"The Rule of Three"

THE RULE OF THREE
By Curtis C. Chen

"Reload!" Janelle reached behind her and grasped empty air. "Reload, dammit!"

"No more speedloaders!" Traci shouted. "Use the shotgun!"

Janelle cursed, holstered the revolver, and swung the Remington off her shoulder and forward into both hands. She leveled the barrel at the abomination that was shambling toward them.

Thick, syrupy blood oozed from its neck and face, where four of the revolver rounds had torn through the gray flesh. At least one of those bullets must have gone through the brain—what was left of it, anyway.

So why is it still walking?

"There's only one," Janelle said. "This is a waste of ammo!"

"Seriously?" Traci said.

The zombie raised one skeletal arm toward their barricade. Janelle fired the shotgun, and the skull disintegrated with a sickening noise.

She lowered her weapon. "We need to get out of here."

"Finally, we agree—WHAT THE FUCK!"

Two clawlike hands appeared on top of the barricade and pulled up the rest of the undead body. The neck was a gray-red stump, leaking blood in weak spurts. The zombie drew itself up on top of the barricade.

Janelle fired again, and again, taking off both of the zombie's hands at the wrists. But it had already levered itself over the barricade, and tumbled onto the floor.

"It's still moving!" Traci said. "Why the fuck is it still moving?"

The zombie dragged itself to its wrists and knees and began crawling toward them. Janelle backed up, pressing herself against the wall next to Traci. We don't have enough ammo for this.

Something buzzed loudly from the doorway, and all the lights in the building went out. Janelle cursed and aimed the shotgun at where she hoped the zombie was.

But the shuffling had stopped. She heard clicking noises.

"Flashlight's dead," Traci said. Something snapped, and then a yellow light appeared.

She tossed the glowstick onto the floor, where the zombie lay sprawled, motionless.

"The hell?" Traci said, kneeling.

"Don't get too close," Janelle said.

"No worries, it's off now," came a voice from the doorway.

Janelle brought the shotgun up just as a flashlight went on, pointed at the ceiling, revealing a tall woman wearing police body armor. Both her hands were raised above her head.

"We're all friends here, now," the stranger said.

"That buzzing noise," Janelle said. "You did something to the zombie?"

"EMP. And it's not a zombie. That's why it didn't stop after you decapitated it."

"So what the hell is it?"

"It's a robot."

Janelle grimaced. "I'm not in the mood for jokes."

"No joke," the stranger said. "Nanotechnology gone wrong. Real bad news."

"That seems... implausible," Traci said.

"That ain't even the weird part," the stranger said.

"So what is the weird part?" Janelle asked.

"You know about the aliens, right?"

Janelle gaped. "Aliens."

"Yup," the stranger said. "Honest-to-gosh, invasion-from-outer-space, flying-saucer aliens. Seen 'em with my own eyes."

"I do not believe this," Janelle grumbled.

"Well," Traci said, "they do say that bad news comes in threes."

"Please shut up now."



Image: Zombie by Nathan Rupert, July, 2009

"Waking Up Alone"

WAKING UP ALONE
By Curtis C. Chen

The girl's glow-green eyes glittered as she said, "Baltimore with a shot of espresso to go, right?"

Jake was so surprised, it took him nearly a full second to reply, "You remember that?"

The girl shrugged and smiled. The holographic heart tattooed into her left dimple sparkled. "It's just an odd combination. Most half-caf folks don't add espresso."

"It's for the flavor," Jake said. "Espresso tastes different than drip coffee. To me, anyway."

The girl nodded. "Charge card?"

She indicated the paypoint with one slender finger. The animated flower painted on her fingernail danced from left to right.

Jake swiped his card and pressed his thumb on the reader while racking his brains for small talk. He'd spent hours last night researching cosmetics, finding out what brand of contact lenses she wore and what the diffraction pattern in her cheek tattoo was and the name of every cartoon plant on her fingernails. He had thought he was prepared to make interesting conversation.

Jake didn't know shit about coffee.

He suddenly wished he had an excuse to truncate this awkward silence. Maybe he could pretend his phone was buzzing. That it was something important, police-detective-important, and he had to run.

Then he felt like an idiot. You stare down perps in the box every day, Jake told himself. And you can't manage a simple conversation with this girl? Pull your shit together, Lanosky!

He'd say his name, finally introduce himself, and ask her name. He was dying to know her name, the one on the apron tag that was covered up by her long, brown hair. Simple. Easy. Go.

Jake opened his mouth just as the girl slid his drink across the counter.

