Ed is a traveling salesman.
But he doesn’t go anywhere.
He goes anywhen.
Because he’s a time-traveling salesman.
He shares technology with the past.
And memories with the future.
Is it legal?
Is it ethical?
Scientists say no, and warn of paradoxes and temporal rifts.
Courts ruled that the present has no jurisdiction over the past or the future.
He’s flown kites with Benjamin Franklin.
And had tea with the Caliph of New Paris.
And after The Fall, The Visitors paid him for everything he knew about humanity.
He’s retired now. Sits on his front porch, watching the timestorms grow.
Category: My stories
Two Servings
How many servings is a can of Coke?
One?
No, according to their Corporate Nutritionist. It’s two.
As if someone drinks half a can, and puts the other half away.
“Or they share it with someone,” they said to me, opening a can of Coke, and offering it to me.
I took the can, filled my glass, and handed it back.
They filled their glass.
“See?” they said. “Two servings.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I said, and offered a toast.
I suppose people should read labels carefully.
Even if the poison I put in their glass wasn’t on the list.
Know what’s funny?
There’s an old joke that a priest or a nun on roller skates is a holy roller.
You’d think they’d update the joke to a priest or a nun on roller blades, but roller blades aren’t funny.
Not that most priests or nuns are very funny either, but that’s what makes the joke funny.
Except for Sister Mary St. Peachpit, who was an extremely funny nun.
She wore roller skates, a rainbow wig, and a pair of those Groucho nose glasses.
People found her extremely amusing. Especially when she’d fall down.
Until they realized she’d broken her neck and died.
Scavengers
The Von Neumann probe landed on Mars, surveyed the area, and deployed the initial fleet of construction bots.
The bots hastily gathered up raw materials, processed them, and then put together a shelter for the initial factory.
However, due to a bug in the system, instead of using those native raw materials to create more robots, the robots cannibalized each other to make more robots.
Well, newer generations of robots. Because their numbers kept mostly the same.
Until the materials began to wear out. Metal fatigue and oxidation caused supply issues.
The last robot rolled through the darkness, trailing sparks.
The last thoughts
Remember me as I was, before the madness took me.
All the memories we shared. The things we did.
Those are all gone now.
What’s left, please don’t let it hurt you.
This is not me. This is something else.
Something sick, and evil.
And it can make you sick and evil, too.
Bury it somewhere, no matter how much it screams.
Or how much it begs you to stop.
Bring a shovel, duct tape, a machete.
And a sleeping bag. Or heavy blanket.
Whatever it takes.
Don’t let it touch you.
And, please, God, don’t let it bite you.
Blessing
It’s hard to word a blessing properly these days.
Whatever you come up with, something’s just not right.
May you live long.
May you live long, and be healthy.
May you live long, and be healthy and be happy.
May you live long, and be healthy and be happy, and not be bored.
May you live long, and be healthy and be happy, and not be bored, but not be too busy to enjoy things, either.
By the time you come up with a decent blessing, they’re either dead, sick, annoyed, bored, or too busy to thank you for it.
Out of sight
Leland’s mother liked to say “out of sight, out of mind” a lot.
She was also blind. And she was often out of her mind.
Some of it was the booze and pills, but insanity ran in Leland’s family, and he was sent off to live with relatives.
And then sent off to foster care when those relatives went missing.
Did Leland kill them? The police investigated, but couldn’t prove anything.
They never found the bodies.
People have a habit of disappearing around Leland.
“I don’t mind them at all,” he says.
And he smiles through the prison cell bars.
Prankster
Joe liked to joke around.
He played a lot of practical jokes on people.
Most of them were really good.
But some of them backfired badly.
His best one was when he put a sign by the River Lethe.
It said “This river will help restore your memory.”
People would splash some of the water on their faces and forget everything.
Then, they’d see the sign, and splash more.
This went on for days and days.
Until his victims slowly starved to death.
There, among the bodies, was Joe.
He’d gotten wet while hammering the sign into the ground.
Dumbass.
The girl in room 24
The old janitor likes to visit the girl in Room 24.
She was in a car wreck, and was the only one of her family to survive.
She doesn’t remember a thing.
She doesn’t remember the kids who visit, and say that they’re friends.
She writes a lot down, but can’t remember.
The janitor tries to help her, telling her who’s who.
Sometimes, he likes to have a little fun.
“This is Jimmy,” he says. “He burned down the church last year.”
What’s the girl’s name?
“You name is Jenny,” the janitor says today.
Who knows who she’ll be tomorrow?
The loops
They built a freeway through the city.
Then, they built a loop around the city so people could bypass the city.
Then, they built another loop around the loop so people could bypass the city and the inner loop around the city.
Over time, they built more and more loops.
Until they ran into another city’s loop around a loop around a loop.
The two cities thought about starting a war.
Instead, they kept building loops, trying to loop around the other city.
In the long-distant future, the people were gone.
So were the cities.
But the many loops remained.