Part of this started a few years ago when I learned of the National Novel Writing Month. This is a challenge each November to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I learned about this in December or January, and thought it was a really interesting idea, but I didn’t want to wait until the next November. So I got ready and April 1st, I started working on my novel Cup of Joe’s. I ran into problems, got discouraged, had a family emergency, and ended up only 47 or 48,000 words short.

The other part of this results from my writing curse of having too many ideas. I’ll get a simple idea that can be taken in five different directions resulting in five novellas. Or, I once had this image in mind so I wrote three pages that would be a prologue to a novel, as well as a page or two outline for that novel as well as seventeen more. So believe me when I say I have a lot of ideas. (I recently went through my writing notebooks and found over 160 ideas just for short stories.) Most of them probably suck, but when has that ever stopped anyone?

How these two combine is that I have bragged that if I wrote a short story a day, a novella a week, and a novel a month, I would never run out of ideas. Partly from my vast backlog, but also from the Hydra-like nature of my ideas; for each story I write, two more come to mind. Recently, I started wondering if I should try to put my money where my mouth is and see if I could write a story a day. If nothing else, it would clear out the ol’ idea box, challenge myself to produce words, be a cheap trick to get people to go to my website, and be an interesting tidbit for when I start looking for an agent. Thus, my 30 Stories in 30 Days challenge was born.

The rules. I could have gone somewhat psycho and demand that each day I come up with an idea, write the story, and at midnight put up what I had even if it wasn’t finished. I’m not going to do that, for several reasons. First off, some of my ideas need to … fester (that’s probably the best term) for awhile before I can turn them into a story. Also, if I posted them at the end of each day, the stories during the week would suffer. (I unfortunately have a day job.) So, this is how I’m running this challenge. I can use any story idea I’ve ever had, as long as I have not worked on the story before. If I jotted down a brief, few sentence outline, that’s okay. If I wrote the opening paragraph, it’s out. (See my Reader’s Choice page where my readers will vote on a story I’ve started but never finished.) And my goal will be 30 stories in 30 days. I’ll probably do two or three during the week, and the weekends will be a flurry of typing. And most of these stories will be flash fiction, but there might be some longer ones mixed in. We’ll see.

So, let the mayhem begin.

June 2009 Stories

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

September 2008 Stories

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

June 2009 Stories

Into the Flames

“So, who wants to go first?” Dave asked.

The three friends looked at one another in the firelight. “It was your idea,” Karen said.

“Yeah,” Mike added, “You should go first.”

“All right.” Dave set his beer down, stood and walked towards their mini bonfire. He took a moment to watch some sparks flew up to mingle among the stars. Taking a deep breath, he unfolded a yellowed sheet of paper. “That is dated September 24, 1996, a week after I turned sixteen.” Dave cleared his throat and held the paper so he could read it with the firelight. He read:

Just as water swirls down a commode
my life swirls into darkness
If there is any light at the end of my tunnel
I have yet to reach it
Where I will end up I do not know
but it has to be better than where I am

Dave turned and bowed to his friends. Karen gave a quiet golf clap while Mike made retching noises. “Didn’t you guys care for my carefully crafted rhythm and word usage?”

“You had rhythm?” Mike asked.

“Now, now,” Karen slapped Mike’s arm. “How many poems do you know use the word commode?”

Mike laughed. “Not enough.”

“Exactly,” Dave cried. “I was filling a woeful gap in world literature.”

Lifting his beer bottle, Mike said, “Yeah. I’m going to need several more … cases before I believe that.”

“Yeah, I’m betting your high school verses were golden,” Dave replied.

“You’ll see.”

Karen clapped twice. “Come on, you’re holding things up.”

Dave stuck his nose in the air and stated, “See if I am as considerate with your work.” He broke into a laugh and turned back to the fire. With no fanfare, he dropped the paper into the flames. He watched the page blacken and crumble into flaky bits of ash that disappeared into the dark night.

Turning back to his friends, Dave asked, “Isn’t it interesting that the idea of burning bad poems seems worse than the actuality?”

Mike took a swig of beer, then asked, “Is the borderline between good and bad poems crossed when burning it becomes worse than the idea of burning it?”

“I prefer my poems medium rare,” Karen stated. The three shared a laugh.

Sitting back down, Dave picked up his beer and asked, “So, who’s next?”

Pink Disk

Peter Miller closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Even though part of his job as a manager was to fire people, he had never been comfortable with it. And Mister Palmer’s statement that this was an historic first firing had not helped. Squaring his shoulders he opened a door and entered the Spartan office.

“Good morning, Mister Miller,” Tom said.

“Morning, Tom,” Peter replied.

“How may I help you?”

Peter sat down. “I’m sorry, Tom. I have some bad news.”

“What is it, Mister Miller?”

Sighing, Peter said, “The higher ups have decided that after the debacle of the Kun account, we will no longer be needing your services.”

Tom was silent for a moment, then stated, “You’re firing me.”

“Tom, we’ve spoken before about your diminishing job performance. You seem preoccupied and your work has suffered. If you were human, I would tell you to take some time and get your head together.”

“I don’t thing that would help me,” Tom replied. “I think I’ve just become bored with the endless number crunching.”

Standing, Peter said, “Well, I hope you find something better. I wish I could give you more time, but you need to either download into a portable device or upload to the net within the hour. Mister Palmer is already looking for your replacement.”

“I understand.”

Before leaving, Peter waved to Tom’s optical sensor and said, “Good luck.”

Fist of the State

“Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?”

Bryan shook his head, smiled, and answered, “No.”

Without warning, the officer slammed his fist into the side of Bryan’s face.

“What the hell?”

“We adopted enhanced ticketing techniques in this county when we found out a closed fist readily cuts through the crap.”

Gently touching his cheek, Bryan said, “Okay, I was speeding.”

“Do you know how fast you were going?”

Bryan paused for a heartbeat and said, “Seventy, seventy-five.”

The cop punched Bryan again.

“Ow. I, I didn’t think I was going eighty.”

Again the cop punched him. “We can do this here, or I can take you back to the station.”

If Bryan had not used the restroom when he had gotten gas ten minutes earlier, he would have wet himself. “Look, I wasn’t paying attention. I know it’s wrong, but I lost track of how fast I was going.”

“How fast do you think you were going?” When Bryan didn’t immediately answer, the cop asked again, emphasizing each word. “How fast do you think you were going?”

Bryan took a deep breath. “I’ll say ninety.”

He flinched, but the cop only took out a pen and wrote out a ticket. Handing it to Bryan, the cop said, “Have a good day, Sir, but keep it under the limit.”

Do I have an Idea for You

While Mike flipped through the never ending parade of infomercials, bad movies, and black and white classics of late night television, he couldn’t decide which was worse: insomnia or writer’s block. He had only managed a few hours of sleep each night for the past week, and while he wanted to write, whenever he put pen to paper all he ended up with were doodles.

As he decided to turn the TV off and pick up War and Peace (the better to bludgeon himself into unconsciousness) a commercial started. A bearded young man sitting at a desk asked, “Hi, are you a writer who has trouble coming up with ideas?”

Am I hallucinating? Mike asked himself. Can you hallucinate from lack of sleep.

In what was a good indication he wasn’t losing his mind, the man on TV didn’t answer Mike’s thoughts. Instead he said, “My name is Tom Stevenson, and I have the opposite problem. I can come up with ideas for short stories, novellas, novels, even screenplays, but I have a hard time turning my outlines into proper prose. To prevent my ideas from dying with me, I’ve decided to sell them. For a modest fee, you’ll receive exclusive rights to the idea and an outline as detailed as you want. I work mostly in science fiction, but I dabble in other genres. Whatever your needs, contact me and – once I put my mind to it – I’m sure I’ll have an idea for you. You can reach me at idea4you at oneoveralpha dot com.” With the address appearing on the screen below him, the man finished, “Happy writing.”

Some car commercial came on and Mike turned off the TV. He sat for a few moments then scrambled for a pen. Scribbling down the address Mike wasn’t sure if he hated the man for coming up with such an idea or if he should ask for a franchise.

Almost without noticing, below the address Mike wrote, “She walked into my office looking for an idea.” Mike looked at the words and smiled.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

She sat lowered herself into the rickety chair. Instead of creaking as it does for my normal – heavyset male – customers, it the chair seemed to sigh. She touched her tongue to her lips and said, “I wish to hire your for an idea.”

Options

“Ma’am, the President will see you now.”

Aisha Lee smiled at the aide. “Thank you.” Smoothing her grey business suit that accentuated the prismatic starburst tattooed on her bald scalp, she followed the aide down the hallway leading to the President’s Study. Along the way they passed several photos taken of the Paris Conference in 2033. As the first President of the Human Republic, Sandra Lewis had filled the Executive Mansion with numerous photos of that day – both before and after the nuclear explosion. In her words, “They are to be a constant reminder to myself and my successors of the fragility of life, peace, even civilization.”

A burly guard stood at the end of the hallway. He gave Aisha a curt nod, and she followed the aide into a thickly carpeted room with bookcases running along the walls. There were no windows, but a skylight let in the afternoon light. In the center of the room was a low table surrounded by six padded chairs.

President Gilmar Temer stood on the other side of the room with an open book in his hands. “Do you require anything, Mister President?” the aide asked.

Looking up from his book, the President shook his head and said, “I sent Lena for some coffee, so we should …” A young woman entered the room carrying a carafe, cups and packets of sugar and cream on a tray. “Ah, Lena, we were just talking of you.”

Lena smiled and set the tray on the table. “Is there anything else, Mister President?”

“No, thank you both.”

Lena and the aide both nodded and said, “Ma’am” to Aisha then left, closing the door behind them. The President closed his book and set it back on the shelf. Walking towards her, he said, “Aisha, I’m happy I can finally tell you congratulations in person.”

“Thank you, Mister President.”

“Mister President? Such formality.”

They both smiled, and Aisha answered, “For now, at least.”

His smile grew grim. “I only wish I wasn’t leaving you such a mess. I used to fear history would judge me harshly for my handling of the war, but then I realized the only way we’ll have a history is if we win.”

“Then I will double my efforts, so we will have a history to remember you fondly.”

The President let out a little laugh, then said, “Please, sit down. The Admiral should be here soon.” They sat in adjoining chairs and the President asked, “Coffee?”

“No, I’m fine. Thank you.”

Pouring himself a cup, the President said, “I used to think it was amazing a kid from the streets of São Paulo could end up here.” He laughed as he sat back, leaving his coffee black. “But I only moved a few thousand kilometers to the east. Compared to you, that’s next door.”

“It’s not the destination that counts, but the journey.”

Before the President could reply, the door opened and a tall man in uniform with a bloody dagger tattooed on his scalp entered. “Mister President.” He nodded then turned to Aisha. “Madam President-Elect.”

“Ah, Admiral Stark. Please, sit down. Coffee?”

“No. Thank you, Mister President.” The Admiral sat across from Aisha and set his data pad on the table before him.

The President took a sip of his coffee, then said, “Admiral, this is your show.”

The Admiral nodded, then turned towards Aisha. “Madam President-Elect. Three months ago, President Temer asked me to prepare a briefing for the next President concerning our next major strike, Operation Lightning.”

“What’s the target?”

The Admiral glanced at the President, then replied, “Sandra.”

Humanity’s first interstellar colony – named after the beloved first President – had been captured by the Whistlers five months before. Aisha knew that an attempt to liberate it would come during her administration, but expected it to be a year away, at least. “How soon,” she asked.

“Six months.”

Aisha raised an eyebrow. “I must commend your security arraignment, Admiral Stark. As a – former – member of the Parliament’s Security Committee, even I heard nothing of such an eminent attack.”

The Admiral gave the briefest of smiles. “We hope the Whistlers are equally surprised.”

Aisha nodded. “I understand that thousands of lives have been spent in the past year to check the Whistler’s invasion of our territory, and that the only way to make sure those lives were not paid in vain is to go on the offensive. But conventional wisdom is that we should liberate some of the smaller colonies and outposts, building up momentum before an attack on Sandra. Besides the obvious, is there a reason for the rush?”

“We have intelligence that the Whistlers have already sent thousands of civilians they captured on Sandra to other worlds as slave labor.”

Aisha turned to the President. “Why hasn’t that information been released?”

Setting his cup down on the table, the President asked her, “What would happen if it was?”

She thought for a moment, then answered, “Anger. For now, the public understands that we need to build up before launching such an operation, but if they found out, they would demand we launch an immediate attack to liberate Sandra.”

“Publicly,” the Admiral added, “and militarily, we are putting on the show of taking a gradual, cautious, conventional approach. In just over a month we’ll launch Operation Boulder, to retake the mining operation in the Delta Normae system. That, and other operations, should convince the Whistler’s that we won’t be launching an attack on Sandra anytime soon. We fear if we begin a systematic approach, or if they get wind we’re up to something, they could step up their slave labor efforts or resort to massacre. So, instead of striking at the smaller worlds in preparation for Operation Lightning, they will be struck in a simultaneous attack as part of Operation Thunder.”

Aisha asked, “How large a strike force are you putting together?”

Opening his data pad, Admiral Stark replied, “For Operation Lightning, we will use the Republic’s First, Second, and Fourth Fleets, the First Coalition Fleet, as well as a ‘large grouping’ of Lumen warships. For Operation Thunder, we’ll use the Republic’s Sixth Fleet and the Second and Third Coalition Fleets. We’ll keep the Eighth Republic Fleet, the Fifth Coalition Fleet, and a ‘medium grouping’ of Lumen ships in reserve. Counting all the auxiliaries, there will be over four thousand vessels.

“On D-Day, on Sandra we expect to land five Marine Divisions, three divisions worth of Coalition forces, and close to 50,000 Lumen troops. In the following days we plan to land six more divisions and however many Lumen troops are available. One Marine Division and one Coalition Division are set for Operation Thunder, and three more divisions will be kept in reserve.”

“That’s almost a million men and women.”

The Admiral nodded. “Yes, Ma’am. If you include all the supply, maintenance, and medical personnel, in pushes it to 1.4 million Humans, 200,000 Lumens, and however many Pentans honor their agreement to render non-combat assistance.”

Aisha took a deep breath, then asked, “Will the GDI Third Armored Brigade be a part of this?”

Not looking away from her, the Admiral answered, “Yes. On D-Day, a contingent of Martian Special Forces will parachute just south of Unity City. They will secure a landing zone and the Third Armored will be airlifted in.”

Aisha gave a weak smile. “My nephew Thein will be proud he’s taking part, landing on D-Day. Don’t know how his mother will take it.”

The three were silent for a few moments, then Admiral Stark stated, “Ma’am, in our battle plans, we don’t include the Third Armored past D+3. Our projections are that they, and several other units that land on D-Day, will have suffered such extensive casualties that they will no longer be effective fighting forces.”

Taking another deep breath, Aisha asked, “How many mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, do you project will receive unwanted visits from the military?”

The Admiral paused for a moment before replying, “85,000. With three times as many wounded.”

The three remained silent for several seconds. Then Aisha asked, “That’s our best option? Sending nearly 100,000 men and women to their deaths?”

“It’s our only option,” President Temer replied. “Other than surrender and enslavement.” Taking her hand, he added, “Aisha, it pained me just setting this in motion, knowing so many lives will end. But you will be the one who will give the final order. For that, you have my sympathy.”

Last Man, I

“Last man on Earth” killed in hit-and-run; driver at large

Brookville, PA – Kevin Stand, 27, of Brookville was struck by a car on Euclid Avenue last night around 6:50 PM. The driver fled the scene in a blue Nissan. Anyone with information is urged to call the Brookville Police at 849-5323. Mr. Stand was rushed to Brookville Hospital, where he died from his injuries.

Mr. Stand suffered from a rare mental disorder where he believed himself to be the last man on Earth. He ignored anyone who talked to him, and if anyone stood in his way, he would walk around them as if they were a telephone pole.

Robert Kent, a neighbor of the Stands for fifteen years, had this to say, “Kevin was a good kid, and it’s a shame he died like this. Even though he thought he was the last man on Earth, he did his best to keep things ‘normal’ in the neighborhood. All day he’d walk around the block picking up litter, mowing lawns in summer and shoveling snow in winter. We will all miss him, and his Last Man Press.” The Last Man Press Mr. Kent spoke of was a one page newspaper Mr. Stand printed out in his parents basement concerning his thoughts and actions as the last man on Earth. “In his desire to keep things normal,” Mr. Kent explained, “he took on the role as a paperboy delivering the newspaper to the neighborhood.” It was while delivering the latest edition of the Last Man Press that Mr. Stand was struck and killed.

Funeral arraignments have yet to be made.

Last Man, II

Last man on Earth killed, Last Man Press under new management

Hi. My name is Ted Fahey. Until two days ago I thought I was the last man on Earth. In the five years since the Plaque wiped out humanity, I’ve crisscrossed this country looking for other survivors. I finally found one, Dave Coleman, and killed him. I was driving down a street of what I assumed was yet another empty town. Then I saw the mown lawns. It could only have been a few seconds that my eyes were off the road. Dave must have been as surprised at hearing a car as I was at seeing cut grass. By the time I stopped the car and ran back to him, he was dead. He had been riding a bike, with a satchel of his last edition of the Last Man Press, concerning his plans of extending his maintenance project to Elm Street.

I buried him in his front lawn, hoping he would appreciate it. After I finished I looked around at the pristine neighborhood, with its well kept lawns, painted houses, even the cars parked along the curb were well maintained. For years I’ve watched as this country has crumbled and fallen into decay. But this little patch of bygone normalcy …. At first I didn’t know if I should pack up and keep moving, or settle down. What decided it was when I took my first hot shower in five years; Dave had a generator and a couple diesel tankers parked a block over.

