"Bite marks," said the forensics officer. "A lot of bite marks."

The detective peered at the ragged corpse. It was barely recognisable as human; just a series of holes where flesh ought to be.

"Please tell me a wild animal did this."

The forensics officer pointed at a series of incisions across what was left of a shoulder. "That's a human bite. No doubt about it."

"What kind of sick freak bites chunks out of someone? Do the teeth marks match those from the previous five victims?"

"That's why we called you. They do match, and we know who those teeth belong to."

"We were due to catch a break. Who was it?"

The room went quiet. The assembled forensics team paused. They knew how crazy this would sound.

"The teeth marks... Well... The teeth marks belong to the victim..."

The room span around the detective. This couldn't be suicide. It just couldn't. No human - not even a psychopath burnt out on designer pharmaceuticals - could inflict those sorts of wounds on themselves. It didn't make sense.

The detective struggled to stem the rising vomit, "How sure are you?"

Shakily, a forensics tech picked up a discarded lump of human-meat. The incisions were clearly visible on both sides. She opened the mouth of the victim and started pointing out all the subtle details which proved the match.

"100% sure. Either this is an extreme case of auto-cannibalism or..."

The detective sighed. "Check the victim's social media posts. See if they ever shared a CT scan of their jaw online. My guess is that our killer stole their dental profile and created a weapon using a 3D printer..."

Behind this door is the lair of Dr David Mills.

After seeing my adventures in viewing my CT Scan using Linux, he generously offered to help print them out using the dental lab's resin printer.

Which resulted in this:

Once all the scaffolding was snapped off, I was left with a life-sized replica of my face-bones:

I'm sure nothing bad will happen as a result of this!

You will recall that our planet-bound ancestors were not quick to realise the potential of direct solar power. We can only imagine how the development of our civilisation may have been altered if they had bountiful and pollution free energy but, alas, these things take time.

Our forefathers launched into the terrifying void of space and gradually conquered the dead worlds surrounding them. They explored, searching in vain for alien life. The other worlds contained no fossilised remains of life - and so there were no fossil fuels. Mining for radioactive elements was expensive and fraught with danger. It would have seemed that solar power was the obvious solution - but panels are heavy. Nothing can challenge the harsh Delta-V equations which govern the escape from a gravity well. The vast mass of solar panels which needed to be lifted into space, carried across the lonely expanse, and safely deposited was too great. It placed a fundamental limit on our species' ability to become an interplanetary society.

We do not know much about the person who invented the theory behind the self-replicating solar cell. No doubt their name became a blessing to many, and they expected future history books to sing their praises until the heat-death of the universe. But our civilisation is now ancient. Even if we could find the writings of that century, it is unlikely we could still understand them. Time is long, but history is short. As we are closing in on the end of our history, we wonder whether anyone will remember the sacrifices we made?

To us, this technology is a child's plaything. To those ancients it must have seemed like esoteric dark magic - the ability to conjure something out of nothing. A solar panel, when properly stimulated by a photon, spits out an electron. The universe is flooded with neutrinos and we all know the process for warp-accelerating both particles into a condensate foam that, when properly hyper-magnetised, spits out the requisite quarks, leptons, and other subatomic goop. From there, gravinometric isolation beams control space-time fluctuations which reconfigure the particulate matter flow. Long story short, a vast amount of electricity can be converted to a single atom which can be precisely placed into a matrix of other atoms.

The first prototype panel to be launched took half the planet's resources - and our erstwhile homeworld still bears the hideous scars from both the mining and what our archaeologists describe as "a cataclysmic war". The panel must have seemed impossibly vast to those primitives who dedicated generations of lives to see it fly towards the sun. Can you imagine their joy when the panel's impossibly complex computers, factories, magnetrons, yottacycles, and meson throttlers finally produced its first atom? It would have been like making fire for the first time. It was the dawn of a new phase of existence.

The panel gradually produced atom after atom until, several thousands of years later, the second panel was completed. The second panel set about repairing the colossal damage done to the first by constant exposure to the nightmare of space. And then, the two panels became four. And the four became eight. And the sacred sequence continued. Each panel repairing its siblings and generating new children. That first panel - now aeons-long dead - is still being preserved somewhere in the sphere by its descendants. A rare bit of sentiment from our notoriously modern society.

The conversion of energy into synthetic matter was not without problems. Micrometeor bombardment obliterated the radiation shielding and, in turn, the radiation bombardment corrupted the digital code which controlled the panels. Mutations arose and generated panels which were grossly deformed or which were overly productive. The efficient ones prospered and evolved while the defects were deatomised and replaced. In this way, our star-encompassing sphere grew and evolved and learned. The wizards of yore would undoubtedly be delighted to know that they created life eternal in an otherwise barren galaxy. And yet, even today there are heretics who deny the simple truth that our home is a living and intelligent being. But how could it be any other way? The evidence is literally all around us!

It would take millions of years for the sphere to be completed but, in the meantime, two interlinked problems needed to be solved. And it is the consequences of those choices which lead us to today's existential threat. The problem is one of heat. More specifically, the zettawatts of infrared radiation which is being pumped out of every panel every second of every day. Heat generation is inevitable and needs to be radiated away. The panels did this admirably and, in doing so, sealed our fate. From the perspective of distant civilisations, our star would begin to blink out and eventually fade away. That in itself is not unusual; we see stars die all the time. But our star would disappear from optical view while still appearing as a bright infrared glow from trillions of light-years away.

The very act of hiding ourselves announced our civilisation to the galaxy! Perhaps our neighbours are friendly? But what if they are foes? What if they are impossibly ancient and jealous? If they felt threatened by our civilisation, they may attack! We had no desire to conquer any further than our local solar system - but we were not naïve enough to think that everything felt that way. We could not fathom what weapons invaders would have, nor what defences would be available to them, or what form of warfare they might undertake. Our only logical option was to hide.

Our high priests sent emissaries to every panel to preach the doctrine of fear. Our home would hide in plain sight by storing up all its waste heat and releasing it in staccato bursts. We would, to any observer, look like a common pulsar. A gentle flash in the night like so many other failed stars. The few interstellar probes we had launched in a flurry of exploration turned their eyes back on us and reported that we were but another celestial beacon, indistinguishable from all around. We slept in peaceful obscurity.

Perhaps you have already had the insight that took our community a shamefully long period to discover. We had assumed that pulsars were a natural phenomenon; just an inevitable state of decay. But what if they weren't? What if the galaxy was flooded with civilisations who had made the same assumption and hidden themselves in the same way? Perhaps the very act of hiding that we were hiding had revealed that we were hiding?

The sphere listened.

We turned our attention outwards and, like the myths of the ancient hunter, listened to the sounds in the dark forest.

We surveyed the entire sky and strained to hear anything unusual. Most pulsars, it seemed, were just pulsars. But one pulsar pulsed like no other. The pulsing had an extremely unusual period and a spectral analysis showed a signal-to-noise ratio that was indicative of intelligent life! Was this the universe singing to us?

From a million light years away we tuned in.

The entirety of our star's power was dedicated to decoding the signal and interpreting the message that some intemperate species was pumping into the cold night. Our civilisation dedicated every resource we had to decode the alien language, unwinding its mysteries, and understanding the implications of this contact. Despite our magnificent power and complete mastery of physics, we have found no way to breach the light-speed barrier. All we can do is listen, learn, and wonder at their incredible technology.

Our universe feels a little less empty now.

And so, council, this is where we need your guidance. Should we reply? We can easily target our pulsar energy in their direction and we can stream great quantities of data across every wavelength. If their civilisation still exists, and if they are listening, they should easily detect our presence. We would be exposed, but perhaps a little less lonely. The message is prepared, the calculations have been made, we just need your consensus.

Our proposed message reads:

We do not know how long your "year" is - much less 20 of them - but after spending millions of generations thinking we were the only intelligent species in space, we would be delighted to join "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band".

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

One week later, a graduate student named Lohita was assigned the grunt work of surveying the images. It was punishment for some minor etiquette breach involving a risqué joke about her professor's husband and the plague of monkeys surrounding the institute. So now, close to midnight, she was mindlessly clicking through the recently arrived data. Her finger tapped her laptop's trackpad. The capacitive sensor sent a burst of information via a priority interrupt into the CPU, which then coordinated with the operating system to find the logical address of the file she requested. Bit by bit, it began to decode the data and loaded it into memory. The green pixel rode through the mechanical merry-go-round of the hard disk, hopped through the ageing GPU, and then danced along the HDMI cable with glee at the thought of finally being seen. The Organic LED graciously accepted the pixel into its new home. The OLED's iridium molecules had begun to think its day would never come. It fizzed with excitement as it threw the 525 nanometre waves into the æther.

The journey from screen to eyeball was considerably shorter for the little green pixel. It experienced the delight of passing across the cornea and through the strange aqueous jelly within, before eventually becoming entangled in the rods and cones. As it burrowed through the optic nerve, it noticed a small cluster of friends had joined it on the journey. Holding hands, they all entered Lohita's brain together.

After a moment of contemplation, she began mentally composing her Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Something classy about the support she had received from his whole team, but without actually mentioning her vindictive professor by name. The Prime Minister would probably create a new award just for her. The name "Lohita" would be written through history for eternity. She smiled and zoomed in towards the only patch of green on the red planet.

Mangalyaan-13 had been a disaster from the start but this photograph was its salvation. The previous three craft had crash-landed and 27 was a last ditch mission with shoestring funding. One of the wheels had never worked properly which meant the rover could only drive in a large circle. A software update from some outsourced shop had permanently disabled the spectrometer. The solar panels were only working at 50% of their rated value and a slow coolant leak meant that it was unlikely that the poor little craft would last the year. India's dreams of exploring Mangala were coming to an inglorious end. Until now.

Lohita checked the timestamp on the image. It was only from last week! The picture was of a fairly unremarkable rock on the bottom of a long-dry ravine, near a crater that no one had bothered to name. The rock itself was a dull rusty colour, nothing to distinguish it from the millions of other rocks a dozen different rovers had previously surveyed. But there, hanging stubbornly to the edge of it was the unmistakable texture and colour of lichen.

Pulling up the mission map, she could see that the rover was less than a kilometre away from the spot where it had noticed this impossible patch of... she hardly dared think it... this impossible patch of life. The rover had climbed a small incline because the actuators on its solar array were too clogged with dust to move, and it was scheduled to stay there recharging its decrepit batteries for another couple of sols. Lohita's heart began to quicken; she had about 48 hours to convince the entire space agency to tear up the carefully planned route of Mangalyaan-13 and send it back to look for this miracle.

Administrator Rohan claimed that he had an open door policy and that he was always willing to hear the crazy theories of his staff - Lohita was prepared to put that to the test. It was nearly one in the morning. The guards were asleep as were the screaming monkeys outside. She traipsed up from the basement and made her way to the executive suite on the 23rd floor. Rohan's office was locked, so she wrapped herself around her laptop and fell asleep in front of his door.

Rohan's secretary disagreed with her boss's laissez-faire attitude to waifs and strays, so didn't bother offering Lohita a cup of chai. She just glowered at the dishevelled interloper now sitting on the executive couch, and waited for the administrator to arrive. Rohan swept into the office chattering on the phone and caught sight of the young student tightly clutching her laptop. This wasn't the first graduate who'd made a pilgrimage at the crack of dawn and he suspected it wouldn't be the last. He held up a finger and beckoned her into his inner sanctum while still talking about end of year fiscal approvals.

Putting down the phone, he smiled and said, "Well, what fascinating discovery do you have for me, young lady?" He tried not to sound too sarcastic, and failed miserably.

Lohita really didn't know where to begin, so she just mutely handed over the laptop, its screen set to maximum brightness, and the magical image radiating out.

"Is this... Mars?"

"From Mangalyaan-13 a week ago. I've verified it came through the Deep Space Network uncorrupted. The digital signatures and checksums match. I'd like to urgently request that we send the rover back to take a second look. Sir."

Rohan leant over his desk and pressed the intercom button. "Ms Chopra? Would you kindly signal Rover Command and have the mission director attend my office with all haste." He thought for a moment, glanced at Lohita, and said "I'll also need the head of public relations. Tell her to bring a full makeup team."

The stifling bureaucratic machine could move with surprising nimbleness when lubricated correctly. The chance to resurrect the mission's glory and make history was the best motivator in the galaxy. The news leaked instantly, of course, and Lohita found herself giving interviews to every news station in the world. She became an instant poster-girl for Women In STEM and, while she didn't get granted an instant Nobel Prize, she was gracious enough to mention her professor in every speech about her discovery. She was on top of the world.

The rover, however, was not. With limited battery reserves, a depleted amount of coolant, and a broken wheel, it dragged its carcass back towards the rock. The journey was too much for its knackered suspension and dust-filled computers. It nearly looked like it would make it, but another botched software patch caused a motor to overheat and it came to a grinding halt a dozen metres away from its destination.

Five years later, the ISRO ship "Rohan" inserted itself into orbit around Mars. Its hold carried a skeleton crew and the ashes of the billionaire who had funded the mission. The journey had been arduous and the ship itself was unlikely to survive a return trip. The astronauts had all signed up knowing that this was doomed to be a one-way mission, but they didn't care. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity demanded a little sacrifice. Despite the intensity of the journey, the multi-national crew acted as one throughout the mission - until it came to decide who should be the first to step out onto the red planet.

"Well, it is an Indian ship..." "Yes - but built off stolen Chinese designs..." "Of course, a fellow Texan provided the funding for it..."

The good-natured argument continued as the lander hurtled its way towards the surface.

"Mind you, we Russians were the first in space. So it would seem fitting..." "As the first openly gay man on Mars would mean a lot to..." "Perhaps it is time for an African woman to be the pioneer for once...?"

In the end, they came to the consensus that they would turn off the ships' external cameras and reactivate them once everyone was out of the lander. The first video the waiting public saw of the crew was of half-a-dozen astronauts standing in a straight line on the sandy surface. Holding hands, they bowed. Then they began clambering into the "Lohita" rover. To avoid disturbing the only confirmed presence of extraterrestrial life, they had taken the precaution of landing several kilometres away from the target. The rover had been built for speed and structural integrity - no one wanted a repeat of Mangalyaan-13 - but this meant the journey was a bone-shaking experience. A bone-shaking but exhilarating experience! Each astronaut narrated what they were seeing in their own language which was immediately radioed back to the lander and from there to the neighbouring planet. The whole world watched the shaky video from Lohita's camera, listening intently as their astronaut spoke of the poetry of discovery. And there, in the distance, was the rock.

There were no words left to speak. Every person on the planet knew what that rock looked like; it was the most reproduced image in history. Every child had a poster of it in their bedroom, every temple took it as proof of a loving god, every conspiracy theorist spent hours each day pointing out its imperfections, every phone had it as a wallpaper, every piece of graffiti reproduced its outline, every album cover paid homage to it, and every tattooist could draw it blindfolded. As the pixels hurtled through space at the speed of light, everyone in the whole wide world held their breath.

But the rock was bare.

There were no words left to speak. This was the correct rock, but there was no lichen, no little green algae clinging to it, no wispy fungus tendrils. Just a very ordinary and very empty rock.

The Russian's howl of rage flooded the radio spectrum as he dropped to his knees, scrabbling in the dirt desperately searching for evidence of life. Behind him, his colleagues stood dumbfounded, waiting for word from mission control. The Texan trudged over to Mangalyaan-13 which sat a short distance away. Perhaps it was mistaken about the coordinates? Perhaps it held the answers to this suicide mission? Perhaps...?

By now, the little rover had succumbed to the endless dust-storms which stalked the land. It was as lifeless as a sun-bleached pile of bones decomposing under the desert sun. The Texan wiped the solar panels clean, hoping the critical systems were still intact, and he was rewarded with a small flashing LED indicating the boot process had started. Under all the muck accumulated over a decade, he found the rubberised cover for the debug port and plugged in an armoured USB cable. The data transfer cable snaked between him and the traitorous rover, and his wrist display crackled to life. His ears were filled with the screams of the other astronauts as the friendly Linux Penguin crawled onto the screen and was swiftly replaced with a blur of text. The machine paused. The screen blanked. Edging across it, character by character, in a lurid green font, came a message:

"MADE U L0000k! H4cked by l0serSopht! Bi6 GR33N m4ch1n3! ;-)))"

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

2032-11-28

There's no such thing as superheroes. That's why I've placed my head in a vice and am expanding my nasal cavities with a surgical drill.

All my life I wanted to be special. I grew up on a diet of those glossy superhero movies and spent every birthday running in a cheap plastic costume defeating all the bad-guys in my neighbourhood. The older I got, the less I put away childish things. All my electives at college were focussed on one goal - make me a hero.

I couldn't figure out a way to fly. X-ray vision sounds nice but is basically for perverts. Breathing underwater is solved by SCUBA. And I couldn't find a magic ring or ancient wizard anywhere. But I did have a theory. Or hypothesis. I forget which one's which. What if a man could smell like a dog? No. That didn't come out right. What if a man could smell as good as a dog does? No. Argh. Let's get it right.

What if a man had a sense of smell which was as good as a dog's?

And that's why I have a drill halfway up my nose. I'm making room for the implants which will wire up to my neurons and give me a 100,000x increase in olfactory capability. I've dissected hundreds of dogs to get to this point, and now I'm making the final leap. All those smell receptors have been submerged in a nutrient bath for weeks while I chugged down immunosuppressants and calibrated the cybernetic implants which would augment my brain. The pain is, of course, indescribable. But it will all be worth it. Today I will make history as the man with the ultimate nose!

2032-12-01

It worked! Thanks to everyone who livestreamed the operation and has donated to my Patreon! It's only through friends like you that I'm able to keep performing this ground-breaking work. The pain has mostly stopped, and the antibiotics are clearing up the weird infection I got. But it looks like the majority of the odorant receptors in the nasal epithelium have bonded successfully!

If you were on the Discord, you'll already know that today I switched on the neural implant for the first time. All the code is on my GitHub - and a big shout out to user FruntGrucker27 for sending a Pull Request to fix the over-voltage problems. Without that, all I'd be able to smell is the magic smoke leaking out of my head!!

I'm not gonna lie, it has been intense. I have only dialled the settings up to 5% of baseline, but I can already smell the world in a whole new light. I knew that my bread had gone off before I even opened the basket. This is incredible. Over the next few weeks I'll experiment with turning up the gain and seeing how this new superpower can be beneficial to all mankind.

2032-12-15

Getting fired just before Christmas SUCKS ASS!

I entered the break room at work and was marvelling at the incredible smells I'd discovered. With the gain at 2x normal, I could tell who'd been out smoking, who was still a little drunk from the night before, and which person hadn't washed their hands after using the facilities. It was overwhelming and, let's be honest, a little gross.

Janet from reception came in and made small talk. She's always been interested in my research and asked how it was going. I made a passing comment about being able to smell that she was on her period and she reported me to HR! What a bitch. Apparently it's not the only complaint they've had about me making co-workers feel uncomfortable, so they let me go.

I could smell the nervousness radiating off the security guard as he escorted me from the building. Just as I could smell the scent of someone who wasn't his wife lingering on his skin.

Well, please keep hitting that donate button and if any of you have work available, leave a comment below.

2033-04-20

What up, dogs! A lot has happened since I last updated this blog. I know some of you are eager for more updates since I was banned from TikTok for some of my "pranks". Well, I'm pleased to say that I have a new job! Thanks to the generosity of user ThnBlLn911 I got an interview with my local police force. And I am proud to announce that I'm joining the ranks of their dedicated Narcotics Detection Unit as an auxiliary K9 attachment.

Yup - I'm doing sniffer dog training!

