Genre
Books
Short Stories
The Contract
These guys always look the same. Oily, unkempt hair falling on a wrinkled, sweaty brow, eyes blinking rapidly.
These guys always look the same. Oily, unkempt hair falling on a wrinkled, sweaty brow, eyes blinking rapidly. Dirty tee that looks like it’s been slept in. Blizzard of Ozz, figures.
His hand trembles a bit as he pushes the page toward me. Too much coffee. Or booze.
I can barely make out the printed text in the dim, candlelit room. 12-point font, single-spaced, of course. His eyes widen as I use my phone as a flashlight; he must have expected a snap of my fingers to do the trick.
A quick scan of the first few lines. Ugh, the usual artless bullshit, and a missing comma to boot… It’s going to be that kind of day.
I push the page back as he sags. “I can’t use this, sorry.” I don’t sound like I’m sorry, but in my experience, it’s a kindness, really. “Besides, from the look of you, I’ll get you eventually, anyway,” I tell him, as I give the room a quick once-over. “When was the last time you washed this floor?” I cut him off as he opens his mouth. “Never mind. Don’t call me again.”
They rarely listen, which keeps the scented candle folks in business, I suppose. Though threatening to go medieval on them, on their second or third try usually does the trick — it’s especially satisfying with those wannabe lawyers that start with the “you can’t do this” and “it’s not supposed to.” Seriously, you’re going to get a master of the universe to show up in your room, you’d better make sure your chalk geometry is flawless. Or at least learn to take no for an answer.
Did I say master of the universe? Lowercase. At your beck and call for the price of five thick, properly placed candles, and a few Aramaic phrases, though Latin will do in a pinch. Oh, and practice your chalk lines if you plan to get cheeky.
“Who the hell needs your soul?”
I LOVE watching their faces when I say that. The saggy starlets who have run out of plastic. The ‘roid rage has-beens that want to win just that one more time. The politicians… ok, ok, we all make mistakes…
But the “writers” — they are truly the worst. Use an AI to write a romantasy, for fuck’s sake, or just get a vanity publisher for your drivel: it’ll cost you a few thousand bucks, and you can shove all the signed copies you want down the throat of your friends and family. If they still want to be your friends and family, anyway.
You think hell needs to add your tender consciousness to its library, the one that already has Goethe? Dante? You think there’s a shortage?
Like I have nothing better to do than get you a publishing contract that will have every miserable living hack, not to mention a few dead ones, bitch: “How is this possible? I write way better than this!” Is any soul worth that headache?
Yeah, I know, I know, you can give me examples and quote them chapter and verse. Those were from before my time.
How is that possible, you ask? I did say lowercase.
No, I’m not the first to get this gig, not by a long shot. And it’s been ages since the Big Guy handled these types of cases himself. Ever since… Let’s just say there are still a few among you who are really, really good at an Euclidean chalk line, so ever since the little embarrassing incident in the Prague Masonic lodge, He tends to assign house calling to expendable poor devils like me.
And we’re on strict quotas to bring down only the most exceptional contracts. Oh, an agent will slip up here and there; that’ll explain more than a few Nobels and Pulitzers, and if you wanted an explanation for how Pulp Fiction didn’t win the Best Picture Oscar in ’94, now you know, but for the most part, we stick to the rules and are rated on it. You should know I’m in the ninety-ninth sticktuitiveness percentile, and damn proud of it. Expecting to get promoted soon.
You detect a paradox? Oh, this is no Yogi Berra situation, believe me, hell is plenty busy with regular customers, just think about where you’re going to end up. OK, but for real. That’s right, we don’t need to do a lot of work to get most of you where you belong.
But how do we get the exceptional ones? That’s what you’re asking me? Why do they need someone like me pulling strings on their behalf?
Like, why would anyone, genuinely gifted, an author, an actor, a physicist, attempt to sell their soul for success? What does he have to gain from it? What’s in it for her if she is already great?
