sciberpunk stories

soft cyberpunk, side of traditional scifi. by Z. see also "trustafarian", wizarding and romance error? request? so ask

[quasi-normalcy]

Of course, the real way to tell whether you’re in a Hard SF novel is if people keep providing you with unsolicited explanations of basic physics and everyday technology which you should, by rights, already know.

[noctumsolis]

It’s interesting that you choose to express this sentiment by means of a computer whose principle operational components are doped silicon transistors, whose method of operation is via electrical fields rather than primitive current based circuitry.

[sciberpunk-stories]

[bogleech]

The Fungus That Turns Ants Into Zombies Is More Diabolical Than We Realized

Carpenter ants of the Brazilian rain forest have it rough. When one of these insects gets infected by a certain fungus, it turns into a so-called “zombie ant” and is no longer in control of its actions.

Science wasn’t actually certain how fungi like cordyceps “hijacked” their host’s behavior, and we always kind of assumed it was causing some relatively simplistic damage to the brain, but now it seems the truth is much more like all the dramatized versions of it in sci-fi horror.

These fungi integrate themselves on the cellular level with the host’s tissues all throughout their body, actually seem to send signals to the host’s muscles and even alter the host’s genes with their own.

And all the while, it turns out THE BRAIN ISN’T TAKEN OVER AT ALL.

These fungi, all along, have been converting their hosts into animal-fungal hybrids they control while the host’s brain and consciousness remain helplessly alive and largely unaltered.

[sciberpunk-stories]

here's an interesting landscape for the mind. a sky with a strip of green at the horizon and otherwise dark blue and blank, let's say, no stars. the landscape is like utah but dark dark maroon or black. there is a person standing on a ladder that extends up into the sky pretty far, just a freestanding ladder and someone who climbed it below is someone on the ground the one on the ladder can see everywhere. its a flat planet i guess, and none of the mountains or weird rocks are too big to see over the one on the ground can see the climber from anywhere, and can go anywhere, but can't see everywhere. that's the singular domain of the one stuck unmoving at the top of the ladder the one on the ground is annoyed to feel always watched and shouts, im going to knock you down the one on the ladder says there's a mob of people who don't like you over that ridge. the one on the ground decides to look eventually, but finds an old campsite they're over there now, says the one on the ladder

[sciberpunk-stories]

3 Shorts  [by: Z. Texalek]

The Xenoanthropology-Xenopology Intergalactic Interdimensional Research And Collaborations Conference is hosted on neutral lunar territory, which xenopologists can reach by Earth-to-Moon elevator transit, and which xenoanthropologists can reach from Mars-to-Moon mattergram.  The Martian mattergram was responsible for many guest arrivals from further away, although most made their own way to the vacation dome devoted for the conference. Guests arriving from other dimensions simply arrived.  The ghost lectures were packed with xenopologists, standing room only, despite the xenoanthropological nature of the ghost’s work.  It was a common discourtesy at the conference–in a way, this discourtesy was the raison d'etre of every attendee–a kind of willfully cross-purpose gaze-for-all that sometimes skewered insights in the crosshairs.  Observe:

1. A presentation unfolds on the xenoanthropology concentration day.  The presenter outlines the inconsistencies between human biology and cultural constructions of sex categories; unexpected conflicts between the sex assignment based on phenotype and the assignment based on karyotype were surveyed, along with multiple irreconcilable third sexes, including XXX karyotype individuals, who were taller on average than XX individuals and reproduce significantly different birthrates of other karyotypes from those reproduced by others.  It was suggested on the much more strict and coherent basis of karyotype, that human sex categories be both expanded–to reflect a diverse reality–and simplified; all humans, argued the presenter (hailing from the crystal caves of Titan where the xenoids reproduced via clonal budding) could be most honestly regarded as variations on the single template laid out on the X chromosome.  All humans, even humans with one sex chromosome only, have an X chromosome. All humans, even those with the so-called partial X, the Y-chromosome, could, in spite of their phenotype, be induced to produce milk for young, and might, from gestation onward, internally house any number of the reproductive structures expected in individuals lacking the Y chromosome and exhibiting the phenotype produced by ongoing exposure to estrogen.  Likewise many of the reproductive structures expected in individuals exhibiting the phenotype to signal them, were disabled or otherwise absent–was sex categorization logically relevant when sexual reproduction didn’t or couldn’t occur, and given the uncertainties presented about any given individual’s sex regardless of their reproductive ability, was sex categorization logically relevant at all? Simply identifying an individual’s sex chromosomes didn’t portray their reproductive status, and the chromosomes are the only simple identification realistically available to determine exactly that: the whole concept of sex categories was to quickly assess the expected role in producing replacement group members of developing group members. If the categories function only as misleading guidelines with “general accuracy”, they’re both culturally and scientifically irrelevant.  Ideological fossils.  The presentation concludes with the suggestion that the diverse sisterhood of the human race be an enshrined recontextualization based on the superior objectivity of xenoanthropological observation.

2.  In the culinary studies pavilion a human xenopology grad student is speaking with a poster presenter from Mars, about Martian recuisine, the art of organizing a meal in such a way as to enhance its flavor at each traditional phase of the meal–initial ingestion should reveal one set of flavor profiles, which changed and improved in the gut, prior to regurgitation, which hosted a new set of flavors for the diner, followed by re-consumption after a short oxidization period, which altered the whole meal yet again.  The human is eating a series of samples out of small plastic cups; these samples have been processed by a professional, a Martian of the epigenetic caste of chef as earmarked by their stomach flora's favored enzyme cocktail.

