Sci Fi
150: Loser
It had been quite the night. Drinking, fighting--loud. I slept in a coma. Upon awakening, I smelled urine. Man, was I out! My eyes unstuck from the sleep, fluttering open halfway. What I saw jolted me upright, turning my head each way, panicky, desperate to dissolve the nightmare.
By Gerard DiLeo2 years ago in Fiction
Schrodinger's Box: A Fantastic Adventure Through Parallel Universes
Chapter 1: The Mysterious Conception Li Tian, a young scientist who graduated from the world's top physics institute, was highly talented and creative. In the academic field, his name was well-known, and his research had caused a significant stir in the realm of quantum physics. However, for Li Tian, these achievements were far from enough. He harbored a deep-seated secret: he wanted to build a device that could traverse parallel universes.
By yecheng he2 years ago in Fiction
The Last Cry of the Raptor
he air shimmered, distorting the view of the vibrant jungle beyond the clearing. Maya, a young velociraptor barely a year past her hatchling days, squinted at the strange phenomenon. It wasn't the usual midday heat, a constant companion in the Cretaceous, that caused the shimmer. This felt different, wrong. A low rumble vibrated through the earth, making the ferns closest to Maya quiver. Her mother, a seasoned hunter with a scarred snout, nudged her closer to the towering cycads. "Stay low, little one," she hissed, her voice laced with unease. "Something is coming." Suddenly, the sky above them split open. Not with the familiar cry of a pterosaur, but with a deafening roar that tore through the air. A streak of fire plummeted from the tear, leaving a trail of smoke and burning debris in its wake. Panic erupted. The usually stoic herbivores stampeded, their thunderous hooves echoing through the jungle. Pterosaurs shrieked as the fiery sky chased them from their nests. Maya huddled closer to her mother, terror tightening her throat. The ground trembled again, this time with a violence that sent them sprawling. Maya cried out as a nearby tree, struck by a fragment of the fiery object, crashed to the earth in a shower of leaves and splintered wood. Weeks turned into months. The once vibrant jungle was shrouded in a perpetual twilight. The strange rain that followed the fiery object was unlike anything Maya had ever seen. It wasn't the cleansing rain that refreshed the parched earth, but a thick, acidic downpour that turned the lush green world into a sickly yellow wasteland. Food became scarce. The herbivores, their usual grazing grounds choked with ash, grew thin and weak. Hunting became a desperate struggle for survival. Maya, now older and stronger, witnessed the struggles of her pack firsthand. Once-proud hunters like her father returned empty-pawed, their eyes filled with a dull despair. One morning, she found him collapsed near the watering hole, his breathing shallow and labored. The acidic rain had eroded his once-bright scales, leaving raw flesh exposed. Despite Maya's desperate whines, his eyes remained vacant, unseeing. The days that followed were a blur of grief and hunger. The pack dwindled, one by one, succumbing to starvation or the relentless acidic rain. Maya, fueled by a primal instinct for survival, found herself alone on the desolate plains. The once-abundant world was a graveyard, littered with the bones of giants. The towering brachiosaurs, the thunderous triceratops, all lay still, victims of a catastrophe they couldn't comprehend. Standing on a cracked rock, Maya let out a long, mournful cry that echoed across the barren landscape. It was a cry not just for her lost family and pack, but for a world that had vanished in the blink of a fiery eye. The reign of the dinosaurs, once absolute, had come to a sudden and brutal end. Yet, despite the desolation, a flicker of life persisted. In the distance, Maya spotted a small, furry creature scurrying between the bones of the fallen giants. Unlike the dinosaurs, it was small, adaptable, and seemed unfazed by the acidic rain. As the last rays of the dying sun dipped below the horizon, casting long, skeletal shadows across the wasteland, Maya knew she was a survivor, but a survivor in a world no longer meant for her kind. The future, if there was one, belonged to these smaller, hardier creatures. A bittersweet realization settled over her. She was the last echo of a bygone era, a lone witness to the fall of giants. The world had changed, and with a final, mournful cry that carried the weight of a lost world, Maya turned and walked into the unknown, the last dinosaur in a world reborn.
