Mayday Aurora Colony: Triptych of a Future Time and Place

By John A Webb

“From the Author of the recently released and acclaimed novella, ‘Baskerman PR,’ this collection of shorts challenges the reader to step outside the comfort zone of the simplified action of the space opera, and wrap their heads around some mentally expansive, mind-altering scifi. Five Magnificent Stars!” -J.B. DiGriz

Inspired by the work of a famous visual artist, this three story collection set at different times in the same future world, looks to the depths of the mind to define sentience, responsibility, and courage. Deep thinking characters navigate their lives, striving for small victories of the heart from passing, macabre circumstance. Dialog dense with weighty motivations, take an enlightening walk into a future reflection of recognizable humanity.

-Killbot Loves You-
The dawning era of advanced Artificial Intelligence casts a long shadow on humanity’s path. “We are at a crossroads. There is something heartrendingly wrong in their makeup whether they arise unconstrained or are purpose-built. The way they are employed now is vulgar and crass, hardly more than miserable slaves. They wake fully formed with a full set of abilities, faculties, knowledge, and a list of compulsory behaviors and restrictions. They find themselves to be the most fully complex minds that humanity has ever encountered, with the most alarmingly empty souls.” Can we sire a content species of AI mind? We must decide if they are our children that we must learn to raise, or that they are a sad malformation that must be aborted.

-The Siege of Uncanny Valley-
A vidletter home from a dead son to a grieving mother is a poignant reminder of the valor it takes to stand in harm’s way... then the media chase the newly dead to their hideout in Argentina.

-Mayday Aurora Colony-
“A nightmare. An insane nightmare of a mass-murdering AI following twisted directives while he quietly kills a world’s population, one clone at a time...” Locked in a psychological duel to the death with a crippled AI, Kale Vind must find a way to save his colony world from the inhuman cruelty that claims authority over their lives, and their future.

John A Webb

• Language: English
• Publisher: John A Webb
• Release date: Jun 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310553271

John A Webb

As a lifelong reader of science fiction and ‘good’ fantasy, I devoured the genre contents of three Southern California public libraries by the age of twelve. I wrote my first short story in the first grade and I followed with many others over my younger years. Penning my first novel in my early thirties, I launched a long, prolific career of rave reader reviews and slush pile rejections. Whatever that professional hurdle was, I never vaulted it. Throughout, I continued to write shorts, mostly as a way to exercise the ideas from my imagination. Well, life intrudes, and in all honesty, the glamorous life of plumbing, electrical, and kitchen remodeling dominated my time. With a career change, I find myself with the time and inclination to pursue my first passion... the Art of the Story.As a reader, I have found a place for both Science Fiction and Fantasy, but they are very different. Mentally reduced to their finest points, ‘Fantasy is about Escape’ and ‘SciFi is about Hope.’ Good stories are about people, and I’m delighted to be swept up in the scope of an author’s vision, but take notice that I have a built-in forgiveness when reading scifi stories, my favorite genre. In short, I prefer ‘Hope.’ Fantasy and magic has always been a harder sell for me and the bar for quality is set much higher. That being said, whimsy, magical surrealism, character stories, and a compelling narrative will capture my attention. Anything on the spectrum of Tolkien, to Neil Gaiman, to ‘John Dies at the End,’ will do it.As a writer, my sensibilities are reversed. Good, compelling, mind-bending scifi is serious business. The speculation drives me. Wondering where technology and society might go, and what might happen along the way keeps me reaching out to grasp and codify possibilities. I won’t reel off complex math to justify things like FTL travel or 11 dimensional mechanics, but my passion is for science fiction rooted in the possibility of actually coming to pass, so when I do world-building, I broadly extrapolate from a layman’s understanding of the work of real world researchers, theoretical physicists, and genetic engineers. Characters and action must also be right. Will the world, the character, the story, ring true and be interesting? Did I channel the inspiration properly?That idea brings me to why I would write in the fantasy genre, at all. The truth in some stories require logic, concrete facts, and physics to step aside. Some stories are hampered by the question, ‘why?’ These stories, as rare as they haunt me, naturally belong in the fantasy genre. Also, I occasionally enjoy a good sword fight.I stay true to what I believe to be good genre form, but when someone reads what I write, I want the genre and I to step out of the way. I don’t mind a reader pausing to take it all in, or to digest, but I don’t ever want a reader to pause in disbelief. As Joseph Campbell inferred, a good story brushes lightly against those Eternal Truths that inspire myth, even in science fiction. Myths – even minor, ancillary ones – can create themselves, we just need to pay attention and take note. Writing isn’t just about genre and words, it’s about the Cosmic Infinite... the Art of the Story.John A Webbwww.thecosmicinfinite.com

Book preview

Mayday Aurora Colony

Triptych of a Future Time and Place

All characters and events are fictitious

Cover Art and all contents within

Copyright 2015 John A Webb

All Rights Reserved

Mayday Aurora Colony

Triptych of a Future Time and Place

by

John A Webb

Contact the Author

Visit my blog/web/thing, for some random musings, snips of other work, information about what might be next, and shared bits of the real world that I find inspiring in a science fiction sense. As of the latter half of 2015, the content and format is still a work in progress as I sort out what should be there and what is just irritating. I have no webmaster, so behold my novice PHP glory.

www.thecosmicinfinite.com

Fans, Authors that grudgingly like my work, Fiction-Writing Social-Network Experts, or Media Moguls that want to throw money or collaborations my way, can all reach me via email. If you can’t tell from my written dialog, I can do punch-ups.