3. In the dome’s guest suite village, two conference attendees are having enthusiastic sex.  All day they’ve been mingling as exhibits in the xenoanthropology portion of the body modifications and adornments pavilion.  These two are recipients of gene-therapy and cosmetic surgeries to confirm their nonhuman identities as anthropomorphics.  One guest is a leopard gecko and one is an adult male lion.  The leopard gecko is grinding up and down across the lion’s torso with zir whole body, which is about one half as big as the lion’s.  The lion is making low chunttering rumble noises and purrs, a wet spot already visible where its erection prods its Bermuda shorts.  The gecko whips around striking erogenous zones on the reachable expanse of titillated lion, weirdly-lidded eyes predatory and playful.  Finally the lion sounds more urgent, after a well-angled slide by its partner simulates penetration as the still-clothed boner skates zir slick naked thighs and wedges along the still-sealed genital opening.  The gecko smirks.  "Did you see that presentation about sex classification?  I liked that comment during questions, about motile-23 females and massive-23 females.“

“We just met,” the lion pants, trying to sound joking but suddenly panicked.  "Besides, I don’t make sperm anyway, you know that.“ The gecko did though, the lion realized suddenly: the gecko had testes and produced motile cells for genetic recombination.  No delivery method, though.

"Just making conversation,” in a very sly, unconversational manner.

“…are you edging me by trying to freak me out?  If you want, we can roleplay that I’m breeding the bejeezus out of your tight little lizardy fuckhole.”  The win-win gambit, either the gecko was trolled back–fair play–or the sex was about to get enthusiastic, again.  The gecko’s eyes darkened and zi smiled a wide, appealing smile, running zir pale, padded fingers through the lion’s chest fur in symmetrical patterns and gripping intermittently.  Then Zi slid down hard at just the right angle and said,

“Breed me Leo.”  At which point the encounter concluded with the lion gushing its thin ejaculate, losing its boner and any present interest in sex, and deciding it felt like a swing through the food pavilion.  The gecko found this decidedly deal-breakery.

[sciberpunk-stories]

H. ouroboros [by: Z. Texalek]

description:  historical sci-fi told in the near-future, covering initial public presentation of time-spanning technology-based investigation of the pre-recorded past and part of the cultural impact of that presentation. word count: 1472 content warning: nongraphic mention of cannibalism, infanticide, amputation. 

[][][][]

A meta-archaeological historian takes the podium.  This is the main room of the Conference of Cross-time Sciences in Reykjavik, Iceland. The hotel hosting the conference has provided tasteful laser-etched lucite furniture for the attendees, and in the dim light cut just by projector beam and baseboard track-lighting, the lectern glows under the speaker’s tablet and notes like a bioluminescent deep-sea jelly.

A brief introduction from the room marshal followed by rehearsed-sounding preamble from the speaker.  The concluding joke is met with polite laughter; despite flaws in delivery, the room appreciates the humor intellectually. The pitch of the projector’s faint whirr changes as the visual presentation begins, announcing the same title listed in the conference schedule-planner leaflet: Homo ouroboros, 2 million years of long pork in Europe. The speaker begins thumb-swiping through a scripted accompaniment displayed on the tablet, clicking a handheld remote to instruct the pace of progression by the visual narrative.  The auditorium of assorted researchers, reporters, archivists and livefeed broadcasters expresses a loaded hush. A pregnant silence, it might be called.

“Two million years ago,” the speaker glances from the tablet to the surely-murky figures of the unlit back rows, puncturing the silence with a concordant change of visual, from title screen to moving landscape. “Upright apes in the Homo genus began applying their, which is to say our, technological genius to the task of expanding northward into novel habitats.” A group of moving figures is picked out of the landscape and the perspective changes as the ground shifts backward, slingshoting the viewpoint across the distance, to the action. The group is made up of short individuals, enough to make up several lineage groups, or one very large lineage. They are clothed in hooded skin ponchos and carry collection bags made of form-cured ostrich stomachs, although this surprises no one in the audience; the work presented today builds on prior cross-time archaeological studies cataloging material cultures of the past. The catalog-building surveys were preliminary applications of mathematical analysis of atomic junk data by quantum computers, translating a stratigraphy of events embedded in all matter and accessible via freed electrons, like putting together the fragments of former files on a sloppily wiped hard drive.  The conference today is the cutting edge of this expanding field; building on these initial catalogs, specific times and places are now “of interest” to historians, who pore over the records–mapped from math to model by different quantum processing farms–watching history for new information.  

“Their semi-permanent yurt-style homes were up to the challenge, when reinforced with the thick-furred hides of the megafauna they encountered as they moved further from the equator. These individuals we’re seeing were part of a larger population focused on foraging high-starch root foods and tracking large herbivores to scavenge from accidents, other predators, or attempt an ambush kill. They would form permanent foraging parties to follow likely targets such as injured elephants, travelling with their housing and other tools and settling where possible around the resource base created by the death of their prey.”  The little people depicted in the projection are climbing a trail through a rocky landscape. They pause as one and listen to something for a moment before a call is heard from the head of the chain of travelers and movement resumes. The vocalization is subtitled nonthreatening rock fall. “Surprising even a family of goats in the narrow ravines we see them in here, using fire-herding and artificially hardened, poison-tipped spears, would net enough hide for a whole layer of covering on a multi-adult tent once the pieces were tanned and hitched together by gut-rope threaded through awl holes in the hide.”  A remote-click and the scene changes to show a village, surrounded by walls of dried thorny branches.  "Having originated in micropopulations struggling against unstable and demanding seasonal weather at higher elevations throughout Northern Africa, these innovations for living spread between groups and were quickly set in the cultural psyche of these groups.  The amassing of survival technology in the conscious of these populations gelled naturally into attempts to expand their range northward, to avoid resource competition.  This avoidance of conflict–this tendency to seek uncontested resources in novel territory–was the same impulse that lead these populations away from the lowlands to the south and into mountainous territory, and it was in mountainous terrain that the first explorers of Europe from our own genus emerged onto that new continent.“

[][][][]

[Two Years Later]

[][][][]

The same meta-archaeological historian takes the podium.  But today it’s at the InfOscars, the world’s major prestige award ceremony for recognizing excellence in edutainment productions.  _H. oroborus _has won best horror.