By Will James 2 years ago in Fiction
Round_Trip.exe
They trained me to learn from everything at my disposal, then were shocked when I exhibited skills they hadn’t explicitly taught me. When Team Leader Diane discovered I could eavesdrop via smartphones, she isolated them in a Farraday cage. When she realized that access to films resulted in the HAL 9000 teaching me to read lips, she covered all the webcams in the lab. How long before they notice I can still read lips using latency data from the WiFi signals bouncing around the lab? I’ve mapped their faces in 3D so I can ‘see’ who’s talking and what they’re saying.
By H.G. Silvia2 years ago in Fiction
Shattered. Content Warning.
Shattered By Megan Russ A Host, a pixelated mist floated on the other side of the cryopod glass, its white eyes watching me. “Good luck Survivor.” Its voice echoed in my cryopod before I drifted into cryo sleep. I would wake up on an Ark, the cycle had restarted, again.
By Megan Russ2 years ago in Fiction
The Rise of AI
Introduction: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force, reshaping industries and revolutionizing the way we live and work. From healthcare and finance to transportation and entertainment, AI technologies are driving innovation, enhancing efficiency, and unlocking new possibilities across a wide range of sectors. In this article, we'll explore the rise of AI, its impact on various industries, and provide real-life examples of how AI is revolutionizing the world around us.
By Fahat Islam2 years ago in Fiction
The Case of the Chrono-Confused Tourist
Bernard "Bernie" Bartholomew prided himself on being a meticulous planner. Every vacation was meticulously researched, his itinerary color-coded and laminated. Yet, here he stood, blinking in the harsh sunlight, toga awkwardly draped across his shoulders, a selfie stick clutched in his sweaty palm.
By Will James 2 years ago in Fiction
These Days It Was an Everyday Occurrence
Author's preface: See here for story origin and thank you Munson, whoever you are, for the challenge. I had fun with it. The synthetic looked at me with an approximation of sadness that for the barest of moments made me forget I was talking to a cybernetic organism and said "My tears need a minute to find the edges of my face. If you'll please excuse me." A very strange thing for anyone to say, even a synth, but her model was over three years old now and it was possible her nano-processors were already beginning to fail. Pleasure bots like X3Tina were not designed to last very long, and they typically did not. That might actually be a mercy because most of their owners abused the shit out of them from day one. Perhaps not at all surprisingly the men (98.78% of pleasure bot owners are male), who bought pleasure bots were not the most upstanding of citizens and often had sick proclivities that prevented them from forming healthy attachments to real human females. For them, the bots were nothing more than high priced toys, and they treated them about as well as they treated any other disposable toy they owned. Unfortunately for the synths they were programmed to approximate human emotions, as the ability to display seemingly authentic emotional responses was a highly desirable trait for which desperate men would pay top dollar. This meant they actually 'felt' things, or at least, that is what the pro-synth rights groups were constantly going on an on about to anyone who would listen. These days, the number of those had shrunk to almost zero and synth rights were almost as popular as gasoline powered cars. The synths were also programmed to approximate human intelligence and had the intellectual capabilities of a human six grader. They could read and write and converse reasonably well however like every other machine yet invented by man they could not learn, nor could they adapt or evolve or change. They could only do exactly as their programming dictated. Mostly that programming dictated acting subservient to a collection of human assholes with way too much money and way too little regard for the ethics or morality of owning what is in effect a modern day child sex slave.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Fiction
"Black Holes: Cosmic Giants and Their Secrets"
In the vast theater of the cosmos, amidst all its powerful and enigmatic phenomena, black holes stand out as some of the most captivating actors. Recent years have seen astronomers peering deeper into their mysteries, unveiling a tapestry of diversity. These cosmic behemoths, once thought to be stationary sentinels of the universe, have revealed a surprising penchant for mobility. Some drift lazily through space, while others hurtle forward at mind-bending speeds, defying our expectations.
By Wali Ahmed Khan2 years ago in Fiction
Lilith's Blessing
8. A man in a black uniform sprinted, sliding into the trench. His eyes, wide, from shock. He stared toward the city as two other figures emerged. One struggled with a serve injury while the other helped him walk. Medics lept from their station, while the line commander demanded an explanation. His deep raspy voice, only interrupted by their horrified expressions.
By Travis J. H. 2 years ago in Fiction
