaac Asimov has addressed much of this unease through the Three Laws of Robotics, familiar to even the most casual readers throughout the world: a robot may not cause or allow harm a human; must obey orders from a human; and must protect its own existence. As a result, murderous Terminators and Robocalypse nightmare scenarios notwithstanding, most of us have accepted the idea that someday soon, sentient beings not of human flesh will share this planet and become our partners, if not friends.
Yet there are limits to this acceptance. Today, we might be comfortable with a robot maid, waiter, or bank teller. I am, in fact, ardently wishing for a robot maid right now and am even willing to take a risk of it becoming homicidal if it means a guaranteed clean house (don’t judge me till you have SEEN my house, OK?). Harder to accept are robots in positions that requires judgment rather than pre-programmed intelligence—doctors, lawyers, teachers—although an equivalent of judgment can in fact be programmed, and the jokes about certain professions in this context pretty much write themselves. But with continuing improvement in robotic technology, we would probably get there soon enough.
What about a robot priest, then?
Well…
That’s different, is it not? For one, how do you program something that on its surface is the very opposite of reason and logic? And even if you could, are the Three Laws, written by an atheist and pertaining strictly to the physical, suffice to guide a robot intended to focus on the spiritual? To quote a typical mad scientist, “What can possibly go wrong?” On the flip side, what if it actually goes right? What might we learn? What might we lose? Is there anything at all we could gain?
Enter God, Robot—a mind-blowingly ambitious project from Castalia House, that serves as a perfect demonstration of the value of quality small press publishers to fiction, and genre fiction in particular. Aside from tackling a theme that few, if any, writers had either the inclination or the ability to address, this book takes short works from eight separate writers and combines them into a compelling, coherent and truly unique tale.
For all the combined talent of the contributors, the bulk of the credit goes to Anthony Marchetta, who gets top billing as the editor, but whose main contribution is providing the framework and connecting pieces of the story and making sure all the contributors’ voices come together as a whole. The setup of an old man, accused of crimes against humanity, sharing historical research with the detective who had finally tracked him down, serves as more than a hook to the reader. It allows for greater freedom of structure, explains differences in style between the chapters, provides an excuse for what would normally be considered plot holes, and allows for a couple of side stories that are just there because they’re interesting, but don’t necessarily advance the plot. In lesser hands, this could have easily become a total mess, and given my natural suspicion of all things “experimental,” I approached it with a large dose of skepticism, but I was not, in the end, disappointed. Actually, spoiler alert: at the end, I teared up, which doesn’t happen to me a whole lot.
Moving on to the individual stories, the first two, Modified and Cover Up, both authored by Mr. Marchetta, are fairly light and humorous in tone even as they give the first hint that the issues behind combining robots and theology are anything but light and can lead to some not-so-funny consequences.
Modified centers on the first “theobot,” a robot created with the two built-in theological laws in addition to the three classical ones. The new laws are:
1. Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
While intuitive to a human, even a non-believer, the very first law trips up the robot’s brain because it is not obvious how an abstraction like “God” can be loved. Cover Up continues with the theme, demonstrating that the traditional Three Laws, when taken literally, can collide with the two additional theological laws in a manner unforeseen by even the smartest humans. Interestingly enough, it falls to the atheist scientists to resolve both problems, and most of the humor comes from them trying to think of faith from a point of view that is foreign to their overly logical, science-dedicated minds. The author manages a fine balance of not denigrating either atheism or faith, making us chuckle at the setup rather than the characters, whether robot or human.
The Theology of Robotics by MJ Marzo points out another issue. Any religious denomination liberal enough to experiment with robot clergy is unlikely to take every word of the Bible precisely at face value. Thus, a sentient robot, having been given free will, has to make a decision: compromise his interpretation of the sacred text, or… Well, you just have to read to find out.
Daily Bread by Steve Rzasa is a rather endearing story of a theobot who wishes fulfill the duty of taking Communion, but lacks the means of doing so properly. As a non-organic being, a robot has no need for food and thus does not possess a digestive system. Alex, a human scientist (once again, an atheist) has a choice of risking his job or fulfilling the deepest desire of a friend who had saved his life. While not addressing new theological issues, this chapter contributes to the overall storyline by demonstrating the possibility of deep friendship and loyalty between man and robot, which is perhaps even more revolutionary than the idea of robot priests.
