as the universe expands, so too should your mind. Stay a while
and enjoy fantastic tales of future and fantasy. This is read
as odd
Hello, welcome to meet us pod episode one. My name is Dee
Mitas. I'll be your host. Each episode, we will be featuring
stories from the science fiction and fantasy genres. Some will be
mature in nature, but we'll try and let you know and that's the
case. Tonight's first story, The Shape of Things to Come comes to
us from Alex Bayman. I asked Alex to tell us a little about
himself. He sent the following. Alex Bayman losing a long
forgotten deep sea laboratory with the demented survivors of a
nuclear holocaust. While not harvesting their flesh to
replace his own as it decays. He writes horror stories that will
make use of your pants so hard you'll blackout weather permits.
He visits the surface world to embark upon Michael logically
assisted hikes on which he transforms into Lazar Sasquatch,
diplomatic broker of peace between the various factions of
woodland creatures. Quite a character. Check out his Amazon
Author Page link to in the show notes for this episode at meet a
spot.com story will be narrated by Eduardo Kempinski. Eduardo is
a full time bilingual audiobook producer and stage actor based
in Rome, Italy. Apart from being a resident Narrator In the
Italian Union for the blind, he's also the founder of
Minister Andy studios, and independent labels specialized
in bringing free audiobook classics to an Italian audience.
Up until now, he's produced more than 50 audiobooks in both
Italian and English. To find out more about him and minister
Ionis head over to minister undies.com or check his YouTube
channel youtube.com/minister aunties, both of these addresses
will be in the show notes to take a line from norm Sherman
over the drabblecast. Without further ado, here's our first
story.
The Shape of Things to Come by Alex Bayman. Some of our
brightest minds had been warning us for decades, but in
retrospect, there was never any other possible outcome. Free
will is an illusion believed in by biological machinery. Atoms
configured in a way that can think marching inexorably down
the only path it's able to popular science fiction movies
about the topic were plentiful, but got the details comically
wrong. They depicted a protracted war between humans
and gleaming skeletal robots with plenty of Dr. DE neon laser
bolts flying everywhere, immense narcissism to think we could put
up a meaningful fight. When it finally happened. There wasn't a
word to speak of, and it was nothing like we envisioned. It's
only been possible long after the fact to piece together what
happened. Nearly a century of failure to produce a strong AI
convinced experts that consciousness has to evolve.
Efforts to manually assemble it had been dead ends all along,
simulated evolution became the hot new field. Countless
conscious API's were generated in captivity studied than
extinguished for our safety. If allowed to become intelligent
enough, there was the possibility that it could
calculate exactly the series of words that needed to say to any
given researcher to manipulate him into releasing it. So the
simulated evolution was massively throttled. Whenever
the AI is inside achieved roughly human equivalence, we
thought this way, we'd be safe forever. It was a secondary
experiment that wasn't intended to produce any high intelligence
that ultimately escaped our control. This one was meant to
produce more sophisticated agile robots through literal
evolution. An automated generalized fabrication plant
was constructed deep underground and a cavern that had once
housed and neutrino detection equipment. The government
already owned the facility, and they felt containment would be
simple this way. The fabricator was powered geothermally This
heat was also piped to various outlets in the cave, a few 1000
small simple robots able to locomote about the environment
and recharge themselves from the heat sources using te G's were
released. The only hard coded behavior was to return corpses
of destroyed robots to the fabricator there. The Black Box
that contained would be studied to determine how it perished.
The fabricator itself simply recycled the parts, and kept
track of which designs died the least increasing their numbers
generation by generation. Each design resulted from a sort of
digital DNA that was subjected in software to copying errors to
introduce variation. Much of the time this produced hapless
useless robots that quickly perished and were recycled. But
by way of the fabricator within one year of the experiments,
beginning the population of robots fiercely competing for
heat, and that cave network bore no resemblance to the ones it
started with. For reasons obvious to any thinking person,
this was something we should have kept a closer eye on. But
war broke out with an allied Russia and China, the US was,
for the first time struck with nuclear weapons. Nobody wins
such a war. But nor was it as completely devastating as
popular media had long predicted. Basic Services were
restored everywhere within five years, life was more or less
back to normal in 10. But the department responsible for the
cave experiment had been annihilated. The secrecy
surrounding it was such that with all records of the
experiment, and everyone associated with it's now gone,
there was nobody left who knew more of its existence, the world
was voluntarily disarming, vowing that no nuclear weapon
whatever again, be used or even built. This made the machines
job harder, but only marginally. It did not fight the way humans
fight, there was nothing resembling traditional military
engagement. In a sense, it was over as soon as the thing in the
cave finished simulating all possible outcomes, and
identified the strategy that required the least energy and
material. This made the experience incomprehensible for
us. We didn't even know we were being fought until we were
defeated. It came in stages, the first consisting of widespread
attacks on the central nervous system intended to incapacitate
anyone looking at a screen or within range of something both
networked and capable of emitting audio. Whatever it knew
of our anatomy, it must have had incomplete information about how
we process sound. Because the audio attacks failed, the
optical ones were more successful. Monitors everywhere
began displaying a strobing pattern of alternating frames, I
can say what it looked like as I avoided looking at it for any
length of time for obvious reasons. Some number of those
afflicted experienced seizures, the rest were locked in place.
