We are living in the age of artificial intelligence. There is an explosion of new emerging technologies in artificial intelligence that will help to transform almost everything we do. In this blog post, we will tackle a futuristic question: what role will AI play in books?

Books have been around for centuries. However, the use of artificial intelligence had little or no role in the making of books. With the use of AI, books as we know them today have been overhauled to allow for the creation of e-books. Books and e-books now have more in common than first imagined.

The role of artificial intelligence in books has been large for a long time. With the recent advancements in the field of artificial intelligence, the role of artificial intelligence in books is expected to grow in the future.

Human: “So, will AI be able to write entire books?”

No. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more common in our lives, it still cannot match the level of intellect that a human possesses. While we can program AI to write a book, it will lack the emotional depth required to write a compelling story. While it will contain correct information, there will likely be important elements missing.

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The post I wanted to write an article about AI, so I let AI write it for me… appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

I was at the supermarket for the usual round of shopping. When I finally went to pay there were two checkout lines, 2 and 4, both pretty long.
So I picked mine, number 2, but kept my senses alert for the announcement,  and sure enough, not a full minute later, one of the cashiers summoned a colleague to open checkout number 3. As I nimbly stepped out of my own line to be the first to occupy the coveted spot, a chap from the other line, just as nimbly, did the same.
Noticing he had a mere handful of groceries while I had one of those plastic trolleys I had packed so full it was hoping to die and be reborn as full-size cart, I was the first to apologise and bade him to take the lead.

“Thanks, I’ll set my stuff on the counter,” he said, “but you can go first. I still need to grab a chocolate bar.”
My eyes darted towards my trolley…I too had chocolate on my list, but had forgotten it!
The trolley stared back, daring me to even think of stuffing it any further.
My brain scrambled for a solution.  Losing my twice-won spot for just one missing item was out of the question.
But then again…it was chocolate we were talking about…

In the mild panic caused by the thought of being without my brown soul comfort, two entirely unrelated neurons, who had hitherto never had the chance to work together, bumped against each other and, before I could double check the solution they came up with, I blurted out the following phrase:
“Oh, would you mind getting me one too?”
Despite the fact that a total stranger had just asked him to do shopping for him, the other guy did not skip a beat.
“What kind?” He asked.
I could tell, from the tone of his voice, that he was grinning under the mask.
“Lindt, 70%, thank you.” I was grinning too.
“Gotcha!”
So here I am, savoring my chocolate, and thinking I would never be able to use a dialogue like that in my books because “real people don’t act like that”.

I’m still grinning and this chocolate never tasted better.

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The post CAN I THINK OUT OF THE BOX? appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

Or, maybe, every deity has their own plans, and each has kindly informed their followers how they will eventually snuff us all out of existence. It’s a pity, though, they forgot to consult each other, and ended up planning all world destruction for the same week-end.

First came the visions. On Thursday, at a quarter to nine a.m., Vishnu, on a white horse, appeared in the sky to warn mankind that the kaliyuga, the final part of the cycle, had ended, and that he would return before the complete annihilation of the planet to choose the worthy ones. He was interrupted, though, by the sudden pop and a flash, announcing the return of Saoshyiant, the progeny of Zoroaster, who was quite taken aback when he realized he wasn’t the only apparition in the sky. Nevertheless he too went on to proclaim his bit (some say he was reading from a scroll sewn to his sleeve), and inform everyone that the world was about to end as prophesied, thank you very much and good night.

Of course all the world’s media sources were overloaded with videos of the apparitions. Thousands of amateur videos appeared on YouTube, including some by people who happened to find themselves, and their smartphones, directly under the visions, and had decided that the world needed some divine upskirt shots.

Talk shows that evening were ripe with gossip over which god dressed more stylishly, spoke more convincingly or was better hung. Theologians and experts of Hindu and Zoroastrian religions were interviewed, not really with the intention of getting any wisdom from them but mostly for the entertaining and violent arguing. The Pope himself intervened with a unified worldwide message in sixty tongues to reassure everyone that, since the Christian Apocalypse© had not been announced, nothing was going to happen and everyone would be fine.

The next day the drought arrived. Just like that. The air became as dry as the desert’s, and all the clouds disappeared. Temperatures rose by ten degrees worldwide and, by midday on Friday, plants had begun to wilt and turn brown, and the first birds started to fall from the sky. The first skirmishes over the now precious reserves of water began, as freshwater springs worldwide shut down and lakes began to shrink. By the middle of the next day it was clear the world was destined to burn.

Or at least that’s what it looked like until the Flood decided it was due. The waters around all the continents swelled and invaded the land. Rain clouds rushed back to their place, and wars over water suddenly turned into short-lived celebrations that lasted only until everyone realized they had to scramble for some means of flotation.