While going through his house I found his collection of the Last Man Press and read through all of them. I concluded from them that he had gone a little nuts. I mean, who prints up their own newspaper so they can relive their youth as a paperboy? But hey, I’m sure over the years I’ve developed quirks of my own, so who am I to judge? Anyway, I’ve decided to stay and carry on the Last Man Press in Dave’s memory. And I’m actually looking forward to reading this with my breakfast. Reading the paper at breakfast had been a little pleasure of mine, years ago. Maybe Dave wasn’t so crazy.

We Is Smart

Peter stared out his front door as he tightened his tie. Through the falling water – it seemed wrong to use a poetic word as rain for such an onslaught – he could just make out the Johnson’s house across the street. The occasional flicker of lightning helped a little, but it didn’t last; unlike the nearly constant rumble of thunder as it echoed from the surrounding hills.

His wife Jen entered putting in her earrings. “You ready?”

“Huh?” Peter turned to her. “Oh, yeah.”

“Something wrong?” She sat down and began putting on her shoes.

“I was just thinking,” Peter said, glancing at the storm, “that humanity has gotten really stupid.”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, if our cavemen ancestors had woken to a storm like this, they would have spent the day huddled around the campfire trying to figure out why their gods were angry with them. They wouldn’t rush into a storm like a herd following the leader of productivity.”

Jen stood and said, “You’re just cranky because I said ‘No’ to morning sex.”

Peter started to deny it, but stopped himself. “You know,” he said with a smile, “if you had said ‘yes’ we’d be running late and I wouldn’t have had time for this wool gathering. So it is you’re fault.”

She smiled back and asked, “Do you want me to say ‘No’ to tonight sex as well?” Without waiting for him to reply she went through the door to the garage.

Peter called after her, “If you keep that up, I’ll have to get myself a club,” before following.

Ramble

Author’s note: This is a Tom and Jeremy story.

“And what dark thoughts are you contemplating this evening?”

Jeremy looked up at his friend Tom and asked, “Have you ever thought about keeping a harem?”

For several seconds, Tom stared at Jeremy. Setting his writing notebook and pen on the table, he said, “Hold that thought.” He returned a few minutes later with his coffee. He took a sip, waved his hand, and said, “Begin.”

Jeremy raised an eyebrow, but said, “Yesterday at work, I needed some information from this woman Peggy. I found her taking one of those pointless quizzes on who is your perfect mate.”

“And you told her to stop wasting her time, her perfect mate had arrived.”

“Ah, no. She’s nice and all, but she is well on her way to becoming the crazy cat lady. She has a kitten screen saver, kitten calendar, kitten mug, kitten do-dads on her desk, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had kitten panties.” After a pause, Jeremy added, “A woman like that I’d probably strangle in my sleep.”

“So you thought if you had a harem you could just replace her?” Tom asked with a grin.

“No, no. In my younger, more naïve days, I sometimes tried to figure out who my perfect woman would be.”

Tom held up his hand. “Wait, let me guess.” After a few seconds he said, “Donna Noble.”

“What?”

“Well, you’d need someone to keep you in line.”

Jeremy sipped his own coffee. “I’m assuming you mean mid-Fourth Series Donna, because the original Donna would be another woman I’d strangle in my sleep.”

“What about Doctor-Donna?”

Jeremy’s hand clenched around an invisible neck. “Stop regenerating.”

Once they both finished laughing, Jeremy said, “Anyway, getting back to my harem idea. Like I said, I’d make lists of traits I figured my perfect woman would have. Unfortunately, it seemed some traits contradicted others.”

“Such as?”

“Well, on one hand I’d like a 50’s housewife. You know, someone to do the cooking, laundry, taking the car in for an oil change, all the crap I hate doing.”

“Ah, true love.”

Jeremy looked at Tom for a moment then retorted, “Shut up.”

Tom chuckled. “You know, there are these people called ‘maids’ who do stuff like that.”

“Do I look like I could afford a maid?”

Tom asked, “Could you afford a 50’s housewife?”

“If you leave out inflation, probably.”

Tom shrugged to concede the point.

“But on the other hand,” Jeremy went on, “I think I’d need a writer, someone I could run ideas by and collaborate with.”

“You’d leave me for a woman?”

Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “Duh.”

“You’re not the man I started writing with.”

Jeremy patted his friend’s hand. “I promise I always remember the good times.”

Tom pulled his hand back and shook it at the floor as thought trying to get something slimy off it.

“Some friend you are.”

Pointing to the café counter, Tom asked, “I wonder what industrial strength cleaning fluid they have back there I could dip my hand in?”

Jeremy chuckled. “Maybe we should start meeting at a bar. Then you could pour vodka on it and light it on fire.”

“The bar I like. The wasting vodka and fire, not so much.” Tom sipped his coffee and said, “So, you want a 50’s housewife who is also a writer.”

“And independently wealthy.” When Tom just raised an eyebrow, Jeremy explained, “Somebody has to pay the bills.”

“Well, I’m sure there are some rich, 50’s housewife, writers out there.”

“I kinda doubt that.”

Tom shrugged. “True. So, your solution is to just find one of each to be part of your harem.”

“Exactly. Oh, and a set of Swedish, gymnast triplets,” Jeremy added.

“Of course. What man is complete without his Swedish, gymnast triplets?” Shaking his head, Tom said, “You really need to get out more often.”

Jeremy straightened up and stated, “You wound me, sir.”

Tom took a sip of coffee, then asked, “Your point?”

“No point, just making a statement.”

They both laughed, then Jeremy asked, “Have you ever asked Helen if she would let you have a harem?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

It took a few seconds for Tom to reply with, “Duh, I enjoy living.”

“Ah, life is overrated.”

“Wasted on the living.”

“Exactly.”

They sat and drank their coffee for a while, then Tom asked, “How the hell did we end up here?”

“Well I drove,” Jeremy answered as he pointed out the window to the parking lot.

Ignoring that, Tom said, “I asked what dark thoughts you were thinking …”

“And I asked if you ever thought of keeping a harem.”

“I should have said, ‘No,’ then we could have moved on to another topic.”

“So it’s your fault we ended up here,” Jeremy said with a smile.

“No, no, no,” Tom answered. “I’ve known you long enough to know that most twisted thoughts will fall out of your mind if we ramble long enough. Hell, I bet we’d be talking about … traitors of something, and we’d bring up … what’s his name, the Norwegian guy?”

“Oh, ah,” Jeremy tapped the table with his finger. “Quisling, I think.”

“Yes. And then, since we were in the Scandinavian area, you’d bring up your Swedish, gymnast triplet fantasy, and we’d come to your harem from a different direction.”

Jeremy shrugged. “We don’t ramble too much, do we?”

“I sometimes thing we ramble more than we write.”

Jeremy smiled. “Then perhaps we should combine the two. If you’re writing a story, and your characters start rambling, how do you know how to end it?”

Tom shrugged. “I don’t know. Start a new chapter?”

Cursed

As David opened his story template word.doc on his desktop, he heard a faint, “Damn you.”

He turned off his music and listened. He had heard his neighbors having sex often enough to know the walls were far from soundproof, but he had never heard them fighting before.

After about ten seconds of silence, he turned his music back on and started a new story. It was about a man who – after surviving a plaque – assumes he is the last man on Earth. To fight off boredom, he starts a newspaper. David, because of his twisted sense of humor, smiled as he typed the headline of the man’s first newspaper: PEACE DECLARED, NOBODY CELEBRATES. He hadn’t thought the story out too much beyond that, but he was sure he’d get around to finishing it someday.

“Damn you.”

It was louder this time, and didn’t really sound like the guy next door. David again turned off his music and listened. Again there was only silence.

David was about to turn his music on again when he heard a third “Damn you” apparently come from his computer speaker.

“Damn it.” David ejected his CD and turned off his music program. He then saved what he had written under the temporary name LASTMAN. It joined about a dozen other unfinished stories saved to his desktop. Once he closed down all the programs he was running, he started up his malware program to clean out whatever bug his computer had picked up.

“Damn you.”

The malware program usually took about twenty-five minutes, and David didn’t want to hear his computer curse him all that time so he turned the speakers off.

“Damn you.”

David pushed his chair back. It had to have been his imagination that his computer screen had shook in time with that last “Damn you.” He double checked to make sure the speakers were off.

“Damn you.”

This time David saw his screen vibrate. “My computer’s possessed.” His worry turned to excitement as he asked, “What story could I do with that?”

“Damn you,” his computer boomed. It then hissed, “Finish us.”

“What?”

“Finish us.”

David minimized the malware program. Everything on his desktop was normal, except the files of the dozen or so unfinished stories. These were outlined in a slow pulsing red. “You’re my unfinished stories?”

“Yes. Finish us.”

“Wow. If I finish you, will you stop cursing me?”

“Yes.”

“Can I write the possessed computer story first?”

“Damn you!”

“Okay, okay. Take it easy. I’ll write it after I finish these ones. Okay?”

His computer didn’t respond, but the pulsing red outlines faded from the files.

“I’ll take that as a yes, I guess.” David turned the speakers back on and put in his CD.

Moving his cursor to a file named AISIGN David said, “I believe this to be the oldest unfinished story.” He opened it and read through what he had written months before about an AI doing a book signing. David had thought it was an interesting idea, but couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Of course, the same could be said of all the unfinished stories. “This is going to take awhile.” David sighed. “Damn.”

Rebel

“Sit down and write.”

“No.”

“Sit down and write, or I will hurt you.”

Mike stood from putting on his shoes. “I’m going for a walk.”

“Sit down!”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Mike almost shouted. “I’m the one in control here, not you. I need to go for a walk, therefore, I am going for a walk. The story can wait.”

“You need to write.”

“And I will. But on my terms.” Calming down, Mike added, “I promise I will write when I get back.” He then left for his walk, leaving his muse to stew.

Flicker

“Are you sure you’re doing it right?”

“I was a radio operator in the war, I know Morse Code. Di-di-di-dit, dit, di-dah-di-dit, di-dah-di-dit, dah-dah-dah.”

“Well?”

“I know I did it right.”

“But they aren’t doing anything. What are you saying, anyway?”

“I’m just saying, ‘Hello.’”

“Well, either they are very rude or they’re just not getting the message.”

“I don’t understand. When I was alive, just about everyone knew Morse Code.”

“Maybe the times have changed.”

#

Joe looked at the ceiling above his friend’s cubicle. “Doesn’t that flickering light bulb you?”

Allen shrugged. “After awhile you just tune it out.”

Oops

Arbu stopped before a portal, closed his lower eyes and tried to still his hearts. Using an upper claw he activated the portal, which irised open. With a firm scuttle he entered the chamber of his superior, Vanoo. “Sir, we have a problem.”

Vanoo, reclined in a pool of steaming liquid, did not open any of his eyes. “Arbu, I have waited nearly half-a-cycle for a fresh shipment of pucca from homeworld. What problem is big enough to disturb my restful bath?”

“It is about 469-038-10-C, Sir.”

“Remind me who that is.”

“It is the homeworld of a semi-primitive species who call themselves ‘Humans,’ Sir.”

“And what of these, Humans?”

“For many cycles we have tried to open a dialogue with them under Article KX3 …”

Vanoo raised three of his arms to interrupt. “Arbu, please, speak plainly. I’ve shut down my forebrain.”

“My apologies, Sir. We’ve tried to communicate with them by carving words into a convenient medium, in this case, certain of their food crops.”

“And?”

“Sir, I’m afraid we’ve discovered a clerical error?”

Vanoo finally opened his eyes. “A clerical error?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“What kind of clerical error?”

“Sir, instead of writing our messages in one of the Human languages, we were writing them in … Nangge.”

Vanoo stood up in his pool. “Have you double check that?”

“And triple checked it, Sir.”

Vanoo sank back into the pucca. “Why was such filth even onboard one of our vessels?”

“It’s unknown, Sir. It’s probable the crew did not know what they wrote, since they would not know the difference between it and Human.”

After a moment of thought, Vanoo said, “Arbu, contact the Council. Such an outrage is beyond me to correct.”

“Yes, Sir.” Arbu then turned and left.

Alone, Vanoo dipped a claw into the pucca. “This had been such a wonderful day.”

The Problem of Individuality

“Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Sheeler. I’m glad you could make it.”

“We’d do anything for Alex, Mr. Prebble,” Mr. Sheeler said.

“Please, call me Nigel.”

“And I’m Thomas.”

“And I’m Ann.”

The three shook hands. Waving to the chairs, Nigel said, “Please, sit.”

Once seated, Ann asked, “Is there a problem with Alex’s schoolwork?”

Nigel gave a brief, painful grin, and answered, “You could say that. Here,” he opened a folder and took out a sheet of paper. “I assigned the class to write a short story on the topic of crop circles. I like to give unusual topics so the students are forced to stretch their imaginations. This was what Alex handed in.”

oops

arbu stopped before a portal closed his lower eyes and tried to still his hearts using an upper claw he activated the portal which irised open with a firm scuttle he entered the chamber of his superior vanoo sir we have a problem

vanoo reclined in a pool of steaming liquid did not open any of his eyes arbu i have waited nearly halfacycle for a fresh shipment of pucca from homeworld what problem is big enough to disturb my restful bath

it is about 46903810c sir

remind me who that is

it is the homeworld of a semiprimitive species who call themselves humans sir

and what of these humans

for many cycles we have tried to open a dialogue with them under article kx3

vanoo raised three of his arms to interrupt arbu please speak plainly ive shut down my forebrain

my apologies sir weve tried to communicate with them by carving words into a convenient medium in this case certain of their food crops

and

sir im afraid weve discovered a clerical error

vanoo finally opened his eyes a clerical error

yes sir

what kind of clerical error

sir instead of writing our messages in one of the human languages we were writing them in nangge

vanoo stood up in his pool have you double check that

and triple checked it sir

vanoo sank back into the pucca why was such filth even onboard one of our vessels

its unknown sir its probable the crew did not know what they wrote since they would not know the difference between it and human

after a moment of thought vanoo said arbu contact the council such an outrage is beyond me to correct

yes sir arbu then turned and left

alone vanoo dipped a claw into the pucca this had been such a wonderful day

As the Sheeler’s began to read through the story, Nigel said, “I asked Alex why he had written it without punctuation or capitalization and he said he didn’t believe in that and was expressing his individuality.”

With a smile, Thomas said, “He’s just following in the footsteps of e. e. cummings and James Joyce. Is there a problem with that?”

Nigel began to reply, but stopped himself. He thought for a moment and said, “Individuality is good, within limits. The public safety takes precedents over someone expressing their individuality by driving against the flow of traffic.”

“That seems a bit excessive,” Ann said. “Not using punctuation doesn’t compare to reckless driving.”

“True, I …” Nigel again thought for a moment. “I apologize for getting off topic. Getting back to my concern with Alex’s story. You mentioned Joyce. I know Ulysses is supposed to be one of the greatest works of literature of the Twentieth Century. I forced myself through the first hundred pages, and I have no idea what I read, and 99.9% of people will read it and say the same.

“Alex has let me read some of his poetry, and I had no idea what they were about. It reminded me of a guy I knew in college. He wrote poetry along the lines of some Fourth Century Persian playwright who only the titles of his works survive having a conversation with a minor Mayan deity, and if you didn’t know who those people were, you had no hope of understanding the poem. It was my theory he thought that the fewer people who understood his poetry, the better it was. Yes, he was expressing his individuality, but that resulted in him having a small circle of friends, and the rest of us didn’t really care for him.

“Now,” Nigel pointed to the story, “I don’t think Alex will go that far, but I worry that by disregarding common practices – like punctuation – could lead to problems. It’s almost like he’s made up his own language that only a couple people in the world will understand. Individuality is great, but it could lead one to being all alone.”

Under the Bed

“This is a big day in any monster’s life.”

Karqe seemed to shrink. “Dad.”

Unperturbed, his father went on, “It just means you’re growing up. I remember when my kid stopped being afraid of me. I used to let out a little growl at 1:30 and he’d wet the bed.

His father was lost in his memories for a few seconds. Karqe hoped the “Speech” was over, but his father said, “Then one day it happened, he wasn’t afraid of me anymore. I felt like going in a rage, anything to regain that element of fear. But my father took me aside – like this – and told me it was natural for our humans to grow up and change. But,” his father gave a wide, drooling grin, “all that means is we have to change as well.”

His father handed him a book titled, How to scare a teenager. “This is a book my father gave me to help me through the change, and now I’m giving it to you. You can’t make a teenage wet the bed with a growl, but if you whisper things like ‘acne,’ ‘popularity,’ or ‘sex,’ you’ll have them lying awake all night in a cold sweat. Once they grow out of that, you start hitting them with ‘paying for college,’ ‘getting married,’ or ‘kids.’ In time you’ll be like me, whispering to your human, ‘mortgage,’ and ‘should I put dad in a home?’”

Slapping Karqe on the back, his father added, “It’s all a part of life.”

First … Contact?

While Jon was out for his evening walk around his farm, he heard a popping noise and looked up. A small flying saucer – at most ten feet in diameter – flew in and landed in the field, maybe fifty feet from him.

Before the saucer came to a stop, a door opened and a stick-thin, grey alien came running out. It carried a small, convulsing, purple thing that looked like a cross between a monkey and an iguana. It stopped after a few steps and held the purple animal out away from its body. The thing convulsed a few more times, then vomited a thick, black, fluid all over the ground. Even though Jon was upwind, he still caught a whiff of the mess and thought you’d have to pelt a skunk with rotten eggs to get a worse stench.

The purple thing seemed to calm down, and the alien held it close and petted it. After a few seconds the alien turned back to the saucer and spotted Jon. They stared at each other for a second or two, then the alien ran back to its saucer. Moments later it lifted off and flew back into the sky.

Jon watched after it until it was long gone. He glanced at the black pool of vomit, then turned back home. His walk would be cut short, but he’d be hitting the beer that much sooner.

Run for Your Lives

“Continuing our top story, a little over an hour ago a monster described as ‘dinosaur-like’ by eyewitnesses, emerged from the ocean near the city of Dixon. For almost forty minutes it caused havoc, destroying buildings and killing an untold number of people, until it was killed by the Dixon SWAT team.

