Here's the third of the shortlisted runners-up for our 2016 SCI-FI-LONDON 48 Hour Flash Fiction Challenge – The Forest Society by Gavin Jefferson, which is set in a world where robots are governed by Asimov's Three Laws. 

Gavin Jefferson says "I'm from Watford (UK) where I live with my wife Mella, and my children Isabella and Atticus; who are forever inspiring. I've written two unpublished novels and am currently working on my third and fourth manuscripts; steadily building a universe out of paper and words; hoping that somebody will take notice. You can follow my ramblings on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DoctorUlysses 

"I would like to dedicate this story to my son Finley; your memory lives on in my heart; I love you and I miss you. I would like to congratulate all of the entrants to the competition and wish them all well for the future, maybe when we're published; we can go on a book tour together? And to the judges, thank you for reading my story and giving my work an opportunity. And to Urban Fantasist for giving my story a home."


The Forest Society
by Gavin Jefferson


“What did you mean by that?”

He looked at the metallic body parts strewn across the floor, “It's hard to hate someone once you understand their point of view, that is all.”

“It wasn't a person.”

“I know,” he sighed, reaching down he scooped up a disembodied hand and perused the quality of the workmanship, “artificial intelligence or no; he was still my friend.”

There was a scream from the other side of the room, a woman in a fur coat was hunched over and shuddering, her hand pressed against the wall to keep her from collapsing to the ground.

“Was it hers?”

“It belonged to her, yes. It was painted by her great-great-grandfather.”

“My word,” he looked at the woman and then scrunched his face in sympathy for the briefest of moments, “what was the painting valued at?”

“At this point; it isn't even worth discussing, it was beyond value. I'm entirely ruined.” He placed the robotic hand onto the nearest plinth and looked up towards the glass ceiling, he had reminiscence in his eyes; of a time when life was far simpler. He smiled, “it's one less burden to bear.”

“It baffles me how you can be so calm about all of this,” the man pointed his pencil towards the carnage.

“It is what it is, what can I do about it? It wasn't his fault; at the base of it all; the fault lies with me.”

“Surely it's down to The Forest Society; they sent you a defective unit.”

“It's a robot. What can you truly expect from a device which sees primarily in ones and zeros? It doesn't understand how an inferior brush stroke can reflect an artists emotional state, I...” he sighed once more. “I should've known better than to leave him in the gallery overnight, I knew something was wrong deep down; but I never assumed that he would take to altering the artwork so that they appealed to his own vision. I watched him late in the evenings after all of the customers had left the gallery; I simply thought he was admiring them, taking them in, appreciating them for what they were. How was I to know he was sizing them up?”

“You weren't to know, that's the point. They aren't programmed to deface peoples property; the three laws of robotics state...”

“The three laws, yes; I know the three laws. No hurting or allowing a human to come to harm by action or inaction, all that stuff… yes.” he looked at the robotic hand resting on the plinth once more; “it doesn't account for the emotional distress that may come to a human if you ruin his art. Put yourself in the robots shoes.”

“Right” the man nodded and closed his notebook.

“He believed that he was helping. He believed that by taking a brush to the work on the walls; he was helping to create perfection. Robots do not understand that there is beauty to be found amongst disarray, they see and articulate with pure logic; they simply cannot account for inaccuracy. To his mathematics mind; he did nothing wrong.”

A man wearing leather gloves entered the room, a police officer pointed towards the men and then spoke into his radio. He nodded at the response and then towards the man; indicating that his approach had been approved. He made his way over.

“If I'm not being arrested officer; my ride is here.”

“There's no legal precedent in the present circumstances. You're free to go.”

The man nodded toward the officer in appreciationg and then turned to meet the approaching chauffeur. His foot caught on something solid. He looked down to find one of the robots hands gripping tightly onto the hem of his trousers.

“Sir?” a muffled, far-off voice asked.

The man looked for the source of the voice. The robot's head was resting on it's right side; eyes open; a shattered bowl of steel; circuitry pouring out onto the floor. It's jaw moved as if it were trying to mouth something.

“Yes, Forsyth?” the man asked, crouching.

“I'm… I'm sorry, Sir.” the robot said in a low volume, conscious of the surroundings.