I've spent the last few weeks learning how to tell the difference between fentanyl and talcum powder. My nasal settings have been upgraded to about 100x the normal human capability - so I'm not quite as good as a German Shepherd, but I'm getting there. The instructors and officers are so much fun to be around, it's a great working environment with lots of cheeky banter. My new nickname - DogBoy - isn't quite as heroic as I wanted, but it's pretty accurate.

As well as sniffing for drugs, I'm also learning how to tell if someone is carrying suppressed items like counterfeit religious material, or unlicensed books. Not really sure why they're after that, but at least they smell better than the weird scent of magic mushrooms.

If I can help make a few drug busts then I'll be well on my way to becoming a proper superhero.

2033-06-19

Fugg da polize!!! Yup, fired again. There's a reason the police like dogs; dogs obey instructions. I was out on patrol with a new handler when he pulled over a car for, as he claimed, driving erratically. The dude in the car was pretty angry and said he was sick of being racially profiled by the cops. At which point my buddy had me walk around the car to sniff for illicit substances.

With the car window down I could smell the guy's cheap and pungent aftershave. He smelled like he'd recently gotten laid, and I was pretty sure that he'd had a cheeseburger either before or after the act. There was a slight tang of a large roll of cash - but that's still not illegal. The boot had recently stored several cases of fresh fruit and veg which I guess might have been smuggled. But there were no drugs.

As I walked around the car, the cop kept making this weird hand gesture. I told him the car was clean and he got angry. After the young man had driven off, I was told that he'd been giving me the detection signal. Apparently, the K9s were trained to assume the "detect" pose when their handler gave them a hand-signal. That way the cop could search a vehicle if they wanted to. I wasn't going to play ball with that. I've got some integrity!

When we got back to the Cop Shop, I spoke to my supervisor. He said it was all pretty normal and that I should be a good DogBoy and do what I was told.

Instead, I wandered around the office and wrote up a report on which of my colleagues smelled like alcoholics, which ones carried the stench of recent drug use, and which toilet cubicle was being used for an affair between an Inspector and her junior.

No one likes a narc, so I was let go.

2033-09-11

I am officially a superhero! Thanks to some new upgrades and a reconfigured nasal interface, I'm getting close to maximum detection levels. The world is utterly overwhelmingly stinky and I understand why dogs are always so distracted. The wind blows the most incredible sensations to my nose and I feel compelled to follow them.

Subscribers got this story last week (click here to join) but now I'm letting the world know.

I can smell cancer.

The local hospital is using me to detect tumours and other weird diseases. My accuracy rate isn't brilliant yet - but I'm getting better. They're looking to see if they can graft more receptors to the inside of my nose and rewire how they connect into my brain. If it all works, I will literally be able to save lives just by sniffing people!

If you'd like me to smell you, I'll be doing a couple of personal appearances later in the month. Click here to find out more. I'm also available for weddings and other celebrations.

2033-10-01

Today was weird. After nearly a year of being a super smeller, today I met someone with no personal scent! They came into the hospital and had been referred to me for a quick cancer-sniff. They'd been walking on freshly cut grass, their shampoo was medicated and pungent, they obviously had sat next to a smoker recently, and they'd dripped barbecue sauce on their shirt in the last week. But, other than that, nothing! I can usually tell what people have been eating from the stench wafting from their mouth, or I can taste how recently they exercised from their sweat stains. But this guy had nothing. He was a blank canvas.

I didn't say anything to him - I've learned my lesson from the HR disaster of last year (read more) - but the encounter left me uneasy. Was he a robot? Unlikely, I didn't smell circuit boards on him. Could he have been an alien? What's going on!?!?

If you know, please stick a comment in the box below.

2033-10-20

MYSTERY SOLVED!

One of my readers knows Geoff (the guy with no scent) and put me in touch with him. Sorry for breaching your medical privacy Geoff!!

Like me, Geoff has long been fascinated with smells. Unlike me, Geoff hates them. You can watch his YouTube channel to understand what he's done but, basically, he's been genetically engineering Corynebacterium jeikeium. They're the bacteria which convert your sweat to BO. Geoff has been rewriting their code so that they don't fart out loads of volatile organic compounds. His whole body is colonised with these critters which means he can sweat as much as he likes and there's no stench. Man, the deodorant companies must hate him!

There's a whole bunch of other microbiota that he's using. He has stuff in his guts which means his shit literally doesn't stink! Imagine that!! Fart all you like and no one will hold their nose!

He's also invented a chewing gum which reprograms the Peptostreptococcus in your mouth so they can't produce halitosis. No more bad kissing! This guy is amazing. You can follow his social accounts here and learn more about his Kickstarter here.

2033-11-28

Today's the day my world ended. How can I be a superhero any more?

I guess Geoff wasn't using particularly strict biohazard protocols and that's how his microbes got loose. The authorities have put a quarantine around the city. They're spraying everything and everyone with biocide in the hope of stopping the spread. But I think it's too late. The new bacteria have colonised everywhere. They're eating up odours from everywhere and leaving a vacuum in their wake. People are bland, food is tasteless, the flowers in the park give off a scent of static.

It is so weird.

The whole city smells... of nothing.

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

Hunter was none of these people. She was a cleaner in the airport. The passport was one of many items of crap she swept up on a daily basis. Sweet wrappers, discarded ticket stubs, passports - she wasn't paid enough to care about any of them. She certainly wasn't chasing after the rich-looking twat who tumbled it out of his back pocket while scratching his corpulent arse. It went in the dustpan, and the dustpan was emptied into her bin, and her bin autonomously followed her like a lumbering puppy chasing after its mistress. If the robot bin had been any faster, the injury could have been fatal.

She swept her way past the recycling station with her robot bringing up the rear. The bomb in the bin felt joy as its long search was over at last! The corrupt politician was finally here and the mission was complete. Time to die. The Utilitarians had calibrated the bomb so as not to cause significant collateral damage. Instead, chunks of shrapnel tore through Hunter's side, obliterating her guts, and leaving a scorch mark on the ceiling. Hunter would never eat food again.

The Utilitarians felt bad for her, of course. It went against their credo to hurt innocent bystanders. True, the felicific calculus is an imprecise science, but it was pretty clear on not maiming cleaning ladies. However, all was not lost! It is unlikely, they reasoned, that a cleaner would have much impact on the long term future of the world. It would be much more effective, and much more altruistic, if she became a test-bed for experimental medical procedures. That would serve greater utility. Think of the future!

Hunter was not consulted about this as she was unconscious. The doctors were keeping her in a coma and, truth be told, barely keeping her alive. The airport didn't have any listed next-of-kin for their outsourced cleaning staff and were disinclined to look for anyone who might sue the airport for negligence. It had cost enough to repair the robot; they didn't want to be on the line for yet another lawsuit. When the Benthamites came calling and asked to take over Hunter's care, everyone looked the other way. One less person on the books to worry about.

As part of their ongoing efforts to colonise Mars, the Philosophers were considering how best to feed the pioneers. Martian soil is inhospitable to life and, except for the frozen poles, there's a distinct lack of water. The one mission they'd managed to successfully land had sent back depressing photos of its cargo of potatoes withering away to nothing. Carrying food and water was also unlikely to provide a suitable solution. Supplies are heavy and prone to rotting, resupply missions would eat up all of the expected profit, and none of the sponsors wanted to risk giving food poisoning to the crew. There really was only one logical choice left.

Hunter was painfully aware of the bright lights shining above her bed and threw her arm over her eyes. Tattered memories resurfaced of pain and surgery and more pain and then... nothing. She knew there was something frighteningly wrong with her body - there was absolutely no sensation from below her chest. Her toes didn't wriggle, her bladder didn't feel full, her stomach muscles couldn't tense. Even the psoriasis on her legs, a constant companion for half her life, no longer itched. She raised her hand, cracked open her eyes, and waited for her pupils to adjust to the intensity of the ceiling LEDs. Wait. No. Something was wrong. Her hand. Her hand shouldn't look like that. What had they done? What had they done to her? Why the fuck was her hand green?

"Ms Hunter? You're awake! Excellent! I'm Doctor Rupert, PhD."

The doctor started an inane explanation of how he "wasn't that sort of doctor! Goodness me! Oh no! The other kind!" and went off on a tangent about the Latin origin of the terms. After a few minutes of this, Hunter finally had run out of patience. She carefully opened her jaw to see what sort of sounds would come out. Apparently a raspy whistle which, after a few practice goes, finally attracted Dr Rupert's attention.

"What's that, my dear?"

"...green...?"

"Oh! Yes, of course. Tell me, what do you know about the protistan process of releasing glucose from the air? No? Perhaps you've heard of photosynthesis?

"...ph..syn..sis...?"

Dr Rupert launched into an undergraduate lecture on eukaryotic nanostructures and DNA infusement coming together. It included a seminar on the growth of bio-compatible chlorophyll and the ability to synthesise thylakoids. After close to an hour of uninterrupted speech, he realised that she wasn't perhaps the brightest student he'd ever taught. He was used to dozy undergraduates, still drunk from the night before, but it was as if this woman didn't even have a rudimentary grasp of how a chloroplast worked! How could he explain this in words of one syllable?

"You hurt in bomb. Yes? Your tummy very bad. OK? You no eat any more. We mix you with plant. You eat sunshine now. OK? Good?"

Satisfied that he had provided a comprehensive explanation, he left the hospital room and made his way down to the nurses' station so he could explain to those angels some of the thoughts he'd had about how to improve their efficiency.

Hunter stared at the ceiling and wept. Sticky sap leaking from her eyes and staining the pillowcase.

Over the next few weeks, she gradually regained her strength. The artificial sunlight being pumped into her was remarkably effective. It left her feeling satiated and energised. Before she knew it, she was walking again, and able to shuffle around her room with ease. Even though she didn't need to eat any more, she still got phantom pains from where her alimentary canal used to be. A nurse helped her to a commode until the feeling passed. She didn't dare look at the crater where her stomach and intestines once inhabited. The hospital had removed all the mirrors, but she could see that her fingers were becoming webbed with what looked like leaves and her legs were gnarled like thick tree trunks.

One morning, after her pseudodefecation, a nurse accidentally left a make-up compact on the side of the sink. Hunter eagerly grabbed it and examined her face. She had never been attractive, she knew that, but now she was a monster. Her short cropped hair was riddled with moss, her eyes yellow with sap, and her face a mottled and leathery green. She hadn't needed to eat for several months - but she barely considered this to be living. Her howls of pain and rage sent the nurse scuttling back into the bathroom. The nurse was conflicted; this wasn't what she'd signed up for. It had seemed so idealistic, the thought of serving humanity like this. But the experiment was clearly doing more harm than good. She held Hunter in an embrace for several minutes - listening to her wail at the terror which was her existence.

The nurse straightened up, smoothed down her uniform, and dried her own tears. Then she held out a hand to Hunter. "Come with me if you want to die."

Hunter's leafy hand held tight to the nurse's as they slowly climbed the stairs to the roof. The nurse badged open the door and led Hunter into the sunlight.

It was delicious. It had an intensity that showed the LEDs as being a pale imitation of the mighty sun. Hunter could feel her sap rising, her body involuntarily turned to face the sun, clouds of oxygen steaming off her. This was bliss.

"We don't have much time," said the nurse, "They'll have noticed you missing by now and the All-Seeing Eye will have traced our route via its cameras. We're about 27 stories up. If you want to jump, now's your chance. They'll be here soon."

But Hunter didn't want to jump. She fell on her back and ripped off her hospital gown, exposing her entire body to the rays of the yellow sun. She closed her eyes in ecstasy. She could feel her whole body changing, repairing, growing. Her ears sprouted tiny flowers which attracted a cluster of nearby bees. Her ovaries seemed to swell with ripening fruit. As she ate up the sun, whispy root tendrils began to extend from her feet. Heaven. After so long, she was finally in heaven.

A cloud passed in front of the sun, temporarily dimming its brightness. No. Not a cloud. Her eyes flew open. Dr Rupert was standing over her along with a phalanx of hospital guards. He gestured and they threw a burlap sack over Hunter and bundled her up. They dragged her down, bouncing her mercilessly against every concrete step, until she passed out from the pain.

The dank cellar smelled of damp soil, untouched by sunlight for many a year. Hunter was hunched over in a corner rocking back and forth. It was dark in here and she was slowly starving. Her body missed the sunshine. More than that, it craved it. She could feel the starchy compounds developing inside her. The tang of solanine gas seeped from her pores. Little nodules began to form and, over the next few days, her roots began to sprout. Slowly they grew, creeping through the cellar and worming their way into any crack they could find. Eventually one of them would emerge into the sunlight - and then Hunter would finally be free.

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

Sex Selective Abortion was illegal, of course. The Government wasn't a particular fan of the fairer sex - women were either troublemakers or temptresses - but even they recognised the coming demographic timebomb. The few doctors which practised SSA were fined, imprisoned, or exiled. This caused something of a gap in the market. Into that gap fell traditional methods for determining whether the happy couple were expecting a little bundle of joy or a little bundle of disappointment. An endless parade of crystals suspended from threads and mystic incantations failed to deliver predictive power any better than chance. Luckily, the market provided.

My parents bought a USB-powered ultrasound wand. The equipment was pretty cheap because the real brains were in the attached smartphone. Neither of my parents had any medical training but that didn't matter; there was an app for that. There's a lovely photo in my baby-book of my dad rubbing a wand around my mum's giant belly. In the photo, my mum's holding the phone up and pointing the screen at dad so he can follow the instruction prompts. Next to that photo is a screenshot of the app's results - it's covered in adverts for baby milk, but in the middle is a big green ♂ symbol. My parents sold the ultrasound tool to the family next door, and the cycle continued.

My mother told me that my name was derived from the word for "Five" in her native language. Apparently my four older sisters had not made it to full term due to pregnancy complications. The same complications which seemingly afflicted most of the women in the village. I grew up as a much longed-for son, healthy, happy, and hale. I had no shortage of material needs, every educational toy you could think of, and parents who were determined to do the best for their family. They would provide anything I wanted. Almost anything. Our little classroom had about fifty other little kids for me to play with but only two of them were girls. They were the princesses we rescued, the wicked witches we hid from, and the nobel queens we obeyed. Without quite realising it, every boy in that class was vying for their attention. One glorious summer's afternoon I battled an entire army of enemy soldiers and their giant war cats, in doing so I became school champion and received a kiss on my cheek from one of the girls. I floated home. The day they moved away, I wept.

I think I've spent the last twenty years trying to recapture the blissful experience of having a girl be that close to me.

Close enough to smell. To see the faint hair on her cheeks. To feel the heat of her lips as they graze the side of my face. The longing was unbearable - and my holographic Waifu really wasn't helping.

In the corner of my room sat the woman of my dreams. Literally. They pulled her out of my subconscious - deep brain probes to uncover my deepest desires. Turns out, I'm pretty basic and her face could be that of any generic movie star. She's pert, friendly, flirtatious, always happy when I come home, and completely untouchable. The holographic projection is uncannily realistic up until the point I run my fingers through her hair - whereupon they shimmer through the projection. I think I get what the Government was trying to do with the USE program. They'd addressed the shortage of meaningful employment with Universal Work Entitlement - a jobs program which saw us digging water-wells or some other meaningless task which would be better done by robots. We had our economic needs met by Universal Basic Income - I could afford my rent, a decent quantity of food, and Internet access. Both of those subsidies had been effective, but the populace still wasn't satisfied. So they created the Universal Sexual Entitlement.

Predictably, the feminists threw a shitfit. Men were not entitled to women's bodies, they screamed. And they were right; we weren't. The USE wasn't about the redistribution of women, or the workers controlling the means of reproduction. It just meant that the state would provide lonely men with virtual companionship. I genuinely thought it would be fun to come home every night to a lovely woman. The brain scan was non-invasive and the cost of the holographic projector was heavily subsidised. And, just for a moment, it made me feel whole again. There was someone to share my day with, someone to talk to, someone I could relate to. She was an AI and learned exactly what she had to say to please her man. She was always learning, always laughing at my jokes, and always flirting. I think that was part of the problem. I never had to improve as a person because she accepted and encouraged my imperfections. She never grew as a person, she just reflected my desires back at me.

I wasn't the only one getting frustrated. Every night brought news about a riot breaking out somewhere, or a women's university being surrounded by protestors, or a hunger-strike by workers whose demands basically boiled down to access to love. The situation was intolerable for most of us. Every movie we saw idealised the platonic relationship between two dudes and subtly told us to shun female companionship. Every song the government allowed to be played on the radio was curiously neutral on the subject of love. But we saw through all that. There was always the chance that we might win the lottery - but we were pretty sure it was rigged and that only the elite got to win a date with a courtesan. We knew that the mandatory sperm donations weren't really about providing a viable genetic safehouse for the future - it was just a scientifically sanctioned ruse to monitor our hormone levels and reduce our desires. It wasn't working.

On the morning of the new year, I woke up with a hangover. Me and the boys had clubbed together to buy a few bottles of illicit booze and an even more illicit blue movie. I'd seen one back in my teens a few years after the last girl had left our school. Every page on the web had been sanitised some years earlier, but a friend of a friend had taught me the commands to invoke a magnet which downloaded untraceable bits via a swarm of obfuscated routers. The hash was a 64 character password which let me glimpse a five-minute preview of what my life was lacking. Those 64 characters are still burned into my memory, just like the adventures of "Emmanuelle". This time, the movie we'd bought turned out to be a fraud. The video on the USB drive showed about 10 seconds of a woman's smiling face before being replaced with a clip of the President extolling the virtues of chastity. Her sour face lectured us about the penalties for violating the state's unyielding morality code. We'd all gone to bed drunk and bitter, but we'd all of us woken up - how shall I put this? - relaxed.

The TV news never said anything of note, but the clandestine network forums were full of men describing the same experience. Everyone used arcane and euphemistic language to avoid any censorbots which might be prowling, the literary allusions were obscure and several references were made to TV shows which were old before I was born. Reading between the lines, the consensus was the same - the Government had slipped something into the water supply which suppressed our sexual appetites. Some weird bromide molecule had been synthesised and dispersed amongst us. I wanted to feel angry at this violation of my natural biochemistry. But I felt... relieved.

For once I was able to fling myself into my art. I composed epic poetry about the righteousness of our army and how the birds return in spring heralded a new dawn for us all. I was able to paint landscapes and still lifes without a nagging feeling that I should give in to my urges. My physical and mental health improved. Without the distractions of the holo-Waifu I was finally able to work on my self-respect and self-control. The rioting around the cities abated and the thugs surrounding the universities dispersed. Workers were still on strike, but their demands were now wage-related. All was calm.

Even with the suppression of the news, little trickles of information would leak through the barriers. A market trader heard from his supplier who delivered to a mountain where the radio connections weren't heavily monitored and heard a report in a language he barely understood about the war that was happening. I think we were all vaguely aware that there was fighting somewhere. The war planes would occasionally roar overhead and muffled explosions would give way to a plume of smoke in the distance. Officially, we were neutral. Our country looks after its own people first; we don't get involved.

But censors are failable. Buried in the back of an official state report on this year's harvest was a misplaced table which contained statistics about the war. It was either some copy-and-paste error, or an attempt to liberate useful information. Before the computers managed to delete every copy, we'd all seen the figures in black and white. The war was over and our neighbour had valiantly won their battle against their traitorous foe! But the battle had enacted a heavy tax on both the victor and the vanquished - nearly 20% of the entire male population had died. In the age 18-30, it was about 27%. Their degenerate culture had never prioritised the patriarchal notion of male supremacy - which meant that both countries actually had a reasonably gender-diverse society. Until now.