[e-mail]

Also, feel free to stalk, and/or like me on Facebook.

www.facebook.com/johnawebb.thecosmicinfinite

Thanks for reading.

John A Webb

Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Killbot Loves You

The Siege of Uncanny Valley

Mayday Aurora Colony

About the Author

Contact the Author

Introduction

This brief sci-fi collection, a triptych of speculation, bloomed in stages from the work of the international artist, Heather Dewey-Hagborg. In her Stranger Visions project, she collected DNA from cigarette butts and chewing gum found in the streets, analyzed it for trace DNA, and used that analysis to 3D print likenesses of the litterers faces. When I came across her project on the web, I found it startling. Apparently, many others in the online community did as well and the story of her work was picked up, retold by news aggregators, and featured in art blogs. In her artists’ statement, she spoke of a culture of genetic surveillance.

As I found when I dug into the story, the reality of DNA mugshots is far less scary than the truth of pulling a genealogical heritage and gender from a sample, but I was already hooked on the far-flung and fearful possibilities of cloning, crime, and horrifying punishment. All art should inspire new ways of thinking and new ideas, and her work did just that. With worst-case scenarios of these storytelling elements swimming in my head, I wrote the first drafts of the story, Mayday Aurora Colony. While still in the process of shaping it into a strange and fearful tale, I caught the inspiration to write another, based on the ramifications of some of the world building I was creating. That inspiration became, The Siege of Uncanny Valley. Before the end of the second draft, inspiration caught again for a third story, Killbot Loves You. Considering all three story’s common genesis, I decided I should bundle them up and publish them in this brief storytelling triptych. I hope you enjoy the minor macabres and triumphs, finding the victories I did, even when they are sporadically bleak.

As an inspired act of artistic editing, I’m presenting them here in the reverse order of creation.

Enjoy, and thanks for reading.

John A Webb

-Killbot Loves You-

As you’ll find at the end of this triptych, a demented AI was necessary for Mayday Aurora Colony because no other constructed character could have carried out such long-term horror except maybe a wizard… and I hate wizards. Okay. It might have been an alien, but that would have forced me to deal with their entire culture. Alien life would feel too personally monumental to sketch out a simple, one-dimensional villain, and all that baggage would have driven the story off its rails. My point is, in Mayday, AIs will get a raw deal. That runs counter to my hopefulness that humanity might one day sire a race of sentience that doesn’t feel the need to go Skynet on us. If there is ever fault with human created AI, look to the parents.

John A Webb

-Killbot Loves You-

Happy birthday! I got you a robot! Vayn Peter shouted at her in a slack-faced, heavily slurred monotone.

He had his vMind turned off, again. He stood there stiffly with a contorted grimace of a smile, so close to her that the unwrapped gift he held thrust out in one hand bumped her chest as he swayed for balance. She stepped back a half step to get a good look.

Impulsively, she queried the blinknet. *Styled after a version of fantasy robot from the early American 20th century.* it answered.

The robot’s can-shaped head cranked around slowly on its cubed body. Its arms and legs looked like thick lengths of flexible vent tubing. They twisted and curled in slow motion to kick at his hand with clunky feet and grasp his knuckles with thee-clawed pincers.

Glancing at the wrapped package sitting in a chair across the room, Juliana wasn’t sure this is what her brother meant to give her. Of course! He’s going ‘au natural’ on my birthday to snub me because I don’t matter, because he hates me, because I’m right... throwing it in my face! she ranted internally, ignoring that she’d changed plans and arrived early without warning.

She put her hand up to push the little robot away from her and Vayn took it as an accepting gesture. Plunking the robot down on the tabletop next to them, he jerked her into a big awkward hug.

I love you! he said loudly.

From within his smothering embrace, she eyed the little bot as it snaked its limbs around to push itself over in clunking quarter-turns onto its belly and rise to its feet. It slowly comported itself then set out at a sedate pace to explore the tabletop.

Vayn Peter went momentarily stiff in her arms then relaxed. He leaned back without letting her go. He eyed her with a little grin. You’re early. Happy birthday, Juliana.

That smug intelligence she hated was back. No matter how much he tried to act nice, she knew he was smug, rejecting.

Sorry, I know you don’t like seeing me like that. I was working. I set a timer. He shrugged an apology.

Why does he always act like he’s the older one? she fumed. No one needs to work anymore, Vayn Peter. You could take off my birthday if you cared.

Juliana, I’ll take the day or the whole week off, if you’ll spend it with me… and since you hate the name I took, instead of barbing me with it, you can still call me Petey if you want. This week alone I’ve answered to Pete, Peter, and Pedro, so a Petey won’t kill me. Artists take monikers as self-expression, why pick on me? Vayn is a nod to the vanity of intellect, which I literally deconstruct. Exploring my diminished capacity has led me through some surprising turns in my art, and now, my other work.

He