Flash Shorts Volume 1

AI researcher Janelle Shane fed a neural net with a bunch of drawing prompts and turned up the heat until it boiled over.

These truly unhinged prompts excited my creativity, and these 15,000 words spread across 28 stories are the result.

Tiny cod Flames rise

The only light in the sky came from the low clouds, reflecting the light of the town beyond the ridge. In the distance a train complained. Nearer at hand, frogs and crickets called for attention.

Grace sat at the end of the dock hugging her knees, all of her attention below the lake’s quiet surface. Flamefish darted and schooled leaving faint amber streaks. At first she was disappointed she shouldn’t see the stars, but when her eyes adjusted, she saw the lights below. Grace didn't know if they were hunting or mating or playing, but she wished she was down there with them, surrounded by frolicking source of light.

At the lake house the screen door rattled and slammed several times. Grace heard her dad call her name, but there wasn't any urgency in it. She’d been chewing on a long stem of grass, savoring the sweetness and bitterness, knowing her dad would scold her because it was full of pesticides or something. She lowered the stem toward the water, hoping a fish might be interested. It didn’t quite reach, so she put her feet over the edge and leaned closer.

The fish were largely indifferent to the grassy intrusion. After a minute, a mismatched pair rose to the surface, curious. They were small, the size of her thumb, and the glow seemed to come mostly from their fins and tails. Grace tried to pretend that they were her dad and brother taking an honest interest in something she did. But that was too hard to believe, so she decided these two were new friends and wondered what their names were. She felt tiny vibrations as one nibbled gently on the end of the grass. The other broke the surface and gawped a few times before resubmerging.

Behind her, someone scuffed down the sandy trail. It could only be her brother, dragging his feet, kicking every rock he saw. Probably filling his shoes with grit that he'd complain about on the drive home.

She pulled her hood up, wishing it would make her invisible.

"Dad says we got to go," Colin said to the dark shadow at the end of the dock.

Grace ignored him.

"Hey, Grace! Dad says we got to go!" He chucked a rock in her direction, only partially to get her attention.

It splashed not far from her new friends. They scattered and when the waves subsided, the lake was dark.

Grace whirled on her brother. "What the hell'd you do that for?"

"Dad says we got to go!" A whine in his voice.

"Just because Dad says it doesn't mean you have to do it."

Colin stopped at the foot of the dock, sniffed, and rubbed his nose. Grace couldn't see his face, but could tell he was looking at her. He sniffed again and his shoulders slouched. Slowly, he stepped onto the dock. For once he didn’t kick anything, though his cuffs dragged across the old wooden boards. He lowered himself next to his sister, who hunched and scooted a little further away.

She put her stem back in the water, but couldn’t hold it still. Little circles spread out from it, dark upon the black.

After a long minute, Colin rubbed his nose. “I’m sorry, Grace.”

Grace’s stem went still. “For what?” It could be a million things, but he’d never apologized for a singe one of them before.

“I’m not like you. I can't just run away and do whatever I want."

"You can, you know."

"No, I can't." Another long pause. "I don't have the courage you have."

Grace shook her head and watched the end of her grass, wondering if her new friends hated her. “You don't have the courage to leave. I don't have the courage to stay,” she said with a dry chuckle.

In the lake, two faint lights lowly returned from the depths.

Spoon Creature

Tureen and Ladle formed a union and in the second year it bore fruit, and they named them Spoon. They were small and delicate, silver with a flowering, filagree handle. Spoon was good at hide and seek and, of course, carrying things.

The same year Spoon was born, Fork arrived. No one claimed true knowledge of Fork’s origin, though rumors said they were the issue of a shared loneliness between the fire iron and meat tenderizer. Such things were only whispered by those who liked to spread scandalous stories, but they persisted. Fork was hefty and silver plated with three narrow tines. They liked to play by themselves and would hum a meandering harmony when left alone.

Spoon and Fork lived in different worlds in their early lives.

Spoon was kept at home unless there was a special occasion. They complained when they got a bath—prelude to any fancy dinner—but always performed with aplomb when the soup came. They were proud to work together with their family.

Fork didn't know if the rumors of their origin were true. They didn’t care, really. They met the world alone without anyone to fall back on. They were expected to pierce and secure while Knife cut, but it wasn't a labor of love. Knife was rough and reckless and would knick Fork. Fork knew not to complain; no one in the kitchen antagonized Knife if they wanted a peaceful life.

Spoon and Fork lived in different worlds in their middle lives.

The more Fork worked with Knife, the more damage they took. Knife would get resharpened, but Fork was increasingly left in the drawer as the silver plating scratched, revealing yellow brass. Still clean and useful but, after a stainless steel replacement arrived, considered too shabby for daily use.

Spoon also saw less daylight. Those who ran the kitchen had fewer dinner guests, and even then, didn't feel like polishing the whorls and volutions in Spoon's handle. Spoon had stopped playing hide and seek and sought to be available and useful, but they remained in the drawer.

Spoon and Fork's worlds came together late in life.

A change fell over the kitchen. Suddenly and for a time, no dishes or utensils were used. No one knew what had happened, or what would happen next.

On a day Spoon would never forget, their parents, Tureen and Ladle, were boxed up and taken. Spoon would never see them again.

Spoon was tossed in a box with the rest of the utensils. It was an unfamiliar jumble. Some, like Cake Server and Butter Knife, they'd known their whole life. Others, like Table and Tea Spoon, they'd only heard about. They both acted like old friends, but Spoon saw nothing familiar in them beyond their name. Spoon huddled in a corner as the box jostled, never having felt so alone.

Spoon had little experience with loss and grief and the ache was profound. They huddled in the corner and wept salty tears which only darkened their already tarnished silver.

Between sobs they caught something quiet, a humming melody. They stifled their sobs to listen. The tune was clear and clean. It felt timeless and enduring and Spoon let it fill them. Fortified by the strength and surety of the song, Spoon's curiosity pulled them out of their corner and found Fork. They didn't approach too closely, they didn't want to break the spell. Instead Spoon listened.

Fork's music didn't have words, but told a story of hardship and contentment. Spoon thought they were well hidden, but Fork noticed the attention and waved them closer.

Spoon didn't think they should, but loneliness drew them, and pain spilled forth. They told Fork their life's story, all in a jumble. It started with memories of their parents, but also about the time a rambunctious child launched them out of the soup and into the living room. It was their only trip further than the dining room, and they'd played hide and seek under the ottoman until the soup turned crusty and they needed a rough cleaning when they’d finally been found.

Fork listened carefully to everything Spoon poured out. Their song resumed, responding to Spoon's words.

At last, Spoon's well of grief ran dry and their story faltered. They looked at Fork and asked, "What will happen to us now?"

Fork took a break from their song and thought. They had started with little enough, and it had been chipped away bit by bit. To Fork it didn't matter what happened next. There was only so much more that could be taken. But Spoon had lost more than Fork ever had. They didn't want anything more taken from Spoon.

The box opened, bringing light and something new. The grandchild that once launched a soup spoon into the other room was now an adult, setting out on their own for the first time. They rummaged through the grandparent's miscellaneous flatware for something to match their style and found Spoon. They were flooded with memories of all the holiday dinners where they'd been forced to wear uncomfortable clothes and eat unfamiliar foods, and the low grade fear that they’d break etiquette. The perversity of recollection made those rare memories warm and kind. There would be no more formal dinners with the grandparents.

They added Spoon to their sparse, ragtag collection. And they picked Fork too, reassured by the wear, knowing it had been well used by the grandparents.

Every day, Spoon and Fork shared meals. Spoon tried to learn to sing along with Fork. They weren't very good, but Fork was always encouraging and happy for the company.

String Of Solid Ground

He ran.

His hiking boots skated across the scree and sand. Something loose came off his backpack, but didn't turn to see what he’d lost. He thought about dropping the pack altogether, but if he survived, he'd need it. He cinched the straps better to keep it from bouncing, and put more power into his legs.

He hoped he lived long enough to miss everything he’d left at the campsite. His nice reclining camp chair, the tent he’d only used twice. The food. Most of his fresh water.

Water was a bigger problem. It had washed the campsite away and was on his heels.

An hour or more earlier, he'd heard the thunder, but thought sure it was on the other side of the mountain. There hadn’t been many clouds, at least not threatening ones. But the sky had broken open and dropped a sea somewhere uphill from him, and the one thing he knew about water was that it ran downhill.

You're not supposed to camp downhill, just in case it does rain. But he'd been in the foothills of the mountain. Everything was downhill from something.

