Tag Archives: scifi

Fiction

A Parasite

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From the Microcosmicon, 39:

They crawled under his skin, blindly squirming and squelching. He wheezed in agony. How had they gotten in? How had he become their host?

Then he felt the large scar on his wrist. That’s how!
Longing for liberation, he dug his nails into his arm, pulling strings of living matter out of it.

A blade of light. The nurse calmed him, pointing at the blood and tissue he’d scratched out of his body. No parasite.

A week passed.
He felt them, blindly squirming and squelching. How had they gotten in? Then he felt the scar on his wrist. That’s how!

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

Makers of History

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From the Microcosmicon, 38:

“I’m Empress Rathoi!” Nili screeched from her dingy cubicle.
“Every two damn minutes,” Anned grunted, turning in her sleeping bag. Old Nili was getting worse.

Anned wasn’t much better off. She’d wind up a meaningless husk, like everyone else on Toreadis.
Yet something rebelled within her, coherent, alive, like the stars judging her from above the collapsed Toreadian skyline.

The following day she snuck onto an airship for Arctamam. First, the pirates welcomed her among their ranks; and when the constitution was abolished, the revolutionaries. After the war, she was crowned empress.

Nili never knew of her role in history.

MQS

Fiction

Grandpa Dell

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From the Microcosmicon, 37:

Grandpa Dell always had the most sensible explanation for everything. When we kids discovered an alien in the forest and everyone was weaving stories around it, Grandpa Dell said it was just an aborted deer.

When the seamstress was accused of witchcraft and everyone swore she’d hexed them, he laughed at people’s credulity.

Around him, I felt the world’s contours were well-defined, its contents ordinary.

It was when I went looking for him and caught him in the forest sucking a doe’s blood through suction cups in his mouth that I understood the world truly was unremarkable, compared to him.

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

The Scarecrow

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From the Microcosmicon, 34:

I was born with only two arms, and I grew into a scrawny, spindly lad, ridiculed for my grotesqueness. Nor would anyone give me a job—not with my face, not with my weak body.

So I did what I could to make ends meet—I started following space pirates. They knew what to do with my ugliness. They sent me out to scare gullible folks of distant planets into handing over their goods without fighting.

Soon, my reputation began to precede me. “Watch out, they are sending the Scarecrow!”
There is no acceptance for me in it. Only peace.

MQS

the scarecrow

Creativity, Fiction

The Soul’s Journey

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From the Microcosmicon, 33:

The Explorer III reached the end of the Suctan system eight months after departure.
But when the ship was about to trespass, it… bumped into the sky?

Suddenly a slit of light tore across the vastness. Then it yawned open, revealing not the outer universe the Suctanians had observed from afar, but an endless contortion of titanic interlocking mechanisms, each feeding into the other with impersonal, meaningless coherence.

Finally, a voice echoed from the reddish depths.
“Welcome back, souls. Now that you have spontaneously gained consciousness of the nature of things, you are fit to enliven us. We’re one again.”

MQS

The Soul’s Journey
Creativity, Fiction

Space Hagsploitation

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From the Microcosmicon, 32:

“I didn’t know Wild Rose had a sister,” he said, his eyes wandering to the dark space outside.
“She didn’t talk much about me,” the pudgy old woman conceded.
“Why didn’t you give news of her passing?”
“She wished to… keep her legend alive.”

“I’ll have to tell the Empress her ally is dead.”
He got up and made for his capsule.
Then a thud came. A muffled voice. “Help!”

“You bitch! Forever ruining everything!” Wild Rose’s sister screeched chidishly at the spaceship’s walls. “Couldn’t keep quiet! Always the center of attention! It’s your fault he has to die now!”

MQS

Space Hagsploitation
Creativity, Fiction

The Circumstances of Greatness

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From the Microcosmicon, 30:

Finding the draft card in my mail, I knew I had to flee. I had so much to live for. Not that I’d ever done anything with my life, but I wanted the option.

I stole a military pod and left Alpha-Fenoler. For months I survived on freeze-dried food in the great star-washed nothingness.

Then a ship appeared. My capsule was pulled in. I panicked. They’d call me a traitor! I’d be quartered!

But they were not Alpha-Fenolerians. They were from the Interstellar Reconstruction Forum. They hailed me as a hero for preserving Alpha-Fenolerian DNA to repopulate my war-consumed planet.

MQS

The circumstances of greatness
Creativity, Fiction

Blending In With The Locals

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From the Microcosmicon, 29:

“They celebrate the day of their birth?” Tannuz asked, puzzled, as he adjusted his holographic camouflage. Humans were delicious, but also easily startled.
“Yup. Help me with the card,” Xondon said.

Tannuz thought about it, then scribbled something.
“What do you think?”
“It just says ‘Happy Birthday,’” Xondon mumbled, “be more creative or they’ll become suspicious.”
Tannuz got back to work.
“Better?”
“’Happy Birthday, hope it’s the best.’ Ok… But wouldn’t that imply the next one’s gonna be worse?”
Tannuz corrected the card again.

“Now?”
“’Happy Birthday, hope it’s the best (and last) one!’ Perfect! No one will suspect anything!”

MQS

blending in with the locals
Creativity, Fiction

Learning From Experience

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From the Microcosmicon, 28:

The doctor told Jade I’d be better than her late wife. I immediately shocked her with my mannerisms.
“That’s so Ana!”

For months I kept surprising Jade with my impression. In fact, I was more pliable than Ana: we never fought over the remote or her cooking, as Ana would have. I could learn and adapt, without prejudice.

Yet this bothered her.
“Ana wouldn’t have done it.”
She started sleeping on the couch. I didn’t disturb her, because that was her wish.

Rotting in the cellar, I realize she wanted me to do what she didn’t want. But I can’t.

MQS

learning from experience without prejudice
Creativity, Fiction

The Great Watcher

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From the Microcosmicon, 27:

The psychonauts’ submarine plunged into the Inmost Ocean, the depths of the collective unconscious where the whirlpool roared. A wound throbbed at the bottom of it, through which meaning bled out of reality, leaving the world stunned under a pall of grayness.

“There’s something,” one of them shouted, as the sub spiraled down toward the abyss.
“Don’t be silly, there can’t be anything beyond reality,” another responded.

“Wake up!” Dr. Ferguson’s voice broke in, saving them just as they were approaching the point of no return.
Their vision disappeared from the screen as they awoke.

“What did you see?”
“An eye.”

MQS

The Great Watcher