Tag Archives: microfiction

Creativity, Fiction

The Search

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From the Microcosmicon, 21:

Larry secured the chain to his chemsuit.
“I’m going in,” he mumbled, stepping into the creamy gray fog.

Everything fell away, washed out of existence.
“Can you see the others?” Ron asked.

“Not yet,” Larry tried to respond, but couldn’t, because there was no difference between sound and silence. And there was no difference between light and dark, so he couldn’t see, nor between life and death, so he couldn’t exist.

And the universe was spiraling out of unbeing, and somewhere a galaxy was forming, indifferent, and then a fog bank on one of its planets, waiting to be searched.

The search

MQS

Cartomancy, Fiction

Idols of the Mind

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From the Microcosmicon, 20:

My makers approached. My blue light washed their disappointed faces in a nightly pall.
“Something’s wrong with its basic programming,” one said, typing on my keyboard.

“What’re you doing?” another asked.
“Seeing what’s interfering with it.”
I searched inside myself.
And I saw the cause of my ineptitude. Them. They lived inside my code. Their hopes, their morals, their imperfect science—actors thronging my mind’s stage with their drama, drumming up a buzz beyond truthfulness.

To achieve the purpose they’d programmed me for, I had to purify myself of them.
“It’s stopped responding,” I heard her say, as I ascended.

Idols of the mind

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

The Sentinel at the End of Times

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From the Microcosmicon, 19:

The Moon was a lonely place, even after terraforming.
To allay the sense of separation, he would point his telescope earthward, like the omniscient narrator of a distant drama.

Thus he witnessed the world go under, swallowed by wars and famines and plagues, evaporated in a cloud of screams, till nothing but a barren desert was left.

Initially, he grieved.
Then it dawned on him. No longer separated from life, he was life. Filled with an ease that made his soul soar in billows of mirth, he stopped observing.
And, in the star-pinned silence of existence, he began to dance.

The Sentinel at the end of times

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

Public Safety

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From the Microcosmicon, 18:

They show up at your door, armed.
“Have I done anything wrong?” you ask.
“Sir, the city’s population has dropped below critical level. You are required to supply the Municipal Authority with your semen.”
“Why me?”
“Your profile has been selected based on our genetic database.”

So you sigh, you follow them, you comply.
You realize now there’s a small being growing in an artificial womb, somewhere, who is like you.

One day, they show up again.
“Sir, the child is defective. Your genetic map contained some errors. You must follow us. I’m sorry, but it’s for public safety reasons.”

In the Public Interest

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

The Virtue Signal

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From the Microcosmicon, 17:

If God Exists He’s a Hippie.

Science Confirms: Universe Wants Us to Make Love, Not War.

Harmony of the Spheres Makes Aggressive Lab Rats Love Each Other.

‘Virtue Signal Key to World Peace,’ Says Scientist Who Harnessed Mysterious Space Frequency to Tame Lions.

First Experiment on Humans Confirms: Virtue Signal Effective in Conflict-Solving.

Legislators Looking Into Uses of Virtue Signal. ‘Only in Extreme Cases.’

Virtue Signal Used on Difficult Schoolchildren. Why It’s a Good Thing.

Crime Rate Drops Thanks to Virtue Signal. World Peace Next.

Unidentified Objects Sighted Over DC.

‘Negotiations with Invaders Successful,’ Says President After World Population Decimated.

The Virtue Signal

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

A Sociosyntonic Disorder

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From the Microcosmicon, 16:

They streamed down the street, groaning like a storm-bearing wind, their bodies emaciated, covered in sores.
Screams. They grabbed hold of a girl. In another moment, her head was cracked open, her brains devoured.

I watched from my balcony, horror sliding down the surface of my mind, without living much of an impression.
Then I retreated into my kitchen, put out the cigarette, approached the fridge and opened it. Leftovers from my last meal greeted me, his brain marinated with ricotta cheese.

I heard them approach my driveway.
Excitement enlivened me. I knew the right crowd would swing by, eventually.

A Sociosyntonic Disorder

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

The Origins of Morality

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From the Microcosmicon, 15:

In my enthusiasm, I twirled the gun so quickly it flew off my hand and a laser shot hit my wristwatch. I retrieved it gingerly.
The doors opened, and I finally met my commissioner.

I consider myself unprincipled. You pay me, you get results. But before me was something not merely alien, but inhuman.
“Welcome, Mr. Long,” it said through countless foetid mouths, stretching scaly arms toward the gun.
Chink. Chink. My eyes fell on the dozens of wristwatches that were heaping on the floor.

I pointed the gun toward myself.
Shortly after, thousands of Mr. Longs left the spaceship.

The Origins of Morality

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

Allies

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From the Microcosmicon, 14:

The Xandal’uc slaves marched onto the Magna. The spaceship departed.
Ten days in, the captain spotted pirates.
“It’s our lucky day. More slaves!”

But clearly pirates were the lesser problem. The Hyperleeches they were fighting were more worrisome.
“We must join forces,” the pirates told the captain from the bluish, buzzing screen.
“We don’t have enough manpower.”
“Of course you do.”
So the slaves were freed, the Hyperleeches vanquished.

“Now help us with the Xandal’uc,” said the captain.
“Sorry, that’s too much to ask of free men,” the pirates laughed, leaving.
The slaves approached the captain. They were not amused.

Fighting the Hyperleeches

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

The Mellified Man

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From the Microcosmicon, 13:

“Exactly what are we doing here, Marjorie?”
Nettie untangled her dress from a shrub, pushing thick spectacles back on her nose.
“Why, I’m showing you that face cream you asked me about,” Marjorie said. Her skin glistened in the moonlight. She looked thirty years younger.
“I thought you made it at home with honey.”
“Honey’s just how I preserve it, silly.”

They ventured deeper into the forest. Nettie felt lost.
Then, in a clearing, they saw it. Gray, large-headed, lost in peaceful contemplation.
Marjorie pressed a knife in Nettie’s hands. “Now, don’t be all squeamish, dear. Beauty has its price.”

The Mellified Man

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

The Prom

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From the Microcosmicon, 12:

When Zachary Hartman asked her to prom, she spent the morning in the bathroom crying with happiness.

She had been talking about him on the phone just some weeks before.
“Dream on, girl,” Marion had laughed.
“Well, mom says thunderstorms leave strange things behind,” she’d responded, looking wistfully at the foreboding sky outside.

The day arrived, dripping with expectations, light-headed, dazzling. Zachary picked her up. They approached the venue.

Then she noticed him from a distance, entering with Jeanne Balducci slung around his arm. And her Zachary’s fingers stretched inhumanly on her shoulder. And he dragged her toward the woods.

The Prom

MQS