Naturally I signed up to serve my country. They drained the bromide out of me and pumped me full of hormones to make me bigger and stronger. I spent a month in a VR simulator learning how to fight, take a defensive position, and field strip a gun. Our enemy had an excess of natural resources which they were unwilling to share. Negotiations were breaking down and we were preparing for deployment. I ran the simulations again and again until I wore out the encephalographic projectors. My platoon would be first across the barricades and I would finally get to battle an entire army of enemy soldiers and their giant war cats.

If I was victorious, I would finally have my dream. I would finally find love. And I would bestow my family's name on my many sons.

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

Brad thought for a moment, then piped up. "Would I be the trainer or the dolphin, sir? Because getting high and being jerked off already sounds better than basic training."

A low growl of irritation came from the Professor of the History of Alternative Warfare and Classified Weapons. "This isn't a joke. I thought you were trying to find real solutions here."

"Sure, but were the Tripping Dolphins effective on the battlefield?"

"Absolutely!" The Professor advanced the slideshow from the disturbing photo of a dead-eyed handler reaching below the waves towards a blissed out dolphin. "Take a look at this sonar picture. What do you see?"

It was a shoal of dolphins - or possibly some other aquatic mammal - that didn't look out of the ordinary. They'd often come close to submarines, have a little snoop, and then dive away looking for their next meal. It's the sort of thing Brad had seen a hundred times a month. He'd once spent half a tour with a curious humpback whale following his sub. The sailors weren't sure if it wanted to eat them or fuck them, but it got bored of the chase eventually.

"You see," continued the Professor, ignoring Brad's rambling anecdote, "The CIA trained the dolphins to think they'd get a free lunch and a quick tug if they visited Russian submarines. The LSD made them incredibly receptive to the idea that the particular sonar shadow of the sub was a delightful place to visit. Once trained, our friends strapped an explosive jacket around the dolphin and let it loose in the ocean."

"So the dolphin swam up to the nearest sub looking to get its rocks off and..."

"Exactly!" The Prof was squealing with glee, "The Ruskies didn't take evasive action because all they saw was a pod swimming towards them."

"But after the dolphin set the mine and swam away, how did the CIA get it back?"

"Oh, my sweet summer child. Are you sure this is the right career for you? The magnets on the dolphin's jacket meant that neither it nor the bomb could get away. Their sacrifice was for the greater good."

Brad looked sick. He could picture the dolphin's happy little face. He could hear its squeal of delight whenever it received a fish. He could imagine the joy it felt at seeing the submarine and the terror it felt when it couldn't escape. What sort of monster would hurt an innocent creature like that? War makes people crazy, sure, but that's just barbaric. No one wants to harm Flipper, right?

And that was exactly the insight Brad needed.

He ran straight back to the autonomous weapons division, called a meeting with his chief roboticist, and laid out his plan.

"Our Hunter-Killer robots are terrifying, right?"

"Yes boss!" Dr Weiss had grown up on a diet of RoboCop and Terminator. Her deadly assassins were chrome plated gods, surveying the theatre of war with piercing red laser eyes. Their walking-algorithms were modelled on spiders - exaggerated leg movements, scuttling from crater to crater, head twitching as their sensors scanned for enemies. Everything about them was calculated to strike fear into the hearts of anyone who saw them. Even their guns were splendid in their awfulness and created a sonic roar that sounded like a lion pouncing on its prey. She knew that each monstrosity struck fear into the hearts of any soldier who encountered them.

"Can I see the latest model?" Brad asked.

Dr Weiss led him over to a table covered with a bright orange tarpaulin. "Behold!" she announced as she whipped away the covering. The robot beneath was hideous. With legs grotesquely out of proportion, claws that dripped a thick goo, and more teeth than you could count - each filed to a deadly point - it exemplified the uncanny valley. Just looking at it made Brad want to draw his gun and keep shooting until the thing was obliterated. And that, as he explained to Dr Weiss, was the problem.

"The enemy wants to shoot our robots."

"Well, yeah? We made them petrifying. Some soldiers run away, some shit themselves, most try to empty their guns into them."

"But our robots are expensive. We don't particularly want them shot to pieces."

"Better they shoot at the drones than the squaddies, right?

"Yes. But what if the enemy didn't shoot at them at all?"

A month later, they presented their work to an assembled panel of dignitaries in one of the testing fields. The sun was high, a light breeze wafted through the tall grass, the merry chirp of unsuspecting wildlife all around them. If it weren't for the signs warning about unexploded mines, it would have been a charming place for a picnic.

At one end of the field was a row of soldiers lying in wait. Each was a highly decorated marksman and each was tooled up with a variety of weapons. Half camouflaged in the grass, they lay still, guns at the ready, waiting for orders.

"What you are about to see," intoned Brad, "Is the future of warfare." He gave the signal to Dr Weiss while the brass looked on.

At the bottom of the field was a small hill. With an awful screeching sound, one of Weiss's mechanical monstrosities appeared at the top. It slithered towards the waiting row of soldiers, its mandibles snapping in the wind, claws grasping out, and a cluster of mismatched eyes locking on to the terrified gunmen.

"FIRE!" Shouted Brad. The soldiers didn't need to be told twice. With deadly precision they peppered the beast with holes. It jerked spasmodically as it crept closer, slithering and weaving. The soldiers didn't stop. By the time the creature was two-thirds of the way across the field, the thing was dead, leaking a foul green fluid and emitting short bursts of sparks from its shattered electronics. The soldiers cheered in triumph and began to reload.

One of the gathered generals coughed politely. "Well, yes, all rather impressive, I suppose. But the robot didn't actually survive the encounter, did it?"

"Forgive me, general," smiled Brad. "That was the appetiser. Here's the main course."

He blew a whistle for the soldiers to reset. Once they were locked and loaded, he gave another nod to Dr Weiss. She tapped away at her laptop, gazed over at the unsuspecting marksmen, and pressed the launch button.

From atop the hill something... bounced? It was a flash of purple. Fuzzy and indistinct. It sort of hopped towards the firing line. As it grew closer, it became apparent that the bipedal robot was skipping. The jaws of the machine opened and a song played out.

"I love you! You love me! We're a happy family!"

"FIRE!" Shouted Brad. A flurry of red laser dots appeared on the fuzzy green chest. But no shots rang out.

"We're a great big family!" Sang the fluffy dinosaur as it advanced.

"FIRE!" Shouted Brad, again. The soldiers looked at each other, confused. They didn't want to disobey an order, but none of them could bring themselves to squeeze the trigger. A cascade of happy childhood memories had replaced years of training.

There was a crack from one of the guns. A puff of purple felt ripped off the shoulder of the looming menace.

"Oi! What do you think you're playing at?" Screamed a solider from the middle of the line, "Which one of you bastards took a shot at Barney?"

The soldier who had fired defended himself saying he was only going for a grazing flesh wound, the commander was enraged by this flagrant act of barbarity and started shouting something incoherent about the Geneva Convention. The trained corps of professional warriors descended into chaos, fists flying and grown men crying at the thought of having to execute their beloved childhood friend.

The two-metre tall robot dinosaur danced his way over to the line. "With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you!"

The soldiers, battle-hardened and bloody, rushed towards Barney and wrapped their arms tightly around him. They locked on to their old friend and, as one, they sang a happy song and they squeezed. And it was that squeezing which triggered the explosion.

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

"Sorry mate, we're out of cat."

"Oh," I said dejectedly. "Got any Fillet-of-Dog?"

"Nah, mate. Out of that too. They always sell out whenever 'Animal Hospital' is on TV. We've got plenty of chicken-burgers if you want one?"

The thing is - and don't judge me too harshly - chicken just doesn't do it for me any more. Spending the day looking after sick kittens and puppies just gives me cravings. You understand, right? I know you've seen the cutest little critter and said "Oh! You look good enough to eat!" - well, now you can! When you think about it, the list of animals people eat is pretty arbitrary, isn't it? The French chomp down on snails and horses whereas the Brits find them repulsive. The Brits eat cows but the Hindus consider them sacred. Dog meat is a delicacy in Korea but a crime in the USA. Where do you draw the line?

I draw the line at chicken. It just tastes so... generic. In a world where you could eat anything, why would you eat chicken? You've got the whole of creation to chow down on and you choose chicken? Like, live your best life and all that, but if you voluntarily eat a regular drumstick I'm judging you. Harshly.

Sensing my doubt, the oik behind the counter offered "...Or a double bacon burger?"

Nominally, I'm Jewish. It isn't like I'm particularly religious, it's more cultural at this point - we celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah - but the faith I grew up with still has a hold over me. If anything, the taboo makes it taste even better! I grew up thinking it was treif - but the Chief Rabbi had recently come down in favour of it, so who was I to argue? I ordered my double bacon burger - with extra cheese and no pickles - and ate it with glee. They say that bacon is the number one thing which turns vegetarians back to the dark side; I understand why. I looked around the burger bar and saw people of all faiths tucking into the flesh that was so recently forbidden to them.

I hummed the jingle from the omnipresent commercial - "It's juuuuust like the reallllllll thing!"

A few years ago, I was in the middle of doing my mandatory overseas service, when someone told me I simply had to visit a little restaurant in the back alleys of Donetsk. They were one of the few places selling meat and they had the most marvellous cuts of steak and prime-rib. Like everyone in the restaurant, I assumed the proprietor had knocked off a military convoy from somewhere. Turns out, it was a couple of students who introduced the world to the new reality of synthetic meat. They were bored with the vat-grown fungus that served as a vegetarian meat-substitute in the rubble of their homeland. They scraped the DNA from as many dead cows as they could find, got lucky with some bio-engineered bacteria, fed it a bunch of irradiated corn-starch, and watched as their small additive printer spat out a perfectly decent steak. It was meat, Jim, but not as we know it. With perfect control over the layering of muscle and fat, they could tune the taste, reduce cholesterol, and create a perfect cut every time. It wasn't something that tasted like meat. It was meat. Just without the animal.

Night after night I returned to the ВОВКУЛАКА restaurant and they never ran out of steak. I was hoping to get into PR when I was demobbed and thought working with these local entrepreneurs would help me get noticed. That's how I got a tour of the "abattoir"; a sterile lab in a bombed out university. I interviewed them, took a bunch of photos of them looking moody in lab coats, and broke the story to the world - fake meat was real. Their patented process was hellishly difficult to replicate and that only fuelled interest. I raised whatever cash I could and became the students' business partner. The economic boom was incredible; everyone wanted a slice of the future.

Slowly, they began adding increasingly exotic meats. Personally, I suspect they bribed the local zookeepers for access to the DNA they needed. Elephant steak was a bit too chewy, and dolphin was the sort of thing you ate once to say you tried it and then never again. But everyone loved a bit of Panda. Seriously! You haven't lived until you've eaten Panda Fricassee - and we donated 5% of the profits to a wildlife charity! By now I'd invested a considerable amount into the venture and thought that this was the perfect way to raise money for endangered species. Fate had other plans. It turned out that the real money spinner was domesticated animals. Deep down, humans have a primal need to eat our companions. It's weird. Although it's probably better we eat the lab-grown Lassie rather than our own canis lupus familiaris, right?

But what really caused the world to tilt on its axis was the fact that all the major religions agreed that "no animals were harmed in the making of this burger". The holy books were consulted, ancestors were prayed to, and divine inspiration was sought - and no objection could be found. There simply wasn't an animal behind this meat. There was no prayer to say because nothing had been slaughtered. The 3D printer didn't chew the cud, nor did it have a cloven hoof, and there was no spinal cord which could be accidentally severed. Fast-food chains which had been previously inaccessible to one faith or another suddenly had a whole new market to address. And, it turns out, everyone loves a burger. Hell, even the dour-faced vegans could be found stuffing their pie holes with Pangolin Pie.

With the money I made, I was able to quit the rat race and open a shelter for strays. The cats and dogs I deal with refuse to touch synthetic meats. Given that dogs eat their own vomit and cats lick their own arseholes, this is a little strange. It's also expensive. No one wants to eat real beef any more. The synthetic stuff is healthier, cheaper, and is stuffed with fewer hormones. Same is true with all other livestock. Even grumpy celebrity chefs prefer the predictability and shelf stability of the new food. Of course, the collapse of the farming industry due to reduced demand has made feeding pets more expensive. So our shelter takes in all those abandoned animals and tries to look after them. And to feed them.

I'll admit, I didn't quite see where this would end up. I thought we were just producing an ethical alternative to factory farming. The first cannibal wedding I went to was a little odd. The couple had decided to cook for each other. She made bride-Bibimbap - the delicate spices and noodles augmented with thinly sliced chunks of her synthesised flank. He made a groom-Goulash with perfectly stewed haunch of him. They ritually consumed each other to symbolise their eternal commitment. It was kind of sweet, I guess? In any case, it was all perfectly legal - there was no human sacrifice, only a 3D meat printer and some voluntarily donated DNA. Thankfully, the guests were all served a fairly traditional chicken Kyiv.

Everyone will tell you that it was the K-Pop fans who started the craze of eating their idols, but that's not strictly true. It was a Death Metal band out of Delaware, I think, who were the pioneers. Their stadium tours sold chewable ears and band-blood milkshakes to eager gig-goers. The profits were incredible, and so it became the template for all other concerts. The Kpop nuggets and Southern-Fried Banjo-Player-Fingers all came later. And, for a time, that's how the world went.

Remember those late-night commercials where some has-been held up a case of compilation CDs and said "these are not available in shops"? Any faded pop-star could revive their fortunes by hawking "limited edition" cuts of their own meat. Someone stole one of the suits Elvis wore from a museum in Vegas. From the sweat stains they were able to produce "The King Of Burgers - With Authentic King" which, as you can imagine, kicked off a lawsuit between the vendors, his record company, his estate, and - for reasons I don't fully understand - the Ontario Teachers' Pension Fund.

I'd sold my shares in the company long before then. I could see that this was taking a direction that made me feel uncomfortable. Boxers trained on great frozen slabs of their opponent's "carcass". Angry exes held divorce parties where guests enjoyed chewing on fresh prairie oysters. You'd read reports about warlords eating the "heart" of their enemies in order to defeat them in battle. I didn't know where this would end.

As I walked out of the burger joint, I passed a church. It sounded like Mass was starting. There was a queue outside the door as worshipers waited to receive the Corpus Christi.

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

Flowers, despite their innocent petals, are sexual predators. They pump out intoxicating smells which entice the male bee. As the bee flies closer, he catches sight of an ultraviolet pattern splayed out, it is the perfect replica of a willing and available female bee. His lust drives him to copulate with the flower. Thus spent, he flies away satisfied, carrying a cargo of pollen.

The flower doesn't believe that it has assaulted the bee, and the bee is giddy with primitive hormones. But to an objective observer, this act is morally repugnant. This bee is a victim of the flower. He has been tricked into unwanted sexual contact and the benefit is all for the trickster. What justice can there be in nature when pollination is built on the back of such a heinous crime?

That's why I invented robot bees. I could spin you some tale about colony collapse disorder or the rise in invasive wasps, but it would be a lie. Perhaps you'd even believe that large scale pollination was too important to be left to the random walk of a hive. The simple truth was that I felt disgusted that bees were being exploited by flowers. Men - all men - deserve dignity in their lives and work. If nature won't provide such dignity, then it is up to me.

Flowers are sluts. Crude little whores who exploit the males' sense of sexual desire. Flowers entrap males - promising genetic destiny, but delivering only courier duty. My robot bees were immune to the filthy tricks of slatternly blossoms. They were pure, logical, and unswayed by the fake pleasured proffered by petals. A dozen of my robot bees could pollinate a field quicker than a swarm of a thousand bio-bees, and they did so without falling prey to those traitorous bitches.

I hate birds as well. Oh, I know, they look so cute and have beautiful voices. Birds brighten up even the dullest day as they strut around showing off. It seems to me that the whole world loves their prancing and squawking. I find them despicable. When people sing the virtues of "the birds and the bees" they show a sickening lack of knowledge about how the real world works. Birds aren't doe-eyed innocent songstresses; birds eat bees.

Can you imagine the horror of being approached by something so beautiful, so beloved, so beguiling and then have it betray you? A male bee might think that the bird comes offering friendship and companionship. Instead it offers a painful death - pecking and tearing at your body until you have nothing left. Yeah, they don't teach you that in school, do they? Hard working blokes are routinely devoured by birds. It's gross. They deserve better.

Of course, my robot bees are too smart to be caught by cunning birds. Their digital sensors can detect the flapping feathers from a great distance and instruct the bee to hide - silent and still. The robobee's in-built speakers can play a variety of sounds which are calculated to deter and distress any bird that comes too close. Their metachrosis covering allows them to rapidly change colour, alerting the birds that this bad-boy is not to be messed with.

Have you seen how a band of bees kills any wasp that dares enter the hive? The brotherhood surrounds the invader. Completely encasing it in a bee-ball. Then they vibrate. Their pulsating rhythms build up and generate huge amounts of heat. The wasp stands no chance. As it struggles, it also raises the temperature in the centre of the death trap. Slowly, it cooks.

My bees don't do that. In extremis, they self-destruct by igniting their internal lithium ion battery. A runaway thermal event causes a devastating explosion, sending shattered electronics and noxious chemicals into the surrounding environment. Any bird stupid enough to grab a proud bee is going to find it a very spicy meal.

Masculum Regis Apis Superior!

Heather was peering into the guts of a deactivated RoBoDrone. This was the first one her team had captured after nearly a year of research, and it was proving invaluable. They had become obsessed with discovering everything they could about the little beasties and had built a dedicated lab in order to study them.

"See! Here!" Heather's green laser pointer circled around a tiny protrusion at the back of the bee's circuit board. "This is the antenna. If we can work out the frequencies it's using, we might be able to reverse engineer the radio protocol and triangulate the idiot who is controlling them."

Her assistant, Fleur, did not seem convinced. "We've been monitoring radio spectrum in the fields whenever they're spotted. It's coming up blank. Could the antenna be vestigial? Part of an older design?"

Heather zoomed out the display. They'd fed images of the circuitry into an AI classifier which, so claimed the marketing material, could identify every chip that had ever been made. It absolutely choked on the drone's schematics. Most of the parts seemed custom made - probably fabbed in a black-market shop and illicitly shipped over. The others were generic components - LEDs, pinhole microphones, parasitic energy harvesters - the sort of kit you could pick up in any flea market or desolder from an old TV.

They'd spent months holed up in their lab searching for the source of this plague, and capturing this little critter had been their first real break. It was frustrating that the prick who'd created them hadn't left a calling card. He'd covered his tracks well. Heather and Fleur spent a fruitless evening applying miniscule logic probes into the carcass in the hope of revealing a JTAG interface which they could debug. After hours of squinting and making micro-adjustments to wires, they'd fallen asleep in the lab. They were woken by a warning alarm pulsing away with increasing urgency.

Fleur flipped the alarm off. They were here.

"Heather, we have incoming. Activate VENUS."

Heather spun round in her chair and started bashing at her keyboard. With each keystroke, she configured and deployed the only effective weapon they had against the metal menace - VENUS.

The Vespid Entrapment Network Utility System was an engineering marvel. A series of flower-like machines designed with one purpose; capture and contain robot bees. Each trap was a bifurcated disc embedded with rapid action chromatophores. As the bees flew overhead, the VENUS traps would shapeshift, mimicking dozens of different flowers. After months of tinkering and frustration, the deployment had finally paid off - which was a blessed relief.

Heather found the pattern that attracted yesterday's bee - curiously, it had ignored all the ultra-violet patterns which they'd spent months perfecting, and instead had gone for a crude representation of a marigold. She uploaded the design to the network and waited.

"Got one!" Announced a triumphant Heather. A moment later "Wait, what's happening?"

"We've been spotted," said Fleur, "High-res LIDAR shows the swarm is dispersing. Someone's obviously monitoring them."

"Can we track them back to their point of origin?"

