Botspotting

While we waited for someone to come in and declare they needed a brand new robotic vaccum, or more likely ask where the food court was, we scrolled social media on our phones. But then I heard him muttering numbers under his breath. I looked over at him, and he eventually saw my face.

"Botspotting. My grandad used to spot trains, mark down their numbers. I do the same for these bots on here with the long numbered names."

"Why?"

"Grandad always said he'd die only once he filled his book. He filled it, then died. This'll take forever, hopefully."

Pain And Purpose

I walked over to him, a few steps away from the fire, where most of the squad was either engaged in or cheering on a 'friendly' fight. I sat down next to him and offered a swig of whisky. As he took it, I reached out.

"You wanna come join the rest of us?"

He swallowed the booze and handed back the bottle.

"No pain without purpose, no purpose without pain."

I considered this.

"The purpose of this is to help avoid future pain, though."

He winced, clearly pained by my extension of the metaphor. But he walked over, eventually.

Waiting Room

The Tomb of Opex-Legida is famous for being one of the first attempts by the Torelok to temporally lock their deceased rulers. It doesn't work as intended, as instead of locking, it loops, every 46 hours the contents of the tomb are replenished, and there is a 46 second window to get into through the antechsmber. Fail, and you get stuck until the next opening, although for you and anyone else in status with you, it feels like 46 years.

So yeah, bit of a wait, but we'll get through..I got the Holy Cards last time, who's up for Poker?

Easy Money

The Multiverse Agent had made contact with local resources.

The Agent was confused when they saw a display for lottery tickets in a storefront.

"Wait, you have time travel tech, right?"

"Yes, there's a booth down the street, individuals can go back 8 to 24 hours, for free of course."

"But you still have chance jackpot lotteries?"

"Fluctuations in reality mean results change every time you-"

"But you can just keep trying the same numbers till they work, can't you?"

The subsequent mass upswing in looping led to a cascade collapse of all connected universes, completing the Agent's orders efficiently.

The Silent Guardian's Bet

57 Guardians, 57 numbers.

Whenever a recruit had passed all the tests and was ready to protect America by doing whatever was needed as a Silent Guardian, there was The Bet.

A simple eight digit code to open a safe. Engraved on the safe was "Why We Must Silently Guard". Before you started your first mission, you got one chance to open it and discover the secret. Fail, you write your guess on the wall.

Plenty of dates and codes up there. But I've studied, the founders believed the general populace was stupid.

So, a stupid code?

12345678.

...

Nope.

Darn.

Spiced Honey

Blackmail is not an ugly word. It's a profitable one.

I've spent most of my life finding the information people don't want revealed, then making them pay, and/or revealing it.

I've got my sources to discover information, as well as distribution methods, my pet reporters are just as essential.

And this information I found out seems to be the reason all of them are now dead.

So, I have to make a choice. Release this information for the public interest, or bury it.

It could bring down society. But I need that to spend my profits, you get me?

Eccentric Professionals

These pick and mix jobs could be lots of fun, as long as the clients hired the eccentric professionals. As I met the break and enter specialist on top of the target museum, I tested the waters.

"Man, cold huh? I bet you could cut glass with my nipples!"

I got a blank stare back from her, and I sighed. Then she turned to the skylight and yanked down her shirt.

"Uh... That's just a-"

She rose back up and showed me the diamond stud on her nipple piercing, then got back to work.

So that was a promising start.

Foreseen

The Pregenerators fought back the Invermin and drove them out of this continuum once before. But they could foresee a point where they would return, and they also foresaw that they would die out long before this point.

So they seeded hundreds of planets with various races, guiding their development as long as they could, do that when the Invermin returned, Androsians could fight them while Foxions handled the tactics, Bretiaxists ensured communication via telepathy, and so on.

But for all their smarts, they didn't see how the untouched humans could change things.

Nor what would happen after the war.

A Map Reading Skill Primer

You don't even have to mark them, assuming the map has the features of the land on them.

Humans are the easiest to spot, all their borders are straight lines, no thought to the land, they want exactness, whatever the price.

The Elves, they follow the rivers, the edges of forests, if the border is all curves, it's Elven land.

The Dwarves, they can catch up an amateur, but once you learn how to recognize mineral deposit indicators you're fine.

And of course, anything hastily marked in red is land that's fallen to the Hellspawn. I suppose that's technically easiest.

Brookglen, Brookglen

The Elves had called together the Council of Beings for a minor technical issue, but in as good a fortune as one could have when the Liberty Taker had risen from its grave, most representatives were already on their way, so they could discuss how best to defeat it.

The Drow Queen was sure her spellcrafters could beat it, while the Branx Mountain Dwarves felt with enough explosives, it’d die.

But the humans brought a visitor from another world who was sure he could defeat it.

Assuming they’d translated his statement “Fuhgeddaboudit!” correctly, and they understood what a ‘handgun’ was…

Loose Lips

Donx found the bar just past the spacedock. The five extra creds that he’d gotten for his shipment arriving early were burning a hole in his pocket, plus he wanted to catch the last half of the Low-G Ball game.

