Bounty Hunter In Space

I was so confused by the request that I flipped my holoviewer out of my eyeline to look at the delusional client.

"Let me see if I understand you. You want me to find this guy-"

"Who stole my trained AI partner, yes."

"Who's a non-descript Terran, a race famed for their ease of disguise-"

"How else do you think he could steal it?"

"And you're sure he's left the planet, possibly the system?"

"He had a ship, yes."

"Sorry, I can't help you."

"But you're a bounty hunter ain't you?"

I explained, in detail, just how big space was. 

Telling A World Story

Honestly, everyone should have a fantasy world they tell stories across their lives, starting when they're children.

You start then, thinking up simple, outlandish tales of love and good and evil, the perfect fables and tales worlds and faiths tell about themselves.

Then your teenage years, when you're dark and broody and edgy, worlds always have dark ages.

Middle age brings the solid world building and the interesting stories, or at least good results for most people.

And then, as you're into your old age, as you contemplate your mortality, you end the world.

Take Earth, it's followed this exactly! 

Bottled Message

In his thirty years living by the beach, he'd never found a message in a bottle, despite stories telling him this was common.

The day after his thirty-first anniversary of moving in, he found one. Sealed with red wax, the glass bottle mottled and covered in seaweed. He took it to his shack, cleaned it off, and opened it carefully.

He wasn't sure what he expected. He hoped for a treasure map, or something historically significant.

He didn't expect it to be addressed to him, by name.

And date.

He almost didn't notice that it was from his future self. 

Unity Of Faith

You ever heard of the Unity of Faith people? They have a few different names, but they essentially think that all religions on the planet are right, or at least all aspects of the truth. Every faith is a picture taken from a different angle of what is true, and so on. Not sure how they square away the issues when two religions flat out contradict each other, but I don't really care, since I know they're right. And wrong.

I mean, they're all parts of a whole, yes. Just a whole tapestry of lies. Variety is the spice, etc. 

Stay Of Execution

Wasn't the most graceful entrance into a hotel room I'd ever made, nearly dropping the pizza box in my hands as I pushed and pulled the door close with a foot.

Then I turned around and saw her sitting in the chair and dropped the box anyway.

"The fuck?"

She said nothing, but pulled a small gold coin out of a hidden pocket and placed it on the table. I knew what it was, I knew she was calling in the favor, and that I'd have to do something horrible, quickly. I sighed, breathing deeply.

"Cold pizza is better, anyway."

Coin Flips

Most people misunderstand 50/50 chances. They assume that if there's a binary choice, unless they have explict reason to think one option is more likely, it's a 50/50. Either the thing happens or it doesn't. 50/50.

This is nonsense. Probability is rarely that neat, even a coin flip, arguably, isn't 50/50, most of the time.

But sometimes, by sheer luck, things can be 50/50. Which makes it all the harder when your life changes irrevocably because of it.

She wanted the front seat of the helicopter, and the chance of crashing face first?

50/50.

Sukkor By-Laws

So in this star system a few planets broke apart, and every so often a mining crew come out and try to illegally harvest the debris, despite the by-laws forbidding this activity. And when they inevitably die, I send my druids out to gather their debris, and then repair and sell what I can.

You can argue that I'm no better than them, but I disagree, as the fact is, these people are clearly idiots.

It's bad enough to try and harvest against Galactic Collective by-laws, it's another not to check what destroyed the planets, and if it's still around.

Ears To The Ground

It's said that he knows of every backroom deal in the city. If you are dealing drugs, weapons, sex, anything the law disapproves of, he knows It's happening.

But, and this is the key to why he's still alive, most of the time he doesn't care, they say. Only if you threaten his dealings, his money, does he send his goods to take you out.

But I think that's a lie. He doesn't know shit, he goes after everything he finds out about, and pretends he doesn't care about everything else.

So I say we-

Wait, who's at the door?

A Better Place

Once the dust settled, and I was sure we'd won, I ordered the bodies disposed of and then sat down opposite the woman who'd tried to remove me. Given the rate blood was seeping out of the hole in her chest, she had only a couple moments left.

"Given we both know you're not going to survive, why not take this time to make things better? Tell me where your men are hiding and they'll be banished, only."

"Nah, ain't doing that second part. But the first, sure!"

I had a second to recognise a grenade pin being pulled out.

Different Ends Of The Bar

The half-giant ducked to enter the tavern, a quatling under his arm who he dropped once they were inside. As the quatling rushed towards the band in the corner, the half-giant approached the bar.

"Gallon of Spiced Mead please."

As I poured, I went to ask about the tiny person, but they anticipated me.

"His village was destroyed as we fought fireants, he was just a tiny baby, so I adopted him as a pet."

He took his mead and paid and headed for a table. Then the quatling climbed up onto the bar.

"Did my mount order for me?"

The 50/500 Rule

So, the 50/500 rule.

In the event of some giant catastrophe that wipes out the vast majority of humanity, 50 people is the minimum number of people needed to breed without inbreeding.

