Good, Bad, The End

On every media broadcast around tne world, the message was sent out, that there was ten minutes left before the world ended.

The doomsday preppers smugly headed for their bunkers, although it wouldn't do them any good.

The morally borderline started breaking all the rules they could, since they finally could be bad.

The vast majority just milled about in confusion, asking each other if this was a joke, albeit one that was in very bad taste.

Me? I sighed, made some mental notes and rewound, hoping this time I could do a little better, or just not as bad.

Light Side

When we crashed onto the planet's surface, the captain ended up half crushed, thrown a short distance away.

Before she died, she warned us of the Nighthunters, the creatures that were on this planet and would tear us to shreds if they caught us. So we had to keep moving and stay in the light.

We gathered what we could, but the planet spun quickly, and we saw darkness coming upon us rapidly, and we were worried.

And then the ice moon moved over us, sending starlight all over us, thankfully.

Until it began to focus the light and burned...

Pop Culture Rosetta Stone

It started months ago when he came to my desk and asked me what the deal was with 'Cleopatra and Marc Anthony', as he called them.

I explained the 'deal' around it, and he suddenly exclaimed it was just like some sci-fi game I hadn't heard of. I looked it up, and I understood.

So every time I saw him, I outlined a historical event to find out what pop culture was like that.

When I found a historical event he didn't have a pop culture parallel for, I immediately got to work on a screenplay using that exact concept.

State Of Dreaming

I was getting hours upon hours of sleep, but despite all the ideas of resting and recovery, I kept getting more and more dazed and confused every morning, it seemed.

Then I realised the rare times I felt ok waking up, I could remember my dreams, while the times I didn't get good sleep, I couldn't remember the dream.

Correlation and causality and all that, but I had nothing else to go on, so I focused on remembering my dreams.

This led to my confronting my inner issues, and then I started to sleep better, so it worked, I guess.

Play The Field

Even though our languages had long since been perfectly translated, there was still issues between us. She was always trying to convince me to do 'fun' stuff with her, while I was always trying to show her how to fly the ship, to take off and land.

And then I got captured by a criminal gang based in an asteroid field. I had to seduce one of the gang members, while she had to fly the ship through the asteroid field and pick us up.

I did my part, as unpleasant as it was.

I never found where she was.

Boxed Up

She always told me to not open the box until she was gone. That what she had inside was only for me, and only once she was gone.

Although I swore to abide by this, she still would check and test me every so often. I'd find wrappers from Invisible light tracking powders or discrete motion sensing video cameras occasionally, and she'd rush into the basement if she thought I was down there.

But I never opened it, until she passed and I got the lock code in the will.

What was inside?

That's just for me, you not listen?

Orbital Laser

The things you find on the dark web.

I was looking for some drugs and maybe some hacked nude photos of celebrities when I saw it.

"$10K to fire the USA Government's secret orbital laser!"

I assumed it was a joke, but there were enough documentation with it that it seemed like it was genuine.

And my CattyCatCoin had increased in value tenfold, so I paid for my hand on the button.

I got connected to the control system, and I aimed it at Washington, and fired.

I assumed it wouldn't work, and I was kinda right.

Worked too well...

Repeated

So maybe you've noticed it, maybe you haven't, but occasionally I will reuse an idea in these things, sometimes overtly, usually not.

And honestly it's not a deliberate thing. The fact is, I've found that if I remember the Drabbles that I've written, it's because I used the key concept well in the limited word count.

So, logically, if I haven't used it well, then I'll redo it and hopefully get it right this time.

So if you read one and you think it looks familar, it might not be just you.

Although the Boxing Day repeat I can't defend.

Obvious Metaphors

My writing partner stuck his head into my office.

"Hey, let me run an idea by you."

"Shoot."

"Ok, so an alien, blue skin, who is integrated into society. He's happy enough, but he falls for a girl who falls for him. But he rejects the relationship because he assumes that because she loves him, she must have a fetish for his skin color and he doesn't want to be fetishised. Thoughts?"

"That's ridiculous, he's lying to himself, clearly he's scared of relationships-"

"So about your breaking up with your girlfriend because of your weight."

"Oh shut the fuck up."

WiFi Required

At the first sign that our systems were compromised, we shut them all down and began the hard resets on everything.

As we began the hours of work, I looked at the managers.

"This is the most important and secure building on the planet. These systems could run the entire world if need be. And yet, despite the best minds in the world being in here, we've been compromised. How?"

They couldn't give me an answer, so I just yelled at them a bit then headed back to my office to play more of this AR game on my phone.

Taking The Cake

I had spent hours on this cake.

I had sourced the finest ingredients, using the money I'd saved for weeks to gather everything together.

I woke up super early to begin to sift and mix and combine and bake.

An hour or so out, I had put the tiers together and was frosting it. As I did so, I thought about all the work I'd done.

I left the kitchen to get the candles, and I returned to a deflated pool of fruit, frosting and cake bits.

