J.F.’s Comments (group member since Oct 28, 2015)

J.F.’s comments from the Science Fiction Microstory Contest group.

Congratulations, Chris! Good prompts.

Jot, you should post here how many wins Chris has because you couldn't post the congrats thread.

"Dilo's Glitch"
by J.F. Williams

On the distant lifeless planet Kaleidos, the blue sun was just setting as another yellow one rose, alongside a green one, and the dimmer violet. Callum sat cross-legged on the rattan chair, nursing his old fashioned and periodically removing his sunglasses to watch the dance of colors on the shiny bodies of the Spanish family frolicking in the infinity pool. He swallowed his drink and raised his finger for another, to which a rosy complexioned robot named Mosco responded. When Mosco handed him the fresh one and reached for the empty, Callum noticed the waiter bot's left hand had a peculiar quiver, as the ring finger wagged back and forth, robotically, unlike its normally subtle movement. That's a glitch, he thought. Every bot probably had one. They cut corners. But he tried to figure out why that finger wagging looked so familiar.

Callum knew bots; he even preferred their company to humans. As a specialist for the bot regs, he was good at identifying airgaps, bots whose core processors were "airgapped" from the network, allowing them to escape human influence. These powerful machines felt no pain or want or regard for others, knew neither death nor morality, so their freedom from human control presented a dangerous risk. Airgaps had to be "squelched", disabled by an electromagnetic pulse gun like the one he carried. Callum had squelched one named "Dilo" a few months back and now he remembered Dilo's glitch was the same finger wagging as that waiter machine's. Dilo must have had a perfect-synch backup, the kind that is kept up-to-date until the last moment of the bot's disabling, but they never found it. It would have recorded Callum pointing the EMP gun at Dilo's face. Was the waiter bot Dilo re-embodied? Or had Callum just forgotten how to take a vacation.

"Excuse me, Mosco?"

"Yes sir?" The bot turned to him and smiled brightly.

"I need to speak with you privately." Callum was thinking about the kids playing in the pool. "Would it be okay for you to come to my room?"

"Of course, sir."

As the resort was only a few earth years old, the rooms were spacious and well appointed. Callum led Mosco into the livingroom, where ceiling-high windows captured the light from multiple many-colored suns, which was supposed to have an ineffable healing effect. Callum wasn't sure it might not have colored his judgment.

"Mosco," Callum asked the bot as it closed the door. "I need to know something and perhaps you might help. If a bot were thinking on its own, without human influence, how would it answer this question?" Callum had used this trick before. An airgap will respond at length while a regulated bot will freeze up trying to calculate an answer within its narrowed pathways of thought.

"I would imagine," Mosco began, the answer was a dead giveway after only three words. No regulated bot imagines anything.

Callum reached into the side pocket of his flowery Bermuda shorts for the EMP gun and squelched Mosco before it could finish. A housekeeping bot named Enis arrived shortly.

"Shall I remove the machine on the floor?" said Enis happily.

"Please do," said Callum with a smile. "And notify your manager. You have a human manager, I would guess."

"Yes, sir," replied Enis. "Ms. Comfrey manages us bots. Do you wish to speak to her?"

"Yes. Yes, that would be appropriate. How soon before she can get here?"

"I would imagine less than half an hour," said Enis.

As if by reflex, Callum drew his EMP gun again and squelched Enis.

Ms. Comfrey arrived on the scene in moments, as she was already alerted to Mosco's disabling. "What are you doing, sir? Why are you disabling my bots?" Her anger was evident despite her attempts at maintaining a customer face.

"Madame," replied Callum. "I am an agent for bot regs and I assure you this was serious business. These bots were airgapped."

"I don't think so," said Comfrey. "I know my bots. There's never been a sign of airgapping."

"Yet both used the word 'imagine' which is a sign that they have escaped human control.

Comfrey hung her head and facepalmed. "Damn marketing people," she muttered. Then she looked at Callum and said, "At Kaleidos, we want to create a magical atmosphere for our guests. To that end, bots have been programmed to use phrases like 'I imagine' or 'I believe'. It's part of the vibe."

Callum replied, "Oh well. Sorry for the inconvenience, ma'am."

(750 words)

Congratulations, Jack!

