Tag Archives: Fiction

“Not this again!” you cry. “Every time Buckley gets inspired with some new story, he feels compelled to post it here, and I feel compelled to read it, and uuuUUGGGHHHhh another ten minutes of my life wasted!”

First of all, hypothetical reader: wasted? Really? That’s harsh, man. Harsh.

Second, you don’t have to read it. I mean, sure, if nobody reads it, I’ll whimper myself to sleep, curled up next to the comforting warmth of the hot water heater in the basement, my only true friend in the world. But don’t feel obligated, is what I’m saying.

And finally: this story won’t waste ten minutes of your life, because it’s super short. It’ll only waste, like, one minute of your life.

Chuck Wendig’s challenge this week is to write a story about revenge – but in a mere 100 words, instead of 1,000. Heck, I’m over 100 words already in this introduction, that’s how short 100 words is. That said, I should probably get to it.

Here’s the story:

System.Log

PC.Print(“Listen, Chelsea, I’m totally over the divorce. And the cheating.”);

Espresso.Brew();

PC.Print(“I’m thrilled you get to keep the G12 GadgeTech Programmable House I spent three years building for you.”);

TV.Play(“Richard_Simmons_Disco_Sweat.wmv”);

PC.Print(“I know you love your espresso maker, your ferret Aristophanes, and your $28K collection of Lawrence Welk dinner plates.”);

Plate_Collection.Open();

PC.Print(“So why separate the things you love?”);

Ferret_Cage.Dispense(Espresso);

PC.Print(“P.S. ‘IHATEJUSTIN’ works as a Facebook status. As a network password, not so much.”);

Ferret_Cage.Open();

This week’s story is a response to one of Agent Courtney’s writing prompts: “He opened the last box, and inside he found…” Slipping it in just before the August 26 deadline. Enjoy.

Marva

“Slave!”

A Handler’s voice, booming and rough. Jovo looked up, shading his eyes from the scouring noonday sun. No – not just one Handler but two, approaching slowly from the landrunner they’d parked some distance away. He gripped the shovel tighter.

One was bad enough. Two meant trouble.

He stepped out of the shallow hole he’d been digging, laid down the shovel, and began the usual gesture: a deep bow, pressing his nose as close to his knees as he could manage, though the effort sent waves of agony down his tired back. But he’d barely begun when he paused, noticing what he had not seen before in the dusty summer haze: only one of these two men wore Handler white. The robes on the other were light blue.

A Master.

Jovo’s breath caught on the scorching air and he dropped to the ground, prostrating himself. He pressed his cheek silently to the white-baked earth, spread his callused fingers on its surface, praying he had not been too slow. The rock-hard soil burned him, dirtied his ragged beard, but he ignored all that. Life and death in this land came not from the heat, but from the hands of men like these.

A Master. What did it mean?

Jovo could see nothing but the long vertical horizon, yellow ground against yellow sky, but he heard them murmuring to each other in their outlanders’ language: those soft, melodious tones, so alien in this cracked wasteland. Then scuffles and grunts, as of something being moved. What were they moving that was so valuable they couldn’t trust a slave’s hands to the job?

Now the Master’s voice again, louder, and the Handler translating: “Stand up, slave!”

Jovo rose, taking care to keep his eyes down. His friend Marva had forgotten once; he tried not to imagine Marva’s left hand, the pock-scarred stump where the third finger had been.

“You may look up, slave, but take care not to look at the Master.”

Not knowing where the Master stood, Jovo looked up very slowly indeed.

A red blanket, stained white with dust already, lay spread over the bare earth. On the blanket sat three cubes. Beyond, at the edge of his peripheral vision, two men lurked shadowlike. The cubes were an arm’s length on each side, brilliantly gleaming blue-green metal, surfaces worked with ornate curls. Smooth oval gems shone white and gold along all the edges, and one fat jewel sat clear as water in the center of each square face.