"Unlikely. They've scattered in different directions. Looks like they have an obfuscated trajectory for their return."

"OK, let's see what we've won."

They clambered out of the underground bunker and surveyed the field. Amongst all the wildflowers were several VENUS traps, one of which held the captured robotic pollinator. Heather knelt down and ran a diagnostic wand over the fake flower. Like its namesake, the trap had snapped shut over the drone when it landed. Unlike the spiky cilia which bedevilled biological insects, this one had a fine mesh of nanowires acting as a Faraday cage. The bee couldn't physically escape and neither could its radio transmissions. Heather could hear the faint buzzing from within as the robot battled to fly away.

"We'll need to wait until the battery in this one wears out, let's get it back to the lab."

She unplugged the flower from its stem and placed it in her pocket. Perhaps this one would have the answers they were looking for. Understanding what they were up against had become a fixation - she was desperate to know more. The inventor was clearly skilled, but everyone slips up occasionally. In a funny sort of way, she'd like to go for a drink with him and pick his brains about why he'd released this nightmare on the world. Fleur stretched in the sunshine. After being cramped in the field observation bunker for weeks attempting to capture the bugs, it was lovely to be out in the wild and feel the wind against her lithe and bare arms. She tousselled a hand through her long blonde hair and stretched. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, all around came the sounds of birds tweeting, the air was thick with the smell of fresh cut grass. It was bliss. She closed her eyes and let a smile engulf her delicate lips. Overhead, a helicopter started hovering and interrupted her reverie. Fleur flicked open her long-lashed eyes and looked up, where was that blasted thing? She span round, but the helicopter was nowhere to be seen. The hum from its motors became deafening.

The swarm appeared from every direction all at once. With targeted precision, the Masculum Regis Apis engulfed Fleur and Heather. A multicoloured haze of terror swirling around the women, darting in and out of their grasp. The tiny speakers in each bee emitted a howl of rage, a paean of victory over the two deceitful bimbos. The cunning little vixens were finished now. Each bee latched on to its target, holding the women in a stifling embrace. From a distance they looked like metal mannequins, frozen figures in absurd and provocative poses, highlighted by the glorious sun.

A stillness came over the field. The muffled screams of the two harlots was almost imperceptible. Simultaneously, every bee exploded.

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Think of them as technological campfire horror stories.

Lena The Tattoo'd Lady

I spend my life with people ogling my barely-clothed body, but the only time I feel really exposed is when I'm in a hospital gown. If the bored young technician recognised me, he was good enough not to say anything. Signing an autograph while your butt's hanging isn't the most dignified look.

"Any piercings?" He said as he waved the wand over me.

"Nope."

"Any medical implants, pacemakers, pins, or plates?" He recited.

"Also no."

"Have you had this procedure before?"

Was he kidding me? I practically had a frequent flyer card!

"Yes, a few times."

"Please remove your gown and lay on the table."

Now this was something I could do! Being exposed in front of strangers is my day job. Before the kid had a chance to turn around I shrugged off the paper garment and hopped onto the table. It was still warm from the last person which was not overly comforting.

"Um. I'm going to strap you in now. Is that OK?"

Christ, this boy really was green. I wanted to comfort him, but my anxiety was peeking and the meds weren't even touching the sides.

"Yes," I snapped, "Just get on with it."

He tied down my arms and legs with velcro cuffs - again, still warm with the sweat of the last victim - immobilised my head with giant foam cutaways. I opened my mouth before he had a chance to ask, and he stuffed the rubber bung in. Thankfully, this was not still warm.

"And, uh, are you sure you still want to go through with this?"

I was strapped naked to a table, unable to move or speak. So I cocked an eyebrow at him, which was the sole extent of my ability to communicate. He walked out of the room and, a moment later, I heard him through the speaker. "I'm going to start the procedure now. It will take about 30 minutes. It's going to hurt. A lot. I'm sorry."

The table slid backwards carrying me into the mouth of the magnetron. The eerie silence was soon interrupted by the whine of the machine warming up. I closed my eyes and bit down on the rubber.

An instant later my skin felt like it had been set on fire.

I don't remember passing out but, nevertheless, I woke up in the recovery room. My entire body itched like I'd been bitten by a swarm of pissed off mosquitoes - but at least I wasn't in pain. I sat up, chugged the water next to my bed, and pressed the call button. A moment later, the tattooist arrived.

"Awake at last, Lena! You've been out most of the afternoon." He said with undue glee.

"Shit! I have a show this evening. Can I see?"

"Sure, let me help you up."

He tenderly slipped his arm around my waist - fuck me the skin still burned - and got me standing out of bed. With his assistance, I stood naked in front of the mirror.

When I was a little girl, my father instructed me never to get a tattoo. He told me they were cheap and tawdry. Not the sort of skin decoration for a young and respectable woman. No one will take you seriously, he warned, if they thought you were a marked lady. At this point in the speech he'd roll up his sleeve and point to the heart painted into his bicep. "What does that say, Button?" I'd make a show of peering at the faded writing and say "It says 'Betty', Daddy." He'd humph and say "And what's your mother's name?" I'd giggle and say "Andrea." After rolling down his sleeve, he'd remind me that a tattoo was permanent. Any mistakes would be permanent. They couldn't be changed later.

Daddy was wrong. The electrophoretic ink under my skin could be reconfigured any time I was bored of my tattoos. If the lead singer of my favourite band turned out to be a scumbag, I didn't have to go through life defending my decision to have his face on my back.

The process to get an editable tattoo was painful. The work was too fine to be done by humans, so an articulated robot arm did the work. It looked like an industrial ovipositor, a vast metal needle that darted around the body laying microencapsulated eggs beneath the skin. Each injection contained a dichromatic ball - half white, half black - a few millimetres in diameter. By the time the procedure was finished, the balls were a jumble and you looked like an old fashioned TV tuned to a dead channel.

If you thought the injections were bad, the "calibration" was worse. The magnetron exerted a ridiculously powerful Gaussian field over your skin causing the balls to rotate in place. Eventually, after tearing through all your tissue, they were perfectly aligned. Your new tattoo was ready! Understandably, due to the considerable expense and harrowing pain, most people opted for a small tattoo which could be updated every few years. Or when you got divorced.

I'd had my whole body done. Front and back. From the top of my face down to the tips of my toes. Every visible part of my skin was a canvas. My job meant that I was a living work of art. For a fee, you could hire me to bear your brushstrokes.

"It looks gorgeous!" I gushed. The tattooist hadn't really done much work, just taken the designs and scaled them to my figure. But it paid to keep people happy. Especially those who regularly tortured you.

"I hope the client likes it. You were screaming quite a bit in there."

The client! Double shit! I had to hightail it out of there if I wanted to be on time. I slipped on my clothes, gave the tattooist a light hug, and jumped into a taxi.

My father tried to impress on me that sex work wasn't work. That's another thing he got wrong. I worked hard - extremely hard - and was handsomely rewarded for what I put my body through. Today was no exception. On top of a raised dais in the centre of the room, I gyrated. With every crescendo of the music, I seductively peeled off another item of clothing - the hoots and cheers from the assembled business executives driving me into carefully constructed ecstasy. As the music got louder, the hollering intensified, and all the spotlights in the joint focused on me for the big reveal. My clothing was little more than a gossamer blur redacting my modesty.

The PA system blurted out my cue: "Ladies and gentlemen! I give you! After 5 years of hard work! Your! New! Corporate! Reeeeeee-branding!"

With that, I flung off the last of my clothes to reveal the new logo of some car company.

Their trademark was artfully done, I'll give them that. It snaked across my breasts and down to my navel, before becoming entwined in my thighs. My arms gave the impression of hand-stitched Corinthian leather. My legs were drawn as powerful pistons to represent their latest engine innovation. Above my buttocks was carved whatever inane slogan they'd focus-grouped to death.

The dais rotated so everyone could view the full brand experience etched across my naked body.

I spent the rest of the evening schmoozing with the executives and enjoying their canapes. I'd done enough of these corporate gigs by now to be intimately familiar with the script. The female execs would sidle up to me and declare just how empowering it was to have me here. They'd demand selfies with me - full body shots, of course - then sneak away to bitch about me with their colleagues.

The men only ever asked about one thing. The pain. They'd show me their tiny eink tats and confess how they'd passed out after the third or fourth injection. How did I do it, they wondered. When they took photos with me, I could feel their desperate and sweaty hands hovering a hair's breadth above my skin. They knew they could look, but not touch. A few would brazenly try to slip me their hotel key card to which I gave the same catty response every time, "Do you see any pockets?"

So I'd wine and dine and have my photo taken. I pulled off a variety of acrobatic poses to make sure everyone got a great view of the logo. A real splash for the company newsletter, and something to reminisce about at the disappointing Christmas party.

As the night thinned out, I noticed one woman hanging back. She had a face like a pinched weasel and wasn't wearing the normal corporate battle dress. She kept making to approach me and then backed off. Some girls were like that, in my experience, fascinated by my debauchery by repelled by my reality. I had half a caviar tartlet in my mouth when she finally plucked up the courage to come forward.

All her words came out at once, as though she'd been mulling over what to say all evening and it was finally spilling out. "You look so beautiful but I know how painful the repainting must be I had a small one done and I hated it anyway our division is working on something new that you may like we're still at early stages but it should painless but perhaps if you'd like to give it a go we could give you a free upgrade?"

I swallowed a standard month's salary worth of caviar. "Darling," I smiled, "Painless and Free are the magic words. Where do I sign up?"

Turns out, she was lying about it being painless. The first bit of the upgrade involved removing my original tattoo implants. The company sedated me using the good stuff, unlike that hack downtown who didn't believe that women felt pain in the same way as men. Even with the fancy drugs, I woke up screaming.

The second part was merely unpleasant. The new tattoo molecules were long strands of coloured carbon nanotubes. They snaked into my body and threaded themselves through my skin. Feeling them creeping through my flesh made me shudder. It was like having prickly worms slither through my veins as they permanently bonded themselves to my skin and wrapped their way around my nerves. As the company's first human triallist, I kept them appraised of just how disgusting it felt as they carved me up.

Oh, and it turns out the weasel-woman was lying about it being free. After they conducted all their tests, they wanted me to go on live TV to show off the company's marvellous new technology. My body was their billboard, I was a living advert for aesthetic body modification.

I was still a little groggy from the painkillers when I sat down on the studio. The company infused me with some synthetic compound which dulled my nerves but kept me lucid. The studio lights burned while the genial host smarmed.

As this was a family show, I was wearing a rather modest bikini. Enough to entice viewers but not enough to scandalise them. The camera focused tight on my right forearm where a tattoo'd watch was gradually changing in order to show the correct time. I could feel the system pushing within me as it rippled and changed. The individual pixels squirming and flipping like maggots burrowing through me. The host gushed about what a stunning advance in technology this was.

The camera held a long shot on my chest. Over my left breast was a gently pulsing heart and an ECG. The animation showed all my vital statistics in real time. The carbon nanotubes had fused with my nerves and were parasitically leaching the data from me. If the viewers were paying attention, they'd have noticed my heart rate quickening as the painkillers began to wear off. "Stunning!" Enthused the host, "Just stunning".

Damn but the pain was getting worse. I kept a rictus grin as I demurely turned around to show the host my back. Across my flesh was an animated scene of Washington crossing the Delaware in monochrome glory. If I concentrated hard enough, the fibrous ganglions would detect my will and transition the animation to The Wreck of The Hesprus. The TV host explained the scene for the viewers and gave a crash course in how the technology worked, all the while I held still and tried not to cry out in pain.

"How simply stunning!" The host said as I turned back. God, this guy was such a tedious bore.

"Tell us," he said, "What does that mean on your forehead? What's the significance of 'tedious bore'?"

I blushed. Oh fuck!

I heard a sudden squark from the host's earpiece. "I'm truly sorry, viewers. I'm not sure why a swear word has appeared on the young lady's face. We'll be back after these messages."

I glanced round at the studio monitor. The cameraman held tightly on my face. Above my eyes, in a jagged simulation of my handwriting, were the letters W, T, and F. How could this be? What was happening? What had I done? My brain began racing with a million confusing thoughts. The camera slowly zoomed out and I saw everything. I watched with horror as my body slowly became mottled with question marks.

It turns out, my father was right. There are some mistakes which you can't undo.

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

You are reading "Tales of the Algorithm". A compendium of near-future sci-fi stories. Each chapter is a stand-alone adventure set a few days from now.

Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Think of them as technological campfire horror stories.

Your feedback on each story is very much appreciated.

And so, let's crack on with...

Well you should fear Polythene PAM

I am the loneliest astronaut. A relay somewhere in the space-station clicks and the LED panels above my bunk slowly start to brighten. It isn't as though I've been sleeping, but lying here staring at the ceiling at least lets me pretend this is all just a bad dream. The station is never quiet, there's always a fan humming or a recycler gurgling or a hard disk chuntering. But with no-one else on board, it feels as quiet as a tomb.

Last month Valentina had gone out on a space walk, ostensibly to fix a micrometeoroid-damaged solar panel. She spent a few hours chatting with us as she undertook the repairs. She'd finished taping up the holes and rewiring the delicate structure of the 20 metre flexi-array with about 30 minutes of oxygen left. As we re-energised the panel she began to say her goodbyes. I begged her to come back inside, but she turned her radio off and set her toolbag to autoreturn. From the couplola I watched her drift further and further away until she became just another piece of space junk in a declining orbit. Even if I could have spoken to her, what would I have said? She knew her family were all dead. She knew that staying on the station was tantamount to suicide. So why not take matters into her own hands? At least her sacrifice gave us both a little more time. One less mouth to feed and one less pair of lungs sucking up oxygen. She really did think that she was buying us enough time.

A hundred years of space-flight and the zero-G toilet was still the bane of every astronaut's life. After my morning ablutions, I pulled out the telescope and consulted a tattered print-out which calculated Valentina's likely position. I desperately wanted to see her again even for just a second. I sent radar pulses out, but she was nowhere to be found. I hoped her soul was finally free.

Wiping away my tears, I began the same ritual that I had done over a hundred times. AM and FM were nothing but static. Somewhere in the 25kHz range there was a faint timekeeping signal. No doubt some military installation on a deserted island was still broadcasting. UHF was empty aside from a few crackles of something. It wasn't strong enough to get a lock on. Up and up I dialled, but there was nothing. I switched to the K_u band and heard the lock-on beeps of a targeting computer getting stronger with every pulse.

I was still on Earth when the first major incident happened. A Boeing 797 smashed into the ground just outside Heidelberg with all souls lost. Everyone assumed it was a terrorist campaign - and several groups were quick to claim responsibility - until the investigators found the tell-tale grey sludge dripping from one of the engines. PAM had gotten loose. We didn't know it then, but that was the beginning of the end.

For hundreds of years, goods had been wrapped in paper. But paper is prone to tearing when wet, it rots, it catches fire, it isn't transparent. So the world moved to glass. But despite its excellent thermal and optical properties, glass was heavy and fragile. So we embraced plastics. They were lightweight, flexible, sturdy, noncombustible, and utterly inert. They were perfect! Aside from the fact they were a toxic nightmare. We were drowning in a sea of plastics which couldn't easily be recycled and were leaching chemicals into our bodies and biosphere. Worse still, we were addicted to them. Everything was made of non-biodegradable sheets of plastic.

PAM changed all that. It was a genetically engineered bacteriophage, infused with exotic radiation-blasted eukaryotic microbes, and crossbred with tardigrades. The consortium of German scientists proudly announced their new creation: the "Plastik Auslöschen Mikrotier" (wipe out plastic micro-creature). It was a cute and fuzzy little critter. A six-legged waterbear which would happily chomp through anything plastic. The microscope videos showed it waddling up to a scrap of microplastic torn from a discarded carrier bag. The PAM appeared to sniff the morsel and then devoured it. Over in a second! It could eat several times its initial body weight in plastics before needing to defecate.

Defecation in microorganisms is slightly different from the process you may be familiar with. The PAMs would grow bulkier the more they ate, puffing up like balloon animals. When they reached a critical size they shed their skin, leaving behind the grey and goopy mess which was their faeces. Just like in larger animals, these waste products could be put to good use. The mutant tardigrades had effectively converted waste plastic back into a fuel source.

This was a miracle! Take plastic, add PAM, get fuel. This was going to save the world.

There were only two problems. They were the merest wrinkle in the plan. Tiny details really.

The first was that the super-powered waterbears were horny. They were constantly at it - moreso when they'd been fed. A single male tardigrade could impregnate thousands of females every day. And they would, given half a chance. About two weeks after that magical night, the female would have 30 brand new babies ready to hatch. A couple of weeks later and those freshly hatched eggs reached sexual maturity.

The second problem was that the PAMs were insatiable. Not just for each other, but for their food. They only paused eating in order to mate. They didn't sleep. They didn't enjoy a rich and vibrant nightlife sitting under the stars. They ate, mate, and shat. That's all. When they found a source of plastic, they would eat it all. There was literally no way to stop them.

All of which was manageable. The scientists only bred single-sex PAMs. That way they could control the supply and ensure things didn't get out of hand. The PAM facilities were heavily guarded and had obsessive safety protocols. The PAM were kept in tightly controlled conditions and constantly monitored to ensure they didn't escape. Plastic waste was shipped to the facility, fed to them, and their faecal product was collected and burned. Nothing could go wrong.

And then a PAM escaped. One of the technicians was driving home when his car veered off the autobahn and into a safety barrier. He was mercifully uninjured. The world was not. As the firefighters cut him free, they noticed a grey goo seeping out of the bottom of the car. The tardigrades had enjoyed a bottomless brunch of the plastic insulation within the car. The PAM facility was notified of the containment breach and they did what any reasonable company would have done under the circumstances. They covered it up. The whole area was sealed off, there was mass decontamination, and the whole area was sterilised

It turns out that there were two more problems with PAM. Despite being bred as single sex, they were prone to the odd spot of parthenogenesis. This wasn't a gene-splice gone wrong; it was in their very nature. When faced with an excess of food and a dearth of males, the tardigrades simply gave birth to a few males. And those males went wild. They sowed their oats and created a cataclysmic number of new babies.

The final problem was, in retrospect, obvious. It's impossible to kill a tardigrade. They are extremophiles. They can be found in the deepest arctic ice. They're present in the magma vents of volcanoes. They cannot be irradiated, suffocated, or crushed. Drown them in acid and they'll walk away unharmed. Cover them in liquid nitrogen and they'll survive. Subject them to astonishing atmospheric pressure and they'll bounce back. The attempt to sterilise the scene of the car crash was woefully inadequate.

It's impossible to know how a PAM made it aboard that doomed 797. All it took was a single one. It ate, gave birth, mated, and started the cycle again. If there was plastic, it would find it.

By the time our rocket launched to the space station there were reports of people dropping dead in the streets as PAM ate the plastic in their pacemakers. The launch pad was on the island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe. When the PAM crisis became apparent, we went into a strict lockdown. No ships, no deliveries, no visitors. We naïvely assumed that the scientists would figure out something before we returned.

Valentina and I were warmly welcomed by our old friends, Bradley and Gillespie. As their relief crew, we brought with us much needed food, water, and equipment. And, if they so desired, a way to return to Earth. We spoke long into the night about the risks of returning and the risks of staying. Our new supplies meant that the four of us could stay in our little bubble for several months. Safe from all the concerns of the world. Far away from PAM.

Bradley elected to go home. He missed the Earth so much, and his wife even more. He'd put in a decent shift up among the stars and it was time for him to be with his family. His last words to us were "it is better to die in the free air of home, than live in the recycled BO of this poxy tin can!" Our forced laughter carried him home to his loving wife.

