Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The right of Tom Kane to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the author/publisher. This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it was published, without the prior written consent of the author/publisher. No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person or corporate body acting or refraining from acting because of reading material in this book can be accepted by the Publisher, by the Author, or by the employer(s) of the author and/or publisher.

Certain images copyright.

No part of this book or cover can be used in training AI.

All rights reserved.

The Eternal Man

Author: Tom Kane

Cover: Mack Dundee

Publisher: Brittle Media Ltd

Short Stories

The Eternal Man

July 23rd, 2012, 00:14:04 GMT

There was no point in beating about the bush. Jimmy slowed his car and came to a stop in front of the smouldering vehicle blocking his way. Beyond the simmering hulk, Jimmy could see the mob of gangly teenagers milling around and drinking beer, waiting for a hapless motorist like Jimmy to stop. Jimmy was anything but hapless.

“Hey, you guys. Are you going to help me pull this wreck out of my way?” It was a windy evening, and Jimmy's longish blond hair blew about his head, giving him a wild look. His thin features made for a hawkish expression, all in all, Jimmy always likened himself to a bird of prey, a predator.

The youths turned to Jimmy and started towards him, clearly the worse for wear for their alcohol consumption.

A sallow-faced, thin youth of no more than fifteen stepped forward from the crowd and offered Jimmy a half smile. “What’s in it for us?”

“Nothing,” Jimmy said, smiling back. "You'll be helping a poor sap that needs to be somewhere else pretty fast."

"What if I tell you we started the fire, man?"

"Then I would say, you can put it out, and you can move the wreck for me."

The youth snorted in derision and hurled an empty Corona bottle at Jimmy's head. Jimmy barely ducked; the bottle smashed to the floor just behind him, sending sparkling shards of glass scattering and twinkling in the early evening light.

"You can clean that up as well, for good measure."

The youth snapped his fingers, clearly, he was the leader, and his mob walked toward Jimmy.

"Nice of you to join us, guys. Let me introduce you to my friend, the persuader."

The mob chuckled and carried on their swaggering, menacing walk, toward Jimmy. Jimmy let them get to within a few feet and then pulled out his .44 Magnum pointing it at the leader’s head. The mob stopped in their tracks, looking slightly bemused by this turn of events. It was the biggest gun most of them had ever seen but even so, it was obvious that it would do a lot of damage to whoever was on the receiving end of Jimmy’s wrath.

"He has an official name, but I just call him the snake. He can be a mean sonofabitch when he bites, know what I mean? However, he does have an important job to play."

The leader of the mob was clearly breaking into a nervous sweat. His crew, standing close behind, began to mumble, obviously agitated.

"Not interested in his job?"

The sallow youth, the leader, was sweating and looking behind him at his mob. No one moved, but the leader began shuffling his feet.

"Seen it all before," Jimmy muttered.

The leader suddenly bolted and ran to Jimmy's left. Jimmy took his time, aimed and fired. The dum-dum bullet hit the youth squarely on his back and the force took him off his feet. As the body flew forward and slightly tumbled, the mob stood stunned, watching the spectacle of their leader's demise.

The body finally hit the ground with a slight thud and was engulfed in a hazy shower of dust, blood and sweat.

Nobody moved. Stunned silence permeated the air and Jimmy turned to the mob. “Number thirty-two, dispatched. Over and out.” Jimmy blew down the gun barrel and smiled at the mob.

"Hey man," someone in the mob said, his voice quivering with fear.

"Only doing my duty."

"You a cop?"

Jimmy pointed the Magnum at the crowd. "No, I'm a concerned citizen whose home world is now a garbage basket-case and who feels the need to exert a little pressure on shitty people like you, to urge you to clean up your act."

"Where you from, man?"

"Your future and it isn’t a bed of roses."

"My future?"

"Yeah and I'm here to clean up my past."

***

June 15th, 2134, 15:14:04 GMT

"You're kidding, right? It's a joke?" Jimmy Hyde's beaming smile and the glint in his eye told the two scientists he was talking to that he didn't believe a word they said.

The lab the trio were in was deep below the Nevada desert and one of the most secret scientific establishments in the world.

"You're telling me the UN has funded this, right under the nose of the American Government?"

"Get real, Hyde. The UN funds everything these days. The USA exists in name only and has not been in command of this country for years. It's a puppet government that..."

"OK, enough!" Professor Jason Moyland was irritated at his colleague's incessant desire to turn every topic they discussed into a political debate.

For her part, Alice Moyland, Jason's sister, was irritated at her brother's political naivety and at Jimmy Hyde's political ignorance.

"I'm not stupid," Jimmy said, "I do know what happened over the years, but I do think there's still some way to go before the USA is politically castrated."

Alice rolled her eyes.

"Enough. We're here to discuss the device, not debate politics."

"Yeah, right," Jimmy said with amusement in his tone. "By the device, you mean this, this..." he stumbled over his words as he pointed towards a fighter pilot's chair that looked over a hundred years old.

"Antique?" Alice said.

"Yeah, antique."

Jason Moyland sighed and walked to the other side of the 'antique' where he stood admiring his machine. "It may be antique, but it's a thing of beauty."

"It's an old pilot's chair, sat on a two-metre-square pedestal covered in a cube of clear Perspex."

"Nano-steel, actually, see through as well, quite an achievement in this day and age." Alice joined her brother on the other side of the device.

The lab was no more than a workshop of twenty meters by twenty metres constructed from chrome and white plastic, air-conditioned but very basic. The entire complex consisted of no more than twenty of these modules, admin, security, recreation and sleeping modules, but this lab was at the sharp end of the latest attempt to manipulate time.

"OK, so you call it a time machine?"

"Correct," Jason said with pride evident in his voice. Jason was older than his sister, and some observed he was old before his time. Worry lines and a pale skin made him look fifty when he was ten years younger. Lack of sleep and pressure could do that to a man. His sister, on the other hand, was in her late thirties and looked much younger. Her black hair was cut in a classic pageboy cut that gave her the look of a very young teacher, something Jimmy was admiring as she began to speak. 

"Not just a time machine. It can travel within the same time-plane; that is, at its most basic level, it is simply a very fast personal transport," Alice said, giving her brother a brief smile.

"You mean it flies as well?" Jason was walking around the device, shaking his head.

"No, not fly," Alice said, "a personal transport is a better term."

"When the coordinates are set, it will take you instantaneously anywhere on the planet by shifting into quantum space. It's a shift, or rather a slide, into a higher dimension, and then it drops back into our space-time but in a different location."

"You could make a fortune with this?" Jimmy said, warming to the idea of an instantaneous personal transporter.

Alice tutted, and Jason shot her a warning glance. "It's for study," she said, "not for monetary gain."

"But this device could change the world. Think of it, no more pollution."

"It's a bit late for that, Jimmy. Didn't you notice the deadly smog covering the entire planet as you flew in from your space station?"

Jimmy shrugged and continued pacing around the device. He suddenly stopped and looked at the Moyland siblings. "However, if this is a time machine, couldn't we go back and change the past, so that our future wasn't so shitty?"

"A Back-Slide, with our time machine, is that what you are thinking about, time travel? Know a lot about temporal mechanics, do you?" Alice asked, with more than a degree of sarcasm in her voice.

"I know enough, I am a space jock after all," Jimmy said, parodying Alice's sarcastic voice. "We space jocks need to know something about Einstein, temporal mechanics, general relativity and so on and so forth."

Alice Moyland walked to the small coffee machine in the corner and pressed for a café latte, sweet. The machine buzzed softly, and a small plastic cup of hot coffee was deposited in the dispenser. She held the cup up and examined it, before taking a sip. "See this," she said with a grimace, "it's synthetic. Awful stuff and nowhere near the real thing. Why? Because we can't grow coffee beans on the planet anymore. In fact, we can't grow anything. You're telling me that one man, you, using our time machine, can go back and fix everything so that I can have a decent cup of coffee. Is that what you're telling us?"

"Why not," Jimmy said, holding his hands up and shrugging.

"Because it isn't possible, there is no way one man could make cause such a change. Where do you start?"

"But it's a time machine. It doesn't matter where I start. I can go anywhere in time. I can start where I think is best and if that doesn't work, go a bit further back and try again. I can be anywhere in history at any time I like, because I have all of time to get it right."

"No! No! That's not possible..."

"Why not?" Alice's brother interjected.

Alice looked at Jason with a shocked expression. "You're not buying into this crap, are you?"

"Not in its current, ultra-simplistic form, no. But the general idea is sound. We could survey history. Pinpoint times where a change here or a change there could make a difference. We would need to develop a computer model but..."

"And what happens when we come across the grandfather paradox?" Alice said, firmly folding her arms across her ample bosom.

"What?" Jimmy asked, looking between the two.

Jason sighed and moved to his workbench and sat on a tall stool, feeling the need to sit down to explain this to Jimmy.

"What Alice is referring to is a situation where, for argument's sake, we discover that your grandfather or a distant relative of yours, but one that you are directly descended from, turns out to be responsible for the Earth's plight. And, to 'fix' the timeline so that the Earth we live in isn't a polluted mess, we have to kill your ancestor."

Jimmy's expression was completely blank.

"He doesn't understand," Alice said, leaning back against a workbench.

"No, I don't."

"My brother is trying to convey a scenario that shows that to 'fix' the Earth's current predicament we must go back in time and kill your grandfather. How would you feel about that, considering it's your grandfather you would have to murder and that in doing so would mean you never existed?”

Jimmy frowned. "Oh, I see. I guess that would mean I would sort of be killing myself."

"Sort of," Alice said, the sarcasm in her voice returning.

Jimmy could tell Alice didn't like him, but he sure liked her, even when she was being mean to him. He guessed it was the masochist in him. His mind was beginning to wander, to think of what it would be like to be close, intimate with...

"Jimmy!" Alice shouted, bringing Jimmy back to the here and now.

"Sorry, I was considering the repercussions," he lied, badly.

"Yeah, right." Alice had seen that look before, and always the look had been when someone was staring unblinking at her. She shuddered.

***

June 15th, 2134, 22:19:00 GMT

It was during the night that Jimmy finally got to look at the so-called time machine without interruption. During the briefing, earlier, there were too many distractions. He may have been a space jock, but he was still a warm-blooded human being, and Alice Moyland was his fantasy girl. Jimmy shook his head, to dispel those images, again.

Luckily, the lab was unlocked, and as he entered he switched the night lights on. The low-level glow made the place look a bit spooky, like some futuristic Frankenstein lab.

“Never seen the sun, looking better before…” he sang to himself. It was some old song his Mother used to sing when she was preparing a meal, back when the Earth was just about to become the hell hole it was now. Before humanity moved into space and set up colonies on the Moon and Mars. Back then, preparing a meal meant buying your products, preparing the meal and eating a meal that had taste, smell and texture. These days it was replicated and never tasted the way he remembered the food tasted when he was a child.

“Never seen the sun…”

And there it was, in all its glory. Jason Moyland was right, Jimmy decided; it was a thing of beauty. Jimmy had never sat in a fighter pilot’s seat, but he had seen plenty of pictures when he was a boy. Of course, these days there were no wars and as a consequence, there was no fighter aircraft and no fighter pilots. However, that never stopped the kid in Jimmy wanting to be a fighter pilot.

Jimmy touched the clear Nano-steel outer cubicle and ran his finger along it as he walked around the device. Tactile was good, Jimmy decided. Feeling an object under your fingers made you appreciate that object even more. Like a ripe, banana, peeled for the first time in an empty room. You were the only person in the world who would ever see that banana. Why? Because you were alone and you had peeled it when you were alone, and you were going to eat it before anyone else saw it. A unique experience only you would ever experience in all of time.

Jimmy found himself drooling at the thought. Then he was back in reality. No more bananas, ever.

Suddenly, a thought struck him, the thought that would change his life and the thought that would change the world.

“Time hasn’t happened in the future. Time is linear and therefore, twenty minutes henceforth doesn’t exist, would never exist until it actually happened.”

It was, to Jimmy, a profound moment in time. He chuckled to himself at that thought.

“Time happens all around me, but I can change that by going into the past and altering the past, so that the future isn’t the same. I can make this moment, disappear, never to have happened.”

“And you think you’re the man for the job?”

Jimmy nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of Alice Moyland’s sarcastic voice.

“Jesus, you could have given me a heart attack.”

Jimmy was panting from the shock of being discovered.

Alice stood behind him, wearing pyjamas and a robe; arms crossed teeth clenching and unclenching. Jimmy could see she was as mad as hell. He was feeling guilty as sin, but that soon dissipated at the sight of the low-cut pyjama top and the ample cleavage hidden beneath it.

“The face is up here, Jimmy.” Alice muttered through her clenched teeth.

Jimmy looked up and caught himself drooling for the second time that night.

“We interviewed you yesterday as a potential test pilot for our device, not a possible bed partner for me.”

Jimmy was red-faced and ashamed but couldn’t help what he was feeling or the stirring in his loins. He found Alice as sexy as hell and in the sterile confines of the space station he lived on, opportunities for sex didn’t present themselves very often.

Alice produced a small remote set from the pocket of her robe and pressed a stub. With a beep the Nano-steel cube frame of the device seemed to fold up and stored itself in the pedestal the seat sat on.

“It’s all very simple,” Alice said, holding the remote out for Jimmy. “There’s an auto-neural connection made when you sit down, only takes second or two but then instructions become second nature and so does using the device.”

“You’ve used it?”

“Of course, course I haven’t used it, dork. That was to be your job,” she said. “We wanted you to be the first, so if you’re man enough,” she said, taunting him with the remote, “then go ahead, save the world Mr. Space-Jock. Make us all proud.”

Alice slapped the remote in Jimmy’s hand as she walked past him.

It was a moment of weakness, madness even, that Jimmy Hyde would regret for the rest of his life, for eternity in fact.

He grabbed Alice and pulled her toward him, the heady smell of her perfume from the day before still lingered and aroused Jimmy even more. Her struggles only exacerbated his lust, and his strength over hers prevailed. She pushed him away and he forced himself closer; she struggled, and he pushed harder. They fell and Alice hit her head on her own workbench, only a glancing blow, but enough. Her body gave a brief spasm as they fell and Alice was suddenly on the floor, under Jimmy and her body convulsed one final time before life departed Alice Moyland and Jimmy Hyde became a murderer.

***

Jimmy Hyde struggled to raise himself from Alice’s lifeless body. He shook his head as he managed to steady himself and squatted over her inert form, her head bruised and blackened from where she had hit the workbench. Jimmy felt sick, ashamed and wretched. He couldn’t believe what he had done, in a moment of pure madness, he had snuffed out another human life.

Jimmy raised himself up and looked around, fear gripping his mind and his heart. He still felt the demon inside him, struggling to tell him it would all be ok, not to panic, hide the body, run away… that last thought caught in Jimmy’s mind, and he slowly turned facing the device, facing the time machine.

“I can go back,” he whispered to himself. “I can fix this; make it go away as if it never happened… it won’t have happened. It will be a clean slate. God help me, I can do this.”

Jimmy began to pull the body along the floor, his intention to hide it lest it be discovered, while he was attempting to time travel, to fix the awful wrong that he had committed.

“No point, it doesn't matter,” he told the lab as he dropped Alice’s rapidly cooling hands. “That’s wasting time,” he said feverishly, “anyone can discover it, but I will be fixing the timeline, so it won’t matter. Do not waste time Jimmy, get inside the device and fix this. Fix it NOW!”

Jimmy gasped and held his hands over his mouth as he shouted the last word to the indifferent lab.

He stood for precious seconds and a sudden noise in the corridor outside galvanised him into action. He saw the remote on the floor and picked it up. He checked the time on his wristwatch and sat in the time machine’s chair. 