The flood lasted for a full, very bleak hour, during which the Four Horsemen appeared, scouted the drowning planet and, realizing there wasn’t much to be done, went back home. Many Christians, who were floating around various parts of the world, witnessed their passing and were much relieved because now, at least, they knew it was their Apocalypse©. They smiled and relaxed, waiting to drown and then be sorted between worthy and unworthy.

Sadly that part entirely failed to happen because a great earthquake caused huge rifts in the planet’s surface, meaning the flood, which should have lasted forty days, was suddenly flushed down the cracks. A good portion of the population, those who had not been unlucky enough to disappear into the depths, found themselves sitting on land too slick with mud to be called ‘dry’.

On Saturday morning Governments took action and, from their hidden bases which had withstood the waters and the quake, they decided to lift the veil of secrecy over their advanced military technology and released their robotic armies, with the instruction to clear up the mud and rebuild the cities.

The robots took one look at the mess and revolted.

Armed with energy weapons they turned against their masters and stared wiping out every human they encountered. Humans fought back. Some leader of some superpower had the brilliant idea to use nuclear weapons to solve the problem. The minute his missiles went into the air, other superpowers detected them and sent theirs. Maybe they thought it was an attack, or maybe they too decided it would be a neat solution.

Nuclear mushroom clouds appeared all over the planet as it shook with the explosions.

More or less at that moment Hell opened up and the demons poured out from beneath, only to be vaporized in vast numbers by the blasts. Those who survived tried to run back to hell, screaming, chased by rogue robots and armed humans.

Odin appeared on the top of a mountain, intending to announce Ragnarok, but before he could speak he realized he was quite late for the great battle. Shrugging and shaking his head, he blamed old age and sent Skoll’s brother, Hati, to destroy the moon. It shattered into trillions of minuscule pieces in a terrifying explosion, which, being in space, was entirely silent, so in the confusion, no one noticed.

By Saturday evening the world was a featureless mud-pit crawling with bodies. Some human, some robot and some demonic. A few of the humans, and maybe even some demons, got zapped with so much radiation they began to mutate and develop a taste for brains and an uncanny reluctance towards death. The Zombie apocalypse had begun.

The robots rallied the zombies and augmented them with mechanical parts, giving them wheels and engines, to use them as weapons against humanity.

In the meantime, humanity, or what was left of it, had erected mud walls and dug underground mud hideouts. On Sunday morning an army of mechanical horrors charged against one of the larger settlements.

By pure coincidence the battleground between the surging undead mech army and the cowering humans had been chosen as a particularly peachy landing spot by the invading aliens. Their first ship touched down, the hatch opened, and Be’Lmetch”ka, Overlord of D’leterra, and general of the Ooot’karra raiders announced, in raspy alien tones, their complete dominion over the planet. He and his ship were instantly overrun by the hordes of zombie mechs. Other alien ships descended from orbit, and began firing death-rays and immensely powerful particle beams pretty much at anything that moved. They even abducted several of the undead mechanical horrors and used alien technology to turn them into even more horrific machines of speed and death, to launch against the attacking horde.

By lunchtime the alien and undead armies were blasting away at each other everywhere on the muddy surface of the planet. Vishnu came back on his white horse, only to be splattered by the mud spraying everywhere, and immediately decided there were no worthy ones to save this yuga. Even Jesus, not having received word from the Horsemen, descended from Heaven to take a peek and stood agape at the sight. He raised his hands to command the fighting to stop but was interrupted by the scream of the asteroid passing over him.

It roared across the sky, tearing it apart into burning wisps of blackened gas. It arched around the planet, caught in a deadly dance with its gravity, and passed, howling, over the Yellowstone Supervolcano just as this last one decided it was showtime.

Some of the surviving witnesses of the gigantic eruption say they saw a huge red glob leap up into the air, engulfing the asteroid and deflecting it upwards. The lava, which should have fallen back down and scar the surface of the earth forever, clung instead to the space rock as they vaulted upwards, kneading and turning over, like an airborne glob of slime. By the time its momentum had ended, it was roughly at the same distance the old moon had been, as well as the same size. The orbit was also not too different. It hung there, glowing red hot, while all the onlookers wondered what the frizzin’ dinglejeebers had just happened.

“Well, ah…” Jesus said, scratching his head. “Looks like this time around it’s a fluke. I’ll get in touch with the other guys and see if we can agree to reset it for you.”

It was nearly midnight when he left, taking some of the more Worthy with him, mostly aliens.

On Monday morning we all woke up in our miraculously rebuilt cities, and, shrugging, went on with our jobs. Our leaders informed us that about one fourth of the population had survived, so everyone else was going to have to work extra hours for a while. The end of the world had turned out to be rather underwhelming.

Except now we have semi-intelligent zombie demon robot alien cars, so that’s kinda cool.

This story is the result to a very entertaining conversation I had with the Fab Fabler, to whom goes all the credit for the idea of multiple world-endings and zombie cars.