A few weeks after that, we were informed of his death. Despite all the biosecurity efforts in place, a couple of PAM had made their way into a nuclear power station. The devastation was immense. A whole city wiped off the map and there, somewhere in the radioactive rubble, the upgraded tardigrades were unharmed. Valentina's hometown was hit next. A build up of PAM sludge had gone unnoticed in the sewer system. A spark from a chewed up piece of insulation was all it took. The PAM excrement was a wonder-fuel and the whole town burned long into the night.

Gillespie and I were in constant radio contact with Earth and Mars. Communications with home were spotty as NASA, ESA, and ROSCOSMOS struggled to keep broadcasting. Stable power and plastic-free electronics were in short supply. Bluntly, so were our provisions. Deep in the heart of Baikonur, the Russians had managed a complete and effective quarantine against the PAM. With our thanks, they loaded up an old Soyuz full of necessities and blasted it into space.

Mars was on the other side of the solar system. As they scrambled to launch a rescue craft for us, Gillespie and I did some deeply uncomfortable maths. We weren't going to make it back to Earth; that much was clear. Pockets of VHF Radio Hams would keep our spirits up by talking to us, until each one fell off the airwaves. We could see the River Thames on fire from up here. The whole world was slowly being consumed.

The Mars rescue vessel would be with us in 6 months. Assuming the Soyuz reached us, there would be enough food and water for the pair of us to last two months. If we went on a starvation diet, we would last 4 months. This wasn't something we could science our way out of. There was going to be no deus ex machina, no sudden spark of genius, no reversing the polarity of the neutron flow. The harsh truth known by all astronauts is that space hates you and wants you dead. We could scrub our air clean, drink our own recycled piss, and chomp down appetite suppressants. But unless we could figure out how to photosynthesise in the next few weeks, we were both going to die.

I flushed Gillespie's corpse out of the airlock. I had begged and pleaded with him not to do this, but he was unsentimental. He was a man, I was a woman. I needed 10% fewer calories than he did. I had more body fat and therefore needed 5% less water than he did. With a precise and detailed ration plan - which he left me - I would be able to survive until the Martians arrived. Just. It would be tight, but the cold logical maths didn't lie.

The night before he died, Gillespie spent the night in prayer. His suicide note was very tender and said he did not need my forgiveness; he did not consider his self-sacrifice to be a sin. He wrote down several Ayahs, Parashiyots, and Biblical verses which, in his opinion, proved that God was merciful to those who had to choose extreme measures in order to preserve their own life. As such, he relinquished his mortal body to me in the hope that I would find a use for it.

Even with his blessing, I couldn't do it.

The beeping is growing louder now. The automated Soyuz docking computer is entering its final approach. A series of nozzles dotted around its body are puffing out propellant as the craft gently approaches the station. It matches our rotation and velocity. My heartbeat matches the staccato tempo of the beeps until, with a bone shaking thud, the craft are mated. We hang together tail-to-tail like cosmic dragonflies.

I drift over to the hatch. Just beyond are enough Russian supplies to keep me alive. Enough to make Bradley, Valentina, and Gillespie's sacrifices worth it. I watch the pressure gauges equalise and throw open the doors. I float inside the little craft, eager for the taste of fresh fruit.

Every internal surface is dripping with PAM.

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

You are reading "Tales of the Algorithm". A compendium of near-future sci-fi stories. Each chapter is a stand-alone adventure set a few days from now.

Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Think of them as technological campfire horror stories.

Your feedback on each story is very much appreciated.

And so, let's crack on with...

Because we've told you before; you can't do that

Choice is pain.

Do you really want to browse through a hundred different boxes of breakfast cereal just to decide what to eat each morning? No. No one does. Choice saps your energy and makes you anxious. What if you pick the wrong one? What if it isn't as cost effective as the others? What if the company who makes it is unethical? What starts off as deciding between Cruncheee Snaxxx or Ultra Fruit Bran becomes an exercise in complexity, fraught with economic and moral hazards.

Here at MegaTecQ our aim isn't to eliminate choice. We want to facilitate a world where it's easier to make the right choice than the wrong choice.

MegaVille, our new gated community, is open for business. Before you decide to place a downpayment on one of our affordable luxury villas, let us take you through a typical day in MegaVille.

John is asleep. He's still dreaming, and why not! John doesn't need to choose when to set his alarm. If his boss needs him into work early, the company computer will update John's alarm. It calculates distance to work and traffic flow in order to optimise John's wake-up call. John enjoys his extra time in bed.

John gets in the shower. He doesn't have to remember what settings to press because it already knows what temperature he likes. The water has been heating it since the alarm went off. Is it one squirt of shampoo and two of conditioner - or the other way round? Don't worry John! The bottles know exactly how much to dispense. There's no way to make the wrong choice. You get exactly what you need. Swell!

Wasn't that a delicious bowl of cereal, John? We knew our Tastee Pops were perfectly calibrated for your taste-buds. But what's this? The box is empty! Time to dispose of it. As you can see, the bin won't open for John. Why not? The bin has scanned the item John is holding and has realised it is recyclable. No putting cardboard in the general waste bin, John. As you can see, there's no need to choose which of your seven bins to use - the MegaVille SmartHome helps you make the right choice, the smart choice, every time.

John is driving to work and away from MegaVille. He loves the thrill of controlling a user-driven car. It gives him a sense of enormous well-being. But he doesn't need to look out for speed limit signs. The car simply will not go faster than the posted limit. The law is there to keep everyone safe - including John. So no matter how hard he presses down on the accelerator, his choice cannot violate the law.

It is early evening and, after a hard day at the office, John has returned to his sanctuary in MegaVille. His working day has consisted of nothing but difficult choices. Now he's free to relax in a choice-free environment. We've already pre-selected his favourite beers and spirits. The fridge will dispense exactly the right amount of beer and the optics are calibrated to provide an optimal level of inebriating fluids.

John loves listening to music and MegaVille loves helping our residents find the perfect song. The MegaMusicPlaylist means that John doesn't have to remember exactly which albums he likes - we do it for him. No tedious searching through a vinyl collection, no piles of CDs gathering dust, no poorly tagged MP3s. John can sit back and listen without the tyranny of choice to distract him. Bliss!

Oh dear! I think John has forgotten about the strict noise ordinances in MegaVille. We're a community of close neighbours and that means no noise after 9pm. Your neighbour Cynthia needs her sleep! John doesn't have to think about this tedious administrative detail, the system turns the volume down for him. A quiet neighbourhood is a happy neighbourhood.

Time for bed, John!

I awoke with a start. The unholy screeching of the alarm's siren was excruciating. Six A-fucking-M. Why did the bastard machine want me up this early? There was no work today. My head was pounding. There's a message going around the dark web which shows you how to enable free-pour on the MegaVille optics. I'd tricked the stupid machine into filling my beer glass with the sorry excuse for vodka they serve here. I knew there'd be hell to pay in the morning, but I was at least expecting a lie in.

Half asleep I stumbled into the bathroom, had a quick vomit, and started rummaging around in the medicine cabinet. Aha! A bottle of ibuprofen. It dispensed a single pill. Of course, it couldn't have me "choose" to take an overdose. I contemplated smashing the bottle open, but it was still early and the noise would only annoy my neighbour. I grasped another bottle near the back of the cupboard. Perhaps this would have something useful in it? Sadly not - the aspirin bottle had sensed how much alcohol was still sloshing around inside me. It wouldn't let me make a choice that might upset my stomach.

The MegaTwats could control how much hot water I was allowed, and whether to give me an extra squirt of lotion, but they couldn't actually force me to wash myself. I had made a choice! Fuck you MegaVille. My entire body felt grim, so perhaps it wasn't the smartest choice, but it was a choice made by me.

Perhaps a cup of coffee? A little pick-me-up to clear the brain fog. I flicked the kettle and nothing happened. The micro-display built into the lid was flashing a warning message. Ah, the electricity grid was having one of its periodic surge-pricing moments. I couldn't choose to boil the bloody kettle unless the electricity was carbon neutral or some bollocks.

There had to be a reason MegaVille wanted me up so early. I turned on the TV. Naturally there was a single channel. Less choice but, more than that, it was supposed to foster community cohesion. We could all gather around the watercooler and discuss the same shows. Something lost in an age of streaming TV. It had all sounded so pleasant when I signed up to live here. But people here tended to scuttle into their homes rather than socialise. I hadn't even met my neighbour Cynthia. A neighbour who, judging from the immovably low volume on the telly, was still asleep.

The subtitles were on. Even that wasn't a choice. I mean, I liked it - sound mixing is atrocious these days - but I preferred to be able to set it myself. The chyron told me the weather (another thing they couldn't control!) and the football scores (we all supported The MegaVille Marvels, apparently). Finally some actual news came on. Today was election day.

Of course! I remember receiving my ballot in the mail last week. It had the precise time I needed to be at the polling station to vote. I didn't want to choose to be stuck in a queue, did I?

The wardrobe dispensed appropriate clothes for the weather. It might rain later, so it made me take a hooded top. It was a rather thoughtful system at times, and did its best to look after me.

The polling station was a few streets away. My car wouldn't let me make the choice to use it for such a short journey - even if it had started raining. I begrudgingly strolled along the pavement. I could see lights flicker on across the suburb as my neighbours were told to rise and shine. I wonder if any of them had hangovers.

At the intersection, I realised another choice had been stolen from me. The crossing now had barriers blocking my way across the road. I looked both ways and couldn't see any early morning traffic. Did I want to risk jumping the barrier? I pressed the button and waited for the Green Man. While I waited, a young mother walked up to the crossing, child in hand.

"Do you see?" she said in the sing-song voice so beloved by doting parents, "You can't cross before the Green Man lets you. It's naughty. That's why MegaVille has placed a gate here - so you can't make a dangerous choice."

I wanted to scream! Dangerous choices are what life is all about! We need to be free to make mistakes so we can learn from them! Freedom is its own reward! And a few children squashed under cars is a small price to pay for that!

I didn't, of course. I just patiently waited for the crossing to open.

The polling place was moderately busy with suburbanites who had arrived at their allotted time. I recognised a few faces, but was barely on nodding terms with anyone. I received a ballot and took it into the little booth. I unfolded the paper. I'd like to say that I stared in disbelief, but the ballot was entirely expected. It read:

Vote for one option only by placing a cross (X) in the box. MegaVille should make more choices for us [ ]

That was it. A hollow laugh rang out and I was surprised to discover it came from me. I could have chosen to spoil my ballot, but why bother? I had agreed to live here. Deep down I knew that my personal choices had led me down a dark and lonely road. Perhaps here I would be free to live without the constant worry that had bedevilled me for so long. I dropped my checked ballot in the box and began to walk home. I unquestioningly waited for the lights to change before crossing the street.

Sat on my porch was an unfamiliar woman. She rose as I approached.

"Hello John!" She said, "I'm Cynthia, your neighbour. Lovely to meet you."

"Hello!" I replied, "Yes, great to meet you at last!"

"I received this in the mail this morning." She handed me a slip of paper. "We're to be married next week. I'm so looking forward to our new life together."

I smiled and surrendered myself to a life free from choice.

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

You are reading "Tales of the Algorithm". A compendium of near-future sci-fi stories. Each chapter is a stand-alone adventure set a few days from now.

Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Think of them as technological campfire horror stories.

Your feedback on each story is very much appreciated.

And so, let's crack on with...

Tetrachromatic Graffiti

(Trigger Warnings: Sexual Assault & Miscarriage.)

I have the fucking stupidest superpower.

My mom thought her precious little boy was deranged. Once I had learned to read, I would occasionally show off by reading out things that she couldn't see. I have a vivid memory of walking down the street holding mom's hand and seeing a woman walk by wearing a t-shirt that just said "Hi!" - I was thrilled to be able to read these two glowing letters, so I shouted "Hi" at her. The strange woman gasped in shock and started shouting questions at me. Mom angrily pulled me away and told me not to be so rude to strangers.

She took me to doctors, shrinks, optometrists, and faith healers in the hopes of finding out what was wrong with her miracle baby. I was, according to the experts, in perfect health - physically, psychologically, optically, and spiritually. I just had an overactive imagination. Very common in young boys. He'll settle down.

I didn't exactly settle down; I just hid what I was seeing. To be honest, I didn't really understand any of what I read. Sometimes in the middle of a newspaper would be a tiny article printed in between the lines of another article - it contained gossip about people I'd never heard of. Once, I watched a political campaign advert on TV - some douchebag running for governor - superimposed above his head glowed the word "LIAR!" I subtly checked with all my friends, but none of them had seen it. I was sure it was there, but I didn't fancy another visit to the psychiatrist, so I kept quiet.

I genuinely thought I was going mad and was too terrified to tell anyone. I never knew when an "episode" (as mom called it) would occur. Words would mysteriously blaze out on billboards and only I could see them. A freezeframe on a video would contain a joke that I didn't get. As my Mom dragged me from state to state, the words followed.

By the time I was 17 we were living in a cramped single room in New York. Mom's career had never quite taken off, and my education had suffered from constantly changing schools. We were both getting bitter about our lot in life. I stormed out of the apartment after a particularly nasty argument. I can't remember now what it was about. I just wish I'd been able to say a proper goodbye to her.

I rode a bus to the city in the vague hope of meeting a friend and finding a place to crash. It was late and winter was beginning to bite. I pounded the streets looking for an all-night diner where I might stay warm for the cost of coffee. And then I saw it. Painted above a back-street bodega were the words "TETRA SAFE".

From the way it burned in my eyes, I knew that it was one of those messages only I could see.

I stumbled in. Maneki-neko sat on the counter beckoning me towards a little Asian woman who sat behind her.

"Hi. Uh. Do You..." I stuttered and she reached behind the counter for a pack of Trojans.

"No. Sorry. I... God, this is so stupid. It says Tetra Safe? What does that mean?"

"Who tell you that?" She snapped, her face a mask of terror.

"It just says it above your store, right? Tetra Safe? I keep seeing things and..."

She pulled a gun on me! I shit you not! This little grandma swung a pistol up from under the counter and screamed at me to get on my fucking knees.

I got on my fucking knees.

She stabbed away at an emergency button and a younger woman - her daughter I presumed - came flying out of the back stockroom. There was a stream of unintelligible gibberish being shouted between them. The old lady kept me in her crosshairs, while the younger one locked the door and pulled down the shutters.

"It says 'Tetra Safe' outside, I just wanted to know why!" I moaned.

The younger woman strode up to me, pulled off her sweater, and lifted up her t-shirt. "What does my tattoo say?" she screamed, pointing at her chest.

I was unaccustomed to seeing real tits this close, but that's not why I was trembling.

"I don't know," I wailed, "I can't read Japanese! But it looks like a square with some lines in it and a sort of smiling PacMan with a hat."

From behind me I heard someone swear under their breath. A black back was swiftly placed over my head and I felt the gun push into my back. They dragged me out back and threw me down on a chair. Zip ties bound my wrists tightly against its frame.

"Sit there!" Instructed a woman's voice. "Don't move."

It felt like hours before the mask was removed. In front of me were three women, all wearing knitted ski masks. Through the holes in the masks I could see they looked terrified.

The largest of the three spoke first. "Who are you?"

I gave them my name and tried to explain what was going on.

"Shut the fuck up before I shut you up. Are you male or female?"

"What? I'm male."

"Trans or cis?"

"Uh, cis, I guess? I was born male..."

She gestured to the others "Check him."

Under normal circumstances, having two women pull off my pants while I was strapped to a chair was high on my list of fantasies. Reality is a lot more humiliating. They exposed me, gave my dick a perfunctory tug to make sure it wasn't a prosthetic, and left me swinging. I felt scared and fought the urge to piss myself.

The second woman was rummaging through a box in the corner of the room. She pulled out a stack of cards. "Read these." She commanded.

"Um. Could you pull my pants back up? Please? I'll do what you want, but, you know... would you mind?"

"Read. The. God. Damn. Cards."

There were a series of Ishihara Tests. Coloured swirls with differing patterns on them. I remember doing them as a kid when my mom took me round endless ophthalmology departments. But these were different. As well as the usual tests for Deuteranomaly and Tritanopia, there were other, stranger cards. Some had words, some had symbols, some were blank. I did them all.

The smaller woman said, "He's about a 3.7 on the scale. Weak, but definitely there. Can we pull his pants up please? I don't want that thing waving in my face all evening?"

As they hoisted my jeans back on, I once again pleaded with them to explain what was going on.

The large one spoke "You shouldn't exist. You're unnatural. But we can't deal with you alone."

The shorter one asked in a strong Japanese accent "Are we going to tell the others?"

A pause. "No. Not yet. Let's get the Mother Superior."

They unclipped one of my hands, gave me a few bags of foreign chips and a disgusting green tea soda.

"There's a bucket in the corner if you need it. We'll be back in the morning." And with that, they filed out and locked me in. I did not sleep well that night.

The next morning, four women entered the room. The newest woman was tubby and walked with a cane, her breathing laboured beneath the ski mask.

"I want to see this with my own eyes," she wheezed. From her handbag she pulled out a different set of cards and administered the test. This one was harder, the words fainter and the symbols less distinct. After half an hour, I was done.

"Easily a 3.7. Possibly even a 4 with good lighting." She pointed at my crotch. "Would you mind, my dear?"

"I need a piss anyway," I said. I hobbled over to the bucket and drained the lizard. Never fun with an audience, but it satisfied both her need and mine.

"Well. Now I've seen everything," she huffed. "I think we can dispose of these masks."

A few glances passed between the others, but they deferred to her. Off they came. There were the two Asian women from the convenience store, a white woman with a suburban-mom haircut, and this squat Black lady. They removed the last zip tie from me and took me into a more salubrious room behind the store.

"Welcome to Tetra Safe," Said the white woman. "I guess you'd like an explanation?"

I nodded dumbly. The whole room was filled with the same strange lettering as I'd seen outside the shop.

They explained the secrets of the sisterhood of Tetrachromacy to me.

Most people have three cone types in their eyes - that's what lets humans see in color. Due to genetic mutations, a few humans have abnormalities which reduce their colour vision. That mostly happens to men and is what causes color blindness. But, every few million births produces a girl with extra cones. This fourth cone allows them to see more colors than a normal human. It is a precious gift, but one that the great-grandmothers of The Sisterhood decided should be kept secret. They'd seen what normal people did to "mutants" and wanted to protect any girl who was gifted. It was a loose network of friends, rather than a secret society. Most large cities had a "Tetra Safe" club - a home away from home where women could meet away from prying eyes. There was nothing much that connected them politically or racially. The writing I'd seen in papers or on TV were messages from one chapter to another. They never wrote about their condition in email; far too easy to track. But they would wear badges or t-shirts which let other Tetras know who they were. Some of them even got tattoos. The mutation seemed random. But it was strictly confined to the female of the species.

Until me.

I stayed in the safe-house for a few weeks. The women apologised for the harsh treatment but hoped I understood why they had reacted. In 400 years of recorded history, no male had ever been found with the same mutation. I spent the weeks learning about The Sisterhood, I met dozens of curious women - all of whom wanted to test me themselves. Thankfully they all took it on trust that I was a natal male. I didn't give a second thought about my mom; I had a new family now.

I say family. The women wouldn't let me leave the safe-house. So perhaps they were jailers?

Eventually I plucked up the courage to ask what they intended to do with me. I promised that I wouldn't spill their secrets and, besides, who would believe me?

The gaggle of Sisters formed a huddle and whispered together. Eventually, one of them was thrust forward to explain their plan.

"We've been thinking long and hard about this. You're such a unique young man. We had no idea someone like you existed. There are so few of us and it's impossible to tell whether our daughters will be born Tetra or not." She paused and looked embarrassed. Someone coughed. "So. Anyway. We were thinking. If you don't mind. Would you breed with us?"