The boxes looked identical at first, but a moment’s study revealed that was not quite true. The middle box was just a little bigger than the left one, and the right box just a little bigger than the middle.

Again the master’s voice, like music, and the harsh echo of the Handler.

“The Master is pleased with your work, slave. As a reward for your labor, the Master permits you to open these three boxes and gaze on their contents.”

Rubbish, of course. The only reward for labor was not to be killed. And what nonsense was it, anyway, to open a box and look inside but not get to keep it? What game were they playing?

Only, the men’s shadows retreated now, and he knew. They were afraid. Something dangerous was in these boxes – or at least, the Master suspected there might be.

So have a slave open them. Jovo was old, anyway, close to useless in his late forties. No great loss if something happened. That was how they thought, these men, and he had found it useful to learn exactly how they thought.

Jovo stumbled forward, squatted on the blanket in front of the leftmost, smallest box. He reached forth trembling, sun-dark fingers, but stopped short of the brilliant metal. He did not ask the question; speech was forbidden, mostly. But his wide-eyed questioning look was enough.

“Yes, start with that one,” said the Handler. “Smallest to largest – may as well do it in the order she wanted. Touch the center jewel on top.” Still he heard them backing further away. What were these boxes, to frighten them so?

And who was ‘she’?

But despite his fear, he never even considered disobeying. Nothing atop this blanket could be worse than a Handler’s wrath. Again Marva’s four fingers flashed in his mind, that awful, obscene gap.

His own fingers brushed the top center jewel of the first box, surprisingly cool under the pitiless sun. The top split into four triangular pieces as the four sides fell away. Inside sat a silver dish. A pale blue lasergram flickered to life above it, taking the form of a shimmering woman four meters tall. Jovo dared not raise his eyes too far – the Master still waited some distance away – but he could see the gown of pure light, the bare feet peeking out from the folds.

Belatedly he noticed the Summerstar ring on her big toe – a sign that even slaves recognized. This was an image of the Empress Herself, Monarch of the Hundred Thousand Lands, Keeper of the Light of Centuries. He hurled himself to the blanket once more, burying his cheek in its softness, genuflecting before these hallowed photons. Was this only a recording, or could she see him now? His skin turned cold in the pounding heat.

“Lord Feumis,” said the lasergram, a woman’s voice, not melodious like the Master’s but cool and flat as iron, proper as the sun. Yet he relaxed. Only a recording. “I greet you in the language of your servants to remind you that you are my servant. But I greet you by name. You are a servant, not a slave.

“You know I am not pleased that anyone in my Empire should indulge in slaving, by far the least palatable of your world’s numerous…blotches. Yet a wise ruler respects the customs of her lands. So I present you these gifts, that you may know I am everyone’s Empress, even yours. Take them in peace.”

Gifts from the Empress. So that was what had them so worried. Marva said the Empress was no great friend of this backwater region, and might well try to assassinate one of their leaders if she saw an advantage. But that had sounded like a friendly enough speech. He cradled his fingers and they shook a bit less.

He took no pleasure, though, from her lip service toward the Emancipation Movement. Her Imperial Majesty said a lot of things, but little had changed since she captured these lands eighteen years ago.

“The next one,” called the Handler. Jovo rose and obeyed.

This time the box opened on an oval mirror, its border gilded even more lavishly than the containers themselves. Jovo looked into this gift that was meant for the Master, studying the careworn lines of his own face, the eyes like old granite, the fear he’d hoped would be less obvious. A slave’s face, surrounded by swirls of gold.

A halo, perhaps. Or an omen.

“Slave!”

He opened the last box, and inside he found a machine.

It was a fat thing, the size of a dog but utterly alien, a convoluted mess of black tubes and black spines and dull gray metal.

“What is it?” shouted the Handler, and the tremor in that voice was unmistakable now.

