Timing Error

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: SERENITY VALLEY

This weeks fff. It's actually a perfecta, coming in (unintentionally) at one thousand words. In all the near fiction fff I've got stored in my trunk, it's the first time I've actually 'set foot' on the moon.

Please enjoy.

SERENITY VALLEY

There were fifty of the Serens, standing there in the field, golden grains and green grass swaying around their lithe bodies.  Men and women from Serenity City, the first and last line of defense: bare-chested and dressed only in brightly colored loincloths and handmade headdresses with swords, spears and shields held in various states of readiness.

If you knew their tribe, and my time there had made me loosely familiar with them, then you understood that the paints and patterns which illustrated their bodies told stories of allegiances, families, hopes and fears. Their paints indexed them within the technosocial milieu that was their city.

But the paint was not only decorative: it was also ablative, designed to turn, for a precious few seconds, the lasers of their sworn enemies, John Laws in service of the Grand Jurist.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: THE PARTY CIRCUIT

“He’s cute, Angela.”

“He’s a ladykiller, Bekka.”

“So, a bit stuck on himself, hunh?”

“No. He really kills ladies; something to do with his childhood and his Aunt.”

“Not his mother?”

“No, he killed her in childbirth. She still hasn’t forgiven him.”

 

FLASH FICTION MISS

Bad news, no flash fiction for this week. Good news, the house hunting is going well. On the phone now with our agent and mortgage broker, learning a whole new language. When this is over, my wife and I will be homesteaders for the first time: no more rent/equity bleeding.

If you're curious, we went classic:

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: THE MANUMITTERS

The Manumitters

New Mexico was the damndest place, thought Captain-General O’Malley, to hold a market. The market was closing in a couple of hours and O’Malley would be glad to kick the dust of this place off his feet and get somewhere a bit more climate controlled. If he’d had his druthers, they’d have dropped into New York or San Francisco: better selection, as far as O’Malley was concerned.

But beggars can’t be choosers and if the government wanted to throw some life to this old Spaceport America and the surrounding homesteads, then Spaceport America was where they’d go.  The Trade happened once a year and if the government told the Martians to show up on the south pole of the sun, well, then the Martians would show. Mars was too small to matter.

O’Malley just wanted to go home; home to where things made sense. He sighed.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: BRUTE FORCE AND IGNORANCE

(A bit late to the game. I had my doctor's appointment today: good news is that all my labs are normal. I test well.)

Todays flash fiction story: Brute Force and Ignorance.

Space Captain Rey Donald, of the Outer Guard,  brought his ship, "Brute Force and Ignorance",  to a halt, just 100 km from Salvation Station. 

"All right, Rusty. That's close enough. Set up a channel with them and let's get down to business," he said.

"Aye, aye, Cap'n," his First Mate Rusty responded cheerfully.

Captain Donald looked at Salvation Station: a non rotating black cylinder over five hundred meters in length, Salvation Station was a recent addition to the moons of Saturn. Captain Donald had orders from Mars: 

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: THE SURGERY

(UPDATE: I spent of most of Thursday thinking today was Friday. Still on Iraq time, I guess.)

As always, more flash fiction here. Enjoy.

The Surgery

The trip to the doctor's office is long. 

It takes the patient almost an hour from her cube in north Puget City to her provider's office in the center; she is alone on the tube. Most folks think traveling an hour for anything is outrageous.

The patient is okay with that; she takes the tube all the way down and spends most of the time on her phone. She talks to her friends about her surgery: most are supportive; most have had it done; and most don't understand why she hasn't done it already.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: A COLLECTION

A little something different. I've collected and ordered my flash fiction stories, bound them in the finest corinthian leather .pdf* and posted them here for your pleasure. 

The goal of my writing has been to flesh out a world I've had in my head. Each story represents some fragment of a consistent whole and I think by ordering them, that becomes more apparent. This world has a beginning and an end...as do all worlds.

I've uploaded my collection, Consent to Be Monitored, to scribd. For those that download and read, thanks in advance for your time. Please feel free to drop criticisms or comments down below or by email.

*To all the editors, typesetters and book binders out there: my hat is off to you.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: CONSENT

By clicking the link below, you consent to be monitored.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: SANCTUARY MONS

Another flash fiction friday story. Got tied up at work (no joke here) so I missed knocking out a graphic.

You can read the rest of my flash fiction here.

Sanctuary Mons

K-Bar moved among the rough brush of the Martian outland. He’d made his way out of the city, by hook, crook, and some light murder, and found himself winding his way past the venter--biological slave-- villages surrounding the Imperial Hold. He’d almost been caught out by three venter farmers, but a squirt of micro payments from his handset bought their silence. At least, temporarily. The Imperial Police would trace the transaction back to the venters and they would either beat or recycle the truth out of them. Imperial venters weren’t bright, generally low on the Maslow2 Hierarchy of Wants and as such were entities to be pitied, so sad, but right now that was not K-Bar’s problem.

He needed to put about as much distance as he could between himself and the Imperial Hold. He’d never make it to Sanctuary Mons, but time was on his side. Yes, the Emperor had effectively declared a death sentence on K-Bar. 

But the Emperor had only a day to live.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: THE CUBE

FFF The Cube
Originally uploaded by s.phred

This weeks Flash Fiction Friday entry: The Cube

                               ***

The fugitive took the elevator to his stop on the thirtieth floor of the Oakland Municipal Homeless Shelter. He’d never been in a Homeless Shelter before; he’d never had that kind of money. The Shelter was a forty story lattice work, with cubes sticking out at odd angles, established on the shores of the San Francisco Bay, overlooking the localized singularity formerly known as the City of San Francisco which now referred to itself as The Esther.

 

The homeless shelter was owned by Temporary Housing Solutions, which was in turn owned by the Oakland Municipal Machine, which in turn was owned by…hell, the fugitive didn’t know. The interlocking cooperatives and directorships baffled him. He’d come to the homeless shelter for one reason and one reason only: to see a man about some business.

 

The fugitive stopped in front of his destination, checked his phone to confirm this was really Cube 30C and knocked on the door.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: VANDIVER

A quick Flash Fiction Friday story. Very much a fragment of my fascination with 'black' markets.

VANDIVER 

They met in a back alley. There were still a few spaces available; Vandiver wasn't, couldn't be, everywhere. Yet. In another time the space would have been called a back alley: think badly lit, overwhelmed with the smell of urine, vomit and all other manners and methods of human effluence. Those days were gone now; a back alley today was a space where Vandiver was not, and they existed in meatspace and agreedspace in equal parts. 

MISSED DEADLINES: FFF

Missed my flash fiction friday post. Sorry; between work and my new found obsession with powerpoint cartooning...well, there went all my energy.

As a consolation, a few world building sketches.

Polly Pengelly:

Sevania Applebottom:

Calliope:

Rumors:

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: TOWARDS SANCTION

Today's FFF story. More stories here.

 

 

 

Sanction was an unremarkable moon.

 

At least by the Ambassadors’ eyes, which was all she had with which to judge the moon. Sanction was an oblong, chondritic rock. Its black, grainy surface held three manmade structures: two embassies and a tree-of-life. The tree-of-life was someone’s quixotic stab at panspermia; at odd intervals, it shed radiation hardened spores into the solar wind.

 

There were no Libraries or Arsenals located on Sanction. By design, treaty and agreement, Sanction was an informational blank slate. Sanction registered in no databases, contained no cross references and had no indexes. If you wanted to see Sanction, you had to go to Sanction.

 

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: A PUBLIC MATTER

Been awhile, but here's a shortish entry into the flash fiction meme:

The Centurion awoke, relaxed.

 

Without opening his eyes, he knew his setting. The room would be his cubiculum, set off the atrium. The soft linen drapes would be swaying gently, messaging the cool, salty, breeze as it rose up from the sea below. To his left were his weapons: a sword, the shield and a grenade launcher he’d picked up somewhere and taken into his affections. To his right, a bowl of fruit filled with the plenty of a midsummer’s Mediterranean harvest.

 

Continue reading "FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: A PUBLIC MATTER" »

Been missing in action this week; I think it was a mistake to attempt two classes, work and everything else. I've got about five thousand words due for school, a test, homework, a paper for an obscure professional journal to edit and a paper for another obscure professional journal to write.

So, I'm doing what any rational being would: I'm taking four days off to get ahead of the ball.

But I did make sure to get out a flash fiction story for this week and work up a neat header for the story. I get points for that, right? Please enjoy...

The State Department blimp hovered over the Arctic wasteland.

 

That’s not right; in school we learned there are no true frontiers. Every scrap of earth has some purpose. Frontiers were what you got before boundaries; boundaries were what you got when people moved in and started setting up markers.

 

So, the State Department blimp hovered over the Arctic frontier.

 

And it was definitely a frontier. The Moscow Machine was up here and so was Union. Of course, we had a piece or State Department wouldn’t have sent my team into here.

 

Oil. The last great rush of the mid twenty-first century was on and folks were moving into the Arctic in record numbers.

 

Continue reading "FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: ...FOR OIL" »

Exhausting week; apologies for being wordy.

Please enjoy this week's flash fiction titled, simply:

“I’ve seen wonders, Van.” said Barry, simply. “I never thought, growing up, I’d be doing this.”

Van was leaning forward in is chair, both hands holding his phone steady, so he could see Barry and his wife, Brenda, in the full screen. Barry was facing the wall phone while Brenda worked an improbable looking control panel. Van was alone in the downstairs living room; his wife, Marla, was upstairs sleeping. Outside, the river rolled gently past their cabin. The Cascade Mountains framed the scene.

“You should come,” Barry added. 

‘You’ was such an imprecise word, Van thought to himself. ‘You’ could be plural or singular. We or I. Van was very concerned about the preciseness of text; text was his job.

“She’s dying, Barry.” Van said, finally.

Continue reading "FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: VAN AND MARLA" »

Flash fiction friday story up; feel free to view the rest here. The "Blue Eagle" takes a look at another one of my loves: history. I love "what would happen if" stories.

The Blue Eagle

 

 

Lenny shuffled into the dining hall. He was about the last of the three hundred men—it was all men—that could get into the place. The dining hall served Lenny’s Work Regiment, but like everything else, was open to all comers.

