Existence is Elsewhen

by John Gribbin

  For the first time since its construction, Earth will be of lasting benefit to the civilised universe.

  I remain your obedient servant,

  Jud Day

  Judgement Day

  Vice-President, Acquisitions

  ARMAGEDDON INVESTMENTS INC.

  Ambrosia

  by

  Edwin Hayward

  Edwin Hayward studied Computer Science at university. After graduating, he spent fifteen years enjoying the bright shiny future in Tokyo (with regular pilgrimages to Akihabara Electric City) before returning to the mundane day-to-day of the UK. He currently manages a number of websites, trades in domain names, reads avidly, writes when the muse cooperates, and exercises his geeky side at every opportunity. He lives with his wife in Cambridge, where he is awaiting the Singularity with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

  The 3D printer whirred and shook to a stop. Its custom print-head, primed with our most recent blend of cell cultures, retracted with a whine. The protective cowling clicked open. Tom and I craned forward to examine the output: a ragged disk of pink goo the size of two digestive biscuits stacked together, flaccid in the centre of the glass tray. We looked at each other.

  “Yum!” Tom raised an eyebrow.

  “It doesn’t look that bad. Better than last week, anyway.” I shuddered at the memory of that slimy elongated mass, like a squashed grey slug.

  “Sure. Give me a sec to cancel my Chateau reservation.” We hadn’t ever actually eaten in the Michelin-starred Chateau de L’Esprit, which we passed every month on our way to the film quiz at the Unicorn and Cross.

  “Let’s get on,” I said.

  Tom crossed the lab, started fiddling with the Bunsen burner. The gas caught with a squeaky pop, followed by a roaring finger of fire. He set up a stand next to it, and clamped a square of iron mesh about a foot above the blue-white flame.

  I slid the tray out of the printer, carried it over to him like a butler balancing an heirloom tea set. The pink blob quivered like jelly with every step. It clung to the plate as Tom tried to coax it onto the mesh. He wormed the wooden scraper under it, and flipped it neatly onto the cherry red metal. It sizzled on contact, and began to smoke.

  Tom bent low over our sample, seemingly oblivious to the heat. He sniffed at it, then straightened up and looked at me. “Smells pretty good.” No raised eyebrow this time, just the hint of a smile. He flipped the disc over, then beckoned me forward and scooted aside to give me room. I held my hair back with one hand to keep it away from the flame, and leaned in. Tom was right. It certainly did smell appetising, like a well-aged steak grilling on a barbecue.

  I went to get the tiny picnic basket. Nothing fancy, just pairs of plastic plates, cups, knives and forks. We kept it hidden at the back of one of the filing cabinets, behind folders filled with paperwork relating to long-defunct projects.

  Tom turned off the Bunsen burner. He grabbed our project notebook and the camera. “Your turn to do the honours, Jane.”

  I slid the golden brown sliver onto one of the plates, then paused for him to take close-ups. I sliced the sample in two, talking as I worked. “Not a lot of resistance. It’s practically falling apart.” Tom scribbled notes busily. I pressed down on a piece with the flat of my knife. “Not much juice, either. Still, the smell’s right.”

  Tom zoomed in on the cross-section and snapped away. I transferred the other piece to the second plate, then handed it to him. “Bon appétit.”

  Tom cut a tiny morsel. I did the same. Then we put them in our mouths. I closed my eyes to concentrate better.

  “Texture?”

  “A four. No, make that a three.”

  “Yep. Mouthfeel?”

  I rolled it around on my tongue. “Surprisingly ok, even if it’s not chewy or juicy enough. Five.”

  “Four from me. It really is dry as a bone. Taste?”

  I stopped, looked intently at Tom. “A solid nine.”

  Tom nodded. “We may just have cracked it, Jane.” He gave me a thumbs up. We knew that the physical factors could be manipulated by tweaking the fat ratio, or adjusting the thickness of the muscle substrate during deposition. But taste was finger-in-the-wind, dependent on formulating the initial cell cultures just right.