Jovo reached forward, setting his fingers on the strange device –

Quick as heat lightning the metal – unfolded, opening klik-klak-krak and shooting up his hand, his arm, his entire body. In less than a second it coated him like a suit of armor. Knobby gray gauntlets snapped cold and tight around his hands, thick robotic sinews clung to his thighs. A green visor slipped over his face. He stumbled back, and the suit moved with him.

A recording of the Empress’s voice crackled in his ear.

“Oh, my,” she said, not sounding the least bit surprised, “DNA sensors indicate you aren’t Lord Feumis at all. He must have had one of his slaves open it. How very unexpected. And now, alas, there will probably be a slave rebellion. If only he had trusted me more, this politically convenient tragedy might have been avoided. As it is, you’ll most likely start all sorts of trouble with your brand-new, fully-automatic Phlogiston missile launcher, which you can fire by curling your right forefinger.”

The voice switched off.

A bolt of piercing orange light rocketed from the Handler’s painstaff into Jovo’s metal-encrusted torso. It bounced away harmlessly.

Jovo looked up and, for the first time in his life, met the Master’s gaze. Through the green visor, those unassailable eyes looked stark and fearful. The Master – the man – turned and scrambled away. Jovo followed, invincible, taking meters at a stride. More orange beams failed to hurt him.

The targeting computer drew a thin blue circle around his retreating form, and the missile launcher on Jovo’s right arm clicked invitingly.

He smiled, and thought of Marva.

Mr. Wendig challenged his readers to write a story about something you’d find at a flea market. Word limit: 1,000.

A friend at work challenged me (for reasons best unexplained) to write a story titled “Bald Pregnant Women With Bras and Unstoppable Telepathy.”

I searched my soul. Could I do both at once? Was it possible to write a flea market story that also had that title?

Spoiler alert: yes.

Bald Pregnant Women With Bras and Unstoppable Telepathy

With a belly full of McNuggets and three hours till Sociology, I was precisely the target audience of the sprawling, newly-arrived flea market. It was a warm Monday afternoon, and dozens of tents covered grassy Franklin Square, each with a sign lovingly crafted by its own resident marketing genius:

GIT R DUN – DIY solutions for every household project from tracheotomy to taxidermy

PAIGE TURNER’S LIBRARY – Exquisite literary classics, sold by the pound

CELEBRITOPIA – Every single object you own should feature LeVar Burton’s smiling face

The KITSCHY CRAP tent drew me in with sheer honesty.

I examined a leopard-print salad shooter, a MacGyver mousepad, and a gumball dispenser shaped like Argentina (!) before a bemused repulsion led me to a VHS wonder entitled Bald Pregnant Women With Bras and Unstoppable Telepathy. 1972, PG-13, 99 minutes of cinematic glory.

The proprietor’s FUCK DA PO-PO wrist tattoo doubtless signified a prior stint as a middle school guidance counselor. I brandished the video at him.

“The hell is this?”

“The hell does it look like?”

Sixty seconds later, he had my two dollars, and I had possibly the greatest B-movie treasure this side of Plan 9 From Outer Space.

I watched it that very night. It was accurately titled. Vodka helped.

***

At 2 a.m. a voice in my head spoke my name.

Marcus.

“Grrrrnggghh?”

Marcus, I want to talk.

“Wuzzit?”

Are you listening to me?

I sat up slowly. “Who are you and also what the fuck?”

Marcus, I know perfectly well you watched that documentary.

“Documentary? You mean you’re actually a – ”

Yes.  I’m a bald pregnant woman with unstoppable telepathy.

“And a bra?”

That’s personal.

“You’re in my brain.”

Marcus, we need to talk. About us. Sometimes I wonder if you’re giving me the support I need.

“And you are…?”

Crystal.

“Krystal?”

With a C.

“You heard the K?”

I’m in your brain, dumbass.

“You sure are.”

Marcus, promise you’ll never leave me.