 

Lenny took his seat where he usually did; towards the back, near the door and about as far away from the bright stage and the inevitable appearance of the Four Minute Man of the moment. The stage was simply set, as always; a bushel of fresh corn, apples, oranges, a slab of beef and several bottles of milk formed the static display. Fruit of the land, but Lenny always thought it was a waste, putting that stuff up there. Ought to go in a man’s belly, he figured.

 

Now for something a bit different (and longer; breaks my 2,000 word limit by inches). The story takes place not long from now, and kind of sets the stage for the other stories I've been writing. I'm not arrogant enough to call it Wodehousian, but that's what I was aiming: please enjoy, even if I fall far short of the mark.

ENERGIA CITY: HOME OF ROCKETS

 

The Mayor of Energia City sat at his desk in the Penthouse Office/Apartment complex on the top of Machine Towers, home of the Energia City Hall. His body man, and constant companion, Reginald, was at his side.

I need to look into getting me one.

I've got a couple of flash fiction stories sketched out; here are some of the blogs I plan on researching (yes, I do that) prior to executing them.

Dumbonyc Blog :Flesh out the scenery for Elephant and Johnny.

Pamela's Blog ( it's near peer competitor, thevenicebeachblog, looks dead, but what a cool header): going to help Mordechai and Sevania get around.

And a few Puget Sound Blogs, like Sound Politics, SPS Libertarian and Patrick's Sailing Blog will help lay the ground for Energia City: Home of Rockets!

My latest flash fiction friday story; on time, with fewer calories. Please enjoy.

At sixteen thousand feet they drop.

The plane is a four engined Grunt/Cargo-27M Spartan II aircraft. It carries three crew up front and two in the back. The plane is configured to move one squad of Grunts, twenty one in all, and most of their equipment. There is plenty of space in the back; the Grunts don't take up much room and their equipment is palletized on the back ramp for easy push off on landing. 

Mordechai Kim sits along the side of the plane's hold; he's strapped in like the rest of his squad. He's wearing black/grey combat slicks that cover him from the neck all the way to his feet, where they harden into boots; his gloves are retracted. The slicks give a Grunt ballistic protection up to about 7.56 mm, though any impact will probably break a bone. Still, good enough. Half his face is covered by the polarized lenses of his glasses. They are multichannel. Through them, Mordechai can monitor the network; the rest of the world. On one screen, he's watching CNN; the newsies are just starting to cover the fight. On another screen, he's looking at the TACOPs, as information, maps, orders and requests stream across. On a third screen Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero is conducting her final PMCI's, or pre-mission checks and inspections, on the Squad's systems. Mordechai reminds himself to put his glasses away later or he will lose them. 

Yeah, I'm late. Apologies all around; between work and school, my fun has got to slip. Polly Pengelly Pendragon is a new character; she actually started out as a series of sketches I've been working on, when I asked myelf, "o.k., good sketch, but what does she do?"

I am spatially oriented.

"They should put gravity out here," said Polly Pendragon, to no one in particular. She floated in a full lotus position, a meter above the floor.

This weeks flash fiction friday story. Now that I've started class, I figured my time would be consumed writing for class but I got my story out on time and on budget; it's funny what happens when you prioritize.

Choices

He takes the bullet between his shoulders.

The Grunt does not feel the impact, nor does his suit report anything amiss. 

The Grunt is about twenty klicks from the Squad main body. His orders were to flank the 'surgent lines and attack targets of opportunity, while the Squad conducted a frontal assault; all part of a larger, platoon level assault on the 'surgent city-state. 

The Grunt is busy clearing a 'surgent Fires Team when the Shredder makes an appearance. One on one, Grunt versus Shredder, the Grunt wins: barely. Grunt iron still provides some advantages over Shredder flesh; it is an arms race where both sides constantly change leads, where metal contests with meat.

Azimuth check.

I enjoy writing speculative (science) fiction. This blog, as you can see from my tags, is ultimately about building a world. A world I can inhabit with characters, peeps, I enjoy in situations I hope you enjoy. Flash fiction is an exercise I enjoy: no one ever got “worse” by writing “more”. Perhaps one day I’ll look back at what I’ve written and cringe; one day I plan to be much, much better at writing.

So what about this world I’m building? Well, it is close by and not far off. I enjoy reading space operas and highly complex worlds: “And Zorton, the Last Man, used his mighty trans-fixation bolts to stop the Zagnut Fleet hiding behind A. Centauri”. Post-human, post-singularity, post-colonization, post-everything stories are great. They are just not what I write.

I want to know what Zorton was like when he was delivering pizzas.

Maps. I make reference to wally’s world. It’s a twofold reference: Chevy Chase and Martin Walldseemuller. Below is a a copy of his 1507 Universalis Cosmographia.

Marty, as I like to call him, first put America on the map: curse him or praise him, according to your preferences. Look to the left, and there is the Empire. Instead of stretching east to west, it stretches north to south: from Anchorage to Buenos Aires. It is resource poor; either by choice or design. In the center is the post pangeatic mass of Eurasia and Africa. And to the right, the Thousand (or so) Islands: hic sunt dracontium. Plenty happens in the Thousand Islands.

Maps are the base documents used when describing the sproutian milieu in which we float. I have a fascination with maps.

John Laws. What defines a civilization; that is a question we’ve reopened recently. I put a tremendous emphasis on laws and patents: if information wants to be free, what happens when it escapes? Who has to hunt down good information gone bad.

The Agreed Framework. Think of it as part UN, part top level instruction set, top structured reality. The Agreed Framework is at once kind, humane, viscous and cruel. Smarts mixed with a confederacy of dunces. Is the Agreed Framework right, is it wrong? Unknown, at this time.

The Thousand Worlds. Extend the Thousand Islands into space. Hic sunt…

Biomods. I’m a biologists by (in the “way before time”) training. We are approaching what I like to call the Thingularity: part technological, part biological, part spiritual. Biomods are part robots, part genetic mutations, part set of clothes. Biomods are slaves: necessary to the well ordered functioning of a democracy (ask Kant or the Athenians). Are biomods peeps? Unknown, at this time.

The Latency. Again, I am a home body. I travel well, but really like the comforts of Home Station Couch. The Latency reflects that; the Latency is in and around earth, where peeps, information and memes travel without a too annoying delay. 

The Aesthetic. Ars est vitae. I need to explore that more.

Time. I think in terms of terawatts, not days/months/years. I haven’t got that fully visualized, but that’s the subtext. Thing about energy is, if you want to move forward, you have to expend energy; if you want to stay still, then do not use energy. Every time one of these private space ventures launches a rocket, we increase, imperceptibly, our energy expenditure. If we do that enough then my peeps will finally break loose of the ‘treadmill”.

Bad Physics. When you look into spookytechnology, quantum (entanglements, actions at a distance) and beyond, aren’t you just going over terrain the Looney Toons covered long ago? I have an unnatural affection for cartoons (no, not hentai); I want to infect you with that vibe. Let’s call it Toonpunk.

What’s next? Hic sunt dracontium: so let us go hunt them.

It has been one of those days; the kind where you just want to crawl back into bed until some set of unspecified and difficult  conditions have been met. Alas, I do not have that luxury.

My entry into this weeks flash fiction friday: the meme. Over here, you can view (enjoy/critique) my previous stories.

Otherwise, grab a fork and please enjoy...

Garden Variety

Beneath her balcony,  Seattle grows. 

Bekka's shared living space is about twenty five stories up the side of one of the newer cones in Seattle. She lives in a mixed neighborhood;  old twentieth century buildings, square blocks really, are giving way to a living Seattle. Specially engineered DeWalt Nibblers chew the old concrete and steel boxes, slowly, reducing them to a reusable ash: a controlled burn. Greenbelts replace the road ways and yet some things remain: a dirt path ends at the entrance of the Pike Street Market; the piers lining the bay remain, but the Port of Seattle, like most major Ports up and down the West Coast, lies miles out to sea. Automated ferries bring in the containers, on flat racks, and exchange them with automated trucks up where I-5 terminates near the King County border. Supplies for Seattle are shifted underground and distributed.

The King County Machine promises a livable, a living, Seattle; and the Machine always delivers.

Up with another installment for flash fiction friday:

Daddy's Girl

After the revolution, when we killed the King and took what was ours, I had the Apothecary tattoo Daddy's name on my thigh.

Daddy is good. He's going to set things right; the revolution needed Daddy and he came. Some say Daddy ain't right, but I say we'd still be under the King, except Daddy came along.

***

New story out the shoot. The Great Debate is in line with an earlier story, the The Possibility Engine. Please enjoy.

Almost missed my (internal) deadline. I started playing around in the X11 terminal on my macbook. Mac's are shiny, pretty things; but there's alot of power under the hood. I just have to figure out how to use that power.

The Great Debate

Brenda touched up her hair one last time and turned to face the cameras. Her partner Chet was already practicing his smile into the camera, as the studio director gave the countdown. Five, four, three, two...

"Good evening America," began Brenda cheerfully. "Chet and I would like to welcome you to the very first in a series of forty seven exciting debates to determine who you will choose as the next Steward of the United Species of America..."

That's the title of one my flash fiction stories in the queue. Started working on the idea yesterday while working in our backyard; see, to fill this dog dug hole, I had to actually go buy dirt (lo, I am the effete urbanist).

Something like this Earth Box Garden Kit will figure prominently.

I just did not know that, yesterday. But that's how writing works, for me.

Thanks to i09's post on a dystopic "Slave City", my flash fiction short, "The Battle of Shitter Number One" now has a graphic:

The friendly folks at futurismic have their weekly flash fictioneer round up.

Looks like the weather will clear and I get to fly; I'm going to .pdf some stories to enjoy.

Good news and bad news. The bad news is I'm weathered in and I'm not flying. The good news is I've got a Flash Fiction story up, on time and on target. More of my flash fiction here.

I hope you enjoy.

In Service To Empire: Candie

Sometimes we called her Candie.

But we never called her that to her face. To her face it was always "yes, Sgt-Commander" or "no Sgt-Commander".