He ran. Downhill. The same way the water was going.

This was bad. The floodwater was tireless and wouldn't stop until it reached the ocean, a thousand miles away.

He wasn't going to stay ahead of it for even another hundred meters. Even over his panting, he could hear it clearly now. The deep low churning, rocks and boulders being ground together in the push of water. A cracks like lightning echoed as pines snapped.

He careened between two boulders, bouncing heavily off one, and wondered if they'd still be there after the flood.

He had been following the trail, but knew it lead to a slot canyon just ahead. He juked left into a clear space between the rocks and brush. Now he was in unknown territory, but he'd get pulped if he went into that canyon.

Water runs downhill.

He slipped but caught himself by pulling a muscle in his lower back. The sand and dirt were freshly wet. He found it unbelievable that a slow trickle could be precede the wall of water, but then he saw it swell out of the dirt beneath his feet. The wall behind was so heavy it was pushing the water through the ground ahead of it.

Water runs downhill.

A wall of underbrush blocked him, and he plunged headlong through it, leaving bits of cloth and skin behind.

Then he saw it. A string of solid ground, mostly flat stone rising out of the rubble and brush. It wasn't huge, but it was the highest place he could see, and there was a clear path to run to it. If he was going to survive, it was going to be up there.

His heart skipped because he could never make it. To reach it, he'd have to cut across the path of the flood.

His body reacted before he consciously made the decision. He couldn’t take back the choice. Sprinting parallel to the onrush, he got his first good look at the churning wall of mud as it consumed trees and spit broken trunks into the air. It pushed a wind ahead of it that whipped branches before absorbing them and he could feel a cold mist on his flushed cheeks.

He ran.

There was something wrong with his right leg, it wasn't landing where he wanted. As he started up the string of solid ground, up the path to the stone rise, he willed his body to hold together, just for another few seconds. After that he could either piece himself back together or be dashed to pieces.

Astral Egg

“Viv, what are you doing?” Claire asked, making her concern very clear over the radio.

“I’m just going to look closer,” I said as mildly as I could, which didn’t reduce her worry.

“Like hell you are. We’re close enough. I don’t know how you even talked me out here.”

We both hung suspended from two different airlocks, our cables at an acute angle, pulling us toward the ... thing. It was about the size of Claire’s fist, which I could see her making inside of her spacesuit. She worked out her tension by fretting, I worked out my tension by doing. At least there wasn’t a lot of tension in our cables, the … Thing had the mass of a moon, not a planet.

A vibration twang down my harness lines to remind me that even its small gravity was enough to make our ship complain. Not nearly enough to be dangerous, but enough for it to bend a little more than it did on the float.

Madre de Deus was technically in orbit around the Thing, but its size made it awkward. We were a million times bigger, but had a billionth the mass, so while the Madre’s center of mass was in a proper orbit, the parts above and below that were trying to orbit at different speeds—which included us, dangling from our harnesses.

Claire lifted the gold sunshield on her helmet so I could see she was serious. “Viv We have two more drones left. Use them.”

“Nope. If we lose one of those, it’s mission over. We need both of them to maintain safety margins.”

“If we loose you, it’s mission over too.”

This was not her worrying about losing a sister, this was her worrying about being a failure in a particularly spectacular way. “Yeah, but I won’t care. And if we don’t do something, we might as well call the mission right now. Do you want to leave the way things are?”

“No,” she admitted. “But can’t you poke it with a stick or something?”

I pulled the grabber from my utility belt and waved it at her. “Like this?” It had a hand grip on one end and pincers on the other. We mostly used it to grab stuff that wandered off in zero gee like screws and stuff. Claire thought if one payed proper attention one never should need them, but I used them a lot.

“I was thinking more like something a dozen meters long,” she said. “Or a dozen kilometers.”

I scoffed at my sister’s outsized sense of caution. Besides, she couldn’t be that afraid of this thing or she’d never have put our ship this close. I extended the grabber to its full length of about a meter and started feeding out cable on my harness.

I was at home in gravity or freefall—even on a station with a strong Coriolis—but this was weird. I couldn’t decide if I was being pulled down to the little ball, or rising up up to it. Both seemed equally unlikely.

“Don’t get any closer, Viv.”

“Just take lots of pictures,” I told her. We already had a month’s worth of sensor logs from every instrument we had, and a few we rented, but taking pictures would keep her busy.

“Viv…”

“I’m just going to take a look, don’t worry.”

Despite a month of observation, I’d only seen it mediated by a screen. It didn’t seem real. I couldn’t leave without seeing it with my own eyes.

It was perfectly round, maybe the size of a billiard ball. It had a natural spin of once every 97 seconds—the length of it's day, more or less. We orbited slowly in the same direction, making the apparent spin just a few seconds longer from my point of view. Its lazy period was an indicator of extreme age, and contributed to the mystery. By everything we knew, it should take longer than the age of the universe for this chunk of a neutron star to spin down and get this cold. But it shouldn't even exist—it didn't have enough gravity to compress a trillion tonnes worth of regular mater into neutron-degenerate matter. But here it was, quiet and serene and almost in reach.

It was the most remarkable thing I would ever see—the most remarkable thing I would ever know about—and I was going to get as close to it as I could.

"Viv!" More nagging. Older sisters never change.

"I'm stopping," I informed her, but let another meter of cable play out, putting the Thing within arm's reach.

It was dark with a glowing orange spiderweb that pushed deep below the surface. Shining a light on it did nothing to brighten the black bits, but I turned my suit lights on it anyway.

I could have reached out and held it in my hand, but (despite what my sister thought) I wasn't completely irresponsible. I reached out with the grabber and gave it a poke.

It did exactly what I'd hoped, and I grinned. The thing, having the mass of a moon, stayed perfectly still while it pushed me away. I swung on my cables until I activated my suit’s thrusters to stop me.

“Yup, it’s as massy as our sensors claim!” I laughed.

“Viv!”

“Are you taking lots of pictures, Claire?”

She huffed. “Of course. I’ll have to show Mom how you died.”

I relaxed just a bit. If she was really worried, she wouldn’t have made a joke.

At least I thought it was a joke.

I reached out again and placed the sphere of starstuff between the pincers. “Okay, I’m going to grab it and see what happens.”

“You are the worst scientist.”

“Thanks for the support, sis.” I said and closed the clamp.

It wasn't about catching it—you couldn't catch a moon. It was about being caught by it, being carried along with this ancient ball of mystery, becoming a part of its eternal story.

It was slick and took all the strength of one hand, but eventually the grippy end held, and I started rotating along with it. I took a breath to laugh (and maybe record some sciencey observations) but I thought I heard a sound and held my breath instead.

Space suits are noisy, cycling air and coolant and generally keeping its inhabitant alive. I turned it all off, including the radio so Claire's complaints wouldn’t intrude when she saw what I was about to do. The system's momentum would keep me alive for a while.

After the last fan and pump spun down, I held a breath and listened. It was very faint, passed up through the grabber and into the rubber palm of my glove. The sound was real, but still too faint to make out properly.

I stowed my gripper and reached out, taking the astral egg between my gloved palms. Slowly, I let myself be pulled in until it touched the glass of my helmet. I giggled as I went crosseyed, looking at this moon I held, that held me. With solid contact of my helmet, the sound was clear. From beneath the translucent and webbed surface, a choir of multitudes passed from it to me.

Day 5 - Forest Of Beast

Kik embedded her claws into the cool bark so she could hang lazily under the branch, then leaned back and blinked languidly at Bim. "What do you think it's like on the ground?"

Bim lounged on a branch below, basking in some leaf-filtered sunlight. “Well, the beast'll eat you down there,” he said.

“Obviously.” Kik bristled at the energy it always took to push through Bim's skepticism. "I mean, what's it like to be down there, to climb along the ground."

"You want to be a beast?"

“No, I’m just wondering what it would like to be a ground person.” Kik flicked her tail.

Bim turned face down and let his limbs hang. In the dark shadows below something even darker darted. A squeal reached up through the canopy and was cut off.

"You wouldn't last long down there," Bim said.

"Neither would you." Kik took a tailful of mulch out of the crotch of the tree and flung it at Bim. She wasn’t sure if she was being playful or just annoyed.

Bim sighed and shivered the debris from his fur. “You’re in a mood today. What is with you?”

Kik decided she was definitely annoyed. She broke her claws free of her branch, dropped down to Bim's, and sat with her back against the trunk. "I'm just wondering what it would be like if I couldn't walk the trees and had to walk the ground." She reached out and brushed a bit of decayed leaf from Bim's coat.

