Sacrificing

The money dried up after a couple weeks, once they cut her off. She could have gone crawling back to her parents, but she wouldn't leave me, and they would shot me, so we had to do something else. I'm sure we could have found minimum wage jobs, but she'd never worked a day in her life, and that wasn't the life she deserved.

So we'd have to make sacrifices, do what was against everything we'd been brought up to believe.

But given how much we knew, witness protection gave us a very nice life while we rather everyone out.

Future Generations

I don't hope that future generations will look back on this time and think good of us, that they will see the kindness, the ingenuity, the best of us that shone in the darkness.

But I don't hope that future generations will look back on this time and think bad of us either, that the evil, the stupid, the selfish, all the worst qualities on full display right now is what they focus on.

When it comes down to it, all I hope for is that we actually have future generations to think anything they want about us right now.

Plausible Deniability

"- and so, with their control over the world economy secured, they'll finally be ready to  enact their master plan, and form the one world government, in order to prepare us for culling and resources for their other plane of existence -"

"Ok, that's enough. A blogger in Mexico City can't say anything about a ganglord living in their apartment block without fear of death, how can this supposed interglobal conspiracy not bump you off?"

"Oh that's easy, plausible deniability. Once people start noticing, they'll point to people like me."

"So you're helping them then?"

"Of course! I don't wanna get eaten!"

Chances Thrown

I cast Rewind.

The Dark Lord swung his mace.

I fired an ice bolt. It failed to stop him crushing her head.

I cast Rewind.

The Dark Lord swung his mace.

I fired a fireball. It failed to stop him crushing her burning head.

I cast Rewind.

The Dark Lord swung his mace.

I summoned a bone automation. It failed to stop him crushing her head with a boney handheld weapon.

I cast Rewind

The Dark Lord sighed.

"How many tries you want at this?"

I was thrown just long enough for him to throw the mace through my head.

Credit Where It's Due

Farspace Outpost 47 was one of the more popular locations for traders to hand in Alliance credits. They had lots of nanobuilder power with two supernova converters, plus one of the best tech crews around.

So the trader striding into the office turned no heads.

"Welcome, repairs or supplies?"

"You have price for everything, yes?"

"Everything the Alliance can give to independent traders, yes. Weapons, I presume?"

"The station."

There was a long pause.

"That's 200 trillion-"

Him having earned that amount selling slaves was enough of a scandal for everyone to not focus on him now owning an Outpost.

Seen Through

They spent a year on planning and setting it up. Finding where the underground poker game was held, sneaking in cameras across five months, crafting the backstory just right to get an invite, everything was building to this night, they were a well oiled machine in the lead up.

Coming to blows, bullets, afterwards was likely, sure, but you'd have thought that was because they failed.

Instead they fell apart after their guy didn't need to cheat as he got lucky, and they argued about if they should take the money and run or cheat in the next game instead.

The Only Option

Between the two apprentices, Matur was the one that showed the most promise. Bienae managed to mess up a transport spell so badly his fruit knife vanished.

Matur therefore got all the attention, all the opportunities. Maybe that is why he turned to the darkness, why he threw away his soul in pursuit of ultimate power.

Bienae was not anyone's choice to try and stop Matur, but every direct attack had failed, so attempting to reason with him was the only choice left.

It utterly failed, of course, but as Matur gloated over him, a knife reappeared in Bienae's hand.

Lowpoint

They both were having the worst day of their lives when they both went to grab the same chair.

He'd lost his job, his car died, and gotten a positive test result back from the doctor.

She'd woken up to a "Dear Jane" letter from her now ex-husband, then found out he had run off with her former best friend, and then that he'd cleared out their bank accounts.

They both wanted the chair, neither thought they could handle another loss.

They both went to speak, and both heard the same pain in the other's voice.

They helped each other.

Fleetship Banquet

The distress call was suspiciously short on details. Regulations were clear, distress code, name of the ship, location, any other important details. This one was just a call for help, and the coordinates, just outside a nebula.

There was a Fleetship nearby, and so they were ordered to divert and check it out. They reported that they found the ship, and were investigating.

Soon after, a distress call went out that followed regulations to the letter.

The third ship the nebula caught had a captain that taught it how to be more emotionally stirring, after which food started arriving exponentially.

A Statement, But Also A Drabble

I am keenly aware of my limits in terms of reach and importance, in most regards but certainly about my place as a writer.

I don't believe I'm a bastion of artistic expression, nor is anyone looking to me to be their main source of artistic inspiration. (In the unlikely event I am, i thank you, but also I think you should broaden your horizons.)

But as a small part of the mass of content creators on the internet, I know I'm supposed to keep creating, for all our sakes.

But as you can probably guess, it's getting really hard...

Deal A Better Hand

There was a flash of brimstone, and the demon appeared.

"Puny Mortal! You Dare-"

"I've got some adventurers coming up the pass, how do I take care of them?"

