Author: R.

• Lisa
• Richard
• Zackmann
• Lizzie
• Tura
• Serendipidy
• Norval Joe
• Planet Z

LISA

Reasonable Grounds

Julian thought he was clever and had destroyed all the evidence in the taxi but the one thing he couldn’t hide was the glint of delight in his eye. His wife, Sally, had waited up for him and although she hadn’t seen that glint for a while, recognised it instantly.

So there were no secrets as the couple got into bed but Julian didn’t know that as he slipped into his contented slumber. Sally stared at the stranger she’d been married to for twenty years before deciding she wouldn’t divorce him. Then slowly pressed her pillow over his sleeping head.

LIZZIE

“No evidence,” repeated the impatient historian.
“But Professor…”
The historian stormed out.
Stubborn fuckers, he thought.
So, he went back to Japan to check the temple again.
“Doubting me… Unacceptable.”
After weeks of research, he found the small button in a dark corner.
Click. A whole new room opened up.
“Damn, they were right,” he whispered.
The historian quickly closed the secret room and pulled a chest over to hide the stupid button.
The next day, the button and his stubbornness were all over the news.
“They followed me…”
And this is how arrogance is the beginning of your downfall.

RICHARD

Evidence?

Maybe those ancient astronaut theorists are right? After all, it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that our ancestors came from elsewhere.

The evidence, they say, in the books that they’ve written and the documentaries that are beamed into our living rooms is incontrovertible.

Ancient spaceships of the gods, or simply the remains of past civilisations?

Strange markings in the desert… Pre-historic runways, or perhaps the tracks of celestial vehicles? Who can really tell?

They’re certainly intriguing, but I’m not convinced.

The Moon has always been humanity’s home.

The very thought we may have come from elsewhere, is simply preposterous!

ZACKMANN

I miss Saturday morning cartoons and do feel one of the things that led to their demise is restrictions on advertisements for sugar coated sugar filled breakfast cereals.

It could be time to add monsters who eat healthier cereals to the likes of Count Chocula, Boo Berry, and Franken Berry.

The first new Saturday cartoon could be about a Corporate Knight, possibly named Bran Stoker using his guide the ChexCrowNommicon to find evidence of the new creatures.

Once I think of names to go with unsweetened shredded wheat and raisinless bran flakes I can send my pitch to General Mills.

SERENDIPIDY

It’s a well-established principle in law that, without a body, you’re going to have a hell of a job proving a murder.

In fact, without a body, lacking any other incriminating evidence, proving that any crime has taken place is going to be difficult.

After all, people go missing all the time.

It doesn’t have to be abduction, torture and murder, just because they aren’t anywhere to be found.

Although, in this case, it was.

But, that’s not a confession, just a statement of fact.

As for the body?

Well, I can neither confirm, nor deny, it was delicious!

TURA

P(A|B) = P(B|A) P(A) / P(B)
———
Now STUDENT was perplex’d, and asked GOODWILL, “How may I know the road to the Castle of Truth? For these philosophers wander in circles unending.”

Then GOODWILL answer’d, “Dost thou see this narrow way? It was cast up by Bayes and His apostles Jeffreys and Jaynes; and it is as straight as a rule can make it: this is the way that thou must go. Now FREQUENTIST hath said to thee, that there are many roads to that Castle; but one only proceedeth steadfastly toward it, though in his obstinacy he refus’d it, and that is the Way of Bayes.”
———-
A guide for the perplex’d can be found at https://arbital.com/p/bayes_rule/.

NORVAL JOE

Billbert closed his eyes and sighed. “Now you’re hurting my head. You’re just talking in circles. You say that magic doesn’t need to be learned or performed, but we still need to make contact to activate our magic each day. What evidence do you have that you even have magic?”
Sabrina looked up at the clear blue sky. When Billbert started to speak, she held up her hand. “Wait for it.”
First one raindrop landed on his hand, then another on his face, then a light rain shower sprinkled the two. A single black rain cloud had formed above them.

PLANET Z

My lawyer is on the aggressive side.
She logged the entire universe into evidence.
The whole damn universe.
The judge allowed it, and the bailiffs were stuck hauling the entire universe into the courtroom.
Police were tasked with bagging and tagging everything, cataloging it, and handing it to the bailiffs as my lawyer introduced every piece of the universe.
She explained how it fit into the case, and after five weeks, the judge declared a mistrial.
The state declined to retry me. I was let go.
“Next time you get a fucking parking ticket,” my lawyer said. “Don’t call me.”

