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The Threat
A story for my Apocalypse Bingo card.
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The monsters were getting closer.
The survivors had created three ragged perimeters around what had been, at one point, Main Street. They had hung the outside with cold iron. They’d put mines on the middle perimeter. And on the inside they’d put up the biggest wooden spikes they could manage. Continue reading
Last Night’s Writing
Last night, I was feeling like I was running on one cylinder and running out of gas, but I play this writing game, 4theWords, and I really wanted to move up one step on the leaderboards for battles.
Which meant 4 130-word (or so) battles.
So I asked for suggestions on Mastodon, and this is what came of it.
Well, technically, two of these weren’t even from suggestions…
But anyway! Words!
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Filling the Boots
He woke and shook out the cards. Continue reading
Exploit
Okay, content warning, I creeped myself out.
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“Kelly, he’s a person, he’s not a robot, you can’t just – Kelly, what are you doing?”
“So there’s this line of – okay, they’re not robots, but they’re programmed, aren’t they? They’re the Zero-One-Seven line out of Detroit, and they’re, ah, They’re beautiful, for one.” Kelly gestured at the man in question, a handsome, tall, twenty-something dressed in a simple tunic and pants that looked too sterile and antiseptic for the city street. He smiled back, a wooden expression that did not reach his eyes. “And they have an exploit in them.”
“Kelly,” Susan repeated, “he’s a person. People don’t have – they don’t have – really?”
“Really. And the thing is, he wasn’t purchased – there’s this loophole, you can’t actually buy a person, even someone from on of the programmed lines.”
“Good! Good, Kelly, that’s awful.”
“But indentures are still legal.” Kelly stroked the back of the man’s neck affectionately. He did not move, except his eyes, which half-closed. “And what’s more, there’s this clause in the programming that is suppose to ensure obedience. But what it ends up doing—”
“I’m going to be sick,” Susan muttered.
“Oh come on. They sell these Programmables, they’re supposed to be — well, programmed. It’s what they’re sold for. They volunteer. Anyway. There’s this thing where they’re supposed to imprint on the person to wake them up, who is supposed to be their indenture-holder.”
“:That’s pretty horrible.”
“They’re programmables, Susan,” Kelly repeated. “It’s not like they have feelings until they’re programmed in. Anyway. That means that whoever wakes them up essentially holds their indenture. They can’t be re-imprinted without a full factory reset.
“You stole a programmable human? A person. Kelly. How did you?”
“I hacked a Programmable, using a really obvious exploit in their system. And those training screens they use? They have no security at all. I hacked him, Susan. And now he’s mine.”
She stroked his hair again, paying no attention to the way his jaw twitched at her touch.
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Written to yesterday’s Thimbleful Thursday’s prompt: Zero Hour.
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X-Factor
“We’ve studied one million samples.” Professor Georges was very solemn. It didn’t keep Professor Osborne from scoffing at him.
“There aren’t a million people in this part of the world anymore.”
“We have been studying for a long time. At approximately fifty thousand people a year for the first one hundred fifty years, and then a much reduced rate. The last five years, we took samples from merely a thousand people.”
“So your rate of testing decreased over time.”
“The population decreased over time, and the methods became, by necessity, more circumspect: we could no longer use blood tests overtly. Also, our own population was badly hit by the Disaster.”
“Yes, of course it was. What did you determine?” Continue reading
A New World: History is in the Eye of the Beholder
First: A New World
Previous: Made In the Ikitem Peninsula
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A map. She wondered if there were maps anywhere in this place.
The next couple floors proved not so helpful – informative, but not for what she wanted at the moment. There was a diagram of what a typical house would look like in the time of Kaelingrade Torrent-Step, which was remarkably accurate but made her wonder what people lived like in this day and age. They even had a couple different rooms mocked up. She was pretty sure the bedroom had come from Joaon’s home, the place he had lived before she had taken him in.
There was an explanation of potion-making that relied a little too heavily on the mundane properties of some of the reagents but explained, in detail she would need to go back and read, how certain inventions of the modern world had build off of the foundation of potion-masters like herself.
It was strange to walk up floor after floor of what she had built as, essentially, a barrier against the world and see her whole world laid out in details. What people ate. What people wore. What people did. Even what people defecated in – which was an interesting one, and she was going to have to discover that sooner or later.
This tower, she realized, had been set up as a monument not just to her, but to her whole world. It was an explanation of what had come before.
“That can’t be right.”
A voice on the stairs sent her moving for a hidden passage that appeared covered by a display on pottery. She moved as quickly as she could, finding the display pivoted the way the cabinet she had once had her did.
“It’s a museum, Halsey, I don’t think they’re just going to lie to you.”
“Not lie, no, but they might get something wrong. I mean look at this. That has to be some sort of error. Think about what they said in history class.”