  “I believe a liquid celebration is in order,” I declared. Tom’s grin mirrored mine. We finished off the samples, tidied everything away, and spritzed air freshener to get rid of the residual smell. Then we headed for the pub.

  Three weeks later, we feasted on highly respectable pieces of steak that looked, smelled and tasted like beef. We’d settled on a light marbling of fat by pushing into Japanese wagyu territory and then easing off. Our knives – proper metal ones, with serrated edges – met just the right amount of resistance as we carved thick slices off. Our plates ran with clear, meaty juice.

  I was ecstatic, but Tom seemed uncharacteristically subdued. “What’s on your mind?” I prodded between mouthfuls.

  “Just think we should be doing better.”

  “Better? This is probably the best steak I’ve ever had.”

  “It’s a great steak, granted. But we’re not constrained by nature, so it should be out of this world. This is a 9, but the taste knob goes to 11.”

  I brandished a moist, tender forkful at him. “Really? You don’t think this is enough?” As I saw it, we’d achieved everything we’d set out to and more. We’d created a delicious meat substitute that could be produced cheaply in industrial quantities once economies of scale kicked in. No, to call it a “substitute” was to short-change our efforts: this was meat, just without the antecedent animal.

  Tom, bent on his quixotic quest, put a very different spin on recent events. The more I lauded our efforts, the more Tom held out. We’d known each other since he poured sand down my neck in the local park at the age of five, and I’d never seen him so stubborn.

  The debate grew more heated. I felt sure our work was going to change the world. I could even picture a Nobel. It was simple: all we had to do was serve out our notice periods, and walk away with our discovery. But no...

  Our argument ended the only way it could: aggrieved parties stomping off in opposite directions. Tom muttered something about carrying on testing without me; I told him to go to hell.

  My anger turned to hurt when Tom maintained radio silence into a second week, and then a third. By now I was desperate to see him, though I wasn’t sure whether I would end up hugging or punching him when we finally met. Eventually, though, I pretty much gave up waiting.

  “Friends? Meet me at the lab tonight, at nine.” The text message, when it finally came, left me feeling a mixture of anger and relief. I was outside the building by ten to. Tom buzzed me in, and I went to find him.

  Tom’s skin was as pale as wallpaper paste, and his eyes were little more than dark hollow circles, sunk into his cheeks. An unfamiliar hint of grey ran through his black hair. His left hand was wrapped in a thick, ragged bandage, secured by a clumsy knot between thumb and forefinger. His haggard appearance shocked me so deeply that I felt treacherous tears prick my eyelids.

  “What happened, Tom? What have you done to yourself?” All notion of recrimination vanished.

  “Nothing.” He shifted from foot to foot. “Just keeping busy.” He noticed me eyeing his hand. “Little mishap with one of the pipettes,” he muttered, avoiding my gaze. “But I’ve done it, Jane. I’ve done it.”

  He insisted I take a seat while he cooked.

  The meat looked firmer and leaner, somewhat like pork. As it sizzled and spat, a sweet almost cloying smell filled the air, exotic yet familiar. My taste buds were primed even before I cut into it. I took a mouthful and chewed thoughtfully. Mild, not as sharp as I was expecting, more like veal perhaps. Taste and smell reinforced each other with every bite, until my mind was drowning in primal thoughts of meat.

  “Tom–” Something about the way he was toying with his bandage made me pause. I stared at my plate, then back at his hand. I dropped my fork.<
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  NuMeatTM catapulted Tom to the top of the Forbes rich list, and kept him there for over a decade. I moved to a small cottage in Cornwall. There, I grew roses – and as many vegetables as I could cram into my tiny garden.

  Jekking the Oofers

  by

  Rhys Hughes

  Rhys Hughes was born in 1966 and began writing from an early age. His first short story was published in 1991 and his first book, the now legendary Worming the Harpy, followed four years later. Since then he has published more than thirty books, his work has been translated into ten languages and he is currently one of the most prolific and successful authors in Wales. Mostly known for absurdist works, his range in fact encompasses styles as diverse as gothic, experimental, science fiction, magic realism, fantasy and realism. His main ambition is to complete a grand sequence of exactly one thousand linked short stories, a project he has been working on for more than two decades. Each story is a standalone piece as well as a cog in the grand machine. He is three-quarters of the way through this opus.