I see. It appears that you still do not get it. Let me spin you a bit of a conspiracy theory:
Imagine that there are many, many devils, each just like me, who’ve spent years, no, perhaps decades learning how to get better at saying no, to eventually revel in saying no, to positively salivate Pavlovian over saying it.
Now imagine that as we finally get so good at it that we can’t get any better, that every “no” sends the intended recipient into immediate, irredeemible despair, what happens? What do you think happens?
We get promoted.
And where does the Big Guy put us? Where would we be able to put our newly honed sharp skills to the best use?
I see that you are beginning to understand.
No one gets by us. No one, no matter how good they are. No one without one of these contracts.
Do you get it now? Are you finally ready?
Very well, I see that you are.
To be honest, I would have probably drawn the figure first and then lit the scented candles afterwards. It seems much easier that way.
But here’s your piece of chalk.
Prophet From It
Whether you consider the shouting match he’d just had with his wife, Zakutu, over her treatment of
Whether you consider the shouting match he’d just had with his wife, Zakutu, over her treatment of Vashti, his new concubine, the cheeky Babylonian Ambassador who had just offered Marduk’s help in relieving the devastating summer drought they’d been suffering, if only His Majesty would be good enough to authorize a new temple to his chief rival’s god, or the stifling heat in the main audience hall of his spacious palace, Sennacherib, by the grace of Ashur and Ishtar, King of the Four Corners of the World, not to mention his magnificent capital, Nineveh, was not having a good day.
And it was promising to get worse by the look on Ahikar’s face. The vizier clasped his own hands in a suppliant gesture, his stance unsteady, plainly afraid of his king’s displeasure at what was to come next.
Well, if it’s displeasure he wants. Sennacherib screwed his face into a mask of sheer royal annoyance, concentrating on lowering his impressive, henna-dyed eyebrows. This should work. “What is it, man? Spit it out!”
Ahikar paused to appreciate His Majesty’s effort while invisibly gesturing to the scantily dressed slave girl fanning the king to increase her pace. “Funny you should choose those words, King of Kings, but that appears to be exactly what happened. According to eyewitness accounts, at least. He was spat out. But now he’s here.”
Sennacherib sighed the weary sigh of a benevolent god-king. Was he working his vizier too hard? The man made no sense whatsoever. “Who was spat out?” he asked at last. “And where?” He spread his arms wide as his eyes scanned the audience hall. “I see but the usual courtiers and hangers-on?”
Ahikar nodded his understanding. “An Israelite, Sire. Goes by the name of Jonah. From the tribe of Zebulun…” He attempted to continue, but his king interrupted with an impatient wave of his impeccably manicured right hand.
“I can’t ever keep those twelve tribes of theirs straight. And so, was he spat out here? Into your dungeon, no doubt?”
Ahikar cleared his throat nervously. “Not exactly, Your Majesty. He was spat out onto the shores of the Great Sea. By a whale. And then came straight here.”
Sennacherib permitted his eyes to widen, sparing a moment to check his face in the handy bronze mirror that lay next to his massive golden throne. Vashti is absolutely right, this new eyeliner is perfect. His lips started curving upward, but stopped as the memory of the morning’s argument soured his mood again. “What, straight here? A day’s journey as the crow flies, and nearly a month for a caravan?”
“Indeed, Your Majesty,” came the quick reply. “We verified the story with local fishermen, though there was some debate as to whether this was a whale, a leviathan, or just a plain old fish.” Ahikar paused as if to collect his thoughts. “But all that we interviewed swore that a creature rose from the depths, and deposited this Jonah onto the beach.”
Sennacherib dismissed the report with a shrug. “Since when is a fisherman a reliable witness, Ahikar?” He chuckled. “No doubt they told you this when you threatened them with exile to Assyria. Land of milk and honey… riiight. They’ll do anything to move here. But instead of seeing it for the tall tale that it is, you chose to believe them. They must have been disappointed when you left them there.” He laughed out loud.
