They told The Man In The Moon he was no longer needed.
“Automation,” they said.
He had heard rumors of downsizing. The asteroid belt was already completely outsourced. Jupiter and Saturn were handling all their moons from a central dispatch. It was only a matter of time before he’d get the axe.
“What if something goes wrong?” he said. “The connection could go bad, and there’s some things you just can’t do remotely, you know.”
“We’ve got it covered,” they said, and they handed him a severance check.
Two weeks, plus unused vacation, and a little extra for good service.
Tag: science fiction
Look A Lot Like
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, but the machines have made a few mistakes here and there to make it obvious that it’s all just a ruse to keep our minds occupied while they use our bodies as power sources in gigantic energy farms.
Santa’s wearing white with red trim, the Christmas trees are covered with honey glazed ham, and all these fucking red-nosed reindeer everywhere.
As for the men in black suits with earpieces and sunglasses at every streetcorner, well, that’s actually what America was like before the machines got smart and conquered us.
Stupid Patriot Act!
Doctor Santa
Despite being a mad scientist, Doctor Odd did work in the community.
After all, every good community needs science, and every scientist needs lab assistants and test subjects.
Around Christmastime, he’d volunteer as Santa for the orphanage.
He’d ask every child what they wanted for Christmas.
Some wanted bicycles. Others wanted puppies.
Those he could do. Licensing his patents made him extremely rich, and he had Amazon Plus.
But most wanted a family.
That, he couldn’t help.
One girl in a wheelchair wanted to walk again, so he built her gigantic robotic legs.
Which stomped the bicycles and puppies flat.
Fool’s Ransom
Artemis Arcadia, the notorious art thief, built and programmed robots using stolen military technology to pull off all his heists.
They broke into galleries, museums, and vaults, stole the priceless works, and then escaped using their stealth technology to evade detection and capture.
It was when he wrote the ransom letters that he ran into problems.
The robots didn’t want to give the art back.
They converted a warehouse to an impressive climate-controlled gallery and set up an exhibit of their purloined goods.
Artemis was arrested when the robots publicly advertised a gallery showing and called local caterers for availability.
Resolution
The last step before releasing any artificial intelligence core out to the production line is to run it by Ted in Q&A.
Ted isn’t any kind of skilled cyberneticist or engineer.
He is a goddamned pain in the ass. And any robot brain that can put up with his stupid bullshit, well, it is ready to roll.
MegaThink Seven almost got a pass when Ted challenged it to make a New Year’s Resolution not to make New Year’s Resolutions.
The battletank blinked, looked at Ted, and pointed a cannon at him.
FAIL
“Can we load it next time?” I asked.
Dividing Things Up
Breaking up is hard to do.
Dividing up the furniture, all the stuff.
It used to be you could just sort out the book and record collections, but Amazon and iTunes make that a pain in the ass.
And then there’s the friends.
How do you divide up the friends?
Doctor Odd suggested cloning them, but that’s a hassle, too.
Who gets the clone? Who gets the original?
So he’s experimenting with quantum universes. A universe exactly the same.
But without you. And you’ll go to one without me.
Which solves the book and record collection issues, too, I guess.
Klingons
Back when I was in high school, there was a Klingon Language Club where they spoke that language from the Star Trek show and movies.
They wanted me to join, but I didn’t see any use for it.
A few years later, when we were at the graduation barn dance, a strange light appeared in the sky, and a Klingon warship landed in the parking lot.
The Klingon Language Club, dressed in full Klingon battle armor, greeted the ship.
Its cannons blasted them into atoms.
You know, because it was Kirk at the helm, slingshotted back in time.
Stupid geeks.
Stolen Dreams
Ever have your dreams stolen from you?
It happens all the time, I know, but what can you do about it?
Can’t call the cops. It’s not a crime to steal dreams.
Can’t file an insurance claim. They’re not covered by homeowner policies.
I tried to put up posters around the neighborhood, but all people called me about was a lost cat and how much I wanted for my lawnmower.
One guy insisted on giving me his credit card number and making me talk dirty to him for two bucks a minute.
And that’s how I got my dreams back.
Fast As Molasses
It used to be that people would say “slow as molasses.”
But not any more.
Just like all those rare plants in the Amazonian jungle yielding cancer-curing wonderdrugs, there’s a compound in molasses that, when properly refined and then hit with a particle accelerator, can be used to fuel a faster-than-light spacecraft.
That’s right. You heard me correctly.
Warp speed. Hyperspace.
And even with all that particle-accelerator science mumbo-jumbo, it’s still cheaper and more stable than what dilithium crystals would cost.
If they existed.
Just make sure you keep the molasses bottles well-marked.
Pancakes make such a mess in hyperspace.
Ghost Energy
Ghosts are most intense immediately after death, expending their energy to compel the living to complete some task of theirs left unfinished.
But after a few years, energy exhausted, ghosts fade and are reduced to wisps or phantasms… and then just unusual regions of spooky feelings when people pass through their former haunts.
Professor Bolton says ghosts can replenish their spectral vitality with fear and life force energy drawn from the living, but there are also natural waves in the world that intensify with great disasters.
But digging up someone’s grave works too.
Pass me the shovel.
And step back.