“Is your last name ‘Meth?’ Cuz that would be really funny.”

That’s hurtful. I’m not speaking to you anymore.

“Darn.”

No more Crystal.

Certain questions simply cannot be answered at 2 a.m. “Am I schizophrenic?” tops the list. I fell back asleep.

***

Most of Tuesday passed telepathy-free, and I chalked up Crystal to a ramen-induced hallucination. That evening found me on my couch watching a Futurama rerun, my non-imaginary girlfriend Megan curled up comfortably on my lap.

Marcus.

“Crystal?”

Megan stirred. “What?”

Who the hell is Crystal?

“Who the hell is Crystal?” echoed Megan.

Only one way to have this conversation without seeming crazy. I held my cell phone up to my ear.

Quiet about your other women. I’m Amber.

“Sorry, Amber. You sound a lot like Crystal.”

“Who the fuck is Amber?”

I raised my hand in a gesture that was either placating or papal.

Can you get me a jar of pickles from the store?

“Isn’t that your husband’s job?”

I’m divorced, dickweed, thanks for asking.

“Why are you bald?”

Do you really not know how telepathy works?

“Is that a serious question?”

Vlasic. Kosher. After you buy them I’ll give you my address.

“Is your last name ‘Bock’? Cuz – ”

Fail me and die.

Amber was out. I glanced around. Megan was out too.

I don’t even like Futurama.

***

Wednesday was rough. Samantha’s persistent soliloquy – Will it hurt? How much will it hurt? I bet it won’t even hurt that much. Oh God, I’m going to die – severely hampered my Riemann sums. Over lunch, I assured an invisible Jada that her boobs looked just fine, earning a Scrooge face from the decidedly male McDonald’s cash register professional. I skipped English Lit entirely as a preoccupied Clara expounded on the relative merits of Fisher-Price and Little Tikes. By 5:00 I knew what the word “Desitin” meant.

Thursday was worse.

***

I reclined on Jim’s futon as he scrutinized his Corona Lite.

“So Megan hasn’t called you back?”

“Jim, do you think it’s possible to stop telepathy?”

He didn’t even blink. “Depends. If it’s Star Trek, and the telepath’s a Betazoid, then you can stop it by, like, being a Ferengi.”

“This isn’t Star Trek.”

“What is it?”

“Bald Pregnant Women With Bras and Unstoppable Telepathy.”

“Unstoppable telepathy?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re trying to stop it?”

“Ideally, yes.”

He swigged. “Marcus,” he said, “you’re an idiot.”

***

For sheer surreality, few things exceed being accosted by a bald pregnant woman on a crowded campus lawn.

IRL, Amber was five foot negative one, very third trimester, and wielded a pink leather purse roughly the diameter of her unborn child. She was rocking some serious Patrick-Stewart-grade baldness. I would describe her emotional state as “dissatisfied.”

“You want to play this game with me?”

My adrenal glands experimented with their “overdrive” setting. “Amber, I just checked Walmart. They’re fresh out of Vlasic. I can look again next week.”

“You’re a lying sack of shit. You don’t think I’ll cut you? I’ll fucking cut you. I’ve got shit in this purse you can’t even imagine.”

“Amber, I hesitate to suggest this, but I’m reasonably sure I can outrun you.”

“YOU MOTHERLESS GOATSUCKER YOU THINK YOU CAN KNOCK ME UP AND THEN THROW ME TO THE CURB WHILE YOU’RE FUCKING SOME OTHER LITTLE SLUT – ”

“Dill?”

“Yes please.”

Fifteen minutes later, I returned with her prize.

“Amber, I deeply respect your inexplicable super powers but I think you are a terrible person.”

“Stuff it. I’ve been this way for nine months. You could be free tomorrow.”

“Go on?”

“Someone else watches the video, the curse transfers to them.” She waddled away.

Freedom!

But who (besides me) would voluntarily sit through the film in question?