Bim clearly thought she wasn’t paying attention. “Well, you'd be eaten, like I said.” He screeched a spot between his eyes. “Last year, my uncle broke both his arms, so he had my aunt cook up a sleeping syrup and slipped off in the night. Sometimes I wonder what kind of beast ate him and if he made it sleepy too. Maybe he started a chain reaction: A beast eats him, gets sleepy and so they become vulnerable. The next beast eats them and then they get sleepy too, and on and on it goes, forever.”

“Something like that couldn’t go on forever,” Kik said.

“How do you know?” Combative.

“Because nothing lasts for ever.”

“Says who?”

Kik pulled herself up straight. “Says me! I mean, like take your uncle. Who says just because his arms don’t work for a bit that he had to feed the beasts. He didn’t, you know.”

Bit pushed himself up and looked at her, wondering if she had a fever or something. "If you can't climb, you fall,” he said. Even toddlers knew that.

“But broken arms heal! You know that. If we were just a little patient and gave him time—”

Bim sniffed. "If you can't climb, you fall,” he repeated and lifted himself into the canopy. Conversation over.

Kik sat there for a long time, knowing what he said was true, wondering why it needed to be.

Planetqueen

Gwen closed her eyes and tried to concentrate.

It didn't work. When she opened her eyes, the cards were still the same and only seven seconds had come off the timer. She took a breath and tried again, silently mouthing her mnemonic to the order of the 72 ranks. She stumbled at the rank 23 when she couldn’t remember if a Tectonic Plate beat a Descending Orbit.

Planet Poker was one of those games that would be trivial if she had even a basic augment. A Planet deck had 365 cards in twelve suits and three card shapes—which made shuffling a special challenge. Regular poker had ten ranks to compare hands, Planet had six dozen.

Gwen wasn't a professional card player, she was a roofer, more comfortable with roofing felt than the green felt on the poker table. It was her first tournament. She’d played plenty of cards, though. That and puzzles kept her busy in the slow winter months. Josie, her wife, knowing she was brilliant at cards and puzzles, believed Planet Poker to be a combination of the two and entered Gwen in the tournament as a Christmas present. And Gwen, because she was Gwen, spent about two seconds shaking her head before deciding she'd learn how to play. Besides, it would mean a trip to New Vega, and Josie had always wanted to go.

Despite being one of three finalists, Gwen doubted her skills. The rules were so complex and the variations so large that the results were essentially random. The dealers required augs to be sure the best hands won. Even at the final table, it was common for the players to turn up their cards and wait for the dealer to figure out who won.

To keep the game moving, each player had a single minute to make their play. Gwen kept her eyes closed and counted breaths. She decided that a Descending Orbit did beat an Tectonic Plate, but she only needed a single square card to make a Plate, and there were thirty still in the deck.

She discarded the Four of Chevrons. The dealer passed her a circle card. (Damn.) She pulled it to her and took a peek. The was the Queen of Planets.

She was the last to discard, and the final round of betting began. Gwen had too much on her mind to remember player names, but the Player One, the only professional player remaining, didn’t look at his cards, he just pushed his substantial pile of chips toward the center of the table. All in. He always played immediately, so Gwen thought he must play randomly or by some arcane but simple rules of thumb. Two dealer’s assistants counted the chips, though their augs had to have kept track. Much of the tournament was traditional performance to keep things interesting.

Player two, like Gwen, always used her full minute. She fidgeted constantly, and Gwen decided that was to cover some other tell. Gwen hadn’t been able to figure out player two’s strategy at all. Maybe there was no strategy and she played random too.

With three seconds left on the clock, player two also went all in. The timer reset and Gwen had 60 seconds to decide. She should have been thinking while the other two played, but pushing so much money on the table had taken her by surprise. This could be the last hand.

Gwen surprised herself by calling for a chip count to see how much money was on the table, how much she had. Until now, she hadn’t been playing to win, just not waste what Josie had spent. Now, at worst, she’d get third prize money, which would pay for this trip ten times over. But now that she’d gotten this far, she would be damned if she was going to do less than win.

Gwen looked into the crowd, wishing she could see Josie who was up there pulling for her, but the lights were too strong on the table and too dim in the crowd.

The chip count came in. She’d had just ¤20 more than player one, and ¤2500 more than player two. If she went all in and lost to Player One, she wouldn’t have enough money to continue. A loss to Player Two would give her a few hands to get back in the game. But if she won, she’d take the tournament. ¤250,000. It wasn’t enough to retire, but it would make a lot of things easier for her and Josie.

Twenty seconds left on the clock and she did what she should have done from the start. She looked at her cards and started working through the ranks. She got to rank six (Major Axis) and stopped, feeling she’d missed something.

She hadn’t paid much attention memorizing the first few ranks. The odds against them were in the six and seven figures. But rank three was a Royal Constellation. And when she’d been dealt the Queen of Planets, it had given her a Royal Constellation. Hadn’t it? Or did she just have nothing at all? If she had it, it was one chance in a million that it could be beat.

The dealer said her name, quietly, politely. Time was up.

She pushed her chips to the center of the table and turned up her cards. She was all in.

Damselcoil

“I have to say, this is not what I expected.”

“No?”

“Well, traditionally when they say—”

“Who is ‘they’?”

The prince cleared his throat. “The ones who tell tales about this kind of quest.”

“Hm. And what do they say?”

“Uh. Well. They traditionally say—”

“Big on tradition, are they? The people who say these things?”

“Uh. Well, yes.”

“Have these people ever been on a quest themselves?”

“Uh…”

“No?”

“They don’t really seem the type, honestly.”

“Hm. Yes, well. Go on.”

He cleared his throat. And then he cleared it again. “Do you have to make this so difficult?”

“Is this supposed to be easy?”

“Well, no, not as such.”

“Go on.”

“Um… Well, anyway, they talk about the damsel in distress.”

“Do they?”

“Uh, yes?”

“And?”

“You’re … just not very damsely.”

“No?”

“Well, you’re… You’re a snake.”

She had a very good glare. She used it. “Now you're just being insulting."

"But you are—"

"Of course I am. But is there a reason a snake cannot be a comely maiden?”

“Uh. Okay.” The prince might be good with a sword, but his mental sharpness wouldn't cut damp bread. "And well… the 'distress' part..."

"Don't I seem in distress?" She drew out the s's. If the prince expected a stereotype, she could give him one.

The prince looked around the chamber. "I mean, you're not really in any danger. In fact you might be the most dangerous thing around..."

She flicked her tongue, annoyed with the 'might be'. "You should read more. There are other kinds of distress beyond physical danger."

The prince blinked at her. At least he didn't say ‘uh' again, but his mouth hung slightly open, which happened whenever he tried to engage his brain. It occurred to her the prince might not actually know how to read. What were they teaching royal heirs nowadays?

"For example, loneliness is distressing, if it persists for long enough." She pulled herself up and evaluated him. He was healthy and able. His armor, discarded on the floor in the expectation of some kind of connubial reward, was dented and torn from the seven trials, his sword chipped from defeating Stonegrom, his sabaton encrusted with slime from the Shudderwamp. But his body remained hale. She really longed for a companion, but this thing could barely put two words together.

"More's the pity. At least a body like yours can be put to other uses. I'd like to say it's been fun, but..." Hunger was also a form of distress, and he had been so eager. She tightened her coils to still his breathing, and then unhinged her jaw.

Holeyfish

“Oh, I just assumed that was a typo,” the bride said. She wished she had her phone so she could check again, but she hadn't been able to find a wedding dress with pockets.

“Everything is spelled correctly. Holeyfish.”

“I see. I mean, obviously.”

The fish sighed heavily, blowing bubbles from his many, many holes. “Do you still want me to perform the ceremony?”

The groom wrinkled his forehead and rubbed the back of his neck. “Are you ordained or anything?”

“No, I’m not.” The fish whistled when he talked.

“Well then, I don’t see what good it would do.”

Fish thrashed around a bit. "It’s just that I had to cancel plans to be here and I came all this way. Not an easy thing for me as you can surely guess…”

The bride shook her head and stomped off in search of her phone. The groom looked at his patent leather shoes and tried to figure out how to get out of this without any drama. It was his wedding day after all. “I mean, since you’re here, you could stay for the ceremony. If we can find an officiant.” The last was muttered through his teeth, a prayer to a god who had not been living up to expectations.

Fish considered. “I might do,” he said. “What about the reception?”

“Um, well…” He watched the fish flop pathetically. “Of course you’d be welcome.” Maybe there would be an empty table they could put him at. With a towel or something because he was leaking rather extensively.

