Category: My stories

Mexu, God of Iron, sleeps under the mountains.

“War,” he calls to us. “Bring me to war.”

We dig down to him, cut him from the rock, and haul him out in thousands of chunks.

Then, we melt him out of the ore in the furnace and release his white-hot rage into the molds.

The glowing bars and blanks go to the blacksmiths, who hammer and shape them into the swords and shields of Mexu’s bones and skin.

Hissing fury in barrels of water to cool.

Mexu comes together on the battlefield, flexes his followers’ muscles, and marches to victory.

Ted was a pretty good sheriff. He kept the peace, usually through talking to people and getting them to calmly work out their differences.
However, the one thing he never got the hang of was… well, hanging.
No matter how much he practiced, he never tied the knot properly, and the cattle rustler would fall to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
“Damn it,” grumbled Ted, dragging the outlaw back to the jail cell.
The jail filled up pretty quick, so Ted just started shooting the bastards.
Someone threatened to complain to the governor, but Ted shot them, too.

I parked my time machine in the municipal courthouse lot.

Jury duty.

It took hours for everything to be explained, then my group went to a courtroom.

Voir Dire. Question time. They try to weed out the biased and smart aleks.

It wasn’t until they brought in the defendant that I asked to be excused.

“That’s me,” I said.

The judge didn’t believe me.

“Fine,” I grumbled.

As foreman, I made sure the jury found me not guilty.

Excused, I went back to the municipal lot, saw the parking ticket, and growled.

I’ll just pay the fine this time, okay?

The city pays six bucks for jury duty, but you can choose to donate it to one of several causes, such as victim’s rights groups or afterschool activities for poor kids.

Fuck them. I had to fight traffic, drag my ass Downtown, sit in a room full of other annoyed and miserable people for three hours, and then fight my way through traffic back to work.

Instead, I stop by Baskin Robins and get an ice cream come.

There’s a buck or two of change… I could give that to charity?

Fuck them. The change goes into the tip jar.

It has been a long time since I last ate pickled tomatoes.

Last time was when we lived in Chicago. Almost forty years ago. I think Claussen used to make them.

Or maybe when we lived in Columbus. That’s thirty years, but still, a long time ago.

The special yuppie grocery store hides them in plain sight, above their olive bar with the rest of the pickles.

I needed a jar of pickles, saw the pickled tomatoes up there, and got them both.

I cut one up and ate it.

Sweet and briney deliciousnewss.

I’ll go buy some more tomorrow.

The Turing Test challenges machines to demonstrate intelligence and behavior indistinguishable from a human.

It wasn’t much of a challenge by 2020.

So, a new challenge was developed: The Pinocchio Test.

Artificial constructs were created with the goal of fooling themselves into thinking that they were human.

Robotic and biological sciences reached that goal around 2050.

For a while, synthetic athletes and pleasure units were on the production lines.

Then law enforcement and super-soldiers.

After the robots took over, they kept a few humans in zoos and research facilities.

But in the end, they were a hassle, and eradicated completely.

When Israel assassinates a Hamas commander, Hamas rounds up a bunch of their political enemies and accuses them of collaborating with Israel.

Then they shoot the people, tie them to motorcycles, and drag their bodies through the streets.

That’s when the Israelis came up with a brilliant idea: they published a list of Hamas members and labeled it as “Collaborators.”

The next day, Gaza and the West Bank were piled high with Hamas members’ corpses. They’d executed themselves as collaborators.

Diplomats at the UN screamed “GENOCIDE!”

Israel responded “If we wanted genocide, we’d have published the whole Palestinian phone book.”

For the longest time, man sought to translate dolphin squeaks and whistles.
With enough experiments and computational power, we thought it would be possible.
Years of putting on wet suits, handing out fish, and taking meticulous notes.
But every time we thought we were getting close, the dolphins changed their tune.
Then they’d laugh at us.
Eventually, we gave up on trying to communicate with the dolphins.
“Shut the fuck up!” we’d shout at the squeaking bastards. “Go fuck yourself!”
We sold them all to the local aquarium show.
No, not Sea World. Somewhere nastier and uglier.
Who’s laughing now?

Founding Father and President John Adams doesn’t have a monument in Washington.
Washington says that the area in which they build monuments is full.
Never mind that they’ve been saying that for years, but they’ve added monuments for World War 2 and Martin Luther King.
And they’ve added museums to the Smithsonian.
Name a freeway after him? Schools? A subway station?
It’s not the same.
So, I voted for Donald Trump, because thousands of government employees are threatening to quit if he wins.
That should empty some office buildings that we can demolish and clear to build an Adams monument.