The two voices sounded pubescent, one male, one female. Halsey was the female voice, the one who thought the displays were wrong.
Kael should get up to her potions room, but she stayed a moment to see what was “wrong” about the displays.”
“You know what Mr. Catalon thinks about the natives.”
“He’s a history teacher, Corin. He can’t go around lying about history!” What if I was wrong?
“I don’t see why not. History is in the eye of the beholder, right?” The translation spell was still working, because Kael heard a whispered take the bait. Corin, it seemed, was trying to prove a point?
“That’s beauty. History, what is it… oh, yeah, written by the winner.”
“That’s right! And we won the invasion! Right?” Come on, come on, don’t make me use the big stick…
“It wasn’t an invasion…” Halsey sounded uncertain now, a why wouldn’t it be? They were savages, right, but… lingering behind her words.
“We came in, we took their land, we set up our own government. So uh. We probably wrote history to suit us.” Now even Corin sounded unsure. “They didn’t have anything interesting, so they needed us, that sort of thing. You know.”
Kael knew all too well. Her own people had done that twice in her lifetime – in her first lifetime. The second time had been the reason she had retreated to a tower in the wasteland .
“Yeah.” Halsey’s tone was thoughtful now. “Do you think… do you think it’s really all lies? What else do you think is lies? I mean. If they lied about this, then they don’t really have to tell us the truth about anything, do they?”
“That’s, uh, that’s a little extreme, Halls. I mean. Yeah, they probably lied about the Red War, too. I mean, wouldn’t you? But that doesn’t mean, like, they’re making up presidents or anything.” What have I done?
These two, if they made it as far as her potions room, were definitely going to be interesting.
“Okay, so. Let’s look at this again. They’re not making up presidents here, they’re just saying how these people lived. So why’s it wrong?”
“You sound like Mrs. Hosmer,” Halsey complained. “Okay, so they didn’t have the sort of technology to build stone buildings. They lived in mud huts and they weren’t using steel or even iron tools yet. No mining, we’ve never found any mines.”
What? Kael should get upstairs. But she stayed to listen, wondering what other lies these children had been taught.
“So we haven’t found any mines. What about metal tools?”
“I… haven’t heard of any? There weren’t any found in the Kasfour dig, I know that. Some stone tools and some really nice glasswork. They were really good with glass.”
Kasfour? She needed a map. Why hadn’t she asked the nice young man down in the gift shop for a map?
“Okay, so that’s a start. We don’t know if they had metal tools. But isn’t this tower supposed to be pre-colonies? And it’s definitely stonework.”
“By magic.”
Well, she wasn’t wrong.
“So? What’s wrong with doing things by magic? The warships and colony vessels we sent over were magic, too, weren’t they? And we had the mages. They just had potions-masters. I mean… How do you build a tower by potions.?”
Very, very carefully. Kael had far too much to do. She was going to need to find a way to leave the tower without risking getting “fired.”
Young at Heart
Written to the Thimbleful Thursday Prompt from yesterday, of the same name.
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“It’s a cloned heart, freshly made in our lab.”
Dr. Hischa was very proud of the heart in a box. It was displayed like the crown jewels, held up for the cameras and, more importantly, for the patient. “This heart isn’t the heart of a donor. Nobody had to die for it. It’s your heart — but your heart as it was when you were a teenager.”
The patient, a woman in her eighties, coughed out a laugh. “Hopefully early teens.”
“Had wild teenage years, did you?” Dr.Hischa remained jocular, but a very observant viewer might have noticed a slight twitch.
“That’s a good word for it. Wild.” The patient chuckled.
“Well, now you can be young at heart, ah-ha-ha, again. Won’t that be wonderful? Now, let’s just…”
Prepping included reams of paperwork; recovery included weeks of testing and physical therapy. When the cameras once again turned on Ms. Palorin, she was lounging sideways on a chaise, her children and grandchildren eyeing her uncertainty.
“So, Ms. Palorin-”
“Oh, call me Milly.”
“So, Milly.” Dr. Hischa’s smile was strained around the edges. “How are you feeling?”
“I have to say, I haven’t felt this good since I was a teenager the first time. I feel great. This is the bee’s knees. I can run up stairs. Want to see me do a cartwheel?”
“Mom!” Her eldest daughter, sporting pinched face and frown lines, threw up her hands. “Mother, you can’t! Act your age—”
“-not your shoe size, nyah, nyah. I know, Catherine. But right now I feel like acting six. Or maybe sixteen. This new heart is wonderful, Dr. Hischa!”