“Is there dinner?” Fish asked.

“Yes, yes. Of course.”

The fish perked up. “What you serving?”

Flop sweat beaded on the groom’s brow. He looked longingly at the exit. “Fish. But … um. I’m sure you didn’t know him. Probably.”

The fish did his pisces best to shrug. “It’s okay, I eat fish all the time. A lot of fish do.”

The door to the vestibule creaked open and a trout in vestments poked his head in. “Ah, there you are. Sorry I’m late. We can start the service at any time.”

Vengeful Moon

Selene lay on her back and watched the sky.

It was bad for her environment suit, but it didn't matter and there was little else to do.

The sky was the deep, worn indigo of a Martian dusk. The usual stars were coming out, but this evening they were joined by new ones. Bits of habitats, ships, and almost certainly more than a few people; they all twinkled as they spun across her view. All of it out of control. It had all spun out of control.

Selene thought it was their own fault for settling a planet named after a god of war. Something about it made her people want to pick fights.

Martian settler mentality hadn’t helped. Colonizing Mars had been a long shot, but they’d defied expectations and even thrived. And so it was in the Martian mindset that they could accomplish anything against the odds—especially if Earth said they couldn't or shouldn’t.

Selene's knew the established story of how Earth had started the war. Mars had approached the cradle of humanity with the secrets to living sustainably, offered for free, in the hope that humanity would preserve the planet they were destroying. Earth had violently rejected the offer and Mars had to defend itself.

Although she'd heard the story her entire life, she never quite believed. She'd seen the cracks in Martian propaganda when she was five, seen her father’s broken body, and how it told a different story about his death than the official one. She decided to believe her own eyes instead of what the government had told her.

Kilometers above Selene, the first fragments hit the atmosphere, streaking across the sky to the West. They left streaks of mineral vapor in the sky that caught the last of the distant sun. They were small now, small enough to burn in Mars’s tenuous atmosphere, but they'd get bigger.

Since the death of her father, likely at the batons of government thugs, she looked for the lies under every government announcement, particularly when they were about things she couldn't verify with her own senses.

When there had been a huge loss of life on the moon Phobos, Mars had blamed a sneak attack from Earth. Selene dug and found no survivors who could recall an explosion, only the pop and rip of a habitat dome as the pulled loose. The inspectors had complained about poor maintenance leading to such a catastrophe. They had all been found dead after the incident.

But still, The Voice of Mars had said Earth had blown it up, so everyone believed they had, and that Earth must pay.

To retaliate, Mars salted Earth's Luna with radioactive dust. For the next ten thousand years, anything that touched the surface would be poisoned. Without the off-planet resources of the moon, Earth's ability to wage war was diminished.

Earth had struck back. They'd shattered Mars’s small moon of Deimos. Mars only used it for mining (and in fact cracking it open had been a great help to those efforts). Some debris had deorbited, but Martian defense had been able to easily deal with it. Some did hit the planet’s surface, but the habitats were spared, the budding oxygen environment was barely impacted.

Earth intended it as a warning. They could have done much worse. Mars could rebuild. It wasn't like poisoning Luna for 500 generations. But Mars had lost a moon, and that could not stand.

Mars bombarded Luna until the orbit of Earth was thick with rubble. Any spacecraft launched from Earth would face an omnidirectional shotgun blast of rocks and stones. Space travel was no longer possible. Mars claimed they had quarantined Earth for its own good. Selene mourned for them, for being born of a planet that wanted to make Earth suffer.

Selene couldn’t comprehend it. Billions of people in countless communities were being punished. Certainly they couldn’t all be guilty. Humans on Earth had to be like those on Mars, suffering at the whims and lies of their leaders.

Selene had not fought in this war. She had done what she could to fight against it. But she was a Martian and Earth had decided sharing a solar system with Martians was an existential threat.

Phobos rose in the East. It was never big in the sky, not like Luna, but it was still 24 km across and easy to spot. She thought she knew what to expect, but she gasped anyway. It had completely lost its familiar potato shape since it had last risen seven hours ago. Now it was in three ragged chunks in and expanding cloud of debris. Its tidal lock had been broken and the mountainous hunks were tumbling against each other, spinning faster as their radius shrunk.

Selene watched it progress across the sky until it was crossed by a rocket plume rising from the surface. At the first news of the attack, there had been riots at the docks for seats on any spaceworthly ship. But they’d all taken off hours ago. She hoped Earth would take in refugees, but didn’t think much about it. There weren’t enough ships for one in a thousand Martians to leave the planet.

She wished the straggler ship well, wondering if it would be the last off Mars. And then it exploded in a streaming cloud of fire.

Either Earth had not been so thoroughly quarantined as she'd been told (likely) or Earth had hidden a remote superweapon somewhere in the system (also likely). At any rate, a large impactor had struck Phobos. After Mars faked the attack on Phobos, Earth started attacking it for real. It provided the same off-planet resources for war as Earth’s moon. The attacks had all been precise, trying to destroy production, not lives. (Unlike Mars, Earth never tried radiological attacks, Selene thought idly. They certainly had the material to do it, but hadn’t, until now, done anything but precision strikes. It certainly wasn't because they lacked the material.) But this impactor was enormous, stealthed, armored, and moving faster than anything Mars, in its hubris, was prepared to defend itself from. It pulverized Phobos and now nothing they could do would stop a million trillion of tons of moon from raining down on Mars.

Selene watched Mars’s last moon crumble and waited for the death of her world. Unlike Deimos, this was not a warning, not merely a disaster. This would end life on Mars. Selene decided she was content that Mars's ability to wage war was coming to an end and hoped that a search for a better future wouldn’t die with Mars.

Pin Goose

"Ow!” said the goose. "Look, I don't want you to think I'm not grateful. I'm glad you realized that you didn't need to kill the goose to get the quills, but…”

Tom sniffed. "Sorry, goose. You know your place is to provide quills."

"Okay, but that friggin’ hurt. You're taking them faster than I can grow them."

"Yes, well." Tom said using a knife to expertly dress his fresh quill. “This document has had a lot of revisions. Seems no one can agree on anything. But we're getting there."

Goose filled his beak with ground corn, spilling half of it on the floor. "Did you take my suggestion?"

Tom was already scratching away with his fresh nib. He seemed to have an endless supply of parchment, ink, and pounce, but not quills. (Goose suspected the cuttlefish were not asked to donate their bones for the pounce.) “What's that, goose?"

"My suggestion. Removing ‘men’, maybe replacing it with ‘people’?"

"Oh, that," Tom said. He was looking out of his window, lost in thought, tickling his nose with the feather.

"I just think ‘All people created equal’ would head off some misunderstanding," goose said.

"Remember you place goose, you’re here to provide quills to write, nothing more," Tom said, and went back to writing the Declaration of Independence.

Whoop

"His name is Timothy. He died here of whooping cough in 1882."

At the mention of his name, a whoop came from the space between the air, followed by a heaving cough that took a long time to quiet.

Sister Margaret had plenty of encounters with stray spirits, but this one was more potent than any she'd encountered in years. The pained hacking made he own throat feel raw. "I see no reason to wait, then," she said, sliding her briefcase onto the kitchen table and popping the latches. "Let's get this exorcism started."

She lifted the lid to reveal a Bible (slim and gilt-edged but well thumbed), a vial of holy water (possibly an antique perfume bottle), an assortment of small wooden crosses, and several intricate silver pill boxes. There was a smell of incense.

Eustice Greene put out a hand, but stopped a few inches from the briefcase, like it had a force field. "No, Sister Margaret, we don't—" She looked across the table to her husband.

Levi cleared his throat. "As I explained on the phone, we're not looking to cast him out, really. He's just a boy who died a lingering death."

There was another loud hooting inhalation, followed by a cough. This time the cough deteriorated into sobbing before it faded.

Sister Margaret folded her hands, noticing the sounds of the ghost didn't make the Mr. and Mrs. Greene break into a cold sweat. They looked tired, which was understandable, but they lacked the stress levels that she usually encountered in this job.

"So, what would you like me to do?" she asked.

"You see, we can't care for him," Eustace said. "Not properly, anyway. We're hoping you can find a real home for him."

(Read part 2 tomorrow)

Complete Whoop

Sister Margaret climbed into her car and hauled at the door. It was an old Chevrolet with half a million miles, equal parts rust and TLC. The door creaked and slammed, shutting out the damp autumn afternoon.

She let out a heavy sigh.

Timothy's voice came from the back seat. "What'd they say?" He added a wet gasp and a short fit of coughing.