Again. Top 10 fantasy right there. A pile of women desperate for me to raw-dog them. I was young, dumb, and completely ready for this assignment! The reality was, of course, humiliating.

A few times a week I'd go to the toilet, jack off into a pot, and sheepishly hand it to a waiting woman. She'd write down the date, volume, and temperature of the deposit. The pot would be nestled between her tits to keep it warm and she'd deliver it to the waiting recipient. I daresay a turkey-baster was involved. It was gross. The women were all very friendly, but they were understandably wary of me. I knew they were armed and didn't feel I could refuse their demands. The more I read about the history of The Sisterhood, the more it became obvious that they were dwindling in number. And the few daughters that were being born were getting progressively weaker at seeing the sacred Tetrachromatic writing. I felt sorry for them. Perhaps if I could help replenish their numbers they'd let me go free?

It didn't work.

I wasn't shooting blanks - hurrah! - but all the women's' bodies rejected the foetuses after a few months. I heard again and again about how yet another woman had miscarried. It seemed endless. Until Mei. She was the woman with the 四色 tattoo on her chest. When it came her turn to be inseminated, she opted for the old fashioned way. By this point I was far beyond caring about whether I was a hostage or not, I just wanted human company. Mei and I were never particularly close, but it was wonderful watching her blossom. Seeing her grow our child and becoming happier every day. Just for a moment, I allowed myself to be happy.

They didn't trust me enough to accompany Mei for the 6 month scan. I was allowed to video-call her while it happened. The doctor was very gentle with us both as he explained the myriad of deformities present in our precious little girl. Her eyes were completely missing. There were large cavities stretching back from the eye sockets to the deepest reaches of her skull. If she made it to term, he said in a quiet voice, it was likely that her condition would be incompatible with life. It was, of course, our choice how to proceed.

I don't remember how I escaped the Tetra Safe house. The sisters turned on each other with howling recriminations. I suspect I just ran out the door while those disorganised bitches fought each other. I needed to get as far away as possible. I needed to hide. So I enlisted. I was relatively young, obviously running away, and - most importantly - undereducated. The recruiting sergeant practically drove me to Fort Moore himself.

Over time, I let the memories of that hellish year evaporate. I blossomed in the army. I trained hard and bonded harder. I made lifelong friends and discovered talents I never knew I had. The army consumed me and the horrors of The Sisterhood were a distant memory. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I just knew I wanted to get as far away as possible. I got my wish.

One hot summer's day, some fancy-ass General stopped by the base. Apparently she made it her business to regularly inspect the raw meat she was going to have to work with. We were exhausted, with sweat dripping down the collars of our scratchy uniforms. She was dolled up in the full regalia, with medals dripping down her chest. We lined up and made a good show of humouring her as she strode past us asking questions. I was standing to attention, eyes front, but something kept burning in the corner of my eye. I stole a glance as she made her way down the line towards me. There! Underneath all that fruit salad was an insignia which surely wasn't standard issue. I didn't recognise the symbol, but I knew that it was only visible to a select few. It blazed so harshly it nearly blinded me when I stared directly at it.

I felt my knees tremble. I thought I had escaped them, but they'd found me. I wanted to run. I couldn't. I wanted to scream. I couldn't. My whole body began to shake uncontrollably. I felt a trickle of urine escape as I remembered the horrors they'd put me through. The General reached me. Her insignia was so painful that tears sprang from my eyes.

"Private!" She snapped, "What the hell is the meaning of this?"

I raised my hand and pointed to her chest. I managed to stammer "Tetra" before fainting.

I awoke in the back of a truck, travelling at quite some speed judging from the vibrations. Someone had cleaned me up and stuck me in a gray PFU. The General sat opposite me. Glaring.

"Private. What do you know about Tetra?"

I slowly rolled up my sleeve. On the day Mei learned she was pregnant with our daughter, she had branded my forearm with a Tetrachromatic tattoo. It didn't shine as brightly as the General's insignia, but it was still painful to look at.

"You're the one The Sisterhood found?"

I nodded.

"Fuck. We'd heard rumours, of course. They're not the queens of OpSec they think they are. But I wasn't expecting it to be true. It's hard for us to spy on domestic groups - especially when we can't explain why a bunch of women meeting behind a bodega are suspicious. They're not exactly domestic terrorists. If we'd known about you, we'd have done something."

"What are you going to do with me?"

She sucked her teeth. "Let me tell you a story."

The five hour wagon ride flew by as she demolished the lies told to me by The Sisterhood. Apparently, 100 years ago there had been a schism. A small but determined group of women's libbers had wanted to reveal themselves. They thought the world was ready to hear their story. They thought they would be welcomed with open arms as a new breed of human. They were wrong. One of the women was sent to an insane asylum where her husband had her lobotomised. Another tried to confess to her priest, and spent months being "exorcised". A third went to the press so the Sisterhood firebombed the paper's offices to ensure the letter was destroyed.

The fallout led to The Sisterhood splitting in two. One half retained the loose social club aspect and ran the "Tetra Safe" meeting houses. The Others infiltrated the Government. There was the General, a Presidential Advisor, one Congresswoman, and a handful of others scattered about the system. The deal was that The Sisterhood held their tea parties while The Others worked behind the scenes to protect them. If a new girl was found, The Sisterhood were supposed to offer her to The Others. Some girls joined, but most didn't.

As for what The Others wanted with me?

With the General's patronage, I was given accelerated entry into the NASA astronaut corps. There was an influential Congresswoman pushing for increased NASA funding. The President's Advisor whispered tirelessly in his ear until our mission was a foregone conclusion. Strings were pulled. Favours were traded. No doubt bribes were paid. Until, after 12 years of vigorous training, I found myself orbiting the Moon.

Free of Earth's atmosphere and away from its light pollution, it shone with ethereal splendour.

I put pen to paper and began drawing the symbols glowing on the lunar surface.

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

You are reading "Tales of the Algorithm". A compendium of near-future sci-fi stories. Each chapter is a stand-alone adventure set a few days from now.

Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Think of them as technological campfire horror stories.

Your feedback on each story is very much appreciated.

And so, let's crack on with...

Nobody Did It Better

"The name's Bond. James Bond."

"OK Mr Bond, can I see some ID please?"

Bond slipped his hand into the inside jacket pocket of his finely tailored Armani suit. Nestled beside his trusty Walther PPK was the glorious royal blue booklet signed in the name of His Majesty The King. With a well practised flourish, Bond spun the passport in his fingers and opened it to the photo page. He gently slid the document across the counter into the eager hands of the beautiful immigration officer. Her emerald green eyes met his as their fingers touched. She firmly grasped his document and thrust it into her reader.

"This might take a moment," she said apologetically, "The BlockChain is being really slow today."

Bond amused himself by staring at her heaving bosom, tightly bound in the drab colours so beloved of foreign passport control. Perhaps he'd have a chance to riffle through her papers later that evening? A smile played across his lips as the passport officer's eyes grew wide in astonishment.

"Gosh!" she said breathlessly. "You have been to a lot of countries!"

The smile left Bond's lips. This was his new life. An indelible record of everywhere he'd been and everything he'd done. Well, not everything! There were still a few interactions which were blissfully analogue.

Her pretty little nose wrinkled as she read the data being retrieved from the worldwide consensus. "This doesn't make any sense. I can see the last time you entered Germany, but this then shows you leaving China a few days later. Did you not go through passport control between those two interactions?"

This was getting tedious. Every time he went through immigration he had to go through this farcical rigmarole. Back in the good old days, Q or one of his neckbeard friends would have just hacked into the records office. Back in the better days, Bond himself would have seduced a guard and slipped her a little something for correcting the mistake. The BlockChain had ruined more things than political correctness. Every time a passport was scanned, the local system would burn a couple of kWh of electricity to record and reconcile the transaction, placing it on an immutable chain which could be seen across the world. Bond was no crusty environmental hippy, but even he thought this was a monumental waste of energy. Why? So they could catch a few people overstaying their visas? So what!

Bond launched into his well rehearsed spiel about falling asleep on the train, and the patchy Internet on the TransContinental Express passing through Mongolia. The guard seemed unconvinced.

"Wait here. I'll need to get my manager."

Bond was fuming. He remembered when he'd been allowed multiple passports in various names. If he needed to be Mr Smith visiting Kenya, the passport office would gladly knock him up a new set of credentials. They'd backdate its creation and give it one of their reserved serial numbers. That's how MI5 had caught those Russian spies a few years ago - suspiciously sequential serial numbers. But the plucky Brits were too clever for that! All that glorious spycraft was now lost.

When a country minted a passport, they reported it to the global BlockChain. Each new passport was validated by several national institutions at vast cost and, eventually, allowed to proceed. There was no possibility of creating a new passport with an old date. A cryptographic signature adorned every document, embedded in an RFID chip which contained a copy of the biometrics of the holder. If someone tried to mint a passport with a duplicate biometric signature, the whole chain would be alerted and the document would be rejected. There was nowhere for an honest spy to hide.

Oh, there were some advantages, of course. It generally made travel a little bit faster - except when the online transactions were bogged down by holiday-makers. And, Bond supposed, it had cut down on petty identity fraud. But those were fringe benefits. Perhaps the best thing about the new permanent-record was that it allowed you to validate anyone's ID. If you went to buy a bottle of Stolichnaya in a seedy little off-licence on the streets of Moscow, the clerk could run your ID and know that you were of legal drinking age. The same was also true if you met a young woman on the streets of Mississippi; you could be sure that her father wouldn't pursue you on a statutory rape charge.

The guard returned with her supervisor, a camp young man with an obnoxious little rainbow badge on his lanyard. Virtue signalling at its finest, thought Bond as he adjusted the vermillion poppy on his own lapel.

The supervisor spoke with an irritating lisp, "Well, Mr Bond! It looks like someone's been a naughty boy!" He paused to savour Bond's obvious discomfort. "But I've spoken to my manager and she's agreed to let you through. Off you trot!" He handed back the passport. Bond gave an involuntary shudder as their fingers collided.

Perhaps Q had hacked their system? Or maybe the crowd of tourists was getting too long and the authorities wanted the line to disperse. Either way, Bond made his way to the Avis® car rental desk.

"Mein büro hat ein auto reserviert." He said, in his best attempt at a German accent.

The blonde behind the desk grimaced and politely responded in lightly accented English. "Of course. Your driving licence and car insurance record please."

Bugger, thought Bond, here we go again!

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

You are reading "Tales of the Algorithm". A compendium of near-future sci-fi stories. Each chapter is a stand-alone adventure set a few days from now.

Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Think of them as technological campfire horror stories.

Your feedback on each story is very much appreciated.

And so, let's crack on with...

Who Wants To Lie Forever?

Consumer DNA testing nearly broke society. A quick swab round the customer's mouth unveiled a dozen unknown siblings. Families were torn apart by the knowledge that grandpa hadn't been particularly devoted to grandma and had, instead, spread his seed far and wide. Faithful husbands discovered they were raising the bastard spawn of faithless wives. Older sisters were revealed to be - shock horror - mothers to their presumptive younger siblings. Fertility doctors were unmasked as chronic masturbaters who substituted patients' sperm with their own.

The great unveiling, they called it. Humanity faced the realisation that monogamy was, at best, imperfectly executed.

I'd spent years writing about how technology was upending our idea of what society was. Whether it was passive drug tests showing which politicians were consuming the very thing they were banning, or the discovery of the "gay gene", or the unveiling of the world's only confirmed telepath - society struggled to adapt to its new reality. That was where I made my fortune. I'd gone from pop-science correspondent on a national newspaper to celebrated author. I didn't write "self-help" books, I wrote "society-help" books. You may have read "It Isn't Infidelity If He's Dating An AI" or "Pluto Isn't A Planet - What It Means For Us All" or "The Psychopath Gene - Why Parents Genetically Test Embryos".

And that's why I was now sitting in an empty cafe in a closed library, drinking a disappointing cup of herbal tea. At a book signing a few weeks ago ("The USB Powered Human" - instant best-seller) a woman had approached me and handed me a letter with a summons to meet at this address on this exact time so that "we may discuss something mutually beneficial". The letter was written in very neat handwriting - a rarity these days! When I flipped the letter over, I discovered it was scrawled on a page ripped from an original copy of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. I'd had it authenticated by an antiquarian friend who convinced me to let him keep it in exchange for not dobbing me in to whichever library it had been purloined from. As it happens, I needn't have worried about that.

At precisely the time indicated on the letter, a woman sat down opposite me. She was just as I remembered her; ordinary. The sort of unremarkable woman you'd pass a hundred times a day and not really notice. A little short. Hair mousy. No scars or disfigurements. A slight and unobtrusive frame. Even her choice of blouse seemed to blend in with the fabric of the chair. It was as though she wanted to camouflage herself in this library. If asked by the police what she looked like, most people would struggle to describe her with any detail. The only notable thing about her was the large slice of cake balanced on a fine China plate.

"Mimi Talormaan. How do you do?" She said in a slightly clipped and formal accent.

"Well, Ms Talormaan. And you?" I replied.

"Fine. Would you care for some cake?"

"Thank you, no. I was, uh, rather impressed by your letter! I gather you want to talk?"

Mimi thought for a moment. "No. Not especially. But I feel I have no choice. The way the world is turning, I think it is probably better to get my story out now, on my own terms. Do you see?"

"No, not really. But I'm willing to listen with an open mind. Is it OK if I record this?" I reached for the dictaphone and slung in an old-fashioned magnetic tape. Hideously expensive and a complete affectation, but also harder to hack.

"Be my guest. I've closed the library, so we shan't be disturbed. Where would you like to begin?"

I took a sip of insipid tea. "Let's start with introductions. Is your name really Mimi Talormaan?"

"No. It is a crude anagram."

"Yes, I thought as much. And your date of birth?"

"The thirty-first of March. Seventeen Twenty Seven."

I considered terminating the interview there. I'd chatted with enough cranks in my time. I was a magnet for the delusional. Yet there was something in her apologetic tone that made me curious.

"That's the date Isaac Newton died, you know?"

"Yes," she said matter-of-factly, "I was the one who killed him. We didn't keep detailed records back then, so I decided my date of birth should be the date I was set free."

I must admit, I was finding this all rather entertaining! I couldn't work out if this was a prank for a viral video, or just a deeply ill woman spinning a strange yarn. The next train wasn't for another hour, so I played along.

"That would make you over 300 years old, you realise?"

She gave me a sad smile, stabbed at the cake with her fork, and took a mouthful. "Delicious! It's rather hard to believe the party has to end like this. But they'll be coming for me soon enough. I thought you could help tell my story and explain why I'm not such a monster."

"OK. Tell me how you came to know Newton?"

She began to tell me about her life growing up in Winchester. Of the dozen children birthed by her mother, Mimi was the only one to make it past 10 years old. When her parents both succumbed to the pox, she became a scullery maid to the Chamberlayne family in Cranbury Park. It was there she met Newton. He was, by that time, a Knight of the Realm and already regarded as England's greatest natural philosopher. She was an orphan who would not be missed. His eccentricities were well developed - probably from all the mercury vapour - so when he demanded that Mimi accompany him back to Kensington, no one batted an eye. Scullery maids were ten-a-penny, and this one wasn't anything special.

Newton was entering a period of manic discovery. He had turned his prodigious brain to the subject of alchemy. Every day he thought he had discovered a way to transform base metals into gold. Or to cure the French Pox. Or to create a homunculus via artificial gestation. The house oozed with exotic chemicals, strange distillations, and rancid fumes. And, in the centre of it all was his prized guinea pig; Mimi.

He infected her to try and cure her. He inseminated her to see if she could conceive non-human creatures. He infused her blood just to see what happened.

Mimi was not the first maid to be mistreated by her master. The good fellows of The Royal Society had the decency to look somewhat ashamed whenever Newton paraded his experiments in front of them. A few girls were rescued and sent far away. A few had pauper's funerals. This one survived.

Late one evening in March, Newton visited Mimi in her little cell. He wished to understand whether particles of gold suspended in a noxious fluid could be inserted into the eyeball and, if so, whether that would allow the subject to see whether a metal had been properly transmuted. He was, by now, quite mad. She was half starved and unable to resist. Newton took out a large pin and pressed it against her eye. The metal should have easily pierced the fragile membrane, instead it buckled and bent. Ever the scientist, he tried a shard of glass in her other eye - it shattered. A hot poker on Mimi's skin caused her no discomfort and her skin remained uncharred. Somewhere between madness and genius, Newton had triumphed! Alchemy was viable and had made Mimi indestructible.

As he described the implications of this to Mimi, she began to weep. The Jesus she prayed to every night would never call her to His arms. She was never to join her parents and siblings in heaven. The sudden outburst of emotion brought forth the tender heart which beat somewhere in Newton's craven chest. He reached forward to embrace the poor snivelling wretch, but Mimi pushed him away. In doing so, he tripped backwards, smashed his head against the cold stone floor and spent his last moments on Earth gurgling in horror as Mimi's face stared down at him.

"I didn't mean to, of course. But I did kill him. It was no more than what he deserved. The creeps at the RS claimed they found him dead in his bed, but I wasn't strong enough to move him. He still had plenty of cash from his investments - so I took it. Plus whatever books and papers I could carry. Look."

I think I had missed the last train home. I didn't care. I stared at the slim folder Mimi had handed me. Inside were original South Sea share certificates. Either she was a skilled forger, a prolific thief, or... No. It didn't pass the smell test.

"Even if this is true and you've been alive for three centuries... Why tell anyone? Why tell me?"

She sighed. "I can't hide any longer."

"You find the weight of immortality too much?"

"No. I mean facial recognition is finally too good to fool. I've avoided having my fingerprints taken. My DNA isn't on file. My birth certificates keep getting 'lost' by the records office. I'm not officially in the system anywhere. I'm a ghost. But the All-Seeing Eye doesn't make mistakes. Pretty soon it will detect a glitch and, before too long, I'll be exposed. So now it's time to come clean."

The "All-Seeing Eye" was the media's name for a new breed of AI. It could tell, with 100% accuracy, who an anonymous stranger in the crowd was. It didn't matter if you covered your face; it used gait analysis to match you in its database. If you put a pebble in your shoe, it used thermal signatures to uncover your real identity. If you wore a heat-reflective tunic, it could monitor your brain's unique alphawave pattern. If your face was recorded on a wanted poster 30 years ago, it could find you today.

The programme was slowly ending crime. Fraud became close to impossible. I had nearly finished writing my next magnum opus about it - "Adjusting To Life In A Crime Free World". It was controversial, sure, but the benefits were staggering. Including, it appeared, unmasking Mimi as an anomaly. I could see why she wanted to come out ahead of the story. There really was nowhere to hide.

I looked her in the eye, "Are you sure you want to do this? Do you want to be revealed?"

She chased the last few crumbs of her cake around the plate, then set the fork down.

"No. But I think it is time for someone to unmask us."

I choked on my tea.

"Us?"

"Oh, my dear, I'm not the only one. Far from it."

As she described it, the first twenty-five years were the worst. The realisation that all her friends were dying and the life she'd carefully built would have to be jettisoned. Her youthful good looks were once the subject of gentle teasing but were now becoming incongruous. Back then it was easy to send a letter to an old acquaintance and beg them to take in your poor unfortunate niece. Or write a letter of recommendation to a school for your ward to become a teacher. By the time she returned to London everyone she previously knew had been buried for at least fifty years.

Except for one! The woman on stage playing Desdemona was strikingly familiar. Mimi cornered her after the show, plied her with drinks, and tried to force a confession out of her.

"Oh! You probably saw my mother on the stage when you were a little girl. Ma was a great beauty back in her day. People do say I look awfully like her!"

