— Tell me about your near-death experience.
— It was amazing, Doc. My whole life flashed before my eyes! Then it faded to black.
— Then what did you see?
— “ČESKÁ VERZE, DEUTSCHE FASSUNG, VERSIÓN EN ESPAÑOL, VERSION CANADIENNE FRANÇAISE, …”
“Morning, Ralph. News from the night shift?”
“Distress beacon from the Space Freighter Timmy. Got too close to a black hole.”
“Sending the Hawking radiators to bleed the gravity well?”
“Already done. They should be out in”—checks watch—“fifteen millennia.”
“Hashtag whoops! They won’t do that again.”
“They might. The good news for them, relatively speaking, is that by their perspective it’ll only take twelve years.”
The realm’s three best linguists, we were summoned to the excavation. I greeted Biv and Tharn.
“What’s the task?” I asked. Biv pointed at the glyphs.
THIS PLACE IS A MESSAGE
AND PART OF A SYSTEM OF MESSAGES
PAY ATTENTION TO IT!
“What’s it mean?”
Tharn shook her head. “The only part I can make out is right at the end: ‘Replace with your translation when it seems archaic.’ That’s our job.”
We pondered.
Biv inquired, too nonchalant, “Ven?”
“Hmm?”
“Why is your cat glowing?”
ACAB includes Undead Remote Surveillance as a Service.
The day after Marley’s Ghost visited Ebenezer Scrooge, it visited Bob Cratchit. “Sorry,” said Marley, “I could only order the three ghosts as a set. I hope their visit was useful?”
“The Ghost of Christmas Past was a tedious bore. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come _really_ needs to get out more. But I really hit it off with the Present fellow.”
Marley raised a spectral eyebrow.
“He very kindly showed me Mr Scrooge as he was dialling the combination to his safe.“
The human regains their composure and smiles. “A comedian sings all the chemical elements in a song. ‘There’s element-51 and element-33 and element-13 and element-34—’”
“All of them?” I am incredulous. “It must take hours.”
The human shifts uncomfortably.
First contact has been going well. It’s their turn to ask questions. The biped’s face moves and my translator squawks, “Are you <unintelligible>-based life forms too?”
The human and translator converse for a bit. “Element 6,” the translator clarifies.
I laugh, startling the human. “Do you name all the elements? Adorable! Next you’ll be telling me you name the stars.”
The human shifts uncomfortably.
“… and by night I am a wolf and she is a human,” Navarre finished.
“That’s awful,” commiserated Phillipe. “How can I help?”
“Well,” Navarre continued, “we figured out that Isabeau’s transformation corresponds to the actual sun, and my transformation is tied to a hypothetical mean sun at this meridian.”
“So?”
“We need you to help us get to New Zealand.”
I hesitate. “Mr President, we’ve received a transmission … from … aliens.”
“Fascinating! What does it say?”
I hand the President a slip of paper. He reads it out: “‘You are a winner! Payment for shipping is required. Contact our operators now!’ Seems … suss. Do we go public?”
“Someone, somewhere in the world would fall for it.”
He mulls a second, hands me the slip back. “Delete it.”
I nod, return to my office, and put the slip on top of the pile.
As the credits rolled, I picked up my copy of “1001 movies to see before you die” and ticked off the last entry in the contents. At two movies a week, on average, I was done before forty.
YOU HAVE DONE WELL
“Auuugh! Who are you?”
I THINK YOU CAN GUESS. I WAS THE CHESS PLAYER IN NUMBER 827.
“I uh. Wait. No. It’s just a book title. I don’t want to DIE now!”
HMMMN. I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO MAKE EXCEPTIONS. TAKE THIS.
“What is that?”
MY LIBRARY CARD. LEAVE IT IN YOUR LETTERBOX WHEN YOU HAVE CHOSEN YOUR NEXT BOOK.
As the credits rolled, I picked up my copy of “1001 Movies to See Before You Die” and ticked off the penultimate entry in the contents.
AND THAT’S A WRAP. CUT.
“No way, Death. I’ve never watched _Brazil_. That was my insurance!”
THERE’S BEEN A NEW EDITION.
“They replaced _Brazil_? With what??”
DESPICABLE ME 3.
Damn my nephews! They’d damned me last summer.
IF IT’S ANY CONSOLATION, BRAZIL SCREENS THREE TIMES A DAY IN HELL.
~Account meta~
Aperiodic reminder that all of the MicroFiction stories here are released under the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC-BY). You are welcome to copy or adapt or expand on any FutzleFiction story, even for commercial purposes. All I ask is that I am credited.
The terraforming bots started working on this planet a hundred years before any of us were born. But landing our first colony ship was still a momentous occasion.
Even before the engines finished cooling down, the argument over who would be first to set foot on the world resurfaced. I tuned it out until someone called my name.
“Alex?”
“Hmm?”
“Outside the window. Isn’t that your cat?”
Ripped from the headlines: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/112599667433388378
One of our cargo pods broke up in the planet’s atmosphere, strewn over sparsely-populated prairie. Fortunately the humans think it was one of their own launch vehicles.
We’ve been driving one of their “you haul” land carriers to collect fragments from a farmer. We wear our human shapesuits, practising their strange language: “Ja, we are from SpaceSex.” We know no other phrases.
It goes well, but we almost blow our cover when one of the locals offers us indigestible snack food. We hurry away.
On the way, we pass the real human pickup party, their impossibly angular truck bogged beside the road. We wave.
(Sorry for the horror story, sysadmins.)
Zotty: C’mon, we’re going to buzz some earthlings.
Flith: But the cloak is busted, they’ll see us, and every earthling has a camera in their pocket these days. Dad’ll be so mad, the paperwork—
Zotty: Relax, let’s just drape this sheet over the outside. No one ever thinks to photograph anything with this incantation on it, and by the time tech support turns up, we’ll be long gone!
Sheet:
Error -35816
Assertion failed
in libxkcd2.dll
[OK] [CANCEL]
It’s not so bad, living under the rule of the fairies. They are mostly kind to us, but sometimes capricious. They need us: blacksmiths, engineers, machinists, to work the steel that keeps the machines going. Iron is strictly controlled; it’s impossible to smuggle any, making uprisings impossible.
But they don’t know that we know that they are also vulnerable to iron’s siblings, cobalt and nickel. We’ve been stockpiling old rechargeable batteries. The revolution will be electric.
“Northern lights”? You’re funny, Grandpa. Ever since the Supercarrington event, we just call them “Lights”. Hope your blackout curtains are good. #Microfiction #Nanofiction
The alien saucer landed in the university square. A bedraggled being emerged from the ramp, carrying a sling bag, consulting a phrasebook.
“Um. Take me … to your … plumber?”
The professor of linguistics was first to speak. “Ah, I see what’s happened. You’ve confused ‘lead’ with ‘lead’, one comes from ‘liðan’, to go forth, and one comes from ‘plumbum’, the word for the element—“
His lecture was cut short when a putrid, slimy, plunger landed squarely on his head. “I know what I mean,” said the alien.