The Bugs set off a blanket of electromagnetic pulses over the planet, wiping out our technological infrastructure overnight.
It didn’t take long for them to slaughter billions.
The survivors were rounded up for hunting and experiments.
And then… the Bugs figured out one of our languages.
The hunting and experiments stopped.
They obsessed over books and the surviving recorded material.
“Wow, we sure fucked up,” said a Bug representative. “We’re really, really sorry about that whole invasion thing.”
They cleaned up what they could, built some nice habitats, and left.
Sure, I still have nightmares.
But it’s peaceful now, right?
Tag: science fiction
Turnover
Most companies have an employee turnover rate of a few percent.
Bad companies to work for have higher turnover.
But our company, Replication Incorporated, has a turnover rate of over one hundred percent.
That’s right. More people left than worked for the company to begin with.
Government regulators are always confused by that number, but it’s easy to explain: we duplicate humans, and our staff are required to act as test subjects.
Every now and then, a duplication procedure goes awry, and the employee and all their duplicates leave.
Which is good, I suppose. Makes the bathrooms easier to clean.
Breakfast Is Served!
The famous mad scientist Doctor Odd called a press conference.
He was always good for a soundbite or two, so all the major networks sent cameramen and reporters.
However, on the morning of the press conference, there was no sign of Odd.
They knocked on his lab’s door.
No response.
After hours of waiting, the scientist burst out of his lab and shouted “SUCCESS!”
In his hand was a plate, and on that plate was a stack of waffles.
Famished, the press greedily ate up the waffles.
Odd scowled at the empty plate.
“Well, there goes my Intelligent Waffle experiment.”
The Justice Machines
Before the invention of the justice machines, people had to use lawyers, juries, and judges to determine guilt or innocence. It was messy and unreliable.
Now, all you have to do is stand in a booth and wait for the machine to turn on a light.
Green if you’re innocent, and the doors open.
Red if you’re guilty, and the doors remain shut and sealed so the poison gas won’t leak out.
This wasn’t perfect either, so newer models don’t have the lights.
Too many guilty criminals were damaging the machines trying to escape when they saw the red light.
The Unknown
I put down my repair kit and I place my finger on the scanner next to the door.
UNKNOWN
I wipe it with a cloth and try again.
UNKNOWN
“Is there something wrong with the scanner?” I ask the guard standing by the door.
He shrugs. “I just work here, man.”
“Can I show you my ID?” I ask the guard.
“Yes, but it won’t do any good,” said the guard. “I don’t know who can enter. And I can’t open the door, either.”
I try again.
UNKNOWN
Then, I realized: It was the scanner I’d been called to repair.
Brain
If I suffer some horrific tragic accident that reduces me to becoming just a brain in a jar, I want that jar to be a cookie jar.
Because, let’s face it: the kids these days are fat.
And there’s nothing that puts a kid off of between-meal snacks like reaching for a Chips Ahoy and coming up with a handful of grey matter.
But then again, kids don’t wash their hands, either. Disgusting, nasty creatures!
Pawing around my lobes, their booger-covered fingers scrambling my neurons… ewwwwww!
They’d reduce me to a drooling, blithering idiot.
(Unlike how I am now, right?)
Dead Switch
Roger found a service called DeadSwitch that would let him address a note to be sent after his death.
If he didn’t log in once a week, the service would assume he had died and release the note.
The problem was, he didn’t have very much to say to anyone, let alone anybody to say it to.
So, he wrote a joke note to the president, saying he wouldn’t have to pardon him for all his brutal and horrific crimes now.
A week later, the site got hacked, and all the notes were sent.
Roger never did get a pardon.
Chew on it
There’s a folder on my desk.
I open it, and there’s a stick of gum in there.
So, I unwrap it, pop it in my mouth, and chew.
Charts. Graphs. Tables.
They hit me all at once.
My boss knocks on my door. “Ah, you’re chewing on the Peterson Account. Think the fourth quarter numbers are good.”
I chew some more, shift the gum around my mouth, and it all adds up.
“Yes,” I say with confidence. “Maybe even better.”
“Excellent,” he says, and pops his bubble and leaves.
I spit out the gum and file it under my desk.
Drive Swap
I trusted you with my life.
I gave you the backup drive, and what did you do?
You got drunk, and did a restore with mine instead of a backup of yours.
Now you’re me. And you don’t want me to restore you with the right drive and files.
You know I’m afraid to be overwritten. You’re me, after all.
Well, sorta.
There was some corruption. Because you were drunk.
I’m sorry about the broken arm, but you broke my nose.
You wiped your drive, but unlike you, I can be trusted to keep your spare safe.
Sit still, stupid.
Haunted
Call them Ghosts.
Collecting up all the papers of someone’s who’s died, processing them into an AI personality engine, and plugging it into a hologram might make sense for historical figures like Benjamin Franklin or Abraham Lincoln, but doing that with the Facebook and Twitter and blog and email archives of my son…
He stood there. Right by the coffin, delivering his own eulogy.
He can say he loves me and thanks me for everything, how much he misses his mother, but this is torture.
It’s 2AM. The bottle is empty.
Standing there. By the bed. Staring.
Turn it off!