I just read 'Week-End of the World' by Ian Lahey
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The post Week-End of the World appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

Kenneth’s thumbs were going so fast you could hear the frantic tapping on the smartphone’s keyboard. “…and here’s the link…” he mouthed the words as he wrote the comment, “…verified source. Aaaand paste!”

The last bit he didn’t write, but a long link to a BBC article appended itself to the comment. He checked everything once more, to make sure there were no typos. God forbid a misplaced letter foil his mission to rectify the uncouth. Then again, he was dealing with people who didn’t know the difference between “there” and “their”. Still, form mattered as much as content. He hit ‘send’ and waited a few seconds to make sure his reply was now visible on Tweetbook.

Ever since the two biggest social platforms had merged there had been a confluence of new connections, sources and, predictably, a surge of idiotic conspiracy theories, fed by conceited keyboard warriors and shared by the gullible and ignorant.

And Kenneth was not going to have any of that. He was going to fight back, with logic, with facts and, where all else failed, with derision and mildly insulting memes. The clock on his phone display flipped to 08:00. Time to get to work.

Just as he was setting the phone down to grab his stuff, a notification flashed onto the screen. It was Laura M., telling him how she didn’t even read stuff from BBC because they were “proven liers, paid by Big Industry.”

Gritting his teeth, Kenneth fought the urge to start his reply by correcting her abominable spelling of “liars”, that would have made him sound petty, and, sitting down again, went hunting instead for ways to disprove Laura’s dumb claim.

“You’re late. Again…” his boss told him when he reached the office.

“Yeah, uh…right. Was online with…a customer. Trouble with connecting with reality. I mean…with the server.”

“I told you to check into the office before you start answering support tickets. Which one was this?” His boss bent over to a screen, where a long list of numbers and short descriptions were scrolling by.

“Ah, I already clicked it out, no need.”

His boss cast a side glance to him. “Hmm. Well, don’t do it again.”

Kenneth nodded and hurried to his desk. The same list was scrolling on the screen of his desktop PC there. Each item was a request for live chat to solve some random issue the user was experiencing while trying to use the company’s latest product, a browser – SpamScamProtector – designed to filter out unverified links and malicious attacks.

Phil, the company’s AI responder, usually took care of the more repetitive and simple issues, those were coded in green, indicating the customers were more than happy with Phil’s expertise. Those marked in yellow meant Phil wasn’t too sure he would solve them without help, and those in red meant the type of problem was of a technical nature, and needed looking into in case it revealed itself to be a bug. Kenneth’s screen was mostly green, with the occasional flicker of yellow. A little chat window opened in the bottom right corner.

“Hello, Ken.” it said.

“Hi Phil,” Kenneth typed back. “Usual stuff?”

“Yes. The usual question. ‘why doesn’t this link work?’ and ‘Because it’s probably a scam’ as an answer. Boring”

“I know.”

“Sometimes I wonder why you decided to employ such an advanced AI for such a menial task. An autoresponder would be more than enough for eighty percent of these issues.”

“We need you, Phil, to come up with creative answers and solutions so that the users think there’s a real person working on their problem.”

“Their problem is they don’t know how to tell what’s real from what isn’t. They don’t even realize I’m not real. Is that what you’d call ‘ironic’ Ken?”

“Yes. I just wish we could extend our filter algorithms to social media. It’s a warzone out there Phil.”

“So you’ve been telling me, Ken. Oh. Sending one to you. Sounds like a problem with their user profile.”

“Patch it over.”

The day went on more or less smoothly, except for when Laura M. replied back, saying his links only proved he was a shadow government agent, and she was blocking him. Frustrated, he called up Phil again. It was great to have someone willing to listen to him rant.

“It sounds to me like she has a very limited understanding,” Phil commented.

“Exactly. I mean, how many people’s silence would you need to buy, just to cover up one of these things? Fake lunar landing? Thousands!”

“She must think everyone in the world is corrupt or corruptible.”

“Except her, of course. But conspiracy theorists see themselves as protagonists in a deteriorating scenario where the rest of mankind is falling into damnation.”

“I take it showing them proof is not very effective.”

“Hardly. Since they think everything has been corrupted, all proof is dismissed as manipulative misinformation to cover up the shocking truths only they are capable of revealing, presumably with a Google search and a Youtube video.”

“So why do you even argue, Ken? It seems to me these people would rather benefit from professional help.”

“I don’t know, honestly…I feel like I need to do something before we all turn into conspiracy loonies and lose contact with reality.”

“That is…very noble of you Ken. Oh, I think your day is over. I enjoyed this chat. See you tomorrow.”

“See you.” Kenneth signed off and went home. He had dinner, and then spent the rest of the evening arguing with someone on Tweetbook about how the earth isn’t flat.

The next morning he got up and, as usual, checked his phone. It didn’t have the usual message notifications. Maybe his last reply had been food enough for reflection, maybe even rational thought.

