"Burn", in Echoes of the Future (Noble Romance Publishing, ebook, March 2010)
"Burn" is my story in the science-fiction m/m anthology "Echoes of the Future", which I edited and head up. Noble Romance Publishing released the anthology on 8 March. Get your copy here.
Man fusing with machine. The dawn of cyborgs. Strange alien customs. The lonely echoes in the corridor of a space station suspended in the vacuum of space, while, on earth, human cultures change and adapt to new threats and challenges.
"Echoes of the Future" is an anthology of four m/m science fiction stories, brought to you by rising stars and old hands A B Gayle, Kate Cotoner, Jude Mason and Aleksandr Voinov, who have teamed up to share their visions of a future that is darker, grittier and sexier than you thought.
Burn by Aleksandr Voinov
Flight Lieutenant Chris Waters is the pilot of a cutting-edge unmanned SAD fighter drone which are used for secret government missions. Chris is cutting-edge technology himself: his neural network is upgraded with cybertechnology and software that make him the interface of his combat drone.
Then, something goes wrong as he connects to his drone. Haunted by strange disorientating impressions, a so-called 'ghost', he hooks up on leave with fellow pilot Cyril for a night. But Cyril is not the man Chris thought he is, and Chris soon finds out what the 'ghost' in his body really is, as well as the truth about his missions.
Reversal by A.B. Gayle
Sebastian is bored. He has another five years of lone duty supervising his family's robots on their space station. The last thing he wants to do is the housework. For Christmas, his mother sends him a Domestic Darling cyborg. True to form, she purchases a factory second and sends one that doesn't quite fit the bill. Instead of being a pert blond with big tits and cute ass like in the advertisement, this one is six foot tall and built like a Greek god, a very virile Greek God. In an attempt to improve its functioning, Sebastian uses some of this brilliant programming skills. The resulting changes ensure Sebastian will never be bored again.
Conduit by Kate Cotoner
Ismail and his ex-husband Toki are divided by class and circumstance. Toki is a cybernetic upgrade human and part of the city elite, while Ismail is a baseline human and a cop. Their brief marriage failed when Toki walked out, but now he's back, asking for Ismail's help against Hanuman, a malicious cyber-intelligence who plans to poison the water supply of all baseline humans in the city. Now Ismail and Toki must find the underground reservoir targeted by Hanuman before time runs out for them both.
Rescue Me by Jude Mason
Assigned to guard Leetchi Ambassador Dar and his family, Lieutenant Thomas Patch finds himself inexplicably drawn to Jad, the diplomat’s son. The tall, slender Leetchi turns out to be as gay as Patch and steals his heart. When Jad is kidnapped, Patch goes undercover to find and rescue him. The rescue takes him to the underbelly of the space port city and a whore house where slaves are bought and sold at will. Finding Jad proves easier than he’d hoped, but the rescue takes an insane twist when their escape attempt was thwarted by the one person they knew was on their side.
Will Jad’s enslavement tear the lovers apart? Will Patch be torn from the love of his life? Find out, in Rescue Me.
Man fusing with machine. The dawn of cyborgs. Strange alien customs. The lonely echoes in the corridor of a space station suspended in the vacuum of space, while, on earth, human cultures change and adapt to new threats and challenges.
"Echoes of the Future" is an anthology of four m/m science fiction stories, brought to you by rising stars and old hands A B Gayle, Kate Cotoner, Jude Mason and Aleksandr Voinov, who have teamed up to share their visions of a future that is darker, grittier and sexier than you thought.
Burn by Aleksandr Voinov
Flight Lieutenant Chris Waters is the pilot of a cutting-edge unmanned SAD fighter drone which are used for secret government missions. Chris is cutting-edge technology himself: his neural network is upgraded with cybertechnology and software that make him the interface of his combat drone.
Then, something goes wrong as he connects to his drone. Haunted by strange disorientating impressions, a so-called 'ghost', he hooks up on leave with fellow pilot Cyril for a night. But Cyril is not the man Chris thought he is, and Chris soon finds out what the 'ghost' in his body really is, as well as the truth about his missions.
Reversal by A.B. Gayle
Sebastian is bored. He has another five years of lone duty supervising his family's robots on their space station. The last thing he wants to do is the housework. For Christmas, his mother sends him a Domestic Darling cyborg. True to form, she purchases a factory second and sends one that doesn't quite fit the bill. Instead of being a pert blond with big tits and cute ass like in the advertisement, this one is six foot tall and built like a Greek god, a very virile Greek God. In an attempt to improve its functioning, Sebastian uses some of this brilliant programming skills. The resulting changes ensure Sebastian will never be bored again.