"I'm sorry kiddo. This one has its share of spirits, but none I would want to leave you alone with."

"S'alright. I know you're doing your best."

Sister Margaret didn't feel like she was doing her best. She started the old rust bucket forced it into gear, and pulled onto the main road, leaving the abandoned sanitarium behind.

She'd been searching for a proper home for Timothy for the better part of a year. He’d been a victim of whooping cough more than a century earlier and traveled along bonded to one of the relics she carried for exorcisms. She hadn't performed one of those since she'd taken on this task.

First she’d tried to find the spirits of Timothy’s parents, but they had moved on a century earlier. That had been hard on him, and he'd stopped talking to her for several days. Only his painful, futile cough told her that he was still with her.

She eventually coaxed him back out. He was good company, charming and a bit of a joker when he wasn't consumed by the cough. Unlike any other spirit she'd ever encountered, he wasn’t stuck completely in the time of his death. He'd been worried by the old car at first, but had learned about it and would now watch the scenery go by, asking questions about everything that passed by.

He'd seen a lot of scenery. When graveyards had been a bust, Sister Margaret had visited every abandoned hospital, sanitarium, orphanage, and work house east of the Mississippi, looking for other forgotten souls who could care for little Timmy.

She had found spirits, but none were complete. They were all attached to the moment of their death, in unchanging torment. They couldn't adapt to allow a sweet young child into their (after) lives.

"Your cough is sounding better today," she said as Edith (what Sister Margaret called the car) hauled them onto the highway.

“A bit,” admitted Timmothy.

Sister Margaret remembered when they’d fist met that even trying to talk would trigger an unstoppable coughing fit.

She didn't know where to go next. Her options were dwindling. She could try further West, but she’d found pioneer spirits to be slippery. Maybe a trip to Europe? Timothy's parents had come from Denmark. There might be family.

For now she set the GPS for St. Mary's Motherhouse where she could get a meal and a bed, but not a lot of commiseration. The sisters tended to feel that she should be sending this soul home to God. She felt that he deserved a time on Earth, to be a child.

She let go of another heavy sigh.

She felt a small hand on her shoulder. Timothy cleared his throat. "It's okay Mom," he said. "I'll go wherever you go."

Mouse Odor

Ken took the offered filter mask, slipped it on, and caught his breath. Cerise already had her mask on and stood shaking her head at the cloud of dust that continued to churn out of the fireplace.

“Thank goodness you put the tarp down,” she said and then waved a hand in front of her face. The mask might stop the dust, but it did little for the smell. “Yeah, that’s definitely where it was coming from. Ugh.”

Ken reseated his goggles to be sure the ash would stay out. The house was more than a hundred years old, and by his estimate no one had ever cleaned the flue. “Well, we knew when we bought this place it would be a messy job.” Ken looked down at the broom he’d used to start the avalanche, and suspected he’d need something bigger.

Cerise read his mind. “I’ll get the rake. And maybe a shovel.”

When she returned, Ken stood, looking at a pile of ash in his hand. “Cerise, What does that look like to you?”

Cerise held his hand to steady it and look a look. Among the ash were little white shards. “Mouse bones?”

Ken nodded. “Must have been living up there since the house was built. Ugh.” He dropped the bones to the pile on the floor and brushed off his hands.

“Wait!” Cerise grabbed a dust pan and filled it with debris.

“What are you doing?”

“When I was in college I learned how to read owl pellets.”

“You can read owl poop?”

Cerise laughed. “Close. More like barf. An owl eats rodents, digests all the soft parts, and pukes up the hair and fur. You can tell what their diet is like from looking at what they throw up.”

“And I thought I was doing a dirty job,” Ken said, dragging a waste basket closer to the work area.

“And you can also learn some things about the lives of what they eat. I’m just curious about what life is like up the chimney.”

“You’re weird,” Ken said with a smile, but also a sigh.

“You married me,” Cerise said and started spreading the bones out on a paper towel.

Ken worked at getting a grip on the pile of ash and wondered how much work it was worth. He was not a fireplace person, it always seemed like a bad idea to build fires inside the place you lived.

“Ken, look at this!”

Ken kneeled next to where she was working and squinted. She had sorted out dozens of bones by size, skulls on one end, tiny little claws and teeth at the other. But that’s not what she was looking at.

She used the knife from her multitool to pull something out of her ash pile. It had a metallic sheen. She lowered her mask and blew at the loose ash to reveal a tiny, perfect bicycle, sized and shaped for a mouse. Looking closer she found plates and silverware, even a tiny gold crown and a tiara peppered with tiny jewels.

“Ken, what have we done?"

Hyper Large

Everyone had disavowed it, but someone—probably several dozen people—had made it happen, and to Paulo, it seemed like the practical (not to mention ethical) problems should have been obvious from the start.

Paulo knew he understood buildings in the way that only a maintenance person could, and he enjoyed his work. But if he ever met the person (or people) who decided to implant the brain of a Weimaraner puppy into an office building, he had some words for them.

Duke, as Paulo had started calling him, was friendly enough, but sometimes too friendly. If he didn't get enough attention, he wouldn't let people go at the end of the day. He’d stop the elevators, lock the doors, even block the fire exits. He could be a right annoying safety hazard.

At least if someone was going to put a dog brain in a building, they could have used a Saint Bernard or something low energy. Duke wanted to run, but his foundations ran deep into the Earth. So he fretted, running the ventilation and steam and and elevators at top speed, just to feel the wind in his corridors, the heat in his pipes.

Paulo worked overtime to keep Duke in top condition, even though his restlessness meant extra maintenance on pretty much every moving part across 23 floors.

Purely by chance, Paulo had discovered hosing off the basement parking was a good way to calm him. He suspected it was like giving him ear scritches. Duke would get particularly restless during the holidays when hardly anyone used the building. Once, on New Years, he had triggered the sprinklers on the second, third, and fourth floors, just to get attention. After that, the building’s tenants had a hard time getting insurance, and Paulo would spend the night in his cot next to the boiler. Not every night, just on long weekends and major holidays. It wasn't really a hardship. Duke was his friend. But Paulo had words that took a life that had this much vitality and trapped them in a building.

Bug In Human Shape

The restaurant moved through its nightly dinner routine, but the mismatched couple had been building up layer of silence. The appetizer had only just arrived.

“There’s no point in holding out for romance,” Gregor Samsa said.

Bug sighed. This human body was frustratingly limited and fragile, but it could sigh rather expressively, which he did every few minutes. He worked hard at giving it a different inflection every time. As far as Bug could tell, sighing was the one advantage to being in a human body. “I still have the hungers that I had before my human body, but you’re not even the right species.”

Gregor slumped even more. (Bug’s first impression what that Gregor was a decent person, but basically one big slump.)

“Neither of us has the body we want," Bug said. "That's something we have in common.“

Gregor flicked his antennae. "But I'm a monstrous bug and you're an ordinary human."

Bug stuck a finger in the appetizer, and smeared it on his nose to get a proper sense of it. Starchy, fried, and drowned under cheese and oil. "I'm not an ordinary human. I'm a Blattella Germanica, a German Cockroach. I was having a great life. I lived under a dumpster behind a bakery with thousands of my clan. I'd personally sired dozens of children, and every night I’d wander around the neighborhood spreading pheromone trails to lead my clan to the good stuff. Then one day I woke up stuck in this enormous bag of meat. I mean, I basically want to eat myself all the time." He started scraping the cheese from his nose into his mouth.

“You know,” Gregor said after an uncomfortable pause, “You’re the first person who has never asked me what it’s like to be a bug.”

Bug gave a dry chuckle. “No one asks me what it’s like to be human.”

Another empty pause while the cheese congealed.

Bug sighed, adding a note of weariness. “I am really tired of people seeing me as I appear, not as I am.”

Gregor nodded. Or at least bobbed his head in agreement. "Even my family doesn't accept me. My own family, who should know the true me better than anyone!” He rub a pair of legs along his thorax. “Last night my father decided I was a disgrace and whipped apples at me. He’s furious at me for not being who he wanted me to be. I think he broke something."

Bug tried cleaning his eyes before he remembered he had eyelids for that. He sighed. "I accidentally crushed a dozen friends and family before I figured out how to work this body well enough. The ones that live can't even comprehend what I am.”

Bug stuck his hand in the cheese fries and licked his hand while he looked at Gregor. He was a perfectly respectable looking bug, but in his mind he didn’t see a bug, he saw a human. “You’re right, Gregor," he said at last, "I don't think we're going to find romance on this date, but I can accept you for who you are, and would be glad to be your friend." He extended his clean hand across the table.

