Short Stories Volume 3 E-Book

Liam Mor

• Herausgeber: Liam Mor
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

A series of Liam Mor’s science fiction short stories, questioning the nature of conscious existence. Are we real? Are our minds just part of our bodies? Will there soon be a new form of artificial consciousness and what might it be like in the distant future?

• The Last Referendum
• The Hollow Men
• Philosopher King
• Cold Sunset
• The Conspiracy

Leseprobe

Short Stories - Volume 3

by Liam Mor

Copyright ©2025 Liam Mor

First edition published10th March 2025

About the Author

Liam Mor is an independent amateur artist, living somewhere in Switzerland.

Visit Liam’s website: https://liam-mor.com/

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

Table of Contents

The Last Referendum

The Hollow Men

Philosopher King

Cold Sunset

The Conspiracy

About the Author / Connect with Liam Mor

The Last Referendum

The walls of my bedroom shake and an analogue poster of one of my I-pop idols falls to the floor. I sit cross-legged on the edge of my bed watching the images on the wall opposite. I can smell the burning of tyres and feel the screaming of the crowd. The lead car is barely ahead and is followed closely by two rival form-e racing teams. As the end of the race nears, adverts pop up on the walls to my right and left, entering into my thoughts through my peripheral vision, but I am too focussed on the race to register what they are about. With a sudden, almost deafening increase in screaming from the crowd, the Niktes team wins first place, followed by joint second for the rival teams and then a pack of wannabe race companies cross the finishing line several seconds later. I lie back and thrust my fists in the air towards the lead cockpit view on my ceiling where the human driver’s fists are still clenched around the old-fashioned steering wheel. The last race of the championship has been won by my favourite driver and my favourite team. I pause the post-race commentary and leave my bedroom.

“Appa, amma, did you hear the result?” I ask, eagerly.

“Didn’t hear a thing, my son,” smiles my father, “haven’t you heard of noise-reduction sound insulation?” he jokes.

“You guys are so flimsy,” I shake my head as I reply, “what are you doing anyway?”

“We were just chatting about the upcoming elections,” says my mother, “trying to figure out our voting parameters.”

“Your mother wants to dial up empathy as usual,” teases my father.

“And what is wrong with that? Too little empathy and too much aggression, that’s the problem with politicians these days.”

I say nothing. I am too young to vote and all I can think about is the result of the race so I decide to call a couple of my friends from school on Throwback, a retro vidchat, to talk about it. Making my excuses, I return to my bedroom and leave my parents to continue their discussion about personality facet settings.

“Ashwin, what did your appa call you when you were a child?”

“I think he called me Ash quite often, although more usually putr. Nobody says that anymore; the old ways are dying out.”

“Not the old ways, pati, it is us who are dying out. Do you remember when we first voted to replace people as leaders? What a mess it used to be with crazy politicians making alls sorts of nonsense. People say that we tend to remember the past with nostalgia but I don’t miss those politicians. They only wanted to fill their own pockets with gold.”

“Must have been quite exhausting walking around with heavy pockets full of gold.”

They laugh for a while then fall silent, remembering their years together.

****

In another time, Ashwin is watching the debate on television finally start after a substantial delay due to a song contest which is being transmitted live across all of Eurasia. I never understood why events can still be delayed, he thinks to himself … when I was a child there were only a few television channels and so live events might cause knock-on effects to subsequent programming but today’s ‘television’, as I still call it, is actually all cloud based streaming, so I do not understand why there are still delays sometimes. Thinking about it, I suppose that some algorithm or other calculates how to maximise viewer engagement and that the driver is increasing advertising revenue. I sometimes forget this, as I have stuck a home-made cardboard shield over the bottom few centimetres of my viewscreen, which obscures most of the advertising banners and links. Anyway, the introductions of the election debate participants is over and I listen to the host’s first question.

“The upcoming referendum is perhaps one of the most significant in the history of humanity. Would you care to comment why?” The host bears zirs fearsomely white and perfect teeth, which would be considered aggressive by other great apes but, strangely enough, is considered friendly by our particular species, at least superficially. Ze looks at the southern European representative, Margarida.

“Quite simply, River, we are voting whether or not to replace human politicians with AI bots. We all saw the mistakes which happened once we gave autonomous drones the ability to decide for themselves exactly when to open fire upon our enemies. Do we really want to give those same flawed artificial so-called intelligences political power over us? What will become of human society if we stop deciding for ourselves? We cannot allow this to happen …”

“But, if I may,” interrupts Jacinta, the Sahul representative, “how many mistakes have been made by human generals, by human politicians? Power corrupts, and human leaders end up fighting just to stay in power rather than governing wisely. Politics is a dirty business and the increasing tensions between regions, as basic resources grow scarcer in our post-AGW world, has already caused tremendous suffering, water wars, famine in some regions simultaneously with glut in other regions. We are no longer politically capable of managing the complex human-made problems which are destroying our civilisation. We have an existential threat to humanity. The solution cannot be more of the same. We need to change the way we govern human society and these new AI leaders offer us the opportunity to do exactly that, while retaining the ability to tweak them according to our values.”