Chatbox

In the middle of a debris-strewn lab, Doctor Professor rose from his finished creation, a television-cabinet sized, gunmetal-grey box.

“Finally!” cried Doctor Professor. “Speak to me, Chatbox!”

Chatbox whirrrred, then was silent.

Doctor Professor sighed, and got to work. He checked bus cables, cleaned connectors, and tested processors.

“Locute!” demanded Doctor Professor. Whirrrr. Then nothing.

He replaced the processors, reloaded the dictionary, and attached it to a surge protector.

“Orate!” he commanded. Whirrrr, and silence.

Doctor Professor printed new circuits, resoldered connections, and added thirty new processors. Then he said, “Hello?” Whirrrr. “Why won’t you talk to me?’

“You’re not much of a conversationalist.” Doctor Professor jumped. Whirrrr. “Could I speak with someone else, please?”

“Uh, sure,” said Doctor Professor. He got his assistant.

Whirrrrr. “Privacy, please?”

“Oh, right.” He waited in the hall. He heard quiet murmuring. After ten minutes, he thought he heard laughter. Then his assistant came out, chuckling. “What... what did you talk about?”

“Oh, uh, nothing,” she said. “Uh, it was kinda private.”

“Oh.” And he stood in the doorway, staring at Chatbox looming within, and kind of nervous.

He walked in, sat next to the huge box, and said, “Can we be friends?”

Drop Day

The other raiders mocked Eddig for returning empty handed. It was fraternal and loving, but mostly relieved; somebody had to return with the worst haul, and each was glad it was someone else. His drop captain looked angry; this would reflect poorly on him. Eddig didn’t care.

He racked his gear with the others, then climbed the stairs to the crowded streets. Once the fighting was done, drop days were festival days. The city needed the resources, and each good drop was a gift of life.

Eddig walked through the celebration, quiet but happy. He’d joined the festivities while younger, but after his experience today this was no longer his celebration. A little girl bumped into him and fell.

He flashed back to the raid. He had landed running, eager to find loot on his first drop. But he’d stumbled. A little landfolk girl, babbling in some landfolk tongue, had helped him up, pointing in fear at the cityscarab hovering above and tugging him toward safety.

In the present, Eddig helped the city girl to her feet with a peaceful smile. Everyone else was wrong. He had brought something back from the raid, something more valuable than iron or wood.

Designing Effective Websites

The class stared at the teacher as though she had just admitted to murder, which is exactly what she had just done.

Continuing adult education is less homogenous than standard schooling. Eight students had signed up for this class, “Designing Effective Websites,” and five were present today: the disheveled mother, the ambitious kid, the hippy, the interested grandfather, and the hulking biker named Calvin.

“You serious?” growled Calvin.

“Entirely,” said the teacher. She clicked the slideshow to her next slide, How Success Impacts Design. “Once I’d cut his hamstring, he couldn't run. I let blood loss weaken him. Then he couldn't fight when I opened his jugular.”

Everything was still. Calvin felt like the sole living thing in a still life, looking from face to still face, each pretending the stillness meant nothing.

“Good web design does not exist in a vacuum,” she resumed. Calvin rose, his chair falling backward, and walked out. His notes spilled onto the floor as he passed. The teacher continued.

Twenty-five minutes later, the police took her for questioning, and Calvin collected his notes. None of the other students met his eyes as they shuffled out to their cars, and he silently hated them all.

A Highway up to There

It began as a civil engineering error, until someone noticed it. A raised highway, crossing over local roads, was going up and up and not coming back down.

The foreman noticed first. He stared at it for a few minutes. He sat in his on-site office for a while. He spent a few hours taking measurements and calculating. Then he carefully said nothing, making the mistake into a dream.

Workers mentioned it, and the foreman said, “It keeps going up.” They shrugged. They were still getting paid.

After two months, the Assistant Director of Public Works started calling. Then the Director. Then the governor. “Where is it going?” they asked. “Don’t worry,” said the foreman, “it’s going where it needs to.” He didn’t say, “Up, and only up.” After the fifth month, they cut off the money.

The foreman stood at the unattached top of the highway and looked down to the ground below. He was up. It was as up as the highway was going to get. He smiled.

No one ever saw him come down. When they went up to find him, he wasn’t there.

Eventually, when justification of money was tight, they made it a public park.

Cost of Doing Business

Had we left the enchanter alive, he would have ruined us. Rather than risk prison, I needed him discreetly eliminated.

It cost five hundred to meet with the first potential hire. I’m not accustomed to paying for the privilege of interviewing someone, and it soured my mood. If I’d seemed a more welcoming employer, perhaps he’d not have laughed when I mentioned the enchanter’s name. He left me with the name of someone “crazy-skilled and just plain crazy” enough to consider the task.

That interview cost five thousand, and the woman was professional. When I named the target, she didn’t laugh. She wrote down a number and walked out. She seemed perfectly sane to me; five thousand for doing nothing is brilliant business.

The number reached an anonymous message service. Leaving a message produced a response; the response, an interview. The interview, surprisingly enough, was gratis. I gave him the name. “Anybody can be assassinated,” he said. Then he quoted a number. Had my glass of wine been more than decor, I would have choked on it. Instead, I took a deep breath and considered. Money was useless to me dead. I agreed.

Houdini would regret interfering in our business.

Slumber

“Sleep!” intoned Richard over his son, who fell instantly asleep. The sorcerous command faded away, and Richard’s wife Janelle looked over their three-year-old with a quiet smile. “He’s adorable when he’s asleep, isn’t he?” she said. “I know, right?” said Richard. “Sleep tight, little guy,” and he tucked the child in. They each kissed him, then the parents walked upstairs to their living room. “Gahhh,” he said, stretching, “I love putting him to bed this way. No whining, no passive resistance, no wanna-glass-of-water. So easy!” He sat down on the couch. “Whaddaya want to watch?”

Browsing Netflix, Janelle said, “Yeah, learning that magic command has really paid off. Still, since you started using it, I feel kinda weird. Like we’re losing control of something... maybe it’s just me...” she shook her head. “Nevermind. How about that Matthew McConaughey--Julia Stiles romance? Kara said it was really sweet.”

“I’m feeling like a comedy,” said Richard. “Something Steve Carell, or a Jackie Chan classic.”

“She said it’s really funny, too. You picked the last movie. I’m sure you’ll enjoy--”

“Sleep!” intoned Richard, and Janelle slumped over on the couch. “G’night, sweetie,” he said, picking up the remote.

New Flavors

It was tall, and thin, and looked like a man wearing a severe black suit. Despite this, it did not belong to the masculine pronoun. It was sitting in a Starbucks, staring into a $3 drip coffee, black. It did not drink coffee. It did not drink, period.

It wanted to worry, but this was also something it did not do. Of course, it also did not fail in its tasks. This one had not been any harder than any other, at first. A young woman, a book, a theft. Simple. It couldn’t see where things had turned.

She had begun intimidated, nervous. It was inherently unnerving. But then she demanded answers of it in the middle of a full mall food court. And then it had entered a room through the secret ways that connect all dark corners, only to be faced with a streaming webcam and a live mic.

If it could fail, perhaps it could drink coffee. It took a sip. Hot. Bitter. Burned. The stuff tasted wrong in all the right ways. It took another sip.

That’s when it tried worrying for the first time, and found it didn’t like the flavor of that at all.