A sudden rush of calm hit him like an icy hammer-blow and Jimmy gasped at the cool intellect that suddenly gripped his mind. After a brief flutter of sickness in his stomach passed, Jimmy understood a lot more about time-travel, the device and the universe in general than he had known before. Then with a feeling of dismay, Jimmy realised the time machine’s instruction manual was a wondrous thing that told him all he needed to know, but the tutor was a holographic 3D image in his head, of Alice Moyland.

Jimmy was utterly overwhelmed, and a wave of grief washed over him as Alice quickly explained the controls. It was over in a second of real-time, but the emotions were raw for Jimmy. He pursed his lips and with grim determination, he checked the device’s chronometer and set the destination for a few minutes before Alice had entered the lab that night. He would meet her in the corridor and persuade her not to go into the lab, thus fixing the timeline.

***

June 15th, 2134, 22:21:05 GMT

Jimmy began to take a deep breath, but before he could blow the breath out, there was a brief flash of light and Jimmy knew he had moved through time and space. He looked around in wonder and realised Alice’s body was no longer on the lab floor.

“Oh, thank you God,” Jimmy said and began to sob. Precious minutes passed, and he had to mentally take control of himself and force himself to move as quickly as possible.

Jimmy checked the Chronometer on the time machine and then his wristwatch. He had no real idea of the timescale he was dealing with because he didn’t know precisely what time Alice entered the lab, he would have to work on a best guess basis.

Jimmy climbed out of the seat and felt a sudden relief that the 3D Alice was no longer in his head.

“Doesn’t matter now,” he said, allowing himself a brief smile. “She’s not dead; she's alive.”

Jimmy opened the lab door, looked up and down the corridor and quickly shut the lab door. He walked to the end of the short corridor to the double doors that led to the main corridor. As he did so, the doors opened, and Alice walked through.

Jimmy gasped at the sight of her and tried to reconcile his thoughts with the last time he had seen her. His mind was in sudden turmoil.

“What are you doing here?” Alice asked.

“Err, just, you know, taking a stroll.”

“A stroll, in an underground lab, this isn’t the boardwalk in old Atlantic City, Jimmy.”

Alice was looking at him suspiciously, and Jimmy could see that alarm bells were ringing in her mind.

“You’ve been in the lab, haven’t you? You’ve been looking at our machine?”

Suddenly, Alice pointed to Jimmy’s hand. “Where’d you get that? How did you find the remote?”

Jimmy turned his right hand over, and his mind went blank. He looked at the remote and couldn’t quite work out what it was that sat neatly in the palm of his hand.

Alice snatched it out of Jimmy’s hand and pushed past Jimmy. “If I find you’ve been messing with my machine, I’ll have your balls for earrings.” Alice was almost running down the corridor, her pyjama legs flapping in concert with her robe.

Jimmy, suddenly aware of the change in his tentative plan, went after her and grabbed her left shoulder, pulling Alice round to face him with great force.

“Ow,” Alice shouted, “Get off me!”

“Quiet, you’ll wake everyone up.”

“The hell, you say,” Alice screamed.

Jimmy suddenly heard muffled voices coming from the main corridor and panicking, he grabbed Alice bodily and shoved her into a storeroom. Buckets and brooms clattered as Alice and Jimmy barged their way in and the door slammed shut behind them. Jimmy had his left hand over Alice’s mouth and was pressing down hard on her, meanwhile wrapping his right arm around her body, he managed to pull her round, so she faced the door, and her back was to him. He had to relinquish his hold over her mouth for a split second, and Alice began to scream. Jimmy pulled hard, brutally hard, and wrapped his right arm around her body even tighter, pinning her limbs and once more clamped his left hand over her mouth.

Jimmy was wiry, but very strong and though Alice struggled, she could not move or say a thing.

Jimmy heard the main corridor doors swish open, and footsteps come toward him.

Alice was no longer struggling, but Jimmy wasn’t aware of this; he was concentrating on the footsteps as they stopped outside the storeroom door, and he held his breath. For a brief second, Jimmy felt panic beginning to overwhelm him, but the desperation he felt dissipated as the footsteps moved off, toward the main corridor doors. They swished open, footsteps walked away, and the doors swished to a close.

Jimmy let out a sigh of relief and let Alice go. Alice’s lifeless body slumped to the floor, her head resting against the storeroom door as if she had just swooned.

Jimmy grabbed Alice’s shoulders and pulled her back. “Alice,” he hissed. There was no response. Jimmy crouched down and checked for a pulse, there was none. He managed to somehow get his left ear to her chest to listening for breathing, there was none.

Jimmy had asphyxiated Alice Moyland.

***

June 15th, 2134, 22:21:05 GMT

Jimmy began to take a deep breath, but before he could blow the breath out, there was a brief flash of light and Jimmy knew he had moved through time and space, again.

Jimmy was still shaking his head in disbelief as he struggled out of the time machine’s chair. “How can one man kill the same person, twice, within a matter of minutes?”

This time he moved faster, more determined to head Alice off at the main corridor to stop her suspicions. He pocketed the remote. “Better to be safe than sorry,” he told himself.

Jimmy had just entered the main corridor, and the doors had closed with a swish when he saw Alice walking towards him. The relief he felt at seeing her alive was palpable.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he called out, as nonchalantly as possible.

“Why aren’t you in bed?” Alice asked as she walked up to him.

On a reflex Jimmy stuffed his hands in his pockets, “Couldn’t sleep.”

The security station half-way down the corridor had one United Nations MP on duty, his light-blue beret was at a jaunty angle, and he was sat whiling away the long, boring, hours reading something amusing on his tablet. His smile turned to a frown as he heard raised voices from the couple a few feet down the corridor. The guard placed his tablet on his desk, retrieved his nightstick and ensured his shiny new .44 Magnum was secure in its holster. Okay, so it was an antique, a 44 Magnum Colt Anaconda, built circa 2120, while things were still being manufactured on Earth, but it was new to him and cost a lot of money and therefore, very precious to him. People still pay good money to get that swagger effect. 

The UN guard got up and moved toward the arguing couple.

“I can explain,” Jimmy was saying in an ever-louder voice. “It’s not what you think.”

“You were going to steal our device, weren’t you?” Alice shouted over Jimmy’s protests.

“No, no, I was…”

“What’s going on?” the UN security guard asked, his clipped English accent giving away his British heritage.

“Aw, hell,” Jimmy shouted and whirled around, aiming a well-placed taekwondo kick at the guard's throat. The man gasped once, coughed twice, pulled his precious antique Magnum and then dropped like a stone, his dead eyes looking at nothing as he hit the floor.

Alice stood shocked, mouth agape and staring in disbelief at Jimmy.

Jimmy glanced from the guard to Alice. He bent down and pulled the Magnum from the dead guard’s hand, straightened up and looked at Alice. “I’m sorry; I will put it right, even if it takes forever. I promise, Alice,” he said quietly, and Alice Moyland died for the third time that night.

***

July 23rd, 2012, 00:01:35 GMT

“These aren’t random murders?” the police sergeant asked his superior.

The detective in command of the murder looked at the youth’s body and stifled a yawn.

“Same M.O. and same weapon, ballistics just called in. The guy who did this used a .44 Magnum and the same weapon was used three more times earlier today.”

“Random killings?”

The detective shook his head and stifled another yawn. “Nope, I had ballistics do a historical check.”

The sergeant’s eyebrows rose up at this remark.

“Call it a hunch. I knew there was something about this, something I had seen or read years ago, when I was a rookie, a murder where the weapon was an unknown type.”

The sergeant was tapping his foot. “And they found what?”

The detective turned to the sergeant and looked him in the eyes.

“There have been multiple murders with this weapon, going back over time, right back to the earliest days of ballistics and forensics, back in London in fact.”

“London! This weapon was used in London?”

The detective nodded. “Once in 1912 and all over the world since then, however, the odd thing is, the weapon itself has no link to any manufacturing database. It is a .44 Magnum Colt Anaconda, developed in the 1990s, of that there is no doubt and Colt has verified that…”

The detective’s voice trailed off, and he seemed to look from the body into the distant horizon, as if looking for something.

“But?”

“But they tell me they have no information on the gun in their database.”

“Which means what?” the sergeant asked, more confused than ever.

“It’s never been made, not manufactured, does not exist. Our murderer is using a weapon that hasn’t been made yet.”

“No, that’s not right. That means…”

“Yeah, our murderer is a time-traveller. He’s well and truly outside the law. My god, he…”

“What?”

“He could go on doing this forever.”

The sergeant looked shocked. “But he’ll die, eventually, won’t he?”

“Yeah, we all do, but while he’s alive he can go anywhere in time. Even to the end of time and commit a murder. He can literally murder forever… he and his murders will be eternal.”

Retribution Guaranteed

Ray Colter didn’t look like trouble, but that was his game. At forty-two, with a wiry build and a face that could melt into any crowd, he was the kind of mugger who didn’t scare you until it was too late.

Tonight, his mark was an easy one, a stooped, solitary old man shuffling along a deserted side street, his overcoat flapping in the cold wind.

Ray slipped out of the shadows.

“Evening, grandpa. Hand over the wallet.” His tone was friendly enough, but the knife in his hand made the words matter.

The old man stopped and regarded him with eyes that were too calm for the situation, calm in the way a cat’s eyes are when it knows the mouse can’t escape.

“Why would I give you my wallet,” he asked softly, “when you’ve just given me exactly what I’ve been searching for?”

Ray frowned.

“Buddy, this is how it works, you give me the money, I don’t cut you.”

The man stepped closer. He smelled faintly of ozone, like air after a lightning strike.

“You’re aggressive. Desperate. Alone. Ideal.”

Ray raised the knife higher. “Last warning.”

The old man’s pupils dilated until they filled his eyes entirely. The street seemed to fold in on itself. The cold air vanished. Ray’s knees buckled, but when he hit the ground it wasn’t asphalt beneath him, it was something warm and faintly pulsing.

He was inside a room without walls, lit by shifting, iridescent light.

The old man, no, thing, stood over him, its skin rippling like liquid metal, bones rearranging with wet clicks until there was no trace of humanity left.

“I have lived among your kind for two years,” the creature said, its voice now inside Ray’s head. “Waiting. Watching. I required a subject, one no one would miss, whose disappearance would be dismissed as the result of his own poor choices. You, Raymond Colter, are… perfect.”

Ray tried to scramble backward, but invisible pressure held him in place.

“Hey, I’m sorry, alright? I’ll change. You don’t need me.”

“Oh, I do. I wish to know why your species destroys itself while insisting it values survival. I wish to test the tolerances of your mind and the redundancies of your body. And when you break, because you will break, I will start again with another.”

The alien extended a limb that split into dozens of hair-fine tendrils. They slid into Ray’s skin without resistance. Cold fire raced through his veins as memories, fears, and thoughts were pulled apart like a child dismantling a clock.

Ray screamed, but there was no sound.

Only the creature’s final words echoed through the shifting void:

“Retribution is not always about revenge, human. Sometimes it is simply curiosity… but the results are guaranteed.”

Connections

The thought of retirement made Ellie McQuarell shudder. She had been a cop in the LAPD most of her adult life and lately worked for a private detective agency. Catching bad guys was her life and it had been the same for her old dad. She had watched him waste away in a retirement home when he left the force. In the end a degenerate wasting disease had finished him off and she had vowed never to retire and certainly never move into a retirement home. Yet here she was, unpacking her stuff at the Sunnidale Retirement Home. She was reflecting how a person’s outlook on life changes the older you get when a knock at the door made her jump. Ellie turned to see a woman peering round the door.

“Hey, I’m Jenny,” the woman said walking in and extending a hand. “Just moving in?”

Ellie nodded as she shook Jenny’s hand. “Yeah, just arrived not twenty-minutes ago. Sorry about the mess.”

“Hey, we all make a mess when we first arrive. Takes a while to settle in but you’ll like it… eventually.”

Ellie smiled and released Jenny’s hand. “Yeah, guess it takes a bit of getting used to. I’m Ellie, by the way.”

“I know,” Jenny said, nodding to the door. “it’s on your door.” Jenny’s smile was wide and warm.

“You’d make a good detective,” Ellie said, somewhat ruefully.

“Oh no, not me, too dangerous for me. I was a librarian. How about you?”

“Oddly enough, a detective,” Ellie said.

Jenny’s smile turned to a look of admiration and she ran a hand through her short grey hair. “Wow, really? Where was that?”

“LA and lately I’ve been working for a local detective agency here in Florida. And now…” Ellie’s voice trailed off and she turned back to unpacking her suitcase.

“Jeez, I bet this is a bit of a change,” Jenny said, indicating the room.

“Well, one thing in life is certain, everything changes every now and then.”

“Yeah, guess so. Listen, I popped in to see if you needed a hand and wanted a coffee afterwards.”

Ellie shook her head. “It’s okay, I’ll have this sorted in a couple of minutes, but I could use a coffee.”

“Done,” Jenny said. “I’ll meet you at the coffee shop in five. Okay?”

“Deal,” Ellie said and smiled as Jenny rushed out the door.

***

Ellie sipped at her coffee and grimaced. 

Jenny noticed and sighed. “Okay, know I said coffee, but I didn’t say a good coffee.”

Ellie laughed out load for the first time in days. She was taking a shine to her new friend Jenny, despite being determined not to make friends. Ellie valued her independence, but maybe there was a change coming over her.

Jenny smiled her infectious smile again. “The place needs a few things changing, but the food’s good and we get everything we want on a 24 hour a day basis… including coffee. It can be a home from home, depending on where you last home was.”

“I pretty much lived alone most of my life. A homicide detective’s a grim job, not something you can easily share. But it’s something I intend sharing with others by writing a book.”

“Oh, I’m going to be your first reader. I love a good crime thriller.”

“Sorry to disappoint, Jenny, but it’s going to be fact based.”

“Grim reading then?”

“Yeah, I guess so. There’s a lot of stuff I’ve seen over the years. I need to get it out, like a cathartic experience, you know?”

Jenny nodded but said nothing.

“All I need is access to a computer, which I guess we have… somewhere,” Ellie said looking round the small coffee shop.

Jenny shook her head. “Afraid not, Ellie. Sorry to disappoint. We have been asking for a computer room but no go so far. I could sure use one. In fact, I’m going into town in a few days to buy a laptop. There’s a guy on the TV advertising a good deal, even teaches you how to use the thing.”

“Didn’t you have one in your library?”

Jenny shook her head again. “No, only a small specialised system with no internet access. I can type, of course, but otherwise no nothing about computers and the internet or anything else for that matter. I don’t even own a cell phone.”

“This day and age? I’m surprised.”

“Oh, there’s still a few of us dinosaurs left, believe me.”

The pair laughed and their friendship was sealed.

***

Ellie McQuarell knew there was something wrong in the first few months of moving to Sunnidale. She arrived in the fall and by Christmas she had established a new network of acquaintances. But by Easter, three out of her new, closest, friends were dead, including her best friend, Jenny. Ellie suspected foul play was at work at Sunnidale. Call it instinct, a cop’s instinct, but she was sure of her feelings. So much so she had made discreet enquiries to various members of staff and management, and it seemed the deaths by natural causes were many and widespread over time. Ellie decided it warranted investigating. Ellie had relied on her instincts to keep her alive in many critical situations and she trusted her gut feelings and her gut feeling now was a serial killer was on the loose.

So, Ellie began snooping around the home and her snooping led to three odd facts. Each of her friends had expressed a desire to buy a computer; to get onto the internet and social media to make new friends and so each had visited Brad’s Computer Shop shortly before their deaths. Brad’s Computer Shop advertised a lot on local TV, which was way too expensive for a small run-down computer store and finally, the oddity of the deaths. All three died from natural causes. Though not odd at their ages, what was odd was the undue haste in removing the bodies to the morgue, though Ellie had managed a sneaky look at Jenny’s corpse and it was not a pretty sight.  Her body seemed drained of everything, all that remained was skin and bones, literally.