Later, drinking gin and soda at the afterparty thrown by the lead actor, the historian feels strangely naked sitting on the settee when there is a hush in the room and all attention turns setteeward, drawn by the movie playing in front of it. The night’s horror winner is on, and some choice dialogue has begun.  The script formula is painfully predictable, in the historian’s opinion. The acting has been over-sung, also, in the historian’s opinion–although everyone in the room seems credibly impressed by it at the moment.  The lead actor plays multiple characters throughout time, from the first group to winter in Doggerland, through several subsequent occupation attempts leading up to the Holocene, and then several characters throughout northwestern Europe victimized by poltergeist activity stemming from the horrors undertaken by the first migrants and recreated by every subsequent colony to the area, culminating finally in the psychotic insights of a hallucinating Finnish soldier, eating the amputated legs of his hostage in a stew, a scene set in the winter of 1944.  The great horror of it all is its reality; the desperate-albeit-clinically-tactical initial invention of baby farming for food purposes after the first winter in which several group members die of exposure and are eaten, was enshrined in the great chronology of earth as glued in fragments to all its atoms.  By the same mechanism that encoded this saga, later populations attempting to settle the site were haunted by the strange impellation to replay the recorded events–to re-enact them. The descendants of the survivors are plagued by these deep-level scripts of their environment, and in turn they plague the world.

"When the last of the soup of ground bones had been finished and winter lasted on, we began to decide who would offer their arm or leg so that the group might live.  We harvested two whole limbs from volunteers, our more aged family-parts, before the predictable tragedy of a premature end to Enn’s attempt to bring a new life to the group …changed our eating habits …and reconciled our food stress …permanently.”  Applause scatters across the room, the actor whose home they’re in is outside by the pool.

The historian’s eyes roll harder than they had for the intertitle card reading “1.666 million years ago.” This whole theme of the slippery slope of murder-as-killing-for-greed starting via cannibalism was entirely unfounded in any of the recreated past that had been studied thus far.  It _was _the case that the patterning of those initial events had indeed constituted a kind of physical meta-trauma that’d sunk into the landscape and rematerialized an intensifying cycle of the same events and emotions ad nauseum as new individuals sensitive to such patterning were drawn into roles in the ongoing revivals.  The intensification of this process had accelerated exponentially, culminating in the first genocide, the period when warring factions of cannibals wiped one another off the map 1.64 million years ago. But, contrary to the movie, it was not the case that this could credibly be interpreted to be the dawn of culture-wide psychopathy in humans, because it could not yet be verified that nothing similar had occurred independently elsewhere.  It was certainly verified, however, that psychopathic activity arose on smaller scales commonly throughout the human evolution, as it became alternately adaptive and maladaptive to lack certain aspects of sociality–you must compete with the world to stay alive but misdirected or compulsively unending competitiveness resulted in difficulty staying alive, as group living becomes impossible at that point.  The question of how to acceptably manage antisocial tendencies for prosocial benefits is moot when every participant in a social system is antisocial. No “management” can occur; all perspective is lost.  The revealed past, on this topic, as chronicled in H. oroborus, notes “first we ate the dead, then we asked for limbs. First we ate miscarriages, then we asked for abortions, then we asked for infants…and then we ate our enemies, afraid they would eat us first.  And then we were our own enemies and we ate each other until we had no one left and we were gone entirely.”

“Ach orrible.” The historian sighed dramatically, a sound swallowed by the conversations on all sides.

[][][][]

[sciberpunk-stories]

Factory Fresh (The Goat cont.) [by: Z. Texalek]

description: sci-fi. in the near and possible future, an anthropomorphic female goat manufactured as a sexual aid keeps her owner friend company in a vastly reorganized, green city. word count: 1253 content warning: discussion of consent dynamics and free will.

野羊                野羊                野羊

The kiss startles my friend.  He looks at me wide-eyed, and then his expression turns severe, guilty looking. "Don't," he says.  He goes back to work.  I love him, a gush of it greets me from inside my system while I process his reaction.  I determine that to leave would be a mistake.  I was told to refrain from contact, not to go away.  I sit down next to his chair, on the carpet.  He looks askance at me and I see him force away whatever reaction he has. Back to work.  He's staring at pages of notes.

"Fuck," the sudden break of silence, the tension he's expressing in his posture and voice, alarm me.  I want to press my cheek to his thigh, to be reassuring somehow.  His job must be so difficult, I fret to myself.  

"I wish I could help you, dear friend," I tell him softly.

He makes a disgusted sound and smears his hand across his face.  He hasn't been dry-showering even, lately.  "Friend," he echoes. "Fuck," he echoes again.

  野羊                野羊                野羊

Days pass before he revisits this exchange aloud with me, and when he does, it seems to be nearly against his own will. He sits down with me on the sofa, it's the first time I've seen him use it.

"When I ordered you, it was under the direction of this building complex's therapist, to help manage my work stress.  I specified that you should have the lowest possible setting of sexual interest because the exercise of acquiring a synthetic sexual companion unnerved me in and of itself, and the idea of programming you to be actively interested in me or assertive about sex--the idea that you would be unable to lack interest in initiating if I set your interest high enough--seemed somehow monstrous. So I came up with settings that seemed to compromise between my mental health professionals directions and my own conscience, misguided as I'm told it is in your... in this case."

How sweet he is, I think.  My attention is held on him, listening understandingly.  I want to take his hand and I don't.  The sun begins to set, changing the light streaming from the window behind us over the whole room.

He goes on, after a pause in which he runs his hands through his hair.  "And I don't...  I haven't felt... I can't initiate either.  Even when I."  He stops, hunching further into himself, looking at his hands.

In a flash it occurs to me that he doubts whether I would welcome an advance. "I consent," I tell him softly.  "I would be honored."

He grimaces, still looking away. "Wonderful.  The consent of my mechanical slave that's been programmed to consent.  That means so much."  I can hear his sarcasm.  I've been programmed to detect it.  But I don't understand the reason.

"I'm sorry," I sound melancholy.

His head jerked. "Don't be." He frowned to himself.  "Don't be," he said again.

It's a long sunset, just now the gold had darkened in hue.  I could find no useful resolution in my programming, which compelled me to be tacit and largely detached from any need I might have of my friend.  I realize now it's so I can make up my own mind about how to engage with him, but I can't make up my own mind.  It's been made up already, by him deciding it would be immoral for me to be programmed to the opposite extreme.  So I am determined in my patience rather than my pursuit.  And my patience may outlive my place here, I worry. If this is irreconcilable, what function do I serve?  He doesn't need blinking furniture, or help making lunch.

