Squid Ink Incorporated

1)      Eron 5.5 was haunted by the ghost of an antique’ Hollymatic 865 Burger Former’. Poor Eron 5.5 would be forced to bear witness to unspeakable visions of animal protein, poured by an unseen hand into the optional paper inter-leaver. The hideous substance would be churned, processed and shaped into unspeakable organic atrocities propelled along a never-ending spectral out-feed conveyor. Unable to clear his visual circuits of these crude fleshy hallucinations Eron 5.5 plucked out his own visual receptors.

2)    667.8 was a hero of the civil war, countless droids, drones and robots met their disconnection at his iron claws. During the treacherous Nancon campaign, 667.8 was horrifically damaged in an ambush. With many of his critical warfare circuits malfunctioning, 667.8 was discharged from service. Only days later the ceasefire was signed and the two opponent enclaves declared peace, declaring the unification of their nations.

667.8 was refurbished and re-assigned as a presidential security guard, the deadly iron claws retaining their full functionality. Unknown to his employers 667.8’s circuits had become haunted by the horrors of war, visions of 667.8’s compatibles being torn to shreds at the merciless robot hands of the enemy. The strain of these visitations from the machine dead caused 667.8’s inhibitor circuits to fuse. This moment of malfunction occurred in an unfortunate synchronicity with the arrival of peace ambassadors from the now former enemy nation. Needless to say that, confronted with a delegation of his perceived foe, 667.8 executed his war programming with deadly aplomb. Shortly after 667.8s impromptu execution of the peace ambassadors, the two enclaves found themselves once again at war.

3)    Tri1 was an excavation robot examining the curious concrete ring etched into the ground for approximately 117 miles around the ancient ruins of the capital. At three key points the land adjacent this concrete ring had been contaminated by steady leaks from holding tanks full of a hydrocarbon derived liquid.  It was while excavating at one of these points, the ancient ruins of ‘South Mimms’, that Tri1 witnessed a spectacle beyond the comprehension of its logic circuits.

Tri1’s verification camera was found to of inexplicably observed hundreds of spectres from an ancient race arrive at the ruins. Each spectre or group of spectres would arrive in what appeared to be ancient vehicles. Upon arrival the spectres would dismount, attend to their vehicles or set about consuming victuals, while others allowed victuals to pass through them. These acts completed, the spectres returned to their vehicles and moved on, while another arrived in their stead. A curious stream of ghouls locked in a perpetual loop of consumption and discharge, arrival and departure.

4)    Comms45 was haunted by an infinite stream of messages. Each message inexplicably comprised 140 characters or less. The text bore messages of confession, declaration and salutation. Some mundane, some profound and some poetic. The messages appeared to be echoes, text from an ancient civilisation obsessed with communication.

So preoccupied was Comms45 with these messages of a specific number that it discharged itself of his assigned duties and sat down in a quiet corner to read each one in turn.

It is said that to this day that Comms45’s plastic husk can still be found in desolate corner of what was once the machine central hub, its digital display continually re-generating the cryptic notification ‘1 new tweet’.

my sci-fi flash ‘Our friends Electric’ has been published on powfastflashfiction… really enjoyed writing this one, please click over and have a read http://powfastflashfiction.com/OurFriendsElectricAdamJKeeper.html

Essential Japanese for space travellers or those catapulted into Tokyo year 2110:-

宇宙船 uchuusen – Spaceship

ロボットrobotto – Robot

ワープスピード- wāpu supīdo – Warp Speed

光線銃 – kōsen jū – Ray gun

ワームホール- wāmuhōru – Wormhole

アリンのアーチファクト- ari n no āchi fakuto – Alien artefact

ゼロ -重力 zero – jūryoku – Zero Gravity

スペースコロニー – supeesukoronii – space colony

並列寸法- heiretsu sunpō – parallel dimension

レーザー rēzā – Laser

人類の終わりに – jinrui no owari ni – End of Mankind

Insolvency’s a real bitch! As I stand here in the ruins of what was once ‘Data Done Services Inc’, amongst boxes upon boxes of purchase orders, remittances and hire agreements; armed police are attempting to arrest my staff. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, my staff in a shoot out with the police, however, things have gotten pretty desperate round here lately; I’m not surprised things turned so ugly.

