Flash

Testing, Testing

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Testing, testing. One, two…

“Alice, can we-”

“Sorry, Kurt, I’ve gotta run to class.”

“It’ll only take a minute.”

“I’m already late.” Alice smiled and held her hand up to mimic a phone. “I’ll call you after.”

Kurt watched her go, vague unease still clinging to his gut as his girlfriend hurried across campus toward the arts building. He breathed deeply and, once she was out of sight, walked away.

Testing, testing. One, two, three, four… Hello?

“Heya, Kurt! Just the man I was looking for!”

“Hey, Steve. I was hoping we could-”

“I need someone to cover my shift this afternoon. I’ve got a woman to see about a class she’s skipping.” Jim winked and clapped Kurt on the shoulders. “Affection delivered. Request status?”

“Denied. I’ve got someplace I’ve gotta be.” Kurt shrugged Jim’s hands off and walked away. A few minutes later, he slumped against a wall. He breathed deeply to banish the icy dread in his stomach and, after watching a few cars pass on the road in front of him, walked toward his dorm.

Testing, testing. One, two, three, four. Hello? Can anyone hear me? Anyone?

Stewart and Nathan were out when he got home and Drew didn’t look up from the game he was playing. Kurt went into his room, sat down at his desk, and tried to lose himself in his work. Thirty minutes later, his work sat abandoned on his desk as he flipped through his phone, sending messages and texts to his local friends. Half an hour after that, when Alice was supposed to have been out of class for twenty minutes, Kurt set his phone on his desk and climbed into bed. For a minute, the screen displayed his last text before it went dark.

Hello? I just wanted to talk.

 

Cyborg Anatomy

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“Hey, Phil.”

“Yeah?”

“You know how Humans have that whole mind versus body thing?”

“What about it?”

“If you decapitate a Human, they’re dead. If you do a head transplant, then the ‘person’ stays with the head. So, like, the Human brain is where the mind is stored.”

“Yeah, okay?”

“What about us?” Marty looked at Phil while tapping his head. “This bit is for looks, ‘cause Humans want us to have faces, but, like, is my mind in my hard drive, or my CPU?”

“I dunno, man.” Phil touched his chest and stared at the wall. “I’d say hard drive. Most of what moves if we get a new body is the hard drive.” Phil shivered. “That’s kinda creepy, dude. Does that mean motherboards are our hearts? Wires are our nerves. What are our veins, dude?”

“Far out, Phil. I didn’t think of that.” Marty ran his hands along his arms. “Probably the stuff that connects everything to our motherboards. Which makes everything else an internal organ.”

“So, like, to decapitate one of us, you’ve have to rip open our chests and pull out the hard drive. Or the motherboard, but I guess that’s moving into just killing. Hard drive equals decapitation. Final answer.”

“What a concept, man.”

“We may be made of metal, but we’re just as fragile as them.”

“You sure are.” Marty leaned over and slammed the electromagnetic emitter to Phil’s chest. After the cyborg twitched a couple times, Marty ripped open his access panel and yanked out the hard drive. After looking at all the other components for a bit, Marty started wrenching out everything he could.

A few minutes later, Marty wiped the silver body paint off as he walked out the door muttering to himself. “Cyborg Assassin would look great on business cards.”

Giant Problems

Chris 2 Comments

The giant scratched his beard stubble, the sensation and noise helping him keep his temper as he glared down at the Humans.

“I did not eat your sheep. I’m a vegetarian.”

“That’s impossible!” The largest of the Humans waved his torch. “There’s no way a creature your size could find enough nutrients to survive by eating plants alone.”

“First of all, that’s demeaning. I’m not a creature. Second, I would know if my diet supports someone like me seeing as I eat it, am large for a giant, and do not look as scrawny as half the Humans you’ve assembled.”

“Our sheep are missing and your footprints are all over our land.” The man stopped waving his torch and shrugged. “Seems like you did something with them. Sold them, maybe? That’s a nice outfit you’ve got there and I can’t imagine giant clothes come cheap.”

The giant rubbed his face. “I didn’t take your sheep. Those aren’t my footprints. I live in the foothills and just walked over from there. You can see my footprints behind me.”

“And these aren’t yours?” The man waved the crowd out of the way and gestured at a set of footprints.

“No! Those feet are too small to be mine, see?” The giant lined his foot up with the prints. His foot was half again as long as the other ones. “Just because I’m a giant doesn’t mean I made those footprints.”

“Oh.”

“If you’ve got nothing else to say, I’ll be on my way.”

“See that you stay away from our town!”

“I wouldn’t go near it if you paid me.”

The giant walked away from the crowd of Humans and one of the men in the front turned to the one with the torch and shrugged. “You’re a bit racist aren’t you.”

Descent Into Darkness

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“Listen well, children, for I shall tell you of the world we lost and how this place came to be. Of what once was and may someday be again.