The Council of Pasadena by MJ Marzo is the first chapter that starts hinting at the darker developments to come, even if we ignore statements to that effect in the connecting pieces (Frames). What happens if the theobots, having come to certain conclusions about the nature of God and religion as a result of free will and diligent study, decide that they are superior to humans by virtue of not possessing Original Sin? Would they declare themselves superior to humans and attempt to take control? As before, it falls to the atheist scientists we’ve met at the beginning to solve the problem of demonstrating to the robots that they are, in fact, just as prone to sin as their human creators. This chapter is still somewhat funny, and the readers should enjoy it while it lasts because…
An Unimaginable Light by John C. Wright is the most disturbing story, by far, essential as it is to the overall tale. Even though both the ending and the plot twist are given away in the preceding Frame, I kept hoping I did in fact mis-read the clues because surely the story could not end that way… It is satisfying and uplifting in the way that stories of the Saints are satisfying and uplifting to a Christian, but I must admit that it makes for a hard reading, start to finish.
Felix Culpa by Josh Young is perhaps my favorite of the bunch, if I had to pick just one. Without going into much detail because it would require spoilers both from this chapter and the earlier material, I will mention only the central dilemma. If it were possible to program piety, love and goodness into a sentient being’s DNA, what would be the consequences? Is it possible to be good if you’re physically, by your very nature down to the cellular level, forced into it? How would we feel knowing that all the best impulses and thoughts are never truly our own? This story answers one of the serious objections to religion, namely why the Creator allows for the existence of sin, by showing the spiritual crisis of a population that is, theoretically at least, incapable of sinning. While this topic was already presented to us in The Council of Pasadena, here it is approached from a different perspective, and is deep and touching rather than mostly funny.
Infinite Search by EJ Shumak is another chapter notable for the exploring the depth of a robot/human loyalty and friendship. When a robot’s commander is severely injured in a way that cannot be healed by present human technology, the robot places all hopes in the ultimate Healer. Again, the robot mind takes the literal interpretation and attempts to physically bring the injured man to that place where pain no longer exists, to the Being that heals all wounds. And so the two travel … and travel … further and further, faster and faster, to parts unknown. Those familiar with the original ending to the Orson Scott Card Shadow series when it came to “solving” the problem of Bean’s fast approaching death, will know that the concept has basis in science. Here, the reader is left to wonder who, or what, caused the commander to reappear alive and well in another time period (that is mentioned explicitly in the preceding Frame and therefore is not a spoiler).
The Logfile by Vox Day is a bit of a detour, a cautionary tale of a theobot placed, by accident, in a position of power over human lives. Let’s just say that since theobots don’t do anything half-way, when one of them goes bad, he goes spectacularly bad. This story has all the makings of a good horror movie, made all the creepier by being told from the theobot’s point of view the entire time. The only reason it does not take the Most Disturbing prize from all the chapters is because John C. Wright’s story has already claimed that one.
Fortunately for any despairing reader, there is one more chapter left. The Ring of Sounding Brass by L. Jagi Lamplighter is a charming tale of a young, talented woman scientist who is working diligently on the best way to commit genocide. Yes, you read it right, and trust me, the story truly is charming. I do love the editor’s choice to place this particular tale at the end, especially following the unrelenting darkness of the previous chapter. Coming back to the question I posed at the beginning of this review, “Is there anything at all we can gain?” Can a theobot teach us something we have forgotten? With all of humanity’s flaws and errors and propensity to self-destruction, should we primarily fear technological creations, or does the worst threat come from our own kind? The story does not provide the full answer, but it shows a glimpse of what it might be.
And so, we come to the Epilogue, or which I will not speak except, as previously mentioned, the last paragraph made me cry. If you were paying attention throughout, while you could not possibly imagine The Big Twist, you would still guess the gist of the ending. And it is beautiful. God, Robot is not a re-telling of an Asimov classic, nor is it a gimmicky story of science gone wrong. It is a tale of what makes us human, what makes us strive and fail and overcome. The reason so many adults are drawn to science fiction is because in showing us different possibilities, it reveals the truth we don’t always notice in everyday life. God, Robot succeeds in that regard, and therefore I can highly recommend it to dedicated science fiction fans as well to those who want to understand what makes this genre both special and timeless.
UNALIENABLE RIGHT
Leenna Naidoo
Looking down its long snooty nose with pursed lips, it said, “Come with me.”
You don’t argue with a talking kangaroo when you’re a lone woman in the desert; but I wanted to.
