SFS2 - Science Fiction Short Stories: 10 Science Fiction Short Stories (3 page)

“Is this the alien?” asked the doctor after seeing the box.

“I risked my life to catch it. It had better be the alien.”

“You touched it to make sure, right?”

“Yes, of course I did. What kind of question is that?”

He asked me to touch it again, but I simply walked away.

It was midnight and I went to my cabin to check the Facebook updates and count the likes on my useless shares. This morning I posted “I don't like seafood.” 39 people liked that. I have no idea what the likes even mean.

The doctor and the chief came to my cabin. The chief's face seemed to be scared. I needed him to be proud of me. I had done a good job. I put on my best smile.

“You idiot! I sent you with the army guys because you know about aliens,” he shouted. “They don't know anything about aliens. You didn't catch an alien animal, you brought a robot back to our base. It was designed by our enemies to find our research station. Had you touched it you would have known that it wasn't an alien!”

”So what happens now?” I asked

“Just now we deactivated the robot,” he replied angrily. “Go and look at it.”

“One question, chief,” I said as I stepped into the lab. “It won't bite, will it?”

“I should punish you, you know?” he shouted out of control. “Instead of sending any dogs or monkeys to another planet for testing, I think I'm going to send you there.”

“Thank you, chief. It's always been my ambition. I've been waiting for this opportunity.”

“Wow. You're not the idiot. I'm the idiot.”

Note:

The enemy country fabricated the story about the alien and leads the research station on a wild goose chase. The target country believed they were searching for an alien. The enemy had planted the robot there that was so bravely captured by our comedy hero.

Date: 18-Dec-2013

My name is Robert. So far I've submitted five research papers. I have gotten grants from research funds to meet my expenses. I am currently working on my sixth research paper. I've spent over a hundred thousand hours on my latest research. Yes, actually a hundred thousand. But my research is still only halfway completed. I'll have to at least as much time as I've already spent to complete it. But before I do that, I'm going to test my invention. It might only be half done, but I've already spent so much time. I can't wait longer. My invention is the time machine. But as I said it's only half an invention. So far it's only able to travel to the future and cannot go back to the past.

Scientists believe in their research and dedicate their life to their work. But they're not ready to perform an experiment on themselves. And neither am I.

I am going to test my time machine with a rat. But I need to know if the rat reaches the future safely. How you ask? I invented a device that is based on the theory of relativity. It's about to communicate from anywhere in any time. It doesn't matter if it's sending a message to the past or the future or what. I attached the device to the rat so I could listen to the sound and see its body temperature.

My time machine is not ostentatious. It simply looks like a big box. I placed the rat inside the time machine, closed the doors and set the year to 2200 with today's date, December 18
th
. It took a few seconds for the rat to disappear, but when I opened the time machine to check, it was empty.

Even though I had already tested my invention with inanimate objects such as books and dust bins this was the first time I was testing with something that was alive. I put on the headphones and listened carefully. I heard the mild sound of a rat moving around. The temperature reading was normal. I was excited and loudly sang a song of joy as I sipped my black coffee.

After I finished my coffee I checked the temperature and tried listening again. I got nothing. No sound, no temperature reading. I was surprised. What had happened? I waited for more than an hour but nothing ever changed. I couldn't wait to invent a relativity camera to watch what was transpiring in the future so I decided to send the most intelligent monkey I could find.

I attached the device to the monkey's neck carefully and gave him an air horn. I took the air horn and pressed it. The monkey pressed it as well and liked the sound. He kept pressing it over and over. Of course I kept the time machine's remote control because although he was smart, he wasn't that smart!

I placed the monkey inside the time machine. He was still making noise with the air horn and enjoying himself. I set the same date and time for the machine. In a few seconds the monkey was gone. I wore the headphones and could hear the horrible air horn sound. I reduced the volume and checked the temperature which turned out to be fine. I monitored him continuously.

After two hours I put the headphones back on and checked to see if it was still there. The same air horn sound came out of the headphones but now I could hear some people's voices as well. I tried to listen but the air horn kept disturbing the voices.

I finally heard, “How did this damn monkey get this damn horn?”

I was super excited. A voice from the future. Unfortunately I couldn't hear anything other than the damn air horn noise. So now I was going to do the thing that scientists never do. Yes, I was going to test my half invention on myself. I couldn't control myself after having heard the voices from the future. I was going to travel through time. I didn't require the relativity device but I took the relativity remote to control the time machine.

I set the same time and date once again and entered into the time machine. I stood there only a moment before it started.

