SF Drabble #257 “Steampunk Precog”

Robards Harepenny can see into the future. It’s not a psychic power, you understand: Harepenny is not a fortune-teller in the traditional sense. He has a machine.

Its operating principles are lost on me, though Harepenny has explained them at length. It sounded like so much nonsense to my ears. Yet, it works: he cranks the thing to life and while it is sputtering and coughing, one peers into the eyepiece and as if peering through a telescope sees one’s own future.

Poor unlucky Robards means to market it; I think he will be murdered within the week, the fool.

SF Drabble #256 “Shadchan”

The colony computer soaks up data from every source: sensors attached to the waldoes, logs — both official and private — of the colonists, security cameras, feeds from the power plant, weather telltales, medical files, everything. It sifts, it analyzes, it extrapolates. It weighs, it considers. Finally, it acts.

A name and number is added to a party invitation email as it is going out. Joseph R. Bellowes will attend, because he is newly relocated from the mining settlement and needs to meet new people. There he will find Renée: birthday girl, lonely, and a genetically sound match for breeding.

SF Drabble #255 “Incursion”

He trudged up the dirt road to where the Waldo was stopped just off the path in the newly-mown Earthgrass. When he was near enough, he called out, “What’s the problem, then?”

The mechanism answered back, “Loss of signal. Loss of signal. Loss of s—”

“All right, all right; I heard you. Probably just a short in your antenna leads. Don’t get your batteries in a bunch.” He pulled out the toolkit. He had already knelt down when he noticed the scratches all over the Waldo’s body. “What did this damage?'” He asked, annoyed.

“Behind you. Behind you. Behind you.”

Zombie Drabble #287 “Captain Obvious”

He went up to the roof to check on her and there she was, sitting on the edge, staring off into space. He walked over and asked, “Something wrong?”

She turned and looked at him blankly.

“You look like something’s bothering you. Wanna talk about it?”

She snorted in disgust at his question, turned away, and then, after a short pause, pushed off. He had no chance to grab her, pull her back. By the time he made it to the edge to look down, the zombies in the street five stories below him were already converging on the body.

Fantasy Drabble #184 “Birth Mother”

“Well, she’s your mother, Malie, I can’t stop you. But I’m just saying: she won’t be what you imagined…”

“What makes you say that?”

He shrugged, staring at the fire. “She just won’t, that’s all.”

She went regardless, but her father’s words were all she could think of as she made her way into the deep forest, bundled against the cold, earmuffs over slightly pointed ears. Eventually, she would find the elves, and her mother with them. Would she be everything Malie regretted not having as a child, or would she merely be alien and disinterested? Malie had to know.