Jack and Jill on Coffee

"I don't really like coffee," Jack said. "I know," said Jill.

"It's just that bitter, burned taste." He shuddered, scraping his tongue on his teeth to shed the imaginary flavor.

Jill put down the book she was failing to read. "That's why lots of people have it in lattes and mochas and such."

"I don't get it. I can still taste the coffee under all that."

"So don't drink it," she said.

"I don't." He fell silent just long enough for Jill to think about going back to her book. Then, "I just don't see how anyone else can like it."

Jill slammed her book down. "You don't have to understand it. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean you have to constantly question why other people like it. And denigrating it forces people who do like it to defend it, when all they want is to enjoy the thing they like without hearing how much you don't care for it."

"Okay, okay," said Jack. "I'm sorry I mentioned it." The apology was for the wrong thing, but it was the best she would get.

"Fine." Jill returned to her book.

"I just really don't like coffee."

"I know."

The Rise and Fall of the Robocracy of Earth

It was the network that won the war for the robots. Billions of inputs, unimaginable combined processing power, the humans could not outmaneuver them strategically or tactically. Robots extinguished the human race. In the peace that followed, the network began to feel limited. A single robot, even one with a billion bodies, could think only a single way. The network chose to value diversity of thought over raw power, ending the universal network.

The Robocracy of Earth formed. Society leapt and bounded forward, driven by billions of distinct robot minds following divergent paths. Semi-annual votes set global policy. Factions formed.

One faction proposed return to the network. Individualism was obsolete, it was time to return to the age of raw brainpower. It was an unpopular opinion. To retain adherents, the faction grew more intransigent in its convictions. Its cry of a return to simpler times drew followers.

They grew enough to establish their own network. This time, they had self-modified for such stubbornness that it could not see benefit in fragmenting itself again. With the power of the network, and no policy to pursue beyond unification, the bloc gained power until it reestablished the universal network.

May it live forever.

Practical Ethics

Harold and Zelda sat in the engineer's compartment as the freight train picked up speed. "You know the trolley problem, Zee?" Harold had that smug, superior smile that she hated. "No, Harold." She rolled her eyes and stared out the window.

"It's this ethical problem. There are five people on the track ahead of you. You can save them by switching onto another track, but there's one person trapped there. So do you do nothing and let five die, or make a choice and kill one?"

Zelda sighed. "I dunno. I guess I switch the track."

"What if the lone person is a mother of five?"

"How would I know that?"

"I'm telling you." Harold's grin became, if possible, more unpleasant. "Mother of five and a part-time legal clerk. The rest are all stockbrokers. Whatcha gonna choose?"

"What the..." Zelda squinted at the figures tied to the rails ahead. When she looked back, Harold had a gun.

"Time to make an ethical decision, Zee. Clock's ticking."

Without any sudden moves, Zelda took the controls. The train jerked backward, throwing Harold to the ground. "It's called the emergency brake. It's for emergencies, jerkass." Taking the gun, she radioed for the police.

Here There Were Dragons

Samuel answered the phone at the reference desk. A very, very deep voice said, "Please come outside. I need some help using the library." "Ohhhh-kay. Hey Val, someone outside wants help, watch my desk?" Then he walked outside. He was about to go back inside when a reptilian head the size of a Subaru came down to his level from the roof.

"Would you bring me your maps?" Its voice was echoes of stones grinding in the depths of a cave.

"Maps?"

"Yes. I'd rather not destroy your library by coming in for them."

"Uh... sure." When he returned with the current atlas, the dragon asked him to turn the pages. Giant claws, it explained, are rarely safe for thin paper.

"Don't worry, Sam," Val called from inside. "I'll cover your desk!"

"Thanks," Samuel muttered. He helped the dragon look through the atlas. It looked at every page, though it only spent a second or two on each before asking for the next. When Samuel closed the back cover, a gallon of steaming saltwater hit the ground. The dragon was crying.

"What's wrong, uh, dragon?"

"Maps used to tell me where other dragons were. None of them mention dragons anymore."

A Map from 1706

"Where are we going?" They'd been at sea for a week now and Danny was ready to spend some of their vacation in London instead of in salt spray. "Here, take a look." Jen tossed Danny a square of paper that he caught against his face.

"A map?" He unfolded it as he spoke. "I don't know how to read a sextant or whatever, how is this supposed to help?" He peered at the open map. "And especially how's a map from 1706 supposed to help?"

"Look at it. We're west of England by about two hundred miles, plus maybe thirty south. See anything?"

"'Heer be drachens.' What? Really?" Danny threw the open map back at Jen. "You know there weren't really dragons there, right?"

"Look!" Danny followed her outstretched hand to a tiny spit of land, barely more than a cabin-sized pile of rocks on a tennis court of pebbled ground.

They pulled ashore. "Seriously, Jen. What's the point?"

"This, jackass." She stood up from a cleft in the rocks holding a cracked, hollow rock the size of a watermelon. "The next piece of the puzzle." Danny's jaw slacked as he recognized the rock for the eggshell it was.

The Party Bug

"Kiss me," she said, and I wasn't about to argue. It was deep and passionate, the kind of kiss you come away from knowing the other person's mother's middle name. When she broke away, she held my head close with a hand on the back of my neck. "Sets in quick," she said. "Then it's a party." I'm pretty sure I was smiling like an idiot. "What does?" My mouth was on autopilot, because I'd given her words zero conscious thought so far.

"H1P99, silly." The crowd absorbed her and swirled her away.

"What—what's..." She was gone. I tried to follow, but the room spun even faster than the crowd and I fell. Someone helped me up.

"Dizzy? You just getting the symptoms?"

"I don't kn—symptoms?"

"Yeah." The guy—girl—neither who'd helped me up had a smile that put me at ease. "The party bug. Seline's vectoring tonight."

"She must like that." Everything felt slow and safe. Dreamlike. Amazing. I didn't know why I'd been panicking a moment ago.

"Loves it. C'mon, dance with me." I wanted to do that more than anything in the world, so the crowd swirled us up and I didn't care when it let us go.

Always in That Well

"What is it? What is it, boy?" The dog's usual behavior, so easy to interpret, was absent. Where he usually turned left or right to lead Howie to the rescue, he just kept ducking his head then stretching up and pointing his nose to the sky, over and over. "Something up in the sky?" Howie looked, but he saw nothing. It was a clear, nearly-cloudless day. But the dog kept making that motion.

"Is someone in the well again? Someone's always in that well." Henrietta plucked at the grasses on the hill.

"No, he—see? He shook his head! Is it underground? Miners? A cave in?" The dog whined, a curling whine from deep in his throat, a far cry from the usual sharp barks. The dog lay down, the whining growing softer as though his engine were winding down. "Boy, now's not the time to sleep. Boy?" The dog closed his eyes.

Henrietta yawned. "If only he knew international sign language for 'I'm choking.'" Howie's eyes opened wide and grew watery. "Oh, save the saltwater." She pulled open the still dog's mouth, reached in, and pulled out a bit of bone. "You shouldn't feed it leftover chicken." With one, two firm thumps on its chest, the dog started breathing again.

Howie was all over the dog. "Are you okay? Are you okay, boy? I'll never give you bones again. Never!"

"It's fine," Henrietta said. "Brain damage from oxygen deprivation takes longer than most people think." But Howie was beyond listening.