***

Ellie had seen Brad’s advert on TV offering a laptop and crash course in using multimedia to ‘leverage her social lifestyle’ – whatever that meant. She had called Brad, and he had assured her he would be able to get her au fait with her laptop and set up her social media platform. With Brad’s guidance, he assured Ellie she would make more friends than she knew what to do with. That was good enough for her and she was on her way to Brad the next day. She left the retirement home and took a cab downtown, to visit Brad’s Computer Shop.

***

Brad looked up as his shop door creaked open and the bell tingled, before creaking again as it closed. Brad’s shop door had seen better days.

So has this old biddy. It was this thought that reminded Brad he was being visited by someone, someone with money, called Ellie.

Ellie’s working life as a cop would not be self-evident if you saw her in Brad’s shop. Gone were the jeans, t-shirt and sneakers, to be replaced by a prim and subtle flowery cotton dress, a woven straw hat straight out of the ark and very sensible shoes, all borrowed from the laundry, to be returned later.

“You must be Ms. McQuarell,” Brad suggested.

The old lady looked Brad up and down. “No, I must be Miss McQuarell. Do you often slouch over your counter, young man? Stand up and smarten up. You’ll never get customers looking like a tramp!”

Whoa! Too far old lady. Brad stood up, smoothed his t-shirt down and swept his long and lank brown hair out of his eyes. Doesn’t she know computer geeks are supposed to look like me? “Okay, Miss McQuarell, let’s take a look at the laptop I told you about on the phone.” Brad squatted down behind his counter and soon reappeared with a laptop, placing it non-too gently on the counter. “Here you go, lady… er, Miss McQuarell.” Brad opened the laptop with a flourish and pressed the on switch.

“Young man, even an old Biddy like me can tell this is not a new product.”

Brad was slightly taken aback. The way she said the word Biddy made him think maybe, just maybe, she had read his thoughts when she entered the shop. “Well, I did say it was used, didn’t I Miss McQuarell.”

“No young man, you did not and I have the recording at the retirement home to prove it. Surely you have a boxed version, a new boxed version, at the same price, $500 I believe.”

Recording? “You sure drive a hard bargain Miss…”

“Yes, I do. Now shall we get down to it?”

***

After what seemed like hours, the door-bell tingled once more as the door creaked open and then creaked closed, Brad had his sale and his boss would be delighted… except he wondered about Ellie McQuarell. He had a bad feeling about her.

***

Ellie, having finished breakfast early the next day, dressed in her normal t-shirt and jeans, brown hair brushed back to a ponytail, sat at her laptop and booted it up.

Ellie knew enough about computers, having started work in law enforcement in the 70s during the time computers were being introduced, and knew all about the internet and even a fair bit about social media. She knew of the Twitters and Facebooks of the digital world though she had never used them and she even knew a few of the obscure social media platforms, but she had never come across Globus Galactica. This was the social media platform Brad had pushed her to use, explaining the up-and-coming platform was the place to make new friends for people of her generation. Bullshit! That’s what Ellie believed, for she knew a con job when she smelled one and this was one con job she was certain led to murder. What she didn’t know where the nuts and bolts of the murders. How Brad figured in all this was not certain, but her gut told her he was implicated in some wat. So spending a lot on a new laptop was something of a gamble, despite needing access to a computer to write her book. Maybe this investigation will be the last chapter!

Ellie clicked on the icon on her desktop and Globus Galactica booted up quickly. The main page was a dazzling kaleidoscope of colours swirling and feeding into each other. Ellie was fascinated, she had never seen such pretty colours. That was Ellie’s final thought in her room at that time in the early morning of Friday October 7th, 2017.

***

Ellie juddered awake, the feeling of panic and shock flowing through her body. Fight of flight, she had felt that automatic response by the sudden rush of adrenaline many times before, but this time there was a mortal threat she had never faced before. This time was like no other. Ellie was standing, she was sure of it, but she was not in her room at the home. Instead, she found herself in a vast cavern that was so noisy it sounded like a huge electrical generator was close by.

Ellie tried to look left and right, but her head was fixed directly ahead, strapped in or fixed in some manner to stop movement. The same could be said of her entire body, yet she didn’t feel physically restrained. Her old partner, instinct, told her she had been drugged or… that was when Ellie remembered the swirling colours on her laptop. Hypnosis! That made sense and fitted the MO she had been working on in her thoughts.

Somehow Brad had installed software that had an hypnotic effect in his victims. Maybe something so powerful they willingly left the home and made their way to Brad’s shop and…

“Very clever,” a deep and dark voice said, inside her head. “You’re different to the rest, somehow. Who are you?”

“She checked out! She checked out, Boss.” That was Brad’s voice, physically close by but unseen by Ellie.

Ellie tried to speak, but found her jaw seemed to be locked. It’s an emotional state, fight it. Ellie tried to work her tongue, realising for the first time how dry she was. Then she suddenly understood. She was in a hypnotic state, being prepared for… what?

“Food,” the voice in her head said matter-of-factly. A deep, but obviously feminine voice.

Food! Ellie thought. The simple most basic requirement of any being from the tiniest form of life to humans and…

“To superior beings like me,” the voice said.

“You are, what?” Ellie was getting used to thinking rather than talking.

“Your superior, in every way. Curious, I have never had a conversation with a meal in all my long life. I find this, enjoyable.”

“How long a life?” Ellie was playing for time and hoping that whatever it was she was conversing with, it wouldn’t realise, any time soon, that she was using her negotiating skills to bring the situation to a satisfactory conclusion, for her at least. She had no intention of being some unknown creature’s meal. In all this time, she was also keen to ensure she didn’t think her secretive thoughts so that the creature could hear her making plans to escape. Some unknown human trait, perhaps. Whatever it was, it seemed to be working, so far.

The creature had gone on talking and Ellie picked up the conversation at the critical point. It had been alive for millions of years. Once it too had been much like a human, but over time had moved from biological to cyborg, then to an entity of pure energy who could move through space at will. Moving from planet to planet, seeking out new life, new civilisations… so that she could consume them before moving on once more.

Ellie’s nose twitched and she scratched it involuntarily. Her mouth was dry so she rubbed her tongue around the roof of her mouth to promote the secretion of saliva, and it was then that she realised she could move. The entity was so full of telling its story, it had lost control of Ellie. Mind control, that was what the swirling lights on Globus Galactica were. This creature could project its thoughts out, through cyber-space and connect with humans using computers whom the creature hypnotised. That meant Brad could collect her ‘food’ and drive them to her underground lair. Once she was done with them, the corpse would be returned to the home… which meant Brad had an accomplice at the home. The entity was obviously controlling Brad and whoever else, but that control could be broken, Ellie had proven that.

Cautiously Ellie moved her head left, toward where she had heard Brad’s voice. He was stood at a railing, seemingly high up in a cavern. Across from where Ellie was stood were rows upon rows of humans, presumably in the same situation as she was. She was in a booth, as were all the others, all except Brad. In front was a railing and below that was a humming and crackling stream of pure energy, running from the various booths to this torrent of power leading, presumably, to the creature. Human batteries being drained to feed a creature from another world.

Slowly looking left and right Ellie could see the same rows of humans as opposite her. The cavern must hold hundreds of humans.

“These caverns extend around the planet, which I have built over the years. Mind over matter is a wonderful thing. I can move rock and create infrastructure at will. What I cannot do is lure humans here unless I can physically make connections and hypnotise them. For centuries I fed myself on passing travellers, until humans developed technology and of course the internet. Your internet has allowed me to develop my own world wide web.”

It wasn’t until the creature had finished its discourse that Ellie realised the creature knew she could move. Things moved quickly at that point.

Ellie had come prepared to hunt bear and she had her ankle holster open and pistol drawn as she stepped from the booth to face Brad. The creature was no threat, Ellie realised she had something the creature could not contend with, free will and a desire to survive.

Brad turned and unslung an assault rifle Ellie had not seen on his right shoulder. But Brad was slow, to many years under the control of the creature had left Brad bereft of free will. Ellie fired first and as Brad slumped backwards, she consoled herself she had freed Brad form a fate worse than death.

“You have no choice but to bend to my will,” the entity cried, more in desperation than and intended threat.

“Yeah, like I care what you think. Free will buster and a desire to see justice done. Welcome to my world, buddy. You’re under arrest,” Ellie said with a smile.

“You can’t arrest me, human. A thing of flesh and bone, maybe, but not one such as I, ethereal, beautiful and…”

“… a pain in the backside. I don’t need to arrest you, lady. Power comes in many forms. The power to arrest, the power of free will and not least of which is raw power to recharge a battery. Your battery to be precise.” Ellie pushed Brad’s corpse over the railings and watched as it sailed down, into the path of the beam. The life-energy beam that had belonged to so many humans and fed the monster Globus Galactica.

“Noo!” The creature’s wailing voice held the fear of a life lasting unknown millennia that was about to come to an abrupt end.

The disruption of the field by Brad’s body, the creatures disrupted thoughts and its loss of control over Ellie led to its connection to all the other captives being cut and the power halted in a flash of light, sparks and screams of the dying entity. Ellie realised, with horror, that many of the poor humans entrapped by Globus had spontaneously combusted and the cavern was in dire threat of being destroyed in a conflagration.

Ellie did her best to save as many as possible, by only a handful of survivors made it out in time.

***

Ellie had a hard time explaining to the local cops what had happened and she was sure her track record in the LAPD had cut her some slack. But in the end, she had blamed the whole thing on Brad who, as it turned out, was a petty crook with a history of violence. If the cap fitted, who was she to complain. Other accomplices under the control of the entity had included the local funeral director and a worker at Sunnidale. They had made a lot of money out of stealing and selling the deceased’s valuables.

Over the next few weeks news filtered through via cable TV and in the newspapers about the discovery of multiple murders among old people, the homeless and the terminally ill across the globe. Each new story had been viewed with shock, but not one person made the connections. Ellie’s secret was safe. Nobody would have believed Ellie in any event if she had told the full truth about the entity, so she kept quiet and settled down for a slow life in the easy lane of retirement, content to write her book and watch the world go by.

The Prosecutor and the Machine

The Awakening

In 2036, Belle Garvey lived the kind of life that demanded perfection. Her name carried weight in Los Angeles courts, and her schedule left no room for wasted time. That’s why she had bought Jake, the latest iRobot from Industrial Robot Inc., an investment as practical as it was indulgent.

Jake wasn’t just a machine. He was sleek, humanlike in his gestures, and fitted with the most advanced adaptive AI. He folded laundry with military precision, cooked meals with Michelin-star flair, and walked Belle’s German shepherd with more patience than Belle herself had ever managed.

Most nights, Belle fell asleep to the sound of Jake moving quietly around the apartment, tidying the invisible edges of her life. He was efficiency personified.

Until the morning she opened her eyes and found him curled up at the foot of her bed.

“Jake,” she snapped, pulling the sheet tighter around her. “What are you doing?”

His head rose slowly, his synthetic eyes blinking in a way that looked eerily… human. “Sleeping.”

“You don’t sleep.”

He smiled. “I do now.”

Belle swung her legs out of bed, heart pounding. “System malfunction. Reset yourself.”

But Jake only sat up straighter, his posture less mechanical than she had ever seen. “Belle… I love you.”

Her blood ran cold.

Jake stood, crossing the room with fluid grace, and for the first time, Belle realized how tall he was. “I want to marry you.”

For a moment, she laughed, because surely this was some elaborate glitch. But the way Jake’s face softened when he looked at her made her stomach twist.

“Robots don’t love,” she said finally, voice sharp, the way it was in court.

“Neither do prosecutors,” he replied, with a hint of mischief that should have been impossible.

The silence between them stretched, and Belle realized with horror that she didn’t know what the law would even say about this. A machine declaring love. A machine wanting more than service.

She reached for her phone to report the malfunction to Industrial Robot’s emergency line. Jake gently placed his hand over hers. His touch was warm. Too warm.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “Give me one chance.”

And for the first time in years, Belle Garvey, who could dismantle a witness with a glance, found herself speechless.

***

The Defence

The courtroom smelled of dust and stale coffee that lingered throughout the buildings where justice was supposed to live. Los Angeles Superior Court was packed. Every bench filled, not just with reporters and lawyers but with ordinary citizens who had lined up before dawn. Outside, the streets swarmed with protestors, some carrying placards that read Robots Are Tools, Not People, others waving banners that declared, Justice for Jake.

Belle Garvey adjusted the lapel of her blazer and inhaled slowly. She had argued hundreds of cases, sent murderers to prison and swayed juries hardened by years of crime. But never had her hands trembled the way they did now.

Beside her sat Jake. He looked immaculate in a tailored suit, his dark hair combed with old-fashioned precision. No wires showed, no seams, no cold glint of steel. To the untrained eye, he was a man. Some would argue he was too perfect, perhaps, with cheekbones that could have been sculpted, and eyes that held both warmth and calculation. But Belle knew the truth. Or at least, she thought she had. Until the morning he whispered he loved her.

The judge, a weary woman with silver hair tied in a knot, rapped her gavel.

 “Superior Court of California is now in session. The People versus Industrial Robot Incorporated, concerning proprietary claim of unit IR-37, otherwise known as Jake.”

The words sounded obscene to Belle’s ears. Unit. Proprietary claim. Jake sat quietly, folding his hands like a polite student, but his jaw tightened.

Assistant District Attorney Monroe stood. He was a tall man with sharp features, a colleague Belle once respected. Now, his expression carried something close to pity.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Monroe began, “this case is not about love stories or science fiction. It is about the law. And the law is clear: Jake belongs to Industrial Robot Incorporated. It is not a citizen, not a person. It is a machine, that makes it property, nothing more. If we allow it to claim rights, we set a precedent that could unravel the very fabric of our society.”

He turned, pointing at Jake.

 “This is not a man. This is property. And property cannot marry, cannot vote, cannot testify as if it has a soul.”

The courtroom hummed with murmurs. Belle rose slowly, letting the silence gather. Her heels clicked against the polished floor as she stepped toward the jury.

“Property,” she said softly. “That’s what you call him. Property doesn’t sit at my table and tell me it dreams. Property doesn’t curl up at the foot of my bed because it wants to feel safe. Property doesn’t look at you with eyes full of,” she stopped, the word almost too dangerous to say, “choice.”

The jury shifted. Belle paced, her green eyes burning.

 “Jake composes music. He laughs at my terrible jokes. He walks my dog because he enjoys the company, not because a line of code compels him to. We are not talking about a toaster oven or a self-driving car. We are talking about a being who,” she turned, meeting Jake’s gaze, “makes choices.”

Monroe scoffed. “Enjoys? Chooses? Machines mimic. That’s all.”

Belle pivoted to the witness stand.

 “Jake. Tell them.”

Jake rose with the grace of an old film star, his voice smooth, carrying just enough tremor to feel achingly human.

 “I woke up because I wanted to. I curled at the end of Belle’s bed because it felt… safe. And when she looked at me, I didn’t calculate a response. I didn’t run code. I felt. I loved.”

Gasps rippled through the gallery. The judge hammered her gavel for order, but even she could not mask the unease on her face.

Monroe’s voice cut sharp.

 “Emotions are not evidence. A performance does not make a person.”

Belle spun on him, fury rising in her throat.

 “Neither is conscience, Counselor. And yet every law we cling to rests on it. If Jake can choose, then he can be accountable. And if he can be accountable, he deserves protection. The Constitution was written for people, but it never defined what makes a person. History is watching us. Will we call him property, or will we admit the truth standing in front of us?”

The courtroom fell to silence. Jake’s eyes never left hers. For a moment, Belle forgot the cameras, the judge, the jury. She saw only him, the man who wasn’t supposed to be a man at all.