I closed my eyes. A loud noise started so I covered my ears with my hands. Suddenly I felt like I was flying at the speed of light in the dark. Then everything was quiet. I felt again like I was on the earth.

I opened my eyes and looked around. I could see ultra-modern building, flying cars, and there were a lot of robots. The robots were cleaning the roads, taking pets for walks and there were a few cars in the road but they were all driverless cars. I started to get excited. Yes, it seems to be 2200. No one even gave me a second glance. I started to walk down the street and wonder what else I could find here in the future.

I saw a few people and kids standing near a tree and looking at it so I walked over there. And then I saw it. My monkey was still there making noise with the air horn. I was so proud of my invention. I didn't want to stand there too long otherwise the monkey might see me and walk over to me. I covered my face so he couldn't see me and began to walk down the road. By chance I noticed that the relativity device which I had tied onto the rat was on the ground. Now I understood why there had been no updates. The rat had gotten free of the device and someone had trampled on it, breaking it. I picked it up and put it in my pocket.

I walked for an hour and saw things I'd never even dreamed of. I saw a restaurant that I wanted to get a taste of and knew it contained the food of the future. But I didn't know the value of money here. My credit cards were long past their expiration date and they probably didn't even use paper currency here anymore. Regardless, I didn't bring my wallet so I bypassed the restaurant.

I walked for so long my legs got tired. I took tons of pictures with my cell phone. I decided to go back home. I knew I couldn't go back to before the 18
th
so I decided to go to the 19
th
of December 2013  , the future. I checked the number on the remote and it said “December 18, 2200.” Oh god. I couldn't go back to 2013 because now that was in the past. I could only go forward. My half of an invention left me half of the way. How could I have been so stupid? Now I understood why scientists never experimented on themselves.

Year: 2200             

Mobile phones are a thing long forgotten. Instead, nano-chips are inserted into the ear and take their power directly from the human body. With your voice alone you can accept, reject and even make calls. You no longer have to worry about forgetting your phone at home or running out of battery in the middle of a call. Video calls and mobile applications use a holographic illusion that interacts with your body. There is not physical display. Every human being now has an IP address, ten digit phone numbers are a relic of the past. Computers, robots, all are mapped with human names similar to website domain names. And they're inexpensive. Only the poorest cannot afford multiple robots.

The holographic screen appeared and the computer let the station know they had an incoming call. The dispatcher answered the call after seeing the caller's photograph, name and address.

“Emergency services, how may I help you?”

A woman's face appeared on the screen. She looked sad and had obviously been crying for some time.

“Officer, my son is missing. I have no idea where he could have gone. Please help me find him.”

After scrolling through the woman's personal and family details, the officer came across a page with a family number named Stephen, a ten year old boy.

“This call is about your son, Stephen, then?”

“Yes, that's right. Today's a holiday for him so he went to play outside with his friends. I didn't think anything of it because sometimes he gets distracted and doesn't come home for lunch and eats with them or at one of his friends' houses. But now it's five o'clock. I've called his friends' parents and they say they haven't seen him.”

The officer tried reaching him from an adjacent screen. An error message popped up with error number 404 saying that the recipient was currently unreachable.

“Did he walk when he left to go see his friends?”

“No, he was riding his bicycle.”

“Alright. I will see what I can do. I will get back to you as soon as I have any information that I think will help.”

The police officer checked the last incoming and outgoing call information for the boy’s IP address. He did a broad spectrum search using Stephen's photo and facial recognition to pinpoint his location with any surveillance cameras that might have seen him. One camera had photographed him just after noon. At one o'clock his number had become unreachable. He messaged the control room of the station nearest to where his photo had last been taken and relayed the information.

It only took an hour for the police to find the boy's bicycle at the edge of a nearby lake. They thought perhaps he had gone for a swim and might had drowned. They made a precursory effort to find him in the water and searched all around the bank. The dive team wasn't available until the morning, so they had to wait a few hours before resuming the search of the lake.

By then, Stephen's mother had been apprised of the situation and she had gathered community members to come help search the lake. Stephen had been her only son. If she had to dive down herself, she'd find out if he was in that lake or not. They called off the search a few hours after midnight, vowing to come back the next morning and help the dive team. Stephen's mother was distraught, but traveled home to try to get some sleep regardless. Stephen's father had died four months earlier in a shuttle accident. She hadn't taken it well.

Early the next morning, the boy's mother and her neighbors came back to the lake to meet the dive team. Soon the dive team had recovered the body of the boy in the water. The community said they had looked in that spot and there had been no body then. The police told them that it had been late at night when they were searching and probably had been too tired to find the body. The police said they'd know more after the autopsy had been performed.