"There you go," she said, and started to turn away.

"Wait," Jake said. "Just one more thing."

She turned back, smiling brightly. "Yes, sir?"

And Jake wilted.

"You have a great day," he said.

"Thanks! I'll do my best," the girl said. Her eyes had already moved on to look at something outside the window.

Jake walked out of the cafe. After he turned the corner, he dropped the full coffee cup into a trash bin.

He got into his car, opened the glovebox, and pulled out the hip flask. He tossed back a shot of whiskey. He would have put it in the coffee anyway, he rationalized, and this woke him up just as well.

He wasn't anybody to the girl in the cafe. Just another "sir," another customer she could get a bigger tip from if she flirted a little. He was stupid to think he could have gotten anywhere with her.

And he knew why he'd been so nervous about chatting her up. Because no matter how most-wanted or armed-and-dangerous his suspects were, Jake had nothing personal on the line when dealing with them. He knew exactly what that relationship was: antagonistic. And Jake was good at being the bad cop.

He wasn't so good at being an actual human person.

"Fuck it," he grumbled, and downed another shot. "Time to go catch some bad guys."



Image: Coffee to go by Christian Kitazume, November, 2007

"Don't Be a Dick"

DON'T BE A DICK
By Curtis C. Chen

"What's up, Doc?" blared the computerized voice from the speaker above the CRT.

Lisa turned off the speaker. It would be much easier to do this if she didn't have to listen to the machine actually talking to her.

Even though the voice was crudely synthesized, it made the AI seem more human. And Lisa couldn't think of it as a person right now. She had to remember that it was just a program—just a piece of software she'd written, a bunch of ones and zeroes.

She'd left this copy of the "Battlefield Intelligence Global Master Control" program running on her home computer during her sabbatical. The AI was a remarkable achievement, but the primary BIGMAC—the one running at Fort Baxter and being trained to wage war—had turned out to be uncooperative, unstable, and just plain mean. The military was talking about shutting down the entire project.

Lisa had already made her own decision on that.

She'd been hoping her home copy of BIGMAC would show some positive qualities, since it had been isolated from the Army's bad influences, but it was still as childish as ever. Its first interaction with Lisa upon her return had been to demonstrate a new trick: modulating its audio output to simulate different types of flatulence.

The screen blinked. WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY A GAME? the BIGMAC asked.

NO MORE GAMES, Lisa typed.

The military had insisted on the BIGMAC having all kinds of failsafes so that nobody could disable it in the middle of war operations. But Lisa had secretly built in a killswitch, and a message to remind herself what the passcode was.

TELL ME ABOUT THE RABBITS, she typed.

That was the trigger phrase. The screen filled with text:

COME AND DANCE ON ON OUR FLOOR
TAKE A STEP THAT IS NEW
WE'VE A LOVEABLE SPACE
THAT NEEDS YOUR FACE...

THERE'S A HOLDUP IN THE BRONX
BROOKLYN'S BROKEN OUT IN FIGHTS
THERE'S A TRAFFIC JAM IN HARLEM
THAT'S BACKED UP TO JACKSON HEIGHTS...

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF I SANG OUT OF TUNE?
WOULD YOU STAND UP AND WALK OUT ON ME?
LEND ME YOUR EARS AND I'LL SING YOU A SONG
I WILL TRY NOT TO SING OUT OF KEY, YEAH...

YOU CAN COUNT ON ME
NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO
YOU CAN COUNT ON ME
NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO.

What the hell? It took Lisa a moment to remember how she'd programmed this part.

The computer's security keypad would accept a numeric code now, and that would shut down the BIGMAC completely. These verses were a hint to indicate the five-digit code she'd chosen. That's right! Got it.

The screen blinked again. HEY, WANT TO HEAR A JOKE?

SURE, Lisa typed. Maybe the BIGMAC could still redeem itself.

KNOCK KNOCK.

WHO'S THERE?

3.

Lisa frowned. 3 WHO?

3======D, the BIGMAC printed. HA HA HA! YOU TOTALLY FELL FOR IT!

"Okay, you're done." Lisa was glad she'd turned off the speaker earlier.

She entered the shutdown code, and the screen went dark.


What's the five-digit code? Solve the puzzle and e-mail shutdown@snout.org to get your name on the leaderboard! (Hints also available by e-mail.)




Image: OS X chell in Console.app by Blake Patterson, August, 2011

"At Close Range"

AT CLOSE RANGE
By Curtis C. Chen

The guard held up the unlabeled cassette tape and looked at Lisa. "What's this?"