A server appeared at the table, fake smile cranked up high. He pretended the human in bug shape didn't exist, and addressed the bug in human shape. "How are your apps? Can I refresh your beverages?" He laughed nervously.

Gregor Samsa lay a foreleg in Bugs palm and let Bug hold it. “Thank you, Bug,” he said, and was glad that he couldn't cry. It was too much to ask that the server would recognize him as human, but for now it was enough that he knew one person who saw the person he aspired to be.

Scarfed Mystery

The interrogation room was improvised, and had altogether too much afternoon sunlight to be properly menacing. But the cops had the suspect's attention. He sat eyes wide, trying to take in everything, moderately mystified about why he was there.

The Good Cop leaned against the door, arms folded. "It'll go a lot easier on you if you just confess."

Bad Cop leaned over the suspect and got in his face. "We've got all we need on you. We have witnesses who can place you at the scene, we have samples of your hair and saliva. We even found crumbs in your fur. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Woof!" the suspect barked before licking the face of Bad Cop.

Good Cop laughed. "Told you he didn't think he’d done anything wrong. It was just a piece of banana bread."

Bad Cop frowned. "But it was the last piece of banana bread. And it was the heal! You know I—"

“Yes, I know. It’s your favorite bit.” Good Cop gave the witness, Rufus T. Dogington Esquire, some ear scritches and a jowl massage. "Now see, you got your daddy all upset. You know you can't grab food off the counter. And if you eat too much of that, it'll upset your tummy. So now go play and don't cause trouble like that again."

Bad Cop wondered why Good Cop was being so easy on Rufus.

Rufus had no idea what was going on, but felt bad that he'd made his owners feel bad. He found his bed and curled up, feeling guilty.

Good Cop was glad that Bad Cop hadn't smelled the banana bread on her breath, and knew she’d gotten away with it again.

Day 17 - Ornery Beach Sheep

“I guess I had something different in mind when you invited me to a ‘beachside tiki bar.’” Sofi said, pulling up her hood and hugging herself against the cold, ocean breeze.

“Well, we’re in Northern California. Of course the beach is freezing,” Luca said. He wore a fleece over a flannel with a hand-knitted cap.

“That’s so weird. California beaches are supposed to be blue sky, blue water, and warm sun. This is gray and miserable. And is that a sheep?”

“Here, have a drink. I’ll keep you warm.” Luca slid over an a ceramic coconut that smelled like a banana and a gas station started a family.

She eyed it skeptically, trying to find a path past the umbrella, garnish, and plastic mermaids. “Are sheep traditional?”

“What, for California beaches or for tiki bars?”

“Either.”

Luca hefted a mug shaped to resemble an angry (or possibly lascivious) god, and took a long pull on a thick straw. When the brain freeze faded, he said, “Well, tiki was pretty much stolen from actual traditions of a dozen island peoples, so a sheep is as traditional as anything in here.” He raised his drink to toast the puffer fish lamp hanging over his head, the totem pole carved out of a palm tree holding up the awning, and the gallery of bobble-hipped luau dolls behind the bar.

Sofi gasped and grabbed Luca’s sleeve and pointed. “The sheep just knocked that guy down!”

A man lay on his back in the sand, looking up at the sheep in confusion. One might say the sheep had robbed him of his dignity, however this guy had surrendered his dignity several drinks before.

The guy found his feet (it took a few tries) and pointed himself like a lazy compass toward the bar. When he took the first step, the sheep dumped him back in the sand.

It took two more tries, but the guy finally got the hint, and stumbled toward the ride hailing spot up the beach.

"Excuse me," Sofi called the bartender over, "Why do you let that sheep do that?"

The bartender turned a bottle of dark rum and a bottle of light run upside down and started draining them into a volcano-shaped bowl. “That’s Buttercup. This is her bar, she can do what she wants.”

"What?" Sofi and Luca asked in unison.

The bartender picked up another bottle of rum and one of pineapple juice and turned them bottom-side up. He gave a little shrug. "The old owner was a bit of a character. They'll let you put damn near anything in a will, so when he died he gave the bar to Buttercup."

Sofi and Luca decided they both needed a sip of their drinks.

"And how does that work?" Luca asked after recovering from another brain freeze.

The bartender smiled. "Better than before. She doesn’t get in our way. All she cares about is kicking out the creeps and troublemakers, and she has an unerring sense for it. Don't be an ass and he won't knock you on yours."

Sofi looked at Buttercup, now completely unassuming, munching on a bit of clover hay, and then back at Luca in his ridiculous knitted cap. She decided there were some things to like here, even if they weren’t what she was expecting. She took another sip.

Fur Splashing

(With apologies to Robert E. Howard)

Otter General swam closer to the audience and flipped onto his back. He addressed the one to his right. "Otter, what is best in life?"

The otter faced her general and with a stony face said, "The open sea, a fleet current, a rock in your pouch, and the water in your fur!"

"Wrong!" Otter General turned to the one on the left. "Otter, what is best in life?"

The second otter didn't have to think. He pulled himself up proud and long. "To crush your shellfish, to see them pried open before you, and to eat the life inside."

“That is good!” Otter General squeaked and slapped his belly in appreciation. The gathered crowd did the same, and with a fury of splashes the hunt began again.

Cat Becomes Abundant

“You know Schrödinger’s cat was just a thought experiment, right? It's just supposed to show how people misinterpret quantum theory. You're never supposed to do it, much less involve an actual cat. You’ll be up in front of an ethics panel for this.”

Two of the grad students looked at their shoes. Mikaela managed to meet the professors glower. "I'll take all of the blame, professor. It was my idea. But I think we have bigger problems right now."

The professor had to admit that. There were at least five dozen cats in the little lab already. They were pretty well behaved, but it was clear that wouldn't last. For one thing, there was only one litter box. And every 73 seconds there was a new cat.

"Have you tried turning it off?" the professor asked, making it clear she didn't expect much of grad students, especially ones that have turned a simple thought experiment into a complete disaster.

"We have turned it off," Mikaela said. "Unplugged it completely and shut down the power to the lab, and disabled the battery backup and the generator. It's not connected to anything and doesn't have a power supply on board. It hasn't slowed down at all."

“It what?” The professor was suddenly suspicious that his students had been set up to pull some kind of joke on her.

But she examined the apparatus and found it simple enough, and clearly not connected to any power. Or any source of spontaneous cats. Halfway through the examination, another three cats appeared; a tabby, a tortoise shell, and a Persian.

The professor nudged a couple of felines out of the way so she could lean on a bench and take it all in. A calico popped into existence and immediately started licking its leg.

The professor scratched a cheek and decided this was not a prank. "If it's true—and that's a big if, and you can figure out why, we're guaranteed a Nobel prize. You've discovered how to generate energy from nothing."

"Well, cats from nothing," Mikaela said.

One of her lab partners sneezed. The other shook his head. “I just can’t see how it’s possible.”

The professor cleared her throat. “It’s either possible, or you’ve broken the universe.”

… Meanwhile, in the alternate reality …

Inside the lab, two grad students looked in and under everything, trying to find the missing cat.

Mikaela burst through the door. "We've got to turn it off! Everywhere around the world, cats are disappearing!"

Three Courageous Frog

"…and that's the story," said the first frog.

"So you see why we can't break the spell," said the second frog.

"And why we need you to do it for us," said the third frog.

"Not for us," said the first frog.

"With us," the second frog said. "You couldn't do it without us."

d'Artagnan looked dubiously at Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. At some point along their journey back from the cursed catacombs of Château de Châteaubriant, they'd found someone to make little cavalier hats and tiny cloaks. They had no pants however, which upset him. But he suspected Aramis was enjoying it.

Athos cleared his throat. It came out as a croak. "d'Artagnan, now that you have your promotion, this is what you get. Saving people in distress."

d'Artagnan looked at Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. d'Artagnan. "Athos, my promotion was to Lieutenant of the Musketeers. I have duties! The Captain—"

"Junior Lieutenant. No one will miss you for a few weeks while you go and do a little curse reversal," Porthos said.

"Tell Captain Desjardins that you've had word of saboteurs in Meung-sur-Loire and you've gone to investigate. He will even let you have a horse and rations," Athos said.

"We won't need rations. We don't eat much. Mostly flies," Aramis said, making a face. (Which was quite a thing considering he already had a frog's face.)

d'Artagnan's promotion was still new, and it had come about in an unlikely way. He was wary of lying to the Captain before the shine had worn off.

