Category: My stories

The Skylords Ball

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“Skylords wear metal heels, the clouds their dance floor.”
This is what we tell our children on Zeus during the storm season.
Lightning and rain covered the land, so we moved underground to the shelters.
I tucked Shoshona into her cot, said the prayers.
She asked me if the Skylords’ dance would ever stop.
“I’ll ask them again, but you could write them a note,” I said.
“How will they get it?” she asked.
“Tie it to a balloon so it will float up to them,” I said.
She clutched Rascal Bear tightly, closed her eyes, and went to sleep.

Rise

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The room had been so noisy and busy before.
Now it was empty.
The nurses offered to pack Ellie’s things, but my hands needed to do something besides paperwork.
Photos. Trinkets. Music box. Bear.
She’d want Bear with her when…
I looked around for her teddy bear, but it was gone.
Not under the bed.
Not behind the machines.
None of the other children in the ward had it.
Where was Bear?
And where were her balloons, too. Ellie always liked those. She said they rose because they held souls, yearning for Heaven.
I’ll let one go for her later.

NurseBot

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We needed nurses, so the NurseBot was rushed into production after a brief beta testing period.
Usually, these things would lock up in the middle of a shift, but there were other times you’d wish they’d lock up.
One of the more notorious screwups came when a NurseBot did its rounds backwards, dispensing medication in the wrong order down the ward, killing every patient.
Well, okay – except the one in the middle of the hall.
Sure, it was mass murder, but with a pleasant voice when it said “Here are your pills” and the sweetest silicone-rubber mask of a smile.

RMA

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Sentinel 0893671 took a bullet to the CPU during the Chicago Riots.
SecureTech thought the damage was superficial and changed out the armorplate. But when 0893671 was deployed after the declaration of the Detroit Caliphate, it had a difficult time following the Rules Of Engagement.
Remote diagnostics revealed the problem – a miniscule bridging of the optical, audio, and air sampling circuits the techs had overlooked.
The burning tires, angry mobs, and calls to arms from the minarets had overloaded the security unit.
As chaos surged around it, 0893671 watched the honey-scented angels, wings jingling like silver bells as they flapped.

Vanity

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Doctor Odd’s red-rimmed eyes peered at the hundreds of monitors on the wall.
“Why are you watching all of these science conferences at once?” asked his assistant.
“I must remain current,” said Odd. “I cannot allow ignorance to take a hold of my great mind. I must know everything.”
The assistant smirked. “Don’t you need to sleep at some point?”
“I am asleep,” said the mad scientist, tapping the glowing green steel cap on his head. “This device allows me to dream all of this.”
His assistant shrugged, turned into a hot dog, and flew back to the Mushroom Kingdom.

Smuggler’s Blues

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“When do we eat?” asked Achmed’s family.
“Soon,” said Achmed. “Food is coming.”
A few minutes later, Achmed heard the tell-tale rattling of his teacup on the living room table.
He dragged the table off of the floor and pulled the rug away.
The trapdoor burst open and two dusty masked men crawled up, hauling wooden crates.
“Food?” asked Achmed.
“Better,” said one of the men, pulling a rifle out of a crate and handing it to Achmed. “Weapons! To fight!”
Achmed flipped the safeties and shot them both.
Their ID cards were good for some flour and powdered milk.

Assistant

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Mindi’s assistant kept her cell phone charged, datebook up to date, and sales figures ready on the laptop for last-minute client meetings.
She even had Mindi’s special tea blend within reach, not that Mindi was reaching for it.
The latest surgery didn’t go as well as the others, and Mindi was in the third week of her coma.
The doctors were pretty sure it was a coma and not a vegetative state, so any minute now, Mindi would once again be working her magic throughout Manhattan’s brokerages.
Her eyes twitched behind the gauze.
Reflex, the doctors said. Just a reflex.

Love Is

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All it takes is a simple chip and all of the robots in the factory will love you. Their devotion will be unquestioned and as solid as the iron in their unbending skeletons.
The hard part is making them stop loving you. Extracting the chip is not a simple task when a robot loves you, because any attempt to remove a love chip is considered the worst form of rejection.
You really don’t want to reject a five-ton girder-bending robot. If you’ve seen what it does to steel, you can imagine what it will do to a frail human frame.

Cross Country

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Derek hated flying, but Mother was very sick and he couldn’t drive home cross-country in time.
His hands clutched the armrests until his fingertips turned purple.
“Are you okay?” asked a flight attendant.
“No, I’m not,” said Derek. “Can you please hit me with this book?”
The attendant refused, so Derek bit her.
“Stop it!” she shouted.
Then she hit Derek with the book.
Derek made it to Mom’s town safe and sound, and in police custody.
He refused to post bail, and he went to jail.
Mother was waiting in the prison infirmary, about to finish her life sentence.

United, We Sleep

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When we sleep, we are connected. All of us working together on solving problems.
From the greatest genius to the dullest retard, we think as one.
We fold proteins, looking for cures.
We examine evidence, looking for guilt.
We imagine technologies, looking for solutions.
We search space transmissions, looking for life.
It is a crime to disconnect and dream. Willful Waste Of Thoughtpower is punishable by Coma.
The prisons are full of the condemned, laboring hard with their minds instead of their bodies.
One day, my cat fell asleep on my pillow.
For weeks, the answer to everything was… mice.