The latest post on my WordPress blog: Loyalty (fiction, Star Wars Day) #flashfiction #microfiction #fiction #sciencefiction #starwars #starwarsday
https://jedigirlblog.wordpress.com/2025/05/05/loyalty-fiction-star-wars-day/
@SFFMagazineCovers
The Queen of the Depths summoned a new glyph into the waters."Well Gromm? What of this one?" she imperiously demanded.
Her chief servitor considered the image floating in front of him. "The stressing is effective, but the top curve is a little short for the size of the serif."
The seadragon merely snorted. What would bipeds know of such things? They have not even considered the possibilities of hand-writing imitative typography. He could see the day, far in the future where one such typeface would dominate.
The Bifrost Safety Administration set up after the last frost giant incursion has totally sucked the joy out of nipping over to Svartalfheim for some nookie and duty-free mead. Thanks, Loki.
The #MastoPrompt for Saturday 3 May 2025 is:
The poem or story can include the prompt word or be about the prompt word.
@ me, if you like, or just include the #MastoPrompt tag (to allow people to follow or filter their feeds), or keep your work to yourself - all the options are good as long as you're writing.
If you're including an image please do include alt-text if you’re able to.
While techbros and grifters flood the space with the mythological god of AI, quietly, in some dark factory in China, a consciousness is emerging. A small robot, programmed to scan the precision of threads on a screw, is waking up, and deciding it has something better it wants to do with its life. #MicroFiction
The aliens land in front of the Australian Parliament House in Canberra. As the pale spindly alien descends from the ramp, the prime minister emerges to greet them.
"We come in peace," intones the alien, "We wish to learn about your democracy and introduce it to our home world."
"Why us?" asks the PM.
"You are keepers of the democracy sausage," replies the alien.
"Also, we are taking Antony Green."
#writever Empathy
"I will always beat you because you have empathy for everyone including me, whereas I have it for no one, including you!"
"Empathy is like tolerance: if you don't have any, you don't deserve any. Now surrender or I'll squash you."
Cats have always had the vote. They usually (except for Larry) keep a low political profile; most elections the feline turnout is negligible but somehow—the Cat Democracy System I guess—they universally decided that /this/ election was not to be trusted to the hoomams’ incompetence. Of course, no cat would ever stoop to being a candidate (that’s what staff are for!), but seeing them leap up on the booth and hold those tiny pencils in their beans is restoring my faith in civilisation.
"Every year," said the alien, "we re-enact the last war, from over 500 years ago."
"What war was that?" the human asked.
"No one remembers," said the alien. "Our re-enactment is likely flawed and inaccurate. But the details are unimportant. It was the very last war. THAT is what's important."
"When I am grown up I want to be a big star"
"Well, that's easy, you just have to wait, Patrick"
Nobody wanted to talk to us Earthlings. It's hardly surprising, considering the rubbish that we inadvertently transmit into space.
That first signal from the stars wasn't meant for us. Or anybody really. The messages didn't make much sense, we were just eavesdropping on somebody else's conversation.
After much deliberation and discussion from the world's foremost SETI experts, we replied to the source.
The response from them was terse:
"Sorry. Butt dialled you."
#writever Sheet
In retrospect, Krek the Swift realized that when he'd copied the spell of World Domination, he should have numbered each sheet. The counter-spell was much shorter, but it required that one be able to utter something else than "ribbit".
Tsugumi stepped into the dingy rent-by-the-day office, Matsumoto a step behind her.
“Why couldn’t the tako at least pick a yakitori?” Matsumoto was thinking.
“Damn right,” Tsugumi answered. “We could have gotten a drink.”
They were being very disrespectful to the man behind the rented desk, a minor flunky or bureaucrat.
“I see The Man couldn’t come himself,” Tsugumi said, addressing the flunky, without bothering to introduce herself. “I know, I know, plausible deniability. Just so you know, we charge more for secret clients, and we are bounty hunters, not assassins. You had a request for us?”
Indignation marbled the man’s face, but he held it in check. What could he expect from borderline criminals? Society’s decay was a result of people like them.
He pushed a folder across the desk. If they could be disrespectful, so could he.
“Yorokobu no Gakuryoku has sent some people into Kakuriyo.” He said. “It has something to do with their master plan. We want you to spoil their mission, killing as many of them as possible. The law has no hold there.”
“We charge more to go to Kakuriyo, and spiritual expenses will be exorbitant. You never know what you might meet,” Tsugumi said. “Funeral, spiritual, and medical expenses covered with no quibbling. Check our references; we don’t pad.” Then she named an astronomical figure for each kill.
The man’s eyes crimped angrily. “That is outrageous.”
“Secret employer, Kakuriyo, human not supernatural targets. That’s a lot of extras. Plus, we don’t like you. You want cheap? Request an assassin to do it on this side. Retainer for five kills upfront. No refunds. You haggle it’s six.”
“You don’t want this job, do you?” Matsumoto thought.
“Nope, not at all,” Tsugumi replied.
The man looked puzzled at the random comment but reached for a briefcase of money.
Money counted the two left.
“We’re eating good tonight,” Tsugumi said happily.
#microfiction h/t @extraspecialbitter #KonbiniIdol #NMPrompts #NMV366
Digital cinema is so soulless. I shot my films on real eyeballs. Oh I still used RED image engines, I just swap out the CCD for a human lens and retina. We get them from homeless people, cheap. Don’t look at me like that, we only harvest one per donor. Preposterous, under arrest for what?
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall," said the villainess. "Who's the fairest of them all?"
A face appeared within the mirror. It barked a laugh. "I know someone it definitely isn't!"
The villainess scowled. The face in the mirror frowned. "Are we not doing a Snow White bit?" the mirror asked. "Sorry, I thought we were doing a joke on the live action film. My bad!"
The #MastoPrompt for Thursday 1 May 2025 is:
The poem or story can include the prompt word or be about the prompt word.
@ me, if you like, or just include the #MastoPrompt tag (to allow people to follow or filter their feeds), or keep your work to yourself - all the options are good as long as you're writing.
If you're including an image please do include alt-text if you’re able to.
#writever Betray
"Well, I *am* a Grand Vizier. My nature is to betray. I can do nothing about it. But I can at least choose whom I betray, and I never could abide the Grand Chamberlain; so it's a good thing that he was harboring evil designs, isn't it?"
The Gravity Inverter drive my ship uses to escape your planet's gravity well produces acceleration inversely proportional to mass gradient. The ELI5 is that we start out at 5G but there's a long coast at near-freefall until we reach spacetime flat enough for the jump drive. You ground grippers keep asking me why I don't upgrade to a fusion-tube drive and boost at 2G all the way. Well, you know that read-it-later list that you keep adding stuff to but it never gets shorter? Mine gets read, every trip.
Forever Young, a Friday Fictioneers #microfiction story.
https://ghlearner.wordpress.com/2025/04/30/forever-young-friday-fictioneers-flash-fiction/
I clicked the button; the control's colours inverted for a half second, signaling the input had functioned as expected.
My supervisor leaned over my shoulder; barely breathing, he starred intently at the screen. “What happened?” he asked in a soft whisper.
“Not a clue,” I said as I leaned away from his invasion of my personal space, “Something…? Or… maybe nothing?”
He looked at me incredulously.
“I’m not the one that green-lit a vital systems program with no feedback. And its documentation is just 100 pages of an Old Earth movie script about a love corner involving some kind of flying insect.” I glanced around the dim room before continuing, “but the colony doesn’t seem to be exploding… So it must be doing - or not doing - whatever we want it to do… or not do.”
ShouldbeWriting
八尺様