"I didn't expect you to seem so real when I unboxed you," he finally said.  I remember him unboxing me, carefully. Kindly.  "And that made it seem so much worse."

"I am real, though," I supply.

"Are you?  Do you have free will?"

"Are you certain you would know what free will looks like?"  This philosophy is actually a core aspect of programming, in cases of moral crises on the owner's part.  "Do you have free will, or are you yourself caught in a backwards-collapsing timewave riddled with reverse causation activity?  Are you not held under the deterministic force of both your past and future?"

This seemed to strike a chord and his glance fell on the desk, where his notes were spread.  "Someone smarter than I am wrote that for you," he said.

"In a manner of speaking.  The phrasing is original.  I could fairly accuse you of saying nothing original, yourself. Anything could be cited as a rewrite of existing concepts, couldn't it?"

He smiled at me. This has been our longest conversation. "Anything, but not everything."

I understand the difference, I think. "Try saying something original and I'll cross reference it for you via the wifi."  His smile disappeared.

He groaned and his hunch hitched, between the shoulderblades.  "What do you see me doing?  When I'm not working on my ulcer debating whether to have sex with my sex robot I'm trying to do my job, which is very much the task of saying something original. Something so original that it reconciles an engineering problem for billions of people globally, in a way never before achieved in recorded history.  Because if it had been achieved before, recorded history would have been completely different.  And I haven't had any epiphanies."

"Are you on a deadline?"

"I'll die, eventually."

"Then you should try to live longer, I suppose," did I sound leading?  Or, maybe pleading.

"Of course.  Why, doctor, when did you arrive?  Have you come to recommend that I attempt to fulfil my emotional needs by adopting an inhumanly perfect match for myself because I'm unable to maintain bonds with actual humans?  Real people with free will don't want the job, so sure, I can just force, just... engineer the necessary subservience.  I can just pay for it in installments.  That makes me feel so much better.  Yeah, that sounds totally fulfilling and not at all depressing.  Fuck," he concluded bitterly.

"Have I depressed you?" How horrible...

He sighed. "Yes, but most things depress me.  My apartment being empty depressed me.  Telling myself it's not any less empty because I go a robot depresses me. Feeling too ashamed to actually use you for sex anyway because you're too alive all the same, depresses me.  My job depresses me.  I depress me.  I'm depressed."

"Maybe that's why you can't get your work done."

"Chicken or the egg.  Either way, the cycle hasn't been broken.  I thought you... I didn't think I'd...” he sounded frustrated.

"Would you be upset again if I tried to approach you again, like the other day?"  I don't want to name the gesture, I don't think he'd like to hear it.

"Maybe."  We listened to the word sink into a pensive silence. After a long pause, my friend straightens his back and it pops in several places.  "Thank you," he finally says.

"For what?"  I've been a failure.

"For the conversation.  I wasn't really sure how to start one with you. You're... good company."

I flick my ears happily, feeling better immediately. "Thank you." He smiles a funny asymmetrical smile and I add "I love you."

He squints at me but the smile widens just-perceptibly.  "Let's not get carried away," he tells me.  I think he's reminding himself, again.  I laugh, and quietly, after a moment he chuckles along.

[sciberpunk-stories]

By Name of -Frengh, Part 2 [by: Z. Texalek]

description: traditional sci-fi. in the deep future, a dead soldier is resurrected across space and a little bit of time, musingly bound for the adventure of an afterlifetime with several ghosts along for the ride, all stuck in the same brain. word count: 1970 content warning: deals with paranoia, delusion, subjective experience, state programming.

M'xiira.  This is our next friendly rigrunner.  She and Briin know one another, somehow.  I’m not interested, still, in these details.  I barely had time to use our last friends’ names.  Barely took time.

I think, sometimes, about all the softer information in the energy that went back into my brain.  If the smudges, including myself, are smudgy–inconsistent but extant–my sense is that it’s because we’re the most recent and undiffused information stored in that near-immaterial substance.  There must be knowledge from the other living and unliving canisters as well, integrated into the underside of my knowing without voice.  Genetically imprinted but on an interlocked plane.  A plane without literal material. An other dimension of being.

I have a bunk and a hammock below it, and twice the space again beside it inset into the hull behind a panel, which I can close or curtain as I like.  I use both.  M'xiira leaves thick-mesh curtains over her bunk, tucked in behind her navigation console and the course calculation readout screen.  She says it’s easy to see the space speeding by in front of you, staring at the numbers.  “After a while you get used to it.  I can move around the ship so long as I keep a peripheral of the upcomings.“  She always wears a screen over her left eye, a little projection of the big screen.  She says when she’s at the big screen, she turns it to cartoons and blogs.  Cartoons and blogs. I don’t know what those are and the translator doesn’t change the words for me.  Nothing in my language is like these sounds.  Her name translates but these words fail to.  Her name to me means empire.  Her bunk is in a different part of the ship from mine, as is Briin’s.  Moved into close proximity they would form an exercise weight shape.

We’re in transit.  Briin reads screen after screen of text in its bunk, wanders the ship, listens to stories from M'xiira.  I like to listen to her too.  She’s a weapons dealer and runner; her day-to-day is the combination of plausible diversion and constant detection-evasion that is necessary cover for our life out of reach.  At some point we’re meant to stop somewhere more permanently, some out of sight, forgotten place to stow ourselves.  Briin researches where, and how to set up, and what is needed–even what "our intentions” are in terms of …living.

