Short Fiction

The beings known as The Searching were a religious cult at first. Their scriptural destiny was to travel to the Centre of the Universe and God — the wisest of all. Most considered it superstition now. Nevertheless, as a species they still felt driven to find the Centre of the Universe.

There was a message in my inbox this morning. It was dated from three weeks in the future, and from my own email address

“Our time experiments would be having been verging on success, but the stupid simple errors I am going to will have made through exhaustion in the next four hours have will really screwed up my management…

They believed they would never see home again. They were lucky to survive the crash, but it was little more than an asteroid, and time was running out, with their air toxifying by the hour.

They were rescued by a strange looking being. She took them to their planet, just a day away in her craft. They were welcomed as heroes…

— Of course the scumbags in the opposition were always going to try to sabotage our chances in the election by hacking into the GPS systems.

— And equally of course, they managed to make complete mess of things. I’m not surprised in the least that the vast majority of people decided to vote against them.

The anesthetic flooded his system. His last thoughts were “I wish routine examinations didn’t need all this drama”. His eyes closed.

When he opened them, he was in a different room. More airy and open, brighter, though his head was groggy. More serene than the little examination room he was in. “I hope my insurance can pay…

They watched the planet at distance for a few orbits. Eventually they decided against visiting. Just like others had before them. They wanted to visit (at least covertly), they could see it was inhabited, but there was simply too much debris in orbit. They could probably pick a path through it, but it was hardly worth it.

She was one of 64,000 models built. The manual called her “Adult Leisure Companion — Cherri”. Her first owner called her “Robot Slave Whore”. But she preferred ‘Lorain’, having been assembled there. She was amused that AmeriSynCor chose Lorain over Gary, but it didn’t really matter.

As their people travelled throughout the Galaxy, they started to truly understand how gravitational waves affected spacetime and those caught in it. When messages first came to their home planet from other experiencing such a wave, they noticed how it seemed distorted in playback, sounding slower or faster than normal. The images were distorted.

Once on a small and distant planet, then still in its superstitious infancy, a bright new star appeared in the East, as Solstice approached. Three of their wisest observed it, and not knowing what it was, pilgrimaged to see what they could learn. They journeyed together on primitive beasts, while each day the star grew greater, and it grew nearer…

Tired of the same old Christmas Trees? Fed up with needles on your floors, or limp artificial trees that are identical to each other?

Try the latest tree sensation that has been wowing tree buyers the world over!

Get the new HoliTree 3000! It’s perfect and uniquely made to look like it isn’t. Each…