She'd been practicing her answer in front of the bathroom mirror, but her heart rate still accelerated as she stammered, "Just some music. You know, background music for while I'm working. It gets kind of lonely in that big empty computer room all by myself."

"Uh-huh." The guard narrowed his eyes. "What kind of music?"

"It's the new Madonna album," Lisa said. "I have the LP at home, but, you know, it's not really convenient to carry a record back and forth."

The guard looked to be in his fifties, and Lisa wondered if that stony stare had won him many poker games. She felt her palms sweating as she waited, not wanting to say too much.

After a moment, the guard put the tape down. He fished around inside her purse, found her Walkman, and set it on the counter next to the tape.

"Nice lady like you ought not to be listening to music like that," he said, not looking at Lisa.

"Well, I think she's a real inspiration, but to each his own. What kind of music do you like?"

"I like Johnny Cash."

"Right," Lisa said. "Because shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die is so much more wholesome than, you know, sex."

The guard gave her that look again, then loaded everything back into her purse and slid it across the counter.

"You have a nice evening, Professor," he said.

"Do my best," Lisa muttered, grabbing her purse and hustling out of the building.

***

The PLAY button on the tape deck popped up with a clank. Lisa stopped writing in her notebook and turned back to the computer. She entered a command to verify that the data from the tape had transferred successfully over to the hard drive:

X:\>dir /w

 Volume in drive X is BIGMAC
 Volume Serial Number is 1234-5678

 Directory of X:\

LOCALHST.001   OUTPUT.001
PING.002       Q.002
RAVEN.003      ROT13.003
SAVEGAME.004   SUPEREGO.004
TIME.005       UNROLLED.005
VENDETTA.006   ZBAKSLSH.006

              12 File(s)     34,567,890 bytes
              0 Dir(s)       12,345,678 bytes free

Oh no! Where is it? Lisa's heart skipped a beat before she remembered that she'd encrypted the contents of the tape. That's right...

She had been confident that the exit inspection guard at the Army base wouldn't know that audio cassettes could also be used to store digital computer data, but a little paranoia never hurt when it came to security measures—especially when you were smuggling classified information out of DARPA. Lisa couldn't sleep at night unless she made off-site backups of her code, and it was easier to circumvent the restrictions placed on her government work than to argue with the military.

The problem was, Lisa couldn't remember the passphrase she'd chosen. She was pretty sure it was a three-word phrase, and she knew she'd coded it into the fake filenames based on helical scan, the way data was actually written onto tape—maybe those numbers in the file extensions were a clue? She wouldn't be able to recover her project until she figured it out...


Solve the puzzle and e-mail profgoto@snout.org to get your name on the leaderboard! (Hints also available by e-mail.)




Image: memorex cassette tape by Jonathan Blundell, September, 2010

"Midnight Radio"

MIDNIGHT RADIO
By Curtis C. Chen

"You are a bad person," the radio telescope said.

Rhonna couldn't be sure the signal was talking to her, but it seemed likely, since the voice sounded just like her dead mother-in-law. Rhonna also couldn't be sure she wasn't going crazy, but that's why she was recording.

The next sentence was mumbled and difficult to make out. Rhonna leaned closer to the computer speaker and turned the volume dial clockwise just a bit.

"BAD PERSON ON THE SWANEE RIVER!" the speaker blared.

Rhonna jumped back, then dialed the volume down as the song continued, going more and more off-key with every phrase. The live waveform displayed by the audio recording software pulsed, illustrating the changes in the signal being received by the telescope, drawing a ragged, infinite, impossible line across the screen.

The voice had started talking to Rhonna two nights ago. The signal hadn't tripped any of the automated detection systems, either on the computers or in the analog equipment, but the handheld MP3 recorder that she used for voice dictation had definitely picked up the sounds.

Rhonna had listened to the recording over and over that first night, not wanting to believe the words she heard:

"I know why you killed me."

It wasn't true, of course, not strictly speaking: Rhonna hadn't intended to kill her mother-in-law. She had meant the poisoned casserole for her husband, who had been cheating on her for months now.

The tracker Rhonna had planted on his car in January showed him going to different bars every night. And though the footage was dark and grainy, the video camera she'd hidden in their bedroom clearly showed Darryl bringing several different women home on various nights when Rhonna was working at the observatory.

Of course, Rhonna thought, if I'm hallucinating now, maybe I imagined all that other stuff, too. Maybe Darryl wasn't ever cheating on me. Maybe—

She shook her head. That line of thought was not productive. She was a scientist. She had to deal with the evidence presented. Until something happened to disprove the current theory, she had to work with it.