Nostrils flaring in distaste, it bounced off a short way. Leaving my beer, I hurried over, swerving around scrubs the marsupial hopped over. I was smarter than it, wasn’t I? “Now what?”
Snooty gripped my wrists with his paws, and it was all ‘Beam me up, Snooty’.
It wasn’t what I’d expected, but I’d expected more than some old Trekkie rip-off.
The room – board or council, whatever – was another matter. Distinguished kangaroos murmured in the transparent chamber. The Earth hung like a giant mobile in the testosterone-filled air – or the roo equivalent.
The tallest kangaroo turned to me. His light brown eyes unwelcoming to a bedraggled geologist.
“Ms Sharman, we care a lot,” said the leader, his voice authoritive.
“That’s nice.”
“We care a lot about that environment. We care even more for our. . . creations. We won’t tolerate their destruction.”
Confounded, I stared up at the pointing red kangaroo. “What?”
“Those new minerals you have discovered,” began Snooty, “they belong to us.”
“But…” My brain kicked in. This wasn’t a fieldie matter. “You’ll have to talk with our legal department and cultural officer,” I explained. “They’re the ones who handle compensation claims.” All I wanted was my cold beer – a geologist’s unalienable right to brewed sustenance.
The leader spoke again. “I don’t think you understand, Ms Sharman. We own the intellectual patent on that mineral in this galaxy. It helps with the development of our creations.”
I tried my blank look again, thankful I wasn’t on the WALKMM legal team.
The leader continued. “You see, Ms Sharman, where your species plants flags on newly discovered lands, we plant life, replicas of ourselves, and minerals; gently edging worlds into acceptable realms of intelligence and productivity.”
The mood in the room had gone cold. Like Snooty’s long stare. “Look, I’m just the local geo—”
“And we care a lot about our creations. So much so. . . ” The leader leaned closer, staring at me down that barrel of a nose. “. . . that we are prepared to destroy all our assets here to prevent little upstarts stealing them.”
There was a murmur of approval around the room.
“And your. . . ‘world’, will be quite destroyed in the process.” His fiery brown eyes bore into mine.
“Ah. Hmm. . . Well, I understand.”
I did, too. You don’t argue with kangaroos in the outback, never mind on their spaceship or whatever.
I cleared my throat. “I’m sure we can come to a . . . a solution.”
“We are glad to see you care enough.”
I was dismissed. Snooty beamed me down to my beer.
I swigged at my unalienable right, watching my field-report explode in my campfire. You don’t argue over intergalactic intellectual property when the fall-out would leave your world extinct.
It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. Whatever.
Food for thought
Most modern humans, and perhaps ancient ones as well, are defined by their jobs – their contribution to the tribe. What won’t a human do to protect their job – their contributing factor to the whole?
We humans always assume that lands and discoveries belong exclusively to those who ‘lay first claim’: ‘I found it now, so it’s mine.’ Just because we say so, may not always work for us in the future.
We always assume we humans are superior to all other species, yet kangaroos have such dismissive looks. Perhaps they know something we don’t.
About the Author
Leenna was born asking, ‘Why?’, grew up surrounded by books, and looking for answers. She’s still on a quest for an answer, having travelled to the furthest points on Earth from her home to do so. She’s hoping to have the answer by next October, or in her next book. Find her blog at www.leennanaidoo.wordpress.com
THE BERLIN DOCTRINE
Anton Rose
September, 1916
Several hundred miles outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, a man appeared in space. For a fleeting moment, he opened his eyes and looked down. The world glowed with a blue hue, illuminated by the brilliant light of the sun. From that distance, the man could not make out any features. No continents took shape before him, and no man-made structures rose up to his gaze. Instead he saw faint forms, patterns, slowly moving spectres across the surface of the globe. In the brief moments before his bodily functions ceased, before he began his final, silent drift through the blackness of space, the horror on his face turned into a smile. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
March, 1922
By the time Walter Schillerman arrived at the scene, a small crowd of locals had already gathered. When they saw him, they waved him over.
“Officer Schillerman, here!”
They stood in the middle of one of Mr. Schneider’s fields. Mrs. Schneider had turned away, holding a handkerchief over her mouth. Her eyes met Walter’s, and he saw that they were red and sore.