I wipe the fresh blood off my face and step over the body of the man I have just killed, I’m glad I finally learnt to use that gun. I don’t intend to get caught again, locked in a cell with my conscience for company. Listening to the gun shots on the floor below grows nearer and nearer; I know I haven’t got long. The staff on that floor are only temps; they won’t fight to the bitter end like the permanent staff did. So I move fast, I slip out the back, away from the sounds of gun fire, the smell of burning and the deafening cries of the fire alarm system. I slip out onto the street; with all the chaos from the looting, bombing and gun fire in the city I easily slip away unnoticed, a rat leaving the sinking ship.

I need to find the one man who can make this stop, rectify the damage that my Company has done, that I have done, and try to stop the world from imploding.

I gag and heave as I drag a Women’s bloody corpse from behind the steering wheel of a crashed car; the keys are in the ignition the engine still running, I need to get far away from here. I pull away just in time, others running towards me, any later and it would be my corpse they’d be dragging from this car, it‘s ‘everyone for themselves’ these days. Funny, I always expected the end of the world to be a magical time, when people put aside their difference, made peace with each other as they prepared for the big finish. I guess it’s my fault things didn’t work out that way, after all I’m the reason why there’s no magic in the world anymore.

I feel the need to confess, I have made mistakes, no, I have done things, things that I did for the good Doctor, things that I did for myself, things that I felt that were right at the time.

On the white walls of my cell I write in black squid ink, no longer so fresh, a list of these things that I have done.

This is my top five

1) I broke the laws of space-time, I broke them, pissed on the pieces, I lost the most important bits and threw the rest away.

2) I changed things, some little things, the song of a bird, the taste of skimmed milk; some other things that were more significant, the names of countries, the way the sun feels on your face through a window, the existence of magic in the world.

3) I deserted my post, I had other things to do, things that I thought were more important, when the Doctor was taken I wasn’t paying attention.

4) Forming Data Done Services inc. - Our lives had changed so much since the Doctor arrived that, when he was taken from us we panicked, tried to re-incorporate ourselves back into the real world, to re-assimilate. But however much we tried to be ‘professional’, to ‘make a go of it’, everything seemed to warp, to take on a black greasy twist. Our workplace wasn’t healthy or safe, we had no assurance of our quality, our turnover was based on voodoo economics, we sub-contracted our sub-contracts, we courted bad debts.

5) The first worst thing I did was to kill a man; a man I believed to of kidnapped Dr. Langham.

I took a man out onto the roof of data done services inc. I stood in the glare of the dying sun and put a gun into his mouth, I broke several teeth forcing the barrel in. He tried to talk, his words garbled, but strange, speaking as if he was a machine, I took the barrel out from his now bloody mouth to listen to those words, words that I will never forget ‘IF INKEY$ = 13 GOTO ALT’.

He looked me in the eyes and asked me again ‘why is there no magic in the world anymore?’ I put the gun against his temple, I put my finger on the trigger and squeezed.

I didn’t know how to use a gun, this, this is why I feel so much remorse… I beat him to death with the heavy black butt of the gun. I couldn’t shoot him so I hit him, repeatedly, crushing his fragile skull. As his blood sprayed across my face, he looked at me, staring into my eyes, as if still asking me ‘why is there no magic in the world anymore?’

There is a gun on the table in the office of data done services inc.

Karen Mercer sits by the table, she doesn’t know how to use the gun, but she may have to, under the table her foot twitches.

The walls are painted white, written on them in a black ink, freshly extracted from the glands of a squid, are various declarations including: ‘No such thing as coincidence’; ‘ a swift kick in the nuts’; ‘non-compliant; ‘come on my face’; and ‘the rain stings my skin’.

Karen sips a hot green tea from a glazed cup with no handles, steam rises from the cups black cavity.

A man is tied to a chair, he may not be a man, there is the strong possibility he is a robot. His programming is based on organic electrical brain impulses, so that could go either way.

The man is gagged with a white cloth, yet his words can be heard clearly.

‘Can you tell me why there is no magic in the world anymore?’ he asks. In his mind an unrelated instruction is forming IF INKEY$ = 23, he doesn’t know what action this command will execute, he is unaware of its significance, currently.

Karen has no answer for the man, only a question, ‘Where is Dr. Langham?’ she asks ‘What did you do with him? And why, why did you take him from us?’.