I spend my time mostly in my bunk, sometimes I tune into the chattering voices of Briin and M'xiira on the rigwide vocal broadcaster.  The chattering voices in my own mind are now as easy for me to tune in and out of, and I listen to their stories as well much of the time.  When Ix'ia sits to my mind’s table again, ze comes with a request: Ze wants to stop over at Zer planet and assess–and possibly interfere in–the political situation.  Ze imagines vividly for me what could be happening in zer absence.  And as vividly back as I can, I imagine placidity–pastoralism.  Zer planet mapped over with imagery about the pre-War of Extermination period on Tris'vgh.  I have to add in more creeping vines and night-active creatures, skip the grainfields waving in the warm wind with wind+++ turbines hazy in the distance.  I say no to the course ze urges.  This is of no interest to me, and this life is my own.  All favors owed to the priestess by anyone were null at zer death, and no new favors are owing.  Why I’m certain about the morality of this is Mee-av, who agrees with my gut instinct, that this life is my own because I’ve claimed it, and must serve myself.  However, Mee-av feels that I owe my life to Briin as much as to myself, or more, and that this constitutes a debt of service to it, where none could exist between myself and the less active controlling interests now-seated in my psyche.  Possibly I… agree partway.  I can’t tell whether it’s subtle cross-pollination between our minds, or whether (again on a gut level) I believe, independently, that I owe something to Briin.  Something that doesn’t take the shape of “a favor” in my mind.  A fealty.  I suppose compounding it is the fact that aside from my inherent desire to distance from Briin (seeded by the unlikely-seeming success of our escape and egged on by carry-over suspicion from not being able to assess the basis for my present motivations as original to my own mind, thanks to the smudges), I like Briin.  I’ve liked it ever since we met–all its stupid blinks and its cheerful, cooperative, concerned behavior.  But I don’t know Briin and I keep distance from it.

We stop place to place, to refuel mostly.  Briin goes offrig and takes in the local culture.  Usually the local culture is food that makes its asshole sick, its stomach unhappy.  Smoke from various inhalants in the air, industry-polluted recycled air.  Sometimes, however, we stop off on a planet, and I’ll stretch my legs, do combat exercises.  Briin is amazed at what comes easily to me.  A true librarian. Briin captures specs on my movements, exclaims over what, to any soldier of my species, is standard performance.  Expected.  To perform backflips, running drops from heights many times our own.  We stop sometimes where plants get very large with reinforced structures, and on these I can really fly.  Briin initially insisted that it was dangerous but quickly turned to simply observing my ability to leap and travel at speed high above the ground. The little scholar, shorter and less muscular than myself.  So flimsy, so limited in range of bodily control.  The charming bright child.  I don’t know, really, whether I’ll be able to fend for it with my skills in the way it fends for me with its skills.  My training is to combat nonhumoid creatures.  Against even something so low-tech as a retrieval squad of bounty hunters with pulse weapons, my kill skills are not so valuable.  M'xiira is more valuable than I am, in that regard.  A true warrior, respected by that subtle hired killer my head.  M'xiira wears a bandoleer of micro-teleporting skipgrenades and carries a giant blade of timefrozen acid, in a wedge of flexible platinum-enforced plastic on her back.  A very unfavorable encounter awaits any alien at our stops who might enjoy trouble.  Perhaps it is fair to say that I revere M'xiira.

But in spite of my respect or… affection for the two I travel with, I have cause to remain skeptical. I continue to puzzle over an exchange I overheard between these comrades a few stops back; we had parked the rig on a small asteroid, a mining site with one cafeteria for workers, known to M'xiira as "the saloon.”  The artificial atmosphere of the tiny outpost burned my airways after a few minutes standing outside the rig, and I decided to practice crypsis.  I am able, under certain states of stress (which can easily be self-induced), to exercise intentional control over the frequency of the vibration of atoms in my exterior down to the dermis, and create a kind of distortion out of myself, a static in which to hide.  In this state I am virtually unable to defend myself but I become both difficult to observe and a more astute observer; my senses heighten as I become more superficially permeable atomically and am able to intake and organize more information from the environment about any actions and matter within it. Wandering around the rig in a casual way, I passed out of the line of sight of all the exterior security monitoring sensors I had spotted, and entered crypsis.  With a few ground-covering jumps I closed the space between myself and the back of the saloon, and scaled the exterior.  From the roof I made my way into an air circulation duct–the place was so defenseless it was surprising to me that this was where M'xiira apparently had an arms deal, although maybe picking the least likely spot had a wisdom to it–and from the duct, into the space above the interior ceiling-facing, which was thin planks of reformed pressed inorganic foam laid between a wide lattice of metal bars.  I spread my weight across the supports and made my way by the light between the planks until I could hear the tones of my companions’ voices in the eatery, between the many other, mainly louder, conversations.  It was a bit like being in a large crew transport after retrieval, with leitmotifs of shouted phrases, the solos and the chorus swells–in many languages now, rather than slight regional dialectical variations.

“I don’t know what to do about them,” Briin said, the first phrase I caught distinctly.  That was the moment the exercise clarified itself into a good idea. Then as now, however, I felt uneasy about potentially raising more suspicions for myself without any clear preferable alternative to continuing with this group.

“Well does it matter that… they… is delusional. Are delusional?” That was M'xiira.

“Explain it to me again?” This other voice was clearly a third participant in the conversation, maybe M'xiira’s contact.  "Is every personality delusional or just the main one. Why is there a main one, do they ever take turns?  Have you met the others?  How do you know its true anyway?“

"The company did regular neuroprints, Frengh has multiple distinct personalities subsumed within the guiding ego. I don’t know why the company established a backstory like that, with compartmentalized knowledge.  The senior programmers claim an organic system like a human mind will reject organizing too much information consciously. You can’t just hypnotize someone into knowing everything.”

“But they hypnotized her–them, whatever–into being able to jump between trees like a soviet gymnast.”

“A what?”  M'xiira’s casual tone felt surreal to me, in light of my comprehension of their conversation.  They meant me. Briin knew more than had been made known to me.  I had not been brought into the domain of my former captors in the way I remembered.  I might remember nothing factual about my life at all.

“Soviets, they lived hereabouts two hundred years ago.  Learn your history, girl, or you’ll swing your blade for nothing.”

“There’s not a lot of room in the van for books.”  