Aramis added, "And grab another bandolier from the quartermaster. I'm tired of hopping and would like to ride. We could fit right in the pouches."

"Not that we

"Besides," said Athos, "I outrank you."

"You don't outrank the Captain," d'Artagnan said, but broke out laughing when he saw the looks on his brother's faces. There was never any doubt that his friends would wear him down. They were his brothers in arms, closer to him than any family.

"All for one!" he toasted.

"And one for all!" the three frogs replied in chorus.

Two Blocks Squishy

Josh decided he should have thought more about this “Battle To The Death” thing. It seemed so straight forward; It only had one rule. But now that he was in the arena, sword to sword with his foe, he realized he should have checked to see if he would be facing someone more traditionally alive.

Satisfying Crash

"That was a very satisfying crash," Yag said, tossing off the restraints and arming the charges on the forward door.

"Maybe a little bit too satisfying," Delta said from the pilot's seat. The windows and forward cameras were all blocked with dust and debris, but sonar returned a reasonably clear picture. "They don't build prisons like they used to. We're about thirty meters further inside than we intended."

Yag triggered the charges and the forward door blew out with enough force to clear a path through several tons of rock. As luck would have it, there was very little debris in front of the door, and it flew end over end down a hallway and disappeared in a cloud of dust as it passed through the insubstantial wall at the end. "So, what does that mean for me?" he asked, using his armor's sensors to check the corners, doorways, and rubble for anyone who objected to their arrival.

"The good news is that we're almost completely covered from outside fire. The bad news is we each have a new problem. Mine is that it's going to be more of a trick to get out. Your problem is that you're now on the wrong side of the door controls. Either go through the cell block and blast your way out through the guard station. Or you can skip the guard station altogether and just blast the individual cells open. It's up to you."

Yag had oriented and was loping toward his goal, tagging the wall at intervals with infrared chalk. There was no light. It was a standard part of lockdown to turn them out (It was a lot harder for prisoners to organize in the dark) but Delta's dynamic arrival might have knocked out the power. At any rate, Yag had planned for it. He dropped some infrared lights at intersections as he worked his way along the memorized layout.

He could hear yelling coming from every direction, but nothing immediate, or coherent. He only had to blast through two pair of locked gates—and no guards—to get to the cells for political prisoners. The guard station was at the other end, but the guards had been called to deal with the outside threat, not realizing it was already behind them. (Yag had dropped incendiaries on three guard towers on the way in. With luck, they thought the ship had been shot down, instead of smashing through the wall on purpose.)

"Attention freedom fighters, your ride is here!" he bellowed into the cell block.

He was greeted with various yells of solidarity and one cackle of laughter. He started distributing cheapo infrared goggles they'd picked up at a party supply store. He greeted the ones he knew by name, and asked the names of the ones he didn't.

Past the guard station someone had a suspicion. Someone gave orders and the reflections of flashlights bounced around the corner. He blew apart the lock on Doc Alanzo's cell. Doc (PhDs in History and Economics) looked bug-eyed in the goggles, and nearly broken from the torture, but she was never short of energy or intuition. She knew what to do.

Yag carried the entire ship's armory on his back, and while he watched for guards, Doc grabbed a rifle and started breaking open locks and distributing weapons. There were more prisoners than weapons, but these inmates were here, next to the torture vaults, for what they thought, not their martial skills. Doc made sure that the few who could handle a weapon had one.

From beyond the guard station, an authoritative voice barked, "Start killing the prisoners." It was something Yag had been told to expect: The prison would take the opportunity to kill the prisoners in cold blood and claim they'd been put down in an uprising.

"Follow the dotted line, you'll find your ride out, I'll watch your back, but don't dally," Yag told the growing party of ex-prisoners.

There was no cover in the cell block. All the walls were simply bars. Yag's body armor and could absorb most of what the prison guards were issued. He moved forward to the guard station to intercept everything he could. He braced and aimed his rifle though the bars, at the corner where the guards would first appear.

A hand gripped his shoulder. He hazarded a glance. It was Doc Alanzo. Behind him were a half dozen compatriots, though the other three dozen prisoners had fled to the ship. The ones that stayed looked rough. Their coveralls were worn and stained. They'd all spent more time under torture than bathing. They all handled their weapons with confidence, and held themselves with a deep burning desire.

"Go, you fools," Yag said. "You don't have any armor. Just get out. You're free."

Doc shook her head. "We'd be out of this prison, but we wouldn't be free. Freedom is what we're fighting for."

Yag, if he was honest (and he was always honest) was here for the action, not the ideology, but Doc always made good sense to him.

Doc patted him on the shoulder and smiled before blowing apart the lock to the guard station. "Sorry to derail your rescue, Yag. Some of us have debts to settle with this place. We can't let them keep doing this. But you've done all that you need to. It's your decision to stay or go."

It took Yag a moment to realize that Doc was giving him a chance to evacuate, while they stayed delivered the medicine. If he had just been Yag, well, he couldn't think of much more fun than sending these torturers and cold blooded murderers to hell. But today he had to think about Delta and a ship full of liberated prisoners.

"Delta, you been listening?" he called into his mic.

"All the way, Yag. I think we're in agreement. You do what you need to. We'll be here to take you home when you're done."

Yag grinned. "Okay crew, I have one rule: Stay alive. We need you," he said, and kicked open the gate just as the guards rounded the corner.

Go Go

“I just wish it wasn't such an asshole about it,” Kenji said, ripping yet another cocktail napkin to pieces.

“Why would it be? You built it to be a victory machine. Every part of it exists to win. To beat you." Iris was slung across the booth, empty pint glass in front of her. It was her fourth. "It is the seed of your undoing. Your Achilles heel."

"Bad analogy. Achilles didn't make his heel. It's where Thetis held him when dunking him in the river Styx." Kenji scraped the pieces of napkin into a pile next to an almost untouched Manhattan.

“Taking a dip in the Styx seems like an easy solution. Wonder why more people didn't go swimming there to protect themselves. Or just sell wet wipes with Styx water on them. Could make bank. Do it when they're born, like getting undercoating for your car. 'Would you like the invulnerability coating for little Kimmy? A thousand dollars extra!'"

Kenji sighed. The drunk delta was getting too big for hist taste, and he didn't feel like catching up to Iris. "I guess this is what all those stories were warning us about. If you're the best in the world at something, someone is going to come along, encapsulate all the knowledge and mass produce it inside a robot. Except in this case, I did it to myself."

Iris straightened and hit the table with a fist. "Except you didn't, Kenji!" The bar was quiet enough that several people turned to see if there was trouble brewing. "You made something that can beat you at Go. But, as you just whined about, it's not a better player than you. You," she said, point a finger between his eyes, “are a graceful winner and loser. I've seen it. I've watched you, you know," she added with a leer.

Oh shit, here we go, Kenji thought, and braced for an awkward turn to the conversation. Iris surprised him by holding on to the thread.

"It knows how to win—and so do you—but you also know how to loose, you know what it's like to loose, how sometimes it's agonizing because you made a mistake that you can't take back, or sometimes a relief that the torture is over, or sometimes there’s a little frisson as that guy you're playing against does something brilliant. And probably another dozen things that I don't know because I've never won anything in my life. But you know and can feel all that. Which makes you a graceful winner. Your foolish little AI doesn't know any of that shit. So, if you want it to be a more graceful winner, you need to teach it how to be!" She added another thump on the table as punctuation.

Kenji laughed at the idea. "Teaching it Go is easy—well, straight forward. There aren't many rules, and a zillion games to use as examples. Kindness, or whatever it is that you're talking about here, is a completely different domain. There are no rules for kindness. Kindness is its own rule. You can't teach it to an AI."

"Are you sure? Or is it just harder to teach than Go? And… I don't know how to say this kindly (so maybe I need an AI to help me) but … maybe it would be more worthwhile to teach it how to help people be kind than to teach it to dominate a game that people, you know, play for fun."

Kenji thought about that for a moment and decided he'd been neglecting his cocktail. And maybe some other aspects of his life as well.

Emergency Rental

“I'm sorry sir, I can't.”

“Look, I understand your problem. We can figure something out.”

“I'm sorry,” the rental agent said, with possibly real regret. “It's against regulations.”

Wade thought for a moment, wondered if he could wait until her shift was over and try his luck with someone else.

No, it could be hours, and he had places to be. One place, at least.

He took a purely imaginary deep breath and put on his patient voice. “Let's find something we agree on. You can't rent me a body without verifying my photo ID, and you can't verify my photo ID without a body to compare it to. Is that a good summary of the situation?”

