Tag Archives: #amwritingscifi

Leigh

hands

Image: Natalia Drepina

Her hands, so petite, so delicate, in those lacy coverings, yes he would miss her hands. They were on their bed together kneeling, he was holding her gently from behind. His eyes were hot with tears.

“Don’t be sad, Gerald. You will be fine when I’m gone.”

“I don’t want you to go, Leigh.”

“We have no choice, darling. My diagnosis, I’m terminal.”

“There’s got to be something…”

“Hush, my darling. I’ve only got moments…moments…”

The world’s first humanoid companion robot went offline Thursday, January 13th at 10:55 a.m., a victim of atmospheric contaminants that toxified her cybernetic brain.

Written for Photo Challenge #147 from Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie.

I don’t know if I managed to capture the emotion of this moment in a mere 98 words, but I hope so. I’ve written similar (and much longer) stories about a man falling in love with an artificially intelligent humanoid, principally The Perfect Woman.

An Alien Walks Into A Bar

alien

Comic book cover from 1958

Frank Lyman was working on his third Vodka Collins when the alien came through the door. Frank had been stopping by Murphy’s Bar every Friday night after work for nearly ten years, and this was the first time he thought the booze was spiked.

All of the regulars at the bar, plus Murphy serving drinks behind it, froze like ice sculptures and stared.

“RJhmzzxpingwqupnmkl-ooo-dx!” Static came out of the alien’s spacesuit. It adjusted a knob on its chest.

“Better? Understand?”

“What?” Frank forgot to swallow and his drink dribbled onto his shirt.

“Spaceship broken. Roadside service here?”

Okay, I know the image I used as an inspiration doesn’t show a bar, but when I saw it, I thought it looked like the beginning of a bad joke, “An alien walks into a bar.” I wrote it for fun.

Flash fiction of 99 words.

Oh, the comic book was published in 1958.

Taking Care of the Family

counterclock

Image: Odditymall.com

It worked. I changed everything for the better. Now my son Charles marries a hardworking, loving wife and mother instead of a depressed lay about. Now my son Chris makes his career decision five years earlier and gets a tenured position before the recession hits. Now my wife has that business she’s always wanted and the franchise money will make her rich. The Time Changer worked, but with one catch. Instead of me being a successful scientist, I’m a divorced drug addict, dying of lung cancer in the local hospital’s charity ward, a total human failure. It was worth it.

I’ve been writing so much flash fiction over the past few days, that when this idea popped up, I thought I’d take advantage. No prompt, no challenge. Just the way my head works.

Uncle Eli’s Machine

the machine

© Sandra Crook / Found at Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ blogspot

For two weeks, Evan had been investigating the odd, sprocketed contraption in the basement of the house he’d inherited from old Uncle Eli, an eccentric inventor who’d been tinkering with it for the past sixty years.

Evan didn’t fathom the machine’s purpose, but he did think he could get the gears moving.

He made one last adjustment with his screwdriver.

Evan jumped back as the large driver cog suddenly lurched one “ka-chunk” counterclockwise.

Then the light changed. “So, my time machine finally worked, I see.”

Evan turned. The figure speaking to him was Uncle Eli at age 26.

I wrote this as part of (last week’s) Friday Fictioneers challenge hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. The idea is to write a piece of flash fiction using a max of 100 words and base it on the photo prompt you see at the top of the page. The details are at Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ blog (scroll down).

Read all of the responses to this flash fiction challenge at InLinkz.com (over 80 as of this writing).

My story is exactly 99 words long.

First Contact Imperfect

ted

From the film “Ted 2” (2015)

The Qredderq came very close to their goal of communicating with humanity. However, being just a little off was going to have difficult if not disastrous results.

The Qredderq weren’t aliens in that they came from another planet. The Qreddreg were transdimensional life forms, and that sort of life was abundant. However, piercing transdimensional barriers in order to communicate was highly technical, energy intensive, and not always reliable, as the Qredderq were about to find out.