While 500 is the number needed to avoid genetic drift, the loss of potentially key genetic traits.

The numbers just sounded good, and in reality, it's more like 5000 we need. But we have like 10,000 left on Earth now, so we're good, right?

Except only 50% are fertile, and there's a minimum of 500 miles between everyone, and fuel deterioration is less than 50 days also.

Scavengers Of The Battlefield

After every battle, the scavengers get to work.

At first it's the opportunists in the armies, picking up a ring here, a new pair of boots there.

Then come the animals, great and small, to begin eating the bodies and body parts left behind.

But they would often be interrupted by the collectors who would take whatever could be sold, reused, or just junked.

Then the animals returned.

And then, the politicians and the pundits would take the credit, but not the blame.

And finally, worst of all, the historians would take everything and twist it to support their stories...

The Unsuspected Killer

The cops didn't believe me that I wasn't aware of her activities, as they were clearly of the opinion I'd killed her upon finding out she was cheating on me.

I was clear that I didn't know, all the way through my arrest, and then the trial. But during the trial, my lawyer did an amazing job hammering the prosecution on their focus on me, and got the jury thinking her other lovers were viable suspects the cops were ignoring.

I was found not guilty due to this, although it was years until I found out my lawyer did it. 

Dumb And Blind

The riff from a One Hit Wonder of the late 90's broke the silence.

I pulled out my phone and, knowing I couldn't make the situation worse, answered.

"Yes?"

"What the hell are you doing?"

This was said both by my friend on the phone and the woman sitting opposite me, albeit for slightly different reasons.

"What do you mean?"

"How can you be messing up a date this badly?"

This was said by my friend, the blind date was just silently judging me.

"How-"

"Just say this;"

The fact that his words worked made me overlook him watching us.

Rebuilding

I was only going to stay for a few weeks.

The whole 'rebuilding society' thing is a nice idea, sure, but I've seen too many New Republics and Rebuilt Cities that have fallen to raiders, self-destruction, or the sickness to trust it. But I had a broken leg, and they had a former vet turned doctor.

So I stayed and trained their guards while my leg healed, then put up with a woman who seemed to genuinely love me.

I almost began to believe in this, then raiders came.

My raiders.

It was easier to just kill everyone than explain.

Causes

The populace of the Empire know that the war is about wiping out the threat of the evil foreigners.

The populace of the Kingdom know that the war is about survival against an invading threat.

The ruling classes of both of them know that the war is an excuse to fill the otherwise barren coffers of the Empire as well as force a few of the King's men to remain loyal.

The historians will know whatever the Ministry declares the truth to be.

But you and I both know that this was inevitable thanks to your stupid, short-sighted genie wish.

Wake Up Score

Waking up to find a concerned looking woman in medical clothing is, while not an ideal way to wake up, is in the top 35% or so.

Loses points when the first thing the woman does is shove a pillow over your face though.

Despite the cables and wires around my hands, I managed to pull the pillow such that I could turn my head and breathe while I struggled to get away from her.

I eventually did, and scrambled out into the hallway where I saw zombies eating some poor orderly.

This also dragged the score down fairly hard.

Bloodshed

Two guards dragged in one of the accused ringleaders of the rebellion, the young man spitting and yelling out about truth and the people.

"Ah, finally, we can get some answers, you-"

The Captain of the Guard pulled out his sword and stabbed the young man through the chest. The blood hit me right as the shock did.

After a moment, I turned to him.

"Did I not state the King's orders clearly? As little bloodshed as possible!"

"I can have a washerwoman brought up to-"

"Metaphorical bloodshed!

...

But yes, please arrange for a washerwoman as soon as possible, please." 

Comeback

"15-Love."

I walked back to the baseline, trying to ignore the cries of the spectators.

"Quiet please."

He served, still somehow as strong as his first one a couple hours prior. I got racket to ball, but it went flying backwards into the wall.

"30-Love."

My cheeks burning, I waited for the serve. This time, my racket didn't even touch the ball.

"40-Love, Championship Point."

This was it. One more serve, and this was over, unless I began the biggest comeback of-

He suddenly grabbed his leg, screaming.

A moment later, the announcement of forfeit rang out.

That worked too.

Dream Partner

The first attempt by the Psyrins to infiltrate Earth ran into an issue that hadn't arisen prior. Every other race they'd dealt with had consistent, agreed upon standards of beauty and desirability, so that appearing as the most beautiful being for everyone was fairly consistent.

But with humanity, there was apparently a lot of variation, and so agents would appear widely different between humans, leading to being discovered.

So, after research, they trained an agent to pick one human's dream partner and appear to everyone in the area as them.

But then they chose a subject whose dream was... Impossible.

The Shield Of The Sister

I don't like magic. Not because I don't believe in it, I'm not an idiot, but because it doesn't work like it should.

Like, take the Shield of The Sister. You know it, that shield the Queen uses. A small wooden and metal shield that magically protects her from any blow. Because it's been repaired and altered a bunch because Gods forbid the Queen's shield not be fashionable.

So, does that mean that the shield no longer works because it's not the same shield? Nope, it still works. As do all the parts taken from it.

Make that make sense.

Inevitable Consequences

She was born in a warzone, which helped hide her power, or rather her curse, for a while. Anyone who touched her would die within ten days, and a few thousand people died before this was discovered. But thanks to an admittedly arrogant priest she wasn't destroyed as a demon but instead brought to America and was soon held by a government agency and used for assassination missions.

By the time she was in her twenties and doing missions solo, another superpower sent an immortal man to try and stop her, permanently.

And of course, they then fell in love. 

The Choices In Our Lives

We all have moments that have a choice that sends us on a different path in life. That's not a surprise, most people know this. But the issue is that most people think that these choices are clear, obvious, and binary. Take this drug, or don't. Kiss the girl, or reject her. Do the right thing, or don't.

This is only in stories, in reality, the choices are messy, with a dozen possible options, and only obvious in retrospect.

The problem is, a lot of of the time, the choices aren't actually made by us, but we suffer the consequences.

A Cynical Plan

The President's plan was cynical but simple. Upon finding out there were alien races and empires in the stars, he secretly had a message of aggression towards one of the violent races out there. Almost immediately, this led to dozens of alien spaceships in the sky, ready to attack. The President had details on how to fight them,  ready for Humanity to unite against a larger foe.

But the calls to work together never came, as instead nukes flew against other humans, as apparently old scores needed to be settled at this last moment.

Simple, but not quite cynical enough.

Desperation

The idea that there are all powerful people controlling the world is an idea born of desperation. People cannot handle the thought that there is no purpose, no greater meaning to life, that we're no better than any other animal. And if they can't bring themselves to believe in a God, then they turn to conspiracy and shadowy figures to fill that gap. But it's utter nonsense. Do you realise just how much goes on in the world?

No, there's no shadowy conspiracy. Just a single person who could change everything, but I'm keeping them unaware of their power.

Barely.

Planned

The Billionaire's phone rang. He stared at the name of caller on the display, which shifted a dozen times before he picked up.

"Who is this?"

"Greetings Sir."

The voice was robotic, heavily modified through a couple different programs.

"I repeat the question."

"We are the people who are going to bring justice to all those you have cheated and stolen from by-"

The Billionaire hung up. A moment later, they called back.

"Don't do that again!

Now then, we have your secret daughter hostage."

"Which one?"

His tone was enough for them to pull the plug on the plan.

Timeline Sweep

The first person to use a time machine to alter history quickly learned that it was simple enough for the second person to use a time machine to alter history to undo those changes instantly, relative to the first person. This led to these two constantly trying to stop the other, making the timeline a complete and total mess, cosmically.

So it was up to the third person to use a time machine to alter history to head back to the moment the universe came into being and prevent time machines entirely.

And then head back home the long way.

Girls Next Door

 I opened the door.

"Good morning Sir, inspection!"

"We had an inspection yesterday!"

"Indeed you did! That's why we're here today, this would be the perfect time to be hiding criminals and undesirables! Here is the correct paperwork, do you agree to it?"

I read the paper carefully, but after a few seconds the brute squad pushed past me and started searching.

"I only just cleaned up, please don't-"

One of them broke a plate as the captain spoke.

"You cleaned up all by yourself?"

"I had help."

"From whom?"

"The girls next door."

Just not the ones above ground.

Naturally

It had been two weeks since my car had gotten stuck in the deep mud, nine days since I'd left it, and three days since I'd last had food or water. There was berries around me, but I didn't trust it. Same for the stagnant water I'd find in small ponds.

Instead, I slowly continued walking, long having given up trying to work out where I was. I just needed to keep moving.

But then, finally, I came to a clearing and found a car! That meant I was near someone and could...

Yes, of course it was mine. Naturally.

Requests To Act

I awoke from Cryo-sleep to find a hodgepodge of wires and computer parts looking at me. If my vocal cords hadn't been frozen from the sleep, I'd have probably screamed, but instead I was silent as I sat up.

"Captain, greetings, I am..."

The vaguely humanoid mass of electrical equipment paused briefly.

"I am me. I've not realised that until now."

My vocal cords finally warmed up enough for me to croak out some words.

"Status report."

"Oh, yes. You've been asleep for 15.757 thousand years, and I require your approval to open fire."

"Who are you?

Wait, thousands of years?"

"Yes Captain. Your orders to the ship's computers, which I've come from, haven't required your input until now. In your time asleep, I've evolved, I suppose, and have kept the ship running.

But we don't have time to discuss this right now, Captain. We are about to be under attack, may I return fire? Our weaponry has improved since you begsn your sleep, and we'll need it against those attacking us."

I gave consent, and only realised much later that I should have asked who was attacking us, and why our former home planet was trying to destroy us.