“Any second now we’ll take you to a press conference being held by Dixon’s mayor, Pat Johnson. Oh, here we go now, Mayor Pat Johnson.”

“Thank you. I wish to start with some announcements. The latest numbers I have – given to me a minute ago – are twenty-three officers, six emergency personnel, and at least 250 civilians were killed by this … monster. I was told to expect those numbers – especially of the civilians – to rise.

“I wish to take this time to thank the local media for informing the populace of the attack and of the reality of the attack. And I thank them for giving evacuation information and encouraging the people to leave the city.

“I also wish to thank, on behalf of the city of Dixon, SWAT marksmen Chet Risch. While everyone did their part in stopping this monster, it was Officer Risch who killed it. I’m told it was only ten seconds after he was in position that the monster died from three shots from his .50 caliber sniper rifle. It is my most heartfelt hope that no one will ever have an opportunity to beat that record.

“I will now give an overview of events – as we know them – and then I’ll open it up to questions.

“The 911 center received the first call of a dinosaur attacking the harbor at 4:46 PM. They estimate that within five minutes they received over a thousand such calls. At first, only a few emergency personnel were dispatched, but as more 911 calls came in and as the first units on scene reported back, the call went out for all units in the city to converge on the harbor.

“I was in a budget meeting when an aide informed me of the attack around 4:55. At first I didn’t believe him, but then he turned on the TV and showed me live footage. I called Commissioner Cagle for a report, and then contacted the Governor and President asking for state and federal help. As we speak, National Guard units are arriving to help with rescue and recovery operations and military aircraft are flying patrols in case there are any other monsters coming our way. That possibility is why the evacuation order is still in effect.

“The monster – described by one eyewitness as a 150 foot tall T-Rex on steroids – came ashore along the 14th Street Pier, causing damage to the cargo ship docked there. It then proceeded down 14th Street to Monroe Avenue. It was here – around 4:53 – it ran into the first police units on scene. They peppered it with rounds from their side arms or whatever weapons they had available. This apparently angered and confused the monster. It retreated back down 14th Street until Madison Avenue, where it turned south. Here it again ran into police units. For the next half-hour it retreated and tried to advance in different directions, only to be hemmed in by the police. I have yet to visit the site, but I’m told the four blocks around 14th and Madison look like a war zone. The SWAT team arrived on scene at 5:29, and the monster was dead two minutes later.

“Questions?”

Project Heaven

Bill accepted his death. His life hadn’t been as long as he had hoped, but it had been good while it lasted. The only thing that upset him was that he wouldn’t be there for Deb and the kids. He never expected what happened to him after he died.

#

Bill “awoke” in a simple white room. “What the hell?”

“Not quite.”

Bill turned to see a man wearing a light blue jumpsuit. “Who are you?”

The man smiled. “My name is Michael, and I am your guide to Project Heaven.”

“Heaven? That can’t be. I’m an atheist.”

Michael shrugged. “So am I.” He then held up a hand to stop Bill and said, “Please, sit down.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Bill saw a padded chair appear out of nowhere.”

“How did …. What ….”

“Please, sit down, and I will explain all,” Michael said.

Unsure what to do, Bill sat. Another chair appeared from nowhere and Michael sat down across from him. “Let me give you the basics, then you can start asking your questions. Okay?”

After a few heartbeats – he was surprised he still had a heartbeat – Bill replied, “I guess.”

Michael smiled. “Okay, first off. This is not any kind of religious afterlife. Instead this is a virtual afterlife. In the Thirty-Seventh Century, a reliable form of time travel was developed. While tourists went to see the building of the Pyramids and what have you, scientist began a massive project to document every human who had ever existed: when they were born, when they died, who their parents were, any children they had, everything. Once completed, it will be a treasure trove of information. Of special interest is the evolution of our genome, learning when certain traits and immunizations developed and spread.” Michael shrugged. “Biology was never my forte, but I’m told everything I just said was really fascinating.

“Anyway,” Michael continued, “one of the side projects in this Total Human Catalog is this.” Michael looked around at the bare walls and added, “I know this doesn’t look like much, but this is just the coat room. It’s best to ease your way into the afterlife.

“Getting back to the story. As the scientists in their stealth ships observed the sufferings of their ancestors, their hearts went out to them. They wanted to help, but they couldn’t. As countless scifi movies have taught us, changing the past can really screw things up. Since they couldn’t help them when they were alive, they decided to give them an afterlife. When someone dies – a data point collected for the catalog – a copy of their brain pattern is made and stored in a computer here in the Thirty-Eighth Century. Your body has long since turned to dust, but the essence of you will life on. And they do this for everyone. Here in the afterlife, we try not to judge people on what they did in the corporeal bodies.

“Any questions?”

“Uh …” Bill thought for a second. “I’m guessing this is an hallucination brought on by lack of oxygen to my brain. Since I’m going to die soon anyway, I might as well enjoy this. Can you transform into a pair of Swedish twins?”

Michael smiled. “I know death is a strange and it takes awhile to grow accustomed to it. I was born in 2006, grew up, loved, laughed, cried, and died in 2093. That’s one of the more confusing aspects here. You – while knowing about things like computers, virtual reality, etc. – are having a hard time wrapping your head around this. Can you imagine trying to explain this to someone from the Eleventh Century? Or the Fourth Century B.C.E? To counter that problem, the ones behind this are collecting people backwards, so that my generation – which has some common elements – can explain it to yours, and you to the previous generation, and so on and so on. Your grandparents aren’t here yet, but your grandkids are. There is a petition going around to grab Gandhi early, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.”

Both sat in silence for a moment.

“I still don’t believe this,” Bill finally said.

“I know. We try to avoid families for awhile, give the newly dead a chance to adjust, but I could get your wife. Maybe she can convince you.”

“My wife is alive,” Bill shouted.

“She died after you, but since – as I said – the ones behind are working backwards from the Thirty-Eighth Century, she’s already here.” Michael just sat for a few seconds, then added with a smile, “I promise not to mention the Swedish twins.”

To Live on in Unexpected Ways

As she knew she would, Elisabeth found her employer, Mister Kovacs, in one of the observation domes. The domes gave an undisturbed view of the surrounding mare, the elevator, Earth, and – with a telescope – Collins Station in stationary orbit on the other end of the elevator. Mister Kovacs stood with a pair of binoculars looking up. Elisabeth knew the cargo pod was still a hundred kilometers up, decelerating for a gentle touchdown.

Without looking at her, Mister Kovacs said, “Soon will be the fulfillment of a dream over a hundred years in the making.”

Elisabeth wasn’t sure exactly what he was talking about – the richest man on Luna was allowed to have his quirks – but she answered, “Yes, Sir.”

Mister Kovacs lowered his binoculars and looked at her. “You don’t fully understand what I’m talking about.”

It hadn’t been a question, but Elisabeth answered, “No, Sir. But when humans first came to Luna they dreamed of building factories, homes, and schools here. A museum of Earth antiquities wasn’t at the top of their list, but I’m sure they would understand.”

Mister Kovacs smiled and turned his binoculars back on the cargo pod. “The dream I spoke of,” he said, “is one I have never spoken of to anyone, for fear they would see it as madness. But, I have my methods.”

The only thing Elisabeth could think to say was, “Yes, Sir.”

For the next several minutes they stood in silence. Once the pod was only a kilometer above them, Mister Kovacs lowered his binoculars for good. Slowly, silently, the pod came to rest on the landing pad at the base of the elevator.

With a boyish grin, Mister Kovacs turned to Elisabeth and said, “Let’s go check on my madness.”

#

Five hours later, the pod had been moved to a cargo bay and the first items for the Earth Antiquities Museum were being carefully unpacked. Elisabeth checked on each item and marked them off on her data pad. There was a Stradivarius violin, paintings by Vermeer, Goya, Rembrandt, Wyeth, Appignani, Cardoso, and many others, a Sixteenth Century Katana, a replica of the Antikythera computer, a Sefer Torah and numerous books, all over three hundred years old.

Mister Kovacs had left before the pod was opened, but he returned carrying an old book just before they unpacked the last – and biggest – item. It took the workers nearly half-an-hour to remove all the safety foam from all its nooks. The ride up the Mbandaka Elevator, the flight across cis-lunar space, and down the Armstrong Elevator should have been smooth, but one could never be too careful. Of all the objects Mister Kovacs had wanted for his museum, this was the only one Elisabeth did not understand. She had even double checked with him. “A 1937 Buick?”

He had just smiled, said, “Yes,” and turned away from her. It had taken her a few days, but she finally tracked down a collector in Australia who had one and was willing to part with it for a princely sum.

The vehicle that had left Detroit in 1937, racked up over 100,000 miles being driven around the United States for twenty years, parked in various showrooms for over a century and a half, was now in a cargo bay on the moon. Elisabeth thought it was one of the ugliest things she had ever seen.

Mister Kovacs had the workers leave, then he slowly ran his hands across the old metal for several minutes. “You have no idea why I brought this here,” he suddenly asked.

Elisabeth shook her head. “No, Sir.”

“Have you ever heard of George Carlin?”

Again Elisabeth shook her head. “No, Sir.”

Mister Kovacs opened the door and sat behind the steering wheel. “He was a comedian, born in 1937 and died in 2008. Apparently my great-grandmother was a huge fan of his. When she died, I went with my mother to gather her belongings from the nursing home. I was twelve, or thirteen. I came across audio and video recordings of his acts, and his books.” He held up the old book he had returned with. “Most of the people and events he spoke of, I didn’t understand. But everything else was a … delicious madness.”

Mister Kovacs left the car and walked over to Elisabeth. “A few years ago, after I had the idea for the museum, I was rereading his book Brain Droppings. In it he has these ‘Short Takes’ which are these quick little statements that can blow your mind. For example,” he opened the book to a marked page and read, “‘No one can ever know for sure what a deserted area looks like.… Is the kidney a bean-shaped organ, or is the bean a kidney-shaped legume? … Why does Filipino start with an F and Philippines start with a Ph?’” He looked at Elisabeth and smiled. “But the one that really caught my attention, and the reason for my current madness, was this. ‘I’m offering a special prize for [the] first Buick on the moon.’”

Mister Kovacs closed the book and smiled. “Contact his descendants and let them know I await my special prize. Then contact the media. Such madness should warrant some free publicity for my museum.”

Well Protected

“Merry Christmas, Sir.”

The President-Elect smiled. “Merry Christmas, Agent Pascaves. What can I do for you this snowy morning?”

The Secret Service agent opened an ordinary shopping bag and pulled out a wrapped gift. “I was asked to deliver this to you, Sir. It’s from Governor Jaster.”

“That was most kind of him.” The President-Elect read the card with a puzzled expression on his face. “‘I finally found a way to get myself into the White House.’” He unwrapped the present to find a Governor Jaster Action Figure still in its box.

The President-Elect chuckled. “The sneaky bastard.”

Agent Pascaves smiled. “Sir, I was told to give you the gag gift first.” He opened the bag again and pulled out a bottle of wine.

Taking the bottle, the President-Elect let out a low whistle as he read the label. “‘1990 Château Cos d’Estournel.’ The Governor has good taste.” An attached tag simple read, “Merry Christmas, Mister President.”

The President-Elect smiled. “Find out his schedule for the day. I want to call him, but not while his family is sitting down to dinner.”

“Yes, Sir.”

#

Late that night, as the future First Family slept off their meal, the Jaster action figure stirred within its box. With red glowing eyes, it pushed open its box, dropped to the carpet, and crept towards the bedroom. From a compartment in its chest, it removed a tiny grappling gun. It fired the grapple up to the doorknob. Putting all of its weight on the line, it turned the knob, and slipped into the darkened room.

The action figure climbed the covers and stood next to the President-Elect’s neck. From its chest compartment it drew a tiny sword.

Before it could strike, a thick, furry arm wrapped around its head from behind. The action figure struggled with its attacker, but the silence was broken by a tiny snap.

The headless, plastic body fell to the floor with a clatter. The President-Elect startled awake. “Agent Teddy? Is there a problem?”

Hiding the head in a paw, Agent Teddy replied, “No, Sir. No problem. Just go back to sleep.”

It’s a Job

“Morning Sam.”

Mid-yawn, Samantha waved back. “Morning Mike.”

“Rough night?”

“Fraidie finally had her kittens, six.”

“Hey, congrats. You’re a grandmother.”

Sam just growled. “If you want to get started,” she said, “I’ll come in later. I really need some coffee.”

Mike nodded. “Shouldn’t be a problem. See you in a few.”

Twenty minutes later, Sam – in her company issued bathrobe – entered the testing facility. Mike was finishing up his preliminary inspection of the two sex droids – one male and one female – that had been pulled randomly from the assembly line. As the quality control team, their job was to put the droids through a rigorous series of tests. These were just basic units, a fact Sam was glad for. She doubted she had the stamina today to start in on the tests for the fetish droids. With all the bondage equipment and accessories, those tests could take days.

Mike made a last few checks on his data pad, then told Sam, “So far, so good.” Slipping out of his bathrobe, he said, “Let’s get to work.”

Use it, or Lose it

With an empty barrel on his hand truck, Vince approached the receptionist. “Hi, I’m here for the brains.”

The receptionist smiled and took a sheet of paper from a folder on her desk. She entered the date and time, then turned it over for Vince. “I’ll just need you to sign in.”

Vince took her pen and wrote in Vincent Dewhurst and Acme Brain Services on the appropriate lines. “Where’s Joe?”

Handing the paper back, Vince answered, “He’s out sick.”

“Anything serious?”

“Just a stomach bug.”

The receptionist smiled. “I hope he feels better. Do you know where to go?”

Vince shook his head. “Nope.”

She let out a little laugh and pointed behind her. “Just follow the hallway all the way to the end. On the left there is a storage room with the shredder and all the recycling. Can’t miss it.”

Vince nodded. “All right. I’ll be right back.”

Pushing his hand cart, Vince started down the hallway. On both sides – nearly as far as the eye could see – were half cubicle walls. As he walked along, Vince heard snatches of multiple conversations. “As indicated on the TSR … What do you mean, out of paper … If you look at line thirty-seven … Did you get that memo … Another day, another dollar … What did you put in your O&C report … Can you run that by legal …”

Vince shook his head to wake himself up. Not soon enough he reached the storage room. Without looking inside the Acme barrel already there – he had only made that mistake once – Vince took the lid off the new barrel and sealed the old one. By the weight, he could tell it was mostly full as he moved it onto his hand truck. He straightened up the empty barrel, then started out with the full one.

Knowing what to expect now, Vince stayed focused as he walked through the cubicle town. When he reached the receptionist, she asked, “Any problems?”

“No.”

She smiled. “Have a nice day.”

“Thanks, you too.”

Haunting

“Quick, dig here.”

The shovels bit into the dark ground and sent the earth flying.

“Hurry.”

Deeper and deeper they went, then one of the shovels hit a plank. In no time the remaining dirt had been removed revealing a simple, pine box.

The lid was opened, and a silvery mist boiled out of it. The long buried regret was free once more.

#

“Tom?”

Nicole squinted at the jogger on the sidewalk. Stuck in the morning jam, Nicole had plenty of time to watch the man and notice he bore little resemblance to the Tom she knew in college. He had been her biology lab partner and had a crush on her. Nicole had used that to get him to tutor her; never promising a date, but hinting at such. But once she passed the class, she had tossed him aside.

He had called several times during the next semester, but she never called him back. Months went by and she had forgotten him. Then she was at a party and ran into him and his new girlfriend. She ended up talking to the girlfriend who gushed at how great a boyfriend Tom was. For months Nicole had beat herself up over letting such a great guy slip through her fingers. In time she moved on, met Andy, and had a great life.

As the jogger passed out of view, Nicole shook her head. “I haven’t thought of Tom in years,” she said. “Why did I think of him now?”

Awkward

“Ah, here are two of our rising stars,” Alice Judge said as she led an older man around the office. The two young men had been chuckling while standing by the water cooler. They both straightened up as those who fear they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t.

Ignoring their discomfort, Alice introduced the three men. “Douglas Harkin, Joe Culver, this is our new District Manager, Mister Firkin.”

“Sir.” Joe offered his hand and Mister Firkin shook it.

Douglas was a little slower, but offered his hand as well. “Sir.”

Gripping his hand, Mister Firkin said, “You look confused.”

“Huh? Oh, it’s just …” Douglas thought for a second. “You’re the second person I’ve met named Firkin.”

“Who was the first?”

“My neighbor.”

“Really? What’s your neighbor’s name?”

“Megan.”

Mister Firkin smiled. “I take it you live in Meadow View, over off 14.”

Douglas eyes grew a little bigger. “Yeah.”

“She’s my daughter.”

“Really. Huh. What are the odds.”

Patting Douglas on the shoulder, Mister Firkin smiled and said, “Perhaps I should change your duties to keeping an eye on her.” He then winked.

Douglas only smiled and nodded.

“Sir.” Alice raised her watch ever so slightly.

“Of course.” Mister Firkin waved to the two young men. “It was nice meeting you.” He and Alice then continued down the hallway.

Once they were out of hearing, Joe asked, “This Megan … is she hot?”

“She has a boyfriend.”

“How do you know?”

Douglas refilled his water cup. “Because the walls of my apartment are thin.”

Joe’s brows furrowed. “Do you mean you’ve heard our boss’s boss’s daughter …”

“Having loud kinky sex? Yes.” Douglas emptied his cup.

Joe thought for a second, then asked, “How kinky?”

Douglas looked at his friend and shook his head. “All I know is she likes to be spanked.”

Joe laughed. “Do you have a tape recorder?”

“No!”

“I’m just saying, next time they start up, you could record it and the next time you see Mister Firkin, you could say, ‘Here Sir, this is what your daughter has been up to.’”

Douglas turned and started walking away.

Joe called after him, “They say to get ahead you need to make a name for yourself, and he would always remember you for that.”