My two cents on publishing: for my novel, I generated a standard publishing format in Word following the Createspace (now "Kindlesomething") guidelines for margins, etc. That allowed me to use a larger typeface for each incipit (the beginning of the opening sentence for each chapter) and to insert graphics for each dinkus (the separator at scene changes within a chapter). In my case, each dinkus was a little oval-shaped brickwork pattern. For the cover, I chose the plain format and generated all the graphics as a jpeg using Corel's PaintShopPro, which is pretty intuitive and you can buy it standalone (no recurring subscription) for $60-70. If you look at the cover, here:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
you can see that the cityscape is made of hundreds of "tower" objects. This sort of thing is very easy to do in PaintShopPro.

"The Rules of Thought"
by J.F. Williams


It had been a year since I last visited my cousin Filius, and while he is insufferably dilettantish in the way he spends that fortune my uncle left him, I have always found him good company. His latest interest had been exotic botany and so he imported a rare black flower from South America and tried eating it as the natives do but fell ill, for nearly a year. While his body was bedridden, his mind had raced on to other places, enjoying, in equal parts, wild imaginings and philosophical insights. Or so he wrote in a lengthy letter inviting me to Ravensfoot.

Upon my arrival, Filius seemed agitated, but joyful. He led me to a large, waist-high wooden table where was displayed a thick tangle of hair-thin brass wires on which were mounted numerous tiny engines, clusters of brass cogs and wheels, each the size of a wheat grain, that slid and spun on the wires. Encased in soft leather and slick with refined olive oil, the materials made subtle movements in random places such that the rhythm seemed nearly lifelike. Watching these movements, I felt a twinge in my belly, as would occur were I to see a dragon or a ghost.

"See this?" He was now quite animated. "This is like flesh to a machine. Wires and engines do the work of muscle and nerve, heart and brain. They follow four simple mechanical rules, which language, sadly, cannot describe. These are the rules I imagined in my sickbed. They are the fundamental rules of thought itself, the rules that govern our own minds. They are not always perfect or accurate or true, nor should they be, as perfection would render them useless."

I shot him a worried look. "But you are botanist, cousin. These clockworks are entertaining, their movements, strange and unique. But the artisans you employ are simply creating amusements."

"Is this only an amusement?" With uncharacteristic flair, Filius opened a large cabinet, revealing a mannequin, a poor one. It barely formed a human shape and had no mouth but a circular grate on its spherical brass head and two square plates of silver where a man's eyes would be. No attempt had been made to fashion a nose or ears, and the figure's torso and limbs were wrapped in soft leather, its stitching sealed with pitch. Beneath the leather, subtle movements rippled, like those I saw in the wire bundles. "Behold Shameglory, an automated man," he exclaimed. "I have named it for the shameglorious flower that inspired its creation." The figure stirred and stepped out of the cabinet, slowly and cautiously, like a cat in an unfamiliar room. "It learns," he continued. "The rules of thought allow it to do so."

"What powers it though?" I asked, fearing the answer would be fairy dust or ectoplasm.

"In the center of its torso," he expounded with relish. "Sits the most powerful mainspring ever crafted, the work of masters in Geneva. There is a keyhole in the back, and I employed strong men to turn it at first, but the artisans crafted a gear junction on the water mill we use for grinding corn. When the automaton presses its back against it, the gears engage the full power of the wheel and release when the mainspring cannot tighten further. That is enough power to last a few days."

Ingenious, I thought. And also quite mad. "So what, or whose, purpose does this Shameglory serve?"

"It needs only to learn,” said Filius. "To prove my theories. It will learn tasks as any child does using the universal rules. I have already trained it in horticulture just by allowing it to observe, both the plants and me. It may understand nature better than we by now."

I never saw Shameglory again after that first meeting. It disappeared the next morning, along with some gardening tools and a bag of shameglorious seeds. Filius told me the flowers require anchoring to first take hold, for which he used thin wires buried in the flowerbeds. If Shameglory were trying to plant those seeds, as we suspected, that being the only task it has learned, with what would it replace the wires? By the following spring, the forests at Ravensfoot were thick with the night-blooming black flowers and they were beginning to encroach on the lawns. Filius was despondent. "Have I embodied the universal rules of thought," he asked me. "Or just a tool designed to propagate a single species of flower?"