She hadn't told anyone about the voice yet, but maybe it was time. She'd been recording the signal continuously for the past two days. Surely in that time it had spewed something more meaningful than this horrible rendition of "Swanee River."

"All up and down the old creation!" the voice caterwauled. "Sadly! I roam!"

"It's too bad I can't talk back to you," Rhonna muttered.

"You can talk back to me," the voice said.

Rhonna looked around the empty room. "Goddammit, I am crazy."

"You're not crazy," the voice said. "Bad, maybe. But not crazy."

"You're a radio signal from a point source five light-years away," Rhonna said. "It is physically impossible for us to be having a conversation in real time."

After a pause, the voice asked, "What makes you think this is real time?"

Rhonna threw up her hands. "Great. The voices in my head are wiseacres."

"I don't know that word."

"Shut up."



Image: Time Is Passing by DonkerDink, August, 2007

"Get Your Ass to Mars"

GET YOUR ASS TO MARS
By Curtis C. Chen

My father died before I went into space, but he was the reason I made it there.

For years, he talked about visiting the Grand Canyon, but kept putting it off. There was always something more important to do. It became a running joke between us. Every birthday and Father's Day, I would send him another tacky souvenir I'd bought online, building up memorabilia from a vacation he'd never taken.

It was funny until my junior year of college, when he was diagnosed with stage three bone cancer.

That summer, I surprised him with a gift: two train tickets to the South Rim. It had taken me weeks to negotiate with his doctors, but we all knew he didn't have much time left.

He had taken up whittling, using a kitschy penknife I'd sent him the year before. The lacquered handle showed tracks from coyote, deer, sheep, and other mammals native to Arizona. The pawprints had inspired him to attempt to carve tiny versions of each animal.

He was fashioning an alleged mountain lion out of basswood while we waited for the train. His fingers kept slipping off the blade, but I said nothing.

"What do you think?" He held up the tiny chunk of maimed lumber.

I squinted. "You're getting better. That almost looks not like a mutant dog."

"Everyone's a critic." He laid the carving on its side. "Hold that, will you? I need to make my mark."

I don't know if it was the pain in his hands, or if the whistle of the incoming train startled him, but I saw a flash of light as the knife spun out of his grip and slid across the glass tabletop. Then I saw red.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine," he said, his voice tight.

"You're bleeding."

"What? No." He held up his hands and turned them over. There were no cuts or scrapes anywhere. "I'm fine, see."

I pointed at his chest. There had been one fuzzy red dot on his shirt a moment ago. Now it was expanding. Other dots appeared, turning the solid blue cloth into a gruesome polka dot design.

An ambulance rushed us to the hospital. The doctors refused to let him leave. I knew what they would tell me. My father wasn't going to see the Grand Canyon.

I sat with him that night, reading aloud from a book titled Over the Edge, which cataloged the outlandish ways people had managed to get themselves killed in the national park over the years. I had been saving it for his next birthday.

"See," I said, "it's a good thing we didn't go. You might have ended up dead. Or worse."

"Promise me you won't wait," he said. "Whatever it is you want, whatever you think will make you happy—don't wait until it's too late."

"I promise, Dad."

He smiled at me, and I held his hand as he closed his eyes.

I went to the Grand Canyon after my father died. I scattered his ashes there, and I kept my promise.



Image: Superimposed Rover on Rim of Victoria Crater by NASA/JPL/Cornell, October, 2006

"Sacrifice"

SACRIFICE
By Curtis C. Chen

"Beacon!" The familiar, pulsating light pattern flashed across the left side of Semira's visor. "You see it, soldier? Beacon! Just over the ridge! Now move!"

Riddam didn't move. Semira shifted her weight and slid down the slope, bringing a cloud of fine dust with her. It wasn't until the next bombardment ignited a new set of fireballs that she saw why Riddam wasn't moving.

The armor had saved their lives on more than one occasion. It wasn't just weaponry, or defensive equipment; it also cleaned water, identified toxins in local flora, and processed and stored waste so hostile forces couldn't track the unit by their organic residue. But when push came to shove, it was still just a suit of armor.

Riddam's entire right side had been crushed by an enemy drone. Semira couldn't believe she hadn't heard the crash, but the evidence was right there, smashed into the hillside: gnarled metal beneath a cracked ceramic shell, detonation sensors in the nose melted into a black lump.

