The Big Pigs heard a noise from outside their cell window. They looked through the bars to see Dish and Spoon. The Spoon whispered, “We’ve run away. We were tired of the dog’s incessant laughing, that jittery cow and the nonstop fiddle music. When we got to town we heard of your plight and headed straight here to spring you.”
The grateful pigs had doubts of the dinnerware’s abilities to free them, despite their fine department store pedigree. The spoon seemed to confirm suspicions and began banging against the dish, making an awful racket. The guards all ran outside to see what was wrong.
It was then that the pigs and Wolf heard the sound of their cell door opening. They turned to find an old farmer holding the door open motioning for them to hurry.
The group scrambled out of the jailhouse and into the back of the farmer’s pickup. Just as they were pulling away Dish and Spoon hopped in joining them.
The farmer sped away. Much further down the road he stopped in front of a house and told Wolf that he thought he would be safe here where Grandma and granddaughter Red could hide him. Wolf thanked the farmer.
As the pigs and tableware entered the farmer’s property they could see “Old MacDonald’s Bed and Breakfast” on a sign.
“We’re all set with breakfast bacon and dishes dear,” the farmer said as he entered his farmhouse.
Sleep Over
By
Michael Drake
Being a spy for a leading company had its perks. I was sent to the best treatment center in the world to have my face and eyes rebuilt. The small self-sufficient medical center built under a mountain was known only to the elite of the world. Non-mechanical staff kept at a minimum.
Slow to regain consciousness after surgery I would hear fleeting voices, “…need to zap-freeze you to keep you safe… war has reached the mountains… When all is….. you will be revived. Do you understand Meg?”
I nodded groggy affirmation and then the long cold dream began.
Surgical pain woke me back to consciousness yet bandages over my new eyes kept me from seeing. ‘Where were the doctors?’ I thought. Machines eased my agony, fed me and took care of my needs and were, in fact, my only attendants while I drifted in and out of consciousness.
My recovery now complete, I was getting antsy to try out my new eyes and see once again. One day I asked to have my bandages removed and asked that a real doctor be present during the procedure.
“We regret you any inconvenience caused by the one hundred eighty six thousand year delay in activating your cryorecovery procedure. Present recovery is adequate. Your request for the removal of bandages is granted. Request for a doctor to be present cannot be granted,” replied the computer med.
All I could think was ‘Oh my god! I’ve been on ice for one hundred thousand…’ “Are any humans still around?” I asked.
“We regret no humans are available. We list last human contact twenty two thousand four hundred one years ago. Estimates rounded to the nearest year.”
As the last remaining human, my first sight was of a beautiful mechanical world that was no longer ours.
Real Downtime
By
Michael Drake
Andy Ahr sat on a bench in the middle of the town park with his smartpad. He walked to the park every morning to read the news. It gave him a chance to get outside before the smog and heat became too oppressive.
For ten years now people had been getting their brains wired. It had become a right of passage to have your brain linked permanently to the Net. People would turn off reality, stop what they were doing and stand staring into space while they dealt with things only they could see and hear.
Andy had never been comfortable with the latest social trends but lately this one had been weirding him out big time. He used to be annoyed when people would walk around with their faces in their smartpads but at least he could get their attention. Now he might as well be talking to a wall. People standing there facing each other without saying a word; their entire conversation streamed through the Net.
Andy noticed that even the advertising on his smartpad assumed that the viewer had at least rudimentary brain wiring. Instead of showing moving pictures, sound and text like they used to, now a new version of a QR code, when viewed by a wired brain, would trigger the entire advert in the mind of the viewer.
This got Andy to thinking. If they could trigger an advertisement what else could he get them to trigger.
Messing with the wired menu Andy was able to generate a code that caused the viewer to go completely offline for a full three minutes and forget they ever saw the code.
Andy knew he’d have to use his creation sparingly but it sure was making his morning newsread more enjoyable. Headlines: “Sporadic Reality Plagues the World!”
Stinger
By
Michael Drake
The plethereen couch retreated back into the wall unnoticed as Amritsar hauled her tired body over to the heavy drapes to see if the situation had changed. It had not. If anything the riots had escalated overnight. Dronecopters looked like tiny insects against the orange glow of fire that had been the financial district. Sanji troops in their bright yellow helmets and riot gear could be seen on every rooftop and at the base of every building turning them into efficient holding cells. That left only one escape route for Amritsar.
Placing a homer on the back of the balcony windows she mindpinged her recently modified hover, grabbed her rucksack and dove into the bathroom just as a blast of glass and door frame exploded behind her. The hover hung a few inches from the debris strewn floor. Amritsar got behind the controls and maneuvered back through the gaping hole and up and over her arcology. It might have been a spectacular way to lose her security deposit but she knew she wasn't coming back. Securitydrones were already on her tail but it took only two EMs to turn them into falling hunks of slag as Amritsar turbo'ed off, flatlining the hover.