Her standard line name and number, if you need to know the thing, was Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero and she was my Squad Commander.

Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero was the best Squad Commander I ever knew; they should have never given her that Medal.

On time and on target. More flash fiction here.

C.H.A.R.L.I.

“Stop freaking out!” boomed the disembodied voice of the Director.

“I’m not freaking out; I just do not know if I want to do this.” replied the Pilot.

The Pilot had just brought his explorer jitney, the latest in space utility vehicles, to a gentle landing on Io; by reputation the hell cursed Galilean Moon of Jupiter. Greeting the Pilot through the port holes was an obscenely flat playa surface, dotted with randomly placed, jagged mountains. No pits of sulfur to swallow the damned, no dark pits to torment the tax evader. It was just a boring, flat, playa surface.

Dante would have been bored here.

A day late, but here's my Flash Fiction Friday story. Stepping a bit out of my miniverse (I think) with this story.

The Possibility Engine

"Are you sure, Herr Doctor-Professor?" asked the Apprentice as he strapped the older man into an improbable contraption of tubes and widgets.

"Young man, for the last time, I am sure. I am sure of my counter intuitive calculations; I am sure of the Possibility Engine and most importantly, I am sure that I will come back with all the answers to all of the legends and mysteries of man!" said the Herr Doctor-Professor.

"Yes, but Herr Doctor-Professor, time travel is..." began the Apprentice.

Digging around the interwebs, I'm finding that flash fiction is generally around 300 to 1000 words. I first read about flash fiction in wikipedia; that's how I settled on 2000 words as my upper limit. Given that I'm trying to cram an entire universe into my flash fiction, the more room the merrier.

But, as a change, this weeks story weighs in at a little over 700 words. (My other Flash Fiction here).

Serath

One day, out of boredom, Serath decided to go for an extended walk.

After many days, he found himself face to face with the “water's edge”, the “eggshell”, the “bow shock”, or more conventionally, the solar discontinuity. He pretended that he could see the face of Einstein, laughing at him, daring him, seducing him to take that last step.

In front of him was a frozen graveyard, littered with the desiccated corpses of untold millions of humans, in all their varieties. They had stepped through the solar discontinuity, from B-Space into Classical Space, where the rules still abided. They had ignored the warning.

Lordy, if there is a meme out there, for anything, I am pretty sure to have missed it. Case in point, "Flash Fiction Friday". I poured those sweet words into google and came up with a plethora of fodder for my RSS reader. Cases in point:

Gareth Lyn Powell who got the ball rolling.

The Originals: Friday Flash Fictioneers.

And of course, collecting all the sci-fi flash fiction in one place so I don't have to, Futurismic.

I'm the guy who keeps discovering air; on the other hand, I do so love teh innerwebs.

New story up. More of my flash fiction here.

A Letter Concerning a Matter of the Most Private Space, Part the First: In which the Beginnings of the War are Examined and Explained

My name is Beauford Battleson Billtesford and on this occasion I am writing the True Account of how I did come to declare Most Just War on my neighbor and now mortal enemy, one Nathaniel Pickford 1409. I am writing these matters down in a most solemn manner in order to present them to whatever government sees fit to aid me in securing my rights in this matter. For I did not embark upon my War easily; only after multiple and divers insults from Mr. Pickford 1409 against my most holy sovereignty did I find it my only recourse to embark upon the most severe censure of his behavior, which is to say War.

Now, the matters which led up to this War are not in dispute, even if the actual cause will be for all time bitterly contested. I firmly place the cause for War on the weak, childlike and slovenly character of Mr. Nathaniel Pickford 1409.

Mr. Nathaniel Pickford 1409 and I share a common property line. Running through this line did, and still does, run a creek of the name Screaming Lady Gulch. Mr. Pickford 1409 used this creek to cool his antiquated and dangerous light water reactor. For aesthetic reasons, I had placed my Walmart-Eskom pebble bed nuclear reactor of a most modern design along the creek.

These plants powered our various works. Mr. Pickford 1409 tried at various methods to secure himself a living from the land and I had a going concern as a Pharma. I raised various herds of milkweeds, producing through nature those vital pharmacological and life extending agents necessary to a civilized and just world. While I would never call a man working the land a wastrel, Mr. Pickford 1409 was perhaps in form as close to that appellation as I have seen. His disregard for his own works and the works of others was the kindling which inflamed our mighty War.

For an explanation of FFF, go here. Otherwise:

Weeguns World

You know what the Lower Manhattan Enclave looks like, right? You have the old Imperial Tower sticking out from that whole mess of buildings; like a glorious middle finger to the rest of the world. Now look at Lower Manhattan through a fisheye lens. Imagine dropping back, going far enough until it turns into a round ball.

That's what the Weegun dwarf planet looked like.

ED NOTE: Reposting my runner up story from the MEDGADGET Sci-Fi contest; basically, I just want it under the Flash Fiction Friday tag.

Dr. Luscious Franks And The Amazing Recylcotron

Kevin stopped his trike in front of the house.

The small AI inside the three wheeled vehicle automatically registered the destination, locked the wheels in place and loosened the tension on Kevin's seatbelt. Kevin unbuckled, stood up, and stretched.

Driving a trike through the streets of Ballard, Washington, was a bit nerve racking. Powered vehicles were banned within the Enclave as unnecessarily dangerous. The chances of running someone over, crashing an art installation or parking more than one hour in the one hour parking zone had guided the Enclave Fathers into pushing powered vehicles beyond both the bounds of Accepted Risk and the city limits of the Enclave.

Still, even a human powered trike was dangerous and exposed Kevin to all kinds of liabilities, lawsuits, lawyers and tortuous tort. If it weren't for Kevin's special needs, he doubted he would have gotten the license to operate the trike.

Kevin was a diagnosed anti-social, with non-consensus building tendencies.

As part of his recovery, the medics made the determination that Kevin required structure. With great regret, the medics ordered him into probationary treatment.

Kevin was told to get a job.

ED NOTE:Okay, first story out the tube in my attempts at one weekly flash fiction story. I had a lot of fun in the writing and editing process. The story builds on a couple, two, three posts from this week. I hesitated on the title, but what the hell. Hope you enjoy.

The Battle of Shitter Number One

Officially, the fight took place at the Sedna Composite Waste Management and Reclamation Facility Number One. Officially, they footnoted the whole mess as the Agreed Framework, Earth v. Autonomous Anarchy, Sedna, Case Number 30,001.2.b in the Imperial District Court, Southern District of New York.

But for the boys, girls, androgs, freaks and biobots who were there, well, we had our own name for the thing: The Battle of Shitter Number One.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: ...FOR OIL

Been missing in action this week; I think it was a mistake to attempt two classes, work and everything else. I've got about five thousand words due for school, a test, homework, a paper for an obscure professional journal to edit and a paper for another obscure professional journal to write.

So, I'm doing what any rational being would: I'm taking four days off to get ahead of the ball.

But I did make sure to get out a flash fiction story for this week and work up a neat header for the story. I get points for that, right? Please enjoy...

The State Department blimp hovered over the Arctic wasteland.

 

That’s not right; in school we learned there are no true frontiers. Every scrap of earth has some purpose. Frontiers were what you got before boundaries; boundaries were what you got when people moved in and started setting up markers.

 

So, the State Department blimp hovered over the Arctic frontier.

 

And it was definitely a frontier. The Moscow Machine was up here and so was Union. Of course, we had a piece or State Department wouldn’t have sent my team into here.

 

Oil. The last great rush of the mid twenty-first century was on and folks were moving into the Arctic in record numbers.

 

Continue reading "FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: ...FOR OIL" »

Exhausting week; apologies for being wordy.

Please enjoy this week's flash fiction titled, simply:

“I’ve seen wonders, Van.” said Barry, simply. “I never thought, growing up, I’d be doing this.”

Van was leaning forward in is chair, both hands holding his phone steady, so he could see Barry and his wife, Brenda, in the full screen. Barry was facing the wall phone while Brenda worked an improbable looking control panel. Van was alone in the downstairs living room; his wife, Marla, was upstairs sleeping. Outside, the river rolled gently past their cabin. The Cascade Mountains framed the scene.

“You should come,” Barry added. 

‘You’ was such an imprecise word, Van thought to himself. ‘You’ could be plural or singular. We or I. Van was very concerned about the preciseness of text; text was his job.

“She’s dying, Barry.” Van said, finally.

Continue reading "FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: VAN AND MARLA" »

Flash fiction friday story up; feel free to view the rest here. The "Blue Eagle" takes a look at another one of my loves: history. I love "what would happen if" stories.

The Blue Eagle

 

 

Lenny shuffled into the dining hall. He was about the last of the three hundred men—it was all men—that could get into the place. The dining hall served Lenny’s Work Regiment, but like everything else, was open to all comers.

 

Lenny took his seat where he usually did; towards the back, near the door and about as far away from the bright stage and the inevitable appearance of the Four Minute Man of the moment. The stage was simply set, as always; a bushel of fresh corn, apples, oranges, a slab of beef and several bottles of milk formed the static display. Fruit of the land, but Lenny always thought it was a waste, putting that stuff up there. Ought to go in a man’s belly, he figured.

 

Now for something a bit different (and longer; breaks my 2,000 word limit by inches). The story takes place not long from now, and kind of sets the stage for the other stories I've been writing. I'm not arrogant enough to call it Wodehousian, but that's what I was aiming: please enjoy, even if I fall far short of the mark.

ENERGIA CITY: HOME OF ROCKETS

 

The Mayor of Energia City sat at his desk in the Penthouse Office/Apartment complex on the top of Machine Towers, home of the Energia City Hall. His body man, and constant companion, Reginald, was at his side.

I need to look into getting me one.

I've got a couple of flash fiction stories sketched out; here are some of the blogs I plan on researching (yes, I do that) prior to executing them.

Dumbonyc Blog :Flesh out the scenery for Elephant and Johnny.

Pamela's Blog ( it's near peer competitor, thevenicebeachblog, looks dead, but what a cool header): going to help Mordechai and Sevania get around.