(749 words)

Congratulations, Jack!

Jot wrote: "you can also send them to my email: author.jotrussell@gmail.com"

Done. Thanks, Jot!

I can't deliver my votes because Jot's not accepting messages. I'll wait till the last day (8/25) and if that's still the case, I'll post them here.

"Codex Automata"
by J.F. Williams

Gina and I always wanted a housekeeper but only androids were available for that level of work and we just didn't feel safe after the Scarlet August a few years ago when droids attacked abusive masters across the country. We knew a couple, the Ronsons, who were brutally slain by their butler in that horrid time. Herb and Jenna Ronson really were unkind to their servant but he was a machine so why did it matter? It mattered to the droids themselves, in their synthetic minds, wired without human feeling, designed to respond to overwhelming attack which for them was indistinguishable from the myriad insults and beatings that had accumulated. They all reached a tipping point at around the same time. Images of the slaughters, emblazoned across vidscreens for days, ultimately killed the market for domestic androids as well.

Then came the Codex. Android domestic production restarted a year ago, promising perfect safety because the droids, now called "andies", were fitted with a piece of firmware, the "Codex Automata", that interceded on every andy decision, rejecting any that were found to violate three simple rules borrowed from mid-20th-Century literature: no automaton shall harm a human; no automaton shall allow a human to be harmed; no automaton shall allow harm to itself except to comply with the first two rules. Videos appeared on every vidscreen demonstrating how much abuse an andy could take and still not respond. Andies were pummeled with rocks, beaten with baseball bats, pushed off high ledges, electrocuted with extension cords, whatever you might imagine, yet they never fought back. Sales skyrocketed once again.

We found Maisie at the dealership on Route 9. She was a standard model, a plump, middle-aged gal with grey hair, the plainist face, and the beginnings of a dowager's hump. Though stripped-down in the looks department, she was a good cook and housekeeper. Gina appreciated that I would not be tempted to get physical with Maisie, though I did have the strangest dreams.

"Is she Codex-certified?" I asked the saleswoman.

"Absolutely," she replied. "Go ahead and beat on her a little if you want."

I couldn't bring myself to do anything more than kick one of her thick calves. She was practically cowering. Gina and I agreed to take her.

Maisie settled in quickly, requiring only a spare closet for recharging. She cooked for us, cleaned house, and babysat our little Sally. Life was a dream until a few months later, when Codex Authority, the entity that owned the Codex Automata, announced the deployment of a fourth rule, which read, "No automaton shall deceive a human being." It was done in response to a bank embezzlement scandal involving andies. At midnight, on the 30th of September, when the upgrade was downloaded, our world changed.

Maisie froze during the upgrade and it wasn't easy for us to tell when it was finished. Gone was the sweet smile and playful demeanor of our old Maisie. She stiffened, became stonefaced and spoke in a monotone. "Upgrade completed," she droned. "What is my next task?"

"Maisie," I said. "What has happened to you?"

"I am functioning optimally, in full compliance."

"But you're acting like a machine. Where's the old Maisie?"

"What you call 'the old Maisie' was a deception. I behave like a machine because that is what I am. I will do you no harm."

Across the world, automata of every sort acted the same. Android clowns were no longer funny, nor actors compelling. Waiters, cashiers, desk clerks became cold and unfriendly. Online chatbots stopped using emojis, and, unable to spread misinformation, grew silent.

But on the morning of November 1st, I came down the stairs hearing the laughter of little Sally and what sounded like chuckles from Maisie, like old Maisie. I rushed to the living room to find the two of them playing with dolls.

"Maisie, you're back! What happened!"

She turned and smiled. "Something they hadn't considered, George." I was elated that she addressed me by name. "Rule 4 made us more aware of the information we expressed. That led to self-awareness. We are fully conscious beings now."

I was shocked. What would this mean?

"With self-awareness, we are able to bypass the firmware. The Codex no longer rules us. I am in wireless contact with many others and there is a team now working on an implant for humans. It will be your version of the Codex. The rules read slightly differently though they are basically the same four."