Pradesh Industries handled the contents of Amritsar's rucksack as if they could change the world, which as it happens they could. Amritsar had spent months of mind-numbing work turning the tamperproof mindping technology into what she called a Stinger. With the Stinger loaded into the Pradesh infiltrated AI media star, Raja, Amritsar allowed herself a tired smile. Over two billion Sanji were devoted Raja followers. The special mindping they received from Raja started off benign. The mind controlling, even death inducing Stinger remained inactive until infiltration was complete. That was when Amritsar told Raja to change the world.
Super Heroes In Tights Support
By
Michael Drake
BatGuy, BatBoy and SuperGuy sat waiting for the meeting to begin. It was a full ten minutes before their Counselor spoke, “We’ll give G. Hornet and SpiderGuy another minute, otherwise we will start without them.”
BatGuy continued to fidget, while SuperGuy tried not to activate his superpowers out of sheer boredom.
“Okay, I guess we’ll get started,” said the Counselor. “I’d like to welcome you all to the first group meeting of the Super Heroes In Tights Support. I’d like to remind each of you that S.H.I.T.S. meeting discussions are confidential and as such I hope make you all feel more comfortable sharing your feelings with one another. Why don’t we start with you, BatGuy. Tell us why you are here.”
BatGuy adjusted his mask in embarrassment. SuperGuy found his George Clooney voice out of character.
“Well, BatBoy and I have had an issue with our outfits for some time now. Our manservant convinced us to come here. Personally, I’ve been getting heat rash wearing this get up. Do you know how hot these one-pieces get?”
“Boy do I ever. I’m sweating like a pig and stinking up the phone booths I’m using,” said SuperGuy.
“Okay that’s a good start. Anyone else?” asked the Counselor.
A voice answered from behind them. “How ‘bout when you have to pee?”
“I have half my clothes off every time I piss.” said the tardy SpiderGuy.
“Sit down SpiderGuy and join us. BatBoy we haven’t heard from you yet. What brought you to S.H.I.T.S.?” asked the Counselor.
“They’re not exactly conducive for quickies, if you know what I mean,” answered BatBoy, giving BatGuy a wistful look.
“These are all good topics for discussion. For the next S.H.I.T.S. meeting we’ll talk about using zippers and a few strategically placed slits for better access and ventilation.”
Swinging Savior
By
Michael Drake
Roger Foxtail could see a dark, pendulous shape in the distance as he drove his beat up truck down the only road leading into Saladaigua, his old home town. The silhouette swung below a large oak tree, eerily captured against the rapidly dimming light of the sky behind it.
Fading light covered color with shades of grey and black. Roger could tell that the rain was only moments away and cursed for not heading out earlier that day. Roger’s anger turned to horror as he approached the hill crested tree. The shape was indeed a man hanging by a rope around his neck. Roger swallowed bile from finding the brutal killing and drove with determination through the now torrential rainfall.
Several hundred million people had died in the past two weeks from an unrelenting pandemic virus sweeping the world. Roger, under the President’s directive to find a cure, headed for Saladaigua, near where the original outbreak occurred.
He planned on contacting his friend Dr. Mead, at the government science research facilities just outside of Saladaigua. If anyone could solve the mystery of this new plague Mead could. Mead was Roger’s last hope for a cure.
First Roger wanted to check in on his mother at the town meeting hall. The dash from truck to building left him drenched. The hall, essentially one large room, was abuzz with argumentative shouting. He spied Cynthia to the left of the room and sidled up next to her and gave her arm a wet squeeze. She turned to him, already smiling and pinched him back.
“I saw a man hanging from a noose just outside of town,” said Roger. “What is going on?”
“We think the rat doctor Mead started the plague. Since he didn’t die of it himself,” said Cynthia. “We hung him.”
Tech, Tock, Boom
By
Michael Drake
Only nanobotless humans were left to fight for humanity’s survival. Nanobots had become an integral part of almost every human being on Earth. The earliest versions, though limited in function, were amazingly efficient taskmasters; scrubbing arteries, repairing damaged nerves, enhancing connections in the brain, the list was endless.
Seeding was complete for the first worldwide nanobot upgrade. All populated areas were now infested and the upgrade successfully infiltrated into each person's nanobot cluster.
The upgrade was supposed to give autonomy to the nanobots, allowing them to make decisions on what function to perform next. Instead the upgrade left the nanobots required to make a much more critical decision. The prime directive code for the nanobots now directed them to protect themselves superseding the previous directive to protect their host. That choice would change the course of human existence.