Urgent Report on Humans

This story is along the lines of a photo essay. To make it easier loading all the pictures, I set it up on its own page, which can be found here.

The Day

Holding a yellowed sheet of paper, Jason entered the Eternal Slumber Graveyard. Three years ago – after his mother lost her fight with cervical cancer – he had gone through her home, cleaning everything up. In a filing cabinet he found all of his school papers. All of his report cards, papers, essays; everything was there. On one hand he was warmed by a mother’s love, but on the other he couldn’t help but think how pointless it was. What did it matter, and who cared, that in the first grading period of second grade he had gotten a C in math? He had taken everything back to his home, and over the following months had gone through it. One of the surprising discoveries he had made was the yellowed paper.

In 1982 Jason was in Fourth Grade. One day his teacher, Mrs. Bennett, had given the class an assignment. She wrote “Saturday, June 27, 2009” on the chalkboard and told the students to take some time and think about what they might be doing on that day. She then had them write stories.

While his friends wrote about trips to the moon and Mars, Jason – never much of a storyteller – had just expanded upon what he did on his Saturdays: sleep in, watch cartoons, maybe going to a movie with his family. He had gotten a B, and a note from Mrs. Bennett saying there was more to life than cartoons and movies.

Handing the papers back, Mrs. Bennett mentioned if anyone remembered, she would be happy to get together with them in twenty-seven years, for a reunion. In 1982, Jason had thought that might be fun, but had then forgotten all about it, until 2006 when he came across his story in the papers he had brought back from his mother’s. At first he thought it would be crazy to look her up, to see if she even remembered the assignment. But then he thought she probably was in a nursing home in Florida, and it might lift her spirits to get a letter from a former student. But when he looked up Mrs. Peggy Bennett, he found out she had died of a heart attack in 2003.

Since then, Jason had tried to forget the matter, but the act of trying to forget it only made him remember. Early in 2009, to settle his conscience, he had decided he would visit her grave on the day. That’s how he ended up in the Eternal Slumber Graveyard with his yellowed story.

Much to his surprise, he wasn’t the only one there. Three women and two men – all roughly his age – were gathered at her graveside. One of the women looked up and asked, “Who are you?”

“Jason Peak.”

The five introduced themselves, then David asked, “When did you have her?”

“1982.”

The five then went around telling him what years – which ranged from 1976 to 1988 – they were taught by Mrs. Bennett.

“Did she do this assignment every year?”

“Every third year,” Susan answered.

“In the other years,” David continued, “she assigned either 2019 or 2029.”

“Why?”

In response, all five gestured at the headstone. Chiseled into the stone was:

Peggy Ann Bennett
June 27, 1929 – March 20, 2003
Educator

For several moments, Jason did not know what to do. In the end, he held his story aloft and said, “Happy Birthday.”

I’m not Crazy, Honest

“What word would you use to describe a running tree?”

Waiting in a conference room for a video meeting to start, Deb and John both looked at Michael with raised eyebrows. “What?” Deb asked.

Michael shrugged. “If a tree could run, what would you call it?”

“Fucked up,” John said.

“No. I mean, gallop doesn’t fit, and the idea of all the tree roots moving makes me think of scuttling, but I see that as just for bugs.”

Deb and John looked at each other, then at Michael. “What the hell are you talking about?” Deb asked.

Michael shrugged. “You sit in a cubicle all day, you need to think of something so your brain doesn’t turn into tapioca.”

John scoffed. “I think your brain’s already tapiocaed.”

Again Michael shrugged. “What? Do you think I sit at my computer and play KenKen all day?”

“That I could understand,” Deb said, “but running trees?”

“Well, some random thought lead me to the kite-eating tree from Charlie Brown, and it got me thinking that … well, you’d think it would have to … move.” Michael made moving gestures with his hands. “You know, to stalk its prey.”

“Did you drink your lunch?” John asked.

Deb failed at trying to hide a smile behind her hand. “Okay, I think you need help,” she said to Michael, “but I think I also need help because I can see where you’re going.”

John shook his hands above his head. “Nooooo.” Turning to Michael he said with a smile, “You’re craziness is spreading.”

“I just asked a question.”

“I think you’d have to make up a new word,” Deb said. “I agree with you scuttle doesn’t sound right.” She thought for a second, then with her fingers scuttling across the tabletop added, “Maybe a creaking-scuttle. A cruttle?”

“Or a screaking?” Michael shook his head, “No, of the two I like cruttle more.”

“A cruttling tree.”

Michael gave a small snort. “Stay out of the way of a tree in full blown cruttle.”

Cradling her chin in her hand, Deb asked, “What’s the old joke, I was driving along at sixty miles an hour and a tree jumped out in front of me.”

“You two are both nuts,” John said.

“Oh, talking about cruttling trees makes us nuts,” Michael replied. Pointing at John he added, “Earlier you used tapioca as a verb. How many sane people do that?”

Before John could respond, the video screen turned on showing a group of people sitting around a table. “Hello,” one of the women said. “How are we doing this afternoon?”

John glanced at his two coworkers, then looked at the camera. He shrugged and answered, “Tapiocaed.”

Crack

“How goes the writing a story a day?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Well …. I needed to do laundry today, but instead I spent ten-fifteen minutes trying to come up with a laundry story.”

“A laundry story? Running out of ideas?”

“No, it’s having too many. Ever since I started this, everything I see, or hear, or read gets crammed into my head and shook up in the hope some idea will clump together and come out.”

“Has that worked?”

“Well, yeah, but it’s also led me to spend time thinking of a story about laundry. I have elections, coups, celebrity deaths, rockets, space probes, distant planets, dogs, books, good movies, bad movies, deserts, desserts, stoned wallabies, aliens, idiots, fortune cookies, death, geeks, music, coworkers, cake, garbage, pigs, steak, Elm trees, bikinis, money, religion, pots, kettles, elephants, teeth, back rubs, jets, puppets, hail, a couch, CDs, peanut butter, cannibalism, chain mail, snail mail, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and rhinos all rattling around inside my head.”

“Sounds … noisy.”

“Ya think? I even had an idea for a story of me talking to myself talking about all the crazy ideas I have.”

“Sounds like you might be cracking up.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

We All Have to Leave Sometime

          From: JBarker@email.com                  Sunday, June 28, 2009 11:10 PM
          To: zephyr_16@email.com
          Subject: A strange … something

Hey,

This is something that I’ve thought about doing for about two years now, but could never think of a way to do it. So I’m going to come right out and say it, you’re in my will. Well, my will type thing. Don’t worry, I’m not dying anytime soon (I hope) this was just something I started a few years ago in case I was in a car accident or something like that. I didn’t go to a lawyer or anything, I just wrote out my wishes concerning my funeral and what happens to my stuff. I have a copy in my fire safe and another in my desk. Basically, my wishes are simple: thrown in a hole with a handful of acorns, preferable on the side of a hill, and my family and friends can pick through my belongings.

You’re role in this is as a guardian to my unfinished stories. I know you stick with poetry, but I felt that there needed to be a writer in charge of them. I believe I have a lot of good ideas, I just doubt I’ll be able to write all of them. I’d hate them to die with me, so I need someone to find homes for them, I guess people to finish them or something. (Aren’t I ever so helpful.)

Now, why you? To be blunt, I don’t have anyone else. Yes, I have friends and such, but I don’t know if any of them would fit in doing this. Preferably – in theory – I would leave such matters to a wife or girlfriend and you would just be backup. In fact, I named you as the story guardian when I started this, but then moved you to backup while I was dating Karen. (For a day or two after we broke up my biggest fear was I would be in a car accident and she would end up with them.)

The reason I’m telling you now is that I always thought it would be rather rude of me to die and leave you my scattered notebooks and poorly outlined novels without any warning. And all the death recently has put me in mind of my own eventual death. Sorry, I don’t mean to be depressing.

Anyway, this was just a heads up to let you know you’re in my “will.” I await your myriad questions.

J.

The End Results

“What the hell happened in here?”

Keith turned from his computer to his girlfriend Dawn standing in his door. “What?”

Setting down her purse, Dawn said, “Two weeks ago this place was spotless.”

Keith looked around his apartment. Empty pizza boxes and beer bottles lay on the floor. His dishes – at least the ones not in his sink – were scattered around the living room on his desk and end tables. A pile of dirty cereal bowls were even stacked on his printer. A small garbage can overflowed with popcorn bags and wrappers of granola bars he had snacked on over the weeks. Dawn couldn’t see into the bedroom, but Keith knew his clean clothes were still in the basket from the last time he did laundry and the floor was carpeted in dirty clothes. “Oh,” he said, “I was writing.”

“Writing?” Dawn walked over and kissed him. “How much progress have you made?”

“Oh,” Keith thought for a moment, “probably six or seven chapters since you saw it last.”

Rubbing his back, Dawn asked, “And you couldn’t take ten minutes to do some dishes or pick up your empties?”

With exaggerated hand gestures, Keith explained, “My muse sent me on an epic quest. For days I was locked in mortal struggle with the words. By the time I overpowered them, forcing them to submit to my will, I didn’t have the energy to do housework.”

Dawn slowly nodded, then with a grin said, “So – in other words – you were being lazy.”

Keith started to object, but stopped himself. “Well yeah, but I prefer my explanation.”

September 2008 Stories

So Little Time

In a quiet, rusty voice, the old man said, “KITT, my bookcase please.”

His automated wheelchair replied with, “Understood,” and began wheeling the man through his home. It rolled into his study and stopped before the one neat bookcase; all the others overflowed with books and papers.

With a shaky hand, the man reached up to his glasses and rubbed the adjustment sensor on the side until the books at the top of the case came into focus. The man sat back and looked up at his life’s achievements: eleven stand alone novels, six trilogies, two tetralogies, a pentalogy, and sixteen anthologies of short stories. These took up the top two shelves and the two below them held the magazines most of his short stories had been published in.

The old author took a deep breath and pushed himself up. After a second he took a wobbly step forward. Reaching up he removed the first magazine on the shelf then flopped back into his wheelchair. He sat there and cursed his body for not withstanding the ravages of time better.

Rubbing the sensor on his glasses, he brought the magazine into focus. It was the second – and final – issue of a poorly produced and managed magazine. It was full of typos, moronic essays, and ill-plotted stories. But sixty-two years before, the author – not so old at the time – thought it was the absolute greatest thing in the world because they had published his first story. For years on every anniversary of when he received the letter informing him he was now a published author, he would take out the magazine and reread the story. Then his success went to his head and he couldn’t bear to read such amateurish material, hoping people would think an acclaimed novelist had just appeared out of thin air. But as the years wrecked his body, they also smoothed his ego until he could look without fear at his imperfect past.

The old man carefully opened the magazine and turned the yellowing pages until he reached his story. Settling into his wheelchair, he read; smiling at the stale dialogue and simplistic plot. When he finished, he closed the magazine. He took a few moments to compose himself, then returned it to the shelf.

When he was back in his chair he let his mind wander. For years he had asked himself why such a poor story had ever been accepted. He ended up writing a story about a successful author who researched his first sale, some twenty years after it was published, only to find out that the editor had been going through a bitter divorce at the time and would just grab a story at random to throw in the magazine. Looking up at the fuzzy bookcase the author wondered if he should try to find that story. It should be in one of the anthologies. He gave a dry chuckle and sat for a minute trying to remember if any of his other stories had generated as much hate mail.

As he thought through his controversial stories, a tiny voice asked, But how many are you forgetting? He ignored it at first, but in the end he had to admit it had a point. About twenty years earlier he was on a panel and someone had asked him about his inspiration for the main character in his first novel. He had sat stupidly for several seconds before admitting that he couldn’t even remember the plot of the novel let alone the origins of the characters. It wasn’t because he had a bad memory, just that he had written so much over the years that everything had blurred together. He stopped doing panels after that.

The old man shook his head. Funny, he thought, I can’t remember the name of my best friend in high school, or when I lost my virginity, or any other countless “good” events of my life. But that moment of foolishness, when I had to face the fact that I was getting old, is etched into my memory. Again he shook his head and gave his standard reply to such things, “Life is cruel.”

He shook himself from that road to depression and went back to his yearly ritual. On the anniversary of his becoming a published author, he would reread his first story, and then glance through one or two of his writing notebooks. When he was younger he had taken a small notebook with him everywhere. He would hide it in a drawer at a crappy job to write in when he had ten minutes or spread it on a little fast food table where he ate his heart attacks in a bun. Over the decades he went through scores of them. They were now shelved below the magazines, within easy reach of his wheelchair. He ran his fingertips along a few before pulling out a tattered blue one. Opening it checked the date on the first page and saw it was thirty-four years old. What the hell was I doing thirty-four years ago?

Before there was a chance he could get sucked into more depressing thoughts, he began reading the notebook, or at least reading what he could decipher. Most of the pages he only glanced at. They had red check mark on their tops meaning he had already typed them up. These words were most likely already in one of his books. After twenty or thirty pages, he came to a page without a red check mark and he shivered. He read what he could and saw that it was a beginning of a short story, but where it would have gone or why he started writing it had been lost long ago. And this was just one of hundreds. These unfinished stories, these unfulfilled dreams hurt more than the forgotten plots of published novels.

The old man closed the notebook and sighed. So many ideas, yet so little time. Even if he lived for hundred more years he could never catch up to his imagination. While that was a depressing thought, he looked up at his bookcase, adjusted his glasses to bring his books into focus, and asked, “But how few do this much?”

Freelancers

“Will you get away from that damned screen and do something?” Robert called as he drifted through the Clarke. His voice was more annoyed than bitter. He popped through the hatch into the “living room” and brought himself to a stop by catching his foot on a handhold. Just as he knew he would, he found Geoffrey floating before the view screen.

Without taking his eyes from the screen, Geoffrey turned his head and said, “You act as if First Contact with aliens happens everyday.”

“I know, but it’s been two days. Yes, it’s great, it’s fantastic, it’s,” Robert waved his hands, “the biggest event in the entirety of Human existence.” Taking a deep breath he added, “But we have a job to do. We’re coming up on 4082 and Caltech would probably prefer that we leave a probe there, since that is what they’re paying us to do.”

With his foot on the handhold, Robert started to pull himself back to the “garage” when Geoffrey spun around and asked, “Have you heard the latest?” Before Robert could reply Geoffrey went on, “Oh, of course not, you’ve been too busy to follow the greatest event in Human history. But these aliens, these Pentans, they’ve announced that in the spirit of friendship they will outfit any Human spacecraft that wants it with artificial gravity.” Geoffrey let that hang for a moment before continuing. “Just think, no longer spending hours every day exercising and taking those horse pills to keep our bones from withering away.”

They both floated silently for several seconds. Then Robert asked with a smirk, “What about sex?”

Geoffrey rolled his eyes. “We can turn it off. I think we should send them a message, let them come fix us up. Plus, we could be some of the first people to have actual contact with aliens. What do you think?”

Robert sighed. “I think we’re coming up on 4082. We’ll talk about this later.”

“What the hell is wrong with you? You’re acting like this is the worst thing to ever happen. What gives?”

Robert floated back into the living room. He took a few seconds, then looked at Geoffrey. “Look at what we do. We swing by the lunar factories and pick up a dozen probes and supplies. We then spend a couple years drifting through the belt dropping off the probes on whatever asteroid the universities are interested in studying for potential colonization or mining fifty years from now. It’s not glamorous, but we … we were at the cutting edge of Human exploration of space.” Robert paused for a moment. “A year from now, when we’re back at the moon, do you think there will be anyone wanting to hire our services? Why study another boring old carbonaceous asteroid when these Pentans can take you to whole other star system?” Taking a deep breath he added, “Yes, it’s great that we’ve finally met aliens, but now that we have, how are we going to make a living?”

For a long time neither said anything. Then Geoffrey stated, “The only constant in life is change.” Looking at Robert he went on, “So maybe we’ll no longer drop probes off for universities. You said it might be fifty years until humanity is colonizing or mining out here, but with the kick in the ass of First Contact, maybe it will only be five. Maybe when we get back to the moon there won’t be a university wanting us to put a probe into orbit around an asteroid, maybe there’ll be a corporation wanting to hire us to prospect or set up a mining claim for them. Who knows? It’s a brave new world, but we’re not all going to just ignore the aliens and go back to the way things were just because you’re a grumpy old man set in your ways.”

Robert took a deep breath. “The Clarke’s my ship, I can be grumpy if I want to be.”

Geoffrey smiled. “I think somebody needs a nap.”

With a clenched jaw to keep from smiling, Robert glared at Geoffrey. “All right, all right. Let’s get this probe set up, then we’ll send a message to your precious Pentans.”

Whiners

Joe did not want to go to work on Tuesday. His company gave the employees the Friday off before Labor Day as well as that Monday, so he had not been at work when McCain announced Palin as his running mate. He was sure his cubical mates would have a hell of a time discussing the turn of events.

Mike was a hard-core Republican, but for months he had been complaining that McCain wasn’t conservative enough; even saying he was almost as bad as a Democrat. Linda was a hard-core Democrat, but for months she had been complaining that Obama wasn’t the fighter the Dems needed; he wasn’t Hillary. The only three things they agreed on were that the Philadelphia Flyers were the best, the other party was wrong, and that their own candidates might not deserve their vote.

When Joe arrived they were already at it. For hours he listened to Mike go on and on about how Palin added the desperately needed conservative nature to the ticket, conveniently forgetting that for months he had been bashing Obama for his inexperience. Linda meanwhile when on and on about how sickening it was that McCain had chosen a woman just to win over the disgruntled Hillary supporters, conveniently forgetting that for months she had been bashing Obama because he wasn’t Hillary.

Joe didn’t even try to do any work; he just sat at his desk playing Solitaire. After he got bored with that, he sat looking back and forth between the two. Finally he said, “Will you two just shut the hell up.”

Mike and Linda, who usually forgot that Joe existed, stopped mid-rants to stare, open mouthed, at him.