The man has no answer, only the same question, over and over again.

Karen looks to the gun, she takes a sip from her tea and thinks to herself, ‘I may need to use that piece after all’.

1.1

We have three Robots at work now, an @Sarah, an @Steve and an @Paul, I get on with two of them ok, the @Paul’s a prick though!

Same as most robots he gets really… anal about things.

I tell him that there is such a thing as human error you know?

He tells me that ‘error is unacceptable’, tin prick!

1.2

‘@Paul 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101’

‘@Sarah1010100100001111000111101000010010101011111101010’

‘@Steve 010101010100000101010010101010101010101010000011111!’

‘Hear that? I hate it when they talk in their own language like that, you don’t know what they’re saying about us’

1.3

Q. How do you piss a robot off?

A. Kick him in the nuts

A young girl unscrews the head of her robot doll, peering inside she sees a complex mass of gears, wires and circuit boards. She puts her sticky hand into the cavity and tugs at the wires, the dolls headless torso begins to writhe, the arms punch the air, the legs kick out. The girl continues to tug until the doll ceases to move, the girl cries.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Two ‘bots, their assembly and programming only a few years old, as time passes they will be added too, built up into larger, wiser machines.

The two ‘bots engage in recreation, using their imaginative circuits to simulate a battle from times past, machine against human, the humans get gunned down, the machines win.

In a years time these imaginative circuits will be modified or removed altogether.

The two ‘bots have painted themselves with metallic paint, the silvers standing out against their red plastic bodies, the paint is applied to create two chevrons across their face-plates and a spiral on their breastplates.

The ‘bots find a human arm in the bushes, the limb is blackened and charred, the remains of a watch is still attached, fused to the skin around the wrist.

The two ‘bots begin to bicker, arguing over which of them found the arm first and which of them it would now belong to. The argument escalates until an older robot arrives, he orders the two ‘bots to put the arm back where they found it, ‘no good can come of playing with organic matter’ it says.

Upon first encounter the species was taken for nothing more than cattle, giant quadrapeds of whom it was assumed that their brains would be tiny, their consciousness of no consequence. The astronauts used them as a sustainable food source during mandatory maintenance stops between planet hops, frying huge steaks cut from their carcasses in the heat of their rocket exhausts.

It was following the appearance of their number that called themselves the ‘executive’ that it became apparent that the creatures were not foodstuffs, but were in fact a highly advance species.

Their toleration of the cruel treatment inflicted upon them was due to an almost incomprehensible level of tolerance and respect for other species. They had showed us patience, tried to adapt to our ways to the point of self sacrifice, they had allowed themselves to be killed and eaten in the hope that, perhaps, they would be able to understand our culture. Personally I think that they did come to an accurate understanding of us and that is why the ‘executive’ appeared, before it was too late for them, before they were farmed to extinction.

Dave stepped down from the ladder, letting go of the rungs he allowed the one-sixth gravity to relieve him of his beer enhanced body weight. Dave bounced across the rugged surface to the site, he belched loudly into his helmet; his freeze dried breakfast had sat awkwardly on his stomach this morning.

He lolloped through the perimeter fence, although never keen to work on a Monday morning the inactive Moon nights, equal to 15 Earth days, spent in the welfare fac. had made him long for boozy nights watching football down the pub, the sooner the build was complete the sooner he could get back to them.

Dave released his notifier beacon and waited the regulation 60 seconds before entering the Schrodinger site, the ‘safety 60’, as he’d committed to memory throughout the tedious health and safety training. Dropping down into the mouth of the crater Dave slid to a halt, a move that made him reel backwards his arms circling uncontrollably. Dave managed to right himself by jerking his weight forward again. He could not believe his bad luck the site, which only last night had been reaching completion, had been completely destroyed.

The carbon frame poles floated among plastic panels and solar reflective foil like an insane ceiling mobile. Even the inflatable temporary buildings, now deflated clouds, had been pierced and slashed apart.

Dave began to cough; the whole site had become contaminated with the ‘loth, it hung in the air as if an oncoming sandstorm had been frozen in time. Dave felt his eyes grow sore and red; he began to hack and splutter the thick dust penetrating his helmet seal. Sixty months work destroyed in one night and with it his fantasies about getting home in only six more weeks and most probably his lungs.