And a few Puget Sound Blogs, like Sound Politics, SPS Libertarian and Patrick's Sailing Blog will help lay the ground for Energia City: Home of Rockets!

My latest flash fiction friday story; on time, with fewer calories. Please enjoy.

At sixteen thousand feet they drop.

The plane is a four engined Grunt/Cargo-27M Spartan II aircraft. It carries three crew up front and two in the back. The plane is configured to move one squad of Grunts, twenty one in all, and most of their equipment. There is plenty of space in the back; the Grunts don't take up much room and their equipment is palletized on the back ramp for easy push off on landing. 

Mordechai Kim sits along the side of the plane's hold; he's strapped in like the rest of his squad. He's wearing black/grey combat slicks that cover him from the neck all the way to his feet, where they harden into boots; his gloves are retracted. The slicks give a Grunt ballistic protection up to about 7.56 mm, though any impact will probably break a bone. Still, good enough. Half his face is covered by the polarized lenses of his glasses. They are multichannel. Through them, Mordechai can monitor the network; the rest of the world. On one screen, he's watching CNN; the newsies are just starting to cover the fight. On another screen, he's looking at the TACOPs, as information, maps, orders and requests stream across. On a third screen Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero is conducting her final PMCI's, or pre-mission checks and inspections, on the Squad's systems. Mordechai reminds himself to put his glasses away later or he will lose them. 

Yeah, I'm late. Apologies all around; between work and school, my fun has got to slip. Polly Pengelly Pendragon is a new character; she actually started out as a series of sketches I've been working on, when I asked myelf, "o.k., good sketch, but what does she do?"

I am spatially oriented.

"They should put gravity out here," said Polly Pendragon, to no one in particular. She floated in a full lotus position, a meter above the floor.

This weeks flash fiction friday story. Now that I've started class, I figured my time would be consumed writing for class but I got my story out on time and on budget; it's funny what happens when you prioritize.

Choices

He takes the bullet between his shoulders.

The Grunt does not feel the impact, nor does his suit report anything amiss. 

The Grunt is about twenty klicks from the Squad main body. His orders were to flank the 'surgent lines and attack targets of opportunity, while the Squad conducted a frontal assault; all part of a larger, platoon level assault on the 'surgent city-state. 

The Grunt is busy clearing a 'surgent Fires Team when the Shredder makes an appearance. One on one, Grunt versus Shredder, the Grunt wins: barely. Grunt iron still provides some advantages over Shredder flesh; it is an arms race where both sides constantly change leads, where metal contests with meat.

Azimuth check.

I enjoy writing speculative (science) fiction. This blog, as you can see from my tags, is ultimately about building a world. A world I can inhabit with characters, peeps, I enjoy in situations I hope you enjoy. Flash fiction is an exercise I enjoy: no one ever got “worse” by writing “more”. Perhaps one day I’ll look back at what I’ve written and cringe; one day I plan to be much, much better at writing.

So what about this world I’m building? Well, it is close by and not far off. I enjoy reading space operas and highly complex worlds: “And Zorton, the Last Man, used his mighty trans-fixation bolts to stop the Zagnut Fleet hiding behind A. Centauri”. Post-human, post-singularity, post-colonization, post-everything stories are great. They are just not what I write.

I want to know what Zorton was like when he was delivering pizzas.

Maps. I make reference to wally’s world. It’s a twofold reference: Chevy Chase and Martin Walldseemuller. Below is a a copy of his 1507 Universalis Cosmographia.

Marty, as I like to call him, first put America on the map: curse him or praise him, according to your preferences. Look to the left, and there is the Empire. Instead of stretching east to west, it stretches north to south: from Anchorage to Buenos Aires. It is resource poor; either by choice or design. In the center is the post pangeatic mass of Eurasia and Africa. And to the right, the Thousand (or so) Islands: hic sunt dracontium. Plenty happens in the Thousand Islands.

Maps are the base documents used when describing the sproutian milieu in which we float. I have a fascination with maps.

John Laws. What defines a civilization; that is a question we’ve reopened recently. I put a tremendous emphasis on laws and patents: if information wants to be free, what happens when it escapes? Who has to hunt down good information gone bad.

The Agreed Framework. Think of it as part UN, part top level instruction set, top structured reality. The Agreed Framework is at once kind, humane, viscous and cruel. Smarts mixed with a confederacy of dunces. Is the Agreed Framework right, is it wrong? Unknown, at this time.

The Thousand Worlds. Extend the Thousand Islands into space. Hic sunt…

Biomods. I’m a biologists by (in the “way before time”) training. We are approaching what I like to call the Thingularity: part technological, part biological, part spiritual. Biomods are part robots, part genetic mutations, part set of clothes. Biomods are slaves: necessary to the well ordered functioning of a democracy (ask Kant or the Athenians). Are biomods peeps? Unknown, at this time.

The Latency. Again, I am a home body. I travel well, but really like the comforts of Home Station Couch. The Latency reflects that; the Latency is in and around earth, where peeps, information and memes travel without a too annoying delay. 

The Aesthetic. Ars est vitae. I need to explore that more.

Time. I think in terms of terawatts, not days/months/years. I haven’t got that fully visualized, but that’s the subtext. Thing about energy is, if you want to move forward, you have to expend energy; if you want to stay still, then do not use energy. Every time one of these private space ventures launches a rocket, we increase, imperceptibly, our energy expenditure. If we do that enough then my peeps will finally break loose of the ‘treadmill”.

Bad Physics. When you look into spookytechnology, quantum (entanglements, actions at a distance) and beyond, aren’t you just going over terrain the Looney Toons covered long ago? I have an unnatural affection for cartoons (no, not hentai); I want to infect you with that vibe. Let’s call it Toonpunk.

What’s next? Hic sunt dracontium: so let us go hunt them.

It has been one of those days; the kind where you just want to crawl back into bed until some set of unspecified and difficult  conditions have been met. Alas, I do not have that luxury.

My entry into this weeks flash fiction friday: the meme. Over here, you can view (enjoy/critique) my previous stories.

Otherwise, grab a fork and please enjoy...

Garden Variety

Beneath her balcony,  Seattle grows. 

Bekka's shared living space is about twenty five stories up the side of one of the newer cones in Seattle. She lives in a mixed neighborhood;  old twentieth century buildings, square blocks really, are giving way to a living Seattle. Specially engineered DeWalt Nibblers chew the old concrete and steel boxes, slowly, reducing them to a reusable ash: a controlled burn. Greenbelts replace the road ways and yet some things remain: a dirt path ends at the entrance of the Pike Street Market; the piers lining the bay remain, but the Port of Seattle, like most major Ports up and down the West Coast, lies miles out to sea. Automated ferries bring in the containers, on flat racks, and exchange them with automated trucks up where I-5 terminates near the King County border. Supplies for Seattle are shifted underground and distributed.

The King County Machine promises a livable, a living, Seattle; and the Machine always delivers.

Up with another installment for flash fiction friday:

Daddy's Girl

After the revolution, when we killed the King and took what was ours, I had the Apothecary tattoo Daddy's name on my thigh.

Daddy is good. He's going to set things right; the revolution needed Daddy and he came. Some say Daddy ain't right, but I say we'd still be under the King, except Daddy came along.

***

New story out the shoot. The Great Debate is in line with an earlier story, the The Possibility Engine. Please enjoy.

Almost missed my (internal) deadline. I started playing around in the X11 terminal on my macbook. Mac's are shiny, pretty things; but there's alot of power under the hood. I just have to figure out how to use that power.

The Great Debate

Brenda touched up her hair one last time and turned to face the cameras. Her partner Chet was already practicing his smile into the camera, as the studio director gave the countdown. Five, four, three, two...

"Good evening America," began Brenda cheerfully. "Chet and I would like to welcome you to the very first in a series of forty seven exciting debates to determine who you will choose as the next Steward of the United Species of America..."

That's the title of one my flash fiction stories in the queue. Started working on the idea yesterday while working in our backyard; see, to fill this dog dug hole, I had to actually go buy dirt (lo, I am the effete urbanist).

Something like this Earth Box Garden Kit will figure prominently.

I just did not know that, yesterday. But that's how writing works, for me.

Thanks to i09's post on a dystopic "Slave City", my flash fiction short, "The Battle of Shitter Number One" now has a graphic:

The friendly folks at futurismic have their weekly flash fictioneer round up.

Looks like the weather will clear and I get to fly; I'm going to .pdf some stories to enjoy.

Good news and bad news. The bad news is I'm weathered in and I'm not flying. The good news is I've got a Flash Fiction story up, on time and on target. More of my flash fiction here.

I hope you enjoy.

In Service To Empire: Candie

Sometimes we called her Candie.

But we never called her that to her face. To her face it was always "yes, Sgt-Commander" or "no Sgt-Commander".

Her standard line name and number, if you need to know the thing, was Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero and she was my Squad Commander.

Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero was the best Squad Commander I ever knew; they should have never given her that Medal.

On time and on target. More flash fiction here.

C.H.A.R.L.I.

“Stop freaking out!” boomed the disembodied voice of the Director.

“I’m not freaking out; I just do not know if I want to do this.” replied the Pilot.

The Pilot had just brought his explorer jitney, the latest in space utility vehicles, to a gentle landing on Io; by reputation the hell cursed Galilean Moon of Jupiter. Greeting the Pilot through the port holes was an obscenely flat playa surface, dotted with randomly placed, jagged mountains. No pits of sulfur to swallow the damned, no dark pits to torment the tax evader. It was just a boring, flat, playa surface.

Dante would have been bored here.

A day late, but here's my Flash Fiction Friday story. Stepping a bit out of my miniverse (I think) with this story.

The Possibility Engine

"Are you sure, Herr Doctor-Professor?" asked the Apprentice as he strapped the older man into an improbable contraption of tubes and widgets.

"Young man, for the last time, I am sure. I am sure of my counter intuitive calculations; I am sure of the Possibility Engine and most importantly, I am sure that I will come back with all the answers to all of the legends and mysteries of man!" said the Herr Doctor-Professor.

"Yes, but Herr Doctor-Professor, time travel is..." began the Apprentice.