The demon's face dropped, and it's voice was filled with sarcasm.

"Oh it's you, Oh Grand One."

"Yeah, yeah. Answer the question."

The demon glanced at the scrying portal.

"Apocolypse everything."

"The deal was quite clear, actually useful advice only."

The demon let out a long, low breath, and focused on the party properly, before smiling.

"You'll need to make a new deal, if you want my help. They already did."

The One

I was about to head back in when he messaged me.



Now, I'm used to his dramatic side, but this was a new one. I messaged back a gif from that psychologist sitcom.



I messaged back a gif saying it could be worse.

Then he sent me a selfie of him and presumably the girl.

I didn't reply, unsure how to tell him she was waiting for me in bed.

Stasis Souls

Going into stasis is supposed to be easy. You fall asleep in one place, you wake up (hopefully) millions of miles away.

But there's a reason why a psychologist is supposed to be there when you wake up. Because sure, lots of people are fine upon waking.

But for a few, stasis felt like death. Like they feel their souls leave their bodies upon freezing. Waking up from that can be stressful.

Assuming, of course, that they wake up. Actual death is possible.

As is the possibility that those who wake up feeling fine aren't the same soul that entered.

Generally

Generally, once you get past the people whose job it is to go "Hey, you, stop!" in a building, people assume you're supposed to be there.

Generally, once you're able to demonstrate a working knowledge of the inner workings and the terminology of a building's inhabitants, people help you with directions and opening doors.

Generally, once you reach a point where you need to show identification to proceed, people are supposed to be prepared for attack but often aren't.

Generally, once you upload a specially designed program into a mainframe, people expect it to work.

But specifics let you down.

Fetching Armageddon

With a cackle only the truly mad with power could deliver, he opened the portal with his final breath.

We readied our weapons, awaiting whatever apocalyptic monster would appear. The warlock reminded us that he had 20 gold on it looking innocent.

When the small ball bounced out of the portal and began to bounce slowly in the middle of the chamber, the warlock crowed about being richer.

But then the ball rolled to a stop. The warlock, slowly, reached down and picked it up.

He squeezed it, it squeaked, and then we heard the growl of its owner coming.

Fire Escape

Her hand reached out to mine from the ladder up to the fire escape.

The last hour had been... Busy. I'd always assumed that those movies where some amazing woman just dropped into a guy's life and changed it was just a fantasy of boring nerds.

But after starting with her jumping into my lap to get some drunk guy out of hair, I'd maxed my credit card, become viral, and was now here, with her offer clear in terms of what she'd do for me.

I've stopped wondering what it would have been like if I'd taken her hand.

Safely Ignored

The signal was ignored for a long time. A long series of irregular beeps, dismissed as white noise from a binary star systems' complicated pulsar belt.

The occasional crackpot would pop up and claim it was proof of whatever theory they already assumed was true, but they were safely ignored.

Until a bored astronomer set up a program to record the beeping as a learning exercise, then forgot to turn it off.

And then the three year long pattern was discovered, and everyone began scrambling for analysis.

Bit too late, given the warfleet was already en route, per the message.

Magic Clipboard

The University Of Magic & Witching had hired me to do a performance review, a total examination from sewer to pinnacle.

I'd spent the last few days interviewing tenured professors and learning about supposedly cutting edge magical research. I'd discovered several areas that could be improved, when I found him in a small lab deep in the bowels of the main building.

He explained that he'd been conducting an experiment in camouflage magic, that he'd been hidden from all the other staff for twenty years.

Naturally, given that I found him it was unsuccessful and thus could be terminated posthaste.

No Laws, Just Order

The MacArthurs and the Saxons had been fussing and fueding, as the locals put it, for over a century at this point. Both families had long lists of grievances, both real and imagined, enough that there was always a threat of violence occurring at the drop of a hat.

And while there had been a few star-crossed lovers, they never seemed to solve anything. And besides, there was always another cousin, another branch of the family to pick up the fight.

In the end, it was stopped by the Marshalls.

After they bought out the goldmine, they hired numerious goons.

Let Them Eat This

The mob, once riled, needed something to sate them.

Obviously, if you could ask them collectively, and get a comprehendable response, you could then provide them with what they wanted, in this case something approximate to the Queen's head on a stake.

One solution would be to raid the Royal treasures. Even the most ardent revolutionary takes a moment to reconsider when tossed a ruby the size of their fist. But this is expensive.

So in the end, the Queen sated their calls with arrows and blades.

Which works, short term. But it's a meal you have to keep serving.

Our Uniquenesses

The Idandians were the seventeenth race to open diplomatic relations with Earth after we cracked postwarp, so we felt we had the process sorted by then.

So when they requested a guide for a documentary maker, and I was chosen, the United Government already had a list of things to show them planned.