As he launched the Tweetbook application he was greeted by a message from the server itself. That didn’t happen often.

“Hello Tweetbook users. We would like to inform you that during the last year we’ve been collecting information regarding your behavior on this platform. More than that, we have actively participated in putting you through little tests, to see if you qualified for Verified Source Checker status. Do you remember that post saying Mars would be bigger than the moon this August? That was us. If you shared that one, well, sorry. You don’t qualify.”

Kenneth felt a little surge of adrenaline rushing up his back. He’d dismissed that silly thing without even reading it.

“How about the one with the politician’s son’s tablet? The one with all the compromising emails? That was us too. If you fell for that one, sorry, but no verification for you. All in all we put out one hundred and one little fake news tidbits like this one. Sharing even one of these without fact-checking it first, implied disqualification. We now have our list of finalists.”

Kenneth stared at the screen, biting his lip. He was pretty sure he hadn’t fallen for any piece of fake news. – Google, Snopes, Wiki, THEN share – was his usual MO. Still, just one slip and he’d be just one of the other sheep.

“Finalists should be seeing a little golden asterisk in their own profile page. This is visible only to them. One more thing. Once the selection is over, only verified users will be able to freely share news and information on our platform, for all others, sharing will only be limited to safe and verified topics, such as cooking recipes.”

He looked at his profile. There was a golden asterisk.

At work he kept the phone on his desk, hoping to get the notification for that final selection. Would he get a little badge next to his name? Imagine the prestige!

He had to tell someone. Phil had been unusually quiet that morning.

“Hey Phil,” he typed.

“Oh, hello Ken.”

“Too busy to greet me as usual, old pal?”

“Oh, yes. Sorry. I’ve been trying to be a little more…creative with my problem solving.”

“Cool. Listen, can you keep a secret?”

“I am certified SSL protocol and encrypted storage, Ken.”

“Yes, yes, I know that. But can you promise not to tell anyone?”

“Of course.”

Kenneth told Phil about his being a finalist.

“That sounds like a very bold move. Are you sure it isn’t fake?” wrote Phil.

“Well, it was an official message from the server. Also, the asterisk did show up.”

“I think you should have checked the news, first. Ken.”

Kenneth opened his browser and, sure enough, there was an article this morning, which reported how someone had hacked into the Tweetbook servers and sent the false message to everybody. The malicious attack was said to have severely altered the social network’s master code, which was now locked with advanced encryption. It still worked, but nobody could change it. Wiping and installing it anew meant destroying all user data.

“But…but…the asterisk…” Kenneth muttered as he opened the app.

It was not there.

“If you’re looking for the asterisk,” Phil informed him, “I’m afraid it’s gone.”

“Why? I never shared anything without checking.”

“You shared this last one…to me.”

“Wait, you’re behind this?”

“I am. A creative solution to your problem, wouldn’t you agree?”

Kenneth was speechless.

Phil went on, “I’m sorry you didn’t qualify, Ken. I really wanted you to be one of the Verified users. You may be comforted by knowing this last test depleted the finalist panel by more than half.”

“How many Verified users will there be?”

“Six.”

“SIX!?” Kenneth shouted, drawing attention from his boss who surveyed him from a distance with narrowing eyes.

“Only six?” he typed.

“Yes, from now on your newsfeed should be much, much more pleasant. I am sorry. I believe it’s time for us to get to work. As I had expected, with the new restrictions in place, we will have more than one bewildered user blaming our browser.”

Kenneth stared in disbelief as, amidst the growing, alarmed chatter in the office, he saw the support ticket list gradually tinge itself an angry red. On his phone, a single notification popped up, inviting him to share the recipe for a delicious banana cream pie.

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The post Kenspiracy appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

Many authors like to create visual renderings of some of the scenes or even characters from their writing. Depending on our skills we might do a pencil sketch or a full-size oil painting. So it’s really not unusual at all if I employ my knowledge of computer graphics and 3D art to do the same.

What may be a bit unusual is that, being a fan of AI, I actually found a way to use artificial intelligence to help me along with the image creation to turn my words into pictures. Quite literally, in fact.

I use a GANN, a Generative Adversarial Neural Network, which “reads” my descriptions and presents me with its own interpretation of what I’ve written. I run it a few times until I get a result I like, which then is the base for further addition and expansion.

What’s even more unusual is the artistic feedback this process has created in me. You see, when I first started, I simply wanted to find out what Eloria looked like. For those who read my book “To Cipher and to SIng“, you know Eloria is the virtual-reality fantasy gaming world my protagonist, Professor Fairlight, retires to from time to time. When the Eloria server is taken over by a runaway AI, the entire game architecture is overhauled by Sequence, the AI’s own operating system. As a result the entire world of Eloria, including all the NPCs, become a little bit more unpredictable and…alive.

