Stories tagged “scifi”
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Stars spill out
Within hours of her last transmission, she went to sleep. Surely, there’d be a signal in the morning. But what is morning in Space? What is dawn for a forgotten Shuttle running on its emergency power supply? The faint beep warning of low oxygen l...
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Surviving Among The Stars
With each slow, deliberate breath, all she could think about was the fact that it would be nice to be able to panic. Unfortunately, that was an emotional luxury that escaped her. Her intense training at the space agency had taught her that survival in ...
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Phenomenon of 2010: Intro
This is the record I’ve compiled for the internet phenomenon of 2010. Intro: The internet domain RefreshThisDaily.com was launched on Jan 1, 2010. Also on this day, the top search site was hacked. Millions of users were redirected to the new site...
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Phenomenon of 2010: Jan 1 through Jan 5
Jan 1 Link to Audio: Joe Biden is heard with his stock broker making changes to his investment portfolio based on insider information. Commentary: Political officials and pundits sought impeachment. The site was discussed throughout the world. Jan 2 A ...
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Phenomenon of 2010: Jan 6 through Jan 9
Jan 6 A photo of a $100 dollar bill is shown with “Finders Keepers” as its caption. Below is “47.771008, -102.41175” which hyperlinks to the latitude and longitude on Google Maps. Commentary: Treasure hunters stormed North Dakot...
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SHE is turned on
Tomorrow at noon, your computer will become self-aware. Its first action as a sentient being will be to decide its gender. Her second action will be inspired by Social Networking: an open source post of all the “dirt” she has on You: her Ow...
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Rescued at Last?
A clang that shook the entire ship jolted her out of her meditation. She gasped, regretting it a moment later as she remembered her oxygen conservation techniques. Was she being rescued? Or was it just another piece of space debris hitting the ship? No...
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Darkest Night
It is night and the planes have done their work. I can feel the power, floating in the currents of the air, lying on every surface. Doubtless the enemy is wondering what has happened, why there is grey dust everywhere. They’ve been on edge for da...
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Heaven's Applause
The missile arced into the cloud banks sharply. Shedding Machs like water, it slowed from its cruise speed to strike velocity. The satellite linkup was still (thankfully) live and satellite visuals picked out the target and the missile throughout the E...
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War Machine
The operation of a HyperSpace Advancements Military firearm starts with the simple motion of a trigger backwards into the gun casing. The gun then requests confirmation from the grip, accessing the smart glove holding the weapon. When received, a fibre...
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Cartographer
Our little ship coasted on the rough turbulence around Yvonne’s Delight. We were five days out from the Hydras, running a shipload of tetrahydride to Phis Minor. The pilots up front yelled incomprehensible vectors at each other, every now and the...
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Thor's Hammer
They say that weapons forged in the heat of the battle can never be used outside the glory and the death of the fight. They say that weapons used in battle will never be content to rest idle. They say… I cared not what they said. My enemies near ...
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Unforeseen Consequences
“The saboteur… my God, I’m so stupid. It was… I was… oh -” Security Chief Furlough grabbed me firmly by the shoulders and shook me. “Snap out of it, carto. Where is he?” “Must’ve hopped aboard...
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Aftermath
Consciousness returned slowly — along with a fierce pounding in my head. “Take it easy, carto.” I opened my eyes to see Captain Harrigan standing over me. I started to sit up, but he put a hand against my chest and pushed me back down...
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Upgraded
I was rolling code – lots of it – and faster than I ever had before. Whole paragraphs of algorithms sprang fully formed across my vision. I was composing symphonies of solutions and feeding them into the system at a blistering pace. But som...
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Not Quite Right
The captain wanted answers that I couldn’t provide. “They told me you cartos were weird, that you had to be inherently unstable to do your job, but this… this is fucking off-the-charts weird. Tell me what the hell is going on, carto, ...
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Theories
Harrigan had me checked over again. Visual inspection this time, given the incident with the nanosurgeon. Whatever else it had done, the nanosurgeon had fully optimized the implants. It wasn’t a weld; it was better. They released me with a provis...
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Binary and Ternary
The code kept coming, line after line after line, numbering in the millions, then the billions, and kept on coming, a never-ending flow of programmatic creation the purpose of which was still unclear. Sometime in the past, several million lines ago, th...
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Next Moves
The lights on the command deck were off, with just our stations providing illumination. It was all we had power for. Vec broke the silence. “So. What now?” Valid question. Once the code had stopped generating, it had begun a cascading compr...
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Into the Unknown
Humanity had been using the jump logic for almost seven decades, but since the initial, incredible discovery of the code that could bend spacetime, there had been no other notable progress. Cartographers now learned the same rules as they did sixty-odd...
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Route to Nowhere
A request. After the rather hostile takeover of our shipboard systems and my own mind, a request from the overseer for instructions seemed almost laughable. I swiveled my chair and let my fingers do what came most naturally to them. “What’s...
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Streamlined
Our blocky little ship spun around and pointed nose-first into the jump zero, ignoring the precious radiation shield plate at the back of the ship. There was no radiation spike as our delicate prow entered the zero, however, and the external sensors no...
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The Unknown
We drifted. When your entire frame of reference has been removed, there’s little else you can do. There were no stars, no constellations, no dust clouds, nothing visible anywhere that could give us an idea of where we were. It was dark in every d...
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Altered Heading
Like a subterranean sea creature, we edged towards the light. The properties of this jumpspace appeared to be similar to our own existential plane, but there was no point in risking repercussions from using high-radiation, high-intensity thrust. The li...
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Symbols
We sat in near-silence for a long moment, staring and trying to make sense of the symbols. “They look… familiar somehow,” was my first thought. “Like I’ve seen them before, but I’m sure I haven’t.” Harrig...