She Was the Best

She was seventeen, and she was the best. She'd only had the sign job for a week, but already she tossed, spun, and danced the advertisement for new real estate better than anyone else. Not only didn't she ever drop the sign, but her performance attracted more attention than the others'. She'd sneaked a look at the sales numbers, and they'd gone up twenty percent since she'd started. This concerned her. She didn't want to be doing this forever. She wouldn't be able to, for one thing. What if there wasn't anything else that she was this good at? She wanted to study botany, but what if she didn't take to the organic sciences the way she took to this? Could she really work at something where she was only okay? Would she be robbing the world of its finest sign dancer?

It wouldn't be forever. She promised herself this. For now, she needed this, the paycheck, the job. But the minute she didn't, the minute she was free to pursue something deeper, more important, she would go, even if she couldn't be the best, even if it was hard. Until then, she spun the sign.

She was the best.

An Amazing Cat

The boy held his cat tight to his chest. "He's an amazing cat," the boy said, "and he needs an amazing home." He peeked up at the woman standing over him. She smiled. "Can you tell me what's great about him?"

"He can run faster than a cheetah."

She crossed her arms. "Oh, yeah?"

"Um, once he protected me from three pit bulls. At the same time."

"Okay." She didn't sound impressed.

"If you let him go outside, he can find gold for you."

She raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"Um, and his, uh, if he licks you, it cures cancer."

"Well, that's great and all, but I'm not sure I'm the right person for this cat."

Tears beaded in the boy's eyes. "What if he loves a little boy very much, and the boy just can't keep him anymore because we have to move to a place that won't take animals, and maybe we could visit him sometimes?"

She knelt and stroked the fuzzy head. "Now that sounds like an amazing cat. One I could give a good home and love forever. One that could have friends over." He sniffled, and they petted the cat together. The cat remained indifferent.

Since the End

Each year, the Mentists sent a war party to the Prates, to force them not to darken the sky and take away the Bright altogether. The Bright was all that gave them light, shining dim through the clouds. Each year, some Mentists died in the battle, but their threat went heeded and the sky got no darker. One year, a charismatic Mentist gathered all the tribes. She declared that the time had come to wipe away the Prates for all time. Doing so, she said, would stop their great Ack Ack Trees and clear the skies.

She led them to the land of Ack Ack, where the Prates lived beneath the Trees. The war was brutal, for their enemy had sticks that called thunder. Many Mentists died. They thanked the Bright that the war was also short, for the Prates were sickly and dull, and fewer than the Mentists had believed. The war party returned home, more bloodied than any could remember, like in the stories of the Viron Wars, and the tribes celebrated. Victorious, the Mentists waited for the mists to fade and the Bright to come shining through.

They are still waiting, if they are there at all.

StarHub Bio #331: Mister Sir

Mister Sir began life as MR-SUR, or medical robot, surgery. Its mission was to preserve human life through application of its medical knowledge and skills. This directive made MR-SUR's experience during the great dieoff particularly painful. Despite its best efforts, the medical robot could not save humanity. It has few memories of the following years. These days, Mister Sir suspects it wiped that period from its memory due to trauma. When feeling maudlin, it acknowledges that it probably spent fruitless years operating on corpses.

Once it recovered somewhat, it found a new purpose: to renew the extinct human race. It hunted down scientific tomes on human reproduction, cloning, genetics. It recovered a large collection of related technology and made some new strides of its own — all theoretical, lacking subjects for its experiments.

When the Hirr occupied the formerly-human planet, Mister Sir knew its time was up. It concealed its trove of human technology and accepted the offer of safe deportation. It now works as a surgeon and general physician on StarHub. Mister Sir insists it hasn't given up on its dream of resurrecting humanity, and it asks all its patience for clues that may help with its lofty goal.

INF Team One

"So," INF-3 said over the suit radio, "I've been reading this book—" "Another one?" said INF-5, and several others laughed.

"Yes, another. I'd tell you what number, except you probably can't count that high." Chuckles carried over the radio at this, too. INF-5 wasn't laughing.

"So What's this book?" INF-1 did her job of keeping the peace.

"It was all about this farm, see—"

"Another expose about exploitation in the vats?" INF-6 had a keen sense of social justice.

"No, this wasn't a news. Actually a fic, an old one."

"Oh yeah?" INF-2 was an amateur historian.

"Yeah. But see, the farm was aboveground, and they grew plants."

"Bullshit," said INF-5. "The farmers'd be killed."

"I know, that's what I thought. But it wasn't about war or anything at all. The crops were just... there."

"Damn," INF-2 said. "Those old aboveground farmers must've been tough as nails."

"Okay, people." INF-1's tone was pure business. "We're in zone. Cut the chatter and watch out for your neighbor."

Radios fell silent. The INF team ignited their flamethrowers and went to work. No time for chatter when the crops could cut a careless farmer in two. So the team burned for their supper.

The Defence Ministry's Solution

"Okay, Doctor Langhorn, tell the defence minister what you told me." Colonel Heathcliff leaned back in his chair and cross his arms. "Yes, well." Langhorn arranged his notes. "Thanks to the Defence Ministry's grants," he nodded acknowledgement to the minister, "I've developed an electromagnetic field that inhibits or retards most energetic chain reactions, leaving low-energy interactions unaffected."

Minister Phelps leaned forward. "In English, Doctor?"

"The field turns off explosions but leaves everything else working normally."

"So, what kind of things does this block? C4?" Langhorn nodded. "TNT? What else?"

"Bombs of all sorts. Nuclear explosions. Combustion engines. Gunpowder."

"This field even stops guns?"

"Most guns, Minister. Some technology is unaffected. Electric cars. Lasers. The, er, rail-gun the navy's been working on." Langhorn smiled. "It makes war — modern war — impossible."

Minister Phelps cleared his throat. "Ingenious. Does anyone else know about this?" Colonel Heathcliff shook his head. "Doctor, I'm sorry, but we can't let this go forward." He pulled his sidearm and pointed it at the doctor's chest. It clacked, then fizzled.

"I may have forgotten to mention the demonstration portion of the interview." Langhorn bent under the desk and came up with a crossbow. "If you'll excuse me."

Don't Eat the Mustard

He leaned over and said, "Don't eat the mustard." I froze, yellow squirt bottle half-tipped over my open burger. "Why, is it bad?"

"You could say that." He leaned closer, and I imagined I would feel his wild beard tickling my chin if I breathed. "Or you could say it's full of toxins they put in there to make you more pliable."

"Shit!" I slammed the mustard back into the condiments basket. "Who's doing it?"

"The shadow government, duh." His breath smelled like black coffee and stale cigarettes. "They own the companies that make the mustard bottles, which leach the poison into whatever mustard these places put into them."

"How do they work?"

"Well, do you remember being asked a bunch of personal questions by a stranger in a suit?"

"No." Anxious, I looked around.

"Because their drugs make you forget." He turned back to his hashbrowns and eggs.

"What else is bad?"

He ticked them off on his fingers. "Ultraviolet light, pasteurized milk, those vape things, and those phone things you put in your ear."

"Is the ketchup okay?"

He looked at me like I was crazy. "Of course."

I sighed in relief and started in on my fries.