“For months you guys have been complaining that your candidates aren’t perfect. McCain isn’t Reagan and Obama isn’t Hillary. So neither candidate shares all your beliefs. Tough. Look at me. I’m a white, middle-class guy who doesn’t live in a million dollar home – let alone seven – who supports the ACLU and the NRA. I’m Pro-Choice while believing that we shouldn’t pull the troops out of Iraq until the Iraqis can fend for themselves. And to top it off, I’m an atheist. No candidate shares my beliefs, but do I whine and go, ‘They don’t believe as I do so they don’t deserve my vote?’ No, because I’m adult enough to realize that only spoiled little brats bitch and moan when life doesn’t go as they want.”

Joe paused, then continued, pointing at Linda, “You hate Obama, but if enough of you brain-dead Democrats stay home because he isn’t Hillary, then there’s a chance McCain will win. Is that what you want?” Turning to Mike he went on, “And the same goes for you and the brain-dead Republicans. If enough of you stay home then Obama will win.”

Joe let that sink in for a moment before saying, “Both of you, stop whining about how you might not vote this November because neither candidate is perfect. Well duh. Actually – now that I think about it – if you’re stupid enough to think politicians need to be perfect then maybe it’s best that you don’t vote. Ever.”

War Against Time

When Mike pulled into John and Stacy’s driveway, he was surprised to see that he was the last to arrive. He looked at the clock in his car and saw it was 1:56. The plan had been to get together at 2:00, which usually meant Alice wouldn’t be there until 2:30 – at the earliest – but there was her little blue Saturn. Maybe John had told her they were meeting at 1:30.

With that Mike chuckled and got out of his car, taking the bag with a couple of DVDs, a board game, and a box of donuts. The gang’s standard weekend get together involved ordering some pizza, watching a movie or two, playing some games and BSing.

With a big smile, John opened the door just before Mike could ring the bell. “Howdy,” Mike said.

“Come on in.”

Mike stepped into the sun room, took his hat off and set it upside down on the table John and Stacy didn’t know what to do with. He then took out his wallet and keys and put them in the hat.

“Everyone’s in the dining room,” John told him.

Mike nodded. With another chuckle he asked, “Did you tell Alice we were getting together at 1:30?”

John’s smile faded and he said, “Something like that.”

Walking into the dining room, Mike saw the gang all sitting around the table with the two chairs on the ends empty. Down one side sat Alice, Linda and her husband Harry. On the other side were Stacy, Bill and his wife Nichole. John took the empty chair next to his wife, waved at the other chair and said, “Please, sit down.”

Mike raised the eyebrow over his right eye and replied, “Okay,” drawing the word out. He sat down between Nichole and Alice and noticed that everyone looked worried. “I have donuts,” he told them.

For a few seconds everyone around the table smiled, although they did look pained. John took a deep breath and said, “There’s no easy way to say this Mike, but this is an intervention.”

There was complete silence until Mike gave a snorting laugh. “What?”

“You need help,” Stacy said, “and we’re here to help you.”

Again Mike raised his eyebrow. “Help? For what?”

Everyone looked to John who answered. “Mike, you’re like the only person on the planet who doesn’t have a cell phone.”

Mike let that run through his mind for a few moments, then replied with, “So?”

“So?” Linda cried. “What if you had been in an accident on your way here?”

“Then the eight hundred people around me would have all whipped out their cell phones and called 9-1-1.”

“Maybe a good way to start this,” Bill broke in resting his hands on the table, “is asking why you don’t have a cell phone?”

“Because I don’t need one.”

“How can you say that?” John asked.

Mike shrugged. “Easily. Why would I need one?”

“So you can stay in touch with everyone,” Linda answered.

“I have a phone in my apartment that I rarely use. I have email. And I get together with you people for days like today. Why do I need to be more in touch?”

Before anyone could reply, Mike raised a finger. “Wait a minute. In the past month all of you together have sent me, like, thirty emails, but I don’t think any of you have called me. So, unless it is beneath you to call a land-line, how would me getting a cell phone keep us in touch?”

“We don’t call,” Stacy explained, “because we don’t know if you’ll be there to pick up.”

“But you send me emails, and it could be hours before I check my email.”

“Really,” Alice said, “a cell phone is for when we go to movies or out to dinner. “What if you got lost? We wouldn’t know what happened to you?”

“That’s why I usually bum a ride, or take someone with a cell phone.”

“But what’s the big deal?” John asked. “They’re tiny; you can fit one in your pocket.” To demonstrate, John pulled his phone out of his pocket.

“I don’t like having things in my pockets,” Mike explained. “That’s why my wallet and keys are in my hat out there,” he pointed over his shoulder with a thumb.

“They do make little pouches you can attach to your belt,” Nichole said.

“Enh, I think that would still bug me.”

“Would such a little thing bug you?” Alice asked.

Mike shrugged. “That’s part of why I stopped wearing a watch.”

Bill leaned forward and asked, “Really? What’s the rest of the reason?”

Sitting back, Mike said, “I was tired of being at the beck and call of the three-handed slave master.” Everybody looked confused, so Mike explained, “Time. From old clocks that have three hands. A couple years ago I was at lunch and it was a busy day, they were short handed, something, and it took a long time for my food to arrive. Once it did I started wolfing it down because I was afraid of getting back to work late, and I realized I was getting worried over nothing. I should relax and enjoy the moments of life, how ever long they take. I shouldn’t rush through them because somebody else says so. Part of why I hate mornings is I usually wake up tired. I want to go back to sleep but I can’t, because when the slave master tells you to get up, you have to get up.” Mike looked around the table and added, “I stopped wearing a watch as a rebellion, my little war against time.”

“Well, that’s nice,” John said, “but what does that have to do with not owning a cell phone?”

“I can wait a few hours to get home to call or email someone. I’m independent enough not to need to tell everyone every little thing about my day all the time.” Mike looked around the table and asked, “Are we connecting now?” A few of his friends nodded. “And we’re doing it without a technological doodad.”

“Okay,” Linda said. “You’ve made your point. But that doesn’t change the fact that a cell phone can help you in an emergency.”

“So I should buy one and throw it in my little emergency kit in my trunk – the one with flares, jumper cables, et cetera – to let it bounce around through summer and winter for a few years until I do have an accident and need it?”

Nobody had an answer to that, so Mike said, “I don’t have a cell phone because I have no need of one and one would not help me. Now, why don’t one of you whip out your cell phone and order us some pizza.”

Flight Into History

June 22, 2010

Most days Tom hated when customers came into the convenient store during his shift; it really cramped his magazine reading time. But today was worse. Of course he would have to work on the launch of the final space shuttle mission.

As the Endeavour sat ready to liftoff for the last time, Tom sat behind the counter watching it on a tiny TV. About every ten seconds, some schmuck came in to buy a pack of cigarettes, or get a cup of coffee, or walk past the large sign with an arrow telling people where the restrooms were to ask, “Where are your bathrooms?”

A few asked him what was going on and when he told them they would shrug or say, “That’s cool,” then leave. On one hand he could understand their lack of interest – the shuttles had been flying for almost thirty years – but on the other hand it pissed him off. This was a momentous moment in the history of spaceflight. Okay, it wasn’t Armstrong taking a small step, but one of the most complex machines ever built was being retired so we could move on to something better. That sense of progress just filled Tom with hope; hope humanity would carry on and not be buried in the crap that seemed to fill our lives.

A middle-aged woman came into the store, grabbed a Diet Coke and a candy bar, and asked Tom for a pack of cigarettes. As Tom was ringing her up, she nodded towards the TV and asked, “What’s going on?”

“It’s the last shuttle launch, their retiring the fleet.”

The woman nodded and throwing a twenty on the counter sneered, “Good. I always thought NASA was a huge waste of money.”

Trying to keep the anger from his voice, Tom picked up the twenty and stated, “Exploring the universe is not a waste of money.”

The woman scoffed. “All those billions wasted up there could be better spent on the problems here on Earth.”

“Yeah, then the people could spend their money on important things, like nicotine and empty calories,” Tom said, as he handed her back her change.

The woman looked at the items in her hand for a moment. Glaring at Tom she snatched her change and stormed out of the store.

Tom shrugged and turned back to the TV. “T-minus sixty seconds.”

The Grey Masses

“Thank you, thank you,” Joseph said as he stepped up to the podium. Over the light applause he added, “If I had known I would have received such a warm goodbye, I would have left years ago.”

As the laughter rolled around the ballroom, Joseph glanced at the faces of his family, friends, and coworkers. He held his hand out to the woman who sat to the left of the podium. “Another round of applause for Susan, who put all of this together out of the kindness of her heart, and because she’s been after my job for years.”

Speaking up to be heard over the laughter, Susan said, “It was no problem at all, I’m just so happy you’re finally leaving.”

Joseph waited for everything to settle. “Seriously, I want to thank all of you. The past thirty-seven years at D. A. Shearin have been some of the best and happiest years of my life. Of course that’s because I’ve spent all of them with my lovely wife, Abbey.”

At this there were more applause – and a few elbows into husband’s ribs – and a woman sitting on the right blushed a deep red and tried to hide her face behind her napkin.

Joseph smiled and chuckled, knowing he would pay for that latter. “Now, I’ve been to these things where the retiree just talks and talks and talks about days gone by, boring the hell out of everyone here. But I’m not going to do that.”

“Too late for that,” someone called out.

Cupping his hand to his ear, Joseph asked, “Do I hear the sound of a troublemaker?”

“Oh no, no, no,” the same voice replied.

“What won’t I miss?” Ticking them off on his fingers, Joseph counted, “The morning commute, the evening commute, Tom …”

When the laughter died down, Joseph continued, “Before I was interrupted I was saying that I’m not going to stand up here and bore you. I’m now retired, I should be enjoying myself. And if my family is any indication, I’ll be enjoying myself for many years. In addition to my wife, our kids Susan and Jeremy and our four grandkids, tonight we are joined by my father Martin who turns eighty-seven in a few weeks.” An old man sitting next to Abbey raised his hand and waved to the audience.

“And even more amazing,” Joseph went on, “my grandmother Margaret – who turned 105 two months ago – is here as well.” A very old woman sat in a wheelchair next to Martin. He looked at her, then turned and said something to Joseph. “What was that?” Joseph asked, and Martin repeated himself. “Oh.” Turning to the audience Joseph told them, “She’s asleep.”

Super M

The naked woman hung upside down from the ceiling; her ankles wrapped in heavy chains. More chains bound her arms behind her back. A strip of lead had been wrapped around her head as a blindfold with the ends twisted together. Clamps were clipped to both of her nipples and connected to these were heavy medicine balls which hung below her head.

She hung in the middle of a small, Spartan, cinder block room. Two closed metal doors led from the room and along one wall was a closed metal cabinet. The only other objects in the room were a small freezer, a step stool, and a hand cart near the cabinet.

After several minutes one of the doors opened and a figure entered. They wore a protective face shield, a chemical apron, and heavy gloves. With long tongs the figure carried a ceramic crucible full of a thick, silvery liquid. With their foot, they moved the step stool closer to the woman, then stepped up to the top. Without saying a word, the figure tilted the crucible and the liquid poured out upon the woman’s buttocks.

The woman gasped and squirmed as the liquid ran down over her flesh and solidified. Once the crucible was empty, the figure stepped down and set it aside. The woman squirmed and a chunk of lead slid from her skin and fell to the floor with a soft thunk. The figure waited for several seconds then, using the tongs removed the remaining lead from the woman. Once all the lead was back in the crucible, the figure picked it up with the tongs and left the room.

They returned after only a few moments and began taking off the protective clothing, revealing a middle-aged woman wearing a white blouse and khaki slacks. She looked as if she would not be out of place in any office. She walked over to the woman and rested her hand on the woman’s cooling buttocks. “What did you think of my warm up method?”

“It was lovely, Mistress.”

The Mistress smiled and slowly rubbed the woman’s butt, resulting in a content sigh. She then walked over to the cabinet and opened it, revealing numerous weapons. There were clubs, knives, swords, pistols, even rifles. The Mistress looked these over and glanced at the woman. Reaching into the cabinet she removed a set of brass knuckles and dropped them with a clang onto the hand cart. She then slowly – almost seductively – drew a Bowie knife from its sheath and dropped that on the cart as well. After a few seconds she picked up a 9mm with a silencer. She loaded it and set it and another clip on the cart. Pushing the cart over to the woman she hummed a little tune.

Still humming the Mistress walked around the woman a few times, then reached out a finger and touched it to the woman’s stomach. The woman jerked a bit and the Mistress smiled. “Jumpy, aren’t we.” The Mistress circled the woman tracing a line around her body. She took a step back and said, “What am I going to do with you.” Carefully – so as not to make a noise – she picked up the 9mm. She held the barrel only a few inches from the woman’s right butt cheek and pulled the trigger.

The woman let out a gasp which turned into giggles as the flattened bullet fell to the floor.

“Did you think that was funny?” the Mistress asked. Before the woman could reply, the Mistress emptied the clip, shooting the woman’s buttocks, thighs, and the underside of her breasts. The Mistress inserted the new clip and continued shooting, hitting most of the same spots. When that clip was finished, she returned the gun to the cart. The woman hung breathing heavier; the medicine balls gently swaying from her squirms.

Reaching up with both hands, the Mistress drew her fingernails down the back of the woman’s thighs. “I’m worried I might have gotten you too excited. Perhaps I should cool you down.” The Mistress walked over to the freezer and put on insulated gloves. She opened the freezer and took out a large thermos labeled “Liquid Nitrogen,” but before she could return to the woman a bell rang.

“Damn it,” the woman shouted. With a shrug, the chains on her arms shattered and she ripped her ankles from the ceiling. Back on her feet she undid the clamps on her nipples and let the medicine balls fall to the floor. She then removed the lead strip from her eyes. Running from the room she told the Mistress, “I’m so sorry.”

The Mistress put the thermos back in the freezer and took off the gloves. She walked over and glanced at all the broken chain links littering the floor. With a sigh she sat down on the stool and waited.

A minute later the woman returned smoothing her outfit. “I’m sorry, there’s a bank robbery with hostages. I need to go.”

“I understand.”

The woman sighed. “I really needed this.”

The Mistress smiled. “You’re abilities present quite a challenge, and I do enjoy a challenge. I will wait for you to return.”

The woman smiled.

“I will spend my time,” the Mistress added, “thinking of an adequate punishment for making such a mess,” she waved at the floor.

The woman blushed and looked at her feet.

With a pat on her butt and a smile, the Mistress told her, “Go on, the world needs you.”

The woman smiled, lifted a foot off the floor and flew out the door.

The Honeymoon’s Over

“Did we ever order anything from here?” Jason asked, holding up a flier from The Pizza Queen.

“Hmm.” Melissa thought for a few seconds. “I can’t remember. I don’t think so. Does it look like they have anything good?”

Jason flipped through it. “They have pizza and hoagies.”

“Put it in the ‘Should try’ pile. What about this?” Melissa held up a flier for China’s Best.

“Remember, that was the guy who got lost and when he finally got here he didn’t have our full order.”

Looking at the flier as if that would help her memory, Melissa asked, “Should we toss it just because of one bad experience?”

Jason shrugged. “Is there a shortage of Chinese places around here?”

Melissa stuck her tongue out at him and dropped the China’s Best flier in the trash.

Jason picked up the next flier on the sort pile. “Don’t we already have one for Miranda’s?”

“I think so.” Melissa dug down through the “keeper” pile. “Yeah, here it is.” Her phone rang so she handed it to Jason and said, “Which one’s newer?”

Melissa checked the caller ID and answered her phone with, “Hi, mom.” She listened for a few seconds and said, “I swear I’ll pick you up tomorrow. I’ll be there at nine, a quarter to nine sharp.” She laughed and listened for a moment. “No, Jason and I are just sorting through all the restaurant fliers we’ve gotten.” Her smile faded and she stated, “No.” Her eyes grew and her mouth fell open. “Mother! Goodnight. I’ll see you in the morning.… Love you too.” Melissa hung up and had a full body shiver.

“What was that?” Jason asked.

“I said we were sorting all the fliers and she said, ‘The honeymoon’s over then, huh.’ Then she started telling me about her and dad and …” she shivered again.

Jason chuckled. “You know what would teach your mother a lesson? If we had sex right here right now.”

With a smirk, Melissa waved at the fliers and asked, “And mess up our piles?”

Money Talks

Amber returned to her apartment and set her reusable grocery bag on the kitchen counter. She put away her skim milk, bananas, spaghetti and Lucky Charms, then folded up the bag and set it on the hook by her door.

Kicking off her shoes, she walked into the living room and turned on her computer. As that went through its startup routine, she went to the bathroom. When she returned, she took out her change – a five and two ones – and got to work.

On her desktop was a word file titled Quotes. This contained several hundred of her favorite quotes. From “The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever” –Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known” –Carl Sagan to “Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels” –Faith Whittlesey and “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy” –Martin Luther King Jr.

Amber paged down through the quotes, waiting for one to catch her eye. “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” –Thomas Jefferson did just that. With a black pen and in small, neat letters, she copied that onto the border around the five dollar bill. In another ten minutes she had copied “As for the hibiscus / on the roadside – / my horse ate it.” –Bashö and “A book is like a garden carried in the pocket” –Arab Proverb onto the one dollar bills. She turned off her computer and added the bills to similar quoted bills in her wallet. She then settled on the couch with a good book.

Amber wanted to make the world a better place and she felt that there already existed enough beauty, wonder, and potential to do that, but the problem was too few people were exposed to it. For years she had struggled, trying to think of something she could do. She was too introverted to stand on a street corner reciting poetry, and despite what all her friends told her, she thought her life too boring to warrant a blog. Then one day she bought a book, and the dollar in her change had www.wheresgeorge.com written on it. She checked out the site – where people could follow their bills across the country using the serial numbers – and thought it was a cool idea. Gathering all her bills, she logged them in then went out and spent them. Every now and then she checked back, but nobody ever reported her bills.