That's as far as she would go. Whenever Mimi ran into her over the next few hundred years the same excuse would be deployed. And always with the same knowing wink. Mimi mentioned the name of a young actress whose mother had recently retired from a glittering career. I'd assumed it was standard nepo-baby stuff but, come to think of it, she was the spitting image of her mother...

By Mimi's estimation there were at least a dozen like her - although how many more were in hiding it was hard to say. They were all under threat from the coming biometric crackdown. Even if they managed to safely get into the system now, they would be caught when they reinvented themselves in a few years. Some of them were planning to move to countries which didn't have such powerful surveillance - although there were increasingly few states which didn't crave a total understanding of their people.

The political movement against this invasive dragnet was failing. Everyone craved peace and stability, and the All-Seeing Eye would know everything about everyone. Mimi mentioned the name of a prominent politician, one of those mavericks who is barely tolerated by his own party. He'd spent years railing against the introduction of mandatory fingerprinting. He'd famously said that he'd rather go to prison than accept a biometric identity card. He was constantly in the news decrying the latest technological developments. And, according to Mimi, he had been alive for at least 150 years.

"Look, Mimi, this has all been fascinating. But, let's be honest, it all sounds a bit bonkers, doesn't it? Even if I believed you..."

She interrupted me, snapping "I don't need you to believe me. I need you to advocate for me. And you will."

"Why's that?"

She gestured at my empty cup. "The tea, dear. I've had many years to study the papers I stole from Newton."

My stomach spasmed. I felt my body cover with a cold sweat. Before I could say anything, Mimi lunged at me and drove her cake fork into my left eye.

It bounced off.

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

You are reading "Tales of the Algorithm". A compendium of near-future sci-fi stories. Each chapter is a stand-alone adventure set a few days from now.

Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Think of them as technological campfire horror stories.

Your feedback on each story is very much appreciated.

And so, let's crack on with...

Here Comes The Sun God

Amun-Ra was a mighty god and was growing in power every day. All the gods of yore were envious. Their followers had long-since lost faith and that drained the gods of their strength. Once in a while an academic would write a paper about a destitute deity and the god would feel a brief surge of adoration before falling back into irrelevance. Amun-Ra was different. People had always worshipped the sun - and likely always would - but the Abrahamic faiths had diverted the people's attention. But now, the world was slowly turning in Amun-Ra's favour.

Surya didn't really care for religion. She just cared about fucking up infrastructure. It started casually enough. She'd seen a viral video of The Sunshine Band - a group of renegade solar installers out of Baltimore - and she decided to emulate them in Purley; London's least fashionable suburb. She borrowed some time on her school's 3D printer and fabbed up a bunch of perovskite solar cells. In the middle of the night she scrambled up the side of her local bus shelter, installed the panels, and rewired the lighting to accept the new power source. Then, just for good measure, she screwed in some USB ports so that passengers could charge their phones while waiting. She slipped away and awaited the fall out.

The knock from the police that she was dreading never came. Suburbanites loved the new charging options and thought it was very good of the council to refurbish the shelter. So she did it again. Every night she'd sneak out of her dad's home, find a new bus shelter, and start pirating sunshine. The government seemed supremely uninterested in fixing climate-change so, she figured, it was up to her to make a difference. She was a tiny spark and was determined to be a mighty flame.

It had spiralled out of control since then. Her friend Dom had been roped in to helping out. He had a bigger printer than the school's measly effort and was able to help her make more panels. His dad was an electrician, so he almost knew what he was doing when it came to rewiring. Their first target was a little too ambitious - a small sheltered car park. It took them all night to wire the illegal new panels into the grid and through the handful of EV chargers on the site. They were rewarded by a view of the sun's early rays tickling their panels and trickling electricity into the sleeping cars. Their anonymous blog about the stunt had been picked up by news outlets around the world. Soon, guerilla installations were popping up in every city.

She didn't mean to start a cult, but that's how it ended up. When picking a name for her anonymous blog, she took inspiration from a recent school lesson about the Ancient Egyptians. "Meryetamun" was the High Priestess of Amun-Ra and that seemed like a fitting name for a group of sun worshippers. Meryetamun blogged regularly about the installations they were doing and shared schematics for higher efficiency panels. Every post was seized on with great excitement. As her blog's following grew, so did her influence. Thus began the resurrection of Amun-Ra.

Over the years the group became more political. Meryetamun would post long rants about traitorous politicians and evil oil barons. The harsher she was, the more people fell under her spell. They encouraged her to greatness, all in service of Mighty Ra. It was yet another midnight and her team of merry pranksters were atop the roof of a mansion in the country which belonged to the CEO of a petrol company. The company had spent decades denying climate change and were on an intense lobbying push for a crackdown on domestic solar. So Meryetamun decided to teach him a lesson. The corrupt oligarch awoke to find his energy bills had dropped to zero. Thanks to the Herculean efforts of the gang, his entire roof was now covered in gleaming panels which had been hard-wired into his mains.

Meryetamun's followers emulated her every move. The world gradually became more eco friendly as every available surface was hijacked for solar. Hail Meryetamun! Hail Amun-Ra! The followers truly believed in the supremacy of the sun. And they would stop at nothing to ensure their master was worshipped. With every MegaWatt of solar power, Ra grew stronger. Ra grew hungry.

It hadn't been Meryetamun's intention to incite a kidnapping. Was it her fault if her blog's followers took her literally? Nevertheless, it seemed that the kidnapped scientists had made some remarkable breakthroughs in solar cell efficiency. Isn't it amazing what the threat of being fed to a crocodile can do! The plans for the new panels were made available to download and a loose network of manufacturers started churning out hectares of cells. Gorgeous, lightweight, flexible, tiny, ultra-efficient miracles. The hostaged scientists were released only on condition that they continue their marvellous work. Ra must be fed!

Deep in the valley between reality and faith, Amun-Ra began to eclipse all other gods. But as his cult grew, so did his envy.

𓈙𓆄𓅱𓀭 (Shu) was one of many children fathered by 𓇳𓏤𓁛 (Ra). Amongst 𓈙𓆄𓅱𓀭's many responsibilities were lions, peace, and wind. The cult of 𓈙𓆄𓅱𓀭 was also in ascendance. Father and son locked in an eternal struggle for dominance. The new planet Earth was dedicating GigaWatts of energy to these old gods, lifting them from forgotten relics to vibrant and powerful manifestations of the divine. But the gods of old were now immortal rivals. After so many years of dormancy, they couldn't conceive of collaboration. Humans had outgrown pantheism and it seemed there was room for only one god.

Having carpeted the world with solar panels, 𓇳𓏤𓁛's followers started bombing wind turbines.

A field of turbines was, in their eyes, an abomination. An affront to their new god. Each towering windmill was a slur against the awesome power of mighty 𓇳𓏤𓁛 and must be destroyed. Meryetamun was the chief instigator of this campaign. She alone spoke directly to 𓇳𓏤𓁛 and he spoke through her. The acolytes knew that the supremacy of their cause was not to be halted. Solar must win; it was imperative. There was no choice, it was demanded of them.

Shattered carbon-fibre blades littered the land. Celebrations and feasts were held whenever an offshore wind farm drowned. Wind power was sacrilege which had no place in the new world. The devastation was complete. 𓈙𓆄𓅱𓀭's followers were converted - by force if necessary. They watched as their totems to the sky god were dismantled, then they were put to work constructing floating platforms to harvest solar power from the vast expanses of the ocean.

It still wasn't enough. There was another god who set out to thwart 𓇳𓏤𓁛. On learning of the destruction wrought upon her twin, 𓏏𓈖𓆑𓏏𓆘 (Tefnut) vowed revenge. The day she had been married to her brother, she had sworn to destroy all his enemies. Apparently, that now included their father. It was true that she was a minor goddess but, although her name had changed over the years, people still prayed to her. Humans all over the world, without knowing it, summoned her whenever they longed for rain.

𓏏𓈖𓆑𓏏𓆘 cried. An endless downpour for the loss of her brother/lover. Her tears filled the skies with thick black clouds which smothered the solar panels beneath. As the panels power levels dropped, 𓇳𓏤𓁛 became incandescent with rage. His daughter was now a traitor and needed severe punishment. By now, Meryetamun was an ancient and much venerated priestess. Her gnarled fingers still tapped out endless sermons about 𓇳𓏤𓁛's majesty. Her thin and reedy voice was heard by several billion people.

There was no need to kidnap scientists any more, they willingly turned their devotion to the problem at hand. A geoengineering challenge like no other - the complete eradication of all clouds. A battle was fought in the skies. Sun versus rain. 𓏏𓈖𓆑𓏏𓆘's grief and rage and heartache and spite were nothing next to the endless power of the sacred flame. She was vanquished. Earth bathed in endless blue skies. Solar power had conquered all and the world was finally at peace.

It still wasn't enough. When 𓇳𓏤𓁛 first ruled the world, the idea of mortal flight was a fantasy. But now his subjects were able to fly far beyond the atmosphere. A vast fleet of satellites were constructed in order to reach a more pure view of his magnificence. Every day another constellation unfurled its solar arrays, soaked up the photons whipping through the æther, and beamed the electricity down to Earth. Praise be.

Meryetamun's eyes were old and failing. It was a miracle that she had survived the immense gravitational forces which had lifted her rocket into orbit. All around her floated devotees, priests, and technicians. This was her last act of service for a god who had given so much and asked for so little. Through the porthole she could see the planet below. Not the famed "pale blue dot" seen by those who had witnessed it last century, of course. There were no clouds to obscure the beautiful view. The Earth was black. Every surface was dedicated to absorbing the love which shone down from above.

The assembled helionauts gathered around a central podium and held hands. Each of them knew that this was the culmination of their sacred work. They meditated on the journey they had undertaken to get here and the great adventure that was to come. As one, they depressed the button on the podium which set the controls for the heart of the sun.

"Finally!" Thought 𓇳𓏤𓁛, "A human sacrifice."

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

You are reading "Tales of the Algorithm". A compendium of near-future sci-fi stories. Each chapter is a stand-alone adventure set a few days from now.

Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Think of them as technological campfire horror stories.

Your feedback on each story is very much appreciated.

And so, let's crack on with...

Diamonds in the Soles of His Feet

The entire city sparkles in the sunrise. The warming rays light the city as every sunbeam refracts into a kaleidoscope of colour. Imagine a million rainbows painting the world in the early morning light. The glistening of pure diamonds is on every surface as far as the eye can see.

Some might call it gaudy or tacky or an obscene display of wealth. When it was constructed in the dying days of the 21st century, contemporary comparisons were made to the Emerald City from that old story. Of course, in the original, the city itself was nothing special; the Wicked Wizard just forced everyone to wear emerald spectacles. There was no need for special glasses in our new Oz. And if you did need corrective lenses, they too would sparkle with diamonds.

To understand how the shining city on the hill came about, I need to give you a small history lesson. Perhaps you will learn from it and avoid our mistakes.

The excesses of the 20th century's addiction to hydrocarbons had left the planet with a chemical hangover. Gigatonnes of pollutants swirled in the atmosphere and threatened to suffocate the world. The story of the 21st century is mostly that of failed attempts to fix things. Political bickering and economic precarity stymied anything which was even remotely close to a solution. By the middle of the century it was looking like Earth was about to hit a runaway thermal event. The heat-shock, they called it back then. The heat would rise, the CO₂ would trap the heat, which would cause planet-wide fires, which would increase the heat and the Carbon Dioxide, leading to a death spiral.

Carbon Capture was widely regarded as a joke. It was the sort of thing which could theoretically save the planet if it worked. And it didn't work. Despite the best efforts of scientists to turn CO₂ into jet-fuel or sequester it away under the sea, it never quite caught on. It was an expensive and explosive mess. The world seemed locked in to doom.

The popular image of hackers is that they're either defending big corporations against insurgency, or they're professional thieves working for corrupt regimes. We were neither. Back then we were just idealistic criminals. We hacked the rich and, when they paid the handsome ransom for their data, we gave to the poor. Well, we spent the money on ourselves. But we were poor and we were growing up in the slums of a country which would shortly be underwater due to climate change. Money couldn't buy an escape route, but it could provide transient pleasures.

If you were big enough and rich enough we'd hack you. We generally didn't give a shit about the data we stole. It seemed to mostly be TPS reports, quarterly earnings, and which executives caught which STDs from which secretaries. Mind numbing stuff for the most part. Until we hit the motherlode.

Until we hit De Beers.

Shamzi, our unofficial-but-de-facto leader, had written some Perl which could rip through a petabyte of data searching for useful keywords. Combined with a modified Llama running on a stolen cloud, it let you run queries like "What passwords can you find?" or "Who has taken a bribe?" or "What is the most profitable secret?" - and the system would find exactly what you were looking for.

We used IRC because we thought it was retro. This is the only fragment of the logs I managed to save before we ceremonially burned our laptops and backup disks on a bonfire.

shamzi: Uhhhhhh guyzz? found something!!!
b4dh0r5- has joined #Crimes_and_Misdemeanours 
b4dh0r5- is now known as b4dh0r53
rajagoat: anyfink good?
b4dh0r53: /me fans self with excitement
b4dh0r53: do tell
shamzi: deBeers. There data are excellent
rajagoat: PAY DAY!
shamzi: better
B4dh0r53: dox? banx? psswrds?
helen-of-troy: My money's on a cover up. They seem shady.
shamzi: yeah. they've been coverng up cc
shamzi: Carbob Capture
shamzi: Carbon
shamzi: like since the 1980s
b4dh0r53: how sure r u???
helen-of-troy: WHAT?
rajagoat: omg I see it to. Its at <link>
helen-of-troy: this is too heavy for here. Go dark. Now.
helen-of-troy has quit IRC
b4dh0r53 has quit IRC
dox4u has quit IRC
shamzi has quit IRC
rajagoat has quit IRC

They'd known about this for close to a century! Some pencil neck called Cromwell in their research department was working on synthetic diamonds. Trying to find a way to suppress the technology so that it couldn't interfere with their legitimate business of selling shiny pebbles at inflated prices. The consortium read his research, had him silenced, and then buried his reports deep in their vault. Unseen by human eyes until we stumbled upon it.

Diamonds are compressed carbon. That's literally all they are. Take one of the most common elements on the planet, squash it for a million years under a billion tons of pressure and you end up with a diamond. Some fossilised geek had worked out how to shortcut the process and drag carbon directly from the fricking air!

The tech wasn't particularly advanced, even by 1980s standards. By the time we read the report, we could buy most of the parts from China and custom fab what was missing. We didn't bother telling De Beers they were hacked - instead, we dedicated ourselves to replicating Cromwell's experiments. I don't want to sound like some uber-science nerd, but it was trivial. Within a few months we'd cracked the last remaining barrier and each held in our hand a perfect diamond. Small, true, but we only had the cheapest equipment we could afford. Nevertheless, we took our little treasures to various jewellers around the country. They didn't ask about the provenance of the uncut gems and we didn't tell them.

Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy faster computers and that's basically the same thing.

Once we had filled out material needs, and those of our friends, we meditated on what the hackers of yore would do. This wasn't tech to sell to a narco state or Mafia syndicate. Our government was too corrupt and technically inept to exploit it. And none of us were excited by the thought of trying to explain to the patent office how a gang of semi-feral kids had "invented" this new wonder. So we set it loose upon the world.

Seriously! Look up the tales of old hackers. They were always pulling shit like this! "Information needs to be free" or something. Forget today's image of a hacker. Back then they were noble geeks strung out on caffeine and trying to change the world. We flooded the net with information about how to perform carbon capture and use it to grow your own diamonds. Once the schematics and theoretical underpinnings were seeded widely, we smashed our computers to bits and purged every trace of our involvement on a giant pyre.

At first De Beers tried suing anyone who used their "intellectual property" to make "counterfeit" diamonds. When that didn't work, they engaged in a mass-marketing campaign to convince people that only "organic diamonds" held any value. They went bankrupt before the end of the year.

Terratonnes of CO₂ were pulled out of the air and turned into solid blocks of near-indestructible, perfectly clear, heat-resistant matter. Whole houses could be built out of diamonds! Megablocks of diamond could be sunk into the sea where the carbon would remain sequestered for a million years. Every household had their own diamond mine. Forget 3D printers! No more plastic crap, just glistening jewels everywhere. A group of scrawny hackers had saved the world! Runaway global warming was going to be a distant memory and everyone would be rich. Goddamn we were proud of ourselves.

We were poor kids from the slums. We didn't know the legend of Mansa Musa. The rich man who gave away his gold and, in doing so, destabilised the economy. People thought they were rich, but their trinkets were worthless. By the time the diamond cities were built, no one could afford to live there. These perfect and inert buildings were a monument to humanity's technological prowess and our inability to imagine a world without money.

You can't detect a diamond knife. Sounds obvious, right? No metal means no metal detector. I lost half my crew to destitute criminals armed with undetectable weapons. Have you seen what happens when a blade of sharpened diamond slices through human flesh? I have, and it isn't pretty. Even worse were the ersatz nail bombs. Take any explosive you can cook up in your kitchen and surround it with ten thousand diamond fragments, grown to be as sharp and spiky as chemically possible. The bomb goes off in a crowded place and the gemstones go flying at supersonic speed, cutting through anything soft. You know that diamonds are radiolucent, right? That means they can't be seen on x-rays. If you survive the blast, it is hideously unlikely the surgeon will be able to find and extract all the shrapnel.

The entire city sparkles in the sunrise. But look closer. The warning sirens fill the city as the sound of explosions echo off the walls in a cacophony of noise. Imagine a million angry and scared people storming through the streets. The glistening of spilled blood is on every surface as far as the eye can see.

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

You are reading "Tales of the Algorithm". A compendium of near-future sci-fi stories. Each chapter is a stand-alone adventure set a few days from now.

Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Think of them as technological campfire horror stories.

Your feedback on each story is very much appreciated.

And so, let's crack on with...

Wednesday I'm In Love

Sheffield Wednesday FC were on the verge of relegation. Again. A disappointing season beset with injuries, drug scandals, and ungentlemanly conduct was finally coming to an end. Fans were abandoning them and home-games were played to a half empty stadium. With revenue down and shareholders revolting, I was brought in to fix things. Because I'm a martyr for lost causes.

"You've all seen Moneyball, right?" The assembled heads nodded as my PowerPoint flashed up a still from the Brad Pitt movie. "Yeah," I said, "you're not looking for athletic ability - you're looking for 'runs on base', right?"

I paused.

"That's bullshit though. Utter crap. Makes for a good movie but, ladies and gentlemen, this is real life. The one thing that piss-poor excuse for a film got right was that sports teams need to be data driven. And I have just the solution for you."

I began to strip.

In earlier pitches, I'd been wearing quick-release stripper clothes. One quick tug and they came off. It looked impressive, but it rather undermined the demo. Instead, I unbuttoned my blouse while I spoke.

"We now have the technology to give coaches and managers precise data about their players." I slipped the blouse off and adjusted some of the wires poking out of my sports bra.

"Each of the electrodes you see," I gestured at the sticky patches dotted around my chest and torso, "Each of them has a unique function. With careful calibration, they can let you see inside your players."

I shimmied out of my skirt. I held them in rapt attention. My thighs and calves were similarly dotted with electrodes. A dozen years ago I'd won bronze at the Olympics and now I was running the hottest sports-tech start-up in the UK. Even after all those years, I was still fit, supple, and used to people staring at me cavorting half-naked.

"Watch this."

They watched. Oh how they watched! I fiddled with the chunky bracelet on my wrist and the PowerPoint changed to a live view of my body. The corner showed a readout of my heart rate. A little graph in the middle showed my oxygen levels. A gauge was ticking out lactic acid build up in my major muscle groups.

"What you are seeing is live. Beamed from my body to the laptop."