The agent was trying very hard to look busy at her computer, but did glance up at the specter and nod, seeing the trap she was being led toward.

“Right. So. Our problem is one of temporal order. That’s easily solved. We just do things in reverse. First you rent me a body, then you can verify my ID.”

“I can’t sir. It's against regulations.”

“How about a test drive? Can I take a body for a test drive?” Maybe he didn't a rental at all. He only needed it for an hour. Less, even.

“Not without a valid photo ID,” the agent said. Wade was certain she enjoyed saying it.

He looked at the clock on the wall of rental kiosk.

He could steal a body, but that came with unwanted consequences. It was a bad time to rack up any more sins.

He glanced behind him and was glad that no one waiting behind. He didn't want to hold up the line for his selfish request.

“So, if you were in this situation, what would you do?” he asked.

He was relieved to see her take the question seriously, tapping her cheek with a stylus while she stared into space. “Well, there might be a way...”

…12 minutes later…

His hair wasn't as neat as he wanted, and he was a little out of breath, but he'd made it to his own funeral before things got properly underway.

Foot Powers

Omid walked slowly around the creation, eyeing it critically. It was compact, aerodynamic. The composite materials were built precisely to fit his body. He could see the logic behind it, see how the energy would be transferred, noticed the streamlined shield up front made with heat resistant ceramics to cope with the speed through the air, the chunky titanium crank that sacrificed aerodynamics for strength. Here, in its deployed state, it revealed only the thinnest lines where it would fold into something much smaller.

He looked up at Devon with hope. “Okay, but does it fly? It looks like it flies.”

Devon shook her head. “No can do. Would be three times bigger, hundred more times more likely to crash.”

“Aw.” Omid hadn't expected, but he'd hoped.

“But this will take your foot power and move you faster than you can already run by a factor that of thirty."

Omid nodded. This would be a huge help. He could carry it in a (thickish) briefcase, get to the scene of crimes so much faster.

He just wish this bicycle flew, so the other super heroes wouldn't make fun of him.

Day 26 - Cloud Ridden

It kicks the spurs into my flank. Go faster, faster than the wind.

Just my luck to be owned, ridden by a thief. But they goad me and I can't stop my body from going faster. I love the feeling of stretching my legs, drawing myself through the world. It feels amazing.

What (I ask myself as we fly down a canyon) can a cloud steal from another cloud? What crimes can clouds commit between themselves? If they didn't transgress upon one another, would they need to saddle me and my kin? I cannot understand their problems.

Gunshots (pistol revolvers) crack and echo around the canyon. I don't spook much, it would take a very lucky shot to hit me. My rider is immune, but I have blood. It can push me faster than the wind, but not faster than bullets.

Still, the shots put fear into my cloud rider. They dig and ply the spurs. Blood runs down my flank, and I go recklessly fast. Finding my footing is a matter of luck and memory at this speed as I thunder through the narrowing fissure.

My rider only wants me for my speed, doesn’t care about my knowledge. Which is good, because there is no salvation down this canyon. It is a dead end in every sense.

The spurs kick, the blood runs.

And so do I.

Belching

"Dude, what did you eat?"

burp "Uh, Humans, I think. They were on the buffet." burp "They must have been off."

"Lords, I don't know why you do that to yourself. Those things have spent who knows how many centuries in a can, and then they put them under the heat lamps for another century. They have to be crawling with parasites.

"But they're so salty and fatty!" slobber churn burp

"You know that's why no one visits their planet. You stop for a bite, and spend the next ten orbits in the can while your insides trying to expel themselves.”

“Have you ever had one? So tasty! I thought just one wouldn't be so bad." rumble roil belch

"And how many did you eat?"

"A few dozen. Fifty, maybe. Probably more. I can't come back from the buffet with a half full plate. It looks like weakness." burrrrraaaaap

"Yes, weakness. And what are you now?"

"I admit I'm not at my best, but—Oh Lords!"

Gorlax sprinted to the bathroom. The bodily noises and sounds of anguish went on for longer than even his myriad enemies could wish.

Magician Boat

Every day I’m on this boat, I can’t forget I used to be a ventriloquist, and how my fortune has turned. Now I'm the dummy. The boat, thank God, has no hands to put up my posterior. But the boat is inside me in other ways.

Ventriloquy was no life at all. I held out hope it would lead to something bigger, that I'd come to the attention of a TV or movie producer and usher in a new renaissance of the art. I'd spent years studying with the best practitioners of the craft. I knew the history, from ancient Greek gastromancy and religious practices of the Zulu, Inuit, and Māori, through the Victorian voice throwers, Vaudeville and even radio. I'd studied all of my predecessors to build an act that was unique. It required crafting both my own persona and that of my ventriloquial figure (which I built from scratch—its own separate field of study). I was the premiere ventriloquist in the world, but no one cared. Even working children's birthday parties was rare. All ages, from eight to 108, held little respect for someone who played with dolls.

Finally I cracked. I got a job on the night shift stocking shelves at Walmart. Every work break I spent reworking on my act, disassembling what I'd carefully built and adding in whatever I thought would get me work. I made the humor more simple, added a bit of humiliating slapstick, even a bit of sleight of hand (which was a challenge when one hand was inside the puppet).

It worked, in a way. I graduated from rare birthday parties to the occasional quinceañera, first communion, and bar mitzvah. But I didn't quit my job at Walmart.

And then I was invited to an executive retreat. It was superficially humiliating, but it payed, and I was getting used to humiliation. They flew me to Catalina to spend four days on an enormous yacht. My job was, for the most part, to hang out and provide atmosphere while people who made unfathomable amounts of money did whatever they did on a yacht. The theme of the event was some kind of spiritualist thing, and besides me there was a tarot reader (who had a strong phobia about my vent figure), a stilted and clumsy mentalist and her assistant, a man who read palms in the most creepily sensual way, and a magician who was kicked off before we left the dock for palming a guest's wallet.

They'd set up a stage on the main deck, and each night, after dinner, we were supposed to do a performance for a bunch of food-woozy millionaires trying to drink their weight in top shelf booze. The first night, the event planner told me to fill in magician's time on stage. I said yes, and they introduced me as a magician. It was far from the first time I'd done an improvised performance, but I only had about five minutes of magic material and twenty minutes to fill.

The lights came up and no one noticed. This was expected—despite the stage, the performers were just art on the wall for the cocktail party—but it's always tougher when the audience gives you nothing to work with.

There was a bit of an evening sea breeze, but the shiver that shook me was unrelated. Something slithered up my spine, put a hood over my brain, and tried my skin on for size. In my mind, I screamed, but my body smiled, bowed, and welcomed the indifferent crowd, and then started telling a story.

It was a tale of passion and regret. Of love lost, regained, and then lost forever. It was as old as the sea and fresh with blossoming pain as if it happened that very hour. While the story played out, my body flawlessly performed tricks that I'd never learned, using improvised props found as I wandered through the crowd. Each illusion reinforced the heartbreak and healing of a life lived without fear.

It was amazing and touching and, quite frankly, exactly the wrong act for a boat full of drunk millionaires.

And yet, it did enthrall them, maybe the same way I was enthralled by the mystery spirit. A minute in, all conversation had stopped. By the time it was done, grown men openly weeping.

When the spotlight dimmed and the applause began, the spirit withdrew leaving me exhausted. Stepping off the stage, I faced a gauntlet of CEO's, CFO's, presidents, and shareholders that wanted to shake my hand, some gave me a warm embrace. No one had seen anything like it. They had questions, none that I could answer. I'd seen vivid images in my memory as the spirit puppeted me, but it faded quickly. I gave noncommittal answers and eventually made my way to the the tiny cabin I shared with the spiritualist's assistant and two bartenders, and slept for a dozen hours.

I was a hit, but it wasn't me. During encore performances I learned it was the boat that inhabited me, that it had a story that it needed to tell, and that until I’d come by, it hadn't found anyone with a voice it could throw.

The yacht and I became inseparable. Without it, I was a fantastic—but pitiful—ventriloquist and the yacht was silent in its sorrow. Together, I could get the applause I’d always hungered for, but not for anything that I myself could do.

We tour the world now, exclusively playing coastal cities. I cannot, of course, perform anywhere else but my stage on the boat. There are never any unsold tickets, though they are priced so few can afford them.

Sometimes I rent a small theater in the current city, put on a disguise, and do a ventriloquist show, incognito. They are lightly attended, sometimes I perform to an empty theater. It’s okay, I can afford that now. And I get to do the thing that makes me feel complete, even if it's not the thing that I'm famous for.