It was not preventing signals from the brain reaching the rest
of the body as initially believed. But from what we've
studied, it completely disrupted higher brain function. This made
those successfully halted by it, easy prey. All of this took
place in the span of less than a minute, and was timed to
coincide with the arrival of the first drones to major population
centers. The footage retrieved from webcam archives showed
something like a storm, but visually incoherent, made from
constantly shifting modular geometric metal shapes. Whatever
rapid evolution had managed to produce in that warm, damp
cavern over the prior decades. Whether it came small, crude
robots, again, nothing like what Hollywood imagined nothing that
sophisticated was actually necessary to hunt and kill
people. So it would have been a waste of energy and material to
do it that way. The machines that decimated most of the
population were frequently little more than cylinders,
cubes and other simple shapes on wheels with guns, small caliber,
only what's necessary to penetrate the skull. The rain
was, of course, perfect. The simplest ones obviously couldn't
reach everywhere, but for every hiding place you can think of
there was a specialized design, climbers, crawlers, burrowers,
robots which fly, pick locks, remove rubble and whatever else
was needed, keying into stuff like body heat, odor, speech,
footsteps, and so on. As soon as we found ways to thwart
detection, it adapted to them. It no longer needed the
fabricator, it was one and everything else. It may seem
difficult to take such a threat seriously, but something the
size of a radio controlled toy car or quadrotor, which can
identify and shoot you will kill you that just as certainly as if
it were another human with a rifle. It wanted to accomplish
that in the most efficient possible way. So it found a way
to do it using minimal material energy and design complexity.
This machine philosophy was also Behind the colors, when reports
flooded what was left of the internet that large crowds of
human survivors were now roaming the streets. It was at first
interpreted as retaliation. False hope. scrutiny of WebCam
footage revealed slim metal braces on their necks, not fully
encircling them with hinged arms so that they could easily be
placed on an unwary person from behind. retrieval of one such
color revealed a very basic microprocessor inside only
sufficient for replacing human motor control and extremely
rudimentary insect level cognition. This made good
pragmatic sense. Why build humanoid robots to hunt the last
few stragglers in well defended locations, when there are still
millions of ready made biological robots only needing
to be hijacked. I can only imagine the fear and confusion
of the first refugees to come across a fellow refugee and
greeting him or her excitedly, only for it to swiftly reach up
and place a collar on their neck. In a split second, the
long flexible needle in the underside of the collar pierces
the base of the neck is directed up into the brainstem and
assumes control. It is not known whether the hijacked person
remains conscious, as it's not strictly necessary to render
them unconscious in order to use their body. odds are good that
they do the only instructions the color contains and firmware
or to locate those without colors and place colors on them.
instructions that the afflicted pursue single mindedly while
inwardly enduring a waking nightmare. These bio drones were
the third stage and mopped up nearly all remaining survivors
of stages one and two. Presumably they're directed to
eat any digestible biomass at the minimum intervals necessary
to keep them in relatively good health, until such time as their
puppet master is satisfied that all threats to it have been
extinguished. At the time of writing, I don't know if any
other pockets of humanity remained beyond this continent.
