Tag: science fiction

Haircut

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The amazing haircut machine made barbers obsolete.
All you had to do was stick your head in a box, and the computer-scanners would figure out the perfect haircut for you.
Five seconds with a series of lasers, and you were done.
Okay, so there were a few glitches in the system’s development, but those prisoners were too dangerous to have their hair cut by any other means.
No matter how well you chain them up or incapacitate them, putting a prisoner in close proximity with someone wielding a sharp object is a very bad idea.
A little off the top?

The Hunt

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When the sun goes down, vampires wake up from their slumber and roam the countryside.
Here’s my question: do the vampire hunters come out and hunt them?
Back in the romantic days of vampire hunting, yes. They would face off with the vampires under the moonlight.
But then, vampire hunters started to use technology to seek out and hunt vampires during the day, rooting out their hiding places and destroying them while they were defenseless.
Now, it’s a mix of those daytime operations and some highly sophisticated tracking methods at night.
One day, all the vampires will be defeated.
Hallelujah.

The Swarm

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Gigantic swarms of insects crawl the globe, disassembling buildings and erecting massive, looping cellulose towers.
We few survivors watch from Mars, peering through the spy satellites they hadn’t bothered to destroy.
Landmark after landmark, civilization swept away.
St. Basil’s… gone.
Manhattan… gone.
The Eiffel Tower… gone.
For a moment, yarmulke in hand, I get grim satisfaction as the Dome Of The Rock is crumbled to dust.
Maybe… just maybe… this time they’ll leave it clear?
I mumble a brief prayer.
Yes?
My smile fades as another brown tower takes shape.
Oy. If it isn’t one bunch of assholes, it’s another.

Feng Shui

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The news called them diplomats. Let’s not bullshit: they were spies.
Countries like the idea of spies with diplomatic immunity. Rules were meant to be broken, right?
One by one, important men were turning up dead in their embassies.
No bullet-holes. No knives sticking out of them. No poison in their bloodstream.
It was a real mystery.
Until one day, someone noticed that no Chinese “diplomats” had died. And the furniture of each death scene was arranged similarly.
It turns out, there’s a Dark Side of Feng Shui. The proper arrangement of furniture can kill.
Assassination through interior decoration.

Are You Happy?

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There’s a strange machine in the break room.
It’s about six feet tall, shaped like a box. Solid black.
It says “Are you happy?” on it in big white letters.
There’s two buttons on it: YES and NO.
I pushed the YES button and nothing happened.
I pushed the NO button and nothing happened.
Then, I pushed both buttons at the same time.
A drawer popped open, and I took a small yellow pellet out.
Should I swallow it?
I’m not sure. I’ve thought about it, and I can’t decide.
Just like I can’t decide if I’m happy or not.

Kill All The Lawyers

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Doctor Odd’s wealth comes from a series of patents he’s licensed the rights to.
If I told you what devices he invented, you’d be amazed.
You’d also be shocked to know that such easy-to-use devices were blamed by countless fools for causing grievous injuries.
They sued Doctor Odd for millions of dollars.
Doctor Odd responded by inventing one last, simple, incredibly useful invention.
Everyone in the world ended up buying one. In fact, each person born into this world is provided with one now.
Oh, and this invention – it also kills lawyers.
(Which makes it even more useful, I suppose.)

Space Signals

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We’ve been waiting centuries for the signal to arrive, and now that we have it, we can’t understand any of it.
It’s just digital jibberish flowing through the vastness of space, and we have no idea what any of it means.
But it’s out there. And we’re collecting it up, storing it in a digital library until we can figure out what it all means.
Sometimes I wonder if way out there in space, strange beings are gathering up all the crap we broadcast out into the void.
I’m sure the idiots at the RIAA will sue them for it.

Martian Attack

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I’d tell you all about the time I fought the Martians to save the world, but it’s a long story and I don’t have time to tell it right now.
Let’s just say that without me, the humanity would be doomed.
Well, doomed to slavery and genocide under the rule of the Martians.
As opposed to the doom it is facing now.
So, my solution was a bit drastic. But it’s not every day you get to pulverize two planets with a single asteroid strike.
If you look carefully at the sky, you’ll see Mars is gone.
And, soon – us.

Reboots On The Ground

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Here in Army Weapons Technical Support Services, we get all kinds of calls from the field.
Usually, the solution is just to reboot the device, but the reboot switch on the Standard Assault Rifle Unit is hard to get to when the operator is in combat and wearing thermal gloves.
It used to be even more difficult to reboot the things – you had to stick a paperclip in a hole and hold it there for 5 seconds.
This is why it’s so important to hold live-fire exercises for testing these devices. Virtual simulations don’t fail quite like real hardware does.

Asteroids

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We watched in horror as a series of artificial asteroids splashed into the ocean.
I looked over the document on my desk, compared the trajectories, and confirmed that this was no natural strike.
It had been planned.
Swamping a few oil tankers and cruise ships was purely by coincidence. This was really meant as a warning to… to…
Nobody’s sure who had the wherewithal to grab asteroids and huck them with such accuracy at the earth. Nobody was expecting this, and any guidance systems burned up in the atmosphere.
I lean over to my wastepaper basket and shred the document.