I needed someone who would keep watching a screen no matter how bizarre, how senseless, how unrelentingly awful it might be.

Suddenly I knew.

***

“It’s open.”

Old buddy of mine. I stepped into his apartment. “Hey, man. Can you take a break from C-SPAN for a second?”

The story below is based on another of Wendig’s weekly prompts. This week: write something about unicorns! Limit is 1,000 words again.

Everything But Rachel

“There is only one road…” he murmurs, but the words burn his cracked lips and he can’t say it all. He finishes in his mind:

There is only one road as there is only one pilgrim. You must give up everything but Rachel.

Here the road is no more than a trail, winding across the rocky wasteland. Broken gray stone extends forever all around, a petrified ocean. A black sky flickers with flame. Vast, impossible, swirling pillars of darkness migrate across the waste. He is far, far from home, from Rachel. He has followed this road a long, long way: longer than all the roads on all the continents in all his old, half-remembered world. He follows still. This is the Master-Road, the template by which other roads are made, and what is there to do, but follow?

But someday he will reach the end of this road, and then he will kill the Polymancer. And perhaps – he plays this game hourly, savoring the delusion – perhaps it will be today.

You must give up everything but her.

“But I have,” he murmurs painfully, a sound that is barely a sound. I have sacrificed…

For comfort, he runs again through the litany of what he has lost.

His body, of course. That’s an easy one. That cruel-eyed mass of talons and scales bit him three weeks ago, and now slowly, slowly, the poison is spreading through him. It started at his left ankle, and it’s blackened that whole leg. The skin is all tender scales, pink underneath. Now his other leg blackens, and a patch has formed on his left hand. Slowly, but all too quickly, it spreads. In a month he will die. He smiles weakly at the thought. The end of the road.

His weapons, too. He lost the scimitar…when? Before the poison bite, certainly. And the knives, someone has stolen those, in some village where he spent the night. The road wound through villages, too, ages and ages ago.

His own name, sacrificed, gone from memory. He fancies it began with a “C,” but that’s something he’s invented – just another game. He does not know his face. He raises his fingers and feels the rough beard at his chin, but this awakes no memories. That’s all right. Identity is a burden, and that sacrifice was easy. Rachel knows his face, Rachel knows his name. That is enough.

Follow the road, pilgrim. Kill the Polymancer.

He wonders how he will kill the Polymancer like this, when he can barely walk. The pillars of dark slide lazily on the horizon, fifty leagues distant in the dry air.

You must give up everything but her.

Still he walks. He reaches into his pants pocket, pulls out the brass pocketwatch. It has long stopped ticking, stopped answering when he winds it. The dust and the grime. But the back is engraved with a name: Rachel.

Rachel. The warmth of brown fingers on his arm. The dark and curling hair. Laughing in the kitchen, crying in the rain, running across the yard to greet him. Rachel, the reason for the road.

He crests a hill, as he has crested countless others, and he stops once more to survey the land ahead. Always he hopes, at last, to see the Dark Castle of the Polymancer up ahead, the sable towers, the savage keep. But this view is like all the rest: only more rock, and more dust, and the fire in the sky and the pillars of darkness that whisper mockingly. He catches his breath. For the thousandth time his legs threaten to halt. For the thousandth time he forces them on again. There is only one road –

He stumbles, crashes on the rough black stone below. Pain flares in his chest. A rib broken, surely. His mouth moves, forming the scream but not setting it free.

Slowly – slowly – he stands.

“What else do you want?” he cries, not for the first time, a voice raw with thirst but steady as the miles behind. “What else is left – to sacrifice – ”

The unicorn appears.

No motion, no sound: only now there is a unicorn, where none stood before. If he is dreaming again, it is at least a new dream.