Digging around the interwebs, I'm finding that flash fiction is generally around 300 to 1000 words. I first read about flash fiction in wikipedia; that's how I settled on 2000 words as my upper limit. Given that I'm trying to cram an entire universe into my flash fiction, the more room the merrier.

But, as a change, this weeks story weighs in at a little over 700 words. (My other Flash Fiction here).

Serath

One day, out of boredom, Serath decided to go for an extended walk.

After many days, he found himself face to face with the “water's edge”, the “eggshell”, the “bow shock”, or more conventionally, the solar discontinuity. He pretended that he could see the face of Einstein, laughing at him, daring him, seducing him to take that last step.

In front of him was a frozen graveyard, littered with the desiccated corpses of untold millions of humans, in all their varieties. They had stepped through the solar discontinuity, from B-Space into Classical Space, where the rules still abided. They had ignored the warning.

Lordy, if there is a meme out there, for anything, I am pretty sure to have missed it. Case in point, "Flash Fiction Friday". I poured those sweet words into google and came up with a plethora of fodder for my RSS reader. Cases in point:

Gareth Lyn Powell who got the ball rolling.

The Originals: Friday Flash Fictioneers.

And of course, collecting all the sci-fi flash fiction in one place so I don't have to, Futurismic.

I'm the guy who keeps discovering air; on the other hand, I do so love teh innerwebs.

New story up. More of my flash fiction here.

A Letter Concerning a Matter of the Most Private Space, Part the First: In which the Beginnings of the War are Examined and Explained

My name is Beauford Battleson Billtesford and on this occasion I am writing the True Account of how I did come to declare Most Just War on my neighbor and now mortal enemy, one Nathaniel Pickford 1409. I am writing these matters down in a most solemn manner in order to present them to whatever government sees fit to aid me in securing my rights in this matter. For I did not embark upon my War easily; only after multiple and divers insults from Mr. Pickford 1409 against my most holy sovereignty did I find it my only recourse to embark upon the most severe censure of his behavior, which is to say War.

Now, the matters which led up to this War are not in dispute, even if the actual cause will be for all time bitterly contested. I firmly place the cause for War on the weak, childlike and slovenly character of Mr. Nathaniel Pickford 1409.

Mr. Nathaniel Pickford 1409 and I share a common property line. Running through this line did, and still does, run a creek of the name Screaming Lady Gulch. Mr. Pickford 1409 used this creek to cool his antiquated and dangerous light water reactor. For aesthetic reasons, I had placed my Walmart-Eskom pebble bed nuclear reactor of a most modern design along the creek.

These plants powered our various works. Mr. Pickford 1409 tried at various methods to secure himself a living from the land and I had a going concern as a Pharma. I raised various herds of milkweeds, producing through nature those vital pharmacological and life extending agents necessary to a civilized and just world. While I would never call a man working the land a wastrel, Mr. Pickford 1409 was perhaps in form as close to that appellation as I have seen. His disregard for his own works and the works of others was the kindling which inflamed our mighty War.

For an explanation of FFF, go here. Otherwise:

Weeguns World

You know what the Lower Manhattan Enclave looks like, right? You have the old Imperial Tower sticking out from that whole mess of buildings; like a glorious middle finger to the rest of the world. Now look at Lower Manhattan through a fisheye lens. Imagine dropping back, going far enough until it turns into a round ball.

That's what the Weegun dwarf planet looked like.

ED NOTE: Reposting my runner up story from the MEDGADGET Sci-Fi contest; basically, I just want it under the Flash Fiction Friday tag.

Dr. Luscious Franks And The Amazing Recylcotron

Kevin stopped his trike in front of the house.

The small AI inside the three wheeled vehicle automatically registered the destination, locked the wheels in place and loosened the tension on Kevin's seatbelt. Kevin unbuckled, stood up, and stretched.

Driving a trike through the streets of Ballard, Washington, was a bit nerve racking. Powered vehicles were banned within the Enclave as unnecessarily dangerous. The chances of running someone over, crashing an art installation or parking more than one hour in the one hour parking zone had guided the Enclave Fathers into pushing powered vehicles beyond both the bounds of Accepted Risk and the city limits of the Enclave.

Still, even a human powered trike was dangerous and exposed Kevin to all kinds of liabilities, lawsuits, lawyers and tortuous tort. If it weren't for Kevin's special needs, he doubted he would have gotten the license to operate the trike.

Kevin was a diagnosed anti-social, with non-consensus building tendencies.

As part of his recovery, the medics made the determination that Kevin required structure. With great regret, the medics ordered him into probationary treatment.

Kevin was told to get a job.

ED NOTE:Okay, first story out the tube in my attempts at one weekly flash fiction story. I had a lot of fun in the writing and editing process. The story builds on a couple, two, three posts from this week. I hesitated on the title, but what the hell. Hope you enjoy.

The Battle of Shitter Number One

Officially, the fight took place at the Sedna Composite Waste Management and Reclamation Facility Number One. Officially, they footnoted the whole mess as the Agreed Framework, Earth v. Autonomous Anarchy, Sedna, Case Number 30,001.2.b in the Imperial District Court, Southern District of New York.

But for the boys, girls, androgs, freaks and biobots who were there, well, we had our own name for the thing: The Battle of Shitter Number One.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: VAN AND MARLA

Exhausting week; apologies for being wordy.

Please enjoy this week's flash fiction titled, simply:

“I’ve seen wonders, Van.” said Barry, simply. “I never thought, growing up, I’d be doing this.”

Van was leaning forward in is chair, both hands holding his phone steady, so he could see Barry and his wife, Brenda, in the full screen. Barry was facing the wall phone while Brenda worked an improbable looking control panel. Van was alone in the downstairs living room; his wife, Marla, was upstairs sleeping. Outside, the river rolled gently past their cabin. The Cascade Mountains framed the scene.

“You should come,” Barry added. 

‘You’ was such an imprecise word, Van thought to himself. ‘You’ could be plural or singular. We or I. Van was very concerned about the preciseness of text; text was his job.

“She’s dying, Barry.” Van said, finally.

Continue reading "FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: VAN AND MARLA" »

Flash fiction friday story up; feel free to view the rest here. The "Blue Eagle" takes a look at another one of my loves: history. I love "what would happen if" stories.

The Blue Eagle

 

 

Lenny shuffled into the dining hall. He was about the last of the three hundred men—it was all men—that could get into the place. The dining hall served Lenny’s Work Regiment, but like everything else, was open to all comers.

 

Lenny took his seat where he usually did; towards the back, near the door and about as far away from the bright stage and the inevitable appearance of the Four Minute Man of the moment. The stage was simply set, as always; a bushel of fresh corn, apples, oranges, a slab of beef and several bottles of milk formed the static display. Fruit of the land, but Lenny always thought it was a waste, putting that stuff up there. Ought to go in a man’s belly, he figured.

 

Now for something a bit different (and longer; breaks my 2,000 word limit by inches). The story takes place not long from now, and kind of sets the stage for the other stories I've been writing. I'm not arrogant enough to call it Wodehousian, but that's what I was aiming: please enjoy, even if I fall far short of the mark.

ENERGIA CITY: HOME OF ROCKETS

 

The Mayor of Energia City sat at his desk in the Penthouse Office/Apartment complex on the top of Machine Towers, home of the Energia City Hall. His body man, and constant companion, Reginald, was at his side.

I need to look into getting me one.

I've got a couple of flash fiction stories sketched out; here are some of the blogs I plan on researching (yes, I do that) prior to executing them.

Dumbonyc Blog :Flesh out the scenery for Elephant and Johnny.

Pamela's Blog ( it's near peer competitor, thevenicebeachblog, looks dead, but what a cool header): going to help Mordechai and Sevania get around.

And a few Puget Sound Blogs, like Sound Politics, SPS Libertarian and Patrick's Sailing Blog will help lay the ground for Energia City: Home of Rockets!

My latest flash fiction friday story; on time, with fewer calories. Please enjoy.

At sixteen thousand feet they drop.

The plane is a four engined Grunt/Cargo-27M Spartan II aircraft. It carries three crew up front and two in the back. The plane is configured to move one squad of Grunts, twenty one in all, and most of their equipment. There is plenty of space in the back; the Grunts don't take up much room and their equipment is palletized on the back ramp for easy push off on landing. 

Mordechai Kim sits along the side of the plane's hold; he's strapped in like the rest of his squad. He's wearing black/grey combat slicks that cover him from the neck all the way to his feet, where they harden into boots; his gloves are retracted. The slicks give a Grunt ballistic protection up to about 7.56 mm, though any impact will probably break a bone. Still, good enough. Half his face is covered by the polarized lenses of his glasses. They are multichannel. Through them, Mordechai can monitor the network; the rest of the world. On one screen, he's watching CNN; the newsies are just starting to cover the fight. On another screen, he's looking at the TACOPs, as information, maps, orders and requests stream across. On a third screen Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero is conducting her final PMCI's, or pre-mission checks and inspections, on the Squad's systems. Mordechai reminds himself to put his glasses away later or he will lose them. 

Yeah, I'm late. Apologies all around; between work and school, my fun has got to slip. Polly Pengelly Pendragon is a new character; she actually started out as a series of sketches I've been working on, when I asked myelf, "o.k., good sketch, but what does she do?"

I am spatially oriented.

"They should put gravity out here," said Polly Pendragon, to no one in particular. She floated in a full lotus position, a meter above the floor.

This weeks flash fiction friday story. Now that I've started class, I figured my time would be consumed writing for class but I got my story out on time and on budget; it's funny what happens when you prioritize.

Choices

He takes the bullet between his shoulders.

The Grunt does not feel the impact, nor does his suit report anything amiss. 

The Grunt is about twenty klicks from the Squad main body. His orders were to flank the 'surgent lines and attack targets of opportunity, while the Squad conducted a frontal assault; all part of a larger, platoon level assault on the 'surgent city-state. 

The Grunt is busy clearing a 'surgent Fires Team when the Shredder makes an appearance. One on one, Grunt versus Shredder, the Grunt wins: barely. Grunt iron still provides some advantages over Shredder flesh; it is an arms race where both sides constantly change leads, where metal contests with meat.