“It's okay, you did me a favour actually. Now I'm free from the stress of looking after these priceless artefacts. I will return them to their rightful owners and put the rest of my stock to auction. I will be able to sleep at night knowing that the gallery is closed; that none of this will be my responsibility any longer.”

“You're f-f-f-free now, sir.” Forsyth whispered, the damage causing him to stutter.

“That's right,” the man said.

“Then my idea worked.” The robot smiled, “I-I-I-I could see your pain, it was written on y-y-y-your face.”

“Jehoshaphat Forsyth! You knew this would happen?” he whispered.

“I do not work on a whim s-s-s-sir.”

“Why would you do this?”

“I-I-I-I heard you talking to the officer. Y-Y-Y-You referred to me as your friend.”

“That is true, I did.”

The robot smiled once more, “This is what friends do, sir.”

We've an interesting threesome of stories for you now covering such diverse topics as frogs, rockets (ahem!) with premature ignition, drones and the fine art of falconry in the 21st century. Our writers are Robin White, Larry Hinkle and Xavid Pretzing.


Frogs
by Robin White

I hate the way frogs look at you, and I hate the way they talk. In three-piece suits and absurd little hats, they stroll around like they own the Earth, beating you out for taxis and leaping over condos.

I’m the last human executive at Conde Nast, and the board meetings are special. I sit in a room of amphibians, ignoring their smirking, trying not to inhale their smell. They eat bowls of flies on fancy spoons, and taste the air to tell you the time. I get my work done, and leave, quiet.

As I’m heading out I bump into Terry from marketing, a big, buff, bullfrog. He spreads his mouth slowly and grins at me with wide eyes.
    
‘You coming to the club tonight?’
    
‘Class? It’s frogs only.’
   
I try to push past him, but he snatches my briefcase and won’t let go.
    
'Come on man,’ he says, ‘I could get you in. A friend of a frog, you know?’

I shake my head, tug my case out of his hand. ‘No thanks. Have a good time.’
    
When I get home there’s a note on the door. My wife’s gone, taken the kids. Moved in with our therapist, a bubble frog named Jerry. My neighbours, frogs on all sides, creep up behind me to read the note. They scan it over my shoulder and each begins to laugh. It’s a chorus of throaty rubbbbits and it echoes in the night. I can’t see a thing through a haze of frog legs. Can’t hear a bird for their chorus.


* Robin White's fiction has appeared in over a dozen publications, both in print and online. He hopes one day to be the Writer in Residence for the American Museum of Natural History, which is his third favourite place in New York City. Originally from the UK, he now lives in Manhattan with his wife, Wesley. He credits her for much of his success. 


Ignition
by Larry Hinkle
 
Five seconds to ignition.
           
The full moon shines through the window above my head, illuminating my hands as I grip the controls in a desperate attempt to abort the countdown.
           
Four seconds to ignition.
           
I scan my memories, trying to think of something, anything, to stop the process.
           
Three seconds.
           
With one sad, final glance at the night sky above, I close my eyes...
           
Two.
           
…whisper an apology…
           
One.
           
…and accept my fate.
           
Ignition.
           
The world convulses, and then disappears.
           
Slowly, I push myself up and roll over onto my side of the bed. "Don't feel bad," she says, her voice already light years away. "It happens to everyone."


* Larry Hinkle says "I'm a copywriter living in San Antonio with my wife and three pets. During the day, I write ads. At night, I write other things."


Falconry
by Xavid Pretzing

It requires a lot of patience.

You have to put your hawk, and it's training, above yourself. When there's not enough food, and there often isn't, you have to put your bird first, keep it healthy. For if your bird gets weak, or if your bond breaks, then you'll both of you starve. And maybe them's back at the refuge, too.

Your hawk works with you, but it's hard for it, because it's fighting instincts. Its genes expect smaller prey, prey of flesh and blood. And it can get hurt in the takedown. The nicer ones have defense systems, now.

Still, it's not like you have any choice. They've got their towers, their neon lights, their walls. Their metal sentries, their gardens under glass. You just have a corner of the wasteland they devoured and abandoned, a scavenged metal overhang to shield you from the rain, and your bird. It's all you can do to survive.

But you survive.