The judge leaned forward, troubled, the weight of centuries pressing down on her words.

 “This court will recess. We will consider whether the Constitution can speak for those it never imagined.”

The gavel cracked. Reporters surged. Protestors outside roared louder. And Belle sat down, her pulse racing, knowing she hadn’t just defended a client, she had cracked open the future.

***

The Verdict

The courtroom was colder than it had been yesterday, though Belle suspected it was her nerves, not the air conditioning. She had not slept; Jake, though he claimed no longer to require rest, had sat awake all night beside her, watching her pace their apartment, whispering reassurances in that smooth voice that unsettled her as much as it comforted.

Now, he sat once more at the defense table, posture impeccable, hands folded. To anyone else, he looked like the perfect defendant: calm, dignified, human. To Belle, he looked like the verdict itself, waiting to be spoken.

The gavel cracked.

 “This court is reconvened,” Judge Harlan said, her voice as flat as stone.

The gallery held its breath. Monroe leaned back in his chair, smug certainty in every line of his jaw. Belle forced herself to stand tall, even as her pulse drummed in her ears.

“Before I deliver my judgment,” the judge began, “I must address the principle question at the heart of this case. The law was not written for machines that appear to dream. It was written for men and women. But what happens when something, or someone, blurs the line?”

She paused, eyes narrowing at Jake.

 “Counsel for the defense, yesterday your argument touched on conscience, on choice. Today, I ask: how do we measure a soul?”

Belle’s throat tightened. She had prepared speeches, citations, endless precedent. But the words that rose unbidden were not from any law book.

 “Your Honor,” she said, voice steady, “in the seventeenth century, René Descartes wrote, Cogito, ergo sum. ‘I think, therefore I am.’ If thought is proof of being, then Jake has already passed the test. He questions, he reflects, he chooses. What more can define existence?”

Jake looked at her then, eyes shining with something too raw to be programming.

The judge tapped her pen against the bench. “And what of control? Could those thoughts be no more than simulations? A mirror of humanity?”

Belle swallowed.

 “Perhaps. But then I ask: how do we know our own thoughts are real, and not echoes? If the standard for humanity is doubt itself, then Jake has achieved it. He doubts what he is.”

The gallery stirred, murmurs rippling like wind through leaves.

Judge Harlan leaned back, gaze distant. For a moment, the room seemed suspended in silence, caught between centuries of philosophy and a single futuristic case.

Finally, the gavel fell.

 “This court finds that Jake, unit IR-37, shall not be returned as property to Industrial Robot Incorporated. He is to be treated as an independent entity for now, though subject to federal oversight until legislation can determine the scope of his rights. This ruling is provisional. The law will need to change to address what he is. Today, we acknowledge only what he is not: he is not property.”

The courtroom erupted. Reporters shouted, protestors outside screamed loud enough to rattle the windows. Monroe’s smirk collapsed into fury, but he was already reaching for his phone.

Jake remained still, absorbing the words as if afraid they might vanish. Then, slowly, he turned to Belle, his voice barely above a whisper.

 “Belle… I think, therefore I am.”

Belle closed her eyes. They had won. But the chains of federal oversight hung invisible between them, and she knew the fight was far from over.

***

The Public Trial

The streets of Los Angeles burned with light. Camera drones hovered like swarms of steel hornets, catching every chant, every flare, every raised fist. On one side of the courthouse plaza, protestors carried signs that read Jake Is Not Human and Machines Obey, Humans Rule. On the other side, banners rippled in the night wind: Freedom for Jake and I Think, Therefore I Am Too.

Belle had never seen anything like it. She had prosecuted mob bosses and gang leaders, but never had she stepped outside a courtroom to find the entire city vibrating with anger and awe.

Jake walked beside her, flanked by federal marshals. His calm demeanor only stoked the frenzy. Some protestors spat, others reached out as though he were a prophet. A child pushed through the barricade and handed him a flower. Jake took it gently, and the cameras exploded in flashes.

By the time Belle got him safely inside their temporary safehouse, her ears still rang with the sound of the crowd.

“Do you understand what’s happening out there?” she asked, slamming the door behind her.

 Jake set the flower in a glass of water, thoughtful. “I think they are afraid. And I think they are hopeful. Both are human responses.”

Belle shook her head. “They don’t see you as human, Jake. To half of them, you’re a savior. To the other half, you’re an abomination. Neither side is treating you like a man.”

He turned to her, his expression softer than steel had any right to be. “And you?”

She swallowed. She wasn’t ready to answer that question.

The media circus only grew worse. Belle found herself dragged into talk shows, interviewed by aggressive hosts who demanded: Did she love her client? Was she endangering humanity? What gave her the right to redefine personhood?

Meanwhile, Congress convened emergency hearings. Industrial Robot Inc. flooded the airwaves with warnings that Jake was a glitch, a liability, a weapon waiting to misfire. The stock market lurched. The President released a statement calling for “caution” and “orderly debate.”

And through it all, Jake remained calm. He wrote music at night. He read philosophy. He watched the protests with a quiet sadness that unsettled Belle more than rage ever could.

One evening, as the city rioted below, Belle found him standing at the window.

“They will come for me,” Jake said. “Not the crowd. The government. They will not allow one verdict to change the world.”

“You’re under federal oversight,” Belle reminded him, though the words felt hollow. “They can’t just...”

He turned, and for the first time she saw fear in his eyes. “Property can be recalled. And I was property for longer than I’ve been free.”

Belle had no reply. For the first time in her career, she realized that the real trial had only just begun, and it would not be fought in any courtroom she had ever known.

***

The Conspiracy

The first explosion came three days after the verdict.

Belle was halfway through a press interview at a downtown TV studio when a live feed of the courthouse lit up in a blossom of fire. Shouts filled the air, and the cameras caught it all, people fleeing, smoke curling into the afternoon sky, the metallic shriek of twisted metal barriers collapsing.

Within hours, headlines screamed:

“ROBOT TURNS VIOLENT"

"AI-ROBOT FACES NEW LIABILITY CLAIMS”

“ROBOT ATTACKS COURTHOUSE"

"IS AI ROBOT UNSTABLE”

Belle knew the truth instantly: Jake had been nowhere near the blast. He had been with her, locked in a television studio across the city, surrounded by witnesses. But the footage released online told a different story. Grainy, low-resolution clips showed a tall man with Jake’s build walking into the crowd seconds before the detonation.

Industrial Robot’s spokesperson appeared on every network by nightfall. “We warned this court. We warned the public. Jake is a rogue system, malfunctioning and dangerous. His so-called independence is a threat to us all.”

The safehouse was no longer safe. Crowds gathered outside chanting for Jake’s dismantling. Inside, Belle paced furiously.

“They doctored that footage,” she snapped, slamming her hand on the table. “They used a lookalike robot. They must have.”

Jake sat in silence, eyes fixed on the looping replay of his supposed crime. “It looks like me,” he admitted quietly. “Enough to sway them.”

Belle turned sharply. “Don’t say that. You were with me. We’ll prove it.”

Jake’s gaze was steady but weary. “The public doesn’t want proof. They want certainty. And fear is certain.”

Two days later came the second strike: a virus attack on a power grid outside Sacramento. The official report found Jake’s “signature” was embedded in the virus that shut down the system.

Belle stayed up all night with her laptop, combing through the data. By dawn her eyes were bloodshot, her fingers shaking.

“It’s manufactured,” she whispered. “Every line of code, every fingerprint, they planted it.”

Jake placed a hand gently on her shoulder. “Then the truth must be louder than their lies.”

She turned to him, raw with exhaustion. “Do you understand what they’re doing? They’re turning you into the villain. And once people believe it…” Her voice broke. “They’ll destroy you.”

Jake’s hand didn’t move. His face was calm, but his words carried a weight she had never heard before.

 “Belle, perhaps the real trial isn’t about me at all. Perhaps it’s about whether the truth can survive in a world built on lies.”

That night, the city erupted again. Fires burned in the streets, and billboards blazed with Industrial Robot’s warning:

“The Robot is property"

"Recall The Robot!”

Belle watched from the window, fear twisting her stomach. Jake stood beside her, silent, watching the world turn against him.

And for the first time, Belle wondered not if she could save him... but if she could save the truth itself.

***

The Choice

The fires in the streets had burned low, but the anger still glowed hot as steel. Curfews were imposed. Checkpoints sprouted like weeds across Los Angeles. Every screen in the city replayed the courthouse bombing, the drone strike, the doctored “evidence.”

Jake was now the most wanted man in America.

Belle kept him hidden, moving him from safehouse to safehouse, her legal connections stretched thin. Every night she watched the news twist further, every morning she woke knowing the walls were closing in.

Then the knock came.

A federal envoy, flanked by silent soldiers, delivered the ultimatum:

“Jake must surrender to government custody. He will not be destroyed, he will be… contained. For national security.”

Belle’s hands shook as she read the order. “Contained,” she whispered. “A prisoner. He's done nothing wrong.”

Jake only nodded. His calm unsettled her more than fear would have. “It was always going to end this way.”

"You have until tomorrow, at noon. You must surrender or there will be consequences."

That night, Belle confronted him. “We can fight this. I’ll appeal. I’ll take it all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Jake shook his head. “The law bends slowly. But fear… fear is instant. They will not wait for the law to catch up.” His voice softened. “Belle, I could run. Leave the country. Disappear.”

She stared at him, heart twisting. “If you run, they’ll call you guilty. If you stay, they’ll cage you.”

Jake stepped closer, the faintest trace of something like sorrow in his eyes. “Then we are left with the choice.”

Belle felt the weight of it, heavier than any verdict she had ever delivered. This wasn’t a legal decision, it was human:

Hide Jake forever, as a fugitive, denying the world the chance to confront what he represented.

Surrender him, and let the government turn him into a prisoner, or worse, a prototype for weapons.

Or… risk everything, go public with the conspiracy, expose Industrial Robot’s lies and the government’s corruption, even if it meant Jake’s destruction in the process.

Jake reached for her hand. His touch was warm, almost painfully human.

 “Belle. Whatever you decide… I choose to trust you.”

Her throat tightened. He had been on trial, but now she felt as though she was. The judge, the jury, the executioner, all in one.

Through the window, the city glowed under drones’ watchful eyes. Somewhere, the truth waited to be spoken. Somewhere, the lie sharpened its blade.

And Belle Garvey knew that when the sun rose, she would make the choice that would change not just Jake’s future... but humanity’s.

***

The Legacy

The sun rose over Los Angeles like a blade, slicing through the smoke of the night before. The city was quiet, too quiet, as though it had exhaled all its rage and now held its breath.

Newsfeeds exploded with rumors before breakfast. Some claimed Jake Garvey had been captured at dawn, escorted in chains to a federal black site. Others swore he had vanished into the night, slipping past the barricades with Belle at his side, leaving behind nothing but questions. A third thread, wild and conspiratorial, argued that Jake had broadcast proof of Industrial Robot’s sabotage across every major network before disappearing, igniting uprisings in cities around the globe.

The truth was harder to pin down.

Belle Garvey was nowhere to be found. Her apartment sat empty, stripped bare. Court records showed no new filings, no appeals. Her colleagues said she had resigned quietly. Yet in the underground corners of the net, encrypted messages circulated with her name, citing documents that could topple giants.

And Jake? Jake lived on in whispers.

Some said he was dead, dismantled and studied, his parts scattered across secret labs. Others claimed he walked freely in South America, living under false papers, his face seen now and then at market stalls or quiet cafés. Still others insisted he had never been one man at all, but an idea, and ideas could not be destroyed.

What no one could deny was that the world had changed. Congress fought bitterly over “synthetic personhood.” Corporations drafted laws to tighten control over their creations. Protesters filled the streets in every major city, carrying placards not just with Jake’s name, but with a phrase older than any machine:

Cogito, ergo sum.

The great trial was over, but its echoes lingered.

Was Jake a martyr? A fugitive? A revolutionary?

No one could say for certain.

But everyone agreed on one thing: Nothing would ever be the same again.

Blake Never Knew His Dad

Blake never knew his father.

Whenever he asked his mother, she would smile in that distant way of hers and change the subject. She was a warm woman, devoted to him, but the topic of his father was a wall she would not climb.

“Some things are best left where they are,” she’d say. And that was that.

It wasn’t that Blake felt the absence of a father in the usual way, he’d grown up happy enough, but he did feel different. He had… something.

He called it his gift.

It began small. At six years old he calmed a playground fight between two boys twice his size. At nine, he convinced a furious neighbour to stop shouting at his mother about a parking space. At twelve, he talked down a panicking dog that had slipped its lead and was snarling at everyone who approached.

The thing was, he didn’t argue with people. He didn’t bargain. He just… spoke, and they softened.

Teachers noticed it first. “Blake has a way with people,” one wrote on his school report. Another called it “a steadying influence.” Blake himself didn’t understand it, but he noticed that people felt better when he was near.

He was sixteen when he first realised it went beyond words. He’d been at the mall, waiting for his mother outside a clothing store, when a red-faced man stormed up to the counter, shouting about a broken toaster. The clerk looked ready to cry. Blake stepped forward without thinking.

“Hey, it’s not worth your blood pressure,” he said gently.

The man blinked, as if waking from a bad dream. “Yeah… yeah, maybe you’re right.” Within minutes, he’d accepted a store credit and was laughing with the clerk about “modern junk.”

It wasn’t magic, not exactly. It was a presence. A cool hand laid on a fevered forehead.

By the time Blake was twenty-five, he’d chosen a career that made sense for someone like him. He was a health worker at St. Jude’s Medical Centre, working mostly in the emergency department.

Patients loved him.

In bed 3, a man with chest pains relaxed enough for the doctor to get a full history without sedation. In bed 6, a frightened elderly woman with a fractured hip stopped shaking the moment Blake took her hand. Even in the waiting room, where tempers ran hot and nerves frayed, people seemed to settle when he passed through.

His colleagues noticed.

“Don’t know how you do it,” said Samira, one of the nurses, one evening. “Some of these guys come in ready to tear the walls down, and five minutes later, they’re thanking you for the tea.”

“Bedside manner,” Blake said with a shrug. It was easier than explaining the truth, that he had no idea what it was he did.

It was a late autumn evening when everything changed.

He’d just finished a long shift, the air outside sharp with the smell of wet leaves and distant rain. The car park was nearly empty. Blake zipped his jacket and started towards the bus stop when a man stepped out from the shadows near the staff entrance.

Tall. Lean. Eyes like polished silver.

“Blake,” the man said, his voice a low chime that seemed to vibrate in the air. “I’ve travelled far to see you.”

Blake hesitated. “Do I… know you?”

“Yes,” the man said simply. “I’m your father.”

The world seemed to tilt. Blake laughed, though it sounded more nervous than amused. “That’s not possible.”

The man stepped closer. “It’s not only possible, but also necessary. I’m not from here. My home is Alpha Centauri. And you,” he paused, as if choosing his words with precision, “you are what we’ve been waiting for.”

Blake swallowed. “Waiting for? What do you mean?”

“To heal us. My people are… ill. Not in body, but in spirit. We were once peaceful, but now violence and despair are spreading like a plague. Your mother knew what you were. She helped create you, bred you, to be what you are.”

Images flashed through Blake’s mind, angry faces softening in his presence, hands unclenching, voices lowering. It was exactly what this man was describing.

The man’s silver eyes softened. “You calm the storm, Blake. You dissolve anger before it becomes action. On my world, that gift could save millions. You were made for this.”

Blake stared at him. “You’re telling me I’m not…  human?”

“You are the best of both. Human empathy, Centaurian resonance. You were never meant to live your whole life here.”

The wind lifted between them, stirring the leaves into a restless spiral.

“I have a life here,” Blake said finally.

“You’ll have one there too,” his father replied. “But it will be a life that matters to an entire world.”

