PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

This was supposed to be a movie set but in spite of the traditional harsh and hot lighting, the details were too exact.

“Hello?” Where had the crew gone? Was it lunch yet?

He tried to look back at the doors. He swore he left them open but he couldn’t hear the noises from outside the studio and it was getting warmer.

Then his neck started hurting, but he couldn’t stop looking up. Oddly, it wasn’t the colorful stained-glass windows that attracted him but the stone faces instead.

They became animated and sang as one, “Welcome to the afterlife, Scott.”

It’s Wednesday and time again to participate in this week’s edition of Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt for crafting a poem or short story no more than 100 words long. My word count is exactly 100.

One of the “Dilbert” comic strips created by the late Scott Adams.

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard that Scott Adams passed away yesterday at the age of 68, finally losing his battle to prostate cancer. If you don’t know him, Scott was the creator of the fantastic comic strip Dilbert, which for decades chronicled the woes of workers trapped in cubicle farms, particularly those who labored in some aspect of technology.

Adams wasn’t without controversy, which resulted in his comic strip being cancelled a few years back, but he kept on drawing and writing and talking to the middle-class professional.

Dilbert was one of my favorite comic strips so I’ve had Adams on my mind. My drabble pretty much wrote itself.

To read other stories based on the prompt or to submit your own, go to inlinkz.

Promotional image for the anthology “Ruins.”

The science fiction anthology Far Futures Four is now available for purchase in Kindle or paperback formats. It features my military SciFi short story “Awash on Titan’s Shores.”

Next there’s:

Across the vast expanse of space and time lie the remnants of civilizations that reached for the stars—and vanished. Silent cities carved into asteroids. Derelict megastructures drifting between galaxies. Temples buried beneath the red sands of dead worlds.

This book contains 13 bold tales of humanity’s encounters with these cosmic ruins.

That’s how the narrative for the Kickstarter for “Ruins: A Space Opera Anthology” begins. The anthology contains my short story “Sunrise.” The kickstarter is at over 80 followers now and growing. Please consider contributing to this effort or even passing the information along.