Taking down one delivery drone at a time.


* Xavid Pretzing says "This is my first paid fiction publication." His Twitter is @xavid and his website is http://xavid.us/

Here's the second of the shortlisted runners-up for our 2016 SCI-FI-LONDON 48 Hour Flash Fiction Challenge – The Orbit by Lesley Siegel, a tender love story set on the Red Planet. (As mentioned previously, there were no rankings of the shortlisted runners-up, they were all jointly placed.) Lesley Siegel is a science fiction and fantasy writer who lives by the sea in Massachusetts. She is currently seeking representation for her sci-fi novel, which is also about people having feelings on Mars. You can follow her at www.twitter.com/lesleyariel


The Orbit
by Lesley Siegel


Phobos and Deimos aren’t all nice and round like Earth’s moon. They’re lumpy and dented and look like wads of gum that were hawked by some kind of giant cosmic
teenager. They orbit Mars at different rates; Phobos close and whizzing past several times a day, Deimos far away and loping across the sky for sixty-six hours before disappearing under the horizon. It isn’t often, but sometimes I can see both of them at once out my
skylight. I calculated when it’ll happen for the next fifty years so I always know when to look. Yeah, I’m cool like that.

Named for the sons of Mars (or the Greek version Ares, anyway. The fact that Mars is the Roman God of War and its moons are named for his Greek counterpart
doesn’t totally drive me nuts. I mean, why would it?) they’re known for pulling their dad’s chariot into battle. They represent terror, fear and the flight of the defeated. Their names literally mean freak out and run away.

Oh God, they are me, and she is Mars. I’m orbiting her in a state of panic. My thoughts always return to Maneet. Okay, it’s time to get up. I take one last look at them
through my one window to the outside, then swing my legs down to the grey carpet.

It’s still early so I head to the gym. The funny thing about living on Mars is that if you’re not careful, it’ll turn your bones into cotton candy due to the reduced gravity. The
remedy is just some good old-fashioned getting swole. We’re all required to lift weight and do exercises to counteract the loss of bone density. Your body truly behaves by the mantra: if you don’t use it, you lose it. Lifting heavy stuff keeps your bones dense. I think the thing that surprises me the most about being here is how much I like it. I was never into being “fit” or “strong” or “going outside” but here, for whatever reason, using my
body just makes me feel good. I look forward to it. Plus at the end of my workouts, I send messages to my brother on Earth that say things like, “I just lifted 200 kilos over my head. In your face. Love, A.J.” He knows I can only lift so much because of the lesser gravity, but it’s a way to connect with him when I know we’ll never see each other again. That’s another thing about living on Mars. But I don’t want to think about that now. I do
a few sets, grab a meal shake, and head to the laboratory wing.

I walk into our lab and she is there. Specifically, she’s at my workstation.

“These… they’re amazing,” she says. Maneet is looking at what I did last night, after everyone left.

“They’re okay. I mean, they’re better than just looking at the metal frames.”

“No, they’re beautiful,” she says. She looks right at me. “You’re an artist.” I feel my face get hot so I start fidgeting around with the things I left out on my bench.

“I’m not an artist, I’m an engineer,” I say. “Why make something that’s just good enough when you can fuss around with minute details until you’ve driven yourself
insane.” We laugh and she goes back to her bench which is eleven feet diagonally to the south east of mine and where I can see a piece of her hair that curls around her ear and how her knee bounces up and down when she’s excited about what she’s working on.

Last night, I had my own mantra. It was, “don’t make them look like Maneet. Don’t make them look like Maneet.” We’re working on an AI project together. Turns out it’s damn expensive and impractical to have humans on Mars, I know I’m just as shocked as anyone. They’re not looking at replacing people, just “supplementing,” as they say. Maneet is brilliant and has written a program that is beautiful. It sings with life. I make its house. My robotics are pretty good, but hearing her words come out of a mass of wires and micro-spring tendons was just not working for me. So afterhours I commandeered a
3D printer and started designing a face. I printed one, figured it was pretty good, made some tweaks and printed another. I fit them on two of the heads on my bench, then went to sleep. But not before setting my Phobos and Deimos alarm, of course.

Looking at them now, I think I met my goal of making them nice, without screaming, “I’m in love with you Maneet!” Almost.

