Sliders

We've stepped through to this Earth before, more than once,
And moved among the analogues of the people we love,
To tell them our hidden truths without bearing the consequences.

None Shall Pass

Walks up, smile creeping into a smirk, all confidence and swagger, doesn't say hello or introduce himself or ask my name, just delivers the line like it's a shibboleth of the players' club, a magic word that opens me up like a secret corridor to a pharaonic queen's chamber of otherworldly treasures.

I let him buy me a drink, but every word that passes between my lips is a subtle hint of disinterest, designed so that he will hate himself later for not getting the hint more than for clarity in the moment.

I have fucked so many guys meeting his exact specifications; he will never know how many, or why I was not disposed to add to the total, or what he missed thereby.

A girl in the bathroom gave me this lipstick, mine having been lost in the cab or on the dance floor or left on a table somewhere in this club or another, saying, "Here, use mine, it's called Standards. You put this on those lips, and you don't kiss any frogs, you don't blow anybody in the parking garage out of pity or boredom, you don't settle for anything less than Prince motherfucking Charming, baby."

Five Sentence Fiction: "Ludwig Van"

"It's too cute, I can't take it, turn it off."

"This is a court-ordered remediation session, we can't turn it off; you just have to watch the whole thing and try to be open to the experience, let it wash over you without feeling like you're drowning in it."

"Listen, I want to talk to the judge again, can you pause so we can call the judge?"

"The judge isn't gonna take your call, sir, and he wouldn't change his ruling if he did, so we're not going to waste time pausing the session to dial him, so stop asking."

Five Sentence Fiction: "A Word Of Warning"

"This will all be city, one day."

"Oh?"

"Everything will be city, arctic to tropics, tendrils reaching out into the ocean and spiny spikes into the sky, a sprawling nest lousy with humanity. The very Earth will groan under its weight."

"You're a real downer, mister time-traveler, you know that?"

Five Sentence Fiction: "B&E"

She knew he was coming before he did: before he'd bought the gloves, before he'd scoped the place, before he'd even moved up from disturbing the peace to petty shoplifting. He'd always been coming here, ultimately, like it was a scripted thing in a movie she'd seen in her youth.

She waited until he was inside — until he'd eased the door shut behind him, until he'd stopped to wait silently for his eyes to adjust — and then placed her hand gently against his chest. "You have something I need."

He stood frozen as his soul began draining out of him.

Five Sentence Fiction – "Some Men…"

There will be a fire: a vast, world-consuming fire, brought on by the judgment of the gods. It's coming whether you want it to or not, no matter what you do or do not do, regardless of your good intent or lack of same.

You can build all the shelters you want. You can burrow underground to your heart's content. What you don't understand, what you've never understood, is that when the world burns, the forests will grow back — slowly, cautiously, first shoots poking up out of the ashes like a soldier in a shell-hole — but the cities never will.

Zombie Drabble #432 "Afloat"

Get to the boat, you said.

Get to the boat and everything will be fine, we'll be well-supplied to wait it out offshore: there's a de-salinator and fishing rods for when the canned food and bottled water runs out; there's a flare gun and a marine radio; there's the non-stop entertainment of zombies wading out thigh-deep against the tide and getting first confused and then knocked over. We thought: you're right, that's a good plan, that's a better plan than hiding in basements and getting surrounded and possibly eaten.

That was a hundred days ago. A hundred long, sea-sick days.

Five Sentence Fiction: "The Confounding Case Of The Cropped Colonel"

I have assembled you here in this, the dining car, because I am now ready to reveal the identity of Colonel Rumsworthy's killer.

It was not — as many, including Detective Sergeant Mewler here, have suggested — the beautiful Penelope Jule, star of stage and screen: she was otherwise occupied in the Bundermans' compartment seducing Mr. Bunderman… and his wife. Nor could it have been the Rector as he is left-handed and therefore completely incompetent. Even the locomotive's coalman has been ruled out, as he would have left a far greater, sootier mess.

It was I. I am the killer.

Zombie Drabble #431 "Family Trip"

Dad had to work Sunday, never made it home, never called, we just never saw him again.

Mom packed up the car, tossed us in the backseat without worrying about our seatbelts for once, and wouldn't answer any questions about what was happening or where we were going. Mommy needs quiet right now, really quiet, all right?

She drove fast, and we recognized the way to grandma and grandpa's house, but we didn't get off the highway, we just kept going. I was half asleep when my brother, face pressed against the window, whispered, "I think that's a for-real zombie."

SF Drabble #463 "Looper Babies"

I remember it all: I remember being the one in the test chamber; I remember the shaking; I remember you, Jules, yelling something about the settings being off, about danger; I remember everyone scrambling for the panic button but no one quite getting there. And then — or, now — here we are, kids again, far from the lab and from the people we… will become.

It's odd being six and having a degree in theoretical physics.

We'll get there again, we just have to be careful not to avoid all the little accidents that led us there. Then we'll fix it.

