Category: My stories

RMA

732724

Sentinel 0893671 took a bullet to the CPU during the Chicago Riots.
SecureTech thought the damage was superficial and changed out the armorplate. But when 0893671 was deployed after the declaration of the Detroit Caliphate, it had a difficult time following the Rules Of Engagement.
Remote diagnostics revealed the problem – a miniscule bridging of the optical, audio, and air sampling circuits the techs had overlooked.
The burning tires, angry mobs, and calls to arms from the minarets had overloaded the security unit.
As chaos surged around it, 0893671 watched the honey-scented angels, wings jingling like silver bells as they flapped.

Vanity

716583

Doctor Odd’s red-rimmed eyes peered at the hundreds of monitors on the wall.
“Why are you watching all of these science conferences at once?” asked his assistant.
“I must remain current,” said Odd. “I cannot allow ignorance to take a hold of my great mind. I must know everything.”
The assistant smirked. “Don’t you need to sleep at some point?”
“I am asleep,” said the mad scientist, tapping the glowing green steel cap on his head. “This device allows me to dream all of this.”
His assistant shrugged, turned into a hot dog, and flew back to the Mushroom Kingdom.

Smuggler’s Blues

646062

“When do we eat?” asked Achmed’s family.
“Soon,” said Achmed. “Food is coming.”
A few minutes later, Achmed heard the tell-tale rattling of his teacup on the living room table.
He dragged the table off of the floor and pulled the rug away.
The trapdoor burst open and two dusty masked men crawled up, hauling wooden crates.
“Food?” asked Achmed.
“Better,” said one of the men, pulling a rifle out of a crate and handing it to Achmed. “Weapons! To fight!”
Achmed flipped the safeties and shot them both.
Their ID cards were good for some flour and powdered milk.

Assistant

622702

Mindi’s assistant kept her cell phone charged, datebook up to date, and sales figures ready on the laptop for last-minute client meetings.
She even had Mindi’s special tea blend within reach, not that Mindi was reaching for it.
The latest surgery didn’t go as well as the others, and Mindi was in the third week of her coma.
The doctors were pretty sure it was a coma and not a vegetative state, so any minute now, Mindi would once again be working her magic throughout Manhattan’s brokerages.
Her eyes twitched behind the gauze.
Reflex, the doctors said. Just a reflex.

Love Is

622700

All it takes is a simple chip and all of the robots in the factory will love you. Their devotion will be unquestioned and as solid as the iron in their unbending skeletons.
The hard part is making them stop loving you. Extracting the chip is not a simple task when a robot loves you, because any attempt to remove a love chip is considered the worst form of rejection.
You really don’t want to reject a five-ton girder-bending robot. If you’ve seen what it does to steel, you can imagine what it will do to a frail human frame.

Cross Country

622706

Derek hated flying, but Mother was very sick and he couldn’t drive home cross-country in time.
His hands clutched the armrests until his fingertips turned purple.
“Are you okay?” asked a flight attendant.
“No, I’m not,” said Derek. “Can you please hit me with this book?”
The attendant refused, so Derek bit her.
“Stop it!” she shouted.
Then she hit Derek with the book.
Derek made it to Mom’s town safe and sound, and in police custody.
He refused to post bail, and he went to jail.
Mother was waiting in the prison infirmary, about to finish her life sentence.

United, We Sleep

666438

When we sleep, we are connected. All of us working together on solving problems.
From the greatest genius to the dullest retard, we think as one.
We fold proteins, looking for cures.
We examine evidence, looking for guilt.
We imagine technologies, looking for solutions.
We search space transmissions, looking for life.
It is a crime to disconnect and dream. Willful Waste Of Thoughtpower is punishable by Coma.
The prisons are full of the condemned, laboring hard with their minds instead of their bodies.
One day, my cat fell asleep on my pillow.
For weeks, the answer to everything was… mice.

Some Assembly Required

622715

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
No, it’s not because of the stockings hung with care or the tree trimmed to perfection.
It’s because the floor is covered with bicycle parts of various sizes, shapes, and sharpnesses.
Which end is up? Which end is down?
Then there’s the Salvador Dali-esque ambiguity of the parts. Take, for instance, this thing: it’s either a fuser or a gearshift.
I still think they got packed with a photocopier’s manual.
Oh well. I’ll just put it together, sit on it, and we’ll see if I roll or make copies of my butt.

Knit Wit

622701

Halfway to Mars, communications stopped working.
Commander Gregg had plenty of supplies, a library of movies and books, and all of the yarn he needed to keep his hands occupied.
At first, he thought he’d make a cap. Then, he knitted up a scarf.
The sweater was finished as the retrorockets fired, slowing down the lander’s descent to the Martian surface.
Gregg tried one last time to call Houston, but he’d forgotten about the communications delay.
Sixteen minutes later, Mission Control screamed in futility for Gregg to take off the cap and put on his helmet before cycling the airlock.

Schwein in einem Beutel

622716

Gerhard looked around the auction house to see if anyone would outbid him.
Once… twice… sold!
He remembered scaling The Wall and running through No Man’s Land to freedom forty years ago to seek his fortune.
He wondered if this section was the exact one he leapt over all those years ago.
Did it matter?
It was when the truck unloaded his prize and he saw the aluminum coathooks and permanent marker scribblings that he realized his mistake: he’d been bidding on the Wall from Berlin’s, a recently-demolished nightclub in SoHo, as opposed to a piece of the Berlin Wall.