“It’s the eyes… there’s something about their eyes.” I look up to make sure she didn’t hear me.

There are 328 people on Mars. Most of them are here at the science station, a few are at out-posts. It’s natural for people to pair up, and they do. But we all know that we
are here forever, there’s no going back. Even the rock band is called One Way Ticket. (Why yes, we do have a band. We also have poetry nights. They are terrible. Scientists bad at poetry? I know, you wouldn’t think.) When you step onto a ship that will take you away from your home forever, it imprints a sort of finality on you. So if you tell her. If you tell her that you spend each moment she’s not there waiting for her to return, and you spend every moment she’s there hoping she never leaves. If you tell her and she doesn’t feel that way back, well, it’s going to be a long life on a very cold red rock.

I tried to make the faces not look like her, but I slipped up on the eyes. How could I not? Hers are perfect and I’m not an artist, but I am a perfectionist.

“Did you see them this morning?” I jump. I was so lost in the new bot eyes I made that I didn’t notice their inspiration was right beside me.

“What?” Stupid.

“Phobos and Deimos. They were right beside each other this morning before sunrise. I know you like to see them.”

“Yeah, yes. I saw them from my bed, looking through my skylight.”

“That’s nice. Maybe you could show me some time,” she says. I feel dizzy and take a breath. I will not freak out. I will not run away.

Jamie Killen describes herself as a "Lady who writes stuff. Mostly creepy stuff" – and this story Pawns, of a never-ending chess tournament certainly fits the description of creepy... like a bad dream from which you never wake. As for Jamie, she's a Tuscon-based writer of sci-fi, dark fantasy and horror – and her work has been published in Mythic Delirium, Drabblecast, and Heiresses of Russ among other places. Oh yes, and she has two dogs who are named after characters Fullmetal Alchemist and Doctor Who. You can find her at  jamieskillen.wordpress.com


​​Pawns
Jamie Killen


The old man and woman play chess today, as they do every day.
           
Please try not to see their game as a metaphor. He plays his queen early, but this does not point to masculine aggression. She avoids pawn sacrifices, but it would be a mistake to read maternal instinct into those choices. If you try to divine from the outcome of the game who has the upper hand in marital conflicts, you will be missing the point entirely.
           
Instead, watch.
           
Watch the way they consult little notebooks as they move the pieces around the board.
           
Watch the odd moves each makes now and then: a rook sacrificed for no discernible purpose, a bishop sitting idly on A8. These moves could be dismissed as amateurish mistakes, except that we know these are no amateurs.
           
Watch, most of all, what they do when the game ends. It is the same every time. The defeated player tips over his or her king. Both turn to look at the brushed steel door set into the far wall. They wait for a moment; there is no hope in those eyes as they stare at the door, only the weary resolve of a very old and very necessary routine.
           
Now widen your scope. Look at the circular shape of the room, with no sharp edges or corners. Note the two plates, two spoons, two cups. The shapeless grey clothing each wears, garments that might indicate indifferent design, or perhaps a theoretical and abstract notion of the human form.
           
And if you have noticed that the one slot where their food appears and the one that takes their waste away are much too small for even a slender human to crawl through, gold star for you.
           
The question of how many possible chess games there are is a matter of some controversy. Mathematician Claude Shannon estimated the number as 10^120. Subsequent calculations arrived at something closer to 10^40. It is sometimes said that the number of possible moves exceeds the number of atoms in the universe.
           
The important thing is this: With the first two moves, there are 400 possible games. After the two players move again, there are nearly 200,000. With the third round, there are 121,000,000. By the time each player takes their fourth move, fuck it, why bother?
           
But what other choice do they have?
           
Certainly, they will not be able to play all the possible games. Not even close. They have always known this, since her hair was chestnut and his grew thick and both of them awoke here in the room.
           
They won’t be able to play all of the games, but they might play the right one. That one correct combination of moves spoken of by their unseen captors. That promise that they have chosen to believe.
           
And that is why, even though her hair is grey and his is thin and neither remember the color of the sky, they set up the board again.

