Flight 9999

"Good afternoon, and welcome to Flight 9999, this is your captain speaking. Please resist the urge to get up and move about the craft as we cruise.

On the left of the plane, you can see the large pillar of smoke, that is our former capital city, currently burning down. We'll avoid the smoke for now.

On the right of plane, you can see the large number of the undead that has formed and which we are escaping from.

Our flight will continue until such time as we receive a reply to our SOS, or I end our shared pain."

Pool Hall Annie

I've worked as a bouncer at this pool hall bar for a few years now, and every night someone tries to pick up the woman who runs the tables. I've seen every type of attempt, the drunken 'subtle' pass, the flashy spender, the put down artist, all of them. Every type of guy and girl, and only one has ever succeeded, that I've seen.

I'd do something to stop it, but I have three reasons not to.

One, she's asked me not to.

Two, my intervention usually escalates things.

Three, I'm the one success, and I enjoy seeing others fail.

Hoodwinked

The hood was pulled off his head, leaving him blinking, blood smeared across the bruised cut under his ear.

The figures standing before him were masked, but he could tell which one was the leader, and that he was furious.

Much yelling in an unfamiliar language followed, with some pointing between his bruised face and a picture of a guy who, admittedly, vaguely resembled him.

When the gun emerged, he hoped for a quick death.

Luckily enough, the guy who vaguely resembled him was able to complete his mission because of this mix-up, and he quickly repaid debts when incured.

Domtext

She placed it on the table between us.

"Before you is one of the most powerful magical tomes in all of creation, the Infincom Text. It contains spells to create and destroy entire levels of reality, and also can provide the energy to do so, if you're willing to pay the price."

I stared at it, the tome I'd sought for over a century.

"Why is it a Kindle though?"

She sighed.

"It's alive, for a given value of the term, and shapeshifts to remain current. Be glad you missed the Magic Eye version, that was so hard to read."

Bite Marks

Imagine, if you will, a vampire. If they bite you and do not drink enough blood to kill you, or just enthrall you, you will become a vampire yourself.

Now imagine a werewolf. If they bite you and you don't die, you become a werewolf as well. Loyalty to the originator of the condition is societal and thus can be ignored under controlled circumstances.

Now imagine a zombie. If they bite you, you will die, and you will become a zombie.

We're currently a year into testing, and so far zombie vampires are depressingly stupid, but vampire werewolves show promise!

Advice Taking

Brent leaned over the low wall of potted plants next to my desk.

"Hey, quick tip, man. Decentralised debt future options! Gonna be the next big thing!"

"Hey, thanks man, I'll look into it!"

He fingergunned me, then wandered off to test the limits of the company's harassment policy. Zola looked at me with disgust.

"You take advice from that slimeball?"

"Sort of, but not how you think. If and when he tells me about something, I know to never use it, and not to trust anyone who does."

"But he was right about cryptocurrency!"

One less person to trust.

A Useful Reality

I materialised in her observation station to find her half-naked, eating from a bag of some sort of fried corn sustenance, watching just three screens.

"Officer Saothab! Report!"

She coughed and stood up, corn remnants falling off her body.

"Nothing to report, Sir! Humanity is no closer to requiring destruction due to technological advancement!"

I glanced at the screens.

"These are not our feeds! Where is the one in their first advanced learning centre?"

"I turned them all off, why bother risking them being found when Humans broadcast their most important people themselves? Reality TV, they call it. Very useful."