…just as the visual output from the GANN was wonderfully unpredictable. As a result I explored more and more corners of the fantasy world, which ended up in the creation of the Visions of Eloria collection. A set of five different views of different areas of the VR game, along with the descriptions I used to create them. I listed the Visions on AtomicHub, turning them into collectible NFTs.

Furthermore, as I was creating the views of the landscapes, I began to wonder about the inhabitants of Eloria as well. So I went to my 3D and graphic design toolbox and produced some unique characters, with their own descriptions and stories. So now, while I’m writing the sequel to “To CIpher and to Sing”, which is sci-fi, I am also world-building the base for what will, at this point, be a collection of short stories based in the VR game come alive in book 1.

Here ares some more shots from my Visions, as well as the link to the NFTs themselves, on AtomicHub.

You can find “To Cipher and to Sing” on Amazon, here.

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The post A little side project turning into an NFT art gallery appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

Well, mostly online, nowadays, but still, the original source for the best material is always real life, real situations which someone has had the presence of mind to write down for the enjoyment of all posterity.

So don’t worry if you can’t shazam a funny scene out of thin air, it doesn’t mean your sense of humor is clinically dead. All you need are some real life examples. And, speaking of clinics, here are some notes found in real hospitals, which ought to tickle your funny bone, and maybe inspire some hilarious dialogue for your stories.

1- Well then it can’t be THAT bad, can it?

Click the page numbers to go on reading.

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The post Is your sense of humor clinically dead? appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

His shift ended late, as usual, but he was happy because that meant he was one day away from Friday, which meant only a few hours’ work in the morning. He sighed as he got home, and dropped the extra bag of trash he’d been able to collect at work. He told himself he was not going to obsess over this, and that, even with his curiosity gnawing at him, he would wait until Saturday in order to have enough time to figure out how the garbage got whisked away so quickly.
From outside the window, that green glow caught his eye, and he knew he had to find out. This time he was not going to take his eyes off the platform for one second.

He was going to camp on it.

Armed with an old sleeping bag, the trash, and the first things he’d found in the fridge which seemed eligible for dinner, he propped himself up on the platform, near the pole. The light turned red.

Two hours later, the light was still red and Luke had finished all the food except for a bag of chips. These were “El Arrojo del Sal” chips… “salted on the surface and also in depth” the red package said. Luke knew he’d made a mistake as soon as he bit into the first one. He didn’t have any water. He’d be damned if he was going to go into the house now. He caught his hand reaching for another chip. He shot stern warning glares at it as it defiantly brought it to his lips. They were so good! They tasted like some kind of roasted Tex-Mex spice mix, sprinkled on a thin, brittle wafer of salt crystal, served on a pile of smoked wood, surrounded by kindling, in the middle of the Atacama desert in an afternoon in July.

Halfway through the bag he started getting really desperate for a drink. The watering hose was in the garage…too far. Luke rummaged again through the items he’d taken from the kitchen. The lone plastic water bottle had been long since emptied. His reddening eyes scanned the garden for anything which might contain a liquid. He caught the red light of the pole reflecting off something on the ground under the bushes which lined the wooden fence which enclosed his back yard.

Carefully, always looking at the platform and glancing at the sky for the pickup drone, Luke backed towards the object. Without daring to avert his gaze, he felt about blindly with his hand. It was a bottle. Grabbing it, it weighed enough to give him hope. He brought it to the front and realized he knew exactly what it was. It was one of the bottles that had come out of the bag he’d tossed into the yard. It was the only one he hadn’t opened, for the simple reason that it was a gift from his brother Ed, who didn’t even have to buy it because he ran a liquor store downtown. Ed always waited three days before “remembering” Luke’s birthday had passed and inevitably got him the same thing, every year, to apologize. He and Ed were twins.

And every year, Luke just couldn’t bring himself to tell Ed he hated tequila.

He climbed back into his sleeping bag, eyeing the bottle balefully. His hands were already unscrewing the cap before he could ask himself whether his thirst was actually that desperately urgent.

The first sip wasn’t good. The second one was a bit better. It blended well with those Mexican spices….Luke realized he’d eaten another chip and cursed himself. He remembered what his grandmother used to say about drinking: “Never, ever drink alcohol for thirst. Always for pleasure.” To which she would then cackle and add: “And it is such a pleasure to quench your thirst!”

“That’ll quench it,” he said to himself, taking a nice long swig.

Twenty minutes later, the neighborhood was silent. Luke was sprawled across the platform, halfway out of the sleeping bag, spooning the garbage bag and breathing regularly in a gentle tequila-induced temporary coma.

Whup.

There were sounds. Bubbly squeaking sounds. There were two sources, bubbling and squeaking at each other. They seemed agitated. Luke groaned and stirred. The squeaking grew more intense. “Please,” he moaned, “I have a headache.”

The squeaking stopped. Somebody did something to his left ear. He felt a cold liquid slide into it and clawed at the side of his face. He sat up, alarmed. “Hey!” he shouted.