Azimuth check.

I enjoy writing speculative (science) fiction. This blog, as you can see from my tags, is ultimately about building a world. A world I can inhabit with characters, peeps, I enjoy in situations I hope you enjoy. Flash fiction is an exercise I enjoy: no one ever got “worse” by writing “more”. Perhaps one day I’ll look back at what I’ve written and cringe; one day I plan to be much, much better at writing.

So what about this world I’m building? Well, it is close by and not far off. I enjoy reading space operas and highly complex worlds: “And Zorton, the Last Man, used his mighty trans-fixation bolts to stop the Zagnut Fleet hiding behind A. Centauri”. Post-human, post-singularity, post-colonization, post-everything stories are great. They are just not what I write.

I want to know what Zorton was like when he was delivering pizzas.

Maps. I make reference to wally’s world. It’s a twofold reference: Chevy Chase and Martin Walldseemuller. Below is a a copy of his 1507 Universalis Cosmographia.

Marty, as I like to call him, first put America on the map: curse him or praise him, according to your preferences. Look to the left, and there is the Empire. Instead of stretching east to west, it stretches north to south: from Anchorage to Buenos Aires. It is resource poor; either by choice or design. In the center is the post pangeatic mass of Eurasia and Africa. And to the right, the Thousand (or so) Islands: hic sunt dracontium. Plenty happens in the Thousand Islands.

Maps are the base documents used when describing the sproutian milieu in which we float. I have a fascination with maps.

John Laws. What defines a civilization; that is a question we’ve reopened recently. I put a tremendous emphasis on laws and patents: if information wants to be free, what happens when it escapes? Who has to hunt down good information gone bad.

The Agreed Framework. Think of it as part UN, part top level instruction set, top structured reality. The Agreed Framework is at once kind, humane, viscous and cruel. Smarts mixed with a confederacy of dunces. Is the Agreed Framework right, is it wrong? Unknown, at this time.

The Thousand Worlds. Extend the Thousand Islands into space. Hic sunt…

Biomods. I’m a biologists by (in the “way before time”) training. We are approaching what I like to call the Thingularity: part technological, part biological, part spiritual. Biomods are part robots, part genetic mutations, part set of clothes. Biomods are slaves: necessary to the well ordered functioning of a democracy (ask Kant or the Athenians). Are biomods peeps? Unknown, at this time.

The Latency. Again, I am a home body. I travel well, but really like the comforts of Home Station Couch. The Latency reflects that; the Latency is in and around earth, where peeps, information and memes travel without a too annoying delay. 

The Aesthetic. Ars est vitae. I need to explore that more.

Time. I think in terms of terawatts, not days/months/years. I haven’t got that fully visualized, but that’s the subtext. Thing about energy is, if you want to move forward, you have to expend energy; if you want to stay still, then do not use energy. Every time one of these private space ventures launches a rocket, we increase, imperceptibly, our energy expenditure. If we do that enough then my peeps will finally break loose of the ‘treadmill”.

Bad Physics. When you look into spookytechnology, quantum (entanglements, actions at a distance) and beyond, aren’t you just going over terrain the Looney Toons covered long ago? I have an unnatural affection for cartoons (no, not hentai); I want to infect you with that vibe. Let’s call it Toonpunk.

What’s next? Hic sunt dracontium: so let us go hunt them.

It has been one of those days; the kind where you just want to crawl back into bed until some set of unspecified and difficult  conditions have been met. Alas, I do not have that luxury.

My entry into this weeks flash fiction friday: the meme. Over here, you can view (enjoy/critique) my previous stories.

Otherwise, grab a fork and please enjoy...

Garden Variety

Beneath her balcony,  Seattle grows. 

Bekka's shared living space is about twenty five stories up the side of one of the newer cones in Seattle. She lives in a mixed neighborhood;  old twentieth century buildings, square blocks really, are giving way to a living Seattle. Specially engineered DeWalt Nibblers chew the old concrete and steel boxes, slowly, reducing them to a reusable ash: a controlled burn. Greenbelts replace the road ways and yet some things remain: a dirt path ends at the entrance of the Pike Street Market; the piers lining the bay remain, but the Port of Seattle, like most major Ports up and down the West Coast, lies miles out to sea. Automated ferries bring in the containers, on flat racks, and exchange them with automated trucks up where I-5 terminates near the King County border. Supplies for Seattle are shifted underground and distributed.

The King County Machine promises a livable, a living, Seattle; and the Machine always delivers.

Up with another installment for flash fiction friday:

Daddy's Girl

After the revolution, when we killed the King and took what was ours, I had the Apothecary tattoo Daddy's name on my thigh.

Daddy is good. He's going to set things right; the revolution needed Daddy and he came. Some say Daddy ain't right, but I say we'd still be under the King, except Daddy came along.

***

New story out the shoot. The Great Debate is in line with an earlier story, the The Possibility Engine. Please enjoy.

Almost missed my (internal) deadline. I started playing around in the X11 terminal on my macbook. Mac's are shiny, pretty things; but there's alot of power under the hood. I just have to figure out how to use that power.

The Great Debate

Brenda touched up her hair one last time and turned to face the cameras. Her partner Chet was already practicing his smile into the camera, as the studio director gave the countdown. Five, four, three, two...

"Good evening America," began Brenda cheerfully. "Chet and I would like to welcome you to the very first in a series of forty seven exciting debates to determine who you will choose as the next Steward of the United Species of America..."

That's the title of one my flash fiction stories in the queue. Started working on the idea yesterday while working in our backyard; see, to fill this dog dug hole, I had to actually go buy dirt (lo, I am the effete urbanist).

Something like this Earth Box Garden Kit will figure prominently.

I just did not know that, yesterday. But that's how writing works, for me.

Thanks to i09's post on a dystopic "Slave City", my flash fiction short, "The Battle of Shitter Number One" now has a graphic:

The friendly folks at futurismic have their weekly flash fictioneer round up.

Looks like the weather will clear and I get to fly; I'm going to .pdf some stories to enjoy.

Good news and bad news. The bad news is I'm weathered in and I'm not flying. The good news is I've got a Flash Fiction story up, on time and on target. More of my flash fiction here.

I hope you enjoy.

In Service To Empire: Candie

Sometimes we called her Candie.

But we never called her that to her face. To her face it was always "yes, Sgt-Commander" or "no Sgt-Commander".

Her standard line name and number, if you need to know the thing, was Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero and she was my Squad Commander.

Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero was the best Squad Commander I ever knew; they should have never given her that Medal.

On time and on target. More flash fiction here.

C.H.A.R.L.I.

“Stop freaking out!” boomed the disembodied voice of the Director.

“I’m not freaking out; I just do not know if I want to do this.” replied the Pilot.

The Pilot had just brought his explorer jitney, the latest in space utility vehicles, to a gentle landing on Io; by reputation the hell cursed Galilean Moon of Jupiter. Greeting the Pilot through the port holes was an obscenely flat playa surface, dotted with randomly placed, jagged mountains. No pits of sulfur to swallow the damned, no dark pits to torment the tax evader. It was just a boring, flat, playa surface.

Dante would have been bored here.

A day late, but here's my Flash Fiction Friday story. Stepping a bit out of my miniverse (I think) with this story.

The Possibility Engine

"Are you sure, Herr Doctor-Professor?" asked the Apprentice as he strapped the older man into an improbable contraption of tubes and widgets.

"Young man, for the last time, I am sure. I am sure of my counter intuitive calculations; I am sure of the Possibility Engine and most importantly, I am sure that I will come back with all the answers to all of the legends and mysteries of man!" said the Herr Doctor-Professor.

"Yes, but Herr Doctor-Professor, time travel is..." began the Apprentice.

Digging around the interwebs, I'm finding that flash fiction is generally around 300 to 1000 words. I first read about flash fiction in wikipedia; that's how I settled on 2000 words as my upper limit. Given that I'm trying to cram an entire universe into my flash fiction, the more room the merrier.

But, as a change, this weeks story weighs in at a little over 700 words. (My other Flash Fiction here).

Serath

One day, out of boredom, Serath decided to go for an extended walk.

After many days, he found himself face to face with the “water's edge”, the “eggshell”, the “bow shock”, or more conventionally, the solar discontinuity. He pretended that he could see the face of Einstein, laughing at him, daring him, seducing him to take that last step.

In front of him was a frozen graveyard, littered with the desiccated corpses of untold millions of humans, in all their varieties. They had stepped through the solar discontinuity, from B-Space into Classical Space, where the rules still abided. They had ignored the warning.

Lordy, if there is a meme out there, for anything, I am pretty sure to have missed it. Case in point, "Flash Fiction Friday". I poured those sweet words into google and came up with a plethora of fodder for my RSS reader. Cases in point:

Gareth Lyn Powell who got the ball rolling.

The Originals: Friday Flash Fictioneers.

And of course, collecting all the sci-fi flash fiction in one place so I don't have to, Futurismic.

I'm the guy who keeps discovering air; on the other hand, I do so love teh innerwebs.

New story up. More of my flash fiction here.

A Letter Concerning a Matter of the Most Private Space, Part the First: In which the Beginnings of the War are Examined and Explained

My name is Beauford Battleson Billtesford and on this occasion I am writing the True Account of how I did come to declare Most Just War on my neighbor and now mortal enemy, one Nathaniel Pickford 1409. I am writing these matters down in a most solemn manner in order to present them to whatever government sees fit to aid me in securing my rights in this matter. For I did not embark upon my War easily; only after multiple and divers insults from Mr. Pickford 1409 against my most holy sovereignty did I find it my only recourse to embark upon the most severe censure of his behavior, which is to say War.

Now, the matters which led up to this War are not in dispute, even if the actual cause will be for all time bitterly contested. I firmly place the cause for War on the weak, childlike and slovenly character of Mr. Nathaniel Pickford 1409.

Mr. Nathaniel Pickford 1409 and I share a common property line. Running through this line did, and still does, run a creek of the name Screaming Lady Gulch. Mr. Pickford 1409 used this creek to cool his antiquated and dangerous light water reactor. For aesthetic reasons, I had placed my Walmart-Eskom pebble bed nuclear reactor of a most modern design along the creek.