Conduit by Kate Cotoner
Ismail and his ex-husband Toki are divided by class and circumstance. Toki is a cybernetic upgrade human and part of the city elite, while Ismail is a baseline human and a cop. Their brief marriage failed when Toki walked out, but now he's back, asking for Ismail's help against Hanuman, a malicious cyber-intelligence who plans to poison the water supply of all baseline humans in the city. Now Ismail and Toki must find the underground reservoir targeted by Hanuman before time runs out for them both.
Rescue Me by Jude Mason
Assigned to guard Leetchi Ambassador Dar and his family, Lieutenant Thomas Patch finds himself inexplicably drawn to Jad, the diplomat’s son. The tall, slender Leetchi turns out to be as gay as Patch and steals his heart. When Jad is kidnapped, Patch goes undercover to find and rescue him. The rescue takes him to the underbelly of the space port city and a whore house where slaves are bought and sold at will. Finding Jad proves easier than he’d hoped, but the rescue takes an insane twist when their escape attempt was thwarted by the one person they knew was on their side.
Will Jad’s enslavement tear the lovers apart? Will Patch be torn from the love of his life? Find out, in Rescue Me.
Excerpt:
Burn
For DARPA, Joe Haldeman and William Gibson
Is this thing on? Fucking nuisance. No, not you. Hell on a stick, can somebody help me with these cables? What’s the point of being a wired freak if you still get tangled in fucking cables. No jokes about bondage from the techie peanut gallery. Thank you kindly.
Okay, ‘Day in the Life’ documentary. You would think journalists came up with that format so they'd have an excuse for people to curse live on TV. Hi, Mom.
I’m your host for the day.
I’m not going to stand in front of a mirror so you can see me.
Here’s my hand. Nice and tanned. I spend a lot of time on the flight deck out in the sun. We tankers take any chance we can get for real sensory input. Real wind, real sun. Keeps us sane.
There’s the peanut gallery.
Come on, guys, wave to the camera. Gimme a smile, Cameron. That’s it. Those guys watch my vitals. And my other body, the steel one. Yeah, Man of Steel. There’s a joke about how the first unit was marketed as a superhero. Didn’t work out when a couple of the guys went insane on a post-burn rampage.
This is my tank. Not much to look at, no cool special effects. Just a filled suspension tank. The best thing is . . . it has hardly any cables.
Up there you can see the monitors, which would show what I was doing if I were active. I can’t see a thing when I’m in the tank, but sometimes we sit here for debrief and watch the replay. It’s like the movies. Some guys even bring popcorn from the mess.
Let’s take a walk. This is the USS Barack Obama, even though he almost killed this project dead when he was president. I guess even liberals like to have aircraft carriers named after them.
We’re out in the Indian Ocean; the exact position is classified, sorry guys. Embedded journalism only gets you so far. Wonder if they’ll cut that part?
I’m Flight Lieutenant Chris Waters. Funny, I’m a pilot but I never really leave the ground. Studied aeronautics, but my kind of plane doesn’t really care about how many Gs a pilot can withstand.
DARPA built my baby, which I’ll show you in a minute.
Okay, here’s the SAD drone. Looks a bit like a plane, but it’s more like a Transformer. They even called the prototype Optimus Prime. Techies watch way too much TV. SAD is the technical name, but we call them Demons. This baby has a dynamic chassis, like one of those ultra-geared sports cars that change shape with the speed. SADs do that. They can be changed completely.
No pilot, see? It’s basically carbon fiber, with an engine strong enough to punch through to the moon, and it can transform any living pilot in there to mush from the acceleration. You asked.
My Demon comes with the usual next-generation Hellfire missiles, but it’s a weapons platform. You can put whatever you like on it.
Those guys in the coveralls are retooling a SAD to help our Pakistani friends guard their borders, so it’ll have cameras and some anti-Stinger gear. Yeah, the towelheads just never run out of the Cold War gear. It’s good fun blowing them up when they aim a Stinger at you.
I could outrace whatever they throw at me, but a civilian 'copter might not be so lucky.
That’s it, really. Oh yeah, tankers.
There’s some high-end tech inside my body, too.
I don’t look like it, but I’m worth a few million bucks. Not sure how up-to-date you guys are with neuroscience, but DARPA fixed a major problem in human-machine-communication. Forget your Playstation controllers and US Marines with click and play interfaces. I am the interface. Now, look at the SAD there. See it activate. Power of my brain, baby, and I didn’t even touch it. And off. Simple.
They retooled my neural network so I connect with pretty much any appliance I want. Like Bluetooth, only better and way more secure. I even got my coffee machine set up so I can switch it on while still in the bunk. Freaks out the people I go home with on leave, but hell, it’s fun.