She flattened against the hill, lying above the wreckage and perpendicular to Riddam, their helmets close together. Riddam still had her lance pointed upward, and her eyes continued scanning the sky, but Semira knew that unfocused look. The armor sealed itself around any life-threatening injuries until a medic could unlock it, and it also pumped painkillers into the soldier's body until overriden.

"Here's what's going to happen now," Semira said. "I'm going to pull you out of this hole. We're going to get over this fucking hill. We're going to make it to that beacon. And we're going home."

Riddam chuckled. Her eyes were thin rings of pale green circling bottomless black holes. "Thanks for the pep talk, Chief," she said, "but I only got one arm and one leg right now. You go ahead. I'll catch up after my limbs grow back, okay?"

Semira grabbed Riddam's shoulder plate and yanked. She moved, but not much. "Put down the lance and push, goddammit."

"Don't be stupid, Chief."

"That's an order!"

"Well, I'll see you at the court-martial, then."

Riddam turned her head, and Semira saw the other side of her face: red and black and other colors that sat wrong against Riddam's pale skin. She might have been pretty, in another time and place. Semira suddenly realized she'd never seen Riddam outside the armor.

Semira gritted her teeth. "You're going to fucking make me live with this, you little bitch?"

Riddam stared back, her expression unreadable. "Woof, woof."

It took Semira a moment to remember how to laugh. "You really want those to be your last words, soldier?"

Riddam smiled. "Meet you on the other side, Chief. Hoo-rah."

Semira climbed over the hill. She didn't look back. Even after she reached the beacon, even after the pod lifted off, she didn't look back.

She didn't want to know what she had left behind. And she regretted that decision for the rest of her life.



Image: Flowers! by HJ Media Studios, April, 2010

"Can't Get Arrested"

CAN'T GET ARRESTED
By Curtis C. Chen

"Who the hell are these girls?" Dani muttered.

She knew she should be paying attention to her own console, but her eyes kept wandering back to Monitor Three, at her left elbow, where two sandy-haired teenagers were taking apart a mechanical minotaur using nothing more than their bare hands and what appeared to be a couple of liberated parking meters.

"Dani!" the producer shouted. "Where's my next bumper?"

"Coming right up!" Dani called back. She jumped at least two centimeters off her chair when she realized Harvey was standing right behind her.

"What goddamn feed is that?" He jabbed a finger toward Monitor Three. "And where the hell is—"

"Piped to bravo!" Dani hollered, swiping across her control surface to move the rendered bumper graphics into the second of several video buffers on the big board. But now Harvey wasn't even paying attention, and his assistant had to yell across the room to cue the next commercial break.

Dani could smell the pungent aroma of Harvey's lunch as he leaned down and touched Three to zoom in on the taller of the two girls. "Gladiatrix?"

"Hell no," said Peter, the beanpole working Three. Unlike Dani, he actually seemed excited about the managerial scrutiny. "That's a news feed. Live from New York."

Harvey's head whipped around. "There's a ground battle in Manhattan and we haven't cut to a special bulletin yet?" He stood up straight to yell at his assistant. "Are the fucking phones down again?"

"Oh, no, boss," Peter said, waving his hands frantically. "It's an exhibition match."

Harvey squinted at Peter as if the kid had just sprouted an extra head. "The City of New York authorized these people to demolish an entire block?"

"Yeah!" Peter nodded enthusiastically. "It's the latest PR thing for unaffiliated metas. You get some sponsors, file for a permit to help clear a block that's going to be razed anyway—this one's on the Upper West Side—and line up some non-human, non-sentient heavies to beat down—"

"Okay, okay, I get the picture," Harvey said. "This is really a thing?"

Peter shrugged. "How else are you going to get noticed in the big city?"

"Wait a minute." Dani had been wondering how long it would take Harvey to remember that this was highly irregular. "Why do you have this feed up?"

Peter blinked. "Um, research?"

Harvey smacked a palm down on top of Monitor Three. "We're in the middle of a fucking show here!" He waved at his assistant. "Are we still in commercial?"

"Forty seconds back," the assistant replied.

"You." Harvey pointed at Peter. "Are on notice." He stalked back to his control station. "Dani! I want the rainbow bumper in, with a paired ad block!"

She was ready for this one. "Up on alfa!"

By the time the show wrapped, the two superpowered girls in Harlem had gone through a junkyard's worth of sponsored robo-wreckers. Dani headed to the nearest balcony for a smoke and a personal phone call. The Mentalist would want to hear about this.



Image: uprooted by Justin Henry, September, 2007