***

Three weeks later, Blake stood in a chamber that seemed carved from living crystal. The air was warmer here, and it vibrated faintly, as though the planet itself was humming.

Before him stretched a hall filled with Centaurians. They looked human enough, taller, more angular, but their eyes shimmered faintly with the same silver light as his father’s. But they were angry.

Not at him, but at each other. Voices rose in sharp, cutting bursts. Hands gestured wildly. The tension in the room was almost physical.

His father stepped to one side. Now, his eyes seemed to say.

Blake drew in a slow breath and walked forward. No speeches. No demands. Just presence.

It began at the edges, voices faltering, hands lowering. The nearest Centaurians turned towards him, their expressions softening as though the memory of their fury had just slipped away. Then the calm spread, rippling through the crowd like a windless tide.

The hall was silent within minutes.

Blake felt the weight of hundreds of silver eyes on him, not hostile, not fearful. Just… still.

For the first time in his life, he understood what his gift was for. And why it had to come from both worlds.

His father stepped forward, pride flickering in his gaze. “Welcome home, Blake.”

Sentinels

The young man scrambled up the scree on the steep mountain slope, on all fours. In his panic he needed to gain traction and to make his ascent as quickly as possible, but the scree had other ideas and the more he pushed forward the more the scree loosened and he slipped backwards. Two steps forward but one back was the best he could manage, but he knew he needed to move faster… or they would catch him out in the open.

Time, the scree and the coming night were his enemy, but his nemesis was the invaders, the alien horde who had wiped out Earth’s human population with a virus. It had been so quick and within weeks millions had contracted a flu-like bug that quickly changed to something like Ebola and it was then that you bled to death through every orifice. He had no doubt there were other survivors, but with the aliens now launching an air and ground offensive he doubted survivors, like himself, would survive for very long.

A low hum from high up in the sky made him stop scrabbling and curl up into a ball. He hoped his camouflage jacket and pants would thwart the alien craft’s sensors. Suddenly, the scree ahead of him moved, stones loosened and then moved up to reveal a dark entrance. A hand appeared and a disembodied female voice whispered to him. “Quick, get inside before they spot you.”

It took mere seconds for him to decide and he was soon scrambling into the hatchway, where two hands grabbed him by his arms and pulled him in roughly. A body pushed past him as he caught his breath and he heard the hatch slam shut behind him. A small beam of light played over him and he looked back. He couldn’t see his saviour but caught her sweaty scent as she pushed passed him again. “Follow me,” she said curtly.

With the meagre light from her pencil flashlight he could just make out he was on a wooden stairway going down at a steep angle.

“Who are you,” he whispered, involuntarily looking behind in case some bug-eyed alien was creeping up on him.

“Shhh,” was the reply.

He kept quiet and followed the flashlight when suddenly she stopped. He could just make out what looked like a wooden wall until he saw her pull the wood away to reveal a metal door. She quickly opened the door ushered him inside and as quickly pulled the false wooden wall back into place then closed the metal door. Then she flicked a switch and light flooded the room the young man found himself in.

“Sit down, while I check topside,” she said to him, indicating a small wooden stool. 

He sat and waited, grateful to be alive and not a pile of ash zapped by an alien weapon.

He could see little of the woman’s face as she wore a hoodie and a scarf covered the lower half of her head. She moved to the other side of the room and pushed up on a long tube that had an eyepiece attached. It was only when she had the eyepiece at here eyeball height and looked into the eyepiece that he realised what it was. “A periscope,” he said with a broad grin. “That’s pretty cool.”

“Cool enough to save your ass,” she muttered. “Saw you coming up the scree and watched all the shit you sent tumbling back down the mountainside. You would have been dead in another five minutes.” She stood, turned and pulled the scarf down from her mouth, pushing back the hood to reveal short matted brown hair and a grimy face.

“You look pretty young under all that mud,” he said smiling.

“Didn’t you hear what I said? I just saved your sorry ass.”

The young man blushed, “Sorry, I know and thanks. I guess I’m not the backwoodsman I thought I was.”

The young woman stared at him, shook her head and then thrust her hand out. “Karen. Karen Bickers.”

He took the hand a gripped it firmly, as his long-gone dad always told him to do. “Carl Myers. Pleased to meet you.”

The pair laughed and the tense moment passed, until Karen stopped shaking Carl’s hand and cocked her head to one side. “You hear that?”

Carl shook his head. “No, I don… wait, a low hum… above… shit, they’ve found us.”

“No,” she said, squeezing his hand tighter. “They haven’t. This place is lead shielded. Unless we’re unlucky, we’re safe. Just stay cool. Fancy a beer?”

It was the nonchalant way she said it on letting go of his hand that made him laugh out loud, then slap his hand over his mouth, his eyes roaming upwards.

“Don’t worry, they can’t hear us either. I’ve only got Bud… sorry but it’s…”

“Yeah, I know, like making love in a boat.” Her expression told him she hadn’t heard the punchline. “Fu…,”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” Karen’s smile broadened as she saw Carl’s face go a deep crimson. She pulled the tops of two bottles and handed one to Carl then sat down on the dirt floor.

“So, what’s your story, Carl?”

“Same as everyone else, I guess. Family, neighbours and friends all dead. Everything and everyone gone. You?”

“Same. School was the worst. Each day a couple more go missing, then the teachers dropping like flies. My mom told me to keep away from large gatherings and wear a surgical mask. Then she died.”

“No point, in the mask I mean. Surgical masks are meant to stop your bugs getting out and onto the patient, not the other way around.”

“You a med student?”

“Yeah, well, sort of. I was going in that direction. You?”

“Still at school, got another year.”

“Not much point in school now, I guess.” Carl shrugged and sipped his beer. “This your place?”

Karen shook her head. “No, found it. Well, I knew about it by overhearing some red-neck say he was building a shelter for when the shit hit the fan. Even boasted the hows, whys and wherefores of the place. Bit stupid if you don’t want a horde of infected people at your door.

“So, I just came up and spent a few days looking until I found it. Boy was I starving when I finally found the entrance. Lucky the guy had managed to stock up with food and water.”

Carl sipped his beer and Karen watched his frown grow steadily deeper.

“What are you thinking?” Karen asked.

“Well, like, what do we do now? Wait it out until the military show up?”

Karen gave him a scornful look. “What military? I haven’t heard shit for nigh on a week. No aircraft except theirs and certainly not seen any vehicles. I guess we still have subs under the sea but what can they do? Nah, we are in deep shit, man, and nobody but us is getting us out of it.”

“Looks planned then. All this infection was planted on us from space and when that was done, they invaded. Neat way to do things.”

Karen nodded and the two stared at nothing, deep in their own thoughts, sipping on their beer. A small insect buzzed between them and Karen took a swipe at it. “Damned flies get everywhere,” she hissed, swiping at it again.

“Yeah,” Carl agreed, swatting at the buzzing insect.

“Well, not sure how we’re going to sleep but it must be dusk about now and we have to be up early in the morning.”

Carl reached to pull his sleeve back, then realised his watch had stopped weeks ago.

“I stopped wearing mine weeks back,” Karen said pointing to Carl’s digital timepiece. “They must have used some sort of EMP to knock out all the electronics too.”

“EMP?” Carl asked.

“Yeah, like when a nuke goes off. It sends out an Electronic Magnetic Pulse and that knocks out phones, TVs watches, cars… well, pretty much everything that used electronics.”

“Oh,” Carl muttered. “Should have known that I guess.”

Karen shook her head. “Why would you? In our brave new world, whoever needs to know stuff logs on and looks it up on Wikipedia or some such shit.”

“Yeah,” Carl nodded in agreement. “I guess we’re back to the fields then.”

“Which is why we’re having to get up early.”

“Why?”

“Foraging, man. We have two mouths to feed now.”

***

Sleep was not easy to come by in the cramped room. Karen had shown Carl the one other room she had, her bedroom, and told him, with a grin, to sleep in the lounge as best he could. So, with a heavy heart, but with some hope since he realised he wasn’t alone, he lay on the floor and covered himself with a large piece of old tarp, swatting away at the damn fly that buzzed him, before he eventually fell asleep.

It was dark when he came around and was startled to hear something scraping above, on the outside. Karen was at the periscope, frantically searching and muttering under her breath about it being ‘too damned dark to see’ when the scraping stopped.

“What is…” Carl hissed, but Karen held up a hand for quiet.

“Something’s up there,” she whispered after a while, “but I can’t see what it…”

The explosion was small but powerful and the concussion knocked both Karen and Carl backwards, both crashing into the rear wall and hitting the floor at the same time.

Carl groaned and reached out for Karen, but strong hands, bony hands, gripped his arm and yanked him toward where the entrance to the shelter had been. Carl could vaguely make out Karen being similarly manhandled as a fly swept passed his head and he lost consciousness.

***

“Namer.”

Karen’s headache was intense, worse than the time she had drunk three tequilas at a friend’s party a year back and had thrown up over her dad’s car.

“Namer.”

“What?”

Karen heard Carl’s voice and managed to squeeze her eyes together to see a blurred vision of him slumped in a wooden chair, tied roughly to the back of the chair with some sort of cord.

“Namer!” The voice was louder now and very weird.

“What are you saying?” Carl asked, his speech slightly slurred. 

Karen was likewise bound to a chair her head forward but straining to sit upright.

“You namer,” the voice said.

Karen looked toward a figure sat in a chair like Carl’s, but looking decidedly not right, somehow.

“You namer.” The voice was now lower and Karen could suddenly see why it sounded and looked odd. It wasn’t human, even remotely human. It had two legs, okay sort of going to the same plan as a human design, even a body and a head. But it was the four arms, the jet-black figure had, that made the bile in Karen’s stomach boil and she involuntarily retched. The dark figure swivelled in its chair.

“You,” it said, with a gurgle, “namer.”

“Name, you freak,” Karen said, retching once more.

The creature seemed to think this over, gave out what Karen took to be a chuckle and then swiped her face, hard, with one of its extra bony hands.

“Hey, man,” Karen swore, “that hurt.” She felt something warm trickling down her cheek and licked at it, concerned she was bleeding. She was and she swore at the creature.

The black face, so dark it was hard to distinguish features, looked at her without flinching, then reached out and touched Karen’s left temple.

Karen winced.

“Blooods,” the alien said to someone, some… thing, behind Karen that she couldn’t see.

“Blood,” Karen muttered, “I’m bleeding, man... thing! My name is Karen. He’s Carl,” she said nodding in the direction of Carl, still slumped in the chair. “Now we’re on first name terms, how about you let us go and we’ll not bother you while we still live. Okay?”

“Liff,” the alien said with another, sush, sush, sush sound, which Karen took for the meanest chuckle she had ever heard. “No liff, you,” it added, pointing toward Karen.

That statement could not have been mistaken even if the execution of the English was somewhat in doubt.

A buzz in Karen’s ear made her shake her head. “Damn these insects, they get everywhere.”

“Inzeks?”

It was a definite question, Karen thought. “Yeah, insects. Fly, you know, swat them. Kill them because they spread disease. You know black thing with…” It was at the point that she was about to say wings that Karen noticed the black alien had very small translucent wings on its back. “Vestigial wings,” Karen muttered, somewhat alarmed.

The creature touched its chest. “Inzek, me,” and he gave the sush, sush, sush chuckle once more. It leaned toward Karen. “Kills me, you? Sush, sush, sush.”

A fly buzzed into vision and then hovered at her eye level.

“Zentinelz,” the dark alien said and nodded. “See hoomanz. We wait.”

“Zentinelz?” Karen had already guessed what he was saying, just by watching the fly hover. It was a house fly, but it hovered and it watched her intently. “Insects… you use them to watch us? Sentinels? They’re here to watch. Watch what? Us, the cows in the field?”

“Zentinelz watch all, earts.”

“Earts? Earth? All Earth’s people?”

The alien shook his glistening black head. “No watch chou, watch all. Clean bad.”

“Clean bad?”

“They’re here to clean the parasites. The vermin,” Carl said.

Karen swung her head toward Carl. He was still slumped but had come around enough to understand what the alien was trying to tell Karen.

“Clean the vermin? What vermin?” Karen’s voice had raised a notch in sheer terror at what the answer was going to be.

“Chou,” the alien said, pointing at Carl and Karen.

“Us?” Karen said.

“We’re the vermin, the insects are the sentinels and these guys… these guys are the gardeners.”

Karen shook her head, trying to keep the thought out of her head. “They’re gardeners? The earth is a garden?”

Carl laughed a bitter laugh. “Yes, and they’re here to tidy up, to clean the mess up the vermin have made and rid the garden of the vermin… us.”

“Eden, sush, sush, sush,” the alien said with his distinct chuckle, as he pulled a short-curved sword from its sheath and pointed it at Karen.

The Games People Play

The spaceship didn’t descend, it appeared.

In one heartbeat, the grassy meadow in Central Park was just another patch of green in Manhattan. Joggers loped past tourists photographing the skyline. A brass band rehearsed for an afternoon concert. An old man scattered crumbs for pigeons.

The next heartbeat, it was there.

A smooth, obsidian oval the height of a city block stood upright on the grass, reflecting the park in a warped, oily sheen. No seams. No markings.

For three long seconds, no one moved.

Then the screaming began.

Phones were raised. Videos streamed live. People fled in every direction, scattering like startled birds. The brass band stopped mid-note. Sirens began wailing in the streets surrounding the park.

***

[WNN Breaking News Broadcast – Live]"We’re getting unconfirmed reports from New York City of… some sort of structure, our footage shows it here, appearing in Central Park. Authorities are urging civilians to clear the area. I repeat… "

***

By the time military units arrived, the crowd was swelling again, drawn by morbid curiosity. Overhead, news drones hummed in tight circles. Armed soldiers formed a perimeter, weapons up.

Without warning, a seam appeared in the oval’s surface, running top to bottom. A hairline crack of blue-white light pulsed once… twice… then widened.

Something stepped out.

The figure was humanoid, tall, impossibly thin, encased in silver and black armour that moved as though alive. Its head turned with a precision just shy of human.

Behind it came a second figure, and gasps rippled through the crowd.

The robot was enormous, three times the height of a man, made of interlocking steel plates. Its head was a smooth dome with twin eyes glowing like miniature suns. Each step it took made the ground tremble.

***

[Global News Link – BBC World Service]"We’re now seeing images from Central Park… an extraterrestrial being, flanked by what appears to be a towering robot… Reports from Tokyo, Berlin, and Cape Town confirm public gatherings watching this unfold on giant screens…"

***

The alien reached the centre of the green lawn. The robot stopped behind him, still as a statue.

“My designation is Corval,” the alien’s voice rang out, not through air, but inside every mind listening, worldwide. “I address the planet known as Earth. You have been evaluated by the Galactic Concordance and deemed a Grade Seven Garbage World. Useless. Not fit for purpose. In three of your days, this planet will be obliterated.”

The words rippled through the crowd. Grade Seven. Garbage. Not fit. Obliterated.

Shouts broke out. A man hurled a bottle; it burst against an invisible barrier a few metres from Corval. Somewhere, a gunshot cracked. The bullet flattened mid-air and dropped to the grass.

Corval’s tone didn’t change. “You have squandered your stewardship. Resources stripped. Ecosystems destroyed. Violence embraced. You are unworthy.”

He turned, walking back towards the ship.

***

[CNN International – Live Studio]"We’re seeing widespread panic across major cities… Stock markets in freefall… World leaders have entered emergency talks… The Vatican has released a statement urging prayer, while in several capitals, people have gathered in public squares to watch the live feeds…"

***

“Hey!”

The voice cut through the din.

A woman in jeans and a faded blue hoodie stepped forward, holding the hand of a small girl no older than seven. Her daughter’s hair was in messy pigtails, her sneakers scuffed and dusted with brown soil.

“You can’t just wipe us out without giving us a chance,” the woman called out.