The autopsy results came quickly. The medical examiner confirmed that the boy had died after he entered the water around 1:30pm to 2:00pm. There had been a small mark on the head but said that it happened postmortem and hadn't contributed to the boy's death.

The police closed the case as an accident. But Stephen's mother and her neighbors argued that it should be reopened and investigated further. Two days later, the boy's mother got a letter in her mailbox without a postal stamp or address. The letter read, “I will bring your kid back to life. You must, however, agree to never reopen the case.” She immediately took this letter to the police. They agreed that it was strange and also agreed that they would re-examine the body and the area where Stephen had died.

Before they could get to the lake, a forest fire had broken out. The police were suspicious and believed that it had been a case of arson to hide any evidence. But they had no clues to go on. The news was all over town. Everyone now believed that Stephen had been murdered somehow. The news picked up the story. Eventually the police commissioner called the investigating officer.

“There are a lot of unanswered questions in this case. Where do we stand on it? What can you tell me about this mark they found on the boy's head?”

“We haven't been able to figure out what that is. But we're still certain that the death was an accident.”

“Well, what about the letter his mother found?”

“It may be that someone did that as some kind of sick joke. They might also have wanted to confuse us or waste or time.”

“And what about the fire in the lake? Was that an accident as well?”

“Although we looked for evidence of arson, none was found. That too was an accident.”

The commissioner  was not satisfied with these answers. “The boy's mother put in a complaint. She said that they had already looked where the boy had been found the night before. How do you explain that?”

“They just didn't notice him. They were out there in the dark and they were untrained. It's not that hard to believe, really.”

The commissioner thought for a moment.

“There's no wounds on the boy's body,” continued the officer. “It was an accident. He drowned. The boy didn't know how to swim.”

“Well hopefully when we autopsy the body again that the case will be closed for certain,” said the commissioner.

The story was still in the news, but Stephen's mother couldn't take it anymore. She surprised everyone when she told them to just close the case. She couldn't handle the constant media presence outside of her house and around her, reminding her of Stephen's death every moment of the day. Stephen's mother removed his pictures from the house and gave away all of his things. Eventually the story became old news and talk started about the new Robot Act.

Sales executives meeting in a conference room:

My name is Peter. I recently joined this company as a sales executive. You could say I'm the hero of this story. Everyone met the target of ten orders per month, but I made only three sales. Everyone knows my last sale was a big tragedy. But now everyone will find out how I finally solved that issue.

“Secretly, one night, I went to Stephen's mother's house and saw her inside. She was distraught about her son. Her robot would constantly ask her to eat, but she rejected every offer of food. I knocked on the door and placed the second letter and the memory card on the doorstep. She was confused about what these things were, but she picked them up and read the letter. I had drafted the letter based off of the company's customer letter template. It reads as follows:–

             
I don't want to tell you my name, but I've done a favor for you. I understand that losing a child is the largest pain a person can experience. As a mother, you're well aware of that. I also know because my five year old child died in an accident. You see, that's what made me begin to copy the human memories from dead bodies to convert them to digital memories. I did this for your son, Stephen. But accidentally, you found clues that would have led you to me and that would have been a problem. That's why I set fire to the lake area. I've helped many others, but as you're no doubt well aware, this memory transfer process is banned by the government. But the government doesn't understand the feelings of mothers and fathers who lose their children. I do. Please take this memory card and replace your robot's existing memory card. You will have your son back. Perhaps not in flesh and blood, but his mind, personality and memories will all be there. Please destroy this letter and keep what we've done a secret otherwise the police will erase your son's memory for good.

One additional thing:

If you want to help other people as I've helped you, whatever amount you can transfer to this account with non-traceable currency, please do so. The account number is written on the back of the page.”

“Stephen's mother has been happy since that day. As I mentioned in the letter, she transferred a large amount. It's more than enough to cover the missing sales from this month,” I said.

Everyone smiled and was happy that I had made my sales figures.

“We're involved in a secret business that's very profitable,” said the team leader. “We've got to be careful when we expand our business to other cities. We're transferring memories and helping out those who have lost loved ones. They're more than willing to donate for this cause. But as we know, this process is against the law.”

The team leader stopped and looked me in the eye. “Don't take this risk again. You transferred the memories where the boy had died. That's reckless. Next time, just enter the mortuary and transfer the memories from there. You might have earned more money with one sale, but your stupidity could have cost the company everything. Don't do it again.”

Everyone laughed.