And Away

Nine in the morning, tickets in breast pocket, change of clothes stuffed into briefcase, taxi hailed, time checked on phone lock screen, deep breath taken. The cab driver makes small talk about the weather, about politics, about traffic, and I half-hear and am only half-aware of my responses.

The terminal and the concourse and the gate areas are churning seas of humanity into which I wade fully-clothed. I speak politely but perfunctorily to the ticket agent, to the security officer, to the gate attendant.

I wonder if they know — or if they have guessed — that I won't be coming back.

Zombie Drabble #430 "Timberline"

It's been three… no, four days since I've seen a zombie, not even a hint of a whiff of a shadow of one. Not many people out here to turn in the first place, I suppose, and the ones that did probably followed their noses south months ago.

They don't do well in the cold, that much I know; it's why I'm headed North, up into where the grass gives way to snow and ice and even the pines shrink to nothing. I know how to fish, I can hunt, I can survive. I don't know if the world will.

SF Drabble #461 "Engineer"

Twenty years, then ding: you wake from hibernation, stretch, yawn, dispense yourself a cup of coffee and then start going through the graphs and charts and readouts and error dumps and false-color images the computer has accumulated while you've been asleep.

Everybody else is behind you, between the crew module and the drive section, still asleep, cargo. They'll stay that way until you get to Epsilon Eridani.

It's days or weeks getting through all the data, and then you're back into hibernation again. I'd tell you you're not awake long enough to feel lonely, but it'd be a goddamn lie.

All The Noise And The Hurry

"He could be anywhere," Mandy whispered, facing Fleet, eyes darting from side to side as the crowd streamed by on either side of them oblivious to his costume and her injuries.

"Keep looking."

He was here, he'd told them so in the broadcast, somewhere in the crowd or in one of the buildings, suitcase bomb armed and ticking, waiting for them, half-hoping Dreamland would stop him.

A man flew through a plate-glass window high above them, panicking and thrashing against thin air until his anti-grav belt kicked in and let him swoop away towards uptown.

"Looks like Rapture found him."

Fantasy Drabble #372 "Good Morning"

He wakes a little bit at a time: the tip of the tail twitches; a foreclaw slips from its sheath; the spines on his back slowly raise one by one; his eyelids flutter, one and then the other, and then they open to see the sorcerer standing before him, arms folded, eyebrow raised, waiting.

"What?"

The sorcerer responded, exasperated, "That's your opening question? Not, 'how did you know I'd be waking now, today, from my sixty-three year nap?', or 'how has the world changed since I've been asleep?', or even 'how did you find this, my secret lair?'."

"Seriously, what?"

Five Sentence Fiction: "Engulf"

It rips through the forest towards the houses, it tears through the houses towards the church, it sweeps through the church towards the mill, it only hesitates at the river's width. It takes to air on leaf and ember, it wafts up and spins and dances, it circles and descends, it alights and catches and begins burning anew.

It rolls down the hillside, it guts the barn and the stable, it creeps across the yard, it marches through the field furrow by furrow. It begrudges the first drizzled droplets and curses the burgeoning rain. It hisses and spits and sputters and dies.

SF Drabble #457 "Birdshot"

Eight years in the can between Proxima and Epsilon Eridani, eight years of nothing but maintenance and exercises and anxiolytics.

Before I left, they threw me a send-off party, but we all knew it was a wake: there's no coming back from something like this. Knowing it was one-way, that was a choice Ellie didn't get to make.

Less than a year, ten thousand ball bearings going ninety-three percent of c are going to rip into that planet, the one they took from us, and after them, this ship. Somewhere down there is Ellie's grave, but there's no helping that.

Zombie Drabble #427 "On The Street Where You Live"

There's a wood-panel station wagon with the front end up on the grass in Mr. Carey's yard, with one broken window where they'd finally forced their way through to get to eat some lady who'd spent seven hours in terror. There's papers — school papers, loose-leaf — blowing around in little tempests impatient for the rain to weld them to the concrete. There's blue and red glass in shards, down by the stop sign, from a police cruiser that didn't stay long. There's most of a body on the sidewalk over by the mailboxes.

There's an umbrella, ruined yesterday by unexceptional wind.

Western Exposure

She'd come from Houston to pack the house, to send her mother's things away in a truck to where they needn't be looked at or thought of. She'd come to wipe the dust and grime and hair and rat shit from the cold hardwood floors. She'd come to switch off the lights and unscrew the bulbs and throw the breakers. She'd come to lock the front door behind her and walk away once and for all.

Now, standing at the window, she felt like she was still twelve, and wondered if she'd dreamed all the growing up and moving out.

Fantasy Drabble #368 "To The Heavens"

Orgu, I beg you to hear these desperate words.

I have fallen down a crevasse at the edge of the field where my koro graze, and my leg is broken. I have lain here through three sunrises and sunsets, and no one has chanced upon my untended herd or my dropped walking-staff.

If I have won any small part of your favor in my life, I ask you now to grant me either speedy rescue or a quick and painless death, whichever suits your will. I hereby sacrifice to you my last morsel of food, burned on this dry stone.