An hour later, I was being complimented on my lovely Eton Mess dessert. 

My Week With Freedom Fighters

The skills I picked up in that week have served me well.

The shooting and fighting, those skills were obviously useful for me, given the places I've ended up in, the people I've run with.

The... field medicine skills, while useful in the aftermath of the above, have also proven useful when I've cut myself on broken glass and stuff.

The ability to take a punch, a baseball bat, a car, all that, it still hurts, but I've walked away from them.

The cooking up meth skills, well, I make a mean chilli con carne.

And absolutely nothing else, Officer. 

For Her

I placed the meal in front of her. She stared at it for a moment, then rather than salt and pepper it, she peppered me with salty questions. She demanded to know how I made the salad, what spices I put on the roast, lots of questions designed to try and trip me up.

Eventually, as I answered all of them, she began to eat it.

She couldn't help but critique it, but she ate it all. Then as she cleaned up, she found the wrappers I left for her to find.

I cooked it, but she was so happy...

Prophecy

I was clearly sceptical as I sat down at the Fortune Teller's table, but it was an activity included with the day pass to the fair, so I was going to get it.

I listened as the woman of indeterminate age told me to shuffle and cut the deck how I liked. I made sure to shuffle just a little longer than usual, although I can't tell you why.

Then she laid out the cards in a criss-cross, and looked them over.

She sighed, then fell over onto the Lovers card.

I called an ambulance, and met this cute EMT... 

Ending A Cycle

I placed the idol on the pedestal, took a deep breath, and waited.

After a moment, when nothing happened, I turned around. She stood there, looking confused.

"Why isn't it working?"

I stared at her.

"What?"

"You... You've backstabbed, betrayed, and left for dead every ally you've ever had in the pursuit of power, and now that ultimate power is within your grasp, nothing?"

She shivered.

"Don't remind me, but you've shown me the light, I'm not that person any more!"

And thus, with no innocent blood from a betrayal, the spell didn't hold and everything started up once more.

Portal Duty

The portal had to be watched constantly, in case a creature from the other dimension came through. If and when they did, we had our orders. Lock the doors, fill the room with poison gas until the creature stopped moving, then burn off the gas and the body.

It was my last shift on the controls before my week off, so I was obviously eager to end things.

And then a woman jumped out of the portal, looking scared.

She looked like my long lost sister, which I had to put into my report after I disposed of the creature.

Count Pills

He was known as being an ultra hypochondriac, the assumption being that having gotten his hundreds of millions if dollars had driven him mad, or at least eccentric, given the money involved.

He had lots of medical equipment throughout his house, every room holding medical kits, defibrillators, and such. And he checked them constantly, while avoiding sunlight and any illness.

This avoiding of sunlight, seeming compulsion to count and check his kits, the wealth, his remaining looking young, all of it led to the rumors that he was a Vampire.

Which is ridiculous.

He'd created that myth himself, after all. 

Workaround

"And this is the Mirror of Desire."

"That a name or a descriptive term?"

"Descriptive. It shows you your deepest desire."

"I see. And then what?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Does it make that desire come true or something?"

"Oh no, it just shows you it."

"So why does it exist? That seems to have very limited use."

"Look, you have to understand that almost all the magical devices we store here are the kind designed for singular purposes back when magic was... What are you writing down there?"

"Oh, nothing."

She called in and quit that evening, after the lottery draw. 

Five Plans

Every mission has five plans.

The first is the one that you hope you'll use. The one where you use your best intelligence to achieve your objective and get out.

The second is the likely one, the one based on something going wrong. Arguably this should be counted as dozens of plans, but they're all part of the same idea, success at a cost.

The third is extraction, if it all goes to shit, you need a plan to get out of there.

The fourth is how you'll survive capture.

The fifth is gun in the mouth and fire upwards.

Sorry For Your Loss

I walked into the kitchen.

"Table 18 is still waiting for-"

I trailed off when I saw the expression on everyone's faces.

"What's going on?"

The youngest rookie was the only one willing to speak.

"Head Chef's wife called."

I waited for a moment.

"And?"

"Head Chef walked into the cold room and hasn't come out yet."

I sighed, took a deep breath, then walked over and opened the door.

I was expecting tears, or a thousand year stare.

Instead, he was laughing and dancing.

"Can that wait till after work?"

"Nope, my Mother finally died, so I quit, Bitch!"

Doomscrolling

As usual, I'm doomscrolling.

But unlike usual, it's not just the typical doomscrolling about how the world is gonna become uninhabitable, and how we'll all be shot before that point anyway.

No, today I'm doomscrolling through the accounts dealing with my hobbies, the things I do and watch and enjoy in order to forget about the usual doomscrolling.

And now they're all terrible too, and while there's a similar base cause (Hey Capitalism!) they're terrible in a different way.

So now I either find new hobbies to feel better about, or I get off social media.

So I'm doomscrolling again.