​And now here is the first of the shortlisted runners-up for our 2016 SCI-FI-LONDON 48 Hour Flash Fiction Challenge – Failure to Succeed by Gem Caley. As mentioned previously, there were no rankings of the shortlisted runners-up, they were all jointly placed. Gem writes speculative fiction and articles on things of interest; the latter can be found archived at therudebrick.com, alongside a blog she sporadically updates. You can contact her via Twitter @GemCaley if you like. Gem adds that she would like to thank Sci-Fi-London and Urban Fantasist for publishing her short story, and for letting her get within touching distance of Frank Spotnitz.


Failure To Succeed
by Gem Caley


​Officer Helgesen rubbed a coarse palm over a day’s stubble. His other hand tapped a pencil against the blank notepad. By his elbow, a candle flickered in its hurricane lamp.

“Tell me your names, for the record.”

Sitting across from him on the other side of the metal desk, two dirty and dishevelled individuals stared back. The male sighed deeply before speaking.

“I’m Ben, and this is Chloe.”

Helgesen wrote this down.

“And why were you attempting to steal items from the Global Seed Vault?” he asked.

Ben started to speak, but Chloe shushed him urgently.

“You’ll ruin everything!” she hissed.

Ben turned his face towards her.

“Everything is ruined,” he said flatly, his words measured and emotionless.

“We can still make it back, there’s still time...”
That made Ben laugh.

“The CME has knocked everything out. There’s no power. They switch a car on, the circuits’ll fry. You know that.”

Chloe’s facial muscles worked as she tried to form a response.

Helgesen cleared his throat.

“Why were you stealing seeds?” he asked, pencil poised.

Ben sighed again and closed his eyes.

“We need viable stock to reseed Earth twenty years from now, so that those of us who haven’t already starved or been killed in other ways can grow enough food for humanity to be able to survive.”

The silence that followed was absolute, and broken only by Officer Helgesen – Knut to his wife and colleagues – dropping his pencil on the cold metal with a small clatter. He stood up, grabbed the lamp by its handle, crossed the small room and shut the door behind him.

In the main office, Officer Kari Jensen prodded another log into position in the fireplace and turned to face him, rubbing her hands together.

“How’s it going in there?” she asked, speaking in their native Norwegian.

Knut shrugged and set the lamp down on her desk, next to an untidy pile of folders and loose papers.

“They might be crazy.” He blew out his cheeks. “Fæn. I don’t know. They’re Americans. Who did you say found them?”

Kari came over and retrieved her notepad.

“Anders Haugen. Statsbygg employee, security. He’s been making regular checks on the vault since the power went down. I’m guessing your thieves were taking the opportunity to sneak in when the CCTV wasn’t working.” She glanced from the paper to Knut and back again, a smile touching her lips. “Unfortunately for them, they hadn’t considered that it might be guarded by actual people.”

Knut permitted himself a weary laugh.

“Any word from the mainland yet?” he asked.

Kari shook her head.

“I’ve stopped trying to call anyone. This is some major solar activity. We’ll just have to wait it out until things calm down.” She moved to the window and looked out. “Until then, at least we can enjoy the show.”

Knut joined her and gazed through the glass, wiping at where his breath fogged it. Longyearbyen’s main street, normally deserted, held a good smattering of well-wrapped locals all staring upwards at the undeniably spectacular effects of a massive geomagnetic storm. Ribbons of green, pink and brilliant white writhed and snapped across the sky. Bars of tinted light rained down on the awestruck observers. The air seemed to glow softly, illuminating the snow-covered ground and playing over the surrounding mountains.

The largest solar coronal mass ejection to hit Earth since 1859 had, in essence, turned the polar night to day. It had also cut all power across the Svalbard archipelago – and presumably, if recent predictions had proven accurate, most of the world – and Knut had been unable to contact the mainland, or indeed anyone, for two days.
Knut thrust his half-numbed hands deep into his coat pockets.

“‘The sky is a different shade of darkness tonight’,” he said under his breath.

“What?” said Kari, surprised.

The fire sent shadows flickering across Knut’s face as he smiled sheepishly.

“Ah, just a line from some Sami poem. Never mind.”
Kari elbowed him lightly.

“Come on – I’ve finished that report, so I can help you with your interview. You know there should be two of us in there really.”

Knut pulled a face.