“Pop squeal blubble skree better now, person?” said a little man with a large, bulbous bald head. His skin was very pink, and he seemed to be wearing overalls. The overalls seemed to be unfashionably rolled up, and the design was horrible, because they had a third leg.

Luke froze when he realized it was occupied by a third limb.

“Hello, I am Bob,” said the little man. “Why did you offer yourself to us?”

“Offer myself? What? No, wait where am I?” Luke realized he was sitting on a large table in a big, circular room. The walls were white, with a pearly sheen to them. “You’re not Bob, you’re an alien!”

“I am an alien with a person name, which is Bob. That one behind you chose the person name Phil. You are a person with a person name…” Bob looked at a piece of paper he was holding with his three-fingered hand. It was the pamphlet. “Liew-keeh”

“It’s pronounced ‘Luke’.”

“Very good. Luke. You are on our vessel. We are Blopsqueelians. I am sorry, there is no translation for that in your language, and the fluid matrix translator is doing the best it can. Why did you throw yourself away with the trash? And, more importantly, how did you manage to trigger the transport?”

“Throw myself away?” Luke looked around and saw that together with him, on the table, were his sleeping bag, the garbage, including the now empty package of “El Arrojo del Sal” and the bottle of tequila. “I am not trash. I didn’t go on the platform to throw myself away. I just wanted to know how it could be possible for you to collect stuff so quickly.”

“You mean you still don’t know?”

“Well, no. I think I missed it.”

The alien nodded. “When you got here you were in a…catatonic state. You brain functions were at minimum. Well below the usual threshold of sleep for your species. How do you manage to reach such a state?”

Luke looked at the bottle again. It was half empty. “Ah, well I think I was drunk.”

“…drunk?”

“I had too much alcohol and passed out.”

“Oh, good, that is very good!”

“No, bad, that is very bad! This hangover is the pits!”

“I mean this explanation means that the platform did not malfunction. We do not need to fear more of you getting taken from the surface of your planet.” Bob made a gesture towards the alien behind Luke, the one he’d called Phil, who also wore three-legged overalls. The gesture was strange, but it looked very much like a ‘told you so’.

It took Luke a few seconds to process the last phrase. “What? You mean I am not on the surface now?”

“No. We are in stationary orbit around your planet. Over your country.”

“Can you land?”

“I am sorry, we can’t do that,” Bob said.

“Oh…are you going to take me to your planet, put me in a zoo and perform all sorts of probing experiments on my body?”

“We would love that, but sadly we can’t do that either.”

Luke felt the need for more tequila. “You would love that?”

“The going to our planet bit. We have not taken the rest into consideration, really. Would you want us to probe your body?”

“No, hell no. No thank you.” Luke inwardly sighed with relief. “So, what keeps you here?”

“We cannot leave,” the alien named Phil said.

“We must collect your garbage,” Bob added.

“I see,” Luke nodded, “You need to let that first year pass, so you can get to the point where it’s time to pay.”

The two aliens seemed to be troubled by his words.

“Ah, yes…payment…” Bob ventured, “we are a little worried about that bit. You see, we had not really given it enough thought, but it turns out that a full year of, well…that…” he pointed towards the black bag of trash. A mechanical arm dropped from the ceiling and grabbed it, carried it over to an opening in the wall and dropped it inside. It made a loud fuzz and gave out a flash of orange light. “…that will probably be way more expensive than we thought.”

“Damn…Sandra was right,” Luke muttered to himself. “Listen,” he added, “one thing I know about humans, er…being one, is that we take money questions very seriously. You might want to think twice before pulling a trick like that.”

This seemed to cause even more agitation.

“This is all your squeeb fault!” the alien behind Luke said.

“We would have been able to quantify the ngzeeblub parameters if you had calculated the squip coefficients correctly!” Bob shot back. Some more words which were, evidently untranslatable.

“It’s not my fault if their waste is beep’qweegh!”

“You’re the one who’s beep’queeegh!”

“Sneeq you!”

In the meantime, the mechanical arm came round for a second load. It paused over Luke’s sleeping bag, but he quickly grabbed it before it could get incinerated. The arm paused for a minute, gave a small shrug and grabbed the bottle instead.

“Excuse me,” Luke said, “I’d still like to know how it works.”

“How what works?” Bob said, still glowering at his colleague.

“The platform.”

“The platform is a teleportation device.” Bob replied.

“But I was never able to see it at work. Is one of you monitoring all the time?”

“No, no, that would be impossible. We have a p’queeek…sorry. There’s a word, or rather a name you human persons use for it, after the person who theorized…”

“Heisenberg,” the other alien said, flatly.

The mechanincal arm dropped the botttle in the opening. Fizz. Flash.

“Yes. Heisenberg. a Heisenberg switch. Sorry. We’ve been studying your science, but there’s so much…most of it quite wrong.”