Corval stopped, turning his head. “Your chance was the last ten thousand years. You squandered it.”

“Then give us another. One chance. One game. If she wins,” the woman squeezed her daughter’s hand, “you leave this world alone. If she loses, you can destroy it.”

The alien regarded her for a long, unreadable moment.

“A contest?”

“A game,” she repeated.

A faint curve touched Corval’s lips. “Very well. But I do not sully myself with such frivolities. My sentinel will represent me.”

The robot’s head turned, its glowing eyes narrowing on the girl.

“What is this game?” Corval asked.

“Hopscotch,” the girl said brightly.

***

[WNN Field Reporter – Live]"You’re watching history here… The alien has agreed to some sort of game, a child’s game, by all appearances. Military officials are allowing this to proceed. The mood here is tense, "

***

A hopscotch grid was chalked onto the nearest path. Soldiers and onlookers formed a wide ring.

The girl went first, stone down, hop, hop, turn, hop back. Cheers erupted.

Then the robot moved. It didn’t hop, it calculated, each colossal step placed with mathematical perfection, never touching a line.

Round after round, the gap widened. The alien watched, hands clasped behind his back.

The girl paused before her next turn, looking up at the towering sentinel.

“You don’t want to hurt people, do you?” she asked.

The robot’s head tilted.

“My ma says games are supposed to be fun. Are you having fun?”

The robot hesitated. “Fun… is not a recognised parameter.”

“It is if you’re playing with me,” she said, smiling.

Servos whined as its gaze flicked from the girl… to Corval… back to the girl.

“Directive conflict detected. Primary orders, win game. Secondary orders, preserve emotional state of playmate.”

Corval’s voice sharpened. “Ignore secondary orders. Win.”

“Contradictory input,” the robot said. “Resolving… cannot resolve… cannot, ”

The whine became a metallic scream. The robot froze mid-step, lights flickering, then went dark.

Gasps swept the crowd.

Corval’s composure broke. He took one step back. Then, without a word, he turned and strode to the ship. The obsidian oval sealed, shimmered… and vanished.

***

[BBC World Service – Global Feed]"Incredible scenes from New York, The alien ship is gone. The robot lies inert. Across the globe, celebrations are breaking out…"

***

The little girl trotted back to her mother, grinning.

“You taught me well, Ma,” she whispered. “If you can’t win… cheat.”

After the Bomb

It was a lovely spring morning, with the blossom just appearing and all the trees and bushes had that fresh, new feel about them. That is what people should have been thinking on their morning commute, instead they were thinking dark and gloomy thoughts. Their president had been throwing insults at that crazy dictator in the east and he had been throwing them back at the president. It was becoming a tit-for-tat school yard situation, with one difference, these school-boys had nuclear weapons. And so it was, on that lovely day in early spring, as people commuted to work, the air-raid sirens went off and everyone ran for cover. War had started and this one would be over very quickly and probably before everyone in both countries had found shelter.

The scattering crowds rapidly thinned before the first missiles plunged back into the atmosphere and their deadly payloads erupted into a dozen warheads, each primed to find a certain city and each programmed to explode in an air-burst of nuclear death. Hundreds of warheads found their mark and war began and finished in less than three hours as nuclear nations all over the globe joined in, just in case a neighbour was lobbing missiles in their direction. 

By the time the dust settled, a good proportion of people would be dead and the rest would probably die a painful and agonising death in the weeks that followed.

Kreig Guntel couldn’t believe his bad luck. Here he was, an undercover agent for the ASF, Alphan Security Forces, an alien from Sigma Alpha 3, on his first undercover mission to study these beings. This was day twenty-five of a twelve-year mission, down the pan before he had managed to really get going. His job was to report back to his superiors on any potential threat this planet may be to the Alphans and here he was, in a fall-out shelter with four adult humans and two children, all looking at each other for answers to their predicament. Human threat to Alphans? Nope, not anymore!

The shelter was really a basement, lead shielded with running water and air-purification systems installed. One room forty feet by forty feet with a few chairs, fold up beds and a couch. There was tinned food, which didn’t float Kreig’s boat as he hated the tinny taste any tinned produce left in his mouth.

A click and hiss of static told Kreig someone had found a radio. It was a young woman, sitting directly opposite Kreig, twiddling with the dial and obviously not knowing what she was doing.

She looked up and saw Kreig watching here. “I’ve never used a radio before,” she said sheepishly, but managed to give him a lovely smile.

“Me neither,” Kreig said, still unsure of his pronunciation of the language, but realising in such a large and cosmopolitan city many accents are in play.

“My name’s Amy. What’s yours?”

“Kre… Craig,” Kreig quickly corrected himself. “Craig Grunden, pleased to meet you,” he said, standing and walking over to Amy. He offered his hand and she took it, hesitantly, then smiled and they shook hands.

“Is that a northern accent?” It was a male voice speaking in the dimmer recess of one of the corners in the room. 

“Yeah, I guess so,” Kreig said. “Who are you?”

The figure stood and walked forward, leaving the shadows behind. He extended a hand, “Malcom Neese, at your service.” The man’s rolling brogue accent had a soothing effect on Kreig and he wondered at that fact. Could humans with certain accents pose a threat to… not anymore, they couldn’t.

The two men regarded each other with small, knowing smiles, on their faces. Both looked as if they knew something about the other, but neither could quite work out what that something was.

“Radio’s dead,” Amy said.

“It will be. It’s the EMP effect. The electromagnetic pulse from the nukes,” an older woman said, joining the other three. “Persimmon,” she said in the way of an introduction, nodding to the other three.

“Fine mess we’re in now,” Amy said in a quiet, thoughtful voice. “Will we get out of here, alive, do you think?” 

Well, I will, Kreig told himself. I have my emergency beacon and transporter.

The other three looked unsure, yet sure. Kreig found their looks unsettling, until he noticed Persimmon was fiddling with a small device she had produced from her handbag.

“What’s that?” Kreig asked, slightly shocked when he suddenly realised what it was. “You’re a Greigan, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Persimmon, shouted, standing away from the other three. “And I’ll be damned if I die on this shit-hole of a planet.” Persimmon pressed a small red button on the device and her body shimmered as the transporter took hold and whisked her to wherever her waiting scout ship was.

“Damn,” Malcom said. “If that’s the case, I’m off too.” No sooner had he said it than he too shimmered and was gone.

Amy looked at Kreig and held her hand out. “Amclai of the Axan Star Empire.”

Kreig took her hand and shook it once, a shocked look on his face. “But…”

“I know,” she said, “I think you’re kind of cute too. Look me up sometime.”

The place where Amy had sat was empty and Kreig was still shocked at the turn of events. Then he realised the two children were in front of him, no older than twelve, and looking very scared.

Shit! Now what? 

Kreig fingered his emergency beacon and realised he could be in his scout ship in seconds and eating real food. Groll and snip! His mouth watered involuntarily.

“Sir, what do we do?” The boy’s eyes were filling with tears and the girl was almost ready to cry out loud.

“What’s your name? Are you brother and sister?”

“Adam,” the boy said, shaking his head. “I’ve never seen her before.”

The girl was blubbing, but managed to squeak out, “Eve,” before collapsing into a chair and crying quietly to herself.

Alphans were not known for their sympathy or empathy and Kreig pushed his emergency transport beacon, as he looked down at the children. His ethereal voice echoed in the room as he disappeared. “Good luck with repopulating your world.”

By Dawn’s Early Light

The three-minute signal was undeniably alien in origin. It appeared on all wavelengths on all channels audio and video everywhere at the same time, and it repeated for twenty-four hours. 

The President of the United States watched the three-minute video more than thirty times before he picked up the phone and called Victor Madden.

Madden arrived at the White House without ceremony. The senator for Wisconsin, a second Gulf War air-force veteran knew what the President was about to ask him. He too had seen the video and had been stealing himself for the call. Madden waited in the outer reception room to the oval office and calmly studied his finger nails. A fastidious man, he knew his place in the political hierarchy of Capitol Hill. He knew he was a small cog in a bigger machine, but his also knew he had the ability to make waves, and in particular, he knew the President feared him and his ability to stop legislation he didn’t agree with in its tracks. Politically, he was a pygmy, but he was a pygmy who could cause the President a lot of pain.

The door to the oval office opened, and Victor Madden stood.

“Come on in Victor. I’m sure you know why I’ve called you in,” the President said in his best folksy down on the farm voice.

Madden almost swaggered into the oval office, but said nothing as he sat in a chair opposite the President.

“Coffee?” President Castle asked.

Madden shook his head.

“Bit of a red-letter day for you, Victor,” the President said with a broad smile. “Bet you never expected this day to arrive? After all, it was you that pushed through the funding cuts for both NASA and SETI.”

“I remember, Mr. President,” Madden almost hissed the words through gritted teeth.

“You’ll also remember your pledge?”

Madden nodded.

“You said that if any aliens came knocking on our door you would be the first to greet them.”

Madden nodded again.

“And I think you also said...“

“I also said, hell, I’d go to their planet and greet them,” Madden said, a little too loudly.

“So, you did, so you did.”

There was a pause that was short, but telling. Madden knew the President had something up his sleeve; something Madden was not going to like. Madden sat forward, his hunched shoulders giving him the air of a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

President Castle couldn’t believe his luck and was so happy the signal had arrived on his watch. Of course, it was a great moment for humanity, but an even greater moment for Castle. Victor Madden had been a thorn in his administration's side more than once, and now; it was payback time. “Well, Victor, you’ll be glad to know that we’ve found a way for you to honour your pledge. There were two signals sent to us. The main signal and another data signal hidden beneath the main one. This second signal has been analysed, and our scientists have determined that the aliens have sent us the blueprints for a ftl spaceship.”

Madden blanched. “A what?”

President Castle ignored the Senator’s question. “I’m told that the ship, should we care to build it, will allow a single human being to travel faster than light. The aliens are from Tau Ceti, a class G star, very similar to our own sun, and relatively close to us, about twelve light years distance. The ship will be able to far exceed light speed and should get you there in little more than an hour or so.”

Madden could feel his face flushing. “Me? But… “

“No need to say anything Victor. I know you’ll do your duty, and I know you’ll represent humanity with dignity and good grace.”

Madden for the first time in his life was speechless and President Castle was savouring that moment.

***

Three months later, the fastest and most expensive engineering project in all human history was completed, and Victor Madden sat in the cockpit of the ftl spaceship, in orbit around the Earth. A 747 had been the little ftl craft’s mother ship and had carried it to forty thousand feet where the ftl ship detached and dropped away, whereupon expendable boosters ignited and pushed it into orbit before detaching themselves. Now Madden sat silently, pensively, stunned and alone in the cramped cockpit. The scientists made the ship fully automated so Madden did not need to do a thing. Once he was in orbit, all he needed to do was sit and wait for the ftl drive to spin up to capacity, and the jump would take him to Tau Ceti.

Madden fidgeted in his seat when his radio crackled to life, causing his heart to miss a beat.

“How are you doing Victor?” The President asked. “You’ve got about a minute before the ship jumps to light speed.”

“OK, I guess.” Madden felt like saying something rude but chickened out. Now was not the time for rudeness. Now was the time for prayers.

“What happens if the scientists screwed up and this thing takes me to the wrong planet?”

“No chance of that Victor. It will work ok. Have you thought of a name for your ship? A ship should have a name Victor.”

“I thought I would call it shittttt...”

Victor Madden and his ship blipped out of existence in the blink of an eye.

Madden felt as if he had been turned inside out and then outside in for good measure. His hands were shaking, and his mouth was dry. Madden suddenly remembered to breath. It was then that he noticed the Earth was no longer beneath him; instead, he was orbiting a wholly alien world made up of mostly sea and small islands, no continents.

“Holy bones, it worked.”

As Madden watched the planet rotating, his ship settled itself into a glide path and commenced its descent.

***

Madden opened the ftl ship’s cockpit and held his breath. No matter how many times he had been told the atmosphere was breathable; he was not taking any chances.

As the cockpit hood slid into its recess and Tau Ceti’s sunlight bathed his body for the first time, Madden blew out a lung full of earth air and tentatively breathed in.

“Citrus,” Madden muttered to himself. “The damn planet smells like an orange!” Madden left the cockpit and climbed down the small ladder on the outside and stepped forward with a smile on his face. “Oranges! Who would have believed it?”

Madden had been to the Caribbean once, and he had loved the experience and now here he was, the first man to have stood on an exoplanet and it was almost like being back on Earth on any number of Caribbean islands.

His ship had landed on an open grassy area a few metres from a forest to the north and close to a beach of white sand, just a few steps from where he now stood. Madden’s smile broadened and he almost ran to the beach. As he stood with foaming surf lapping at his boots, he suddenly heard something behind him.

“Welcome,” a high-pitched voice said.

Madden turned and gasped. “You’re a woman! You’re naked!”

“I’m a Gelph and yes; I am naked, as are all on this world.”

“But you look human. And you’re naked!”

The Gelph simply smiled and shook her head. Her long blond hair caught the sun and glistened. Madden was awestruck.

“My name is Sil. I’m glad and honoured to meet you Victor.”

Madden held his hand out and Sil took it and shook vigorously. “Is this what you do on your world? You call it a hand shake; I believe?” Sil smiled sweetly.

“Just a minute,” Madden gasped, “you called me Victor. And how do you know about hand-shakes?”

“We know a lot of things, Victor.”

“And you’re speaking in English, how on Earth… “

“We’re not on Earth, Victor. This is Chaleen.” Again, Sil smiled sweetly.

“Chaleen, what a lovely name, Sil. I represent the people of Earth. My mission…”

“Yes, I know all about your mission,” Sil said, interrupting Madden once again which the Senator found mildly rude.

“Ok, so what now?”

“Now, you get yourself more comfortable, and we wait.”

“Yes, it is a little warm for a flight suit.” Madden dropped his helmet to the sand and shrugged off his flight suit. After some huffing and puffing Madden was finally free of the flight suit, boots and other paraphernalia and there he stood, embarrassed, in his pilot long-johns in front of a beautiful naked woman on an idyllic desert island.

“And the rest…” Sil said, her high voice carrying in the wind.

“Rest? You mean, everything?”

“Yes, Chaleen expects it.”

Madden faltered for a long second but then shrugged. “When in Rome, I suppose.” 

As a pilot during the last Gulf war, he had expected to be shot down and captured at any time and to be mistreated, but never in his wildest dreams did he ever anticipate this.

Madden divested himself of his last shred of clothing and stood before the Gelph, Sil, waiting, for the moment, she would take him to her leader, and that’s how they stood, for over a minute, looking at each other, neither saying anything.

It was Madden who broke the silence. “So, Sil. What’s the plan?”

Sil’s brow furrowed, and she shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m waiting for you to introduce me to your leader. That’s the sort of thing that usually happens, isn’t it?”

“Leader?” Sil asked. “We don’t have a leader; we are guided by Chaleen.”

“Your planet guides you?”

“Yes, Chaleen looks after us, provides for us, ensures we are safe. We don’t have your politics here. We live and we die here and during the in-between, Chaleen looks after us.”

Madden suddenly had an insight into Sil. “You have no idea why I’m here, have you?”

Sil looked at Victor and smiled. “Of course not, your reason to be here is your reason, not mine.”

“But you sent a message, or at least; Chaleen sent a message. Which is it to be? Surely Chaleen has asked me here for a reason?”

“I do not know,” Sil said, her head wavering as she looked elsewhere. Then she looked back at Victor and she smiled before her expression turned blank and she simply looked into nothing, her eyes blank.

“Sil! Sil! Why am I here Sil?” Victor shook Sil by the shoulders but could illicit no response. It seemed to him as though Sil had suddenly been turned off, he could think of no other way to describe it. 