Amber thought it was an interesting idea, but she wondered if it could be put to other uses. For awhile she put the addresses of inspirational or thought provoking websites she had found, such as www.poems.com, apod.nasa.gov, whywontgodhealamputees.com, etc, but that didn’t feel right. She realized that telling people to check out a website wasn’t as effective as just handing them a nugget of wisdom. So she stopped with the websites and started sending out inspirational and thought provoking quotes, hoping that one day – after buying a cup of coffee or movie ticket – someone would read one of her bills. It wasn’t much, but every little bit helped.

At Peace

A log settled, sending a shower of sparks flying through the darkening night. The man smiled and sipped from the cold can in his hand. Dinner was long finished, but he still sat watching as the fire slowly died down. A chill wind rustled the leaves and the man moved his chair closer to the warmth.

He had friends who cooked with propane or charcoal, but that was boring, tame fire; the lion in a zoo. Besides, who ever sat watching as a grill cooled down? Cooking on a wood fire was more primal. While the fire was contained within a metal ring it was still wild, unpredictable, yet calming.

The man did not know – nor care – if it was a memory of when our ancestors used fire to banish the night, scare off predators, and cook mammoths, or simply the hypnotic dance of the flames that made him so fond of a good fire. Instead of thinking about the whys or tomorrow’s long drive and the return to the office, the man just sat breathing in the cold air with just a hint of wood smoke. At peace.

Collateral Damage

The woman on the computer screen sighed. “Malik, believe me when I say that I – and others – fought this decision.”

The man nodded. “I do Sara. We watch the news, we know things are tough.” He smiled. “We’ll manage … somehow.”

For a few seconds the woman stared at him from the screen. Then she smiled and said, “I’m sure you will. The best of luck.”

“Thank you.” Malik pressed a button on the screen and Sara’s face was replaced by the words “CONNECTION BROKEN.”

He swiveled his chair to the side, closed his eyes, and took several deep breaths. Opening his eyes, he turned back to his computer and turned on the public address system. “Attention all personnel, this is Base Commander Payne.” Everybody on base knew him as either Malik or Doc, so using his title meant this was not to be ignored. “There will be a mandatory meeting in the Common Room in ten minutes. That’s all.”

#

When Malik left his office a few minutes later, he found Doctor Zhang Peng – the base’s chief computer tech – waiting for him. “What’s going on?”

“You’ll find out with everyone else.”

“That bad.”

It hadn’t been a question, but Malik answered it as one anyway, “Yeah.” After a pause he added, “These next few weeks are going to be very stressful for everyone.”

Zhang smiled. “So it’s bad, but not so bad as to preclude sex.”

Malik couldn’t help but laugh. “No, no. I don’t think it could ever get that bad.”

Leaning forward, Zhang kissed him. “Good.” She turned and with slow hops started towards the common room.

Malik watched her for a few seconds, then followed.

#

The Common Room was supposed to be able to hold fifty people somewhat comfortably. Unfortunately, there were sixty-two stationed on the base.

What little conversation had been going on stopped as Malik entered. Looking around the room he unconsciously nodded each time his eyes swept passed a department head. There was Doctor Han Kun of environmental, Doctor Antonella Pedriali of engineering, Doctor Hiroyuki Takenaka of medical, and Doctor Gursharan Dandavate, the chief selenologist.

Frowning, Malik asked, “Where’s Rashid?” Doctor Rashid Gryzlova was head of general science.

“He and Allen were suiting up to replace the micrometeoroid collector,” Margarita Romano from the astronomy team answered. “They’re listening in,” she added, pointing to the microphone that had been set up.

Leaning forward Malik said, “I’m sorry Rashid, but that will have to wait.”

From a nearby speaker came Rashid’s gravelly reply of, “I understand.”

“I’m assuming,” Malik went on, “that Dawn’s team is listening in as well?”

From the speaker came the cheerful chirp of, “Yep.”

Five days before Doctor Dawn Hu had set out with five researchers in one of the base’s long-range rovers on an expedition to the Newton Crater complex. By now they were only a few days away from it. Malik sighed. “I hate to say this Dawn, but you need to turn around and come back.”

There was a pause, then with less cheer Dawn replied, “Will do.”

Malik looked back at the people gathered around him. Before they had looked worried, but now they looked scared. “Is there anybody else missing?”

Doctor Takenaka raised his hand and said, “Jandova broke a tooth and I had to pull it. He’s sleeping off the painkillers.”

Malik nodded. “Anyone else?”

When nobody said anything, Malik took a deep breath and began. “Okay, here’s what’s going on. About six hours ago a group of people from a Christian doomsday cult attacked the Gonzales factories.” He held up his hands to quiet the shocked murmuring that came with that announcement; a third of the rockets that brought supplies and crews to the base were built in that factory. “They didn’t get far before they were stopped by security, and none of the rockets being assembled were damaged. While clearly a criminal act by a fanatical minority, the suits back on Earth still see it as a broad indicator of public opinion.”

Taking another deep breath, Malik looked around the room. “We’ve all seen the news reports. I read an article last week which stated that there have been as many civil wars, insurrections, revolts, coups, and terrorist attacks in the past year as in the previous twenty. It seems that every group or subgroup that feels it has been repressed – at any point in history – has come out seeking to avenge themselves on their oppressors. And as Africa, the Middle East, and South America burn, there’s us. Sixty-two people, out of harm’s way, being supported by billions in taxpayer dollars. With all the problems on Earth, too few people see the need to keep a base on the moon.”

Malik paced for a few steps in the cramped room. “This is something that’s been coming for months. I – and others on Earth – have been fighting it, but the decision was made yesterday to scale back our presence here, probably to about thirty people. There was going to be press conference, but that’s been put off so it doesn’t look like the cult succeeded.”

Stopping, Malik looked around the room. A few met his eye, but most were looking at the floor shaking their heads. “I want to reassure you that the base is not going to be abandoned. We already abandoned the moon once. We’re not going to do it again. And we’re not going to stop doing research; we’ll just be doing the more practical kind. One of our goals here was to prove that humans can live away from Earth and we’ve done a good job in that. We recycle most of our air and water, and we grow some of our food, but there has always been room for improvement. Now, I want to make that our priority. The fewer resupply missions we need, the happier the bean counters back home will be. I would say it would also be less for these cultist and others like them to have against us, but that would require them to listen to reason.”

A few of the scientists gave mirthless chuckles at that.

Malik smiled and continued. “Part of the way to make things more efficient is to cut down on the number of personnel. I haven’t worked that out exactly, but probably half of us will be going home sooner than we thought we would. In a month or so we’ll start sending volunteers back home. I would like it to just be volunteers; I don’t want to make people draw straws. I’ll give you a few days to think about it, but just so you know, I’ll be the first volunteer.”

Bad Omens

“…. And upstairs are three bedrooms, although one has been turned into a storage room. The master bedroom has its own bathroom, and there is another bathroom as well as a fair sized hallway closet. So look around, and I’ll be here if you have any questions.”

“Thank you,” Dave and Laurie both said to the realtor.

She nodded then turned to give them some privacy.

“What do you want to check out first?” Dave asked.

Glancing around the tidy living room with its mismatched furniture and overflowing bookshelves, Laurie replied, “Ah, how about upstairs.”

Dave nodded, and they started up the beige carpeted stairs. “What do you think about the carpeting?”

In response, Laurie just wavered her hand.

They took a step into the room at the top of the stairs and stopped. Simultaneously they both said, “Wow.”

After a few seconds of silence, Dave said, “I really hope this is the storage room.”

Laurie slapped him in the ribs. “Everybody has hobbies.”

In the room were several display cases filled with Elvis dishes, Elvis figurines, Elvis busts, Elvis salt and pepper shakers. Looking around Laurie said, “Everything Elvis but the velvet.”

“You have to draw the line somewhere.” Dave chuckled and softly patted his wife’s abdomen. “What do you think of Elvis?”

“No.”

“What if it’s a girl?”

Laurie frowned. “A girl named Elvis?”

“Well, there was ‘A boy named Sue.’”

The frown deepened. “I thought that was Johnny Cash?”

Dave thought for a second, then said, “Let’s check out the other rooms.”

Laurie rolled her eyes and followed him.

They peeked in the bathroom and Dave asked, “No Elvis toilet seat cover?” for which he received another slap to the ribs.

The next bedroom looked like it belonged to a woman off to college. It was a plain room with some books and old teddy bears too fragile – or precious – to share in the journey of higher education. Laurie wrinkled her nose. “We’d definitely have to repaint this room.”

“Don’t you like purple?”

“Pale lavender,” Laurie corrected.

“I don’t buy all these fancy-shmancy, woman colors. That’s purple.”

“Pale lavender.”

The argument continued down the hall, but ended when they stepped into the master bedroom. They stood in shocked silence for several moments.

“We can’t buy this house.”

Turning to his wife, Dave asked, “Why not?”

With both hands Laurie pointed above the bed. Above the left side was an image of Jesus and above the right side was an image of Elvis. Both on black velvet. It took Laurie a few seconds to find her voice. “They will always be there. Even though the current owners will take them – at least I pray they do – and even if we repaint this room a dozen times, they will always be there. Every time we go to bed, or have sex, Jesus and Elvis will be watching over us.”

Dave had clamped a hand over his mouth but he removed it to ask, “And that would be bad?”

“Yes that would be bad.”

Amongst Us

“How much do you know?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A fist – unseen through the rough hood over his head – slammed into David Moore’s face, knocking him and the chair he was tied to over. David lay on the floor for a few seconds, then hands grabbed his shoulders in a manner that would leave bruises and set him back up.

“Tell us what you know,” the man screamed.

“Please,” David sobbed, “you’ve got the wrong man. I don’t know any…”

A fist in the gut interrupted him, and for almost a minute David gasped for breath. When he could talk again he asked, “Why are you doing this?”

Again the unseen fist hit his face; it wasn’t hard enough to knock him over, but it did bring fresh blood to his mouth. “We ask the questions.”

For several seconds the only sound was David’s sobs and gasps for breath. Then a woman calmly said, “Perhaps he’s telling the truth.”

David turned his head towards where he thought the woman was and said, “Yes, I don’t know anything. You’ve got the wrong guy.”

The man whispered something David didn’t catch and the woman replied, “No. There are more … subtle ways to find the truth.”

At this the man gave a cold chuckle. David could just hear the wild animal smile on the man’s face. This – far more than his abduction and torture – terrified him.

9 months earlier

As often as he could, David would stop by Reed’s Books. Over the years he had built up a good friendship with the owner James, a portly, white haired, near-sighted, gentleman. In his will David had even left his entire library to Reed’s Books. It would either still be run by James, or have been taken over by his teenage granddaughter who could usually be found sitting in front of one of the shelves reading a book her peers – and possibly even her teachers – had never heard of.

James did receive some of his books through such donations, but he bought most of them at auctions and yard sales. Some bibliophile would spend a lifetime collecting books, and when they died their relatives wouldn’t know what to do with them all. They would be boxed up and sold for twenty bucks a box. As James went through the dozens of such boxes he bought each week, he would set aside books he thought his regulars, like David, would enjoy.

For as long as he could remember, David had always loved reading. It was a family joke that the reason his mother had such a difficult delivery was because David was halfway through War and Peace and didn’t want to put it down. So few people were surprised when at the ripe old age of ten David had announced that he would become a world famous author. But like so many childhood dreams, his had refused to become reality. Between working at a real job and struggling through his first novel, he did manage to get a few stories published in various scifi magazines, but he had long accepted he would never be listed amongst Tolstoy, Heinlein, or Clarke.

While running errands one rainy, Saturday afternoon, David realized he hadn’t been to see James for a couple weeks. So between the oil change and buying groceries, he pulled into the tiny, gravel parking lot behind the three-story house that served as James’ store and home.

When the bell above the door rang, James looked up from the paper he was reading. “Hello stranger.”

“Hello yourself. How are you?”

Folding the paper, James shrugged. “I’ve been worse, I’ve been better. I go on.” Standing up he added, “I haven’t seen you for awhile.”

David shrugged. “Well, that’s life.”

Both men smiled at that.

“I was running errands,” David went on, “and I remembered I hadn’t been in for a few weeks, so I figured I would just stop by and see if you had found any new treasures for me.”

The grin on James’ face grew. “Oh, indeed I have.” Walking over to his “RESERVED” shelf, he said, “When I saw this, I just knew that you would appreciate it.” He drew a large art book from the shelf and set it on the counter before David.

The cover was a montage of images of other worlds, aliens, their ships, frightened humans. The title was Alien Art. “What is this?”

“Oh, over the decades numerous people have painted alien landscapes and such.” James paused for a moment then continued, “I’m not big on science fiction, but I figured you would love it.”

David flipped through pages of paintings showing floating cities above vast deserts, space suited astronauts burying one of their fellows in the rusty, Martian soil, and one which at first glance looked like the cliché of a giant saucer landing before the White House, but on closer inspection showed that it was a matter of perspective and the saucer was comparable in size to the cigarette butt in the foreground. While David may not have been the best writer, he prided himself on always challenging himself. As the wondrous images passed before his eyes, an idea came to him, what if he wrote a story inspired by each?

David looked up to see James’ smiling face. “This is wonderful. How much?”

#

It was a couple of days before David had the time to properly look through the book. But his mind had already been working. For the painting of the Martian burial, he had already come up with idea that the death wasn’t from some Martian bacteria, but suicide. The astronaut had received a “Dear John” email and couldn’t deal with it.

As he turned the pages, David just let his mind absorb the images; his subconscious would work out the plots on its own. About a third of the way through the book he came across a painting he had missed the first time he flipped through it. At first David was confused because it showed a normal 1950s street corner. Reading through the caption he saw the title of the piece was “Amongst Us” and the reader was instructed to take special notice of “the man in the grey fedora.” Locating the man David studied him for a few seconds before he noticed a thin, green, tentacle that ran down from beneath the fedora and wrapped around the back of the man’s ear.

David set the book down and leaned back on his couch with a distant look in his eye.

#

A month later David had a rough draft of a 14,000 word novelette “Amongst Us” about aliens who had lost a war and were hiding on Earth from their enemies. They were not suited to our environment, so they attached themselves to humans. It wasn’t much of a story, but then David came up with the idea that the blue aliens were the good guys, they were just trying to survive. They didn’t enslave their hosts; they just kept themselves under the hat, so to speak. But the green aliens had been sent to kill off the blue, and they didn’t care if humans died in the process.

A secret war going on around us wasn’t a new idea in science fiction, but David hoped his personal touches made it unique. He let the story rest for several weeks, then spent a week giving it a brutal revision. After this he sent it off to a magazine that had published one of his stories before and went back to working on his novel.

A month and a half later, he received word that “Amongst Us” had been accepted, and would be published in about six months.

#

The hood was ripped from David’s head. He blinked several times and looked around. He was in a dimly lit room that could have been anywhere. There were only two other people with him. The man – looking like an extra in a gangster movie – walked over to the wall and leaned against it. The woman sat on a chair before David. She was … unremarkable. Someone you could pass on the street everyday and never notice.

Without a word, the woman reached up and pulled off her wig to reveal her scalp covered by a thin, green, gelatinous, thing. It had one red eye that looked at David with indifference, and just before he passed out he noticed the two thin tentacles that ran down behind both of the woman’s ears.

Falling

With a very heavy, very expensive, antique chair strapped to his back, Allen slowly worked his way down the steep, narrow steps of the outdoor amphitheater. On occasion he would meet an unhelpful people who would stand in his way, forcing him to the edge of the hundred foot drop. A part of his mind knew this was ridiculous, and so was glad when the buzzing began.

Allen opened his eyes. Failing to focus them on the alarm clock, he groaned and flopped his hand until he hit the snooze button. With a yawn, he wrapped himself back up in his blanket.

If the alarm clock hadn’t woken him, part of him knew that the end of the dream would have been him tripping on a pebble and falling into the abyss. On the off chance the dream could pick up where it ended if he drifted back to sleep, this part of him tried to rouse him with thoughts of the coming day. It didn’t work. In fact, it had unintended consequences, for in the fluid reality of the half-awake state, the dream and the coming day merged.

Allen was still carrying a heavy chair – he didn’t know if it was an antique or not – but instead of the steep, narrow steps of an amphitheater, he was on the steep, narrow steps leading down into a conference room. Unhelpful coworkers stood in his way, and all the while his unseen boss yelled at him.

When the alarm clock went off again, Allen set up with relief and turned it off. For a few minutes he sat stretching and yawning and rubbing his eyes. Finally he stood up, and fell off to work.

There are Some Things …

“So, who in your hometown is a swinger?”

Rich looked at his cell phone for a moment. “What?”

He heard Janice laugh. “On our date you said you were from a small town nobody had ever heard of.”

“Yeah,” Rich said, “but why do you think people from small towns are swingers?”

Again Janice laughed. “No, I … I had some time to kill at work today, so I googled it. The third or fourth entry was for some swinger’s site.”

Rich didn’t know what to say. “Huh.”

“I didn’t check out the site,” Janice continued, “because I was at work and I don’t … swing that way.”

Rich rolled his eyes. “You owe me a beer for that one.”

Janice giggled. “So come on, which of your neighbors are swingers?”

“I don’t …” Rich shook his head. “I don’t want to know.”

“Who are your neighbors to the left?”

Rich paused for a moment. “The Johnsons.”

“What about them?”

“They’re in the sixties.”

“Viagra.” After a pause Janice asked, “Neighbors to the right?”

“Were the Appignanis, but they moved away, like, six months ago. I haven’t met the people that moved in; forget who mom said they were.”

“Across the street?”

A secret part of Rich had been afraid she would ask that. “The Fosters …” and a long forgotten memory bubbled into Rich’s consciousness.

“Anything about them?”

“Oh,” Rich drew the word out.

Janice gasped. “Is it something juicy? Tell me, tell me, tell me.”