  “The galumphs are jekking the oofers again.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The galumphs. Right above you. See the oofers? They are being jekked good and poppersock. It’s totally zondrian.”

  “Sorry, I only speak English.”

  “This is English, you drood! Pay moogly attention.”

  “Well, it’s not any kind of English I’m familiar with. It’s some sort of strange dialect that I don’t recognise.”

  “What a humzung farsec! It’s SFinglish, budnag.”

  “I still don’t know what—”

  “Science Fiction English, for quantum’s sake!”

  I looked up but I saw no oofers, unless I did see them but couldn’t tell because I didn’t know what they were. All that was above me was the sky, pale blue and softened with humps of cumulus cloud. Maybe the clouds were the oofers and it was blindingly obvious that they were being jekked by galumphs, but I wasn’t at all convinced by this line of reasoning.

  My interlocutor seemed to have the ability to peer beyond the serene and perhaps mundane sky that I looked at.

  He jabbed his gloved finger aggressively.

  “Fresh gak outta Saturn. Rumbly tekks coming in to spork at spaceport. Bet they’re loaded with krakobits.”

  I strained my eyes and still saw nothing. He uttered a growl.

  “Perk the condenso trail? Tekksigh optimum.”

  “Right. Does this have anything to do with the oofers? Or is it a totally separate phenomenon?” I asked meekly.

  “You galosh! Bid the wangy fortiks, willya frud?”

  “Um... sorry, I just don’t—”

  “Make an effort, for the love of quarks!”

  I chewed my lip and scrutinised the stranger who had so oddly interrupted my daydreaming with his peculiar speech. He was a small man with a bald head and glasses with thick golden frames. His suit was a lilac colour and the shoulders were perfectly square. When he opened his mouth to speak I noted that his teeth were all alike, that every tooth in his head was a front tooth, even the back ones, and that none were pointed, stained or uneven.

  “I don’t know the rules of the game,” I confessed.

  “Nothing mumper. Just wok the nangy pok that ruffers into your xob. It doesn’t krip what the actual swugs are.”

  I was apologetic. “I still don’t comprehend...”

  He leaned forward and whispered urgently into my ear, “Nothing easier. Just say the first thing that comes into your head. It doesn’t matter what the actual words are. That’s what I said. Now stop spoiling everything and try to join in. Say anything at all, by tachyon!”

  So I cleared my throat and said very self-consciously, “Um... what did you think of the frobby emarg last night?”

  He nodded encouragement and answered, “Ribbing biff. Zetunded the migratosh from the kurlo to the bongtog.”

  “Ah yes, I concur with your leko vercog on that.”

  There was an awkward silence.

  I could tell that he was disappointed with me. I realised that the majority of my sentences were supposed to be in gibberish, instead of just a few words here and there. I tried again and this time I invented some actions to go with my words. I struck my left ear with the palm of my right hand, poked out my tongue, bent my knees and rolled my eyes clockwise.

  “Pooks like gibble bandars mektek jubbers on the woy.”

  “Yah yay! Burten twosh oz!”

  He was evidently delighted with my renewed performance. This gave me the confidence to continue. I hopped on one leg in a circle, placed the thumb of my left hand under my chin and flicked it.

  “Dort I vidded a nanospekker hisskissing the voidal continuum slick from clustahole nine. Could be rumpal fussgug.”

  “Sux yerble heavy to that. Best quex the panode.”

  The admiration in his voice was unmistakable. He clapped his hands for joy and this display of enthusiasm pushed me to yet further extremes in my performance. I unbuttoned my shirt, pinched each nipple between finger and thumb and twiddled the pink fleshy protuberances as if they were the controls that adjusted the focus of a space radar screen.