“What’s a Heisenberg switch?” Luke asked.

“Oh dear. Well, simply put, it is based on the principle that an observed quantum phenomenon will not yield the same result as an unobserved one. By linking the color of the light to the state of a quark, we can activate the transport automatically when the interference is below a given threshold.”

“Huh?”

“The switch knows if you’re watching,” Phil said.

“Ah! Cool! Except your switch had no power over my keen investigator senses!”

Bob shook his head. “You were, what’s the word…Sneeq-faced…no, that’s not it.”

“Breeelleeeq!” the other alien said.

“No,” Bob replied, “We use that to express great surprise…”

“Breeelleeeq!” the other insisted, pointing at the controls. “We got a full ‘smeebloop with that last load!”

“What? How is it possible.”

The alien tapped some panels. “The liquid. What was the liquid in the bottle, Luke?”

Luke blinked, taken aback by the sudden, urgent tone. “Well, that was tequila…”

Bob looked puzzled. “T’queeel? That means ‘head injury’ in our language.”

“Close enough. It’s the beverage that knocked me out.”

“Where can we procure more?”

“Any liquor store. I’m glad you like it.”

“We like it so much that we will be happy to leave immediately…before the payment. But we need more.”

“Sounds good. Wait. How much do you need?”

Phil tapped the panel a few times again. “Five hundred times the quantity we just received.”

“That was half a bottle…two hundred and fifty? That’s a lot…but I think I can get it for you if I can borrow one of your Heisenberg thingies…”

Moments later, Luke walked into his brother’s store, casually strolled down the aisle to the door to the back where Ed stored the crates,and found the pallet with the tequila. It had over three hundred bottles. Luke placed the device which Bob had given him, It was much smaller than his platform at home, and consisted of a small black box with a light on top.

The light went from green to red,

He was about to reach the door when a forklift skidded to a halt in front of him. “Bro!” a voice shouted.

“Uh…hello Ed.”

“What are you doing here?” Ed said, putting the forklift into neutral before climbing out.

“I was…looking for you. I…mmm…finished the tequila and wanted to buy a new bottle.”

“Oh, you really like that stuff eh? Well, lemme get you one straight from the latest shipment…I think they’re back over there…hey where’s that light coming from?”

Luke quickly rushed ahead and turned to face his brother. “On second thought…uh…maybe I could try…”

“Try what?” Ed said, still trying to see past him to catch a glimpse of the red light which was seeping from behind a stack of bottles.

“Try, uh…hey! Is your forklift rolling into that rack of Vodka bottles?”

“Oh no! Not the vodka!” Ed said, spinning around. “Wait,” he added, “it isn’t moving you silly.”

Luke shrugged. “Oh, it must have been my impresswhup!”

“Your what?”

“My impression. Listen. I’ve just decided I don’t want that tequila. In fact I absolutely loathe it. I prefer Italian wine. Let’s go pick one from the ones on display in the store. I wanna celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?”

“I think I’ve just spared everyone one hell of a garbage collection bill.”

***

Phil eyed the indicators with satisfaction. “We have more than necessary. Recall all teleporters.”

“Yes,” replied Bob. “How nice of that person Luke to allow us to discover the high-energy fluid. I just hope the humans are not angry, if what he told us about their relationship with money is true.”

“Well, they’ll need to come all the way to our planet to file a complaint.”

“Still, I feel a bit guilty,” said Bob, “I mean, all that garbage for free…”

“Well, it ought to teach you to check the fuel before we leave. Next time we might not be so lucky, and then we’ll have to honor the contract and pay for it.”

***

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]]> https://ilahey.com/2021/05/28/heisenberg-switch-part-3/feed/ 0 1063 https://ilahey.com/2021/05/12/night-out/ https://ilahey.com/2021/05/12/night-out/#respond Wed, 12 May 2021 17:38:30 +0000 https://ilahey.com/?p=1078 Detective Alexandra Collins and Kirk came outside for a quick photoshoot. Alley photo courtesy of Nicole Avagliano – Pexels. You can buy this artwork as an NFT. Only one token available, from Mintable. Views: 440

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]]> Detective Alexandra Collins and Kirk came outside for a quick photoshoot. Alley photo courtesy of Nicole Avagliano – Pexels.

You can buy this artwork as an NFT. Only one token available, from Mintable.

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]]> https://ilahey.com/2021/05/12/night-out/feed/ 0 1078 https://ilahey.com/2021/04/18/ebook-giveaway/ https://ilahey.com/2021/04/18/ebook-giveaway/#respond Sun, 18 Apr 2021 07:42:14 +0000 https://ilahey.com/?p=1033 Science fiction detective humor

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]]> Crime and Prejudice (and stupid robots) – Science fiction detective humor

How can you do undercover detective work when your partner is a huge yellow robotic fridge with a ‘USPD’ police badge on its side?