Uh-oh.
Okay, that’s what a level two alarm sounds like. Should I take this thing off? No? Realism? Okay.
Right, I’m now hauling ass to the changing rooms like the other guys. We have some kind of emergency, so some bigwig pressed the button, and we’re all jumping. I got dropped off just this morning, so I better get stripped.
Here’s my locker. Not exciting. Here’s the flight suit. That thing is really important, real expensive too, calibrated just for me, but I’ll explain that later.
Now, squeezing and wriggling. Looks totally stupid, but it gets my neurons warmed up. You wouldn’t want to do what I’m doing all the time.
That’s . . . always . . . a very nice feeling. Yeah. Feels a bit weird, though. Have to get it checked, but no time right now. I should be out there in fifteen minutes, including twelve minutes for immersion and connection.
Now back to the tank. See, the techies are actually focused this time. The water in the tank is body temperature, but they can cool me down or heat me up if they want to and if I need it. Sometimes I get a little hot. Flight mask for my oxygen and they also monitor my breathing.
Screens are all on; they’re the cameras from the SADs.
I’m flying with two other guys; both are getting immersed over there. Getting immersed is something you get used to, at least there’s a steel grill to support me.
Okay, I’m ready.
Activate.
Holy fuck. What the hell?
* * * * *
Chris managed to pull off the headset while his body burned. Every fiber, every cell in every muscle screamed at him, a jolt so painful he could barely breathe.
“Off the scale! Off the scale!” A neuro-tech shouted and hammered her hand on a red button. Emergency release. The water drained away, and two medics were instantly at his side. He could only squirm. The suit. The goddamned suit.
(...)
For DARPA, Joe Haldeman and William Gibson
Is this thing on? Fucking nuisance. No, not you. Hell on a stick, can somebody help me with these cables? What’s the point of being a wired freak if you still get tangled in fucking cables. No jokes about bondage from the techie peanut gallery. Thank you kindly.
Okay, ‘Day in the Life’ documentary. You would think journalists came up with that format so they'd have an excuse for people to curse live on TV. Hi, Mom.
I’m your host for the day.
I’m not going to stand in front of a mirror so you can see me.
Here’s my hand. Nice and tanned. I spend a lot of time on the flight deck out in the sun. We tankers take any chance we can get for real sensory input. Real wind, real sun. Keeps us sane.
There’s the peanut gallery.
Come on, guys, wave to the camera. Gimme a smile, Cameron. That’s it. Those guys watch my vitals. And my other body, the steel one. Yeah, Man of Steel. There’s a joke about how the first unit was marketed as a superhero. Didn’t work out when a couple of the guys went insane on a post-burn rampage.
This is my tank. Not much to look at, no cool special effects. Just a filled suspension tank. The best thing is . . . it has hardly any cables.
Up there you can see the monitors, which would show what I was doing if I were active. I can’t see a thing when I’m in the tank, but sometimes we sit here for debrief and watch the replay. It’s like the movies. Some guys even bring popcorn from the mess.
Let’s take a walk. This is the USS Barack Obama, even though he almost killed this project dead when he was president. I guess even liberals like to have aircraft carriers named after them.
We’re out in the Indian Ocean; the exact position is classified, sorry guys. Embedded journalism only gets you so far. Wonder if they’ll cut that part?
I’m Flight Lieutenant Chris Waters. Funny, I’m a pilot but I never really leave the ground. Studied aeronautics, but my kind of plane doesn’t really care about how many Gs a pilot can withstand.
DARPA built my baby, which I’ll show you in a minute.
Okay, here’s the SAD drone. Looks a bit like a plane, but it’s more like a Transformer. They even called the prototype Optimus Prime. Techies watch way too much TV. SAD is the technical name, but we call them Demons. This baby has a dynamic chassis, like one of those ultra-geared sports cars that change shape with the speed. SADs do that. They can be changed completely.
No pilot, see? It’s basically carbon fiber, with an engine strong enough to punch through to the moon, and it can transform any living pilot in there to mush from the acceleration. You asked.
My Demon comes with the usual next-generation Hellfire missiles, but it’s a weapons platform. You can put whatever you like on it.
Those guys in the coveralls are retooling a SAD to help our Pakistani friends guard their borders, so it’ll have cameras and some anti-Stinger gear. Yeah, the towelheads just never run out of the Cold War gear. It’s good fun blowing them up when they aim a Stinger at you.
I could outrace whatever they throw at me, but a civilian 'copter might not be so lucky.
That’s it, really. Oh yeah, tankers.
