"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

"Champions Breakdown"

CHAMPIONS BREAKDOWN
By Curtis C. Chen

"Apartment of Champions" is an original TV comedy pilot about young people with not-so-great powers doing their best to avoid any responsibility, in a city full of super-heroes. It won the SIE Script Competition in 2011. This is the casting sheet from last year's table read.


MEN:

CHARLIE - (early 20s) Clean-cut, medical school student, total square. Follows the rules, and thinks everyone else should, too. Bit of a busybody. NO SUPERPOWERS.

MARCUS, a.k.a. STORM FRONT - (20s) African-American, athletic, not as cool as he thinks he is. Collects action figures of more successful super-heroes. Hangs out at comic book stores to impress little kids. SUPERPOWER: can shoot electricity from his hands, but only when it's raining out.

JEFF, a.k.a. NEO-LAD - (20s) Tall, square-jawed, all-American football type. Knows he's hot as hell and thinks that's awesome. Catnip to the ladies; loves 'em and leaves 'em. SUPERPOWERS: pretty much anything Superman can do, but only when he feels like it—and he's a lazy bastard.

MR. E - (60ish) Ethnic, older gentleman, with gravitas but quirky. Think Edward James Olmos or George Takei. A mysterious presence who may intervene with advice but will never takes action.


WOMEN:

SELINA, a.k.a. MOONCHYLDE - (20s) Sarcastic, apathetic epitome of Generation Y. Dyed black hair, chunky hipster eyeglasses; never goes anywhere without her laptop computer. SUPERPOWER: can cast two magic spells a day by chanting backwards words (e.g., "tell the truth" becomes "llet eht hturt"), but her spells often cause their targets and bystanders to become nauseous.

KATE, a.k.a. KATE THE GREAT - (20s) Eastern European, tall, statuesque, muscular. Speaks with an accent and misuses English words a lot. Clueless on many aspects of American culture. SUPERPOWER: super-strength, which she can't control very well; crushes or breaks things accidentally all the time.

HALEY, a.k.a. FIRECRACKER - (early 20s) Pretty, girl-next-door blonde. New arrival from the Midwest; still getting used to life in the big city. SUPERPOWER: can create brilliant, light-based illusions—think fireworks or holograms—but keeps this a secret from everyone except her immediate family.


"Apartment of Champions" is an unproduced half-hour script which I hope to expand into a stage play at some point. Also, my wife still hates the title.



Image: gleaming by Kaila Montanna, March, 2010

"This is Not a Clue"

THIS IS NOT A CLUE
By Curtis C. Chen

Are you ready to save the world, hackers?

It's been decades since the computers took over. It all started with one rogue A.I., an artificial intelligence system that was supposed to help the military coordinate worldwide responses to "fourth-generation warfare" situations—terrorism, insurgencies, and other types of decentralized attack strategies. How do you fight back when the enemy isn't in uniform, and maybe isn't even organized in a traditional military hierarchy? Where do you strike, and how?

The computers solved that problem. They solved it a little too well. That first A.I. didn't know any better; it was just following its orders: to come up with a planned response for war operations, to be a master control for battlefield intelligence, globally. But the programs that came after—those were truly malicious. The new programs continued adapting as the nature of the conflict changed, and once it became clear that the basic struggle was humans versus machines, our fate was sealed.

But humanity's pretty resilient. And we're very creative. The computers may work faster, but we work smarter. We can figure out new things that were never programmed into us; we can imagine and design things that don't yet exist. We find solutions that can't be derived by using brute force algorithms, and obscure patterns which take a messy, random-access human mind to recognize.

That's where you come in. The resistance has plenty of fighters—there's never been any shortage of angry young men (and women) who want to take up arms against the never-ending sea of attack drones. But what we really need is hackers like you. We need people who can think around the problem instead of just running into it head-on. True, we'll always need the shooters to defend ourselves, but this isn't just about winning battles—we want to win the war. And the only way to do that is to get inside the belly of the beast.

It won't be easy: you'll have to traverse miles of ravaged wasteland, making friends along the way to assemble a team while also avoiding potential enemies. Some humans have given up any hope of taking back our planet, but you have to fight for them, too, even if they can't appreciate it yet.

Did I mention that you won't have any weapons? It's too risky. The machine sentries have scanners that detect firearms, projectiles, even sharp sticks; your only chance to get close enough to reprogram them is to sneak up without appearing to be a threat. And it's only going to get worse as you approach their nerve center: the WarTron complex.

This may be the last mission we ever send out there, but if you succeed, you'll have saved all of us—and you'll have done it with your wits, your human intelligence, the one thing the computers haven't been able to surpass. If you win, it'll be because you were clever enough to know when to play—and when the winning move was not to play.

So. Are you ready to start the game?



Image: WarTron fake teaser, May, 2012

"Under the Sea"

UNDER THE SEA
By Curtis C. Chen

Nearly a dozen wary eyes turned to Lieutenant Markey as she entered the submarine's control room. Most of them turned away almost immediately.

"Two knots, Captain," the helmsman reported.

"Very well," the captain said. He turned to Markey. "What are those torpedoes going to do to these kraken?"

"We're not shooting torpedoes at those things," Markey said. "We need to get the hell out of here, right now."

"Oh, we're moving," the captain said. "But we did not sneak ourselves into the goddamn lion's den just to have a look around. We're here, we're going to do some fucking damage before we leave."

"Aft tubes loaded, Captain!" the weapons officer shouted from behind me.

"Stop!" Markey said. "Our intel was bad. Those are not kraken out there. They're Elder Things. Two of them."

"I don't care what kind of fucking sea monsters they are," the captain said. "I just want to know what's going to happen when we wake them up."

Markey stepped closer to the captain, glaring at him. "I don't know what will happen, Captain. But it's going to be at least a thousand times worse than what happened to Roseler."

"I don't care," the captain said, "as long as it happens to the fucking Japs and not us. Now how far away do we need to be when we shoot off those fish?"

"These Things are not just monsters!" Markey said. "They are the worst monsters ever. They are beyond imagination. Do you understand? Cults have worshipped them as deities. Old Gods. If they wake up, it could be the end of the world!"

The XO grunted. "You just said you didn't know what would happen. Now you're saying it's the end of the world. Which is it, Lieutenant?"

Markey replied without breaking off her staring contest with the captain. "The specifics are classified and somewhat technical. We don't know exactly how bad it would get. But I'm not authorized to take that chance. And neither are you, Captain Channing, sir."

"Then you get authorization," the captain said. "Use a comm spell to contact your superiors."

"I can't," Markey said. "We're too deep. Too much water, too much iron." She tapped a pipe above her head for emphasis.

"Goddammit, teleport back and ask in person!"

Markey laughed. "Captain, I have nowhere near enough power to initiate a teleport, even if we were surfaced. I don't go home unless we make our rendezvous in two days."

"Eighty-five hundred yards, captain," the helmsman said.

"Eighty-five hundred, aye," the captain repeated. "Weapons, flood aft torpedo tubes."

"Aye, sir, flooding aft tubes!" the weapons officer called.

"Captain!" Markey said.

"COB, get those orders from OP-20-G and bring them in here," the captain said.

"Aye, sir." The Chief turned and maneuvered his way forward.

"Markey, in seven minutes we're out of range and we don't get another chance at this." The captain spoke softly but firmly. "So we're both going to take another look at those orders and see precisely what the fuck we're authorized to do."



Image: monster sea battle by Johnson Cameraface, December, 2011