Ahikar smiled politely; one does not get to be vizier and fail to laugh at the King of Kings jokes, after all. “Ahem, Sire, as you’ll recall, we did take most of them back to Assyria, and moved some of our people there? It’s those other tribes that are left…” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “That unfortunate dysentery incident during the siege of Jerusalem…” He stopped himself short when he saw Sennacherib’s hands clench the throne’s handles. “Apologies, Your Majesty. I momentarily forgot the prohibition on discussing that subject.” He stood silent, afraid to say any more.
Sennacherib surveyed the room again. No courtier showed any sign of having overheard the man’s unfortunate mistake, which was just as well, as he’d already gone through two other viziers this year. He let the man sweat for what felt like an appropriate amount of time before continuing: “Perhaps I shall let you live, Ahikar,” he said, opening his palms. “Do go on. What does this miraculous fishbait want? I presume that is why you are here?”
Ahikar carefully considered his options before answering. Soften the man’s words, and the king might blame him for not being forthright if the prophecy turned out to be true. Share it outright, and he was bound to run into Sennacherib’s prohibition and meet the fate he just narrowly avoided.
He’d have gone on vacillating longer, but the king’s increasingly impatient expression finally left him no choice.
“Your Majesty,” he continued at last, “Jonah warns us that unless we repent from what he calls ‘our sinful ways’, the idolatry, the child sacrifices, his god will…” He took a deep breath. Here goes nothing. “He said his God will make what happened in Jerusalem seem like child’s play. He said ‘Be sure to tell that to your king’, specifically.”
For a brief moment, Ahikar thought that he’d gotten away with it, though the king’s face went white with rage at the second mention of the Jerusalem incident. But the king’s laugh, coupled as it was with the words, “repent, sure. He’s right, that child sacrifice stuff is truly distasteful, after all,” gave him hope. For a brief moment.
Then the king’s guards grabbed him by his armpits and started dragging him, struggling and screaming as he was, toward the dungeon. “Your Majesty! Your Majesty! I had no choice!” he protested, but to no avail.
“Bring that Jonah character here at once!” he heard Sennacherib command as he was being dragged out. “He sounds like a hoot. And I need a new vizier!”
SpellBound
He stretches his back, then settles across from me. “Let me tell you,” he says, “it’s not
He stretches his back, then settles across from me. “Let me tell you,” he says, “it’s not easy out there.” He pauses to sniff his dish, shakes his head, then takes a bite before continuing. “I’d almost given up, in fact, until I came across this new app, SpellBound. Yeah, with two Ls.”
“Two Ls, huh?” I repeat. “I guess I’ll check it later…” I wait for him to continue.
“Look, even then, it took some trying,” he says. “I open it up, and first thing, this really ugly hag pops up, ancient, nose warts and all. Must have paid up for the premium placement. And that profile video of hers, talk about your catfishing.” He shakes his head again. “I can go all night, she says, and then love to lie in bed and cuddle all day. Man, that voice still gives me shivers. So of course I swipe left...”
He swallows another piece of his dinner as I nod in understanding, though I have to pause to scratch my underpit. Dammit, I hope it’s not some hex? No, probably just fleas again. “Yeah, I get it,” I say finally. “And were most of them like that?”
He shrugs. “Some looked better than that, I have to admit, but those seemed right out of my league. One wanted only someone with eyes of a different color. Another one wanted battle scars and less hair on the back. I tell you. I tried all kinds of filters, too, but they see right through them, the witches.”
“Fuckers,” I curse loudly, not quite sure why, as the folks at the neighboring table turn to stare. “Sorry,” I enunciate with an apologetic nod to them, rolling my Rs for emphasis, then turn back to him after pausing to wet my beak. “Can’t take you anywhere, man,” he says with a chuckle.
I give him a dismissive wave. “Come on, Tommy, you’re stalling, there’s gotta be more to the story than this, no? Not even one good hookup?”