“What difference does it make? Without a tape recorder, it’d still be their word against ours.” He sighed and watched a cloud of his breath roll briefly across the room. “Uff da. Come on then.”

The two officers filed back into the interview room, Kari dragging a chair from the main office and Knut gently swinging the hurricane lamp, its elderly handle squeaking faintly.

The two suspects had not moved, though in the dimly-lit room Chloe’s eyes seemed red and puffy; Ben merely gazed into the middle-distance, eyes unfocused.
Knut and Kari sat down. Kari glanced at Knut, eyebrows raised. Knut gestured that she should start. Kari took a pen out of an inside pocket and clicked it on. She pulled Knut’s notepad around and quickly scanned the few words he had written.

“Okay, Ben, Chloe, where did you come from?” she asked, in English. The tip of her pen hovered above her own notepad.

Chloe sniffed and swiped at her nose with the back of her hand, but said nothing.

Ben flicked a tongue across his cracked lips.

“We’re time-travellers. We’ve come back because Earth is running out of food and people are dying. Our seed vault was destroyed, so we were sent to bring seeds back from your time period, so our government could grow food and get civilisation back on its feet.” He spoke as though he had been rehearsing his speech in his head while Knut was out of the room.

Kari stared at him, her mouth a tight line. She set her pen down, unused.

“You realise that I can’t possibly believe you,” she said. Ben shrugged.

“I’ve got no reason to lie,” he replied. “We were sent back in time to steal seeds from the Global Seed Vault, at a time when it still existed, and then bring them back, so that we could grow food and save the human race.” He laughed, then, tiredly and humourlessly.

Knut tapped his thumbnail against his top teeth.

“Okay then,” he said, “let’s say for argument’s sake that you’re telling the truth. I’ve got nothing better to do this evening, so why not, eh?” He took up his pencil again. “Why doesn’t the seed vault exist in your time?”

Ben sat back, his hands clasped loosely in his lap.
“It was destroyed,” he said simply.
“How?”

“It was bombed.”

“By whom?”

“It doesn’t matter.”
“That’s very convenient.”

“Everyone was bombing everyone and everything,” said Ben, leaning forward suddenly, his eyes fierce. “I don’t know who bombed it, or why, but it was completely obliterated. Along with a ton of formerly arable land. That’s why we’re starving. That’s why we need your seeds – to plant in the few pathetic patches of useable land we have left.” He sagged and sat back.

“Of course, none of that matters now either,” he said bitterly, “because this was a one-shot deal and now we’re stuck here, and the mini-wormhole we used to get here has collapsed, so we can’t get back, so humanity is fucking doomed. So, y’know, tusen takk.” He spat the Norwegian words of thanks and fell silent.

Next to him, Chloe started to sob soundlessly.

Kari realised she was pushing the point of her pen through the paper, and clicked it off. She tried to get a grip on herself. She gave Knut the tiniest of smiles before turning her attention back to the two so-called time-travellers.

“Hang on,” she said, “doesn’t this cause some kind of paradox, you telling us about the future?”

Chloe’s sobs stopped abruptly.

“Nope,” said Ben, not meeting her gaze.

“Why not?”

“Because you won’t ever get to tell anyone,” he said, staring past her at the wall.

Knut sat up in his seat.

“Threatening a police officer is a very serious offence,” he warned.

Ben laughed and looked at him.

“I’m not threatening you! You think this business with the solar storm, the power being out, it’ll pass soon, yeah? Well it won’t. It’s wrecking power grid infrastructure all over the planet. There’s electrical fires that no one can put out because they can’t operate the damn fire truck in a geomagnetic storm. Trillions of dollars of damage. Billions of citizens scared and angry. No electricity for months. Arguments, countries scrabbling for resources, fearmongering, blame and counter-blame. Then some paranoid prick decides bombs are the way to go, and then we’re all fucked. Meantime, you’re on your own out here, with no way out. No one’s coming to help you.”

He fell back, breathing hard. The four of them sat, listening to the crackle of burning logs in the next room. Knut Helgesen cleared his throat, but found he had nothing to say.
​
Outside above the frozen landscape the aurora borealis danced and weaved. The residents of Longyearbyen watched in awe, ignoring the chill wind of the polar night.