Monday 1 August 2011

The day the nanobot came Clem had himself a hoot

[This was written for ficly.com - where stories are limited to 1024 characters] 

Clem was resting on a log the day the nanobot came. It arrived in a spaceship the size of a tiny carrot. The nanobot quickly rearranged the atoms of its ship into another nanobot.

“Ain’t you the cutest little fellers!” enthused Clem, as 2 became 4.

The 4 then set about rearranging some of the atoms in Clem’s log. Soon 8 became 16.

Clem belly-laughed a treat. “You guys sure are somethin’!” he drawled as 16 became 32. Then 64.

After a little while the nanobots started on the atoms of the tree beside Clem and 2048 became 4096. Amazed in a truly simple way, Clem watched the tree dissolve into nanobots. He was still being amazed as 1048576 nanobots inevitably surrounded him and turned him into 2097152 nanobots.

Three hours later, the rest of the Earth had been efficiently converted into nanobots. This substantial cloud then morphed into little spaceships and headed back out again in search of even tastier worlds.

Bon appétit!

...and a bag of hammers please!

[This was written for ficly.com - where stories are limited to 1024 characters]

Peter was securely strapped to the gurney. Unable to move his body, Peter surveyed this new and exciting life experience.

To Peter’s left, ten thousand poison tipped arrows, nestled in ten thousand straining, drawn bows, all pointing ominously at his head and body. To Peter’s right two hundred primed and flickering flame throwers were trained on him with matching terrible accuracy. Above Peter’s head, ten enormous carbon steel axes, sharpened to spine chopping perfection hung from a single hair trigger.

The releases for all three of these dire contrivances connected back to a tiny green button positioned one inch in front of Peter’s nose.

Peter’s mind ratcheted up another notch to process this unexpected turn of events in his awe filled life. Peter wondered if he’d get laid today. Peter wondered what would happen if he pressed the green button.

Peter was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

A few seconds later Peter’s life troubles were over.

Over here, over there, and over…

Oh, never mind.