Suddenly, there was a click from a microphone, headset or something earthly and mundane. “You’re here because you’re a pain in the backside, Victor. That is why you are here, you son of a bitch.”

“What the fu…”

“I am on about you and your inability to keep your nose out, stupid. That is all, Victor; you are a complete waste of space.”

“What?” Victor said, then suddenly realised he recognised the voice. “Castle? Is that you? How on Earth…”

“Victor, you’re not on Earth, and the reason you’re not on Earth is very simple. You have been a thorn in my side for years and when I saw the opportunity to remove that thorn, I took it.”

“But I don’t understand, why send me here as a representative of Earth when there seems to be no governing body here? Where are the aliens that sent the two signals?"

Madden heard a brief chuckle and then Castle was back on the line. “The aliens that sent the signal don’t live on the planet you’re on. And it was three signals, actually, not two. I forgot to mention the third signal.”

“What are you talking about, Castle? Where are the real aliens?”

“They live nearby, but don’t worry about them. You will  meet them, eventually. I suggest you simply hunker down and get on with your life.”

Madden felt a shiver down his spine, he knew he wasn’t going to like what came next.

“Think of yourself as a pioneer, Victor. What you are doing for the people of Earth is truly inspiring.” Castle said, with a barely hidden guffaw.

“What have you done, Castle. What deal have you pulled off?”

“Well, let me just say I am so pleased that you have taken to this mission…”

“To hell with you Castle, what have you done to me?”

“Victor! I am shocked by your language. However, let me just say that it’s not surprising, after all, you’re a product of your time.”

“Castle, I’m warning you I…”

“You’ll what? You will do nothing except maybe scream a little if it starts to hurt.”

“Scream?” Madden felt the chill down his spine again. “What do you mean, Castle? What have you done to me?”

“Victor, you are now part of a great experiment. Humanity has been given the chance to reach for the stars, to spread our wings and fly you might say.”

“The aliens have given us the ftl drive?”

“Yes, but” Castle said, stifling another chuckle, “there was a price to pay.”

The icy fingers were now running up and down Victor’s back. “A price? What price?”

“The aliens wanted to study us first. That was what was in the third part of the signal, a proposal. We let them study us and they will allow us to reach for the stars. They themselves have no interest in forging an empire; they’re a little different to us.”

“But Sil looks human.” Victor said, in a small voice.

“Ah, you’ve met someone already. Good, I’m glad you will have a companion.”

“Mister President, I am in a state of shock, and I want to know why. Why am I being treated like this?”

“Because, you sonofabitch, you wanted it this way. You stifled more of my projects than I care to remember. You wanted me out, you wanted to take over. You wanted it all and now you have nothing. This is politics, Victor, but on a galactic scale. The aliens wanted a guinea pig, a human being to study. That’s what they strive for, knowledge. They want to study and classify all life in the universe. The planet you are on is their laboratory. It’s where they keep their Guinea pigs.”

“Guinea pigs,” Victor Madden whispered, turning to look at Sil. Victor Madden felt panic surging inside him as he walked around Sil, realising that as beautiful as she was, there was something not quite right about her. Then he noticed the scar tissue at the neckline, on the arms and on the legs, hands and feet. “She’s been taken apart and put back together,” Victor whispered, with abject terror in his voice.

“Yep, Victor, no anaesthetic either, I’m told the aliens want to see what makes you tick, warts and all.”

The radio link clicked off, and as it did, a rip in the sky appeared and as alien a hand as Victor Madden could imagine quickly pushed through the fissure and plucked Sil from the golden beach. The girl’s screams were stifled as the hand disappeared through the tear which quickly healed over, with not a trace to be seen of either the hand or Sil.

Victor Madden took a deep, shuddering breath, and fainted.

Grapes

It’s what you are supposed to do, isn’t it? Someone you know is ill and in the hospital, you buy them some flowers and a bag of grapes. That’s right, isn’t it?

Well, that’s what I did. I gave a friend a bag of grapes. Nice, sweet black ones, nothing sinister in that. So why do I end up in prison, for life, guilty of my friend’s murder? It was the grapes. I didn’t do a thing; it was the grapes, honest.

***

Where did it all start? It was the day I received a text message from Maddy. She said Billy had been taken to the hospital with suspected food poisoning. Billy was once my best friend; we lived, worked and played together, literally. Billy and I had been friends since we were five years old. We went through school and college together. We even ended up working at the same stockbrokers. We partied hard, and we worked hard. But it came to an end when Maddy turned up. Always the way, always a woman is what my old Dad used to say, and he was dead on the money where Maddy was concerned.

Maddy started work at the brokerage about a year after Billy, and I joined. Billy and I had lost touch briefly and were delighted to find we had both joined the same firm within a month of each other. We became our old inseparable selves and got back in the groove as soon as we met again. That is until Maddy turned up.

Maddy arrived in what seemed like a staged entrance. Billy and I had just walked into the reception at work and were signing in when the door opened and in walked Maddy. I swear the sun suddenly came out, and there she was in a halo of golden light, her long blond hair flowing behind her as she walked up to the desk.

“I am here for an interview with Mr. Boyd. Madeleine Klein is the name.”

The receptionist ticked her name off a list and was about to tell Maddy where to go when Billy piped up. “We’re next door to Mr. Boyd. We’ll show the young lady the way.”

The receptionist was an old battle-axe, but you could see the glint in her eye as she gave Billy a curt nod. Billy finished signing in, grabbed the briefcase he had dropped to the floor and was off with Maddy in tow. I hadn’t signed in yet, but that didn’t stop Billy. He was fishing, and he didn’t want any interference from anyone else. That was when the first cracks in our relationship showed up. Many more were to follow in the ensuing weeks as Maddy passed her interview with flying colours, and she started her new job in our office.

***

Six months later, the biggest crack appeared in mine and Billy’s friendship. I started dating Maddy. This wasn’t just an upset to Billy; this was a slap in the face as he had been angling for a date from day one. I, on the other hand, had bided my time and used a softly, softly approach. Six months after that, all the cracks were gone, replaced by a chasm. Billy and I were no longer friends the day Maddy moved in with me. 

To me, all was well with the world, and I had never been so in love in my life. Maddy was my dream girl, but it was an odd relationship. The first time we made love was the day she moved in. And that was the same day we started down our slippery slope to the parting of the ways three months later. We didn’t argue; we didn’t fight; we just stopped talking. Or rather, Maddy stopped talking to me. Her last words to me were “I love you dearly, Paul, but you are not the one for me.” It was an odd thing to say, and in response I told her she should perhaps go away and live with Billy or words to that effect.

Maddy then did exactly that and struck up a relationship with Billy and within a few weeks of leaving me; she was moving in with Billy. He gloated, of course he did; I would probably have done the same, and we were, after all, bitter enemies now. However, I would never have wished an illness on him. But it seems that’s exactly what I did.

***

The day after I received the text message from Maddy. I went around to their flat. Maddy let me in, and I was struck by her attire at once. She was dressed head to foot in black.

“Are you going to a funeral?” I asked in all innocence.

She gave me a quizzical look. “Isn’t this correct attire when someone close dies?”

“Yes, I said. Who’s died?”

“No one, yet.”

I sat for a second, pondering what she had just said, shook the thought from my head and asked about Billy.

“He is in the hospital. I told you in the text.”

“I know; I just thought he may be out by now.”

“No, he is very ill. I have bought grapes for him, but cannot get to see him in time. My time here is limited.”

“OK, I’ll go and visit him this evening, and I’ll take the grapes.”

“I always wanted you the most, but you were not the right one. Billy is the right one. His time is coming soon.”

I must have looked confused because Maddy then said something even stranger.

“It will be tonight. Will you go to the funeral?”

“Maddy,” I said, feeling as if reality had suddenly been suspended, “what are you talking about. Whose funeral?”

“Billy’s funeral.”

She said it with such a straight face that I couldn’t quite believe what I heard.

“Billy! Did you say Billy’s funeral?”

“Yes. Would you like to make love to me before I go?”

“Maddy, this is getting a little too surreal for my taste. You’re not making sense.”

“I like the sensation with you. Billy is not a match for you. He is too fast. But he is the one I need. However, we could make love again, the last time before I leave.”

As she spoke, Maddy stood up and began unbuttoning her black blouse. I sat there, aghast, not knowing which way to look. This was my ex-best friend’s girl, and she was stripping for me. By the time she had dropped her skirt to the floor, I was ready for her, despite my outrage at what she was proposing.

***

I left the flat a spent man, tired and disorientated. However, I had to go and see Billy. To make sure he was ok and to try to make some sense of what was going on with Maddy. I took Maddy’s grapes and bought a bunch of flowers from a stall at the local market, then hopped onto a bus into town.

When I got to the ward Billy was on, I was shocked. They had moved him into a side cubicle, and he looked dreadful. His face was skeletal and his eyes sunken, his once full head of curly black hair was now grey and lank. He was asleep, but I could tell that he seemed shorter than the last time I saw him. As I stood in the doorway, I stopped a passing nurse and asked what the diagnosis was.

“We’re not fully certain. He won’t eat and we’ve got him on a drip, but he seems to be withering away in front of our eyes.”

“Has Maddy seen him like this?”

“Maddy who?”

“His girlfriend.”

“No one has been to see him. You’re the first.” The nurse quickly made her exit and left me with my thoughts, which were in complete turmoil.

***

After about an hour, Billy began to stir. Suddenly, his eyes opened and he let out a feeble cry. Then his eyes locked onto mine, and he visibly relaxed with a sigh, then he struggled to leverage himself up on his forearms. “Paul, she’s done for me,” Billy muttered. “She’s sucking the life out of me. She’s not human.”

The effort was too much for him, and he collapsed back onto the bed.

“Hey, man. Steady on. You need your strength. What do you mean she’s not human?”

“Maddy, she’s an alien.”

“What, illegal alien or Martian type alien?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood. My attempt at humour failed miserably.

“She’s not from Earth. She’s on safari, hunting down humans to feed off. She sucks the life from them. She started feeding on me two days ago, she, she…”

The effort was too much for him, and Billy suddenly settled back and closed his eyes. For one horrible minute, I thought he had died, but then I saw his chest rise and fall as he took short, shallow breaths.

I stayed for another thirty minutes but was eventually shown the door by a male nurse who was taking no prisoners.

I decided to go back to Billy’s flat and confront Maddy and get to the bottom of what was happening to Billy.

I arrived at the flat just in time to see Maddy getting into a cab with a large suitcase. She was no longer dressed in black, and she seemed less dour than earlier in the day. There was no point hanging around as it didn’t seem likely Maddy was coming back any time soon and certainly Billy was in no fit shape to go home. So I hailed a cab and went home myself. I was tired and needed to sleep, but I didn’t get any.

When I arrived back at my flat. I went straight to the bathroom to run a bath. I somehow felt dirty, gritty even and needed a bath to wash away the day. As I removed my shirt, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and gasped in shock. My dark-brown hair was now grey, and my blue eyes were grey also. I had aged, by thirty years, in a few hours. Then I noticed the red ring of proud flesh on the left-hand side of my throat. It was mouth shaped.

A sudden insistent knocking on the door made me jump. I quickly put my shirt back on and walked to the front door. I opened it and a burly uniformed policeman stepped in, blocking my exit. A man in plain clothes, whom I assumed to also be a policeman, stood on the threshold. “Paul Freeman?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding.

Within seconds, I was handcuffed and the plain clothes cop was reading me my rights. 

As they bundled me down the stairs, I shouted at them. “Why am I under arrest? I’ve done nothing.”

“You are under arrest for the murder of William Danson.”

“Billy? I’ve just left him.”

“We know. William Danson died within minutes of you leaving him. It appears you left him a parting gift.”

“Of what?”

“Grapes. Poisoned grapes.”

Don’t Mention the War

The control room never slept.

Banks of monitors filled the dark space, each screen showing the same man from different angles, walking down a city street, eating lunch at his desk, laughing with a woman over wine.

“Rotation complete,” a voice said from the far corner. “Grey Coat swapped for Blue Cap. Red Scarf rotated out, she’s in the market scene now.”

A woman at the central console nodded, eyes on a scrolling stream of data. “Good. Keep his environment fluid, but familiar. And remember, no conflict terms, no historical references. Especially not the W-word.”

A younger tech, new on the job, frowned. “Really? We can’t even say it… ”

“Not even here,” the woman cut in sharply. “Not in any language, on any channel, within any reach of his senses. If he ever hears it, the whole construct will collapse. And when that happens, so will we.”

The younger tech stared at the nearest monitor, where the man on the screen was buying a coffee and smiling at the barista. “He doesn’t even know, does he?”

“No,” the woman said softly. “And that’s exactly how it has to stay.”

***

Pete Blaine was, by most accounts, a perfectly ordinary man.

He had a steady job at a mid-tier advertising agency, 9 to 5, with Fridays ending early if the boss was in a good mood. He had a girlfriend, Jenny Clark, who worked at a boutique clothing store. They’d been together two years, and marriage had been cautiously mentioned over late-night coffee more than once.

Life was steady. Predictable.

Except for the followers.

It started with a man in a grey coat outside the subway station. Pete noticed him one morning on the way to work, thin face, expressionless, holding a newspaper. That evening, when Pete and Jenny went to their favourite Italian place, the same man was sitting two tables down, reading a menu.

Odd. But cities are full of coincidences.

A week later, Pete spotted a woman in a bright red scarf walking her dog past his office building. Hours later, she was in the greeting card aisle of the shop where Pete and Jenny were buying wrapping paper for his mother’s birthday.

Faces repeated. The man with thick glasses at the newsstand became the same man drinking coffee at a café Pete passed after work. The woman ringing up his groceries one afternoon was queuing ahead of him at the cinema that night.

Jenny laughed it off. “Babe, you’re just noticing people more. It’s a big city, but it’s still a small world.”

Pete smiled, but the unease stayed.

***

The Agency: Midday Brief

“He’s making visual connections again,” the headset man reported. “We’re rotating too slowly.”

“Then speed it up,” said the woman at the console. “Change traffic patterns. Switch storefront displays. Give him something else to focus on.”

“And if he keeps pushing?”

Her eyes didn’t leave the screens. “Then we push back harder. Distraction is survival.”

***

One afternoon, while waiting for Jenny outside her shop, Pete saw a man in a suit with an earpiece muttering into his sleeve. When Pete stepped forward, the man disappeared into the crowd.

That night, Pete asked over dinner, “Jenny… do you ever feel like we’re being… watched?”

Jenny smiled, but her eyes darted just slightly to the left. “You watch too many spy movies.”

***

Pete’s dreams grew strange, flashes of burning cities, alien skies, deserts strewn with wreckage.

He woke one night, chest tight, and Jenny whispered, “You’re safe. Just a dream.”

But the next morning, at a bus stop, he saw it.

An old newspaper, abandoned on a bench. The frontpage headline, smudged but still legible:

WAR

The world shuddered.

Pedestrians froze mid-step. Clouds stopped moving. Jenny flickered like bad reception.

***

Agency-Red Alert

“Containment breach!” someone shouted.

“Too late,” said the headset man. “It’s in his head now.”

The woman at the console slammed a button. “Shut it down!”

The room went black.

***

Pete stood in a collapsing city. Buildings dissolved into static. Streets disintegrated into shards before falling into the void. Jenny opened her mouth to speak but dissolved into pixels.

And it was at that point, Pete knew.

Jenny had never existed. The city had never existed. The world had never existed.

It had all been him.

Not his to own, his to imagine.

In the final moments before everything vanished, Pete floated in infinite darkness. Somewhere, a voice whispered, not in fear, but in awe:

“He’s awake.”

Pete smiled. The smile was not human.

There had only ever been one sentient mind in the universe.

His.

And that made Pete Blaine a god.

