How to Crash a Spaceship

An inferno raged around the tiny ship as it tumbled through the atmosphere. The craft was just big enough for two control chairs and one bunk, swapped during long missions, and its two inhabitants struggled to regain control. "Firing explosive bolts on damaged wing. Now," she shouted. The wing blew off, the explosion barely noticeable in the chaos, and the tumble became a spin.

"Ejecting ammo," he said.

"No," she screamed, "we need the mass up front. Rear ammo reserves only!"

"Right, ejecting now." The ship shook, and the end-over-end tumble became the point-first spin of a dart.

"We're stabilizing," she said. She yanked at unresponsive controls. "But we can't pull up!" She loosed a string of curses.

"Got the inertial dampeners working," he said, and the turbulence of reentry faded away, bringing peace to the cabin. "Not that it's going to help."

They looked across their panicked, flashing control panels for anything else they could try. Their hands, a moment ago frantic on the controls, were still.

"Y'know," she said, "I always kinda wanted to fuck you."

"What? Really?"

"Yeah." She grinned. "Want to?"

"Now?" he asked.

"I'd rather die fucking than bored."

"Okay."

"Help me with my pants."

The Princess and the Pauper

"It's perfect," cried the Princess. "We'll switch clothes, you can go see palace life, and I can experience your freedom!" "Uh, no," said the Pauper. "It's rubbish. I don't look anything like you, and I'm a boy."

The Princess waved the objection away like a bad smell. "You'll say you've been cursed by the gnome who lives under the streets, and he wants food each day or he'll keep me like this for ever. Oh, brilliant! And that way they'll bring me food. Tell them to leave it here."

"They'll never believe me, they'll just think I'm some street kid who's taken your clothes." The Pauper paused. "And I'll be that, I guess. And then they'll execute me."

"Not if you're cursed," she said.

"Look, your highness, I don't think they'll believe curses the way you, eh, you or I do," said the Pauper.

The Princess thought about this. "You might be right, urchin. I will return to the castle, where I will faint and act sick and complain of a curse. That way they'll believe it. After two weeks, I'll return here and we can trade places. Very well?"

Pause. "Yeah, okay."

The Pauper left town the next morning.

Market Research

The Market Research was on Abraham's desk when he returned from lunch. A smile lit Abraham's face. He sat down in his ergonomic chair, told his secretary to hold his calls, and sat back to read the word. His smile quickly disappeared. He read it all the way through to the end, then started back at the beginning and read it again. Before he left that day, Abraham canceled his meetings for the rest of the day. He had more important things to do.

Early the next morning, Abraham got up and loaded his car. "C'mon, son," he said. "No school for you today. We're going camping." The boy was ebullient. Tents and bedrolls and grill packed, they drove for the mountains.

High in the mountains, Abraham arranged the firewood he'd brought for a fire, and the rope, and tied his son down on top of the wood. He had just pulled out the knife when his Blackberry announced a top-priority message.

Additional Market Research led to a different conclusion. Abraham sighed. He cut the ropes and released his son.

"You understand, Son," he said. "It was Business."

"I know, Dad. I love you."

"Let's have a great camping trip."

Unknown Caller

Driving along Kam Highway on her way back into Honolulu. It'd been a too-short two weeks on the North Shore, and it was time to go home.

A rooster pecking on the side of the road as she drove by. "Hey, chicken," she said.

Her phone rang a minute later. Fishing it out of the bag on the passenger seat, she looked at it. Unknown caller. She answered.

"Ba-cawwww!" It was a loud, aggressive chicken clucking.

"What?" she said.

"Ba-ba-ba-CAWWWWWW!" She hung up.

"Who puts a chicken on the phone?" she muttered to herself.

Her phone jingled with a text message. She almost didn't look, but she was at a stop light anyway.

"Buhcaw," read the text.

"What the huh?" she said. She threw down the phone and focused on the car in front of her.

At the airport, rental car returned, baggage checked. The airport voice paged her to a white courtesy telephone. She picked it up.

"Ba, buh-CAW!"

"For gawssake!" She slammed the phone down.

She spent the flight home fuming, and then called all her friends hunting for the prankster. No one admitted to anything, and she finally let it go.

A week later, the postcard arrived.

Judgment Delivered

The prince sat in the throne room, alone with the royal crown. His every move caused echoes in the massive stone chamber, and dawn threatened to give some color to the room's deep shadows.

He brushed his hand across his balding head for the ten thousandth time since sequestering himself in the throne room last night. With dawn came his coronation, and the setting of the royal crown on his royal head.

Enchanted, the crown judged the fitness of an heir to rule. All his life he had anticipated the crown on his brow, its mystic gem glowing triumphant green. He had studied, negotiated treaties, settled disputes, been king in all but name.

But never king. Until impatience moved him to suffocate his father beneath a pillow and let the royal physician declare heart failure.

Now, the jewel would shine crimson, declaring him unfit. Fleeing would brand him just the same. His life, wasted, because of his impatience. Better to face justice now than after years of hiding.

So he bathed, and dressed, and knelt for the ceremony. When the crown touched him, it shone green. The prince—the king—felt a stunned relief… and then a confusion that would haunt him.

A Commercial

A massive vault door. Beep. Beep. Beep, beep, beepbeepbeep. The door explodes outward and a black-clad man runs out, a steel case under his arm.

He runs down a brushed-steel hallway, klaxons blaring and emergency doors sliding closed, an elevator at the far end. Halfway there, the elevator opens to reveal black-helmeted guards. They raise futuristic rifles, and lasers miss him by inches as he dives through a door as it seals shut.

Behind him, the guards start cutting through the door with their lasers. They don't notice the small device on the floor, beeping faster and faster.

The thunder of the explosion mingles with the shattering of glass as he dives through the 60th-story window. Outside, his black suit sprouts a glider, and he flies away from a building that resembles a sleek, soulless vending machine.

Cut to a dingy room, serious-looking men looking grim over troop dispositions. The black-clad man interrupts, slamming the steel case on the table, then opens it. A dry-ice mist parts, revealing a Coca-Cola. Everyone looks hopeful, and he takes a swig.

Realistic Consequences Epilogue: Rebellion Command reprimands Corporal Harkness for his reckless actions. He is prohibited from field duty. His Coke was confiscated.

The Heartlands

It was too overcast to see the sky, too dark to even see what obscured the sky. Probably nothing so normal as clouds, Jane figured, given she was surrounded by stalks of pink flesh taller than her head, with heart-like muscles dotting each stalk, bleeding scarlet and pulsing in some rhythm.

"Welcome to the heartland," the creepy farmer man had said. He’d given her a pitchfork, which for some reason she’d so far hung onto. Then she’d gone on and ended up here.

She noticed a pattern in the heartbeats around her. Like it was a wave, flowing out from someplace. Lacking any other direction, she walked toward the source.

Some time later (how much? did the sun even move here?) she stood before a car-sized heart on a vine, like a fleshy mockery of a prize-winning pumpkin. Its heartbeats shook the ground and rippled away through the heartstalks.

"Now what?" she yelled. "If I destroy this, do I go home?" She still had the creepy man’s pitchfork. "Is this a metaphor?" she screamed. "Am I having a heart attack? Are these my bottled up emotions?"

She stood under the strange-darkened sky and contemplated the heart, pitchfork in her hand.