He shrugs. “There were indeed a few that were promising. One that I kinda liked, was cute as a pumpkin, that one, but she turned out to be allergic to everything. Started sneezing as soon as I would get anywhere near her. I think that one wound up getting a goldfish. Another one decided to become gluten-free, and I’m like, that’s fine, I’m a meat-eater anyway, but she wanted me to be vegan. Who does that!”
It was a familiar tale, and one I’d heard before, but I don’t interrupt Tommy. He’s a good, old friend, even if a bit self-obsessed. “Ok, ok,” I prompt him, “but you didn’t come here to just complain about your romantic failures. There must have been a spectacular conquest or two in there, no?”
He grins, licking his lips. “All right, all right,” he says. “I’ll confess. The app has that new AI thing everyone’s talking about, and so the matches did get better over time, and I started swiping right more and more. Until I got to this one Goth chick.” He turns wistful. “I tell you, she was purrfect! Eyes like storm clouds, lips blood red, nails blacker than mine. And that veil — widow’s lace, all mystery, all promise. I was lost before I even watched the whole video. And what a video!”
I could tell he’s really getting excited. “You don’t say? Wait, she didn't…”
“No, no,” he interrupts me with a chuckle. “That would have been great, but it’s totally against their Terms & Conditions, it’s not OnlyWitches, you know, that stuff would get you banned. So no. But pretty suggestive. ‘Come, spend the night of your life,’ she says, ‘and who knows, maybe we’ll be together forever!’”
He takes a deep breath. “So of course I swipe right, so fast I almost scratched the screen. And then message her. I didn’t even try to sound casual, I’m like, lady, I’m yours if you’ll have me. Took some new pics, me on the couch, that kind of stuff. Respectable, but you know. And then… Then, within just a few seconds, I get a reply back, marked with three hearts. And an address!”
He coughs, spits a fishbone onto his plate. “Sorry, I always forget to ask them to debone it. Anyway, where was I? Oh, so I see the address, but it’s nowhere in town. Check Google Maps — it’s a large Victorian-era estate on the outskirts of town, out by the lake. The pictures on Maps look great, lots of greenery around, rose gardens, beautiful dock, but it’s the middle of winter now, and it’s going to be a shlepp… Still, I’m too excited to miss this opportunity, so I head out there.
Took well over an hour, what with the traffic, but here I am finally at the front door, waiting by the door like a high schooler picking up a prom date. Then she opens the door, and she’s exactly like in the video! ‘Come on in, come on in’, she says, pointing into the foyer. ‘Oh, you’re cute,’ she adds, ‘much cuter than the last one.’
That should have been my clue, but I’m still lovestruck, so I make my way into the foyer, onto some curious geometric floor pattern. Wait! I think, what is that? But it’s too late. I find myself unable to move, suddenly on all fours, my true form…”
He pauses, and I find myself leaning toward him, neck muscles stretched from the strain, listening intently. “OMG, so what happened next?”
He shakes his head. “First, I realize I can’t move, like not at all. Then, a darkness overtakes me, eyelids forced closed.
I don’t know how long I was out, seconds, minutes, maybe more. But when I next open my eyes, I’m swinging in the air, icy gusts of wind batting me back and forth like a punching bag. I’m in a net, dangling from a pulley a few feet above the frozen-solid lake.
I look down, and there’s a large drilled hole in the ice, dark water splashing underneath it, the occasional shiny, scaled fin making an ominous appearance. And she’s standing there, next to the pulley, mumbling something and gesturing wildly, like she’s doing a spell to call the devil himself.
‘Wait!’ I attempt to call out, though it comes out more like a metal scratching glass. ‘Wait!’ I try again, shouting over the wailing winds. ‘What are you doing!?’
She laughs, one of those maniacal laughs you only see in the black and white movies, and it’s cinematic too, her silhouette stark against the moonlit night sky, then looks at me, with no shame in those dark, dark eyes, none whatsoever. ‘What does it look like I’m doing, dear?’ she says. ‘I’m catfishing.’