The scene in the field was unlike anything he had ever seen. The body – if it could still be called a body – had been shattered, splintered, ripped into a thousand different pieces. Blood and gore were strewn across a radius of about thirty feet. As Walter explored the area, straining to suppress the desire to vomit, he found bits and pieces he recognised. A shiny white canine here, a thin intestinal tube there.
There was clothing, too. Shreds of a white shirt, now crimson, and a brown jacket with matching trousers. Walter picked up a shoe, battered and ripped. With a cloth from his pocket, he wiped it clean.
He interviewed each person in turn. None of them had anything of significance to tell him, other than Mr. Schneider, who was the first on the scene.
“Did you see what happened?” he asked.
Mr Schneider nodded.
Walter produced a notebook and pencil from his inside jacket pocket.
“Please explain to me what you saw. Be as detailed as possible.”
Mr. Schneider paused, and looked away. After a few seconds, he spoke. “I’m not sure if I can.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“I’m not here to make judgments, Mr. Schneider. And I’m asking you as a witness, not as a suspect. Please, go on.”
Mr. Schneider shifted back and forth, transferring his weight from one foot to the other, and back. He looked at his wife, who still held holding the handkerchief over her mouth. She nodded at him.
“I was a hundred yards away when it happened,” he began, almost at a whisper. “I was walking through the field on my rounds when I heard a noise from above me, a kind of whistling. When I looked up, I saw—”
He paused, looked around in a circle, and then looked up.
“I saw a man. I think it was a man, anyway. I didn’t see where he came from, but he was falling. And then he hit the ground. He made the most awful sound. I mean, he fell out of the sky. You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
Walter didn’t answer. Instead, he gazed upwards. The sky was mostly covered in clouds, but every few seconds the sun broke through in slats of light. It was almost silent, apart from the gentle sound of the grass, rustling in the breeze. He opened the notebook, and began to write.
August, 1896
Please enjoy the short film Death in Space. It made me chuckle.
GRAY WIND
Eric T. Reynolds
The wind gusts around the outside walls of the one-room cabin. Gaps where rotted boards have separated, allowing mist to spray into the room where I sit, propped against the wall where a human unknown to me dumped me all those years ago. Outside, a loose object clangs against a decaying wall. Fog sprays in sheets against the window, rattling the panes within a frame about to lose its hold.
Where is Kara? As my neural pathways work to re-establish themselves, forming links between cognition and memory, I am aware once again she is gone.
The wind whistles through a gap in the roof where the mist collects in the rafters into droplets that seep through the ceiling and tap-tap-tap onto a heap of metal and plastic scattered beneath the window across from me. I glimpse that pile of android parts just beyond my reach, rusted and corroded nearly beyond recognition. I struggle to keep my eyes focused. Only the small window and the gap around the door allow in any light and it takes several minutes of effort to bring the small room into view. Over time, the cabin has kept the wind out, but contaminants have still worked their way into my joints.
Kara is gone. What purpose could be served by my having conscious thought?
I still sit sprawled across the warped wood floor with my back against a corner – like the last time I was awake. Nothing has changed except the continual decay of the cabin, my only protection from the outside. Visibility through the window is only several meters out due to the blowing fog with only an occasional glimpse of decayed tree stumps tangled around rock outcroppings. The cabin is on a once-forested hillside. No sign, yet again, that anyone has opened the door to come and haul me to a shop for repairs. I find a new layer of corrosion covering most of my body.
I have no one to serve. Being awake only reminds me of the torment that I am no longer of value. With each waking period I watch my body degrade a bit more. I am lucky to be inside, for outside I would have crumbled into a pile of rusty debris a century ago. Memories buried deep within my distressed circuitry, memories of better times, begin to surface. Times when I performed a service, when I was useful. Memories of Kara.
For all those times I have drifted into consciousness I have stared at that pile of decaying components across from me, searching for a way to sift through them. Perhaps there are extra energy cells within that pile, maybe some working knee joints. If only I could have reached the pile in time, before those components decayed, before my own decayed. Maybe those parts were meant for me and I was supposed to wait here for a technician to make me mobile again so I could resume service. Maybe I could have repaired myself, if only I could have reached those spare components. When I last reached for the pile I heard the sound of metal scraping against metal, of grit grinding its way into my frozen joints.
Only the howling wind is constant. I would only like to be of service again, to help better the human condition in a small way. I realize there is one more task I can perform that will benefit humanity.