These plants powered our various works. Mr. Pickford 1409 tried at various methods to secure himself a living from the land and I had a going concern as a Pharma. I raised various herds of milkweeds, producing through nature those vital pharmacological and life extending agents necessary to a civilized and just world. While I would never call a man working the land a wastrel, Mr. Pickford 1409 was perhaps in form as close to that appellation as I have seen. His disregard for his own works and the works of others was the kindling which inflamed our mighty War.

For an explanation of FFF, go here. Otherwise:

Weeguns World

You know what the Lower Manhattan Enclave looks like, right? You have the old Imperial Tower sticking out from that whole mess of buildings; like a glorious middle finger to the rest of the world. Now look at Lower Manhattan through a fisheye lens. Imagine dropping back, going far enough until it turns into a round ball.

That's what the Weegun dwarf planet looked like.

ED NOTE: Reposting my runner up story from the MEDGADGET Sci-Fi contest; basically, I just want it under the Flash Fiction Friday tag.

Dr. Luscious Franks And The Amazing Recylcotron

Kevin stopped his trike in front of the house.

The small AI inside the three wheeled vehicle automatically registered the destination, locked the wheels in place and loosened the tension on Kevin's seatbelt. Kevin unbuckled, stood up, and stretched.

Driving a trike through the streets of Ballard, Washington, was a bit nerve racking. Powered vehicles were banned within the Enclave as unnecessarily dangerous. The chances of running someone over, crashing an art installation or parking more than one hour in the one hour parking zone had guided the Enclave Fathers into pushing powered vehicles beyond both the bounds of Accepted Risk and the city limits of the Enclave.

Still, even a human powered trike was dangerous and exposed Kevin to all kinds of liabilities, lawsuits, lawyers and tortuous tort. If it weren't for Kevin's special needs, he doubted he would have gotten the license to operate the trike.

Kevin was a diagnosed anti-social, with non-consensus building tendencies.

As part of his recovery, the medics made the determination that Kevin required structure. With great regret, the medics ordered him into probationary treatment.

Kevin was told to get a job.

ED NOTE:Okay, first story out the tube in my attempts at one weekly flash fiction story. I had a lot of fun in the writing and editing process. The story builds on a couple, two, three posts from this week. I hesitated on the title, but what the hell. Hope you enjoy.

The Battle of Shitter Number One

Officially, the fight took place at the Sedna Composite Waste Management and Reclamation Facility Number One. Officially, they footnoted the whole mess as the Agreed Framework, Earth v. Autonomous Anarchy, Sedna, Case Number 30,001.2.b in the Imperial District Court, Southern District of New York.

But for the boys, girls, androgs, freaks and biobots who were there, well, we had our own name for the thing: The Battle of Shitter Number One.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: THE BLUE EAGLE

Flash fiction friday story up; feel free to view the rest here. The "Blue Eagle" takes a look at another one of my loves: history. I love "what would happen if" stories.

The Blue Eagle

 

 

Lenny shuffled into the dining hall. He was about the last of the three hundred men—it was all men—that could get into the place. The dining hall served Lenny’s Work Regiment, but like everything else, was open to all comers.

 

Lenny took his seat where he usually did; towards the back, near the door and about as far away from the bright stage and the inevitable appearance of the Four Minute Man of the moment. The stage was simply set, as always; a bushel of fresh corn, apples, oranges, a slab of beef and several bottles of milk formed the static display. Fruit of the land, but Lenny always thought it was a waste, putting that stuff up there. Ought to go in a man’s belly, he figured.

 

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: ENERGIA CITY

Now for something a bit different (and longer; breaks my 2,000 word limit by inches). The story takes place not long from now, and kind of sets the stage for the other stories I've been writing. I'm not arrogant enough to call it Wodehousian, but that's what I was aiming: please enjoy, even if I fall far short of the mark.

ENERGIA CITY: HOME OF ROCKETS

 

The Mayor of Energia City sat at his desk in the Penthouse Office/Apartment complex on the top of Machine Towers, home of the Energia City Hall. His body man, and constant companion, Reginald, was at his side.

EVERYONE'S GOT A 'BLOG'

I need to look into getting me one.

I've got a couple of flash fiction stories sketched out; here are some of the blogs I plan on researching (yes, I do that) prior to executing them.

Dumbonyc Blog :Flesh out the scenery for Elephant and Johnny.

Pamela's Blog ( it's near peer competitor, thevenicebeachblog, looks dead, but what a cool header): going to help Mordechai and Sevania get around.

And a few Puget Sound Blogs, like Sound Politics, SPS Libertarian and Patrick's Sailing Blog will help lay the ground for Energia City: Home of Rockets!

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: INITIAL ENTRY

My latest flash fiction friday story; on time, with fewer calories. Please enjoy.

At sixteen thousand feet they drop.

The plane is a four engined Grunt/Cargo-27M Spartan II aircraft. It carries three crew up front and two in the back. The plane is configured to move one squad of Grunts, twenty one in all, and most of their equipment. There is plenty of space in the back; the Grunts don't take up much room and their equipment is palletized on the back ramp for easy push off on landing. 

Mordechai Kim sits along the side of the plane's hold; he's strapped in like the rest of his squad. He's wearing black/grey combat slicks that cover him from the neck all the way to his feet, where they harden into boots; his gloves are retracted. The slicks give a Grunt ballistic protection up to about 7.56 mm, though any impact will probably break a bone. Still, good enough. Half his face is covered by the polarized lenses of his glasses. They are multichannel. Through them, Mordechai can monitor the network; the rest of the world. On one screen, he's watching CNN; the newsies are just starting to cover the fight. On another screen, he's looking at the TACOPs, as information, maps, orders and requests stream across. On a third screen Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero is conducting her final PMCI's, or pre-mission checks and inspections, on the Squad's systems. Mordechai reminds himself to put his glasses away later or he will lose them. 

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: POLLY PENGELLY PENDRAGON

Yeah, I'm late. Apologies all around; between work and school, my fun has got to slip. Polly Pengelly Pendragon is a new character; she actually started out as a series of sketches I've been working on, when I asked myelf, "o.k., good sketch, but what does she do?"

I am spatially oriented.

"They should put gravity out here," said Polly Pendragon, to no one in particular. She floated in a full lotus position, a meter above the floor.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: CHOICES

This weeks flash fiction friday story. Now that I've started class, I figured my time would be consumed writing for class but I got my story out on time and on budget; it's funny what happens when you prioritize.

Choices

He takes the bullet between his shoulders.

The Grunt does not feel the impact, nor does his suit report anything amiss. 

The Grunt is about twenty klicks from the Squad main body. His orders were to flank the 'surgent lines and attack targets of opportunity, while the Squad conducted a frontal assault; all part of a larger, platoon level assault on the 'surgent city-state. 

The Grunt is busy clearing a 'surgent Fires Team when the Shredder makes an appearance. One on one, Grunt versus Shredder, the Grunt wins: barely. Grunt iron still provides some advantages over Shredder flesh; it is an arms race where both sides constantly change leads, where metal contests with meat.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: SATURDAY ERRATA

Azimuth check.

I enjoy writing speculative (science) fiction. This blog, as you can see from my tags, is ultimately about building a world. A world I can inhabit with characters, peeps, I enjoy in situations I hope you enjoy. Flash fiction is an exercise I enjoy: no one ever got “worse” by writing “more”. Perhaps one day I’ll look back at what I’ve written and cringe; one day I plan to be much, much better at writing.

So what about this world I’m building? Well, it is close by and not far off. I enjoy reading space operas and highly complex worlds: “And Zorton, the Last Man, used his mighty trans-fixation bolts to stop the Zagnut Fleet hiding behind A. Centauri”. Post-human, post-singularity, post-colonization, post-everything stories are great. They are just not what I write.

I want to know what Zorton was like when he was delivering pizzas.

Maps. I make reference to wally’s world. It’s a twofold reference: Chevy Chase and Martin Walldseemuller. Below is a a copy of his 1507 Universalis Cosmographia.

Marty, as I like to call him, first put America on the map: curse him or praise him, according to your preferences. Look to the left, and there is the Empire. Instead of stretching east to west, it stretches north to south: from Anchorage to Buenos Aires. It is resource poor; either by choice or design. In the center is the post pangeatic mass of Eurasia and Africa. And to the right, the Thousand (or so) Islands: hic sunt dracontium. Plenty happens in the Thousand Islands.

Maps are the base documents used when describing the sproutian milieu in which we float. I have a fascination with maps.

John Laws. What defines a civilization; that is a question we’ve reopened recently. I put a tremendous emphasis on laws and patents: if information wants to be free, what happens when it escapes? Who has to hunt down good information gone bad.

The Agreed Framework. Think of it as part UN, part top level instruction set, top structured reality. The Agreed Framework is at once kind, humane, viscous and cruel. Smarts mixed with a confederacy of dunces. Is the Agreed Framework right, is it wrong? Unknown, at this time.

The Thousand Worlds. Extend the Thousand Islands into space. Hic sunt…

Biomods. I’m a biologists by (in the “way before time”) training. We are approaching what I like to call the Thingularity: part technological, part biological, part spiritual. Biomods are part robots, part genetic mutations, part set of clothes. Biomods are slaves: necessary to the well ordered functioning of a democracy (ask Kant or the Athenians). Are biomods peeps? Unknown, at this time.

The Latency. Again, I am a home body. I travel well, but really like the comforts of Home Station Couch. The Latency reflects that; the Latency is in and around earth, where peeps, information and memes travel without a too annoying delay. 

The Aesthetic. Ars est vitae. I need to explore that more.

Time. I think in terms of terawatts, not days/months/years. I haven’t got that fully visualized, but that’s the subtext. Thing about energy is, if you want to move forward, you have to expend energy; if you want to stay still, then do not use energy. Every time one of these private space ventures launches a rocket, we increase, imperceptibly, our energy expenditure. If we do that enough then my peeps will finally break loose of the ‘treadmill”.