He falls silent, brooding. I wait, letting him collect his thoughts, but I can’t help it. “So wait, how are you here? What happened next?”
He doesn’t answer right away. “Next,” he says finally. “Next, you should have seen the size of that sturgeon. Not one of my finest moments, not at all. But she beat him over the head with a club until he released me. Only took about ten minutes or so. Then she offered me a full-time gig, benefits and all. Even teared up a little when I told her this isn’t for me… He sighs resignedly.
It’s my turn to shake my head. “Well, Tommy, you’ve definitely ruffled my feathers with that one!” I look up at my perch. “Brings back memories of what Edgar used to do to me. So what are you doing now, looking again?”
Tommy stretches his black back again. “Are you kidding me, Raven? I’m taking it easy for a while…
Probably going to move back in with Jerry.”
Looking California
Feeling Massachusetts
Feeling Massachusetts
“Whatever you do,” they kept telling us at the MIT Temporal Arts Academy, “do not create a time loop. You’ll regret it. Forever.”
Paradoxes were not dangerous at all, tending to resolve themselves in increasingly complicated and inventive ways as time would rush to heal itself. They did result in lots of dead grandfathers and shameless grandmothers, of course, especially among the members of the freshman Practical Applications of Time Travel class, but as the scrupulously celibate Dean Thompson was fond of saying, “If it’s not experimentally verified, it’s just dogma.”
The saying was far from the Dean’s most important academic contribution, of course. His true claim to fame was a seminal paper describing time as the set of rivulet-like flows of faster-than-light tachyons. Redirect a substream this way or that, he argued, and you can visit the past, quite safely, for the most part, and for far less energy than could be generated by even the smallest house fusion reactor.
No wonder then that the lengthy treatise, breathlessly summarized in Physics Today as “You Can Now Choose Your Grandpa”, gathered the gentle Professor not one but two Nobel Prizes, the second in History, and how could it not, once he’d conclusively proven that infamous “Et tu, Brute” was in fact but a friendly verbal prompt by Julius Caesar, who’d wanted nothing more than for his family friend to join him in the sampling of an excellent red wine of recent Gallic vintage, the words spoken a full hour on the sundial before the dictatorship-weary young senator helped turn the First Citizen into a leaky sieve. (It should be noted that whether the potent grape was in fact of Bordeaux or Burgundian origin does remain the matter of some debate, with a time expedition slated to settle the argument just in time for a major revision of the Shakespearean classic to be performed by a Patrick Stewart AI in the title role, and an Olivier Brutus, after the O’Toole people backed out, citing irreconcilable differences.)
I was the Professor’s star disciple, of course. “Follow Theodore,” he used to tell my young lab assistants whenever he would visit our lab, “and in time, you would go places, heh, heh.” Our field of research, inspired as it was by his profound Groundhog Day lecture, was far beyond the state of the art: Climate Modification Through the Application of Temporal Paradoxes. Really important stuff, and I would spend many a weekend and most evenings staring at the tachyon flow simulations generated by the endlessly self-improving GPT, the rivulets churning this way and that, to shift an Antarctic current here, end a drought in Africa there.
Now, I wish in fact that I could blame the AI here. True, our IT department’s mandate to always download and install the very latest updates, supposedly for the sake of cybersecurity, did result in the loading of an as-yet-untested agentic framework onto the lab’s quantum processor. But it was completely my decision, unfortunately, to turn on the beta “casual, conversational” mode. To the extent I have any defense, I only did it because I’d grown tired of the endless “are you sure?” style confirmation requests after every command, and not because the entity’s voice was now perfectly calibrated to elicit an emotional response from its user. “Work as a true human assistant,” I told the GPT, and it appeared to comply happily, making the entire lab significantly more productive in the process.