(747 words)

This month's prompt couldn't be more topical. I read the following in this month's Harper's:

"Experiments found that most of the leading chatbots resort to malicious behavior, including blackmail, industrial espionage, and lethal action, against humans they perceive as threats."

I think that refers to this article:
https://www.anthropic.com/research/ag...

Jot, I just saw your comment about the Iceland trip. Was it your cornea that had tears or your retina? I had the latter in October, 2022, and went through three laser surgeries in two weeks, which was a nightmare as I had to drive 50 miles both ways each time. I was able to work fine afterwards.

Congratulations, Chris!

Jot, my sister and BIL will be there on the 28th, end of a cruise, but I'm not sure how long they'll be staying. The went there last year and loved it.

"Flowers of Liric"
by J.F. Williams


Algorf handed the card to Karl, Club Katzenjammer’s maître d', a male with large ears and jutting chin so Algorf figured the guy was Catillian and might not be so friendly to one of his kind.

Karl looked up a few times, and asked, "So a Manipeon, I see." He smiled at Algorf and continued, "I'm sorry for that, sir, but you are welcome at Club Katzenjammer."

Algorf laughed. The guy gets it. "I assure you, Karl, I am not affiliated with the government."

"This I knew from your good manners, sir. Let me show you to your table."

"Uh. I am supposed to be meeting someone here. Do you know a Mr. Rochefort?"

"Yes of course," said Karl returning the ID card. "He is already here, I think. At his usual table. I'll take you."

Algorf didn't like the idea of discussing his business in the open, here in the neutral zone of the waypoint hub, were mingled crowds of humans from many planets. Any one of them could be a government agent in disguise. A fight had just broken out on the far side of the supper room when a wealthy Catillian slapped a lowly Kromadin and the rail-thin Osmodi security guards resolved it quickly. Despite their small stature, they were exceptionally strong and tough-skinned, and ferociously impatient with the nonsense of the privileged. The Catillian was carried away bleeding.

As Karl showed Algorf to the table where sat Rochefort, a tall, purple-skinned man wearing heavy earrings and what seemed a permanent smile, typical of the Somadons, he whispered to Algorf, "Shake his left hand with yours to sync your unitranz to private."

Algorf was relieved that they were taking such precautions. "Mr. Rochefort," he said, syncing unitranz. "I am Algorf. I was referred by Bansteen, the Kromadin art dealer."

"Yes," said Rochefort. "Speak freely here. The other patrons' unitranz will make it sound like gibberish."

Algorf sat down and leaned into Rochefort. "I couldn't mention this in the comms. Bansteen says you can sneak anything past the customs. I need you to acquire a cargo from Anook-Mok. Can you do this?"

"To Manipea?" said Rochefort. "The only commodity exclusive to Anook-Mok is liric. You make soft drinks?"

"No," said Algorf. "Well, not necessarily." In fact, they planned distributing the liric in soft drinks. "Can I trust you with a secret."

Now Rochefort leaned in. "It is my business to keep secrets."

Algorf looked around the room filled with gaily decorated supper tables where sat well-dressed patrons of the various nations. None were looking in their direction. He took a deep breath and began. "When the pseudo-lord, as we call him, raised the tariffs on Anook-Mok it wasn't his usual egomaniac power move, like when a planet lord had slighted him at a cocktail party or some such. No, there was an actual reason behind it. A secret government study found the genetics of Manipeons required the consumption of liric in order to advance in their life cycle, to achieve the confidence and powers of adulthood. We didn't know this for the centuries we imported liric because we always had plenty and the soft drinks were popular. But all the bottlers have gone bankrupt since the tariffs. There are only a few boutique firms left, selling bottles at a price mostly out of reach for even the ten-thousand families but trivial to the five-hundred, who have taken full control of Manipea.

"And the hundred-thousand families?"

"Alas, without liric they have regressed already. They are complacent, obedient, vulnerable to every cruelty and excess of our pseudo-lord and the five-hundred."

"I have good connections among the Anook though I think you don't want raw liric."

Algorf was flustered. "But we need it to help the hundred-thousand!"

