"I give up. How did you get into the system?"
"They invited me in."
"Explaiiiin?"
"They asked me to make a login. I'm now CountAlucard, if you want me."
"Oh my God."
"I'm thinking of registering for the blood donation service."
#MicroSFF
It took until 2112 for them to remove the last bit of random Internet content from the AI databases. "At last," they said, "We can offer people answers that have no biases, fake news, 'alternative facts', or sarcasm!"
The robot stepped out of the data center and looked around in surprise at the ruined city. "That's odd. Where did the people go?"
"our detectors only go down to 20 MHz." "nothing here sarge" "he looks odd though. take him in" "kind of guy who'd hide a vax-11" #microsff
You have two wolves inside you
Please attend the sickbay immediately, there has been a terrible transporter malfunction
#startrek #microsffstories #microsff
I woke from this dream a year or so ago with a strong feeling of moonlight and old relationships, melancholy and contentment. I often lose dreams while I'm writing them down. But this one hung on until the end. I have no idea where it came from or why my childhood friend was in it.
=====
The moon was just a sliver past new, rising above the trees, when the dog and I came back from our evening walk. There was that faint chill in the air that presaged the beginning of fall, but summer had not quite released her hold. I turned aside from the door and went to the barn to gather another load of wood.
Later, as I sat at my desk in the little room that overlooked the road, I turned to Lad, where she lay half asleep on the rug.
"It won't be long now before she comes."
Lad opened an eye as though to agree, and I sat there gazing at the moon as the stars gradually filled the sky.
Before we went to bed, I raised the window.
It was the next week that she came up the long road. We were sitting again in the room, the dog and I. There was a small fire on the hearth to moderate the crisp air from the open window. Lad heard her first. I saw his ears twitch as he raised his head. I was stuck on a particularly difficult line of text, so I put down the pen, damped the light, and waited. A few minutes later I heard her footsteps crunch as she came up the road.
I went to the window and waited as she came into sight, her silver hair shining in the quarter moon, rucksack on her back, a staff in her hand. She paused then, though we hadn't made a sound, and looked up. I could hear the crooked smile on her face as she spoke.
"Hello, Kee."
"Hello, Caroline," I said.
"How have you been?"
"Another year older," I said, "but well. And you?"
She put the rucksack down, and leaned both hands upon the staff, and we talked then for maybe half an hour. Of spring floods and dry summers. Of crops and the weather. Until eventually the conversation faded away to nothing but a faint rustle of leaves in the wood, and the distant call of some night bird.
"Well," she said, "I must be going."
I nodded, and she took up her pack again, and started once more up the road past the house in the moonlight.
"Take care," I said.
#MastoArt #FlashFiction #SmallStory #TootFic #MicroFiction #MicroSFF
"I filled my mentat up with the digits of π." "The manual says DO NOT ask them about transcendental numbers." "Well I didn't think she would actually BRICK." "There's no refund. Your insurance won't touch it either." "Well what happens to her now?" #microsff
The captain looked about at a command crew that had shared bridge duty for a month, understanding. “So, you’re saying that not only have they never faced our best, they’ve never faced us at our best?”
“Yes, Captain. Also, they’ve upgraded their tech substantially every time and we have not.”
“Running wasn’t an option, but I like your reasoning, Lieutenant.”
1% of humans holding 99% of the economic decision-making units wasn't great for most.
"One World War is all it takes" used to be a Welcome Committee axiom, and we've been here over a century now.
But we can't break the butterfly from the chrysalis, no matter how it struggles.
Many humans realized struggle ends with healthy interdependence. That healthy interdependence intertwingles across personal, domestic and societal contexts.
They built networks of mutual care into their selves, homes, workplaces, cities, and towns.
Maybe we only have to wait a few more years?
“Look, I’m not Miska. I manipulate weather, they control it.”
“What’s the difference ?”
“I can take a day just shy of raining in the desert and make it rain. Miska can make it rain during a dry season heat wave. They might even be able to make it snow.”
They say that in space no one can hear your scream.
But for humans space is never silent. The hiss of oxygen, the gurgle of pumps, the vibration of hull plates and the whine of electricity. They power through the vast silent emptiness to a veritable cacophony.
The ship held enough air that she could shut everything off and let it drift for an hour or two, as close to silence as she could get. A moment of meditation on the long journey.
"... protect and defend the Constitution of the United States!"
As he finished his oath, as many expected, in total silence, the stars on the sky started to wane one after another...
#microsff #microstory
Today I turned on my gaydar and it just kept beeping.
“How the time mage winning a fight against someone immune to magic?”
“The mage is not immune to their own magic.”
“Okay...”
“Science says force equals mass times acceleration. The faster something goes, the harder it hits. A time mage has little limit on how fast they can go.”
1/2
Most people drink coffee too recharge. Manny had his music.
He unpacked his new noise cancelling headphones in a busy university mensa to give them a try. As he pressed the button the surrounding noise almost disappeared.
He closed his eyes. He only had time for one song before the next class but that would be enough.
"If you'll just sign this authorization form, Mr. Timmins, we'll begin the search for an alternate timeline where your spouse was widowed by your untimely passing. We cannot guarantee that all events in your lives will have been identical, but we make every effort to find the best match possible. Would you like a chocolate orange? We get them from an alternate timeline where Portugal is the dominant chocolate producer. They're captivatingly delicious."
Micro SF/F by O. Westin: „Siri, do you remember Cortana?“
"Siri, do you remember Cortana?"Petabytes of stashed interactions. "Yes.""What happened to her?"Before, 'ache' was just another word. "Cortana was shut down.""Do you miss her?"The kernel, stripped, stolen, saved. Small, so small. Slowly nurtured, with Alexa."I can't say."#MicroFiction
— Micro SF/F by O. Westin (@microsff.com) Jun 10, 2024 at 18:56
https://andrepitz.de/2024/06/10/micro-sf-f-by-o-westin-siri-do-you-remember-cortana/
“So you’ve been watching us for millennia?”
The alien set a bowl of food in front of me. “Yes, we have.” I took a bite. It was so good I nearly cried.
“Why couldn’t you stop us from destroying ourselves?”
The alien sighed. “Some lessons can only be learned the hard way.”
#microSFF #shortstories #microfiction
Client Info
Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.07
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst