Personal Ad

My grandfather would tell me about how as a young man he'd answer personal ads in the paper all the time, how at any point he'd have a dozen conversations going on at once. And how this led to him getting to know the girl at the post office, how they would talk as he posted his letters, and he'd discuss where the conversations were going, and how soon they were close. And him realising maybe she was his true love.

Which makes him marrying one of the women he met through the paper all the sadder, in a way.

Rainy Day Fund

Every time I had some spare cash, I put it into the money tin hidden in my filing cabinet. It was usually just a few dollars here and there, spare change, the occasional hundred when I won at the weekly poker game.

It was my rainy day fund, and today it was pouring, as a car had hit my girlfriend Misty, and since neither of us had insurance, I needed all the cash I could get.

So I pulled it out, opened it up, and found it full of IOUs from Misty.

When it rains it pours, it would seem.

Lucky Miss

I was, surprisingly, able to recognise when someone was making a pass at me. I went along with it, as much out of morbid curiosity than anything, as we ended up back at my place.

The sex was pretty good, for me at least.

In the morning, I woke to my phone buzzing and her crying. I asked what was wrong and she gave me this speech about how she'd made a mistake and we could never speak again. I agreed, then when she left I checked my phone, and saw the message saying I'd won millions in the lottery.

Timeloop Escape

As I poured seven different flavor shots into my iced coffee, there was a sudden burst of energy and a portal opened in the wall. A figure in a spacesuit looking thing attached to a tether came through, gesturing towards me.

"We've found a way to break you out of the timeloop!"

"What?"

"You must have lost track of time, you've been in a daily timeloop for a thousand years and-"

"1053, actually."

"Well, we can end it!"

I stared.

"I'm functionally immortal, at the cost of constantly repeating a day. Worth it."

The figure paused, then cut the tether. 

Homer Tate (1884–1975)

I pulled her out of the inky black seawater and into the boat.

"Welcome to the Homer."

She spat out some water and fiddled with her life jacket.

"Simpson or Alaska?"

"Uh, neither. The guy who wrote the Odyssey?"

She coughed and looked at me strangely as she began to remove her jacket.

"So why not name her after the boat from the book, rather than give her a male name?"

"Funnily enough, none of ships Odysseus captained are named, not even the one with the Sirens."

"Oh I know, but funny you should mention Sirens."

She began to sing.

Just A Cold

It's just a cold, I told myself. My tonsils were a little inflamed, doing their job of getting the virus there rather than further down, and my nose was a bit runny. Nothing too bad.

I told myself that even as it got worse and worse, as soon I was just moving back and forth between the bathroom, my bed, and my sofa where the air-conditioning was.

It was just a cold, I swore to myself, when I finally decided I needed to go to the doctor's. I never made it.

Because I crashed the car while blowing my nose.

Self-Destruction

In a thousand years after the incursion point, The Miyles Armada was stopped and crushed by the Post-Earth Alliance, led by a hundred legendary Humanotes. The Miyles couldn't do their usual response of sending a team back in time to an incursion point and kill a baby or two, there was far too many key targets. Instead, they went back a thousand years and work to make Humanity more violent and destroy themselves. Their incursion portal vanished after their first steps, which they took as a positive.

Unaware that instead they'd brought forward the P-E.A's actions by five hundred years.