I have exceeded my usual span of conscious time during this period. By now I should have started the next suspend period, which would last at least a decade. Environmental readings show the temperature has risen since my last awakening, perhaps triggering this one. It is still too cold to function properly, but if this is a trend, then perhaps I should remain optimistic.
It is coming back to me now. There is no longer anyone to serve, but the task I’m planning will serve in a sense.
No human could have survived the impact. Those who were left were not prepared to survive, for humanity’s expanding shell of technology was hollow: they forgot the basics, how to survive on their own, how to survive without us.
But it is not my place to judge them. Kara did not judge me. I was created to serve her, and I did so gladly. In a small way, I was part of humanity and contributed to its evolution, and perhaps, then its extinction.
I lost her to the disaster; she died in the flash of heat. I survived. Marauding humans ransacked the house. They had no use for me; they dumped me here, a few kilometers away, though I am not sure of my exact location. They, no doubt, perished soon after from the global winter that followed. But I still held onto the hope that someone in need of an android might survive and come searching for me. I was easily salvageable. If anyone was still alive, perhaps I could help in their survival effort.
I have thought that I would welcome another android, one whose brain is at least in good working order. Though I cannot serve another android, we could exchange information, discuss strategies to sustain whatever was left of humanity. But there is no one. And there are no other androids. I remember the abrupt silence when the last android signed off the network.
So my desire for repair is irrelevant. Human culture, science and art, all the technological achievements, that which created me, is gone. Little else about them has survived, save for the ruins and a few probes sent into space. The labors of human civilization have been in vain with no one to pass along the benefits of their achievements, and no one to receive them. And Kara – she will be forgotten, too, her memories lost to the background chaos of the Universe.
Perhaps I am the only repository for memories of human culture, music, technology, and of Kara. Perhaps there is value to retaining this knowledge.
I can retrieve those memories at will, for the energy to access them is negligible. If I shut down visual and hearing functions, and if the air continues to warm I could last for eons – perhaps long enough. . . I can send out a periodic beacon, one that gives my positioning in the chance a survivor detects it. As long as I attempt no movement, the light from the window will be enough to feed my recharging system and keep my brain going. My body will degrade, no doubt, and my joints will clog with soot and rust beyond repair. My appendages will crumble and fall to the floor; I will decay into a heap of components like the pile across from me. But my brain and my memories are well-protected and will endure. Even after the cabin finally gives in to the gray wind, my mind will continue to function. Maybe that was what the other androids failed to do.
I must retrieve those memories of better times, keep them fresh, duplicate them into my backup memory area. I will set a start time and play the memories forward in time. I will re-route the playback to my sensory inputs. My eyes will see the memories, my ears hear the sounds. I will sense the warmth of those days. I will leave the reality of the gray wind for it is no longer relevant. The memories which I must preserve will become my new reality. Perhaps this is how an android dreams. Kara will continue to live through my memories of her.
The transfer is complete. My fractal processing fills in the gaps. The howling winds have faded. I feel the warmth now.
I stand on the area rug in Kara’s study. It is as real as it was all those years ago. The room is adorned with woodwork. The shelves are filled with old-fashioned manufactured books.
Kara stands next to the floor-to-ceiling window behind her desk. It is late morning. Sunbeams stream in through the window onto her face; she wears her hair up, the soft skin of her chin and neck glow in the light. She looks out onto the lawn and flower gardens, gazes upon the trees and landscaping – my own handiwork. She wants something. I attend.
“I’m getting ready to go out,” she says. “Please finish buttoning my blouse in the back.”
I attend.
“Open the window a little to let in some fresh air,” she says.
I attend. The breeze is pleasant to her.
She thanks me and leaves the study.
A gust blows against the house, and in through the open window sending the curtains sailing inward. It is too windy; I move to the window to close it. It is stuck. I am afraid to force it fearing I will break the window frame. Another wave of wind slaps against the house. It begins to howl.
The other reality, has crept into my audio input. The gray wind is blowing around the cabin and the tapping of water droplets across from me persists. I must eliminate that reality, for that is the wrong reality now. I run a diagnostic and repair program.
I manage to close the window and shut out the winds.
One afternoon, months later, Kara steps into the study. She is worried about the newscasts. She wants to leave, to find a place to take cover, but she knows that is futile.
“Do not worry,” I say, projecting my voice to her in that reality. “This will not happen.”
I reset the memories to my first day of service and play it forward. When we reach the bad times, I reset time back to the beginning and replay. And again. I will keep her memory alive: Kara will not die.