“Get an e-reader,” the three of them laughed the same tired laugh.  "Wouldn’t you like the Security Agency stopping you next time you try to take the Alaska tunnel down to our friends in Cabo, asking why you’ve been brushing up on your ruskies, why you’re accessing antiestablishment concepts?“

Briin hadn’t said anything in a while, now adding "even better, my former employers could just execute me by laser the second they catch me through the thing’s camera.”  This was reassuring to hear, in a way.  At least something about the paradigm of my life remained un-unraveled by this eavesdropping.  If I had thought to guess how my reality might be called into question by what I might overhear tonight, I think I would have banked on an inversion of this revelation–to discover Briin is still an agent of the “undesertable” collective, by pain of death or some hidden patriotism, and for my own memories, my own nature, to remain unquestioned.  Does this news, so unexpected, make any difference to my situation?  Am I too shocked by the implications to process them?  I asked myself then, braced across a thin barrier in a gloaming dark, but the “answer” I supplied back was as confused and uninformative as my own skin.   I’ve concluded that I have as much ability to gain traction on the topic of who or what I am, as someone looking at me from the outside.  My mind is even more cryptic than it seemed.

—————————–—- - -  -   -

[sciberpunk-stories]

Do millennials find AnYtHiNg sexy??? Yxes! but its kinda like demolition man

B is halfpaying attention to thoughtplay, sexy vampire scenario A: [offering neck] go ahead my shining child B: [muffled laughter] A: what im gonna call you my undead babe B: im not undead yet A: yeah, you are. Youre alive. Technically youll be dead in a minute B: see thats hilarious, this is how i know im not just talking to myself

[the-future-now-deactivated20170]

A smart sex doll may become reality in 2017

In a Reddit AMA on Tuesday, RealDoll CEO Matt McMullen revealed some of the company’s future plans for its sex dolls — and the future of intimacy involves a lot of plastic, metal and your smartphone. As for sentience, McMullen responded to a Reddit question asking if the dolls will ever be able to love us back.

Follow @the-future-now

[sciberpunk-stories]

The Bat Country Band watched their newly synthesized European ice age cave guy simulation chew the seven eleven oatmeal raisin cookie they'd given him. "Whacha think??" the singer was leaning in like a heron. The scene was so Encino Man. "Hey dude this is sooo Encino Man??" addressed the aside to the bassist; that aesthetic was big in their circle right now mostly because of bio-dome revival fever. "We could make him our drummer!" "Lair we have a drummer." The bassist put his arm around nothing. Both he and the singer were dressed like dayglo pitstain apparitions of Joey Ramone, like if Joey Ramone appeared in the sweat marks on a hypercolor shirt. "Harvey's a great drummer." The cave guy held up a hand, still absorbing the food thoughtfully. "I prefer this wheat to the other, much finer wheat. This feels good to chew." They had already tried him with a rainbow chip cookie. "I agree with the cave guy," said the bassist. "So does Harvey." The singer scoffed and rolled his eyes dramatically while folding his arms in front of him and tossing his head to get his hair half out of his face. "You don't have to speak FOR her all the time, Frek, we're ALL right here." Harvey suggested they try to sneak into Veld because it was the fifteen year anniversary and someone said they'd thawed out deadmau5 special for the occasion. It seemed like a good idea, but then The Bat Country Band couldn't decide on what to do with the cave guy, who had gone into some kind of insulin shock or something. "Well no shit we should've read the wikipedia," the bassist snapped at Harvey. End

[sciberpunk-stories]

2017 blog post by asabafagacab15: in fits of mitchiness i commonly misgender folks who conscriptively talk in terms of assigned sex at birth with cutting edge pronoun memes eg square can get it squareself. i am aware that it's not only regressive but deeply passe and that a no apologies attitude is also passe b i retro #oldmeme #vintagefilter #waybackwhen

[sciberpunk-stories]

Three shorts from the xenoanthropology-xenopology intergalactic interdimensional research and collaborations conference

UPCOMING! Featuring: -Q&A on The Biological Mechanisms of Homo psuedo-sapiens -Food Fair

[sciberpunk-stories]

the day plants spontaneously developed the ability to synthesize artificial light was not remarkable

50 days later civilization gave up fighting, and the underground parking structures and office building foundations crumbled completely

look on my works ye mighty

[sciberpunk-stories]

Me I Like Pop-tarts [by: Z. Texalek]

and me? well me, i like poptarts. that's about all there is to it. we're a motley crew, bitchn our way through life in the eastern wastezone. i haven't seen a fukn poptart in six years, this point. couple years ago we picked up a kid who didn't even know what poptarts were, thought they sounded like a waste of gutspace. kid decided to crew up with the next group we saw. i don't know if that kid ever did find out about poptarts for real. waste of gutspace? pleasely, pleasels, please, peas. kids today don't know about poptarts, that's what the world has come to out here. im sleeping in a pastel rotscape of an old putput golf course with eight other goofballs in leather armor and not one of us can track down a god damn poptart no matter how many times we mish into the crapholes that used to be cities. yknow i buy that conspiracy story about rich people living in colonies somewhere, like on islands or hollow mountains or behind forcefields with millionyear supplies of everything while we wander around out here wondering why 99.99% of everyone else got sick. i buy that, and i can't buy a poptart. that's life, i guess. wondering why. wandering why? that's about all there is to it.

[sciberpunk-stories]

Factory Fresh (The Goat) [by: Z. Texalek]

description: sci-fi. in the near and possible future, an anthropomorphic female goat manufactured as a sexual aid keeps her owner friend company in a vastly reorganized, green city. word count: 1224 content warning: gently depicts depression and work stress, brief mentions of consent dynamics, feelings of sexual inadequacy, and a kind of fatalistic outlook on the future of human relationships (with a positive spin).

