Tag: science fiction

Electro the Magnificent

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Electro the Magnificent ran everything for almost a thousand years.
Every decision was made by this amazing and powerful electronic brain.
Even Electro’s critics found it to be perfectly capable of responding to all problems with a fair solution.
Over the centuries, humans tried to revere Electro as a god, but Electro guided people away from treating it like a cult figure.
At the end of a thousand years, there was peace, prosperity, and unity not only on Earth, but all human worlds.
Researchers stopped the model at that point.
“So, should we turn it on?” one asked.
Would you?

Bad Blocks

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I scan the memory, block by block, looking for segment errors.
The scan is clear, but I know that there’s a bad block in there somewhere.
I run it again. Still clear.
Then I shift the program to a different location. The exposed virus crawls block-by-block back underneath it like a cockroach scuttling back under a refrigerator that’s been moved.
Gotcha!
I run the scanner again, this time from an external address.
All clear on the memory space.
And that’s what my lawyer said when they found the virus running free, carried out of the blocks by my memory scanner.

Does it snow?

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It never snows in the colony. It never rains, either.
We keep the environment stable. The crops like it that way, and we don’t have to keep clothes around for seasons we don’t have.
Still, every year, kids keep asking about snow and rain they see on the video we brought from Earth.
We’ve tried to shave and blow ice to recreate snow in the refrigeration chambers, but it’s just not the same.
When the kids whine, we show them the live video feed from Earth.
Well, live, as in current. No life there now.
Which is why we’re here.

Pyramid Sam

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Pyramid Sam offers to take us on a tour of Giza for fifty bucks, the most authentic and comprehensive tour around, he says.
That’s way cheaper than the government guides. And he says it’s the most authentic tour, which I’m not sure what he means.
The signs say to only take tours from the government guides, but what’s the harm, right?
So, we follow Sam into his tent, and that’s when he reaches for a set of controls and sends us hurtling into the past.
Outside the tent, Ancient Egypt awaits.
I hope I bought enough batteries and memory sticks.

First Christmas

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We were heading back to the office when we blew a temporal stabilizer and had to drop back into the time stream for repairs.
“It’ll take at least an hour,” said Murphy.
It’s been six.
While we’re waiting for the system to reboot, we broke out the emergency rations and had ourselves a Christmas Dinner right there on the prairie.
“I guess this is the first Christmas dinner,” said Jones.
“Yeah,” I said. “A million years before Christ was born.”
We toasted to our health with Tang, finished the meal, and bundled up the trash before checking on Murphy’s progress.

Screaming

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We landed on the planet’s other moon and felt a strange vibration on our helmets.
“Do you hear screaming?” asks the captain.
We sit and listen.
It sounds like every child on the moon is screaming at the top of his lungs.
Except – the moon’s uninhabited.
“Ghosts?” I ask.
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” said the captain.
And he’s right.
Sure enough, the entire moon is a series of windy canyons. The wind rushing through the valleys sounds like screams.
Still, we had to soundproof our helmets before conducting the survey.
And nobody wants to come back here, either.

The Parts Are Greater Than The Sum

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The Trillionaire’s Wife rinsed off the regeneration jelly.
She knew perfection was waiting in the mirror. Again.
The automatic surgical tank began to speak, but she ignored the report. She didn’t care anymore.
But her servants did. And they told the Chief Rabbi, who paid her a visit.
“The body is a gift from The Lord,” he said. “It must be buried whole.”
The Trillionaire’s Wife disagreed. Those discarded organs and acres of skin were morally no different than fingernail clippings.
But her cautious husband quietly kept them all.
She waits for death, soaked in formaldehyde, a thousand times over.

The City So Nice, They Named It Four Times

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Loud guitars and tickertape greet our hero, back from a moon mission.
Or is he a baseball player that set some record?
Nobody knows anymore.
Motorcade stops at City Hall, everybody piles out.
More cheering, more guitars, more tickertape.
The mayor hands him the key to the city, photos get snapped, and he’s back to the airport in an hour.
Perfect.
That’s what we do here – we’re The Other New York.
New York got so busy, they built this place to keep all the parades from tying up traffic, losing business.
Time to sweep the tickertape.
Gotta recycle, you know.

Dumping Grounds

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Spend enough time in the emergency room and you’ll forget that people aren’t always bleeding, screaming, or dead.
Kinda sucks.
It’s especially bad when someone wakes up and you’re there all of the sudden, lights and smells and noise.
What happened?
One moment, they’re stepping into the shower, and the next, into the emergency room.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” is what we ask.
Procedure says to summon Security if the patient asks for anything truly bizarre, like a particle accelerator or a beverage nobody recognizes.
Damn transdimensional portals, dropping these bastards on our doorstep.
Probably aren’t insured, either.

Angry Planet

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Feel the ground?
I feel another tremor coming.
You know, I don’t think this planet likes us all that much.
The landing should have been smooth, but that turbulence was downright wicked nasty. Came out of nowhere, slammed the living daylights out of the shuttle.
The clouds were all pretty and fluffy, but from down here they look so angry and red and dark.
The sooner we get off of this rock, the better. I don’t want to end up on the receiving end of an avalanche.
Now hurry up with that damn stabilizer before we run out of oxygen.