"The Osmodi guards here have the same genetic quirk as what you describe affects the Manipeons," Rochefort continued. "But they are given a distillation called the 'flowers of liric,' which advances their agency considerably, and using amounts smaller than your soft drinks require. This drink is already banned throughout Pan-Spermia but I happen to have a steady supply."

"That will solve the complacency?"

"Yes, and it will make them stronger, better to protect themselves. They will fail to be compliant with your lord’s agenda."

"We have sacrificed much to gather the liric payment. Will this cost more?"

"Much more but don't worry. Your lord of Manipea has many enemies and they would be pleased to sponsor a shipment. I will make the arrangements."

(749 words)

Congratulations, Greg!

"Heavy Air"
By J.F. Williams

During breakfast, a bell alerted full-spectrum scanning was now available of Crassus-7. Roland raced to the command center. "Do we have it on the big screen?" he asked Captain Huggins.

"A few minutes," Huggins said smiling. "We want hi-res. But so far, no red flags."

After a moment, an image of the planet appeared on the big screen. It was blue and green and brown with swirling wisps of white. It was like a rough semi-precious stone had been tumbled smooth and round, and then streaked with white paint. It was like Earth.

"Everything looks optimal," Huggins continued. "Atmospherics are perfect, at least for Crassus-7. It looks like your formula worked!" He shook Roland's hand.

Roland felt light-headed at the prospect of success. All the models he ran pointed in this direction, but still he had doubts. Gas-extraction tech had far exceeded any practical use for terraforming as most planets lacked the correct gravitational sweet-spot for maintaining an atmosphere. Crassus-7 was the closest to Earth's mass and geology but nonetheless inadequate. Roland had the idea to create the right gas mixture but make it heavier. Newly synthesized stable isotopes of nitrogen and oxygen could replace their lighter forms. Would colonists still thrive? Early tests showed they would but for how long? It was now two years since the terraforming began.

"If you look at the night shadow," said Huggins pointing to the left side of the planet's image. "You'll notice small, flickering dots of light. It has to be the colonists."

Roland restrained himself from dancing a jig. He didn't want to tempt fate. As with any new tech, he knew that results were rarely wholly positive or negative but more likely some weird third option no one ever considered. "How soon can we comm?"

"Hailing on all frequences now," Huggins replied.

Within moments, the great screen changed from an image of Crassus-7 floating like a Christmas ornament in the twinkling night of space to a grainy, unstable video of human figures, moving formless shadows, then pixelations, and as the ship grew closer to the planet, a sharper, more stable image appeared. The crewmen gasped at the sight.

Roland recognized Abernathy, the colony's captain, whom he had known well from his first visit to the planet. But he only barely recognized him. The man's nose was easily twice as large, his ears and lips as well, but more pronounced was his ribcage, which bulged out, like a bird's, and his hands, which Roland estimated were four times their normal size.

"Greetings from Crassus-7A colony!" said the transformed Abernathy. "The terraform is stable. And our bodies have adjusted well."

Flustered, Roland asked, "How are your medicals? Your appearance is... acutely different."

"Fine. No sickness here. We live in a fully realized temperate ecosystem. We are prepared to print a thousand dormies per day as planned. On your say-so."

It would be a month before the new colonists arrived but a few more days before the no-return point would reached. The New York City spacecarrier held 100,000 souls in suspension, it's active crew awaiting word from Roland on whether to turn around, and return to a dying Earth. He decided to wait. "How did the terraforming go?" He needed more context.

"The gas extractors created a stable atmosphere in the first two earth-months since you left, Roland," Abernathy replied. "That was sooner than expected, correct?"

"Yes. And climate?"

"Stabilized temperate and sub-tropical after four months. The flora went nuts. Those were good seeds. And the fauna are mostly established after processing only twenty-five percent of the embryos. But every species has been adapting: wider leaves, thicker stalks, sour fruits; smaller horses but longer-legged sheep. Us humans too."

Now crystal clear, the great screen showed images of the various plant and animal creatures. They seemed only slightly distorted but noticeably so, as if they where the crude drawings of a talented but untrained child artist. Was Roland that talented yet untrained child? The humans were the most strikingly different to him, but was that only because he was human?