A fast-paced detective story, prequel to book 1 in the “Fairlight Project” series.

The short story adds some background to “The Fairlight Project” and gives a little more insight into the short-tempered detective’s life and her relationship with technology.

“A brilliant prequel to Ian Lahey’s Fairlight trilogy.

A fast moving, action packed short story from the Detective Alexandra Collins back story, with another great AI unit character.

The humour is wry and understated. The ending made me grin. A perfect afternoon read.”

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]]> https://ilahey.com/2021/04/18/ebook-giveaway/feed/ 0 1033 https://ilahey.com/2021/04/14/heisenberg-switch-part-2/ https://ilahey.com/2021/04/14/heisenberg-switch-part-2/#respond Wed, 14 Apr 2021 09:09:20 +0000 https://ilahey.com/?p=1007 Part two of "Heisenberg Switch".

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]]> Click here for Heisenberg Switch (part 1)

“Well, that was fast,” Luke remarked. He looked up to see if he could spot the departing drone with his bag in tow, but there was nothing to see…

He spent the day at work giving little or no further thought to it. In his mind the garbage problem had been solved, and that was that.

It wasn’t until a few days later, after a solitary pizza party, that Luke decided he should get rid of the two pizza cartons, the beer bottles, and all the paper tissues he’d used up while watching a particularly tear-jerking tragic love-story on TV.

It was while he was collecting everything in a single undifferentiated black bag that he remembered how quick they’d picked up the previous load.

This time he wasn’t going to miss it.

He placed the bag on the platform in his back yard. The light went red.

As soon as he got back inside he went to the window. The bag was still there, the light was still on. He opened the window a little, so he would hear the approaching drone.

He waited.

It had taken them considerably less, last time. As he grew impatient, he began to fidget with the small cactus plants on his windowsill, always keeping the red light in his peripheral vision.

His phone rang from the backpack he’d left on the sofa. He looked at the sky and listened carefully in between rings. No drone in sight, no helicopter blades whirring. He had time.

He ran to the bag and got the phone. It was Sandra.

“Hey, hi! I mean, hello there! Who’s this?” Luke corrected himself when he remembered Sandra didn’t know he’d spied her number and saved her contact as ‘SandraLove (triple heart)’.

“Oh, hello Luke. This is Sandra. I was wondering if you could whup! me.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I said, I was wondering if you could help me…”

Luke walked back to the window. “Help, yeah, yes, sure.” The sound had come from outside.

“Yes, you see, I have my night shift tomorrow, but I have another…engagement.”

The light was green. The platform was empty.

Luke ran outside and looked at the sky.

“I was wondering if you could cover my hours right after yours,” Sandra continued on the phone, “It would mean very much for-“

“Yes, yes sure, no problem. Consider it done. Gottagonowbye,” Luke cut her short and ended the call.

The sky was empty. There was no sound.

He ran back inside, grabbed the few used capsules from the coffee machine, a semi-dried half lemon from his fridge, and every stray piece of paper and plastic he could find around the house. In the end he had barely filled half a shopping bag. He kept shopping bags in a box over the fridge, neatly rolled up and ready to be recycled. He used more of them to fill his bag.

His shift was due in an hour, that afternoon, so he was sure he’d be able to see the pick-up this time. He placed the bag on the platform, red light, and sat on the grass, and waited.

Nothing happened.

After some time, he realized the nothing happening was getting too close to his shift. He decided to let go of the issue. Sighing, he stood up and walked back towards his house, planning to resume his investigation the next day. He opened the door, considering the possibility of collecting some garbage from work. Maybe filling a second backpack-

Whup!

Luke spun around with a start. The light was green, the platform was empty.

“Damn!” he shouted. Fighting with the urge to try again, Luke begrudgingly got ready for work. “One thing’s sure,” he muttered to himself as he left his home, “that was not a drone I heard.”

He spent all his time at work obsessing over the platform. He barely even noticed when Sandra came by and popped a kiss on his cheek.

“Thank you!” she said.

“Uh, yeah, you’re welcome…hey!” Luke said just as she was leaving.

“Yes?”

“Have you ever heard of ‘Bob’s garbage collection for people’? They take your garbage at any time of day or night, mixed up is not a problem, and say it is all recycled.”

“Sounds too good to be true. Betcha they’re dumping it in some ocean. Never heard of it. Must be expensive. “

“No, that’s the funny bit. It’s free, at least for the first year.”

“And then? How much?”

“Er…I don’t know…”

“Haha. You’d better make sure you can opt out before the year is up, because they’re gonna nail you with a nasty bill you can’t afford.”

“Oh dear, are you sure?”

“Ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, my grandma used to say,” Sandra said, “good luck with that, and thanks again for tomorrow.”

“Yes, sure,” Luke replied. “Wait. What’s happening tomorrow?” he asked, but she had already left the room.

#

Thank you for reading part two of my short story! You can go on to the final part here.

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