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.

Bitter End

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

When galaxies cross paths, stars rarely collide, astronomers say. But we were not warned about the collateral damage.

The city street is full of people, women, men, children, wanderers. No one smiles. No child laughs. All are joyless. Without hope. Doomed.

The twin stars shine down without mercy. The Sun. Our Sun which has nurtured our species and fostered all life on our beautiful planet, over millennia. And then there is Giselle …

Giselle! A tiny star of beauty from the Andromeda Galaxy which for hundreds of thousands of years has been merging with our Milky Way. We were told Giselle was not dangerous – she was not on a collision course with our Sun. They spoke the truth. What they did not mention (at first) was that Giselle would be captured into a highly elliptical orbit around our star. Our Sun. A cosmic ballet began.

That was 5,435 years ago.

And in 17 years, 42 days, 21 hours and 58 minutes Giselle will finally cross the path of, and utterly consume our Earth.

All are joyless. Without hope. Doomed…

Just Don't Do This, OK?

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

Einstein always said that space was curved. Well, all right then. With the help of a little basic quantum physics (is there any other kind?), I built my new house into the fourth spacial dimension.

I now stand in the hallway that runs through my house, and find myself staring at my own back, fifty feet away. So I pursue, er, me. Breaking into a brisk trot I cannot catch up to me. Darn, but I run nice!
Stop! Turn around! Again! AGAIN! No matter how fast I turn, I am still staring at my own back.

I roll a ball towards me. Helpfully, I spread my legs wide, and I do the same. I can see the ball going cleanly between my legs, as a ball rolls gently through mine.

Damn it, I want to see my face!

An IDEA! Grabbing a small mirror, I lift it up and over me, so that I can see the smug face of me behind me.

There are some things that can snap one’s sanity like a twig.

In the elevated mirror I could now see an unbroken line of me’s, stretching out to infinity, all with a look of instant overwhelming terror…

* * *

Prompted by Anonymous, I'll add that this tiny story is inspired by Robert Heinlein's very fine short story 'And He Built a Crooked House'. I had made this attribution on the Ficly version, but forgot to add it here. Naughty me. ;-)

Star

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

Major Peter Burns finished his spacewalk, and holding onto a rail, unhooked his tether.

It was so unfair – at that moment there was a flash of light as a smiling crew member took his photo through a nearby port. Surprised, Peter jerked up, and his helmet hit a strut. He recoiled, losing his grip.
To his dismay, he was now four feet from the grip and drifting away.

But he was already dead, Peter knew. Four feet was no closer now than four thousand feet, or four thousand miles and the vast sphere of the Earth waited patiently behind him.

* * *
Becky leaned on the fence. Her dad, Joe, leaned next to her and they studied the night sky. They’d seen five in the last hour and were keen for more.

A streak of light started in the west, suddenly flared and smoothly spanned the sky before guttering towards the east a few seconds later.

“Wow! That’s the best one all night!”

Becky pondered.

“Daddy? What are shooting stars made of?”

Joe smiled, happy to impart fatherly knowledge.

“Oh, rocks I guess, Honey.”

NUMBER OF THE BEAST

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

Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the Federation starship ‘Enterprise’ materialized on the surface of the planet ‘51 Pegasi d’ and was immediately arrested.

Somewhat surprised by this, Kirk stammered, “I haven’t done anything. What is my crime?”

As luck would have it, the Ruling Council of this particular planet had just passed a law declaring that personnel transporters were a criminal technology which merely destroyed, then duplicated those who foolishly stepped into them. It had been determined that metadata in the transport waveform could be used to reveal the number of times a single individual had previously been ‘teleported.’

“Kirk-666, by order of the High Council of Federated Planet ‘51 Pegasi d’, you are hereby charged with being an accessory to six-hundred and sixty-five counts of First Degree Murder…”

Fiction

(crossposted from Ficly - short stories in 1024 characters)

Worth Waiting For

Mary, the last Christian lay dying.

No priest stood beside her to administer the Last Rites. No Charismatic Fundamentalist was there to condemn her to Hell. Sick of waiting for the Rapture, the last of them had committed ritual mass suicide four years ago. The Zion-Mecca World War over the last decade had cleaned out the belfrys of both of those houses of religious adherence. The Hindis and Buddists were still out there however, just getting loonier and loonier. Ah well.

Mary died.

Awestruck, she walked down the blue tunnel of light to meet her maker – the One True and Only God.

The One True and Only God sat on His throne at the end of the tunnel, observing Mary’s approach.

And so it was that Bumba, the Congo God of Vomiting arose and looked down on His newest angel.

“Welcome to the afterlife!” Bumba intoned, and projected a massive torrent of steaming emesis at Mary.

“You were expecting Thor?”, He asked rhetorically, before repeating His Godly speciality, and not for the last time…

A Petros 1K Short Story: Fred's Day

And it came to pass that the Reverend Pastor Fred Waldron Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church, died and went unto his heavenly reward.

Verily, Fred had prayed and worked hard his whole life.

“I’ve done it all, Lord. I’ve cursed and rebuked all the faggots, and the harlots, and the fag enablers, and the filth, and all the scum that infested your sacred world, Lord. And now I’m comin’ home to ye!”, Fred prayed quietly, as he ascended the golden stairway to the place of judgement.

At the top of the stair, the Lord God Almighty rested on his magnificent throne surrounded by the multitudes of angels and all the Saints.

The Lord shifted gently in his seat, causing the flowing golden chains attached to his nipple rings, to clank gently. The sequin studded thong adorning God’s Holy Nether Bits spangled brightly in Fred’s face, and lo, Fred could not avoid noticing how little it withheld from his imagination.

“Well, big boy”, God intoned, “You’ve no idea how much we have all been looking forward to this…!”