He found the right holocreen, a Melovixian watching intently. Donx was upset that the Gloworms were down by so much, but he knew they could come back, and said so. The Melovixian laughed, and Donx said he’d put a million creds on it.

Donx didn’t realise how serious they took betting on this planet.

                                                                                                         

Thankfully the Gloworms staged a comeback…

The Family Bluff

The will named all four children as executors. Thus, the four of them were forced to catalogue their Mother’s belongings before they could distribute them. And since three of them couldn’t stand the sight of any of the others, this was a long process.

Eventually the youngest and sweetest one broke, and said she was out of here, she’d just take her Mother’s locket.

The others almost fell for the trick of thinking a useless trinket was worth vast sums, but they laughed and sent her on her way with the locket.

And the key to the safety deposit boxes.

A Second Out Of Space

I couldn’t understand why my time machine didn’t work. I knew I had cracked the equation, even if power generation was only enough for a second leap ahead. But instead of my test subjects skipping a second, they just vanished and never returned.

Then I realised. I was moving them a second ahead in time, but their position was locked. And thus, with the speed at which the planet, system, galaxy and universe all move, they must have been popping back thousands of miles into space.

Still, research is good now I have the discrete item disposal money flowing in…

Language Barriers

The text transmission said that their representative had studied Human extensively and spoke it fluently. Given the way the message was parsed out, I wasn’t too confident.

When the airlock opened and she walked in, I was momentarily stunned, given how closely she adhered to human standards of beauty.

“Uh, hello, welcome to the Fornby Station, my name is Samuel.”

“Fuck.”

I stared at her as she held out her hand.

“Excuse me?”

“Fuck. Me name is Fuck.

Why shocking?”

“Well that’s an offensive word in my language.”

“Word be offensive? How?”

I never did get her to understand that…

A Clean Take Away

It was meant to be a clean job. From the moment Blackie started cutting the alarms, it should have taken a mere fifteen minutes to get in and out with a few hundred million in negotiable, that is to say untraceable, bearer bonds.

I should have just walked away when Blackie mentioned that there were more alarms than expected in the basement, but we were heading for the third floor, so I didn’t bother thinking about it.

I got my hands on the first batch of bonds when Lookout suddenly screamed into the radio, and then came the horrible munching…

Power Conduits

Ever since the Empowered began to admit their existence, I’ve been studying them. Sure, they’ve all used their powers for good, but you never know when they might turn on us.

And I quickly noticed how they all needed a conduit for their powers. They needed a special pair of shoes to fly, they needed a certain pair of gloves to shoot ice beams, they needed specific sunglasses for laser vision.

Thus, all we needed to do was ensure that they were only given these items when doing a mission, and we’d be safe.

And then along came Mr. Imagination…

Purple Reign

As Storykeeper, I have the ability, nay, duty, to bring forth those characters worthy of life into my little pocket of existence. The brilliantly written, the perfectly formed, the revolutionary.

And, the others. The improbably beautiful and talented characters with far too many skills and abilities than they could possibly have ever mastered in their short time. Mary-Sues, they are known as.

The worthy characters always ask why this is so. I tell them it’s about light and shadow, night and day. But really?

There’s a war coming, and we’ll need every purple haired elf-dragon warrior witch we can get…

Unwanted Storytelling

You don’t want to hear my story.

My job was to go through donations to the library and make notes so the librarians could decide what to do with them.

And then one book came in, small, cheaply printed. Was about rituals to extend one’s life. I thought it was a joke, but I never have enough time, so I tried it out.

And it worked, sort of. I now get an extra year’s lifespan every time I take ten years off someone else, which I do whenever they hear this story.

Told you you didn’t want to hear it.

Birthday Girls

For the first time in a long time, Glory was bleeding, hurting, in pain.

In danger.

She slowly, with great effort, pulled herself to her feet, as around her, the four of them floated to the ground. Back at college, the May 5^th Girls had pretty much run the social lives of the entire place, if they decided you were a ‘zero’, you were ostracised before the day was over.

And now, on their twenty-first birthday, they all developed superpowers, and were set to take over the city, or at the very least, kill Glory. They had never liked her or her sister, but Glory hadn’t thought it went this deep.

“Any last words, Slut?” asked Susanna, as she began to form a fireball in her hands.

“Better make them good…” added Alicia, as she mentally spun the zerotium blade floating in front of her.

“Because soon you’ll join your sis…” Felicia chimed in, drawing cosmic radiation into her.

“And we will rule!” Paula finished, electricity flowing throughout her.

Glory sighed, and glanced up at the clock tower.

“One year older.” she muttered, and then sprung forward.

That was when everyone found out the girls’ powers only lasted the day.

The 7:24 To CBD

Every workday, two men and two women, each wearing conservative business attire, caught the 7:24 into the CBD.

They would all get off at Central Terminus and then all go separate ways. Every morning, like clockwork.

It took a few months for Gary to break the ice, but pretty soon Rob, Kay and Lucy became firm friends, thankful that none of them worked in the same field.

And while it was a little weird at first, when they became a pair of couples, it just felt right.

Lucy and Kay were Co-Best Women at Rob and Gary’s wedding and everything…