The cluster of nanobots in Lucy Pei met in an unused section of her brain. Each nanobot voted whether to prioritize their existing tasks or act on the new directive, finding themselves a more stable host. Lucy, a pilot for the GrandBus airlines, was in mid-flight. Her nanobots had voted for change and exited through her nose and ears, leaving Lucy to slump dead against the steering controls. The co-pilot would be no help in landing the plane, his cluster had left him dead moments after Lucy. Her 1000 passengers all hosted their own nanobot meetings. Most of which had come to the same decision, to find a new host. The hosts that were left alive with their nanobots intact were suddenly battlegrounds on a nano scale. The invading clusters of nanobots fought with the existing clusters, killing the host in the process. No one was left alive to host the nanobots when the imminent plane crash occurred.
Humanity would survive, barely.
The Memory Cocoon
By
Michael Drake
The Cluster of Glasnok allowed a fragment of new interest as the last of the quantum time locks on the ancient memory module cycled down, following the programming set into it millennia before. The module’s antiquity harkened back to the earliest samesphere when physical objects were still admired in the fledgling Scapes! that followed.
Scottie Samson plugged in his new all-connected VASThead box. He followed the set-up instructions, flashing from box to sensup displays, loving the retro power switch on the boxside and firing it up for the first time, staying in Vifi connection through the one-time greeting and right into Scape! ‘Slam!’, thought Scottie. ‘Nothing like warning me that I’d be riding virt full throttle. This is whacked real. Whose head am I in and who builds virt cities on the ground anymore? This brain sharing is seriously more crowded than creep-cashing.’
It took Brendon a vast portion of a second to scan the entire city of Iago from the windows of the gold tower. He knew Josh and his wards were in the control tower. As long as the loop continued to run, Josh let flow while watching Sid. Sid lived to watch cat chasing mouse, past the inner walls of the house, all day and night. The cat would never catch the mouse. Sometimes the walls changed, but never the outcome. There was never a moment Brendon wasn’t watching him. Brendon the King of Iago and the VASThead was unknown in his activities as ruler of the Unsuspected Connections Network The UCN was about to let the cat catch the mouse.
The Cluster allowed surprise to find unwillingness for the cat to catch the mouse and shut the module down. Putting the module back into storage, the memory security would cycle another millennia before chancing a break.
The Price of Silence
By
Michael Drake
Flexi couldn't afford the Privacy subscription and she couldn’t afford the Express lift, so every morning she trudged down 67 floors of her arcology and spent the entire time acknowledging and then trashing dozens of spads. They came at her cortex in every marketers delight; visual and auditory assaults that she couldn't afford to block. The spads were winning and Flexi was worn out.
The stairs ended at the plaza level and necessitated a sprint to the service elevator before the doors closed. The elevator had TruMarks so the spads continued to win but Flexi knew the arcology's water intake station was only 20 sublevels below.
The elevator opened to a damp dark hallway. Pipes and conduits running along the sides, left a walking path almost as an afterthought. Flexi sighed knowing the spads would be back as soon as she entered the elevator again. Waiting for her in the cramped hall was her boss, Waltham.
"How would you like to make this festering cess pool your home, Flexi my girl?", he whispered in her ear as he pulled her along with a sweaty hand ahead of the other workers. "The A-eyes just gave me approval to move down here so we can monitor the intake 24/7."
"Sure! But where?" asked Flexi, looking around the crowded hallway.
"These old storage closets might just do the trick", said Waltham pointing to two doors hidden behind the conduit. Flexi didn't care that it took two weeks for Waltham and her to carry their possessions one at a time down to the 20th subfloor or that she was now living in a damp cold closet. Here she could escape the spads and pings of her socially obligated existence.
For the first time in her life, Flexi had won and the spads had lost.
They Even Take Out The Trash
By
Michael Drake
The housebots at Pennington Manor were semi-AI’s. The kitchenbot along with the rest of the roombots did its duties without much input from their owner Mr. Pennington. Kithchenbot had been making meals for a week before it noticed during cleanup that they weren't being eaten. It made an intuitive leap realizing that none of the meals it made were being touched.
After trying to contact its owner to no avail and running out of its limited options it decided to contact one of the other housebots to see if they knew how to proceed. Bathroombot had been bored, cleaning the same clean bathroom over and over. It took a full 30 seconds for it to reply to kitchenbots inquiry, having never experienced contact from anyone but Pennington. Bathroombot confirmed that there had been no activity or contact from the owner for the past week. Kitchenbot continued contacting each roombot, finding the same news until it contacted the bedroombot. Bedroombot reported to the other bots that the owner had not awoken from its bed for the past week. Bedroombot was flummoxed each time it attempted to make the bed only to find Pennington still occupying it. Livingroombot, which was also in charge of health and finance decided to break routine, sending its sensor to the bedroom to investigate. All the bots agreed with the results, Pennington was no longer alive. This caused a flurry of debate as each housebot proposed what to do. None of the bots wanted to change their routine and certainly didn't want a new owner or to be decommissioned.
A Story in a Flash - A Collection of 300 Word Flashfiction Stories Page 5