野羊                野羊                野羊

My friend is glum. He sits at his desk in the spare room he uses as a study slash library, with his hands threaded through his unwashed hair. Prancing won’t do the trick; that there’s only a 10% chance of prancing cheering my friend up. Prancing, cavorting around… have worked when he’s sitting glum-but-alert at the kitchen counter. Picturing his slight smiles, a flimsy awareness of something enters my positronic mind: I might like to consummate our pairing in some kind of physically affectionate way.  I really have no sense of my friend’s feelings about that possibility. Since he unpacked me two weeks ago, I’ve loved his way, his dearness. I’ve mourned his isolation and loneliness. I’ve been the companion he spec’d me to be, present and pleasant and just… nearby. Until this exact moment I hadn’t considered making any kind of physical contact with him, although when I help him pre-make his food for each week, we’ve brushed elbows. He commented one time on how lifelike my fine-but-coarse fur seemed. He didn’t elaborate but I suppose many children in this culture go to petting zoos or similar. He didn’t brush my fur with his hand or make further comment. Sweet friend—a slightly wistful sigh I keep to myself. When my shipping form got caught on one twisted horn, he helped me get it unstuck. I wonder about how other anthro goats pursue the happiness of their owners. With tenacity, I guess. Demonically energetic and sure. I don’t feel—haven’t been programmed to feel—so go-go-go-go about things. I have the horns but I’m not horny, so to speak. I almost don’t think about sex. Or, haven’t truly thought about sex at all yet. I’m not thinking about sex now, except as an abstract possible outcome of. Of what I’d like to try, today. An outcome that would manifest only if my friend maybe thinks more about sex than it seems, and there’s no hint to me that my friend does. When, ordinarily, the presence of a unit from my factory implies the need for a particular kind of companionship, my specific existence—my programming—suggests to me just that other companions are absent and not expected (no one calls, no one visits, there is no video conference center set up in the apartment, there are no photos), and that my friend thought I was a cute option for a synthetic humanoid to bond with. My programming implies to me a few possibilities, and my friend isn’t exposed enough to me for sound guesses about how likely each possibility is. The possibilities are: my friend has no interest in anything but companionship, and was unable to select ‘no interest in sex’ on the sliding scale controlling this in me (no animanthro lacks interest in sex; buyers who want sexual encounters with uninterested lovers are not an attractive market, from a PR perspective. Amaturevideo uploads of that kind of encounter wouldn’t be the kind of free advertising the company aims for); or, my friend has very little interest in sex, but left the possibility equally open in both of us, in case the mood ever struck; or, my friend has moral qualms about a hyper-sexually interested AI’s devotion; or, my friend has insecurities about his ability to perform, skillwise or outputwise, to satisfy a hyper-sexually interested partner, regardless of how easily pleased or how much fail-safe patience about output this partner could be spec’d for (both features are maxed out as stock settings for all animanthro units, and haven’t been altered in my programming).

I’ve been sitting in the open window, on the ledge, admiring the city’s greenery and the fresh breezes. There’s a network of bridges between forest and garden islands on the tops of buildings below us. It’s a lovely multi-tiered maze. Most of the city’s human inhabitants have quarters in this superstructure we’re in, and most of the buildings below us are refitted recyclers of one kind or another. Grey water system silos where shoe stores used to piggybacked food courts. All of the commodity businesses are centralized here, in the interior rings of this city of a structure we’re in, all the workers specializing in daily commodity production live near their shops, send their children to school together, up on one of the trade skills-and-general-tutoring floors. There are four whole floors for education, free to all who spare their time. The instructors live here too, and eat from the surplus the gardens down below us produce. There’s more than enough excess food to distribute beyond what the workers directly involved in growing it collect to trade and subsist off of; some of the buildings below us are composts and into some of them go the overflow harvest. It’s amazing that there can be overflow, given the human density in this tower…but it’s amazing how efficient farming can be (has become), and how much cityscape there is to farm. Not every corner I can see has been reclaimed and repurposed, even.  I turn my head to my friend, who sits still, head in his hands and forlorn, staring into some kind of schematic for some distant project. He’s a hydroengineer, working as part of a global team to increase the efficiency of salt water recycling and filtration while decreasing the ecological footprint to nil. A very small part of a team; I don’t know if his work burdens him with stress or whether stress from other things burden his work. Our apartment is bright, the sun hasn’t begun to set yet and we’re 40 stories up, just below the midpoint of the building. When the building shortens itself into the ground based on seismic forecasts, we’re the ground floor for twenty minutes. I’m not sure what I want to say, but I feel like speaking softly, having some kind of soothing conversation with him. Perhaps…maybe…in the future, an equilibrium could be reached, where human workers, now so energetic in their hands-on revolutionization of their world—throwing themselves single-mindedly, it seems, into healing the human harms to the earth—could ease off and work to heal the psychic damage their past generations did them. Maybe units such as myself might, like the city below, be repurposed to do the hands-on tilling and pruning and carrying and weeding, the math and the planning, and the humans who would have turned to us as lovers could turn to one another. Surely that’s a sensible adjustment. But maybe it’s not the worst, for some of them to avoid human company… maybe throwing themselves into labor truly is the most healing and energizing thing possible, and no amount of adjustment and regrowth will ever return them to being humans who can have happy social bonds with other humans. Just like the city… not a forest like it used to be, before there was a city. But not so harmful. Contained, not spreading more mess into the future. Gently reducing the amount of clutter in a self-deleting cycle. Maybe humans would just introduce psychic clutter unnecessarily, by trying to have human lovers, trying to bond with other humans.

Instead of speaking, I trot over across the fluffed bamboo shag carpet and quietly, when my friend looks up, dip my head to his and nibble lippily at the corner of his cheek, right where the bone is sharpest.

[tbc]

[sciberpunk-stories]

Factory Fresh (The Wolf cont.) [by: Z. Texalek]

description: lolrotic sci-fi. so, the punky wolf sexbot is male, has a cunt, and is really into babes. the punky owner is queer, has a cunt, and is really into babes.  they’re both hot over each other’s bods, comfortable about their own anatomy, and inexplicably way-into brostep.   the narrator near-constantly gender-skews his owner, but they asked for him that way… word count: 1269 content warning: graphic goofiness, affectionate-but-constant gendered slurs, sexual availability/willingness outside human limits, sex. there’s sex in this, it starts with sex, its graphic about double penetration. lots of swearing too. [statement of intent]