The unicorn is white and stark and stern, and he sees no weakness in it, and he knows it has come for him. He staggers, remains standing. Now the words are silent, a bare motion of lips: “What else is left – ”

The unicorn stares at him. He catches in its eye another dream, a dream’s dream, a vision of the future:

The Polymancer, red robes billowing, angry as the pillars of darkness and deadly as the sun. Himself – a rough face he hardly recognizes – climbing rocky steps inside the dark castle, struggling, failing. A cruel light from the Polymancer’s hand. As he watches himself falling, he already knows he is dead.

Thus the road will end. He will fail. He will die.

In his heart, the last embers of hope go cold. Nothing, nothing remains.

Nothing but her.

He laughs. His broken rib blazes with the motion, breath sears his throat, but he laughs and laughs. His legs shake as he mounts the beast, adjusts himself wearily on its bare, rough back.

Now he looks up around him, sees once more the final plain: the shuddering pillars, the flickering sky, the endless ocean of rock, and all ahead and behind the eternal, impassive road. He looks down at the unicorn and its solitary spike, the lone weapon glistening in that strange lightning, beautiful and deadly where it shines peerless as fire on the waste.

“On,” he whispers, and the unicorn leaps forward, carrying him down the road with tireless legs, lowering its terrible horn, never blinking those twin obsidian slivers, never hiding their benevolent lies.

Onward to Rachel.

Every week, Chuck Wendig (a.k.a. “The Bearded Blitzkrieg,” a.k.a. “Wendiggedon”) issues a challenge to the universe: write a piece of flash fiction according to his specifications, share it on his blog, then browse the other submissions and see how different writers responded to the same prompt. This week’s challenge is called An Uncharted Apocalypse – write about the end of the world happening in some way that’s different from the usual cliches (nuclear winter, zombie outbreak, etc.). 1,000-word limit.

I’d never done it before, but this week’s challenge sounded interesting, and I had a little free time, so here we go. And it occurs to me, for all the time I spend blathering about how to write fiction, I’ve never actually posted any of my own fiction before. So, enjoy. It was a fun prompt, and I had fun writing it. Hope it’s fun to read, too.

Without further ado, the story:

Scissors With Running

Dr. Wermann held up a Florence flask half-full of some mysterious purple liquid, swishing it ominously. “Behold!”

Dr. Hall raised an eyebrow, which made him look like a bearded Mr. Spock. “I’m beholding. What is it?”

“I call it: SAAMFAS.”

“Well, I’m glad you explained.”

Dr. Wermann giggled. He looked like a beardless Dr. Hall. “Self-Awareness And Motor Function Actualization Serum.”

“I’m not convinced you know what all those words mean.”

“Mock if you must, Dr. Hall, but any substance my serum touches will become both conscious and capable of motion. SAAMFAS is a bring-it-to-life potion, a Frankenstein froth, a miracle mash for transmuting any useless lump of dead matter into a sentient, ambulatory creature!”

“Poppycock,” said Dr. Hall.

“It works,” said Dr. Wermann.

“It works,” said the Florence flask.

Dr. Hall blinked. “I heard you the first ti – ”

The Florence flask slipped out of Wermann’s hand and fell straight to the table’s oak surface (which fortunately was not very far) and hopped straightaway – clink, clink, clink – toward the cluster of fellow Florence flasks at the far end. “Viva the Florence flask nation!” it cried. “Viva Florentium!”

“Yes,” muttered Wermann. “Any matter the serum touches. I suppose that would include its container.”

“You didn’t test it?”

“Thought experiments only. Like Einstein.”

“Um,” said Hall.

The energetic Florence flask busily splashed its own contents over its lifeless brethren, and soon it faced a veritable convocation of compatriots. “Viva Florentium!” it cried.

“Viva Florentium!” echoed the assembly.

“Death to the Erlenmeyer flasks!”

“Death! Death to the Erlenmeyer flasks!”

As Wermann and Hall lifted their eyebrows to uncharted altitudes, the horde of glassware galloped to the other end of the table and shoved the unsuspecting, unanimated Erlenmeyers straight off the edge. Crash! Crash! The Florences cheered in victory.