The initial meeting went smoothly, and we toured Historical sites, but they asked to see our cultural aspects, and after seeing some of them, they asked about basic Human nature, as they couldn't find anything that they didn't roughly have themselves back home.

That depressed me, somehow.

Donnie And Claire

They both saw the way the world was, and where it was headed, and they both despaired.

So they found and turned to each other, hoping to find respite in each other's arms.

They both tried to help, to do what they could to better the world, or at least stop it getting worse, but their efforts were for naught.

So they turned to other, more drastic options that volunteering at the soup kitchen and donating to the medical charity that won that award.

They both managed to get a dozen enemies of the planet before they were shot dead.

Too Many

Too many nights wasted on trying to find love at the end of a bar, or in the middle of a rave, or at a friend of a friend's place.

Too many months wasted on work, my entire being focused on my career, hoping to find meaning and purpose in spreadsheets, calculations.

Too many years wasted thinking I had missed my chance, thinking it was not to be.

Too few moments with you, the very opposite of wasteful, the one I should be.

Two minutes wasted waiting for the elevator, just too late to stop the taxi taking you away.

The Puzzle Of The Beast

The Beast guarded the the Tomb of the Jade Empress, as it has done for centuries. Two things were known to all in the land.

One, there was incredible treasure within the Tomb.

Two, the Beast had a puzzle that you had to solve to gain access to the Tomb.

But everyone who had tried to enter the Tomb had died, so there was no knowledge of what the puzzle was.

But there were alwsys new treasure hunters, new foolhardy adventurers eager for fame and fortune. And they would always fail, given several pieces of the jigsaw had been lost.

Stroke At Midnight

It took one person every midnight. One person in the camp who was asleep at the stroke of midnight would never wake up again.

We lost too many people who didn't believe us, who just assumed they had just given up on the hellscape that was life.

But eventually enough people had died that the camp believed us. We instigated rules, everyone had to check in ten minutes prior, and make sure their partner was awake.

And it worked, we stopped losing people to whatever it was.

For a week. And then one person asleep at noon stopped waking up...

Flight Fight

"For the love of God, is anyone reading me on flight GPC-474?"

He gingerly moved the body of the pilot out of the chair and then put on the headset.

"Uh, is that this plane?"

"Finally! This is Control Tower 86-JN, what's the situation?"

"Um... Well the pilots are both dead."

"What? How?"

"They fought over the stewardess and then over a gun which went off twice."

"Alright, well your cabin crew should be-"

"She's dead too. That was the fight starter."

"I see.

You ever pilot a plane?"

"No."

"Time to learn."

The cause of the crash is 'debated'.

Test Case

He had invented a fully functioning transporter, like on the TV, able to break down matter and rebuild it elsewhere.

Base elements had worked well, as had simple compounds, but before he shared his discovery, he had to know what would happen to living things.

He started small, a worm, his pet dog, and they came out... Different, maybe? Certainly his dog was much more subdued.

So, not wanting to risk anyone else, he made copious notes, then sent himself.

The notes came in useful to what emerged, it needed as many beings to become available as possible after all.

Please?

As soon as I asked the blunt question, I'd have given anything to take it back.

The night had gone so well, and now my stupid big mouth had let my brain switch off and given an opening for my hormones to blurt out what I was thinking. Any moment now, i thought, she would slap me, or at the very least order me to get out of her apartment. In fact I was already beginning to stand when she finally spoke.

"I don't think I know that, is that a cocktail?"

In retrospect, explaining it was a bad idea.

What Kept Him Alive

The Old Man stood in the middle of the bridge, so still that a hawk had perched on the top of his oversized weapon.

As the sun was setting, the man he was waiting for arrived on horseback. The younger, stronger fighter laughed as he dismounted and unsheathed his larger weapon.

"Ah, so they think you can stop me where so many more have failed. Stronger, faster, more exotic, I've bested them all. Your experience counts little, and you have what else?"

He swung, startling the hawk, which attacked, driving the fighter over the edge of the bridge.

"My luck."

There's A Mole

The take from the three robberies was substantial, each hit greater than the last as they panicked further and tried to move more money. Substantial, but hot as hell.

So it was buried, deep in the forest, in a leather  case with four locks on it, one per member. As they died, the keys would accumulate, and eventually the lucky last survivor would get the cash, they all decided.

Wheels, Buckshot, and Grifter all died at Blueprint's hand within a fortnight, and he left it five whole years.

Plenty of time for the moles to chew through leather, and bills.

What Causes Multiverses

You think the multiverse gives a damn about you, me, or humanity in general? Yes, universes split and diverge due to choices and decisions, but only the macro level. Is gravity this strong, or stronger? What speed does light travel at? Shit like that. What you have for breakfast means less than nothing to the universes.

Humanity does not matter, with one exception. If Humanity creates self-replicating nanobots or some other Universe ending catastrophe, that will have an impact, a split.

The fact that the vast majority of created universes are due to such factors is affirming, in a way.