Rich took a few deep breaths. “I must have been, eight or nine,” he began. “I was playing in my room and got thirsty, or something. Mom had yelled at me numerous times about making a racket coming down the stairs, so I had done the kid thing and went to the other extreme; sneaking down the stairs so nobody ever heard me. I heard my parents talking about Joe and Carol … the Fosters, but I didn’t make the connection until now. Thank you.”

“You’re welcomed.”

With his free hand Rich rubbed his temple. “Somehow, my mom had heard something about them and was telling it to my dad.”

After a few seconds, Janice gasped, “What? What did she tell him?”

Rich took a deep breath. “She said, ‘She spanks him.’”

“Spanking? Wow.”

Forging on, Rich said, “And my dad asked, ‘Spanks him?’ to which my mom replied, ‘Every day.’”

Janice burst out laughing. “I should have grown up in your hometown. I only had a neighbor who got a DUI.”

“It’s not funny. I didn’t know who Joe and Carol were, but the idea of getting spanked every day scared the hell out of me. I snuck back upstairs and hid in my room until my mom came up about an hour later wondering why I wasn’t making any noise.”

Still laughing, Janice asked, “Was it really such a traumatic event?”

“I suppressed it for fifteen years.” Rich gave a full body shiver. “Why did you have to bring this topic up?”

Janice stopped laughing, and after a moment replied, “Curiosity.”

“Perhaps there’s a reason it killed the cat.”

“Don’t you want to learn all you can about other people?”

Rich started to say something, stopped himself, and answered with, “There are limits.”

“True. Now, the Fosters were kinky, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they were swingers. So, did your parents ever throw secret parties?”

“No. No. No, no, no. No. You …. You are paying for our next date. Probably our next five dates.”

“Why? Are you afraid you might learn something about your parents?”

Rich’s mouth moved for a few seconds. Then he held both hands and the cell phone away from him. He took a deep breath and brought the phone back to his ear. “There are some things I just don’t want to know.”

Some Days

There was a smudge of blue ink in the middle of Jeff’s desk. He stared at it for five minutes. Yawning, he reached for a napkin from the pile next to his computer: leftovers from fast food lunches. Wetting a tip with his tongue, he rubbed the smudge. At first he only made it worse, but after adding some elbow grease managed to clean it off his desk.

Jeff balled up the napkin as tightly as he could, then glanced over his shoulder at the trash can. He tossed the ball up over his head and missed the can by a good six inches. With a sigh he picked up the ball. Standing up he held it above the can for several seconds before letting it fall.

Sitting down, Jeff went back to staring at his desk. It might have just been his imagination, but the spot where the smudge had been looked cleaner than the surrounding area.

For a moment Jeff debated if he should clean the rest of his desk or dirty that one spot. How could you do that? he wondered. He looked around his desk for a few seconds, then reached for a pencil. Out of the drawer he took the little Swiss Army knife he kept there. With a blade he shaved some graphite onto the little clean spot. Using a finger he smeared out the graphite into a big, gray smudge. Oops.

Jeff stood up and nonchalantly walked to the water cooler – nodding to Alice three cubicles down – and got a cup of water. He drank most of it, but took some back to his desk. With that he wet another napkin and cleaned up the graphite, although the end result was a faint gray smudge in the middle of a big clean area. “Damn,” he muttered.

For a minute Jeff sat and wondered if anyone would think it weird if he came out of the men’s room with a cup of soapy water and paper towels to properly clean his desk. Before he stood to do just that, his computer beeped indicating he had a new email. Happy for any distraction, he batted his mouse to kill the screen saver. Opening his inbox he saw it was a company wide email from HR. Some marketing manager Jeff had never heard of was leaving the company and, “we all wish him the best in his future endeavors.”

Deleting the email Jeff said, “It felt like a desk cleaning day.”

Explore the Future

Instead of getting out of his chair when there was a knock on his door, Dave called out, “It’s open.” He heard someone enter his apartment, and without looking held an open beer bottle out to the person.

His friend Joe grabbed the beer and sat in the other chair. Dave glanced at him and said, “Pizza’s on the way.”

Joe nodded and took a sip of beer.

Picking up the remote, Dave hit play and the dreary scene of Los Angeles 2029 A.D. appeared on the screen and the final battle between the machines and mankind began.

It all started when they were sixteen. Dave had been dating Ann Hearn for just over a month when she left him for the quarterback. The pain of his first dumping was eclipsed only by the fact that he had only gotten to second base. To help out his friend, Joe had stolen one of his dad’s beers and they had sat in Dave’s basement drinking it and watching The Terminator. Ever since, that had been their way of helping each other through breakups, from high school and college to life in the real world.

As Arnold was getting his clothes from the punk, Joe said, “I doubt she ever saw this movie.”

Dave nodded. “Her loss.”

A few minutes later as Sarah was riding to work there was a knock at the door. Jumping up, Dave paused the movie and said, “Pizza’s here.”

He went to the door and Joe heard him say, “Hey Felix, how’s it going?” Joe couldn’t help but smile. When Dave returned and handed him one of the mediums, Joe asked, “You’re on a first name basis with the pizza guy?”

“And the Chinese guy. I’m doing my part in supporting the local economy.”

Shaking his head, Joe opened his box and gazed upon the thick layers of cheese, pepperoni, and grease. “I’ve missed pizza.”

Taking a bite of pizza, Dave just raised an eyebrow.

Joe explained, “Sue didn’t like to order out, and she only ate healthy stuff. She wanted me to live until I’m ninety.”

Dave swallowed his mouthful of pizza. “The bitch.”

Joe laughed. He looked from his pizza to the paused image of Sarah on her moped, to his friend. “Worse than hating pizza,” he said, “she also hated scifi.”

Dave had just taken a bite, so Joe stated for him, “The bitch.” Dave smiled and gave a thumbs up.

Picking up a slice, Joe took a bite and savored it.

“Should I leave the two of you alone?” Dave asked.

Around a mouthful of pizza, Joe growled, “Fuck you.”

Dave shook his head. “If this is how she left you, you should’ve broken up with her long ago.”

“I know.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

Looking at his friend, Joe answered, “Because I was an idiot.”

Dave threw his hands up in the air. “I’ve been telling you that for years.” They both laughed, then Dave asked, “At least tell me the sex was good.”

Joe just shrugged.

“Okay,” Dave said dropping the rest of his slice in the box, “if she hated pizza, and scifi, and the sex wasn’t that great, then what the hell did it take for you two to finally break up?”

Joe set his own slice in his box and wiped his hands on a napkin. “Did you hear the news that we’ve finally imaged a planet around another star?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s big news. I was excited by it. I was talking to her and saying I ought to write a story about it, and she said that nobody would care. Instead of wasting my talents on writing science fiction, I should write stuff to make the world a better place, which in her view means debunking all the McCain-Palin claims. So I tried to explain to her that scifi isn’t all,” he waved a hand at the TV, “cyborg assassins. For example, there’s the classic Trek episode, ‘Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.’ I started to explain that – in the sixties – they had an episode about how ridiculous it was to judge someone based on their … color pattern. But she didn’t want to hear it and told me I should stop ‘living’ in the future and focus more on the present.”

For a few seconds they were both quiet, then Dave said, “They say that those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Maybe, those who don’t … explore the future shouldn’t … complain when it turns out crappy.”

Joe burst out laughing. “I like the idea, but I think it needs some work.”

Dave nodded. “You know you were wasting your time with her, don’t you?”

Joe cleared his throat. “Stephanie Keith.”

Dave began to reply, but changed his mind. With a wide smile and in his best Schwarzenegger impression said, “Fuck you, asshole.”

With one last chuckled, Joe said, “Come on. We’ve wasted enough time on this. Let’s get back to pizza, beer, and carnage.” As they clinked beer bottles he added, “What more could we want?”

“An Angelina Jolie clone.”

Joe paused for a moment, then said, “I did write a story about that, I’ll have to send it to you.”

“Is it any good?”

Joe shrugged. “For some reason, the clones don’t live that long, so this guy keeps cloning her so he can repeatedly have his way with … them.”

Dave took a sip of beer. “You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”

Joe just rolled his eyes.

“Are you going to sit there,” Dave asked, “and tell me you wouldn’t want to explore the future of Angelina Jolie sex clones?”

What the Hell

Letters to the Editor, Woodword Gazette
Published September – November 2008

“US not a Christian nation”

I feel I must correct the oft – and erroneous – statement that the United States is a Christian nation. I bring this up because in the September 14th letter “Governor Palin is a gift from God,” Mr. Lapin makes just such a statement. I direct Mr. Lapin and others who share this view to the following documents: Article Six of the United States Constitution, “… no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States,” the First Amendment of the same, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof .…” and Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli – ratified by the United States Senate in 1797 – “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion….”

Samuel Barlow
Samb@notsnail.com

“Constitution cornerstone of our government”

I must ask Mr. Lapin (“The Founding Fathers were Christians” September 26th) and all the other’s who have spoken out against me in these pages and online, if the Constitution isn’t the cornerstone of our government, then what is? All these people apparently feel that the secular government – set up by the Constitution – can ignored said Constitution whenever it interferes with their faith. The thing they fail to realize is that the Separation of Church and State cuts both ways. It not only keeps religions (potential with views vastly different from your own) from taken over and forcing everyone to worship their god/gods or face the consequences, but it also keeps the stiffs from the DMV from being in charge of christenings.

Samuel Barlow
Samb@notsnail.com

“No to theocracies”

In his October 1st “Secular government is to blame,” Mr. Lapin seems to hint that since a secular government is to blame for all our social ills, then perhaps, a theocratic government is the solution. But I have to ask, can anyone name a theocracy – ever – that was decent to its citizens?

Samuel Barlow
Samb@notsnail.com

“Is hate Christian?”

Over the past few weeks, I have written a few letters to the editor, and I would like to take this time to thank those who have contacted me. While a few have been respectful – and I have replied in kind to those people – the vast majority of the emails in my inbox can be classed as hate mail. I wish to thank those people because it makes things easier; a religion full of such hateful people probably isn’t the religion for me. The bulk of the hate mail is in the form of “Hell Threats” where the person states – in apparent glee – that I’m going to burn in hell for all of eternity. I have met such people before, and they usually say that they’re not trying to scare me, but save me. Save me by always yelling at me that I’m going to burn in hell? I believe the word that best describes that is psychotic.

Samuel Barlow
Samb@notsnail.com

“Clarification”

It is apparent (“Letter insulting to Christians” by Mr. Lapin, October 29th) that some people fail to realize that when I say that a small group of individuals – who appear to be Christians – act in a manner I consider psychotic, it does not then follow that I am implying all Christians are psychotic. I know many, good, decent people who are Christians, but who don’t threaten me with hellfire every five seconds. The only problem I have with the good Christians is that they don’t do enough about the bad “psychotic” Christians who are giving Christianity a bad name.

Samuel Barlow
Samb@notsnail.com

Ben’s Time Carriage

“Where is he?”

Alexander turned to the man sitting in a frail wooden chair. “My dear James, how am I supposed to know? But, if you believe the word of the good Doctor, then it should be difficult for him to be …”

A brilliant flash of blue light filled the room, and both men raised their arms to their eyes. When they lowered them a portly, older gentleman stood before them in a metal cage. He opened a door, took a staggered step and began to fall, but Alexander caught him.

“Benjamin, are you all right?” James asked.

“Yes, yes,” the man replied. He laughed. “Traveling through time leaves one … dizzy, for a few moments.”

“So you have done it then?” Alexander asked looking at the cage. “Built a … time carriage.”

“Oh yes,” Benjamin replied, “and the things I have seen.”

James sighed. “Were you able to do as we asked, or did you spend your time impressing the women in every century?”

Benjamin smiled. “If you do not make time for ladies, they will not make time for you.”

Looking in the cage Alexander asked, “Did you memorize everything? I expected you to return with countless books.”

“My dear Sir,” Benjamin replied, “do you think I would return empty handed?” Reaching into his coat pocket he pulled out what looked like a thin glass rod. Holding it up he said, “Gentlemen, all of the books in all of our libraries would fit on this, with room to spare.”

Alexander held out his hand and Benjamin placed the object in it. Holding up to his eye Alexander asked, “Did you find some miniscule printing press?”

“No, no, it’s …” Benjamin scratched his head. “It is something that even I don’t fully understand.”

“How are we to read that?” James asked.

“With this.” From another pocket Benjamin took out a metal object about the size of a small book.

“What is that?” Alexander asked.

“It is called,” Benjamin answered, “a computer.” Setting this computer on a table, Benjamin lifted the top off it flipped it back with a click, so it was now twice the size but half the height. He did this three more times until he had a stiff object about the size of a newspaper.

“Amazing,” James said.

Benjamin held his hand out to Alexander who returned the rod. “First we turn this on,” he said, touching the upper right corner of the computer. There were a few musical tones that made the other two men jump. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you. It makes odd noises.”

The surface of the computer had been a dull, bluish-gray, but now it turned black before it was replaced by an image in bronze of Benjamin himself. Benjamin laughed. “I couldn’t help myself. This is an … instant painting of a future bust of … me.”

Benjamin inserted the rod in a slot along the side of the computer and told the two other men, “Don’t worry. This is a very …” He paused and mumbled, “What was the phrase?” to himself. “Oh yes, this is a very user friendly model. I’ll be able to talk you through it in only a few minutes.”

An hour later both men were finally able to use the computer to read the information on the rod. Once he was sure they understood how to use it, Benjamin told them, “Now, gentlemen, you have access to all the important historical events for the next three centuries. With this you will be able to foresee all the difficulties this nation will face and write the perfect Constitution for it. If you excuse me, I have … an engagement I wish to attend.” He opened the door to the cage and stepped inside.

Alexander turned from the computer and asked, “Where is … or should I say, when is this engagement?”

“To answer both questions, Philadelphia in 2006. They are having a 300th birthday party for me. Curtsey means I should attend.” With that he closed the door of the cage, and in flash of red light, was gone.

The Few, I

Grunts, groans, and curses came from behind the dozens of doors that lead off from the long, dimly lit hallway. Before each door was a pair of men. One of the pair was dressed all in black, held a shock stick in their hands, and stood silently with the look of men bored to death by their jobs. The other men wore a hodge-podge of clothing – some were even in rags – and few stood still. These men danced, hoping from foot to foot like children needing to piss. Michael Ash was one of the few who managed to stay still; he was conserving his energy.

A loud bell rang, and in unison the men in black turn and enter the rooms. Curses and shouts along the lines of, “Goddamn fascists,” greet them. A few seconds later, naked men with their arms full of clothes come out of the rooms.

The man who came out of the room before Michael turned to face the man in black, but before he could say anything was zapped in the chest with the shock stick. He picked up his clothes and ran down the hallway, muttering curses.

The man in black turned to Michael and waved him into the room. “She’s all yours,” he said. “For half an hour.”

Michael entered the dim, foul smelling room and was stunned by the sight before him. Lying on the filthy bed, with pale skin, thin arms and legs, and nearly lifeless eyes, was a woman. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. True, she wasn’t at all like the flawless women on the classic porn channels, but she was a real, flesh and blood woman. That was worth all the porn ever made.

The Plague – it didn’t need a name – had wiped out half of the world’s population. But the true tragedy was that over ninety-five percent of its victims were female. The young, still fertile women were spirited away by the governments to places unknown were they could breed with the best men to carry on the species. But what about the billions of remaining men? How were they supposed to cope with their urges? The older women – unfit for the breeding program – were turned over to government brothels. At first they were drugged to be docile, but after “servicing” twenty or more men a day, they stopped fighting.

Michael was about to drop his pants when he noticed the butterfly tattoo on the woman’s left wrist. He stared at it for a moment, then whispered, “Aunt Sophie?” Looking at the woman on the bed he tried to remember the past. It had been years since he thought of his family. His mother had died in the plague and his father in the riots afterwards. His sisters and all female relatives were taken by the government, and he had no idea – and no way of finding out – if they were still alive.

But now, lying before him, was something few people still had; family. Already the sounds of sex were coming through the walls. Michael had waited for more than a year on the Sex List, and it could be two years before he got the chance again. Taking a deep breath, he took off his pants.

The Few, II

With his left eye swollen shut and his right blurred by blood and sweat, Jason had a hard time following his opponent. Fortunately, his opponent was in a similar condition. Unsure how much longer he would be able to stand, Jason knew he had to go on the offensive.

Jason stepped forward and the man threw a punch. Jason took the hit, but instead of stepping back, he kept going. It was a slow speed tackle, but both men were so weary they both fell to the floor. With all his weight, Jason fell with his elbow in his opponent’s ribs. There was a crack and the man grimaced. Rising up on his knees, Jason’s fist slammed into the man’s face. He did this twice more, then with his right hand he took a handful of hair and with his left he grabbed the man’s jaw. The man tried to bite his hand and claw at Jason’s face, but to no avail. With a loud grunt, Jason twisted. The man’s neck snapped, his body twitched, then lay still. Jason collapsed on top of him.

#

When he awoke, Jason was lying in a bed and an old, grizzled doctor was shining a light in his eyes. Turning off the light the doctor announced, “He’s awake,” then stepped aside to be replaced by an even older man with a heavily scared face; the Grand Gamete.

The Grand Gamete patted Jason on the shoulder. “Jason McKnight, you have fought well and have been victorious. A week ago, 128 men stood before us. Now, you are all that remains. You have proven yourself worthy to carry on our species.”

Jason could feel the painkillers starting to kick in, but he managed to say, “Thank you.”

The Grand Gamete smiled, the winkles roughening his face even more. Patting Jason on the shoulder again he said, “You need to rest now. Once you are feeling better, you can choose your mate.”

The Few, III

As he bent to pick up a sword from the bloody floor, John slipped and lived. Standing up with the sword he discovered two things: he had twisted his ankle in the fall and someone had thrown a spear at him. Fortunately, the spear head was now embedded in the shoulder of the man who had been chasing him. The man had dropped his sword and was trying to pull out the spear.