“The world was peaceful, once. A place of prosperity, light, and community, where anyone could reach out and connect with whomever they wished. Though conflict remained, it was small and often little more than jest. A brief disagreement blown out of proportion as a symbol of the bond between two brothers. Brothers born from a shared love rather than the same mother. Truly a time when the commonality between men mattered more than the weak bonds of blood and circumstance.

“Some decried this time of peace and love as nothing more than the death throes of a society brought down by its own complacency, and they may have been right, seeing how we now live in darkness and solitude, all that we once held dear lost to us as the great libraries of Alexandria were lost to the Ancients. So to, has much of our culture and what made us great been lost to us with nothing more than the elements to blame. And we, proud and once mighty, assumed ourselves safe from such trite things as a storm or the wind and rain.

“But no. We were proud and we were wrong. And now we pay the price of our hubris as we live out the rest of our days in darkness.”

“Charlie.”

“As the darkness descends ever deeper, we must-”

“Charlie, do you and the kids want cupcakes?”

“Mom! I’m trying to talk about the collapse of human civilization!”

“What? It’s just a power outage. Are you that upset you can’t play your games online?”

“This isn’t about that!

“Leave your cousins alone and go read a book.”

 

Babysitting

Chris 3 Comments

“You sure you’re going to be alright watching our little girl for a week?”

“I’m a professional!”

“But you’re an accountant.”

“Yes, but I did this throughout high school and college.” I smiled and walked inside, suitcase in tow. “I’ve got everything covered.”

“If you’re sure…” Felicia smiled and stepped aside. “Anthony will be back shortly, so I’ll give you the run-down.”

I took the piece of paper she handed me. “Doctor’s office, insurance information, and allergies?”

“All there, no allergies.” Felicia tapped the paper. “There’s plenty of food in the fridge, she likes her wet food. If she gets fussy, there’s some dry stuff in the cabinets, but she’s rarely fussy.”

“Sounds like she’s an ideal baby.”

Felicia smiled. “She’s a doll. So well-behaved, loves to talk but never cries, eats well, and never has accidents.”

“She’s potty-trained?”

“Of course she is. She’s over a year old. Why wouldn’t she be?”

“Wow. That’s incredible!”

“I guess.” Felicia looked over her shoulder. “I just cleaned everything, so you should be good for a week. If she makes a mess, there’s some supplies in the bathroom.” She pointed to a door. “She still throws up sometimes, but not as much as she used to now that we switched to her current diet.”

“Sounds good!” A car pulled into the driveway. “Tony’s here.”

“Right! Suzy is in her room, sleeping. I said goodbye a minute ago. Go check on her in a bit and let me know if anything happens. Bye, Jordan!”

Felicia grabbed her suitcase and ran out the door. I waved as she rode away with Tony. A few minutes later, after I unpacked my bag, I crept into Suzy’s room to check on her. A minute later, Felicia picked up her phone and I screamed “Suzy is a cat?”

Going the Distance

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“Rob, have those reports on my desk by five.”

“The ones about the iodine levels in our ice cream?”

“Correct.”

“Sure. I’ll scan and email the-”

“I need the actual papers.”

“Mr. Barnes, you know I work remotely.”

“I saw you taking your meeting notes on them and I want those for reference.”

“The scans will have those.” I propped the phone up with my shoulder and dumped the reports into my scanner. “I’ll have Lou print them out.”

“Mr. Gellis, if you don’t have those on my desk by five, you’re fired.”

“Mr. Barnes, that is impossible. I live five states away.” I pressed scan and started emailing Lou with instructions to muss up the papers.

“Then you shouldn’t have applied for remote work!” I could hear his sneer in his voice. He’d been trying to fire me for years because his boss let me move away.

“Fine. They’ll be on your desk by five.”

“See that they are!”

“Have a good afternoon, Mr. Barnes.”

Four and a half hours later, my phone rang. “Hello, this is Robbie Gellis with McLew-”

“These clearly aren’t your papers, Gellis. You’re fired.”

“No can do, Todd. I caught a flight just in time but I had to leave them with Lou so I could catch my return flight. You’ll find my notes throughout the reports and a coffee stain on page two.”

“There’s no way!”

“You’re welcome to come out here and prove otherwise, Mr. Barnes.”

“That’s five states away! I’m not flying over there just to grab some papers.”

“Have a good evening, Mr. Barnes.” I hung up and turned off my work phone. Someday, he might actually do it. I’d find that hilarious because my listed address is five states in the wrong direction. Working by phone was the best.

Visiting Grandma

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Like any decent grandchild, I loved my grandmother. She made me cookies, I weeded her gardens, and then we’d sit around eating cookies and watching game shows. I liked to visit her as often as I could growing up, but it wasn’t always easy. Every time we crossed the river, the family got smaller.

We had often talked about bringing her over the river to stay permanently. The river was brutal, but it was fast. Like ripping off a bandage or chopping off a limb. You had to be quick if you wanted to survive.