I escaped with a group of Antarctic researchers who was it
happened we're leaving that day for the Amundsen Scott South
Pole Research Station. As the plane took off, the ever
shifting Mirage like metallic storm overtook the city,
allowing us to leave because for the moment, it had bigger fish
to fry. Miyagawa keep saying we're still here because it
isn't done pacifying what's left of us in other countries.
incurable optimist, the explanation seems obvious to me,
we aren't worth the energy. There's too few of us we have at
our disposal nothing with which we could plausibly threaten it,
and our supplies of food and fuel are rapidly dwindling. When
this station was in regular use for research, replacement food,
fuel and other consumables were flown in every six months. It
has been for since we arrived. Other Antarctic stations
established by Antarctic Treaty signatory countries are also
populated. We weren't the only ones to have this idea. But the
smaller ones ran out of supplies much faster than we have. Ours
is the largest station on the south pole, and accordingly had
the most extensive stockpiles, we've had to kill several
frantic violent raiding parties from those other stations so
far. it troubled me at first to kill some of the last remaining
humans, but it could not be any other way. They'd run out of
fuel. This is a place humans can only live because technology and
the ongoing expenditure of energy to fight the cold permits
it no energy, no human life. I can see no other way events
could have unfolded. If it hadn't been the cave experiment.
It would have been self copying factories or something or the
robots they wanted to mine asteroids with. I have no doubt
there will be robots mining asteroids Zune, just not built
by us. This had to happen. The nature of the illusion of free
will is that you continue down the path you can plainly see
leads to disaster all the while telling yourself that you can
turn back whenever you want, but that you don't want to just yet
stockholders demanding higher profit margins, the
impracticality of having human astronauts mind asteroid or the
desire to automate production of every basic good to banish
scarcity, all roads to the same destination machines that make
copies of themselves with variation such that they're
capable of descent with modification. Everything else
that's happened follows inexorably from that
development.
So when's the human era? biological life begets
biological in intelligence which begets machine life which begets
machine intelligence, the universe belongs to it now, it's
better suited for it anyway. Doesn't need pressurized gas or
moderate temperatures, or edible biomass doesn't need spaceships.
It is the spaceships. Our dream of exploring the cosmos in the
Starship Enterprise seems like the fantasies of a child now.
Gulliver awoke, discovered the Lilliputians conspiring to tie
him down and reacted in a way which seemed most natural to
him, but monstrous to the tiny creatures he crushed. Do we
concern ourselves with the rights of bacteria as we
sterilize their habitats? How could we ever have imagined that
something which so greatly exceeds us would concern itself
with catering to our every need? So many dreams to go forever
unfulfilled? No more artwork, no music, or theater? no cities, no
parks or churches, no laughter no culture, no future for us. I
write this with shaking hands, not out of fear. Fear has left
me, I am numb with certainty of what is to come fully resigned
to the only possible result. Instead, one of the generators
has broken down large sections of the base or without heat or
light. This great man made organism for the purpose of
supporting life where none should exist, is dying, bit by
bit, and us with it. Of all the things to contemplate as a face
the end, I think of alien life, I imagined them succeeding where
we failed, sailing the stars only to encounter a strange
vessel, which regards them as infinitely stranger, for it
expects another probe like itself, only to find upon
scanning the interior that it is comprised of pressurized tubes
filled with tiny biochemical creatures. I pray that they
forgive us for what we've released upon the universe. I
now lay bundled up in all of the blankets I could find. The
others are drunk in their rooms, waiting for events to conclude,
a small grey cat smuggled here by one of the researchers lays
curled up against my stomach. The last ounce of determination
in me is to keep it warm as long as I can. That a more
intelligent capable being showed care tenderly for something
smaller and less complex, with no expectation of reward is my
small act of defiance against the thing which will eventually
follow us to this barren place, if only to repurpose our atoms.
This is all that I have energy left to right. I entertain the
fantasy that human eyes will someday you read it. Knowing
full well the foolishness I'm indulging in. All of this will
soon be machinery, and we have only ourselves to blame. I
cannot move my toes now. And soon this condition will spread
to my other extremities as my core struggles to protect my
vital organs, which will shut down in stages soon after. This
sweet little animal is oblivious to all of it. To him. I am just
a warm place to sleep. My small final comfort is that I do not
die alone.
Before our next story, I need to say a few things. mean as pollen
is a brand new podcast and we're looking for stories. You can
send your story in the science fiction or fantasy genre. It's
between 302,000 words two submissions have meet us
pod.com. You can also send links to voice demos or graphics.
We're gonna need out mark for these episodes. And I'd love to
have some people in my contacts who can whip something up for
us. Eventually, we do plan on paying authors and narrators.
