As we sat on the floor of the dorm room and passed a joint around, one chick said “What if we were brains in jars in some science lab imagining all this?”
I laughed and said “Then I imagine I’d like to do this.”
And we kissed.
Later that night, as we held each other in bed, the scientists read the voltage meters attached to our jars and watched the needles twitch.
“Five units of red,” said a researcher.
A technician stuck a syringe into a brain and administered the formula.
I woke up alone, and never saw her again.
Tag: science fiction
Itsy Bitsy
I’ve spent the last ten years trying to breed itsy and bitsy spiders together to make an itsy bitsy spider.
The problem is that itsy spiders don’t want to breed with bitsy ones, and bitsy spiders will have nothing to do with the itsy ones.
I’d use artificial insemination, but have you ever tried to artificially inseminate a spider?
You have?
Well, dang! You know how hard it is.
Imagine how hard it is when their bits are itsy!
Teeny-weeny… literally!
Once, I thought I had an itsy-bitsy spider, but down came the rain, and…
Well, you know the rest.
Alarms
All of the alarms went off at once.
Fire.
Intrusion.
Radiation.
Chemical leak.
Everybody panicked.
Except for me.
“The alarm system is malfunctioning,” I said, and I crawled into the access hatch.
Sometimes the organic components in the alarm systems get out of whack.
I pulled out two aspirin, crushed them up, and dropped the powder into the brain tank.
After a minute, the alarms stopped.
Then I checked the biofilters in the nutrient tanks.
Clogged.
I exchanged them with some fresh filters and put the clogged ones in the cleaning system.
“Just like changing diapers,” I grumbled, climbing out.
Cognitive Horror
When I was three years old, a scientist sat me down at a table and showed me a box of crackers.
“What’s inside the box?” he asked.
“Crackers,” I said.
The scientist opened the box, and poured out some rocks.
“There are rocks inside the box,” he said, and then he scooped up the rocks and put them back into the box.
“Your Mommy is about to walk into the room,” he said. “What will she think is inside the box?”
“She won’t care,” I said. “She’ll be more interested in drinking your blood.”
I bared my fangs and laughed.
Captain Proton
I’m sorry, but there is no Captain Proton. I just made him up.
So, you can stop shouting for help. Oh, and please turn off the Proton Signal. You’re just wasting electricity.
I mean, it’s not that we don’t need a hero to save us every now and then, but for a while, we were doing okay when there was just the idea of one, right?
People treated each other nicer. Arch-criminals laid off the worst capers.
Things were going good.
Until people actually wanted Captain Proton to show up.
Now, things are worse than before.
Try to explain that.
Ted’s Toilet
My Uncle Ted invented a time-traveling toilet.
Shit makes it go forward in time, and piss makes it go back.
“Just sit down, do your business, and flush,” said Uncle Ted. “The plumbing takes care of the rest.”
“What if you do both?” I asked.
Uncle Ted smirked. “I’m not sure. Either the toilet will work out the math, or you’ll be ripped apart by a paradox wave.”
The next weekend, my girlfriend got sick on Jager-bombs and threw up in the toilet.
I haven’t seen her since.
Which really sucks, because it was her month to pay the rent.
The Lights
Jack told Jill about the strange lights in the sky.
“They were just beyond that hill,” he said, pointing West. “I think they were flying saucers. Want to go with me and find out?”
Jill got a flashlight. “Hell yeah!”
Two days later, Jack and Jill were found along Highway 12 by a retired carpenter. They were both sunburned and babbling nonsense.
Jill held a pail of water. “These are the tears of the Star Master!” she shrieked.
Government agents sealed off the area.
Jack eventually recovered, but nobody’s seen Jill since the incident.
If you see lights, ignore them.
The Orphan
My father died two years before I was born. And my mother died soon after.
So, how was I born?
My mother’s sister got everything in the house, the cars, and the embryos in the fertility center’s cryogenic vault.
At first, she wanted to get rid of the embryos. But she had a dream in which her sister told her to carry one to term.
And that’s how I was born an orphan.
I turned out alright, but I don’t recommend it.
Still, I’d like to see my brothers and sisters.
I’ll pay you fifty thousand for each one.
Deal?
The Generals
General Clayton was a great soldier, and he earned many medals.
So many medals, in fact, he was unable to pin them all on to his chest.
That’s when he had himself cloned.
With all those additional chests, he could pin the medals on.
Of course, with all those additional General Claytons, they collectively earned even more medals.
More medals, more Generals.
It was an endless loop of generals and medals, until the Army ran out of medals to give to the generals.
Then, they all suddenly died of the same congenital heart defect.
Dammit. Now we need more cemeteries.
The Dead Writer
Mark’s parents made a shrine out of his room.
All of his writing awards and achievements were framed on the wall.
They put his favorite pen on the shelf. He stopped using it when his hands shook too much to write with it.
His last keyboard was next to it.
He switched to voice recognition, but he lost his power of speech soon after.
Next to his microphone was the NeuroCap which picked up his thoughts and translated them into his final two novels.
The last words of the novel were: I love you.
But they might not have been.