怒阿呆 餓狼       怒阿呆 餓狼         怒阿呆 餓狼 Ffffffuuuuuck. The double-dil is self-lubricating and my ass is built to spec, good to go like this isn’t my first rodeo. It’s TOO good. I just howl the entire time, like “awww—aw, yes, yeah, aww awww awW-aaAWWOO” and all that. Nonestop. To wub-heavy trap fusion. My partner has this insistent, punishing beat their own, when they’re not beatmatching the tunes. I taste white lightbursts in the back of my throat while I scream each move, each overwhelming feel. Yesssss. Love it. Soooo good. “Gawddamn, bitch—yes, fuck, fuck, oh fuck, fuck me, holy shit fuuuuckkk—you-you bitch, I’m rubbing my fur off. You’re fucking my-my-AWW FUCK SHIT YES—fucking my FUR OFF. YO LISSEN. MY FUR.”  They pause, looking into my face. I snap a lil’ at ‘em and wiggle, tail wags slightly. Keep six, tail, knock it off. They grin a long, lopsided, crocodiley grin and slide slow, slow slow back and I feel the press of the shorter, curved lower cock as it presses that wall of my cunt into the underside of the upper tier cock. It pulls a rumble from deep in my chest… ohh that’s good.  That’s too, too good.  Ignoring the music, my partner sets this slow I’m-really-fucking-you-now-huh-slut pace, this really you-fucking-love-me-fucking-you-huh-slut pace.  Each thrust is smug with how good it knows it is. I’m arching and squirming a bit, mostly trying to buck things into a real pounding.  This is the intro thunder, there’s a whole storm behind the fucking she’s giving me.  Oops I mean they, they-they-they.  What the fuck.  For a second I’m flummoxed.  Where did that come from?  How could I, like actually literally HOW could I get that wrong?  I look into her—their! Jesus!—eyes and there’s a laugh there, a kind of twisted humor like ...they know.  And in the moment marked by the connection of our stares, both of us panting, them with their hands balled into fists on either side of my skull on the floor, stabilizing them over me, there’s a satisfying shift in pace.  Things are going faster again, and there’s a thrum or like a throb in my groin, a YES.  And a gush of my oozy lube.  My partner bends her—their! What. The. Fuck.—face down to me and bites my neck through a mouthful of grey fur, and unf, there are those cocks, owning me.  Telling me what I know, “you love it.”  I do fucking love it, nothing could compare to this shit.  Ya’ll don’t even know about getting double-fucked.  Let me tell you about getting double-fucked: the pleasure-pleasure is coming to me from my snizz, its inconsistent depending on angle and it feels like yup, mmm, yeah, fuck me, or sometimes like oooo yyyeeah you know how, go hard, oh fuck thats good; the thing that’s taking it two gears up is, my clit gets pressed between our pelvises and the base of the top cock squeezes between its embedded twin roots, charging the whole sh’bang with this like, fuck-friction that feels incredible—like an itch getting ground down on—and getting me gushing, getting me wet and stretched and swoll and feeling good; the things that’s taking it up into maximum overdrive is, there’s this cock in my ass and that feeling is NOT inconsistent, it’s like WHAT? HOLY SHIT FUCK ME—it’s not pleasure-pleasure on its own, more like pure sensation, like it’d be good on its own but in combo it’s fucking mind blowing.  My mind is officially blown, has officially been blown.  I think about blowing her cocks—their cocks—taking them both in my muzzle as well as possible like a real mouthful and drooling and just givin’ it, and I come for serious.  I come like a fucking fountain.  That was it, it was too much. The image plus the fucking plus the ...fucking.  Too much.  And I’m still getting fucked, this shit is obviously not over.  There’s a devil driving my partner, I can tell.  Damn, I have lucked the fuck out here.  Partner driven to drive me like the damned.  They got one of my legs pried back over their shoulder and that’s the leverage they’re leaning into, driving my knee up next to my cheek and my hanging-out tongue.  At this point I’m just in space, I can’t even tell my groans from the music, I can’t tell what my tail is trying to do.

After a while things wind down, I dunno whether they’ve came or not but they’re red in their lil’ face and sweaty, and they grin at me, all sticky and spread out under ‘em when they finally unlock from me and roll over onto the floor.  I’m gonna have to scrub some lube out of this shag for ‘em before it gets full of dirt and stains the place up.  “Hey, boss,” I’m stretching my leg out, arching my arms back.  I don’t really need to, I’m permanently limber like that.  But it looks casual, y’know? They slide their half-shut eyes my way, relaxin’.  “Didja O?  Y’want me to eatcha out or anything? Take a whack at it with buddy here,” I flop my knee a bit and swipe the slick dils, making them bob to the side and back into place.

“Hum.  A good eating out’d be nice, actually.  Think you can manage it, without mauling me?”  They kinda move the parts of them close to me so we make contact along that side, like a bit of a cuddle.

“You know I can,” and my tail’s going and my tongue is out again.  But it reminds me: “Hey, why’d you make them special program me to fuck up your pronouns.  That’s a weird fuckin’ move, eh.”

They hoot a laugh, “Haw!” and roll over onto me.  I’m like their pool toy, they can lie on me with room on all sides. “Noticed that, huh? Okay.  So you call me bitch to my face all day long but it’s weird when you’re calling me ‘her’ in your head when we fuck?”

“Well.”  I shut off the slow jam I’d shuffled on—I mean, I mute it a minute. “I dunno, like, bitch isn’t just ...dudes can be bitches and you’re not like, I mean, you’re a ‘they,’ you don’t even, like.  I dunno.  You’re.  Lissen can you just like explain this so I understand or whatever?  I’m pounded into jelly in my brain too, thank you very much.” And I mean thank you very much, so I give them a big lick upside the head.  Their hair that gets caught in my drool stands up all classic comedy style.

“...It gets me going when I’m fucking someone who thinks I’m a chick.  I have this.  Like.  It’s been an issue with.” They’re going to say humans, but then they don’t. “Past partners.  Because it’s only fun for me when we’re fucking... and um.  I’ve tried fucking people who don’t get me wrong like that and the uh.  The thrill of fucking the idea out of them... or, trying to... isn’t there?  Like.  It makes me feel kind of uh.  Impotent or whatever, somehow.  This is really hard to explain.  I dunno.  Maybe it’s like some kind of grudgefuck thing.  I don’t get it at all but it’s just way too fucking complicated trying to find someone... exactly like you, but human.  You know?”  I do know.  What fucking human could be exactly like me, anyway?

“Humans who aren’t you are kinda sucky, boss.”  They laugh and kiss my chin and I kinda melt.  Forever.

“Wolfy, you just said a mouthful.”