“It’s wonderful that you’re feeling capable of being more active again, Ms. Palorin. Now, of course, the rest of your body will still require some care. I do recall from your chart that your broke your hip two years ago, so cartwheels might be a little over the top…”
“Pshaw! Besides, I said call me Milly. ‘Ms. Palorin’ sounds so old, and Mr. Palorin has been gone for thirty years—”
“MOTHER!”
“Oh, Cathy, it’s not like it’s not true. Anyway. I’m having a blast with this new heart. I think I’ll go out and see what the kids are doing these days. What do you say, Susie?”
Her granddaughter, of about the age to be called “kids these days” grinned widely. “Of course! I can show you the new dances, too. It’ll be wild!”
“Ms. Palorin, your hip—”
“What? It’s not like you can’t just clone me a new one. And then,” Milly laughed, “I can be young at hips again, too, and think how much fun that will be!”
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Find
A story for my Apocalypse Bingo card.
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Therosa had been walking through nothingness for well over a week, and it was beginning to wear on her.
Certainly in a physical sense: unlike most of the places around, the rubble hadn’t been cleared, cars had been left where they stopped, and junk was scattered about. It was as if the Thing had hit yesterday and not nearly fifteen years ago.
Except the bodies. Scavengers had pulled out a lot of them, but there were cars with the windows closed and intact remains still inside; there were a few here and there, as if a giant had trampoline-jumped, throwing people up into the air so that they landed willy-nilly. Some of the buildings had faces pressed against the windows, faces that made Therosa reach for her gun, until she realized they were mummified, gone.
And there was nobody, nobody alive. There were hardly even animals visible, just the bleached bones of people and of society, crumbled bits of buildings and the long cracked main road she could sometimes see through the rubble.
She kept walking. She had never gone longer than four days of walking without seeing someone. Not necessarily friendly someones, but people, living people, and the evidence of their passing. Where had everyone gone? Nowhere she had been had everyone died, even if the death rate had been between horrendous and mind-blowing everywhere.
She scavenged a few things here and there, not deviating more than twenty feet from her path. There had to be people here somewhere. There had to be something that was going to jump out at her, or shoot her, or-
She was picking up a dropped backpack – a kid’s backpack, pink, with Minnie Mouse. There, in front of her, mostly covered by an old rug and only visible from this particular angle, was a trapdoor.
She was so going to get shot. Or worse.
She moved the rug aside and opened the trap door.
A ladder went down into a room she was pretty sure wasn’t supposed to be there, not in what had been labelled as a law office.
She made sure the door closed solidly above her but didn’t lock and put her flashlight on its dimmest setting. There, the shelf was just out of whack. She moved it aside, wincing every time it made a noise.
And there was a giant vault door, hidden behind a pretty decent curtain. Heart in her throat, Therosa began to open the door. If nobody had survived, if nobody had made it down here, there would be viable supplies. She could live down here. She could settle down.
The door stuck and jammed in her hand over and over again. Finally, she went back to the shelf and got a bottle of WD40, which she applied liberally to every possible surface that might need it. Using a rag to protect her hands, she turned the handle again. Nobody had opened this thing since the end and probably a few years before that. Visions of cans and cans of food filled her mind’s ey.
The door swung open. Therosa found herself face to face with as many people as could physically fit in the narrow corridor in front of her. The one in the front was ancient-looking; just behind him was a slender teenaged girl and an infant. They were all pallid; they were all dimly-lit and the light made them look almost green.
“Is it safe to come out?” The old man’s voice was a croak. “Is it safe now? Is the war over?”
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Blocked
Sophie woke up to a set of blocks in her bedroom.
She recognized them immediately. The ones in the bedroom were small, the sort you’d stumble over. She picked them up one by one and stacked then against the wall in the space room. If she got them stacked nicely enough, sometimes they would just go away on their own. If she didn’t…
There, in the hallway, with yellow and black stripes, blocking the whole traffic path, a bigger one, almost up to her hip. She went around, down the stairs and then up the back stairs. She’d move the roadblock later. First, she needed a shower. And some coffee. Continue reading
BeePocalypse 3: The More Things Change…
First: The Testers
Previous: Up
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Slowly, very slowly, Kelly turned around. It was Reyansh, and yet it wasn’t. His face was more pointed, his eyes bigger and also more pointed, his skin looked iridescent, and he had wings sprouting from his back, bug-like wings that glimmered in iridescent blues. “The Bees, their most potent attack was their most subtle. They created something we’re calling a smart virus. It mutates us, all in a hope of making our brains more susceptible to the Bee Hive’s commands.”
The green-blue woman filled in. “Children born into this environment have almost no chance of surviving – they cannot withstand the immunization for the mind control, and second-generation physical alterations are almost always fatal in utero, if not soon afterwards. They weren’t looking for a breeding population – or, we think, the ‘immunization’ against the mind control alters something that is meant to let us survive.” Continue reading