City Of Taste

 The city of wizards maintained a level of peace and quiet that anyone who had met a wizard would think impossible through a rather neat trick.

There were many areas of magic that could cause chaos with a small c through to ARMAGEDDON written in hundred foot letters made of burning gold, but all of them were not banned, or forbidden, or even blocked.

But they were all so... Tacky. Gauche. Artless. Unsophisticated.

Common.

And since wizards need validation more than they hated other wizards, peace was maintained.

Right up until someone developed a solid city-wide undetectable taste changing spell.

Final Breaths

Humanity came to an end thanks to zombies. But despite a lot of people thinking that would happen (and a few unwell people wanting it), it didn't go down how they thought.

Because as scary as shambling corpses rising from graves and the like is, humanity had a decent chance at stopping that.

But it turned out that you didn't need a full corpse to reanimate, nor did you need a brain, all corpse parts became zombified.

Including, crucially, every body that had been cremated and had their ashes released into the world, where they mixed with the air, and...

Time Dilation

The real problem was the lack of advancement in distress beacons.

I mean, look, losing a spaceship to a stable micro black hole, something that we didn't know existed until we stopped the problem here, that could happen to anyone.

And losing several more ships heading to the location of the distress beacon which was just past a point beyond the death zone line, that's distressing, no pun intended.

But it all worked out once the last ship broke down before the beacon and ran scans, but if beacon technology had improved over these decades, they'd have noticed the discrepancy!

The Duchy

The Duchy was the size of a small city and its immediate surroundings. And considering it was surrounded by four large, greedy, and above all influential empires, it surely should have been absorbed by one of them at some point, one way or another.

But it wasn't, it remained independent and unbothered. Most people assumed none of the empires wanted to be the aggressor, but in fact it was much simpler, that all the leaders knew what would be unleashed if it was attacked.

Until the lessons were forgotten, and it was invaded.

Sadly, the Duchy also forgot the lessons.

Modern Dark Ages

There's a somewhat infamous chart that is supposed to indicate technological advancement of humanity across the centuries with a giant chunk that flatlines labelled as the 'Christian Dark Ages' that supposedly delayed everything. Now, that chart is complete bullshit (Hey China and India and all the non-European parts of the world!), but I can't think that an actually accurate chart like that will show that this is a start of the chart going into negative territory.

But, of course, I'm heartened by the notion that if such a chart is brought into existence, someone is making it.

Hopefully not A.I.

100 To 1

I had the last hundred bucks in my hand as I ran through the casino, trying to work out how I'd explain this to her.

That's why I was distracted and stumbled, slamming my hand onto the table next to me to stop myself falling.

"No more bets!"

I felt a tug on my hand, as I realised I'd placed the bill on the 100-1 spot on the lucky wheel spin game.

I immediately began to argue that wasn't a bet, that it didn't actually count, right until the wheel stopped, and I flipped my argument around real fucking quick.

Magic Resources

The four main magic using races had a different viewpoint when thinking of magic as a resource.

The Dwarves saw it like any other material, they mined it, so they could refine it and then store it for when they needed to use it.

The Elves saw it as part of nature, and strove to keep it balanced with all things, as it should be.

The Humans just took and took and took, never understanding why it would run out for them at times.

And as for the Orcs, they saw it differently.

Literally, their eyes could see that spectrum.

The Problem

01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01100010 01101100 01100101 01101101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01000001 01001001 00100000 01110100 01100001 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101111 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101101 01100001 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100001 01110010 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01100001 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01111001 00100111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101100 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01100101 01100110 01100110 01101001 01100011 01101001 01100101 01101110 01110100 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01100100 01110010 01100001 01100010 01100010 01101100 01100101 01110011

Multiverse

The idea that there's an infinte number of universes with a (smaller) infinite number of yous is silly, if you understand what's actually going on.

The multiverse isn't made up of universes where someone had toast instead of cereal, but rather universes where gravity is a little stronger, or water's melting point is lower, that sort of thing. So while many of them do have life, often similar to us, to claim that there's a 1 to 1 ratio of people is just crazy. It just doesn't work like that for anyone.

Except for Dave. He's in every universe, obviously.

Double Unlucky

I checked the settings, then flipped on the device, and put on the helmet. And there they were, floating in front of me, a ghostly figure.

"It works!"

They sarcasticly gave a round of applause, which threw me. They began to talk, it took me a minute to calibrate the translation matrix, so they were seemingly mid-rant when I began to hear them.

"-uck, the guy who kills me becomes-"

"I killed you?"

"Yes. Every ghost haunts who's responsible for their death. You cut me off in traffic, heart attack, dead."

"I don't remember that."

"Neither will anyone else, now."

The Other Edge

The prisoner was led in, struggling against their shackles as I sharpened the axe.

Once they were locked in place, and I approached, they switched from trying to physically resist to bargaining.

"You, do you know who I am?"

"My third of the day."

"No no, I'm a very rich man, you help me escape and-"

"You know why I have this job?"

There was a pause, which I let him have, lunch wasn't for an hour.

"You want to serve justice and-"

"Nah, my father, when he did this, helped someone escape. Guy who decided your fate."

I swung.

The News

She ran into my room and literally skidded to a stop.

"Did you hear the news?"

I didn't look up from my work.

"Which country blew up?"

"What?"

"Sorry, I assumed you'd only bother me if it was terrible news. Which lottery did I win?"

"What?"

"Well, if it's not incredible good news, nor incredible bad news, we're left with news that is merely good, bad, or intermediate. And in none of those cases, does it warrant you disturbing me. But since you're here, what is it?"

"That guy you really hate died."

"...

So the answer was Grim Reaper's lottery."

Thoughts

So I said I'd try to make this about America, given the holiday going on there nowish.

But the more I think about it, the more I worry that a million words wouldn't be enough, let alone a hundred.

Because a people are a nation, but not always are they the nation, at least the most prominent parts of it. There are plenty of good things about America, about Americans.

But I'm sure most of you can understand that's kinda hard to see right now, at least in the grand scheme of things.

So happy 4th of July. To everyone.

Lukewarm Shoulder

She had always tried to get me to open up to her, she offered herself as a source to confide in.

And for a long time, I didn't ignore it, but I didn't really let on anything too much. Call it the gender roles bullshit if you like, but I just didn't feel comfortable opening up. Besides, I was fine, I didn't need a shoulder.

Until I did.

Everything went wrong at once, and with nothing left to lose, I did open up and tell her everything.

She didn't seem to think less of me, but her advice was terrible...

Changing The Rules

Humanity had lasted a few galactic years before it got involved in a war. As Humanity's fleets were approaching a system controlled by the Rinaldians, an observer from the Galactic Alliance sat in on the mission briefing to ensure they didn't break a Galactic Conflict Law.

It went well as they discussed the jamming of sensors and dealing with defence systems.

But as the General was beginning the troop deployment plans, the observer raised a hand.

"Troop deployment? Everyone just blows up planets, that's-"

"Is regime change against the laws?"

"I... No, because no-one-"

Human style warfare proved disastrously popular.

Toast

I poured out a double, then she sat down opposite me.

"Any chance you could pour me one?"

I was about to tell her where to go and what to do when she got there, but then I looked into her eyes and saw... a lot.

I poured her a triple, and she downed it in one long gulp before she gestured for another one.

Against my better judgement, I poured another one, and this time she offered a toast.

"To the wrong decisions, made for the right reasons."

We both made many more wrong decisions that night, I think.