Bad Physics. When you look into spookytechnology, quantum (entanglements, actions at a distance) and beyond, aren’t you just going over terrain the Looney Toons covered long ago? I have an unnatural affection for cartoons (no, not hentai); I want to infect you with that vibe. Let’s call it Toonpunk.

What’s next? Hic sunt dracontium: so let us go hunt them.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY

It has been one of those days; the kind where you just want to crawl back into bed until some set of unspecified and difficult  conditions have been met. Alas, I do not have that luxury.

My entry into this weeks flash fiction friday: the meme. Over here, you can view (enjoy/critique) my previous stories.

Otherwise, grab a fork and please enjoy...

Garden Variety

Beneath her balcony,  Seattle grows. 

Bekka's shared living space is about twenty five stories up the side of one of the newer cones in Seattle. She lives in a mixed neighborhood;  old twentieth century buildings, square blocks really, are giving way to a living Seattle. Specially engineered DeWalt Nibblers chew the old concrete and steel boxes, slowly, reducing them to a reusable ash: a controlled burn. Greenbelts replace the road ways and yet some things remain: a dirt path ends at the entrance of the Pike Street Market; the piers lining the bay remain, but the Port of Seattle, like most major Ports up and down the West Coast, lies miles out to sea. Automated ferries bring in the containers, on flat racks, and exchange them with automated trucks up where I-5 terminates near the King County border. Supplies for Seattle are shifted underground and distributed.

The King County Machine promises a livable, a living, Seattle; and the Machine always delivers.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY

Up with another installment for flash fiction friday:

Daddy's Girl

After the revolution, when we killed the King and took what was ours, I had the Apothecary tattoo Daddy's name on my thigh.

Daddy is good. He's going to set things right; the revolution needed Daddy and he came. Some say Daddy ain't right, but I say we'd still be under the King, except Daddy came along.

***

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY

New story out the shoot. The Great Debate is in line with an earlier story, the The Possibility Engine. Please enjoy.

Almost missed my (internal) deadline. I started playing around in the X11 terminal on my macbook. Mac's are shiny, pretty things; but there's alot of power under the hood. I just have to figure out how to use that power.

The Great Debate

Brenda touched up her hair one last time and turned to face the cameras. Her partner Chet was already practicing his smile into the camera, as the studio director gave the countdown. Five, four, three, two...

"Good evening America," began Brenda cheerfully. "Chet and I would like to welcome you to the very first in a series of forty seven exciting debates to determine who you will choose as the next Steward of the United Species of America..."

"GARDEN VARIETY"

That's the title of one my flash fiction stories in the queue. Started working on the idea yesterday while working in our backyard; see, to fill this dog dug hole, I had to actually go buy dirt (lo, I am the effete urbanist).

Something like this Earth Box Garden Kit will figure prominently.

I just did not know that, yesterday. But that's how writing works, for me.

SPONTANEOUS COOPERATION

Thanks to i09's post on a dystopic "Slave City", my flash fiction short, "The Battle of Shitter Number One" now has a graphic:

FFF ROUND UP

The friendly folks at futurismic have their weekly flash fictioneer round up.

Looks like the weather will clear and I get to fly; I'm going to .pdf some stories to enjoy.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY

Good news and bad news. The bad news is I'm weathered in and I'm not flying. The good news is I've got a Flash Fiction story up, on time and on target. More of my flash fiction here.

I hope you enjoy.

In Service To Empire: Candie

Sometimes we called her Candie.

But we never called her that to her face. To her face it was always "yes, Sgt-Commander" or "no Sgt-Commander".

Her standard line name and number, if you need to know the thing, was Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero and she was my Squad Commander.

Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero was the best Squad Commander I ever knew; they should have never given her that Medal.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY

On time and on target. More flash fiction here.

C.H.A.R.L.I.

“Stop freaking out!” boomed the disembodied voice of the Director.

“I’m not freaking out; I just do not know if I want to do this.” replied the Pilot.

The Pilot had just brought his explorer jitney, the latest in space utility vehicles, to a gentle landing on Io; by reputation the hell cursed Galilean Moon of Jupiter. Greeting the Pilot through the port holes was an obscenely flat playa surface, dotted with randomly placed, jagged mountains. No pits of sulfur to swallow the damned, no dark pits to torment the tax evader. It was just a boring, flat, playa surface.

Dante would have been bored here.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: SATURDAY EDITION

A day late, but here's my Flash Fiction Friday story. Stepping a bit out of my miniverse (I think) with this story.

The Possibility Engine

"Are you sure, Herr Doctor-Professor?" asked the Apprentice as he strapped the older man into an improbable contraption of tubes and widgets.

"Young man, for the last time, I am sure. I am sure of my counter intuitive calculations; I am sure of the Possibility Engine and most importantly, I am sure that I will come back with all the answers to all of the legends and mysteries of man!" said the Herr Doctor-Professor.

"Yes, but Herr Doctor-Professor, time travel is..." began the Apprentice.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY

Digging around the interwebs, I'm finding that flash fiction is generally around 300 to 1000 words. I first read about flash fiction in wikipedia; that's how I settled on 2000 words as my upper limit. Given that I'm trying to cram an entire universe into my flash fiction, the more room the merrier.

But, as a change, this weeks story weighs in at a little over 700 words. (My other Flash Fiction here).

Serath

One day, out of boredom, Serath decided to go for an extended walk.

After many days, he found himself face to face with the “water's edge”, the “eggshell”, the “bow shock”, or more conventionally, the solar discontinuity. He pretended that he could see the face of Einstein, laughing at him, daring him, seducing him to take that last step.

In front of him was a frozen graveyard, littered with the desiccated corpses of untold millions of humans, in all their varieties. They had stepped through the solar discontinuity, from B-Space into Classical Space, where the rules still abided. They had ignored the warning.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: THE MEME

Lordy, if there is a meme out there, for anything, I am pretty sure to have missed it. Case in point, "Flash Fiction Friday". I poured those sweet words into google and came up with a plethora of fodder for my RSS reader. Cases in point:

Gareth Lyn Powell who got the ball rolling.

The Originals: Friday Flash Fictioneers.

And of course, collecting all the sci-fi flash fiction in one place so I don't have to, Futurismic.

I'm the guy who keeps discovering air; on the other hand, I do so love teh innerwebs.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY

New story up. More of my flash fiction here.

A Letter Concerning a Matter of the Most Private Space, Part the First: In which the Beginnings of the War are Examined and Explained

My name is Beauford Battleson Billtesford and on this occasion I am writing the True Account of how I did come to declare Most Just War on my neighbor and now mortal enemy, one Nathaniel Pickford 1409. I am writing these matters down in a most solemn manner in order to present them to whatever government sees fit to aid me in securing my rights in this matter. For I did not embark upon my War easily; only after multiple and divers insults from Mr. Pickford 1409 against my most holy sovereignty did I find it my only recourse to embark upon the most severe censure of his behavior, which is to say War.

Now, the matters which led up to this War are not in dispute, even if the actual cause will be for all time bitterly contested. I firmly place the cause for War on the weak, childlike and slovenly character of Mr. Nathaniel Pickford 1409.

Mr. Nathaniel Pickford 1409 and I share a common property line. Running through this line did, and still does, run a creek of the name Screaming Lady Gulch. Mr. Pickford 1409 used this creek to cool his antiquated and dangerous light water reactor. For aesthetic reasons, I had placed my Walmart-Eskom pebble bed nuclear reactor of a most modern design along the creek.

These plants powered our various works. Mr. Pickford 1409 tried at various methods to secure himself a living from the land and I had a going concern as a Pharma. I raised various herds of milkweeds, producing through nature those vital pharmacological and life extending agents necessary to a civilized and just world. While I would never call a man working the land a wastrel, Mr. Pickford 1409 was perhaps in form as close to that appellation as I have seen. His disregard for his own works and the works of others was the kindling which inflamed our mighty War.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAYS

For an explanation of FFF, go here. Otherwise:

Weeguns World

You know what the Lower Manhattan Enclave looks like, right? You have the old Imperial Tower sticking out from that whole mess of buildings; like a glorious middle finger to the rest of the world. Now look at Lower Manhattan through a fisheye lens. Imagine dropping back, going far enough until it turns into a round ball.

That's what the Weegun dwarf planet looked like.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: SATURDAY BONUS

ED NOTE: Reposting my runner up story from the MEDGADGET Sci-Fi contest; basically, I just want it under the Flash Fiction Friday tag.

Dr. Luscious Franks And The Amazing Recylcotron

Kevin stopped his trike in front of the house.

The small AI inside the three wheeled vehicle automatically registered the destination, locked the wheels in place and loosened the tension on Kevin's seatbelt. Kevin unbuckled, stood up, and stretched.

Driving a trike through the streets of Ballard, Washington, was a bit nerve racking. Powered vehicles were banned within the Enclave as unnecessarily dangerous. The chances of running someone over, crashing an art installation or parking more than one hour in the one hour parking zone had guided the Enclave Fathers into pushing powered vehicles beyond both the bounds of Accepted Risk and the city limits of the Enclave.

Still, even a human powered trike was dangerous and exposed Kevin to all kinds of liabilities, lawsuits, lawyers and tortuous tort. If it weren't for Kevin's special needs, he doubted he would have gotten the license to operate the trike.

Kevin was a diagnosed anti-social, with non-consensus building tendencies.

As part of his recovery, the medics made the determination that Kevin required structure. With great regret, the medics ordered him into probationary treatment.

Kevin was told to get a job.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY

ED NOTE:Okay, first story out the tube in my attempts at one weekly flash fiction story. I had a lot of fun in the writing and editing process. The story builds on a couple, two, three posts from this week. I hesitated on the title, but what the hell. Hope you enjoy.

The Battle of Shitter Number One

Officially, the fight took place at the Sedna Composite Waste Management and Reclamation Facility Number One. Officially, they footnoted the whole mess as the Agreed Framework, Earth v. Autonomous Anarchy, Sedna, Case Number 30,001.2.b in the Imperial District Court, Southern District of New York.

But for the boys, girls, androgs, freaks and biobots who were there, well, we had our own name for the thing: The Battle of Shitter Number One.