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Baby Steps

Baby Steps

£1.99Price
Thtree science fiction short stories. 
 
"Turing the Tables" - A competition in authenticity between adult and child.
 
"Comfort Heating" - When an attempt to stop global warming backfires.
 
"Baby Steps" - A rogue A.I. programme muses over humanity’s value.
 

  • Excerpt

    (From "Baby Steps")

     

    His first impression on entering the room was that he had stepped into snow blindness.He had no reference for an all-white environment. Even in the Arctic Circle or a snowstorm, his vision had been broken with subtle hints of colour. The white became a blanket of red, blue, yellow, green, purple, all environmentally disturbing. When he finally saw Earth’s night sky, filled with moon and stars, and his heartbeat soothed out again.

     

    Something forced him into a seated position. He sat comfortably in darkness, pulled back into a childhood at Buxton’s Dreamtime Multiplex, watching Galaxy Marauders and giggling with friends, the security of his grandmother seated directly behind. Here in the present, he could smell salted popcorn, taste watered down Coke-Pepsi syrup, and hear the tense rustling of snacks someone had smuggled in. Comforting smells. Heat, sun, his grandmother. On the screen facing him, words appeared in glowing neon white. Images scrolled slowly, reviewing a history currently being animated by A.I. technology. Above each one was a query.

     

    YOU? TELL. WHY?

     

    Noah frowned. NM340 was programmed for verbal, formulated sentences. Could her source code be corrupted?

     

    WHY?    

         

    Nam threw up an image. And he skittered back. The air around him gave out a single word.

     

    “WHAT?”

     

    It was a girl of six or seven, a living child, her head in the jaws of an alligator. Her dark eyes and expression were fatalistic. This is what happened. What she expected. Crocodile baiting using children. This was better than being alive with the monsters who were taking pictures. This was an antebellum period where lives were owned.

     

    WHAT?

     

    England. A ten-year-old boy, paler hanged for a loaf of bread, the trapdoor falling away, legs juddering, then finally silent and immobile. Another boy of a much darker skin tone, standing on a soapbox, about to be hanged. He was surrounded by men, the executioner, the photographer, and a priest, giving last rites. Punishment for his father, a farm worker who had not met his quota for the executioner’s commercial needs. In their eyes, it was the best work incentive.

     

    REASON?

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