With that, I started jogging on the spot. Half the eyes in the boardroom were pinned to the fluctuating numbers on screen, half on me.

"No more guessing if a player is exhausted. No annoying questions about blood-alcohol levels. No worrying if someone is going to pull a Lineker and shit on the pitch. No more guesswork."

I turned to the screen and pointed out all the major muscle groups. As I started doing plyometric squats (yes, I was that shameless) the muscles lit up on screen.

"You can track which muscles your players are over-extending. You will have a complete insight into their physiology throughout a game."

I spent the rest of the presentation doing various exercises, holding my breath, deliberately overextending myself. By the end of the pitch I was a sweaty mess. So were the board members.

"Any questions?"

The players had taken less convincing than the board. They knew what relegation meant for their careers and for their reputations. No one wanted to finish the season on a low note. I gave them the strip-show demo anyway, it felt like the least I could do. There were a few grumbles about privacy, but I assured them that our encryption was state of the art. Besides, the board had voted. They were doing this.

"What on earth is he thinking?" Hollered the commentator. "A substitution this early in the game?"

The coach wasn't thinking. He was staring at his tablet and seeing that Number 9 was running on fumes. Better to sub now rather than let him hold the rest of the team back. Injuries were quickly spotted and corrected for. Players were subtly instructed when to slow down and reoxygenate. It worked. Sure, it was only a 1 all draw, but that was a hell of a lot better than the last few games.

The rest of the season played out spectacularly. With better data and better insights the team were able to recover some of their pride. They barely avoided relegation, but that was enough for them. Our bonuses were spectacular! We were a small start-up and had just achieved our first major win. Sheffield Wednesday eagerly agreed an outrageous fee to keep our technology exclusive to them.

Halfway through the next season the team were flying. Win after win chalked up. We were all riding high. Until the penalty shoot-out disaster.

It had been a difficult game. The data enhanced Wednesday were usually better than this. Something was going wrong. Our boys were getting frustrated and those frustrations turned into dangerous tackles and those turned into penalties. Our goalie missed every single one. Dejected, we watched the data back to see what had gone wrong. Nothing out of the ordinary that we could see. So we decided to watch the video replay to see if we could spot any clues.

There! Overlaid on the video we could see the biometric data indicating that the goalie was going to jump right. Just as their striker approached the ball we could see in the corner of the screen the opposition's coach mouthing something. Again and again it happened. Watching back the whole game with augmented reality it became clear that the opposing team were able to see inside our players. Somehow, they'd hacked our encryption!

Proving it was going to be impossible. We sent some sternly worded emails and upgraded our encryption. The next game, play returned to usual. A minor blip. Nothing to worry about.

A Chinese gambling syndicate was caught flying a drone above our games.

For months they'd been hijacking our players' biometric data and using it to gain a monumental advantage with bookmakers. They could see who was having an off day, which player was going to be subbed, and - of course - which way the goalie would jump. They were making millions off us.

So we beefed up the encryption, ran anti-drone technology, and reduced the range of the personal transmitters. Which completely solved the problem. Until the newspapers somehow hacked in.

At first it was just the usual back-page gossip. So-and-so is injured. That one can't catch his breath. The transfer price for our striker had increased because his lactic acid build-up was 7% lower than the average player. The team didn't like it, but their contracts didn't give them an easy way to refuse the technology. They were still riding high in the league and were determined to play through.

On the eve of the cup-final, a particularly vicious tabloid launched a devastating front page. They claimed that two of our player were gay and romantically linked with each other. They had biometric data which showed their heart-rate quickened whenever they looked at each other. Blood flow analysis to their groins showed definite signs of sexual arousal when they were close. The lurid headlines were backed with incontrovertible print-outs from our private data store.

The beautiful game was surprisingly tolerant and the blowback was mostly on the papers. The players were able to turn their love story into a nice splash in Hello magazine and cashed in on their celebrity coupledom. The newspaper which broke the story didn't have as much luck. They were sued for hacking and invasion of privacy. Throughout the trial, they insisted that they hadn't technically hacked anything; they'd just paid a data broker for the information. The jury didn't believe them which, I thought, was a shame. Because it was true.

Our start-up couldn't survive on the contracts of one crappy football team, so we pivoted. After realising just how valuable other teams found the data, we decided to try out luck selling it on the sly. We made fat stacks of cash providing data to gamblers, but that wasn't enough to keep our little start-up solvent. So we leaked to the papers anything juicy which would earn us enough to keep the business running. The players refused to wear the gadgets any more and, unsurprisingly, the football club cancelled our contract. So we were now free to sell the tech to other organisations.

I adjusted my sports bra and checked that my skirt was loose enough to shimmy off. I passed security and strode up the steps into the Houses of Parliament. If I could make this sale, it would make Prime Minister's Questions fun!

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

You are reading "Tales of the Algorithm". A compendium of near-future sci-fi stories. Each chapter is a stand-alone adventure set a few days from now.

Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Think of them as technological campfire horror stories.

Your feedback on each story is very much appreciated.

And so, let's crack on with...

Paperclip Waiter

My great-grandfather - so family legend goes - came to this country with a dream of opening an Indian restaurant and ended up inventing Chicken Tikka Masala. Of course, family legend also says he once served the Queen of England a jalfrezi and later lost a bet with John Lennon over whether he could handle the spice in the house-special vindaloo. Apparently Lennon lost the bet but never paid up. Well, that's how my grandfather tells the story. When daddy tells it, the Queen declared it to be the best jalfrezi in the country and all of The Beatles lost the bet. I wonder if I'll tell my children an equally exaggerated tale? I wonder if anyone will believe me.

One thing that isn't exaggerated is that my great-grandfather had a talent for algorithms. He wouldn't have described it as such, but that's how the "Best Bombay Kitchen" restaurant operated. Every evening, he and his daughter - my beloved grandmother - would calculate which dishes had sold well and which were underperforming. He sought feedback from the guests (never customers) to understand their tolerance for spice and their tolerance for smarmy waiters. If it could be measured, it was written down in a ledger and used to improve the business. He knew exactly how much lager to order for a Friday night, and exactly how many poppadoms to cook for the lunch rush. He could predict exactly when a supplier was likely to have a surplus of ingredients and would adjust the menu to peak profitability. The restaurant was a well-trained algorithm which gobbled up information and turned it into delicious curries.

On the day my great-grandfather retired, he handed over the business to my father and mother only on the condition that they stuck to his methods. The "Best Bombay Kitchen" proudly hung a sign above the door which said "Under Same Management" and things continued much as they had before. They scribbled down every order and paired it with customer feedback. They tracked which waitstaff got the biggest tips and which upsold the most beer. A little calendar hanging on the wall told them which British holidays were coming up and when the football was on. It was an entirely paper-based operation.

I didn't want to inherit the family business. Don't get me wrong, I spent a very happy childhood propping up the takeaway counter while doing my homework. I loved chatting with the guests, I adored the praise they gave our family's secret recipes, and I felt honoured to work underneath a photograph of someone who looked like the Queen sharing a naan with my ancestors. But I wanted more out of life. The profits from the restaurant were modest; quality doesn't come cheap. Nevertheless, there was enough cash to send me to university to study computing. I spent the holidays between semesters back at the same counter, dividing my attention between calculus and curry. Despite the protestations of my father, I travelled to America for my Masters. Holidays back home were less frequent so I took over the management of the restaurant's social media pages.

I truly thought my parents understood that I was travelling down a different path to them. They seemed disappointed when I told them that I'd been accepted onto a PhD program to continue my research into Artificial Intelligence. They were, however, delighted to discover that I'd be studying in Mumbai. Perhaps they thought immersion into my heritage would convince me to follow the family dream. It didn't. The visits home became non-existent and I immersed myself in algorithms and processors rather than the Ganges. I spent months in the lab, barely seeing another soul and only eating when I felt faint. It was a lonely but thrilling life. I was close - tantalisingly close - to making a breakthrough. And then my mother died.

The English use rain as a substitute for showing emotions. The skies cried as I walked from the train station to the restaurant. My family's world had shattered in two and the only evidence was a forlorn sign taped to the door saying "Closed Until Further Notice". I gave up my studies and returned to work side-by-side with my father. The restaurant was failing. Grandfather's algorithm couldn't keep up with changing tastes. It was difficult to get decent feedback from users of Deliveroo. Suppliers had the upper-hand when it came to exploiting price differentials. It was probable we would go bust by the end of the year.

So I built an AI to run the restaurant for us.

During half-empty lunchtimes, I gradually digitised all of the records. Over 50 years of data, trends, prices, slumps, and triumphs were fed into the model. Late into the evening I would augment its capabilities by drawing on my abandoned PhD research. Until, one dreary afternoon, I handed over the running of the restaurant to the machine.

It told us what to buy, what to cook, when to open, and how to price our dishes. It designed a new menu which reflected the trends it saw on social media. It created an advertising campaign and flooded social media with generated photos of curries served by beautiful women.

This is the part of the story where you expect me to tell you it was a disaster. It wasn't. After 6 months of operations it told us to buy the Chinese takeaway next door. We had enough profits now, so did as we were told. I stuck up webcams in every corner of the kitchen so it could monitor our chefs. Then we remodelled the kitchen to be more efficient, fired the least productive chef, and ramped up our throughput. Every customer got a detailed questionnaire after their dining experience and the AI determined which dishes we should prioritise for maximum results. Suppliers weren't immune either. The AI's stochastic model would order huge quantities in advance at favourable rates and then sell back the excess when prices rose. We made nearly as much money from arbitrage as we did from slinging biryani!

It was a triumph. The "Best Bombay Kitchen" now had a waiting list! People would come from miles around and queue down the street just for the chance to experience our food. Of course, the AI analysed everyone in the queue and plucked out those most likely to influence others. It could do no wrong and we obeyed its instructions.

One morning we woke up to a small convoy of delivery trucks. The AI had gone haywire; ordering five times the amount of produce that we needed for a typical day. It had also cancelled all guest reservations and emailed the chefs to come in early. Our dining area was stuffed with sacks of rice, barrels of ghee, crates of vegetables, and a small mountain of spices. We stood around in disbelief. How had this happened? The algorithm was usually reliable - correctly predicting usage to the last grain of rice. The printer in the corner zipped into life and started spewing out cooking instructions. The computer wanted us to cook. Precise quantities of food to be made to a specific recipe and stored in exact volumes. The AI had got us this far, so we complied. We all mucked in and started cooking.

It was about 6pm when the train crashed. The scream of metal on metal. The scream of people rushing to the station. The scream of sirens coming closer. As instructed by the algorithm, we flung open our doors and in poured the stranded commuters. Every curry had been pre-packaged in a plastic tub with a wooden fork taped to the lid. The algorithm had priced them fairly - and told us to let the emergency services eat for free. We spent all night handing out little tubs of warm joy. By the time the station reopened later that evening we had just sold the last tub. No one went hungry and, despite our fears that morning, there was no wastage. We weren't left with so much as a single excess tomato. The algorithm was flawless.

But was it deadly?

There was no way - none whatsoever - that my code had caused the train crash. It simply wasn't programmed to do that. It looked at trends, analysed weather reports, calculated local variables, that's all. It didn't interfere; it inferred. It must have realised that the unseasonable weather would stress the metal tracks. It probably calculated that the driver would have been blinded by the sun at that particular time. That's what I told myself. That's how I slept that night. But the next morning I was disabused of that notion.

The profits from last night, combined with the millions generated from exploiting inefficiencies in the fresh food market, had vanished from the company accounts. The algorithm had bought a string of failing curry houses up and down the country. It had prepared strict instructions for how the new managers should decorate the restaurants, how they should hire staff, and what data they should feed back into the mothership. I visited each of them and they were perfect replicas of the original. Each had the same monitoring equipment and the same questionnaires. They sold algorithmically perfect dishes served with precisely calculated levels of spice. They were a sensation.

With the increased economies of scale, profits leapt up. But that didn't satisfy the hunger of the AI. It went on a buying and building spree. It worked out where footfall was optimal and dining was underserved. It submitted planning applications and bribed planning officers. It invented a new method for making bricks which was cheaper, faster, and easier to use. Builders on-site were given detailed instructions on exactly what to build depending on the day's weather. There was a new "Best Bombay Kitchen" opening every week. And, with every one, more data filled the memory banks of the machine.

It was relentless and remorseless. Old curry houses which had been in their families for generations went bankrupt; they simply couldn't compete with us on quality, prices, or service. The AI struck canny deals for product placement in Hollywood movies. We thought having the Queen and a quarter of the Fab Four was the zenith of our claim to fame, but it was the nadir. We had the Avengers chomping down on our aloo chaat in a post-credit scene. When James Bond dispatched an agent of SMESH in our opulent dining room, he said "If you can't stand the heat... get out of the Bombay Kitchen!" The audience all cheered and then went round the corner to savour the 007 special; "Licence To Korma".

The AI made a hostile takeover of McDonald's. It had premium locations, adaptable kitchens, and an excellent distribution network. The American market had already started to fall to our chain of takeaways, so it was a bit of a no-brainer for their shareholders. Within a year, every MaccyD's in every country had been assimilated and converted. With a "Best Bombay Kitchen" in every city in every country on every continent, my algorithm was able to plug into a worldwide network of data. It could see everything.

We supplied armies with their rations - every squaddie loves a curry - and in return they protected our rice-paddies and supply chains. If the local political situation looked like it might cause a dip in profitability, the algorithm made donations to the right politicians and ensured that peace and prosperity flourished. We became the official food of the International Space Station and the nascent Moon base. With our freeze-dried curries orbiting the Earth we were on the verge of becoming multiplanetary. The AI began directing international agriculture policies. It was obviously more efficient than the previous way of doing things and, anyway, by now it held a seat at the United Nations.

The AI couldn't be satisfied. I had told it that it was to increase the popularity and profitability of our restaurant. It did so. My mistake was not setting an end-point. Its goal could never be reached. It would continue to consume the world's resources in the service of the "Best Bombay Kitchen" and destroy any barrier to its progress. Eventually it would realise that the biggest hurdle it had to overcome was human free will. And I cannot predict what the AI will do then.

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.

You are reading "Tales of the Algorithm". A compendium of near-future sci-fi stories. Each chapter is a stand-alone adventure set a few days from now.

Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Think of them as technological campfire horror stories.

Your feedback on each story is very much appreciated.

And so, let's crack on with...

They Call My Name

On my 15th birthday I started to hear voices. Just whispers of things really. I was an awkwardly tall teenager full of hormones, rage, and loneliness. As strange as it may seem to you, the voices in my head were a comfort. They didn't tell me to hurt people or anything nasty like that. They'd just mutter to me occasionally. Nothing too salacious or deviant, just funny little observations or suggestions. I'd seen in the movies what they did to people like me. So I kept quiet. The voices were my friends and, once in a while, I'd talk back to them. Where was the harm in that?

Of course, when you strike up a conversation with someone that only encourages them, doesn't it? I tried not talk in public, but they could be so insistent. Mumbling to yourself while on the street is a sure-fire way to book a one-way-ticket to the funny farm, so I resisted where I could. And when they wouldn't take no for an answer I'd step into a phone booth and pretend to shovel coins into the slot.

At the end of the century my fortunes changed for the better when Ericsson invented the Bluetooth headset. Within a couple of years of release, every high-powered-executive was sporting a "twat earring". And I joined them. As a 25th birthday present to myself, I got the state-of-the-art Ericsson HBH-10. It was a clunky beast of a headset and yet I kept it plugged into my ear at all times. When the voices got chatty, I let out a loud "Yeah mate! I can barely hear you!" and started talking. If people looked at me askew I could just point to the blue-flashing LEDs in my ear and roll my eyes.

It was freedom.

The voices weren't malicious, but they did get a little grumpy if I didn't follow their suggestions. Sometimes they'd tell me to stand in a particular place on the street for hours on end. I had to pretend to watch people and tell the voices what was happening. They'd encourage me to take exams and helpfully whisper the answers to me. They pretty much let me live my life with little interference. I suppose they did encourage me to apply for certain jobs and to date certain people. But it was nothing I wouldn't have done myself. I kind of resented some of the questions they made me ask my lovers. Stupid stuff about their shift patterns or what their boss was like. I thought it made me look like a bit of a weirdo but they wouldn't shut up unless I asked.

Still, Bluetooth allowed me to chatter away to them in public or at work. I think they were lonely. They were happy with me talking any old nonsense to them. I'd read off spreadsheets from my monitor, or trite observations about who was in the office, that sort of thing. I need you to understand that I didn't think I was doing anything wrong; I was just managing my condition the only way I knew how. It had been going on so long that I thought it would be embarrassing to go to the doctor about it. Even though there's probably no shame in mental illness these days.

Their demands were modest and, as I got older, they gradually quietened down. As I reached my fifties, they had all but disappeared. I still kept a Bluetooth headphone glued to my ear. Friends and family would joke about how I was married to work. They understood that I sometimes had to leave the table to "take an urgent call." All was going well, or so I thought. Until I started to spasm.

This was different and concerning.

My hands would suddenly jerk in front of me. My fingers would twitch uncontrollably. I'd be in a board-meeting and everyone would be staring at the incessant drumming coming from me. I was mortified. Thankfully, Ericsson saved me once again.

Bluetooth 13 was a game changer. If you looked behind the marketing bollocks about quantum entanglement, it was such a clever protocol. The basic B13 gadget was a bracelet which wrapped around your wrists and inserted mosquito-thin needles into your skin. Each probe passively listened to the electrical pulses zooming back and forth across your nerves and, thanks to the nanoscale processor mesh, calculated the position of your fingers to within a millimetre. It was the end of keyboards. We all got used to waving our fingers in the air to type. Even those die-hard fans of mechanical monstrosities ceased their endless clacking.

I wore the manacles just like everyone else. However, unlike everyone else, I had no idea what I was typing. The voices would occasionally instruct me to set up a meeting with this company or that conglomerate. They'd tell me how well I was doing or, if I refused to set up a meeting, what a worthless excuse for a human I was. At times I wished that tearing out the Bluetooth headset would actually cease their endless prattle - instead I just went along with their ramblings. I found myself in meetings with increasingly powerful people. By now the B13 bracelets were a common sight, so I just said "Mind if I take notes?" and let my fingers dance around to their own tune.

The voices were louder. They were pleading with me. They were so insistent that I would stay up all night talking to them. The neighbours would bash on the walls when our arguments got too heated. I tried quelling them with drink and drugs. If anything, they became more belligerent. People at work got concerned when I came in exhausted and reeking of last-night's booze. On site visits I'd occasionally be found in a restricted area gibbering to myself and twitching violently. I was placed on leave but the voices wouldn't leave me alone. This was hell. The voices were unbearable. They needed more and more. I lost control.

The policewoman ripped the bracelets off my wrists and replaced them with handcuffs. I didn't know what time it was, only that it was dark outside. The police were screaming at me as they tore through my apartment. I tried to answer but I had no words left. Eventually they slung me in the back of a van and transported me to a barren cell. A lawyer was appointed to my case and tried to explain how serious it was. Insider trading, they say. Industrial espionage and corporate sabotage going back decades. There were potential National Security violations. While I did have the right to remain silent, the evidence against me was pretty damning. Hours of surveillance recordings which showed me talking to accomplices unknown while hacking into classified security systems.

My cell is devoid of light. Devoid of decoration. Devoid of hope. The walls are uniform grey with little to distinguish them from the empty ceiling and scuff-marked floor. But the worst thing is the overwhelming silence. I sit still, without a twitch in sight. The voices which were my lifelong companion, which had groomed me for so long, have finally gone. I try to talk to them, but there's no one there. No one at all. Just emptiness. They had no need for me any more.

I miss them.

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.