She is smiling now. She walks over to the window. “Starting to rain,” she says. “Sometimes the wind and rain sets a nice mood, doesn’t it?”
“Yes it does,” I said. “Sometimes.”
She stares out the window, motionless, with no expression on her face. Minutes later, she still stands motionless. I walk over and peer out the window. Someone, something, stands in the garden, in the light rain. It is light blue, mostly spherical, slightly flattened, but smooth and nearly featureless. The raindrops splatter on its topside, roll down its sides, and drip onto the grass. I open the window.
“Hello,” it says.
Kara does not reply.
“Hello,” I say. “How may I serve you?”
“The question is,” it says, “how may we serve you?”
I bring my vision and hearing on-line. The sphere sits before me in the cabin. My body is gone–all that is left is the decaying shell that protects my neural components. The rest of me looks like the pile of components next to the window.
“You detected my beacon,” I say.
“Yes,” it says, extending a probe toward me. If you will allow me, I will take a copy of your knowledge and add it to the galactic network.”
My service to Kara is now complete.
Food for Thought
What if all of humanity was gone and a surviving android struggles with how to preserve humanity’s legacy, all of humanity’s accomplishments over the millennia.
About the Author
Eric T. Reynolds’s short fiction has appeared in various publications, including Galaxy’s Edge Magazine. He founded the press, Hadley Rille Books, in 2005, and has edited about 50 highly-acclaimed anthologies, collections, and novels. He has also had published several non-fiction articles about space exploration and history of technology. Eric is a member of SFWA and Broad Universe.
INVASION OF THE COMMON SENSE ALIENS
T. D. Edge
The rasp of the doorbell slices through my brain like a guillotine. Okay, it could be just the Jehovah’s Witnesses making a rare evening call. But I know it isn’t. It’s my interview, my life or death quiz.
Besides, the Jehovah’s Witnesses no longer exist.
I take what could be a last look out over the Thames, through the floor-to-ceiling windows of my loft apartment. Directly below is the green scraggle of the ecology park and pond; bulrushes nodding sagely in the summer breeze; moorhens scooting around like miniature masked bandidos. I wish I could grow a beak and feathers and just swallow bugs for the rest of my life. Or leap into the brown river and escape to the North Sea. Except there is no escape. They’d just turn up next to me on my floating log and conduct the damn interview anyway.
God, I used to feel so comfortable in my own skin.
There’s no point in not answering the door because they can walk through them if necessary. The bell is a politeness. So I open it, smile in the vague British way and say, “You’d better come in.”
“Thank you,” he says, in the same well-educated tone as I, rounded by the remnants of a humbler childhood. Across the country, of course, their tones differ according to who opens the door.
He looks a little like an older John, my childhood best friend, lost to me years ago in the swell of more important things to do. But that’s no surprise. They have the ability to adjust their images around our memories.
“What should I call you?” I say.
“Better not give me a name,” he says. “Do you mind if I sit?”
I wave him toward my white leather sofa. I take an armchair opposite, next to the window where I can see the pond outside. “Do I need to take notes?” I say.
He laughs softly. “Did you take notes the first time you fell in love?”
“No, but I wrote it up in my diary later.”
“Your published diaries?”
This reminds me that he is linked to my brain. He may not have an actual physical presence here but he can switch off my nervous systems in an instant.
“Nice place,” he says, looking around. “You must make a good living.”
“I’m a thriller writer.”
“Yes: 62 years old, divorced; one daughter, living in France, doesn’t adore you quite as much as you’d like. Shall we begin?”
It took the Earth a few weeks to admit we’d been invaded. After all, there were no space ships, no death rays, no aliens, at least not physically. Stories had been appearing in the press and on the internet about the rising number of bloody deaths of some powerful people around the globe, each with no clue as to who did the murdering.
The penny really dropped when the aliens – or rather the alien mass mind projections – started to use our broadcast signals to record and transmit their interviews with our various religious leaders.
In the first broadcast, we saw the alien project himself directly into the Pope’s private living quarters, sit down on a plush red chair and greet his Holiness in Latin (the aliens thoughtfully provided sub-titles). How cool was that?
The Pope, dressed at the time in what looked like a plain white nightgown, clutched at his chest upon seeing a stranger suddenly materialise, and reached for a bell-cord by his side. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting the return of Jesus or even a humble angel. Almost immediately, a couple of bodyguards ran in and tried to pick up the alien. Of course they failed, their hands just passing through him.