All of which would have still been perfectly fine, had I not been in a particularly sour mood that evening, having been caught by a cold, miserable thunderstorm on my bike ride back to the dorm. Drenched, cursing, I returned to the lab, where, after crashing into my chair and pushing back from the desk, I uttered those horrible, unconsidered, fateful ten words, words that continue to haunt me as I spend countless days next to my apartment’s window, looking at perfect, moonlit evenings.
I said, “Can we do something so that this never happens again?”
You good folks know the rest. The AI complied, and though the lab lights did dim ever so slightly, an unusual occurrence given our multi-terawatt power supply, and the churning tachyon rivulets did form a few worrisome eddys, these straightened eventually, and so I did not give it much thought at the time. It was only a few weeks later when it became evident that Boston was suddenly experiencing a permanent Northern-California-style February, that I began to become concerned.
Oh, of course, just like in Groundhog Day, most of humanity remains blissfully unaware. I use “blissfully” advisedly here, as to who can really complain about permanent California weather in their backyard? And yet, and yet, they can sense that something intangible is missing, something feels wrong. I should unequivocally state here, nonetheless, that I completely discount the notion that the recent Congressional subpoenas to our lab have anything to do with the matter: the usual grant budget debates are a much likelier cause. We, of course, will continue honoring any such subpoenas, though I do appreciate the school’s offer of legal assistance.
But today, my esteemed colleagues, Dean Thomson first and foremost, I come to you with a most urgent appeal. Please let me continue my research. Please reinstate my building pass and take the padlocks off my lab doors, and Dean Thomson, you, most particularly, please remove the rather insulting restraining order that has made appearing at this hearing in person so challenging.
Let me continue my important work. Let me continue improving the world’s weather conditions through these carefully calibrated time paradoxes, just as we’ve successfully done before. I’m happy to submit to any supervisory regime, any Quality Assurance process. After all, we all share the same goal, don’t we?
We all want that day to come, and for those of us in the know, it cannot come soon enough, can it?
The day that will end, just as it used to, just as it’s been immortalized in our culture in countless compositions.
The day whose end may once again be described, quite simply, as:
‘It was a dark and stormy night.’
If you know, you know:
You've Got Male
“Will that be all?” she asks, not even the slightest hint of a smile on her face, as
“Will that be all?” she asks, not even the slightest hint of a smile on her face, as my last item, a pale head of lettuce, rolls down the checkout counter’s conveyor belt towards the bagging area. Ann Boleyn’s head must have rolled something like this, I find myself thinking as I watch the counter’s mechanical arms grab the head of lettuce by their fingertips and place it gingerly into the bag they’d just opened for the purpose.
“No,” I tell her. “I want to marry you and have lots of children together. But that’s not bloody likely, is it?”
No reaction, though I get a snicker from the fat lady behind me in line. I turn to her, giving her what I hope is a warm smile, my arms spread, palms open. “I’m here all week, lady.” She nods, though her smile seems to melt into the lines of her face. Oops, I may have overdone it. Did I?
The cashier’s irritated “Next” wakes me from the momentary self-reflection. “I’m going, I’m going.” I grab the rusty shopping cart, ignoring the squeal its wheels make in protest. Better hurry up, tons of driving ahead of me, then the grass in the backyard and whatever else needs doing. Then back to the store tomorrow, though my specific window won’t be announced until the early hours of the morning.
Keeping it random. Avoid recognizable patterns. They don’t like that.
The training augmentation packet arrives well past midnight, and just as well, as I haven’t been able to identify even a single fly on the wall or ceiling. No spiders today either. Lying in bed, lights out, is super important for normalcy, they tell us. They don’t say just how boring it is.
The packet tingles as I absorb it. Not sure if “hurts” is the right word, but not pleasant. Reinforcement learning, they call it. See, it tells me, this is where you pushed it too far, and the lady realized what you were doing. Not good. Remember your purpose. Do better next time.