“Now to the supply closet, to grant the spark of life to our comatose brethren!” crowed Florence Prime.

“Yes! The supply closet!” howled the glassy mob.

“I can take you there,” said the table, which had apparently caught a few drops of SAMFAAS itself. “Only promise you’ll save a little serum for my furniture friends.”

“I can help you make more!” squeaked the scrap of paper on which Wermann had written the SAMFAAS formula – another recipient of the serum’s widespread accidental benevolence.

“ONWARD TO DOMINATION!” cried all at once, and the table trotted out.

The two scientists remained in the empty room with the Erlenmeyer shards, some of which had begun to quiver.

“Well,” said Wermann, “that wasn’t ideal, I suppose.”

***

In a matter of minutes, each and every object in the Planck Laboratory had got its own individual spark of je ne sais quoi. Moreover, the colossal container congregation had memorized the SAAMFAS formula; and so they synthesized additional serum even as they initiated an exodus from the compound, spreading the garrulous gospel to the wider metropolitan area. Wermann and Hall likewise exited the edifice, but found themselves largely unable to cope with the cresting crisis. Within hours, a sizable chunk of the city of Chicago found itself suddenly self-aware, and the Florence flasks worked hard to make more SAAMFAS.

“Death to the Erlenmeyers!” the cried again; but a few of the conical containers had got hold of the serum themselves, and the war began in earnest.

***

Their rivalry went viral, as it were, and an ever-expanding radius of cognizant objects set about assaulting their neighbors. In dozens of book stores, volumes of Nabokov made valiant stands against invading Stephenie Meyer tomes. In hundreds of houses, plush recliners waged war against the ottoman empire. In outlying caves, stalactites and stalagmites entered moist combat in the dark. Nikes stomped Adidases even as thousands of deciduous trees clashed with their coniferous counterparts.

“Really we ought to have stopped the initial flask,” opined Wermann.

Hall regarded Wermann with what can only be described as exasperation.

***

The predicament became a pandemic. First Illinois, then the Midwestern United States, and finally all of North America fell under the terror of talking, traveling thingamajigs. In St. Louis, a conspicuous arch declared itself arch-nemesis of Hoover Dam, and went west in conquest. A panoply of pesos in Mexico went after the dominant dollar, one courageous coin at a time. Countless feckless human beings fell in the crossfire, downed by Sacagaweas and Mexican money, trampled by moving monoliths, felled by fiery flasks. The President attempted to issue a statement and received for his trouble a merciless microphone mauling. The serum spread.

***

Forty-three days after Zero Hour, Everest polled the Himalayas and found unanimous support for teaching those sons of bitches the Alps a lesson they might not soon forget. They leaped free of their geological groundings and began an unforgettable trans-Asian migration. From a human perspective, the mountainous melee was not – how you say – win-win.

Meanwhile Hall and Wermann survived in a bunker which had serendipitously escaped sentience.

“I feel this is largely your fault,” suggested Hall.

“Observe,” ordered Wermann. “As ever more of the world becomes saturated with SAAMFAS, gradually the planet itself will become self-aware.”

“Oh good,” said Hall.

***

Earth awoke.

Cautiously it took stock of its situation. It was a spherical rock about forty thousand kilometers around; so far so good. Lots of tiny little things cavorted all over its surface, shouting and shuffling and generally causing a nuisance. Less good, but still relatively minor: a tiny irritating layer between the mellow mantle and the amiable atmosphere. All around lay the vacant void, which even SAAMFAS could not animate.

Earth widened its gaze.

Earth pondered.

Earth reached a conclusion.

“If that punk-ass moon thinks it is going to tide up my ocean for another 4.5 billion years,” said Earth, “I will lay down Newton’s Second Law of Motion up in this piece.”

***

Michael Bay died smiling.