NPC Script

So there's this thing I do, on occasion.

I am, with distressingly increasing frequency, encountering people who consider others to be 'NPCs' in a computer simulation designed around them. They might consider themselves the sole actual person, or they might allow for other likeminded people to actually be people.

In either case, I go out of my way to give them a bad time, to make them miserable.

You might think this is a moral stance, to punish psychotic idiocy.

But actually it's to hopefully get them unhappy and thus end the simulation, so I might have some peace, finally.

Lured

Everyone knew that there was no fishing to be had on the dock. But while there would occasionally be a kid or an idiot who would try their luck, the only regular was the guy in a red shirt.

That shirt was bright, distinctive, and was the only thing that anyone remembered about him, despite how he was there every day, casting a line.

The shirt was deliberate, as by wearing it no-one noticed that there were in fact a few men doing the fishing, as they cycled through being the stand out so they each worked on the plan.

Anti Individual

One was The Merged, a technological collective, where each member was part of the one giant neural network, part of the whole, working collectively.

The other was The Family, a giant psychicly linked group of beings, retaining their individuality, while being part of one giant group of love.

Unsurprisingly, these two groups were in conflict, and fought to destroy the other.

But then The Merged understood how to work over psychic fields, and The Family got through to enough drones. Soon, the two were becoming one.

Thus allowing one being with a computer virus to eliminate double the threats easily.

The Important Outcome

I was on the bus this afternoon when he took a corner far too quickly and ended up on the wrong side of the divider in the middle of the road.

In that instant, my life flashed before my eyes, as I reviewed all my life choices until that point.

Some I loved, others I regretted, but in the split second I thought it through, I finally found peace and acceptance of the choices I made, and thus I felt better.

I'm sure the car the bus forced off the road into that deep ditch were totally fine, of course.

Another Time Traveller

I leaned out of my cubicle and called out once I saw my manager.

"Hey Gary, check this out!"

He walked in, sipping his coffee.

"What is it?"

"We got another time traveller."

He sighed as he looked over my shoulder at the readout of the user's gambling account, full of wins with no losses.

"So Gary who came up with that term, anyway?"

"Oh you know, just officer banter. Let me see their details."

I brought their personal details up, and Gary took a shot on his phone.

"Gonna ban him?"

"That's unnecessary."

Gary forwarded it to Temporal Control.

1-Up

I asked for a moment of silence, as we all bowed our heads.

And then I heard the tinny sounds of collecting power ups.

I walked down the alise as the sounds got louder until I found the young man hunched over his phone, tapping on it as the screen flashed and changed.

I grabbed the phone off him.

"How disrespectful! I'm going to keep this!"

Now, you'd think I would have been the one saying that, but it was neither me nor the shocked young man.

Turns out my moment of silence was unnecessary, or at least somewhat premature.

Being A Bigger Man

I wished, and then blew out the birthday candles.

As the smoke rose from them, my partner leaned over my shoulder.

"So what did you wish for?"

My sister made that disapproving sound with her throat that I hate.

"If he says what it is, it won't happen, everyone knows that!"

My partner stuck out her tongue and blew a raspberry.

"I don't believe in that crap!"

"And yet you believe in wishes? Hypocritical much?"

As the two of them argued and made everyone else uncomfortable, it was clear my wish wasn't coming true.

I wasn't growing any taller, dammit.

Always Right

I had just finished laying out the new t-shirts. I turned around for mere seconds before I heard some commotion behind me.

I turned around to find a middle-aged woman, gleefully tossing all the shirts around, ruining everything. I spoke with a little attitude.

"Can I help you, Madam?"

She turned and looked at me, an odd look in her face.

"What do you say to that, huh?"

I reverted to customer service.

"Was there a specfic item you were looking for?"

She stared, then nodded.

Thank goodness I bothered to look up my new district manager before she started.

Cuttable

The Crime Boss walked into the concrete bunker were I was being held. He glanced at the two guards then pulled out a large serrated knife.

"Now then little girl, I don't want to hurt you, so-"

I laughed.

"Yeah, right. Look, I ain't talking, so if you're gonna do it, then go ahead and do it."

He laughed as he walked forward, clearly thinking he was being intimidating.

"Such bravado from someone so pretty! Why is that?"

"Well obviously because my friends will save me."

The guards attacked him.

"And they also need to stop waiting for dramatic effect."

A Hypothetical

"I've got a hypothetical for you."

"Of course you fucking do."

"I didn't hear a no.

So, imagine there's the greatest guy for social justice ever. He's able to articulate in a way that gets people on board, he's a great motivator and planner, he's just the bestest ever for the cause."

"I presume there's a but here?"

"But he's a real shitty boyfriend."

"Like, he forgets birthdays shitty or he gets drunk and slaps around shitty?"

"He stops just shy of physical abuse."

"Ok, so?"

"Do you support him anyway?"

"No."

"Ok.

So about Sebastian-"

"It's never a hypothetical..."