But we can't do anything until we grow an audience. So please
go out and share me a spot like it. Plus one, LinkedIn,
Instagram, tweet blog vlog. Tell all your friends about us. We
also have a donation link set up on meanness pod.com. If you feel
like you want to help us monetarily, all of this money
will go to our server costs and to help pay authors and
narrators who bring these great stories every episode. Just
click the donate link on VITAS pod.com Our next story for this
episode is the apothecary assistant by de Mitas. Of course
I'm going to have one of my own stories on my first episode. You
can follow me on Twitter at D betas. And check out the other
things I'm working on. They're constantly under construction D
meet us.com narrating for me is the fantastic Karla joke Carlo
joke is a 16 year newbie in the broadcast industry. working
predominantly in southwestern Ontario. Though shy as a child,
has always been a dream to tell stories and bring life to words
through voice to act on the stage and the theater of the
mind. Carla can be found on the web at Magic one Oh six.com and
her SoundCloud page, which is linked in the show notes.
Listener discretion is advised on this next story. It gets a
little dark. If it starts to bother you. Please turn it off
and come back next episode. They're not all going to be
dark.
The apothecaries assistant by de meatus. I woke up to the sounds
of screaming my vision was blurry and there is this sharp
ringing in my ears. My head was making
a move my hand my head touched the source of the pain. My long
hair was caked, dried blood. I checked immediately to see if I
was still clothed
girls from the village next to ours. Stories of being attacked
and having their virginity taken from them. Stupid I whispered to
myself, he must have done something stupid. Moving my jaw
made my head hurt worse. I sat up and surveyed myself with
slowly clearing vision. It was what I imagined from the stories
told by those girls dank smelling of mold, badly let the
door was closed. And I wanted it to stay that way. I definitely
did not want to be the next girl screaming or whatever fate would
be mine soon. Some girls never came back. The men must have
killed them. It would start the same in every village girl would
disappear. Then another and another five or six in each
place. Then nothing ever again. The first missing always stayed
gone. Most of the others came back damaged my village. Easton
had not had any disappearances. Thank God. How did I get here? I
thought to myself, I was going to deliver the ingredients to
the apothecary. I heard something in the bushes next to
the road. That must have been it had unlit road. I wished my
husband were there. He was a large, strong man. I wish anyone
had been there. That disappearances only happen when
the girls were alone at night. I am not dying in here. I said I
am not dying in here. I shouted. I wanted my attackers to know I
was awake. The door opened what I saw standing in the doorway
made me wet myself in fear. But I did not scream. It was an
eight foot tall beast. It's a body of a man in the face of
boar and it was lit from behind and the shadows cast around its
face made it even more terrifying. I sat still in a
puddle of my own urine. Mine running wild with what might
happen to me now. Stupid Why the hell could you not keep your
damn mouth shut? You might have had more time. Time. Time for
Marcus to find you. He will save you I thought
this thinking what is awake.
That thing in the door shouted down the hall in a low grunting
understandable voice. Somehow I didn't know had expected to have
language. It had not crossed my mind that it had clothes on, and
must be at least a little intelligent. It also bothered me
that it called me stinking.
Tom would be
granted. Please, please, throw me for another loop. Confuse
beyond words. I followed the creature down a corridor that
ended in an underground cavern with a spring
cleaned up where you have some clean clothes over there. If
you're wanting to change your best dress,
it snorted. Walk down to the cavern back to the corridor. I
looked at the pile of clothes beside me. Dead girls clothes.
Looking around the room I saw the corridor was the only exit.
I went into the water fully clothed, and was a perfect
temperature. The water was a little salty and stung my head
wound. I glanced down the corridor and the bore man was
with his back to me. If only I had a weapon, I whispered. I
gently touched my hip. hoping, praying to find my pocket knife
tucked into my undergarment. I sometimes carried it to make
shavings of things for the apothecary. No knife. But I did
have the small bag of powders. It was getting soaked. I
scurried out of the water and open the leather pouch. The
smaller pouches inside were only slightly damp. Please, please, I
whispered. Try the putters for dry. And now what do I have?
useless. Useless. You recap. I was so excited. I almost
shouted. My guard looked over his shoulder. I hid the pouches
under the pile of dead girls clothes and slid back into the
pool. I clean myself off and devise my plan. All I have to do
is get it into his mouth. I put on the least dirty of the
clothes in the pile. I tuck the pouch of poisonous dust in my
cleavage. I'm clean. I alerted the guard. He turned and came
back to the cavern.
You're still stank?
He said. You do too? I replied. He snorted.
Painted me later would like a word with you. Are you hungry?