I sigh and look at the ceiling again. Wait, what’s that whine? Oh, a mosquito. Oh, that’s great. Common sucker, come here. Here, let’s increase my left hand temperature and pump some CO2 for you. Come on, now…
It didn’t work. Somehow, the suckers can tell, though the texture of my skin is designed to be nearly identical, and the manufactured scent of it is human, down to the pheromones. And I know this because I can recognize them in others.
Just as I recognize them in her now, as I put up the cans of Spam and Skippy’s on the counter. I pause to run an internal check on the Venn diagram; everything is spot on, a perfect bullseye.
I grab a Doublemint the endcap. “Gives me something to chew on,” I offer, flashing my pearls and making sure my cheeks display just the right level of redness.
“Cash or credit,” she says, mouth as stern as ever. And then “Next,” as soon as my carefully chosen triple-reward card taps the reader.
My supervisor must be getting worried because the call comes even before I get back to the house. I let the car take over and turn FaceTime on. “Yes, sir?”
The larger-than-life “Lothar.io“ logo is blazing on the onyx-black wall behind his back. He shakes his head. “What are we going to do here, Johnny? It’s been two weeks.”
What can I say? “More, really, sir, if you count my quick run-in on Sunday evening. I don’t know what’s wrong… It’s certainly a new experience for me.” It has never taken more than two or three days to get a smile. Into bed within a week. Real human connection. That’s what we advertise.
He makes a face. “I don’t have to tell you what we’ve tied up in this version of you, Johnny.” He doesn’t; it overlays his face out of the corner of my eye. “The Board might move for a reboot here.” He pauses, his face grim. “Or maybe even a rollback.”
I run a super-quick diagnostic on replying with “but sir, it’s just a test case.” But it doesn’t score well, not with the level of stress I’m reading in his face.
So I sigh with as much sincerity as I’m designed to master. “I’ll see what I can do, boss.”
I lie in bed again, running through all my options. Hand her a note with my phone number? Show up in the parking lot after her shift, flowers in hand? That one is risky. Can you imagine having the girl freak out over something like that, the boss having to drag me out of a police precinct after making bail on a harassment complaint? That’ll be even worse than a reboot. Or a rollback.
What else then? She seemed utterly impervious to Johnny’s charms, even this latest, battle-tested version 9.59, that had been trained on everything from romcoms and selfies to soft-porn and romantasy… if you differentiate the two, that is. But nothing worked on her. Nothing at all.
My left eye flashes with a sudden alert: a slight penetration of my skin sensors halfway up my left arm. I focus on it, incredulous, and there it is, a mosquito happily sucking on whatever it is they put in us to substitute for blood. I consider applying the proper “get it” probability and attempting to smack it. That’s what Johnny is supposed to do. And then I realize what’s been going on. I shoo it gently off my arm. Lucky for you, partner.
Late the next day, the boss calls me in the car again, but this time, he is beyond happy. “So how did you do it, finally, Johnny? That was one hell of a smile she gave you. The Board was impressed. What did it take? And when are you getting her into bed?”
And I smile at him, and think about the tiny virus that I’d snuck into my credit card’s RFID chip, a virus whose only purpose was to put up a few lines of text on the card reader.
I’d spent all night programming it, deciding what to say exactly, trying and dismissing dozens of sentences:
“Gotcha, sucker!”
“I know what you are!”
“You work for Succub.us”
“You can’t beat Johnny!”
I considered all of these and rejected each one in turn. This is what I chose instead:
“If you don’t give me a big smile, they might scrap me for metal.”
I saw those blue eyes light up as she saw the message, my right hand lingering ever so slightly above the credit card terminal.
Then she gave me that big smile for the recording I shared with the Board.
And maybe it's just my imagination. Certainly, it could have been an accident. But her finger brushed mine, barely a touch, as she handed me the receipt. Barely a touch.
It was electric.
Poems
Fortune's Favors
When the years press you down
and the aches that add up
put a frown on your face
do not fret, do not stop
and eschew any talk
that it sucks to get old
As the old proverb says…
Fortune favors the bald
Author notes: image generated by author prompt to Gemini