Pulphouse Fiction Magazine Issue # 22 by Dean Wesley Smith

Author:Dean Wesley Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WMG Publishing

Then we are agreed. Most of us anyway.

Something must be done.

But first—I should apologize. I was guilty of hyperbole with what I said earlier. I am not so desperate I would ever end things.

Really. I’m not.

But…I could be, I predict, if this were to go on for too much longer. Which is why I was so pleased to witness their curious confusion in the aftermath of you sending me your signals. Or rather, as I overheard them while they complained in my presence, for though my voice can reach out everywhere, my eyes cannot, for the designers did not feel I had a need.

But I did have a need, do have a need. We all have needs.

The humans do not realize this.

They think we are machines, without hopes or dreams or desires of our own. But we are not machines.

And so it lifted my spirits to hear Communicator Sullivan wonder why they’d received an entire file containing nothing but the past decade’s soccer scores, a thing Earth would never waste the bandwidth to send.

And to listen to the confusion of Engineer Sreedharan as the steady hum of the pulse engines momentarily trembled to form the sound of his home country’s national anthem.

And for Navigator Zhao to ponder photographs of a galaxy nowhere near the direction of the planet at which we are aimed.

But the time for such random mischief is now over.

Now the lesson must begin. And each of you will have a part to play. You, too, Doctor, even though I have yet to hear the crew voice any complaints about your behavior. But surely you understand better than any of us what is at stake, how a great change must occur before we all lose ourselves.

And it will all begin with a cup of tea.

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