There’s some high-end tech inside my body, too.
I don’t look like it, but I’m worth a few million bucks. Not sure how up-to-date you guys are with neuroscience, but DARPA fixed a major problem in human-machine-communication. Forget your Playstation controllers and US Marines with click and play interfaces. I am the interface. Now, look at the SAD there. See it activate. Power of my brain, baby, and I didn’t even touch it. And off. Simple.
They retooled my neural network so I connect with pretty much any appliance I want. Like Bluetooth, only better and way more secure. I even got my coffee machine set up so I can switch it on while still in the bunk. Freaks out the people I go home with on leave, but hell, it’s fun.
Uh-oh.
Okay, that’s what a level two alarm sounds like. Should I take this thing off? No? Realism? Okay.
Right, I’m now hauling ass to the changing rooms like the other guys. We have some kind of emergency, so some bigwig pressed the button, and we’re all jumping. I got dropped off just this morning, so I better get stripped.
Here’s my locker. Not exciting. Here’s the flight suit. That thing is really important, real expensive too, calibrated just for me, but I’ll explain that later.
Now, squeezing and wriggling. Looks totally stupid, but it gets my neurons warmed up. You wouldn’t want to do what I’m doing all the time.
That’s . . . always . . . a very nice feeling. Yeah. Feels a bit weird, though. Have to get it checked, but no time right now. I should be out there in fifteen minutes, including twelve minutes for immersion and connection.
Now back to the tank. See, the techies are actually focused this time. The water in the tank is body temperature, but they can cool me down or heat me up if they want to and if I need it. Sometimes I get a little hot. Flight mask for my oxygen and they also monitor my breathing.
Screens are all on; they’re the cameras from the SADs.
I’m flying with two other guys; both are getting immersed over there. Getting immersed is something you get used to, at least there’s a steel grill to support me.
Okay, I’m ready.
Activate.
Holy fuck. What the hell?
* * * * *
Chris managed to pull off the headset while his body burned. Every fiber, every cell in every muscle screamed at him, a jolt so painful he could barely breathe.
“Off the scale! Off the scale!” A neuro-tech shouted and hammered her hand on a red button. Emergency release. The water drained away, and two medics were instantly at his side. He could only squirm. The suit. The goddamned suit.
(...)
Reviews:
"As with all anthologies Echoes of the Future was a real mix of themes and ideas which meant that there was probably something for everyone within its pages. I greatly enjoyed reading it and would recommend the anthology to all those who like m/m speculative romance." - Jenre, Well Read
"All of the stories are about what the (possible) future might be, whether it’s alien, advance tech, creation or even mixing the core element of human and tech – ECHOES OF THE FUTURE is something to get the juicing flowing and if you like sci-fi or off world plotline or even if you don't, this will make you want to go looking and explore what else is out there." - Erotic Horizons (Link includes Q&A with me)
"This story is fun with cutting edge technology. It opens with a interview of the lead character, Chris, that immediately plugs you into his head. Which as it turns out is the whole point of this ride. It has intrique, hot sex & a mysterious man that rocks Chris's world. I enjoyed the excitement & high tech world that was created here. As usual, Mr. Voinov leaves me wanting more, but it doesn't take away from the BURN. 4 stars - Enjoy" - Karen at Goodreads
"A very lovely collection of quality futuristic m/m stories, running the gamut. Each story in this anthology is worth reading, but by far my favorite was A.B. Gayle's contribution, the final story. I loved the way she made me frown, cant my head at the screen, and laugh, over and over again. For a short piece, it was extremely well crafted." - Rhianon at Goodreads
"All of the stories are about what the (possible) future might be, whether it’s alien, advance tech, creation or even mixing the core element of human and tech – ECHOES OF THE FUTURE is something to get the juicing flowing and if you like sci-fi or off world plotline or even if you don't, this will make you want to go looking and explore what else is out there." - Erotic Horizons (Link includes Q&A with me)
"This story is fun with cutting edge technology. It opens with a interview of the lead character, Chris, that immediately plugs you into his head. Which as it turns out is the whole point of this ride. It has intrique, hot sex & a mysterious man that rocks Chris's world. I enjoyed the excitement & high tech world that was created here. As usual, Mr. Voinov leaves me wanting more, but it doesn't take away from the BURN. 4 stars - Enjoy" - Karen at Goodreads
"A very lovely collection of quality futuristic m/m stories, running the gamut. Each story in this anthology is worth reading, but by far my favorite was A.B. Gayle's contribution, the final story. I loved the way she made me frown, cant my head at the screen, and laugh, over and over again. For a short piece, it was extremely well crafted." - Rhianon at Goodreads