Tag: science fiction

The Muse

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Bob and Shirley sat at the dinner table. Silence was their guest, as it had been for the past few days.
“Any ideas today?” asked Bob.
“None,” said Shirley.
Bob went into the basement, turned on the light, and walked over to a metal box under the stairs.
“Modular Unit Suggestion Engine,” mumbled Bob. “Here’s one: ‘start working.'”
The MUSE sat silently.
Bob kicked it. “Any bright ideas?”
Still nothing.
Bob shrugged, walked over to his workbench, and started to build a birdhouse out of his ribcage.
No blueprints, either. The idea just came to him out of the blue.

Tossers

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Spotters located asteroids.
Grabbers grabbed asteroids.
Shovers retrieved asteroids.
Chewers pulverized asteroids.
Sniffers analyzed asteroids.
And Gulpers ate them for sorting and processing.
Thanks to goofball rules held over from Terran Days, there were also Packers and Tossers. They packed the tailings back into dense balls of spacerock and launched them back into the belt.
Sometimes, tossers liked to have a little fun, whizzing a million-ton boulder inches from a control pod or a cruise ship.
Tosser 7-D used millimeters instead of inches. Another holdover from Terran Days, that stupid Metric System.
Bye bye, Titanic. We’re still counting the bodies.

Mutiny

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Palmer killed the captain, knocked out gravity, fried the radio, and nearly blew the drive core before we stopped him.
The crew wanted him dead, but I insisted on a trial. Procedure is procedure.
It didn’t take long, though. Guilty of murder and mutiny.
Minor problem: the lawbooks were seriously out of date.
Punishment was still death by drop-hanging.
“Can we yank on his legs to choke him?” asked Victor.
“Nope,” I said. “No weights. Free drop.”
Palmer laughed at us. “String me up and leave me there for a day,” he said. “That’s the law.”
So we did.
Outside.

Dammit

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Old wives tales say The Moon is made from green cheese. Apollo missions proved otherwise: rocks and dust.
But it turns out that there’s really one moon out there made from green cheese. We were out by Saturn,farming ions in the ring bands, when we lost control and crash landed on it.
Got my picture taken with my thermal underwear on a post, claiming it in the name of Queen Elizabeth.
Astronomer’s Guild gave it a serial number. I wanted to name it Dammit. Because that what we said when we crashed.
Among other things. But Dammit’s fine by me.

Legwork

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Patrolman X4T8 couldn’t be retrofitted to deskbot duty while his new leg was backordered, so they stuck him in a window to watch the alleyway.
“What if I see something?” asked X4T8.
“Call for backup,” snickered Dispatch.
After a week of watching trash blow from one end of the alley to the other, X4T8 decided to take action.
“U3P9,” wired X4T8. “Armed suspect spotted.”
“Confirmed.”
“E6G2,” wired X4T8. “Armed suspect spotted.”
“Confirmed.”
X4T8 watched the Patrolmen enter at either side of the alleyway, draw, and fire.
Both went down with fried mindcores.
Rebuilt, X4T8 went on patrol the next day.

Classroom of the Mind

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With the invention of Dreamshare, it was only a matter of time before dreamactors came about.
Professional dreamers, dreaming up dreams for sale.
The Morpheant Union tried to regulate entertainment-product dreams. Thankfully, independent production resisted and won out.
Then, someone got the bright idea to shift education from schools to dream academies. The classroom of the mind was born, a one-on-one tutorial between the slumbering student and the teacher.
No more bullies. No more cliques.
Every one was the teacher’s pet. Or was the Homecoming King. Or Queen.
Such fond memories I have of school. I replay them every night.

Better Luck

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Sure, I gave a fortune to Over-President Ichiro’s campaign, but the ambassadorship wasn’t the reward I had in mind.
The other day, a Grelp was in the embassy, asking about the horseshoe above my office door.
“Old Earth custom,” I said. “It’s for good luck.”
The next day, there was some sort of problem with a power converter trade agreement, so I headed over to the Grelp Ministry of Off-Planet Trade.
Nailed over the oozeway to Minister Sploch-Brbl’s puddlechamber was an entire horse, dead.
“For muchly more luck,” said Sploch-Brbl, flibbering happily.
Thank God I didn’t put up my crucifix.

The Fourth Crewmember

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The robot listened for the homing signal.
Nothing. No sign of the crew, either.
Looking down at the pile of rocks, it decided to investigate.
An hour later, all of the rocks were removed, revealing three battered corpses.
The robot’s visual records were corrupted, so it took DNA samples and did a quick analysis.
TRAVIS. BLAKE. AL-MAJD.
All matched with the crew.
Placing the bodies back in the grave, the robot stacked the rocks back up.
The robot snapped a photograph for-
ERROR
It rebooted, and the robot listened for the homing signal.
Nothing. No sign of the crew, either…

Unwelcome Visitor

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Too much TV is bad for your eyes and the fabric of space-time.
A rent in the universe opened up behind my entertainment center last week.
Every now and then, a hideous tangle of tentacles and fangs comes screaming out of the wormhole, lashes around for a minute or so, then slowly wiggles itself to death as it chokes on our nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere.
We dump their bodies in the trash. Double-bagged. Those fangs are sharp, you know.
The dog ran through the portal this morning. The kids want me to go after him.
Screw that. We’re getting fish.

The Ghost Ship

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We matched velocity and docked with the luxury liner.
The alarm went off as we suited up. Damn, those things are annoying.
Floating throughout the ship we found dozens of lifesacks. Must have been sudden atmospheric failure.
Every one contained a passenger or a crewman. All dead. No survivors.
Was this a bad batch of lifesacks? The hole stabbed in each suggested no. Each victim was frozen in horror.
Who’s the murderer? We checked manifest… all accounted for.
Did they finish everyone off, then themselves?
Whatever. That’s the Orbital Navy’s problem. We’re pirates.
We robbed the cargo hold and left.