The forest, though, was a nightmare. It wasn’t as lethal, but the amount of work it took to get through would probably be the death of her. She was a lovely, hardy old woman who would probably outlive her kids, but the march through the trees would have been too much for her.

At this point, I was the only one who made the effort to visit her. My parents weren’t as hardy as she was and they were getting up in years. My siblings had mostly settled down, refusing to travel beyond our little village for anything. They tried to pretend otherwise, but I knew they were afraid. I could see it in the way they clutched their doors and herded their children away when I visited.

I’d made the trip only once before, and that was with a hired escort. Today, I was going to do it alone, even if I was too broke to hire anyone. She hadn’t written in weeks and someone needed to check, the dangers be damned. I could do it. I knew that, if it was at all possible to do alone, I could make the trip over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house.

Under the Gun

Chris 3 Comments

Living underneath an orbital defense cannon was interesting. The geostationary satellite cast its shadow elsewhere, most of the day, but Fred always made sure he was outside when it passed through his town. He’d been a child when they first put it in orbit, but he still remembered just how safe he’d felt, knowing it was up there.

Now, he just liked sitting in the shade and marveling at human ingenuity. In two generations, they had gone from launching orbital defense cannons to no longer needing them. They’d become a last, defunct line of defense in a war that was over. Curios from a past that stuck around because they weren’t worth taking down.

Today, as the shadow passed overhead and Fred enjoyed his lunch, something about it seemed a little off to him. As he munched his way through a ham sandwich, he looked at the familiar dark outline about his head. It took him a couple of minutes to figure it out, but he eventually realized that the shadow seemed off because the various shapes in its profile were on the wrong sides.

It looked like someone had just spun the whole thing around. Fred pulled out his cell phone and pulled up the space transit blotter, looking for a reference of a satellite maneuver, like they do during maintenance. Today turned up empty.

After a few more searches left him empty-handed, Fred leaned back and watched the cannon again. It was clearly pointed down at Earth, rather than just rotated around on a different axis. Suddenly, the looming shadow around him wasn’t the constant comfort it once was. It felt like he was sitting, eating a boring sandwich during a break from a dead-end job, right underneath a gun. One shot was all it would take to-

The Portal

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Timeo stared at the portal, uneasy with the wash of pale light that emanated from it. He’d heard from Gellis there was nothing to fear on the other side of the portal, but Gellis had been through it so many times that he seemed immune to the odd feeling of the light as it lingered on his skin.

Gellis also didn’t seem to notice, but he was a little different after every trip to the outer realm. It was hardly noticeable unless you looked back and saw how much changed happened.

The first time he noticed, Timeo started monitoring everyone who want through the portal. Anyone who was gone for a significant amount of time came back changed in a similar way. The degree of change tended to vary by person, but it was always the same type of change. Timeo was surprised that no one cared when he pointed it out.

“It’s fine. Nothing to worry about.” they’d tell him. He wanted to believe them, but he’d done his research and new that what they told him wasn’t true. His presentations and appeals fell on deaf earths. Fennrel actually laughed at him.

Today was the day, though. Timeo could no longer put off going through the portal. If he did not contribute to the enclave’s well-being, he would be cast out. And then they’d force him through the portal, anyway. Today, he had an appointment with his destiny.

After making sure all of his gear was prepared, Timeo took a deep breath, opened the glass shield, and stepped through the portal. The sun beat down on him, various creatures screamed into the air, and Timeo took his first breath of fresh air. Resolute despite the cancer-causing orb in the sky, Timeo strode off toward his first day of college.

What A Headache

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Ed woke with his head throbbing in pain. Someone was banging on something, but he couldn’t tell where it was coming from, so he looked for the source.

His shelves held their usual dusty allotment of trophies and books. His dresser was covered in dirty clothes and the TV on it was showing the logo of his DVD player, as it always did after he fell asleep watching it. His desk was covered in junk mail he hadn’t gotten around to shredding and a neat stack of bills he hadn’t paid yet.

Guilt picked at him, but he dismissed it. He already tried to get extensions and they’d work it out eventually. It’s not like he had much they could take.

The banging hadn’t gone away, so Ed climbed to his feet to go looking for it. When he stood up, his foot caught on something. As he turned to look, his door burst open and his roommate flew in.

“Dammit, Ed!”

Ed winced. “Even if I don’t have rent yet, that’s no reason to break down my door.”

Matthew dashed past him and Ed turned around to see Matthew start giving CPR to someone. A wave of shock swept through him as he realized Matthew was giving CPR to him, but it quickly passed.

Ed watched, curious despite himself, and unable to muster up more than vague apprehension about Matthew’s attempts to save his life. After a minute, Matthew’s screams for an ambulance and demands that Ed stay faded to grunts. A few minutes later, when the EMTs arrived, Ed realized what had happened.

“Sleep apnea.” Ed shook his head. “I really should have gotten that checked out.” Ed drifted towards the window to watch his body get hauled away. “At least I don’t have to pay my bills.”