• Lisa
• John
• Richard
• Lizzie
• Tura
• Serendipidy
• Norval Joe
• Planet Z

LISA

A wet towel on the bathroom floor.

Honestly? I’m right at the end of my tether. I don’t know why but he’s been drawing circles in the sand. When I went out to hang his wet towel up he’s screaming at me ‘Don’t disturb my circles!’ It’s going to be the last thing he says.

And if one more person tells me I have to make allowances because he’s a highly intelligent man. No. Can a highly intelligent man pull his own bathplug out? Yes. Our Archimedes can’t. What the fuck’s he doing up there? He’s certainly not washing himself.

I mean it. Last thing he says.

JOHN

Creating Evidence

He found the photo cleaning out the house after his last surviving sister died. Five sour-faced kids, two glowering parents, and the family dog stared back at him from crinkled black and white. He took the photo to the senior center’s computer room and asked the young woman working there to scan it. Following his directions, she first erased the parents and then, one by one, his siblings. She was able to press a few buttons and slide her finger to create a smile on the boy’s face and move the dog to lean against his leg. Perfect, he thought.

RICHARD

Perpetual Motion

Grandpa was a little mad, but he did have interesting ideas.

Take his perpetual motion machine, for example – a sealed system, of a number of tanks, and a complex arrangement of Archimedes’ screw pumps, electro-magnetic impellers, dynamos and capacitors.

It worked by way of a gravity fed stream of water from a header tank, driving a dynamo, which generated a charge, stored in the capacitors, to power the impellers, driving the screws to pump the water back to the top.

It was crazy, but it worked.

Well, for three years.

Outlasting grandpa.

So, I guess, for him, it was perpetual.

LIZZIE

“Archimedes!”
Archimedes received an envelope in the mail for years. He opened that envelope to find it empty. But he kept all those envelopes, neatly organized by dates, in a shoe-box under the bed.
One day, a man arrived in town asking for him.
“Your instructions.”
He rushed to his room. He unfolded all the envelopes open and there it was. A map.
He followed the map and at the location, he found a box.
“Oh, my God! I’m filthy rich.”
Ah, his uncle, his only surviving relative, the trickster.
Good thing he hadn’t thrown any of the envelopes away!

TURA

Archimedes
———
It was me that gave Archie the idea. He’d discovered how to calculate the volume of a sphere, or a cone, or pretty much anything. Hiero heard about him, and challenged him to find the volume of his crown. He gave Archie a month… or else.

Archie forgets about ordinary stuff like bathing when he’s thinking. At last I tell him “You reek, Archie!”, and I drag him along to the public baths. I see him staring at the water and thinking, then suddenly he leaps out and runs off yelling “You reek! You reek!” and the rest is history.

SERENDIPIDY

I’m always on a mission to find new and interesting methods of shuffling people off their mortal coil, but it can be hard to innovate, when you’ve tried it all before.

There’s not really much choice outside the usual strangling, stabbing and shooting, and all those unusual and fun ways you see in the movies, can be a pain to set up, and are rarely successful.

I always fancied the toaster in the bath method, but the fuses always blow before you can do any damage.

Then I had my Archimedes moment – why not simply bypass the fuse-board?

Eureka!

NORVAL JOE

Billbert blinked his eyes and shook his head. “There’s no difference between magic and a superpower?”
“That’s right.”
Billbert scoffed. “I think there’s a big difference. With magic you cast spells, and wave your hands, and other mumbo jumbo. With a superpower, you just have it.”
Sabrina rolled her eyes. “That’s not what Archimedes said.”
Billbert frowned. “Archimedes? The ancient Greek mathematician?”
She sniffed. “Of course not. My uncle Archimedes. My uncle Archie was a real deep thinker, a philosopher mage. He said that true magic doesn’t need to be learned or performed. It should be natural to the witch.”

PLANET X

The Archimedes was a Class Seven Star Freighter.
Just a big hollow box with a jump engine attached to it.
The Shipping Consortium ran a circuit around The Gamma Rim.
Raw ore from one world, robots from another.
Grain, water, gold, diamonds, fusion bombs.
As long as they got paid and nobody pointed a gun at them.
So when a stray shipment of Rigel fusion bombs went off in Sirius-4’s orbit, the Consortium stopped coming.
Express smugglers happily took up the slack, bringing food.
And planning out where to plant the next round of fusion bombs to annoy the Consortium.