My novelette, An Illicit Mercy, is part of a new promotion in August: Worlds Beyond Imagination.Nearly 50 science fiction and fantasy books, available at no cost.Get your FREE preview of Fallen!This is a sneak-peek of the first book of a two-part series. The sequel, Risen, is coming soon.Brendan Murphy nearly died fighting for his country.Now he’s trying to stop a war.Five years ago, alien ship appeared in low orbit all around the world and stayed there, waiting. A highly advanced alien race known as the Sabia lingered with little contact with humanity, and the worlds’ governments have been eager for answers – and access- for years.When combat veteran Brendan Murphy is wounded stopping an attack on a Sabia diplomat, he finds himself whisked aboard one of their ships and given medical aid. This rare opportunity finds him walking a tenuous line between burgeoning friendships and secret agenda that will test his loyalties and sanity in ways he can’t begin to imagine.“[Aristotle] was once asked what a friend is; and his answer was, ‘One soul abiding in two bodies.’”—Diogenes Laërtius in The Lives and Opinions of Eminent PhilosophersBorn in Brooklyn in 1928, Robert Sheckley served with the U.S. Army in Korea starting in 1946. Leaving the military two years later, he began writing science fiction in 1951, gaining a reputation for both his humor and his satire.Thanks for reading The Cosmic Codex! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.His 1953 short story “Beside Still Waters,” now in the public domain due to non-renewal of copyright, contains little of either of these elements, but a great deal of pathos. Still, it embodies science fiction historian James Gunn's description of Sheckley's writing:“…in Sheckley’s hands the standard notions of space, aliens, future artifacts, cities, overpopulation, entertainment, culture, survival, love, death and war were transmuted into something that glittered.”And based on this story, I would add “artificial intelligence, free will, and friendship.”Beside Still Watersby Robert SheckleyMark Rogers was a prospector, and he went to the asteroid belt looking for radioactives and rare metals. He searched for years, never finding much, hopping from fragment to fragment. After a time he settled on a slab of rock half a mile thick.Rogers had been born old, and he didn't age much past a point. His face was white with the pallor of space, and his hands shook a little. He called his slab of rock Martha, after no girl he had ever known.He made a little strike, enough to equip Martha with an air pump and a shack, a few tons of dirt and some water tanks, and a robot. Then he settled back and watched the stars.The robot he bought was a standard-model all-around worker, with built-in memory and a thirty-word vocabulary. Mark added to that, bit by bit. He was something of a tinkerer, and he enjoyed adapting his environment to himself.Thanks for reading The Cosmic Codex! This post is public so feel free to share it.At first, all the robot could say was "Yes, sir," and "No, sir." He could state simple problems: "The air pump is laboring, sir." "The corn is budding, sir." He could perform a satisfactory salutation: "Good morning, sir."Mark changed that. He eliminated the "sirs" from the robot's vocabulary; equality was the rule on Mark's hunk of rock. Then he dubbed the robot Charles, after a father he had never known.As the years passed, the air pump began to labor a little as it converted the oxygen in the planetoid's rock into a breathable atmosphere. The air seeped into space, and the pump worked a little harder, supplying more.The crops continued to grow on the tamed black dirt of the planetoid. Looking up, Mark could see the sheer blackness of the river of space, the floating points of the stars. Around him, under him, overhead, masses of rock drifted, and sometimes the starlight glinted from their black sides. Occasionally, Mark caught a glimpse of Mars or Jupiter. Once he thought he saw Earth.Mark began to tape new responses into Charles. He added simple responses to cue words. When he said, "How does it look?" Charles would answer, "Oh, pretty good, I guess."At first the answers were what Mark had been answering himself, in the long dialogue held over the years. But, slowly, he began to build a new personality into Charles.Mark had always been suspicious and scornful of women. But for some reason he didn't tape the same suspicion into Charles. Charles' outlook was quite different."What do you think of girls?" Mark would ask, sitting on a packing case outside the shack, after the chores were done."Oh, I don't know. You have to find the right one." The robot would reply dutifully, repeating what had been put on its tape."I never saw a good one yet," Mark would say."Well, that's not fair. Perhaps you didn't look long enough. There's a girl in the world for every man.""You're a romantic!" Mark would say scornfully. The robot would ...