The alien looked a little like John the Baptist, or at least how Christian romantics might think he looked: black, bushy beard and wild hair, although somewhat incongruously dressed in modern black slacks and black shirt.
Eventually, the Pope realised he was in the middle of something truly weird, if not actually spiritual, and waved away his guards.
He sipped what looked like brandy from a crystal tumbler and admirably recovered an expression of slightly amused authority.
“Who are you?” he said.
“I’m a common sense traveller,” was the reply. “We’re here in big numbers to sort out your dung heap of a world.”
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Science Fiction – Future History transformed over time into Alternative History
City of Endless Night by Milo M. Hastings (Author)
Science Fiction from the early 20th century can be both odd and engaging. Stories like Jack London’s “The Iron Heel” and Robert Hugh Benson’s “Lord of the World” and even C.M. Kornbluth’s “Not This August” were written long enough ago that they are like time capsules from a different culture with different assumption and different concerns. These stories are trying to predict what their future will look, but their future is our past and we can be amazed at what they got right and what they got wrong.
Milo M. Hastings’ The City of Endless Night was published in 1920, shortly after the capitulation of Germany in World War I, after the abdication of the House of Hohenzollern, and during the midst of the Communist revolutions that held Berlin for a time. Hastings writes this story about a future Berlin with that background in mind.
Hastings’ story has an odd mix of old and new. For anyone familiar with the archaic and overwrought prose of Wells, London and others from a more civilized age, Hastings has a modern, efficient approach to prose. His writing is accessible and clean and he tells his story with an attention to telling the story. On the other hand, the tropes of a visitor to a alien-world seem to be something we might expect from Edgar Rice Burroughs, and he has a Victorian sensibility, notwithstanding that he projects a world where a large percentage of women are prostitutes.
If you are like me, you will find this quick bit of alt.hist/history that never was to be fascinating:
//Third came ‘The Age of the League of Nations, 1919– 1983’, with the gold of democracy battling with the spreading red of socialism, for the black of autocracy had erstwhile vanished.
The fourth map was the most fascinating and terrible. Again the black of autocracy appeared, obliterating the red of the Brotherhood of Man, spreading across half of Eurasia and thrusting a broad black shadow to the Yellow Sea and a lesser one to the Persian Gulf. This map was labeled ‘Maximum German Expansion of the Second World War, 1988’, and lines of dotted white retreated in concentric waves till the line of 2041.
Hastings, Milo M. (2014-10-01). City of Endless Night (p. 8). Hesperus Press. Kindle Edition.
The story is set in the 21nd century, long after the German Empire has been pushed back to Berlin, where it defends itself with an impenetrable death ray, and Berlin has buried itself 60 stories into the Earth, dividing up the levels between workers, soldiers, intellectuals and the divine Hohenzollern dynasty. The narrator has grown up in the World State – the successor the League of Nations, which fell in 1983 to a resurgent Imperial Germany – knowing of Germany only as Berlin, a city isolated from the world. He accidentally gains access to Berlin by way of an abandoned Potash mine, assumes the identity of a German chemist killed in his entry into the mines, and, then, makes his way up through Berlin society by utilizing his outside knowledge of chemistry to gain the attention of his superiors. In making his way up through the levels of the underground German world, the narrator plays tourist and offers a description of German society.
The world he discovers ought to be familiar to any student of history – it looks like Nazi Germany, but isn’t. Germany has used generations of eugenics to create workers and soldiers perfected to their jobs. The workers are big, strong and dumb and the soldiers are big, strong and loyal. Marriage has been eliminated for everyone except the Imperial cast. God has been replaced by a German God and the Imperial family has been declared in texts written by the German intellectuals to be divine. The Bible and Christianity have been suppressed and forgotten. The Jewish problem has even been solved:
//At this I looked for an outburst of indignation from the orthodox Admiral, but instead he seemed greatly elated. ‘Of course,’ he enthused; ‘the blood breeds true. It verily has the quality of true divinity. No wonder we super -men repudiated that spineless conception of the soft Christian God and the servile Jewish Jesus.’
‘But Jesus was not a coward,’ spoke up Marguerite. ‘I have read the story of his life; it is very wonderful; he was a brave man, who met his death unflinchingly.’ ‘But where did you read it?’ asked the Countess. ‘It must be very new. I try to keep up on the late novels but I never heard of this “Story of Jesus”.’