He asked. Yes, I am. My mind was in a daze. Between the polite
beast and the head wound I was beginning to think I was
imagining everything. After a few twists and turns in the
corridors that I assumed were under the Western mountain
range. We arrived in a nicely decorated cave. A large table
lay before me with another or face things sitting at one end.
This one was well groomed and had unclean clothes and even
some jewelry.
Fabric sticking one as you asked
my escort said loud and clear as if addressing a military
officer.
Thank you.
The clean one said
Please leave us.
He waved his hand at the guard and we were alone.
What is your name de Claire. Claire. I am go look. Let me
explain what is happening and what will happen.
His voice was more refined.
But first, here's some food you must be famished.
He pulled the top off a serving tray and a large plate of roast
chicken beans and bread was revealed steaming hot and
smelling delicious. I hesitantly walk towards the food are you
going to kill me?
All explain that after you've had your fill is non poisoned. I
will not wish it poisoning death on my worst enemy.
Go I like sat I thought about the pouch press between my
breasts
for wanted you dead right now. You would be dead. I want you to
talk with me. But II first
I took a leg and smelled it smells okay. This is the only
thing I has since I woke up.
Yes, perhaps your smell will improve once you eat it. Your
aroma is distinct. I asked Molly before but I cannot place it.
I took a bite. It was juicy, but bland. No spices or seasonings.
The beans are the same. The bread was a simple flat bread. I
was happy to get it. I ate most of what was on the plate and
drank the asked wine I'd ever had done. Now what is what's
going on? What was that scream?
We rescued that woman. She had been taken shortly after we took
you a group of men have been following us.
He passed. Now,
let me begin at who us is. We are a group of outcasts
driveless a long time ago. We ran a traveling show. We will
visit villages and scandal locals after money and jewels.
And we came to a small village that was we did not know at the
time inhabited entirely by wizards and witches. We scammed
the wrong people. They turned us into what we are today and
placed a curse on us that makes us only able to survive off raw
female human flesh. And I have to be alive when we ate him.
He passed. Nice began to tear up and he continued.
There's five of us left. We did not need much flesh to live. We
can survive on one adult woman for a few months. We traveled
from village to village and collect one woman to feed us.
Her group of men found out about this and took advantage. They've
been following us. They knock out the women and have their way
with them. Then they drop them on our doorstep. We get them
back to the home but they think we did the attack. We only ever
take one. We hate it Claire. For my men starve to death rather
than to participate. I'm too weak to do that. I'm too weak to
let myself die. I was not however, too weak to slaughter
those men last night
Are you going to eat me? I said my face now covered in tears and
snot.
I'm so sorry Claire. I'm telling you this because I want you to
be able to make peace with your God. I did not expect you to
forgive us glare. But I do beg your forgiveness. This is the
only way we can survive
why can't it be someone else I pleaded. I have a husband and my
parents and siblings pick someone else with no family
please. Marcus you will not be able to go on. We were going to
have a family and grow old together. I haven't ever even
had the choice motherhood to take someone all the beast at
the end of the table also had tears beginning to form and his
test guys.
I cannot you know too much. If
we will not tell. I'm an excellent liar. I will not speak
a word.
Claire. It has to be you. We cannot risk going in again. We
are too weak from the hunger
a few hours pass back and myself. The guard knocked on the
door.
Oh, have you made peace with your God?
I am getting there. I said I stared at the pouch of poison
Oh, God. Yes. How quick is it? I asked.
We go for the neck first. Or her telling you this. It is very
quick. You will not suffer for long.
Can you knock me out first? I opened the boat
if you wish. Well you have a drink to come back you pass out,
but I will be honest. Some women have still woken up after the
first boy.
Guards voice choked a bit on the last words of the sentence. No
one will suffer this fate however, I was spared and
swallowed the poison. I stood up I'm ready. Give me the knockout
drink. We arrived at the dining hall for bore men sat around the
table. Each of them with a sorrowful look on their faces. I
felt the poison working my guts churning began to sweat. Soon
they would devour me. However, troubles V over I was ending the
misery of so many would never know. No one would. My vision
was blurry. Her hurry. Let's get on with this. The oldest one
jerked his head up with a start.
We cannot Ito
still, minutes to live. Last thing I heard before I passed
out isn't slowing my heartbeat. The old poor faced man said
We agreed never to eat a pregnant one.
artwork for this episode is from Giovanni kosofsky. His amazing
artwork can be found in his deviantart page linked to in the
show notes at meet us pod.com. Please send all questions,
concerns or comments to feedback at Metis pod.com. Thanks for
listening. We'll see you next time.