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Tales From The Dystopia: Training The Toxic Dog

woman walking man

Image: YouTube

Carl Jason had been wandering in the woods for three days when he saw the lights through the trees. He’d gone for a hike away from the camp and became disoriented. He had a knife, so he cut fir branches to cover himself at night so he didn’t freeze as he slept. He knew something about the local plants, so he at least got some small amount of nourishment.

The lights, it was near sunset and he might have missed them in full daylight. As the trees thinned and he stepped out onto a grassy field, he saw it was a complex of buildings, like a business park or something. He hoped there was still someone around. He needed to phone home. His brothers and Dad must have gotten frantic when he didn’t return to their camp.

It was an annual tradition. Carl and his brothers Mike, and Dave, all lived in different parts of the country. The only time they could be sure to reconnect with each other and Dad was during their yearly autumn camping trip.

Carl was stiff and cold. He’d tripped yesterday and collected some scrapes along with a twisted ankle. He could walk on it, but he limped and he was slow.

“Hey!” Carl saw a few people in the distance walking between two buildings. “Hey there! I need help!”

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Harvey’s Suit

smart glove

The Rapael Smart Glove

His nervous system wasn’t working anymore, so they had to give him a new one.

Harvey Lincoln was 59 years old when he was diagnosed With Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, sometimes also called “Lou Gehrig’s disease.” A visit to the Mayo Clinic and undergoing an exhaustive battery of tests confirmed the diagnosis.

Harvey just felt numb going over the test results in Dr. Bell’s office. Harvey’s wife Sara sat by his side quietly sobbing.

That was three years ago, and the degeneration and death of Harvey’s motor neurons was steady, but thankfully slow. Harvey knew he was living on borrowed time, to use the common aphorism, but it was having time that allowed him to participate in the experiment.

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The Tribe of the People

rain forest

Image: ABC.net.au / Rocky Roe

Petia, the Chief of the People, had listened to all of the arguments presented by the strangers from the East. He had discussed them with the Council, which included Antipa the Medicine Priestess, Prim the War Chief, Cleitst the Spirit Talker, and Valdem the Voice of the People.

The strangers from the East offered much, but would what they offered be best for the People? They offered more sturdy homes which would be warmer in winter, efficient methods of farming that would produce more food, and an organized education system for the children of the People.

“It is clear the strangers offer different ways than ours.” Petia was old but sturdy, and his wisdom as Chief had not been questioned for all the fifty seasons he had been tribal leader.

“We cannot trust them.” Prim was War Chief and it was his responsibility to state any danger to the People he perceived.

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Reset

reset button

Image: Under the Tapestry

“Hurry, Terry. Everyone in quantum reality Epsilon 1450 just died, and the frequency of reality deaths is increasing.”

“I’m trying Kate, but as we get closer to the Nexus, it’s harder to filter out all of the interference from the different quantum realities. I can barely see the center, and we’re dead close.”

It’s generally believed that our universe is the only universe, but Terry Pliskin and his sister Kate found out otherwise when they accidentally fell through a rift near their home in Brooklyn and discovered a different Earth. Unfortunately that one event started a chain reaction, destabilizing first those two universes and then all the others.

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Time Line Twisted

time travel

Image: BBC News

The Third Hunter and Ellison Time Travel Adventure and a direct sequel to In Search of the Time Traveler.

“I have a bad feeling about this, Josue.”

“Stop that! This is serious. This isn’t when we are supposed to be.”

Josue Hunter and Wyatt Ellison thought they were finally closing in on Heloise Amanda Westcott, the mysterious and elusive time traveler first detected in 1885 England. They’d found H.G. Wells, author of the famous novel “The Time Machine” and confederate of Westcott in Texas in 1940, and persuaded him to reveal the place and time they could locate her.

Wells wrote it down on a pad of paper with the letterhead of the hotel in which he’d been staying. Friday, 15 August 1994, 8150 Olive Avenue, Huntington Beach, California.

“Checking the unitool.” Hunter’s all-purpose utility device was disguised as a wrist watch. He set it to review the most recent log of their trip back in time.

“Damn.”

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