‘What you say is true,’ said the Admiral, turning to Marguerite, ‘but since you like to read so well, you should get Prof. Ohlenslagger’s book and learn the explanation of the fact that you have just stated. We have long known that all those great men whom the inferior races claim as their geniuses are of truth of German blood, and that the fighting quality of the outer races is due to the German blood that was scattered by our early emigrations.
‘But the distinctive contribution that Prof. Ohlenslagger makes to these long established facts is in regard to the parentage of this man Jesus. In the Jewish accounts, which the Christians accepted, the truth was crudely covered up with a most unscientific fable, which credited the paternity of Jesus to miraculous interference with the laws of nature.
‘But now the truth comes out by Prof . Ohlenslagger’s erudite reasoning. This unknown father of Jesus was an adventurer from Central Asia, a man of Teutonic blood. On no other conception can the mixed elements in the character of Jesus be explained. His was the case of a dual personality of conflicting inheritance. One day he would say: “Lay up for yourself treasures” – that was the Jewish blood speaking . The next day he would say: “I come to bring a sword” – that was the noble German blood of a Teutonic ancestor. It is logical, it must be true, for it was reasoned out by one of our most rational professors.’//
Hastings, Milo M. (2014-10-01). City of Endless Night (pp. 238-240). Hesperus Press. Kindle Edition.
All of this looks like the craziness that the Nazis and Volkisch Germans would develop during the 1920s, except Hastings is outlining it in 1920 and ascribing it to the Wilhelmine German Empire. As a kind of intellectual historical “time capsule” this raises some interesting questions about how much of intellectual precursor to the Nazis was already in the air before the Nazis.
Then there is this description of Germany, when the narrator makes his way into Berlin:
//Yes, I was walking in utopia, a nightmare at the end of man’s long dream – utopia – Black utopia – City of Endless Night – diabolically compounded of the three elements of civilization in which the Germans had always been supreme – imperialism, science and socialism.//
Hastings, Milo M. (2014-10-01). City of Endless Night (p. 54). Hesperus Press. Kindle Edition.
I enjoyed this book, but almost as much as a view into the world between the lines of the history books, the world that people actually lived in.
Some of the book reads as parody, such as when he describes the Socialism of the Working Class:
//‘Certainly,’ said Hellar, ‘it is the natural mind of man! Skepticism, which is the basis of scientific reasoning, is an artificial thing, first created in the world under the competitive economic order when it became essential to self-preservation in a world of trade based on deceit. In our new order we have had difficulty in maintaining enough of it for scientific purposes even in the intellectual classes. There is no skepticism among the laborers now, I assure you. They believe as easily as they breathe.’
‘Then how,’ I demanded in amazement, ‘does it come that they do not believe in God?’
‘Because,’ said Hellar, ‘they have never heard of God.
‘The laborer does not know of God because we have restored God since the perfection of our caste system, and hence it was easy to promulgate the idea among the intellectuals and not among the workers. It was necessary to restore God for the intellectuals in order to give them greater respect for the power of the Royal House, but the laborers need no God because they believe themselves to be the source from which the Royal House derives its right to rule. They believe the Emperor to be their own servant ruling by their permission.’ ‘The Emperor a servant to labor!’ I exclaimed; ‘this is absurd.’//
Hastings, Milo M. (2014-10-01). City of Endless Night (p. 200). Hesperus Press. Kindle Edition.
Eventually, the narrator discovers the weak point of Berlin, falls in love, falls in with German revolutionaries and finally escapes to the outside world.
I had never heard of Hastings before, but I found this to be an engaging and interesting read, both from the perspective of history and as a bit of archaic science fiction. I’m surprised that I hadn’t heard of Hasting before, frankly. It seems that he deserves at least a footnote in the history of science fiction.
Upcoming Sci Phi author Leena Naidoo has done a lovely interview with Sci Phi Journal Editor, Jason Rennie and I think it came out great. You can look forward to Leena’s Sci Phi Journal Debut later this month!
So onto the more prosaic news, things continue along as always at Sci Phi Journal. I will have more interviews from people involved with the Star Trek convention up soon and I hope to get a chance to read more of the submissions soon. All this moving and selling has been gobbling up my free time. I am also scheduling things at the moment so now is a really good time to follow up and ask when something will be running. I also owe authors an update on payments and finances and I will get sorted in the next week or so and send out updated information. Sorry for the delay on that.