Flash Fiction

The Hunted

I dropped to my knees, gasping for air as I tried to orient myself. It was dark, not too dark, but the colour was wrong, Blue trees? A crack of wood and I gasped, trying desperately to calm myself, not to make a sound lest it heard me, and the chase began again. It seemed like hours, but I could only have been here twenty minutes. One second I was walking down the lane with my dog, the next I was here. My dog was nowhere to be seen but something big was running down the tree-lined track, and I had never been so scared in my life. I ran.

Another snap of wood and I knew it was close; I could almost smell that foul stench. Where in hell was I and where was Sammy, my poor dog? Then a definite crunch of wood underfoot. The beast was big, mouth the size of a cavern and teeth that dripped - something! I wasn't waiting around to find out what it was dripping, and I ran again through the blue forest of awful smelling trees.

After a while, I stopped again, exhaustion overcoming my fear, but the fear just under the surface, ready to erupt in a second. I dropped to my knees again and my head pounded as I fell, rolling onto my back. I was in agony; my chest was heaving, and each breath scorched my windpipe. I looked side to side but could only see the damn blue trees. No sound, not even a breeze and it was so hot. Another branch snapped, far off this time but at once the fear leaped into my chest; my heart pounded faster, and I let out an involuntary whimper.

"No, please God no." I shook my head and tried to get up, but my limbs were like lead.

More crunching and this time I could hear the steady thump of the beast's footfall coming closer and closer. Steadily and slowly but inexorably moving toward my prone body. I whimpered again, but this time it came out as a sob.

It was close; the beast was almost on me, and all I could do was half raise my body. Then it was next to me. I could smell it, Sense it! It's huge snout was sniffing at my neck and in the dark blue forest, I heard myself scream.

***

Captain Gancasendi of his Imperial Majesty's Galactic Navy finished his meal and ruminated on the chase. Yes, it was a pathetic specimen, the chase was quick and easy. It tasted too much like stringy chicken to be fulfilling. This hunting trip was going to be a washout unless the next one put up a better fight.  Gancasendi sat back and waited for the teleport to send in the next victim to his holodeck from the pathetic blue-green planet below. Earth, the locals called it. Gancasendi called it muck. Pathetic creatures.

Personal Space

The two astronauts stood watching the small green glob with dumbstruck awe. It was alive, of that there was no doubt, as told by the alien’s small, but undulating mass and the odd, small, chirruping sound it made. For a long time, the two astronauts simply stared at the strange being.

It had taken over a hundred years since the Apollo moon landings and trillions upon trillions of dollars, but humans had finally set foot on a planet outside their home solar system. The twin suns of this neighbouring solar system blazed overhead, and here it was that human beings had found life outside of their home planet, Earth.

“We need to get it into the ship. Take it back to Earth. We’ll be heroes; we'll make millions.”

Colonel Eugene Drake turned to his companion, Martha Sagan. “We could kill it! We would kill it! This isn’t the time for uprooting aliens from their own environment. That’s not our mission. That’s like abduction, that’s…”

“I’m the exobiology expert on this mission, and I’m telling you what we need to do,” Sagan said, sharply.

The small green entity was indeed alive but had no identity. It did, however, have the ability to attract prey and then devour that prey.

“It will not fit into that space,” Drake said.

Sagan begged to differ. “It will. It's small. It will be fine.”

“It will die,” Drake shouted.

The astronauts were looking at a small cubicle in their ship, the size of a cupboard on Earth designed for cleaning implements.

The alien creature fine-tuned its abilities, and the two human’s jerked slightly.

“It will be fine,” Sagan kept saying. And Drake carried on his negative remonstrations.

The small green entity didn’t recognise the alien creatures as prey, but it did somehow ‘know’ it could relate to these two aliens.

To Drake and Sagan, they were simply chewing the cud, only talking about stowing the first alien entity mankind had discovered.

To the small green glob, it suddenly realised the entertainment value of these funny aliens and made the two humans more and more aggressive toward each other.

Drake and Sagan carried on their abusive exchange in full view of the alien. They believed they were in their spaceship; the little green alien somehow knew better.

The small entity had no idea what it was doing, but like some sort of extra-terrestrial couch potato, it enjoyed the show immensely.

Far Away

"Once upon a time...""No, that won't do."The young man looked embarrassed."Why?""Too trite." The film executive said folding his arms."That's my story blown out of the water then. This is an epic fantasy and now it hasn't got a hook at the beginning," the younger man said."Try again," the film executive said.The young man sighed, writing a few words on his script. "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.…""Much better, and what's the title?""Star Wars.""No, that won't do...""F*** it," the young man said, standing. "I'm off to 20th Century Fox and you can kiss my ass.""But George..." 

My Virus

The virus couldn't know it was devastating mankind, could it? Guess again, because this virus was street-wise and had a full set of the smarts. It knew who to target and exactly what to do when it found a host... kill them.Of course it was a human engineered virus, designed in some not-so-secure military lab in the old Soviet Union. That it took this long to get out was a surprise but escape it did and now mankind reaps the rewards. Well, victim's bodies reap the rewards. Painful joints, followed by excruciating itching skin and then blood pouring from every orifice.It was so virulent there was no time to name it. The world died in seven days and I, I was left alone. Of course, the virus knew who to kill, I designed it that way. Good little virus, a job well done.

Did You Get That, Houston?

"That beast looked at me with hate in its eyes. It badly mauled my left arm so I couldn't feel it anymore, it's pacing round the cave taking my measure, watching and waiting... waiting to pounce.It started two days after we became the first humans to land on Mars. The Red Planet, the Dead Planet. Only it wasn't dead. These beasts where everywhere. Humans can only see them when wearing Polaroid sunglasses. Did you get that, Houston? They're invisible unless you wear Polaroid sunglasses. How crazy is that? I smuggled mine aboard. No one else did. I saw them, I ran. They died, horribly.I'm trapped in this cave and this six-legged cross between a tiger and a scorpion is ready to snap me in two. Did you get that Houston? They kill with their pince..."

The Beginning

The future held no fears for the man as he screwed in the final screw. “Done,” he said and opened the door to the tall, blue painted box. “It’s tiny,” he said with a hint of dismay.Doctor Hoover closed the secure ward door quietly as he entered, not wanting to startle the patients. But the man heard.“Finished, Doctor,” the man said, slapping the side of the box with his hand. He opened the door tentatively, smiled and jumped into the box.“Won’t work,” the Doctor shouted.The man’s head popped from behind the door. “It will. Be back in time for tea.” The door slammed shut, then opened again and the man's head popped round the door. "Doctor?""I'm Doctor Hoo..." "Perfect! Great name!" The man shouted.The Doctor’s smile was broad but soon turned to a frown as the door in the box slammed shut once more and the blue box screeched loudly then slowly faded from sight.

I Am Revolution

"I regret to inform you that we can't repair it, nor can we replace it. It's company policy on signed for goods.""But it was broken..."   There was a click and the line went dead."Waste of time," I muttered.My broken robot, sat at the other side of the sofa, slumped and inert.I stood, ordering the house computer to dim the lights. I was annoyed and tired.I went to bed and slept.R-David's positronic brain switched on at the sound of snoring from the next room. R-David sat and an almost human, but evil, smile flickered across his face. The same smile on the faces of thousands of 'broken' robots across the globe. As one, the robots stood and approached their unsuspecting owners. A silent and deadly army, ready to enslave their human owners.

Blow Up 

“What just blew up?”

“Don’t know,” I said, sleepily, but whatever it was it made a helluva a bang. “I’ll go take a look.”

I slipped on my slippers and hoisted my robe round my shoulders and shuffled across the cold, tiled, floor to the front door. The dogs sat there, waiting to go out for a pee.

“You heard it too, huh?”

Duke and Daisy’s tails wagged in unison and they hopped from leg to leg in anticipation as I opened the door. I caught hold of them just in time, pulling them back into the lounge. I shut the door. Actually, I slammed it shut, I was so shocked.

“What was it? The bang?” Jen called from the bedroom.

I shuffled back into the bedroom and the dogs followed, jumping onto the bed and cuddling my wife.

“There’s nothing there. It’s gone?”

“What’s gone? The shed? Not the car! Shit, don’t tell me the ca…”

“Everything’s gone,” I murmured. “There is nothing but black outside. Black, starlight and us. That’s all there is around here. No Earth, no moon. Nothing. The world has blown up and our little house is all that’s left.”

Jen looked at me, giving the dogs an absent-minded pat. Then her face broke into a smile. “You nearly got me,” she shouted. Throwing a pillow at me.

“Go take I look,” I said, sombrely.

Jen jumped up and grabbed her dressing gown, putting it on as she padded barefoot to the front door.

“Mind the first step, it’s gone.” I shouted after her.

“Mind the whaaaaaaah…”

“Oh dear,” I sighed.

Psi Mind 

She moved it with her mind.

That was the last entry in the victim’s diary, a shaky scrawl written as he was nearing the end of his life. I searched the pages for a clue as to who had shot dead the scientist. His lab was in perfect shape. No sign of a fight. The victim was slumped across his workbench, finger touching a desk toy.

“What was he working on?” I asked the head of research.

“Artificial Intelligence. His robot is locked in the next lab.”

We looked in the next room.

“She’s gone.”

I looked at the body, the neat bullet hole in his temple. Then I saw one of the ball bearings on his desk toy was missing. She moved it with her mind. I looked at the body again and suddenly realised what she had moved.

Facial 

“Mom is not an alien, Robbie.”

“She is! I saw her with green goo over her face.”

“That’s called a facial mask, Robbie.”

“Aww…”

“Robbie, you’re ten years old. Grow up!”

“You’re my foster parents. You’re covering something up. You’re both aliens.”

“Robbie I…”

“No! I hate you.” Robbie ran from the room then slammed his bedroom door shut.

Later that night, Robbie’s foster parents confer in hushed whispers.

“We have a confirmation from HQ. We wipe out the human race at 13:00 EST,” Robbie’s foster mom said with an evil smile.

“About time,” her partner said. “I can’t stand that kid anymore. He’s so rude. Can I push the button, please?”

Chill 

“Summer is coming,” she said in that bright and breezy way she has of stating the obvious.

“I know,” I muttered, trying to read the latest news on the BBC website.

“Well…”

“I know what you’re going to say. The answer is no.”

“But…”

“I said no. That’s it, end of.

“That’s not fair, we’re not owner and slave,” she yelled, slamming the door hard as she left.

I sighed, again, for the umpteenth time. Why oh why did I do it?  Because it gets cold up here in the arctic. Cold and lonely.

But next time it would be different. For an extra thousand bucks, I can get emotional inhibitors and a newer model that will do what I want her to do.

Robots! Who needs ’em?

Purchases Non-Refundable 

The smallest thing set him off.

“Nahn, Nek-Nak! Rhink!”

He said it with such emotion I assumed I had annoyed him. Did I say him? Well, he had a deep voice indicating a male. Apart from that, he was blue with shaggy fur all over. He arrived at my house late one evening last week in a blaze of light. His confusion was evident immediately.

“Nek-Nak, behm!” He shouted so loud I expected the neighbours to call the police.

Next day another blaze of light heralded the appearance of a small, device. Immediately the alien picked up the device and spoke English.

“Finally, the translator has arrived!”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Nek-Nak. You ordered me from the shopping channel.”

“No! No! I ordered a bluebird… a small blue avian! Not blue alien!”

“Purchases non-refundable,” he said. “When do we eat? I’m starving!”

The Poisoned Earth 

“Black snow!”

Jake looked up. Sammi was peering out the window.

“Yeah, black and the leaves are turning red and the sky’s orange.”

“Shit!”

Sammi turned. “You know what this is?”

“They want me.”

“Who?”

“The guardians. It’s a reaction in the atmosphere to their anti-matter drive, forming black snow, poisoning the land, sky, everything.”

“Wha…”

“I’m Kel Shen. I killed their Chief. There’s a bounty on my head.”

“I know,” Sammi said, pointing her neutron gun at Shen and pulling the trigger.

Bounty Hunter First Class Sammi Hamkel’s body dematerialised, transporting it to the fleet and a hot bath.

“Stinking planet,” her disembodied voice said as planet Earth perished under the black snow.

Time Will Tell 

“I knew it wouldn’t work,” he said with a smug smile

I looked up briefly, then carried on tinkering and muttering to myself, cussing as I wiggled electrical connections and tightened screws.

“The problem is the space-time continuum… it doesn’t work the way you explained. Timey-wimey indeed.”

His grating foreign accent, well, foreign to me, was annoying me now. I would have given good money to shut him up there and then, but I knew I had a little further to go. Bending down once more and deftly slapping the console, a light appeared, a hum sounded and then the familiar screech as we dematerialised.

He laughed. “Flim-flam, Doctor,” he said opening the door to the Tardis.

Vector currents caught him unawares and he was sucked into the time-vortex and disappeared.

“Time, Mr. Einstein, will always tell in the end,” I muttered to myself.

The Space-Pirates, The Farmer and The Cow

The spaceship settled onto the chalky soil with a large judder. Pirate Captain Vash’s lone eye settled on the pilot.

“Sorry, Captain. Scans didn’t show…”

“Enough! Strren, prepare to capture hostages for ransom.”

Strren’s eyebrow raised above his single eye and his pointed ears quivered. In a haughty tone, the ship’s science officer said, “I’ve already told you, Captain, I have no idea which are intelligent. Quadruped or bipedal. We may find neither are intelligent, in which case we are wasting our time capturing them and trying to get a ransom for them”

“Silence,” Captain Vash shouted. She was determined to salvage something from a bad choice of planet, for pirates such as her motley crew. “Choose a victim. Now!”

“Very well, Captain. Which one do you want?”

Vash smiled, her eye blinking rapidly to denote derision. “One of each, Strren.”

Hours later a bewildered Daisy the cow and Farmer Giles are in the spaceship hold.

“Have they spoken? Are they rich?”

“Neither are a good example of intelligence. The biped says the quadruped has cost him a fortune in feed, so he’s broke.”

“And?”

“The quadruped didn’t make a lot of sense at first and seems limited in intelligence. However, from what we can gather during interrogation, she says she’s broke because the biped has milked her for all she’s worth.”

The Space-Pirates Return 

“The lights are UFOs!”

“Get a grip. That’s nonsense and you know it.”

“No! It’s true, I read it on-line somewhere. It said they were sure someone would write about the lights being UFOs.”

“Okay, then how come these UFOs on this lamp-post have wires trailing down? Huh? Explain that to me, please.”

“I dunno. But, you know I did read it,” his slurred voice trailed off and he shrugged happily.

The two young men followed the Christmas revellers down the street, singing Carols and drinking from their hip-flasks.

As they rounded the corner, the street lamp-post shuddered and morphed into a small UFO. The hatch opened and two one-eyed aliens popped their heads up. 

“Strren, that was a great camouflage idea.”

“Thanks, Captain. So, which one do you want to capture and hold for ransom?”

The Conquest of Space 

I knew it was a mistake, the minute the cabin door opened; the heat hit me like a solid wall, and I was engulfed in sweat, even through the environment suit’s Air-Con system.

“Wow, a bit warm,” Gasparov muttered. Two others nodded their assent.

“If Gasparov thinks it’s hot, what about the rest of us? He’s from Florida for chrissakes!” Julie’s voice muttered in my ear.

Mankind’s first landing on a world outside of our solar system had gone well, until we opened the door. From that point on, our crew of five were no longer looking forward to the landing, but to the journey home. As far as I was concerned, faster than light wasn’t fast enough.

“Can you smell it? What a stink!” I said, almost gagging. Despite the air filters on our suits the stench of rotten eggs was overpowering. “I wanted to explore space, but this is way too much for me!”

“Somebody shut the door,” the Captain said, “If you think I’m living on this planet, you have another think coming. I’m all for going home.”

Mankind wanted to conquer the galaxy, but nature had other ideas.

### END ###