  Then I raised my hands to the sky, threw back my head, gaped my mouth as wide as it would go, wobbled my legs and swayed my hips from side to side, made bleeping noises that increased in pitch and suddenly stopped, twiddled my nipples back to their original position and yelled:

  “Chipchooping long the honkway in my zooter. Saw quackum nodule passing the outerskirts. Bong rish thwack the korners. Vidded the zackal and poinged his droob. Diddums a migly with the chookers. Plonged right forth a gakkel mekajog. Jabs to me ‘Quickle hopnok, did the weskit runder chubsot, fark ondo the skirp.’ How blibba to the musky? Well, rightum gobo. Pekko from the rupe kwantom level attomekkas.”

  My companion was overwhelmed. “Oh, zolly gork! Hango it, you got right choob. Ferkect SFinglish jaknot.”

  “Mek the tek and subkomp the pekking zootrinos.”

  “Well spoke, mustercluster!”

  It was at this point that I realised exactly what Science Fiction English was. It was an acknowledgement, crude and doomed but sincere, that language is one of the most mutable of human creations, that it is bound to change and evolve over time, that any attempt to imagine the future of our planet in which human beings still play a part must make an effort to reflect the passage of time in the way the protagonists of that imagined future communicate. This is all obvious but there is another point to consider, namely:

  The moment any possible ‘future’ language is constructed, even in part, then it no longer is a future language but a language of the here and now, of the present. It is already redundant as a future language, it has defeated itself. Thus a future language can only be created in our present time, which to the future is already the past, if it is infinitely malleable.

  So it must have no grammar, no syntax, no rules at all. It must be utterly meaningless, for only something that is without meaning can escape the trap of redundancy. Meanings go out of fashion. Only meaninglessness is eternal. And this meaninglessness of every sentence gives SFinglish its strength, for anyone can impose the pretence of a temporary meaning on any invented word and can understand and work that pretence in any way.

  I now began wondering how far to push my newfound language skills. Could a level be reached where I was so fluent and advanced in Science Fiction English that he no longer understood anything I said, even though it was all meaningless anyway? In other words, would he feel compelled to fake incomprehension in the same way he faked understanding? Such fake incomprehension would also be real incomprehension, one of those rare cases where the truth and the lie are the same. It was an interesting speculation.

  I decided to run a test by changing the words I was using from simple pseudo-slang to strings of random letters with no grammatical structure at all. “Gngjhb djew wbpugre rjglewp peojldksa.”

  But he was undaunted and said, “Hwnlb licbdka wyesjlb.�
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  I wondered if the next step in the evolution of SFinglish would be to take the alphabet beyond the letter Z, to use symbols incapable of being pronounced, but this concept presented difficulties that were insurmountable. How does one speak the unspeakable with a human tongue?

  As a solution, I attempted to beam an array of these symbols at him via telepathy, but he merely frowned, shook his head and indicated the watch strapped to his wrist. I peered closer. 21:30.

  That’s what it said and now I realised that he was engaged in playing the same game I sometimes play alone, which is to pretend that the time is the year and to act accordingly. For instance, when the digital clock-face says 12:15 I am an ancient jousting knight, my umbrella held out before me like a lance. When it says 19:17 I am a soldier running out of a trench and dodging bullets. I only act natural when the numbers of the time are the same as those of the present year. A time later than quarter past eight means I must create science fiction scenarios for myself, suitable to those actual numbers.

  He was asserting that telepathy was a development for after the year 2130 and that we ought to stick to making sounds.

  I was enjoying my time with him but I was already late for an engagement and I wanted to explain this and bid him farewell, so I smiled gently and said quietly, without any accompanying antics:

  “Jadderglub the dooble zug.”

  He instantly turned pale. His voice was hoarse. “Bekko?”

  I repeated the phrase. “Jadderglub the dooble zug...”

  He grabbed my arm. “Vik mootle the bik? Vak muztid the kib?”

  “Jadderglub the dooble zug,” I said.