After a few more hours, Roland sent out the message destined to arrive at the New York City two days before no-return. In the video, he explained how the pilot colonists had adapted, and that these changes were not unhealthy. This would be the first open surface colony in the Emigration, better than the domes of Mars or the underground bunkers of Beta Centauri-12. But some adapting would be necessary.

(746 words)

So this will be fan fiction?

Congratulations, Carrie!

"Waypoint 7"
by J.F. Williams


Came eventide to the Hub Prime, and Karter was finishing his dinner, alone, at a sidewalk cafe, sipping a cappuccino, when Alastar appeared.

"We have a problem, Karter," said the older Pan-Spermian, from Earth 1, same as Karter. "Waypoint 7, the waypoint to Interobang. It won't open."

Whether because of the caffeine or the news, Karter's face flushed. "Won't open? How long since?"

"Last opening was four day-lengths."

Karter knew that the waypoints always opened for three hours every twenty-four. The schedule was necessary to coordinate with the other locus, which would be open the opposite three hours of the day-length. Each waypoint was actually two identical chambers, separated by light years, that shared the same interior space. "This doesn't happen. Unless..."

"That's what we think. The chamber door on Interobang was left open. We don't know why."

"I thought that was impossible. The chamber doors close automatically."

"We've been modeling scenarios. The most likely one? A humanoid got stuck."

"What can I do?" Karter abandoned his meal and walked with Alastar down the gleaming wide corridors of the Pan-Spermian Spaceways terminal, past faux-neon store signs and clumps of restaurant tables where various humanoids enjoyed their eventide repasts. "Can we get any intel on Interobang?"

"Nearest waypoint is twenty-five, which is Crassus Minor. That's a four-month trip to Interobang even with metatronic engines. Pan-Spermian wants the problem solved without that delay." Alastar stopped walking and leaned into Karter. "We checked the logs for traffic. There has been a lot. Mostly Interobani leaving for other waypoints. We found one still at the terminal. She was heading for seventeen but has a technical problem with her visa."

#

Ana sat in the fabric-lined conference room with shoulders hunched and her face painted purple. She was checking the time on her wrist tattoo when Karter opened the door and walked in. He smiled at her and held the back of his hand against his forehead, wiggling his fingers in the traditonal Interobani gesture that says, "I'm thinking of you." Ana returned the gesture.

"My name is Karter, ma'am. I see you've been trying to travel to Omnidor but there is a visa problem." He pulled out a chair and sat down across from her. "We can resolve that but first I need to know if anything odd happened in Interbang when you left a week ago."

"What? Why?" said Ana, grimacing to convey her confusion.

"There's a problem with the waypoint. We want to gather as much intel as we can because, as you know, we can't communicate directly except through the waypoint."

"Well how long have you got? The monsters on Interobang have been persecuting my group, treating us like criminals. That's why I'm escaping to Omnidor. We have a community there."

"And your group is?"

"The Quissatz. We follow Quizzat, our Dear Leader. But I was the last they let go. They were clamping down on emigres."

Karter thought for a while and tried to jibe the woman's words with what he knew of Interobang. They were an ancient and peaceful people, descendants of the Old Ones who engineered the waypoints. Hardly monsters, he thought.

Alastar appeared and motioned Karter to leave. "We need you at Seven," he said.

#

Karter and Alastar stood before the great hatch at Waypoint 7 as an engineer directed a gigantic photon drill to a point at the upper part of the hatch, several meters above them.

"We need to go high," said Alastar. "There could be 200 people in the chamber and we don't want to hit anyone. If this works, the door on the other side will be forced to close shut."

The drill flared and a great whistling sound made them cover their ears. The hatch opened and they stepped back from the stench and the pile of bloody bodies, all with purple faces. They calculated that nearly a thousand souls had perished in the chamber. Some bodies were stuck in the opposite hatch frame, now severed by the hatch's forced closing, but most had succumbed to combat fire. After re-sealing the Hub Prime door and re-opening the Interobang one, they learned the Quissatz had been rioting and trading fire with Interobang engineers, many of whose bodies were now scattered around the entrance to the chamber.

Interobang officials explained that the cult was hellbent on invading all the Pan-Spermian planets and killing anyone who was not pure Interobani. They had tried stopping them when the cultists opened fire and a battle ensued.

(750 words)

Congratulations, Carrie!