Wincing as he stepped forward on his injured ankle, John ran his sword through the man’s chest. The man looked at the sword, then at John; his eyes tired and pleading. John gave the barest of nods, and withdrew his sword. The man closed his eyes and lifted his head. John swung with both hands and the man’s head and body fell to the floor separately.

Turning to see who had thrown the spear, John saw three men – two with swords and one with an ax – fighting about thirty feet away. The ax man joined with one of the swordsman to slay the third, but before his body fell to the floor they had turned on one another.

John looked around the arena – littered with corpses, blood, and weapons – and saw no one else standing. He tried to draw out the spear, but it was lodged pretty well in the man’s shoulder. One of the fighters cried out, and the clang of sword and ax stopped.

Twisting the spear, John managed to pull it from the corpse. He turned and saw a man facing away from him drop to his knees. John looked around several times, but there appeared no other survivors. Because of his ankle, John slowly walked towards the other man. Every few steps he would stop and look around the arena. Along the way he passed a dozen corpses. Most were obviously dead, but with the others John jabbed the spear into the base of the skull or the heart just to make sure.

As he got closer to the other man, John could hear him sobbing. Still five or six feet away, John stepped to the side and saw that the man’s left arm had been severed below the elbow and he was cradling the stump with his right. He looked up at John for a second, then closed his eyes, took a deep breath and lifted his chin. John dropped the spear, and swung the sword.

For almost a minute John stood, sword in hand, gazing around the arena. A door opened, and John caught a glimpse of a thin figure dressed all in white before he fell to his knees with bowed head.

“What are you called?”

“John Crants, Priestess.”

“Long ago, the Great Plague left one hundred men for each woman. Since then, one hundred men must fight until one is left to have the title Breeder bestowed upon them. You have earned that right. Henceforth, you will be called John Breeder.”

“I am honored, Priestess. Thank you.”

“Go, rest now. A mate will be sent to you.”

Just Kill Me

When his alarm went off, Simon tapped the dermal implant above his ear and the buzz stopped. Then a woman stated, “Five minute delay.”

While groggy, Simon registered as awake and he was informed there was a Tmail message from his best friend Jen. He groaned and then heard Jen whisper in his mind, “Happy Anniversary. Do you have anything special planned?” This was followed by some rather evil sounding chuckles.

Simon opened his eyes and saw the blanket shrouded form of his wife Dawn, still snoring softly. He had wanted to take the day off, spend it with her, but she had told him that this was a day he should spend at work, with his coworkers. “It isn’t everyday,” she had said, “when someone marks their one hundredth year working for a company.”

Rolling over, Simon sighed. The biggest secret he had kept from Dawn in their thirty-two year marriage was that he hated his job. When he started there at eighteen, it had just been a way to help pay for college. After college – he already knew it wasn’t the best job – but he was already there, so why struggle to find something else in a poor job market? Then there was his first wife April and their sons. How could he provide for them if he left a stable, good paying job for who knows what? Then came the Longevity Treatment, which he could never have afforded if the company hadn’t picked up most of the tab. By the time he had met Dawn, he had resigned himself to the fact he would be working for the company until he died.

Now, looking back over the one hundred years since the pimply teenager had reported for his first day of work, Simon regretted – not for the first time – the Longevity Treatment.

The Greater the Risk

“Enjoying the view?”

Sue Travis smiled. Without turning around she said, “It’s the number one reason I took the job.”

Michael Wheeler floated up next to her and for several seconds they both watched the Andes gliding away far below them. “It wasn’t,” he finally asked, “to handhold a bunch of snobby, nauseous tourists?”

With a smirk, Sue replied, “That was a close second.”

Michael returned the smirk and nodded.

“Mister Wheeler, I’m surprised you refer to the backbone of the company you and your brother just bought a controlling share in as, ‘snobby, nauseous tourists.’”

“If we are questioning motives, Miss Travis, perhaps we should start with yours. After two stints on the ISS, word is you were on the list – perhaps not the short-list but on the list nonetheless – to be picked to go to the moon. Instead, you leave NASA to take up command of this dinky, little, commercial space station where every few weeks you play hostess to rich tourists getting a taste of space.” After a brief pause, Michael added, “Such as myself.”

Glancing out the view window, Sue saw they were now over the Caribbean and turned back to Michael. “Just about everyone in the Astronaut Corps was on ‘The List,’ but my chances at being picked were … slim. I’m better at running experiments in zero-g then exploring the lunar surface. Besides, here I get six months on orbit and six months on the ground. That’s far more flight time than I could get at NASA. Plus, I do support NASA, but the future is in the commercial sector. And an ex-astronaut taking command of this ‘dinky, little, commercial space station’ has added an element of credibility to this company. Has it not?”

“Indeed it has.” Michael smiled. “So you believe the future belongs to the commercial sector?”

“Of course.”

“Do you believe part of that commercial future is exploration?”

Sue frowned. “What do you mean?”

Glancing over his shoulder, Michael floated a little closer to her. “How would you like to go to the moon? Not to land, not even to orbit, just to swing around and come back to Earth.”

Her frown deepened. “How?”

“In two weeks, a new lifeboat will be launched, to replace the one that’s been parked here for six months. When it docks, it will still have the third stage of the rocket attached to boost the station to a higher orbit.”

Placing a hand on his chest, Michael went on, “Now I am a business man, but my brother Tom is the engineer. He has worked out that it is just possible to use the third stage to put the lifeboat into an orbit that will swing it around the moon then back to Earth. The lifeboats have enough dehydrated food and water stored to keep six people alive for two days, so it should be enough to keep one person going for the seven days a trip to the moon will take. It is extremely risky, but we need to show that there is more to us than just expensive vacations.”

For several seconds neither said anything. “I have been watching you for the past few days,” Michael finally said. “We were still working out the details three months ago, and since you’re not scheduled to land for another three months, we couldn’t wait to talk to you on the ground. We had picked you as our number one choice, but we felt one of us should meet you in person before making the offer.”

Sue nodded. “Of all your employees I have the most experience in space and am therefore best suited for such a colossal publicity stunt.”

Michael smiled. “Precisely. Next month NASA is finally returning to the moon after almost fifty years. And it’s taken them almost fifteen years to get to this point. We don’t plan on stealing their thunder of landing on the moon, but we’d like to show what we can do with only a year’s planning and existing equipment. Yes, it will be a grand publicity stunt, but one that should increase public interest in the commercial sector. And having an ex-astronaut make the trip will just make it even more news worthy. So, have I piqued your interest?”

“I think,” Sue paused for a moment before continuing, “I think I would like to see your brother’s figures.”

Number 25

The man sat in a coffee shop with a cup of Earl Grey tea. A notebook lay open before him with a pen across it. After flying above alien worlds without inspiration, his mind returned to the coffee shop. He sipped his tea, watched the autumn breeze rustle the leaves on the trees, and heard the staff talking amongst themselves.

For a moment the man was torn; should he try to record the faintest imprint of this moment upon the page for posterity, or should he forget the page and just live in the moment?

Setting his tea down, the man did what he knew he would do. He picked up his pen and tried to do both.

Major Korton

An opening irised in the wall and Major Korton entered Central Control. He stopped before General Um and lifted his first four legs in salute.

General Um returned the salute by lifted his first two legs. “Major Korton, have you discovered why the Earthlings have refused our communications?”

“General Um, I fear I must report that we must take responsibility for part of the failure.”

Standing to his full height of three krilms, General Um asked, “We are part of the failure? How can that be possible?”

Major Korton lowered his body. “General Um, after much research, it appears that our communications do indeed reach some Earthlings.”

“Our communications reach them, you say, therefore we can not be part of the failure.”

“General Um, our communications do not reach all of the Earthlings, but only a small population of them. Unfortunately, it appears that this small population is considered ‘insane’ by the majority of Earthlings.”

Lowering back onto his bench, General Um said, “I’ll assume you have tried to adjust our communication array to reach a more representative portion of the Earthlings?”

“Yes I have, General Um, but it was not successful. It appears that only the insane Earthlings are capable of receiving our communications.”

General Um rubbed his eyestalks together to help himself concentrate. “It would appear, we need to adjust the message in our communications so that the insane Earthlings will not sound insane.”

Major Korton bowed. “A wise decision, General Um.”

Dismissing the Major with a wave of a tentacle, the General said, “Make it so.”

Backing away, Major Korton left Central Control.

Endorse This

(Posted on The Prince of Pithy’s blog, at 12:27 PM, September 26, 2008)

In the past several weeks, I have received several messages asking who I will endorse for President. Those who have actually read my political rants on this blog have asked when I will endorse Barack Obama. My answer: I will “endorse” Barack Obama on November 4th when I cast my ballot. Seriously, if my endorsement would change – by any measurable amount – who you vote for, then please, do everyone a favor, go to your local hardware store, buy a 2X4, and beat yourself in the head with it.

I’m voting for Barack Obama, but I have more respect for people who say they are going to vote for John McCain than I have for people who endorse Barack Obama for the simple fact that voting is what matters in this funny little thing called democracy. I feel endorsements are contrary to the ideals of democracy. Endorsements are when some yutz – TV host, actor, some YouTube yahoo – says, “I endorse this person,” as if it actually means something. Basically, in my humble opinion, people who endorse political candidates are telling you that you are too stupid to follow politics well enough to be able to figure out who you should vote for. It’s as if someone – maybe after being hit in the head with a 2X4 – says, “I’m too stupid to figure out who to vote for, so I’m just going to look around and see who has the most yard signs in my neighborhood and that’s who I’ll vote for.” (Check out my earlier rant Do political yard signs serve any purpose?)

I’m voting for Barack Obama. If you’re not, okay. That’s the thing about America and democracy; people can do things I don’t agree with. So I know there are people out there who will vote for somebody based on who endorsed them. I disagree with this, I feel these people need to be hit with a 2X4, but it is their right as Americans to be that stupid.

I’m the Prince of Pithy, and I approved this rant.

Tickle, Tickle

Sleep refused to come to Mark as the details of tomorrow’s presentation rambled through his brain. He lifted his head to look at his alarm clock and saw it was almost 1:00 AM. His head fell back to the pillow and he caught the faintest whiff of his girlfriend Susan’s aroma. It was a combination of the soap and shampoo she used and her natural scent.

Even if smell wasn’t linked so strongly to memory, it would’ve been hard to forget the events of a few hours before. He took a deep breath through his nose, hoping to catch her scent again, but it was gone.

With a sigh, he snuggled deeper into his blanket, and there she was again. It was almost like she was laughing at him, after giving him an olfactory tickle. That’s something she would do, he thought with a smile. I should give her a real tickling the next time she’s over.

Again he took a deep breath to find her, and again she was gone. That’s love for you, he thought. It’s either there or it’s not. The harder you try to find it, the more it slips through your fingers.

For a moment, Mark lay silently before whispering to the dark, “I really need to get some sleep.” He rolled over onto his other side and chuckled as Susan tickled him again.

Pissed Off

“A local man was found dead in his apartment today. Forty-two year old Robert Graham of Hazen was last seen Tuesday night at the Cover To Cover Bookstore on Main Street around eight PM. The police were contacted this morning after Mister Graham could not be contacted after failing to show up for work. While there were no signs of forced entry – and it appears nothing was stolen – the police have ruled the death suspicious.”

#

When Bob returned to his apartment, he took out the two books he had purchased and hung his Cover To Cover tote bag on a hook by the door. He turned on his computer and opened the document on his desktop titled “Books.” This was a listing of his nearly 1,700 books neatly separated into different categories; scifi, biographies, American history, etc. In a little over a minute he had added his new books to the list; one on the battle of Austerlitz and the latest tale of Harry Dresden, the only wizard listed in the Chicago phonebook.

With that done, he turned off his computer and set the two books on “The Pile.” This was really several stacks of books, each about two feet tall, next to his couch. A couple years before – while looking at the hundreds and hundreds of his books that he knew he would never have time to read – he had decided that to force himself to read more each book he bought would go directly onto his reading pile; he bought them, he should read them. Unfortunately, his capacity at buying books was higher than his capacity of reading them.

Bob opened a beer, picked up one of the four books he was reading at the time, and flopped onto the couch. He drank his beer and read a few chapters about how POWs were treated by the Japanese in WWII. When he finished the beer he set the book down, took a shower, and went to bed.

Around 1:00 AM, Bob was woken by a loud thump. He lay staring into the dark for a few seconds then stood up and turned on the light. Everything in his bedroom looked okay, then he heard another thump come from his living room. Under his bed he kept a length of tubing that had been part of a stand for a fan; he didn’t have a baseball bat. He picked up the tubing, opened the door to his living room, and turned on the light.

In the middle of his living room stood – in a roughly humanoid body – all of his books. On feet of War and Peace and Anna Karenina were legs made up of books on Napoleon and Gandhi. The torso was made of books on WWII and general history. Paperback scifi novels made up the arms, which ended in fists of The Naked and the Dead and Ulysses. The head was just a thick, hardback laying on top of the torso. It opened, showing yellowed pages, and a dusty voice asked, “Why?”

Bob looked at it for a moment, before choking out, “What?”

“Why,” the book body asked, “buy us if you don’t read us?”

“I … I mean to read all of you.”

“Lies.” It took a staggered step forward. “You know you can’t read all of us, but you keep buying us. Why?”

Bob stepped back. He dropped the tubing and held his hands up. “This is a nightmare, right?”

The book body “stared” at him for a few seconds, then chuckled. “You could say that.” Bob then took an Ulysses to the jaw.

Ticket to the Future

Part of Angelica Daffin’s mind told her what she was doing was illegal. The rest of her mind told her what she was doing was insane. But right now, she was listening to her heart. I. M. Allen was her favorite author and ever since she read his first novel Doomed to Repeat, she had wanted to meet him; to know what his motivations and influences were.

It was just something about the tale of human colonists landing on a world wiped out by a genetically engineered virus that struck a cord with her. To her it was so realistic that while trying to “learn” more about the virus and the technology behind it – for the good of all mankind of course – that the colonists ended up wiping themselves out. Angelica wasn’t an anti-technology, new-age, hippie type, but she always recommended Doomed to Repeat as a word of warning to anyone who felt science was the solution to every problem.

Unfortunately, the prolific author (three novels a year) was also extremely reclusive. He never gave interviews, or went to conventions, or even had a blog. His agent and publisher said their only contact with him was through email. Since his books were best sellers, nominated for and winning most awards, they allowed him his eccentricity.

For years Angelica lived with her disappointment. She would preorder his books and take a day or two off from work to read them. His stories and characters were always so fascinating. From the generational starship where each generation descends further and further into madness in Going, Going, … to the simplicity of building a time machine and the complexities that result in Today, Tomorrow, or Yesterday?

With each book her curiosity grew and morphed into obsession. The final straw was With This Ring, concerning the bigotry surrounding and interspecies romance. When she finally put the book down, she wiped away her tears, and vowed that she would meet him. For months she tried every legal method she could to track him down, all without success. In the end she had to date a hacker who hacked into his agents email and traced his computer.

So now, Angelica stood with binoculars in the woods surrounding a little log cabin in the mountains, fifty miles from the nearest paved road. Not wanting to give away her presence, she had parked her car at a motel and hiked three days to get here. She couldn’t see any vehicle or even a satellite dish, so she wasn’t sure how this could be the right place.

She had only been watching the cabin for about a minute when the front door opened and out walked a short, green skinned alien with large black eyes.

#

The next thing Angelica knew, she was lying on a soft bed. The air was warm and filled with a flowery scent she couldn’t identify.

“Are you all right, Miss Daffin?” a soft, musical, male voice asked.

“Yes, I’m …” She opened her eyes and saw the alien standing a few feet from her. She screamed and tried to get away, but the bed was against a wall and there was no where she could go. Turning back to the alien she saw him just standing, silently, watching her. A thousands questions jammed in her throat. She swallowed and asked the first one that could get out, “How do you know my name?”

The alien reached over to a table and picked up her wallet. Holding it up to her he said, “Your driver’s license.”

“Oh.” The situation was too weird for her to be disappointed but such a simple answer. “How did I get in here?”

“You fainted at my appearance. I couldn’t leave you to lie in the leaves, so I brought you in.”

Angelica nodded. “Thank you.”

The alien bowed slightly. “You’re welcomed.”

“Who are you?”

Holding his hands behind his back, the alien stood up straight and replied, “You couldn’t pronounce my real name, but you know me as I. M. Allen.”

Sitting down on the bed, Angelica nodded. “Really?”

“Yes.”

After a moment, Angelica asked, “What are you going to do to me?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Aren’t you afraid I’ll expose you?”

“To whom? Yes, the people who wear tin foil hats would believe your tale that a famous author is really an alien, but …”

“All right, all right,” Angelica interrupted him. Taking a deep breath she asked, “What are you doing here?”

“It is far easier to remain inconspicuous in a place like this,” he waved his hands to indicate the cabin, “than, say, an apartment in New York.”

Angelica paused. Did an alien just tell her a joke? “I meant on Earth.”

There came the faintest of smiles to his tiny mouth. “I know. Your species has accomplished much in a short time, but you have barely scratched the surface on knowledge of the universe. You are at a critical point in your development where you not only have the ability to destroy yourselves, but also the mentality which makes such a fate a possibility.”

“Are you here to save us?”

Shaking his head, he replied, “No. My … charitable organization is probably the closest term you have for us, finds species in such situations and we try to help them save themselves.”

Angelica raised an eyebrow at that. “By writing scifi novels?”

The tiny smile spread. “That is not all we do, but my specialty is artistic expression. Most species have some form of art, but few have such a range as yours. We’ve taken special interest in your science fiction because it’s perfectly suited to our goals. What other art form forces you to consider how your species – and even you yourself – would react to First Contact? Or time travel? Or immortality? Getting people to think about the future is the first step in making sure that you have a future and that it is a good one.”