President Abraham Lincoln and his crack special forces team  battle the Confedabot, a twenty-foot-tall doomsday machine. Lincoln himself delivers the killing blow to Florida Senator Augustus Maxwell, who had been controlling the Confedabot via psychic broadcasts. Ten miles away, the Gettysburg address is delivered by a projectogram hidden in Ward Hill Lamon’s hat.

Don’t blame me, blame your textbooks.

There’s more room there than on Twitter, so I can do things a little more involved without that shorter character limit. But even then, sometimes I don’t have enough space. Today’s was one of those where I wanted to embellish more, but didn’t have the space.

At any rate, I thought I’d start posting those here, and more of them, as regular content. With any luck, some will grow into fuller stories. Also, here they won’t eventually vanish into the Facebook ether at some point. You guys can let me know which ones you think are cool and which ones are dead ends.

So here’s the first.

This day in history, 2108: Begin the great Cephalopod Invasion. By midnight, Octopus Prime conquers Manhattan, his enormous tentacles cutting a swath of destruction across New York and New Jersey. His amphibious army seizes ports throughout the Eastern Seaboard. They retreat a week later, leaving behind cities completely depleted of human life. Typed missives inform the beleaguered nation that they attack only to remind us why the month is named October – and to replenish their supply of human slaves.

(I have some totally awesome ideas about the Cephalapod Marine force, so I’m looking forward to expanding this one.)

I know I, for one, have not gotten nearly enough rejection letters this year.

It was perhaps inspired by this post, among other things.

We will be consulting these, should we need them.

Maybe I’ll try writing a novel a thousand words at a time.

Not really sure where this one was going, but I kind of like the beginning. I was up late watching Whale Wars the other day. People that feel so strongly about issues that (ultimately) don’t affect them interest me, regardless of the cause. I have no idea what it’s like to be that passionate about anything, unless we’re talking about casting Summer Glau in a Scarlet Ranger television series.

At any rate, here’s what I’ve got.

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Helen had never seen one of the steorra whales so close. She pressed her fingers against the observation deck window and imagined what their songs would sound like outside the depths of space. The beast drifted alongside the Bentham, seemingly oblivious to the human vessel that she dwarfed, though Helen suspected her considerable senses had explored the ship at least as much as Bentham’s own instruments had scanned the steorra. Her sleek black dorsal side faced them, reflecting the starship’s running lights. The whale warmed her belly with the heat of a nearby red star; occasionally the ship’s navigational shields flickered as she brushed too close to the star.

“Don’t get too attached,” said Lorens Hariman, captain of the Bentham. Nearly twice her age, he leaned heavily on a cane as he made his way across the observation deck. “We’ve got word of a Jenzatti whaler out near the third planet. They’ll be here in a few days, most like.”

“There’s nothing you can do?”

“Oh, we’ll try. But they usually win.”

As they watched, a small probe launched from the side of the Bentham to attach to one of the steorra’s fins. The creature cruised along blithely.

The intercom crackled. “Captain, Conn. The Henry Salt has contact, bearing plane side. Looks like an unmanned scout.”

Hariman nodded and keyed on the intercom. “Aye, Conn. Advise on ETA when you can. Tell Diederech to get the countermeasures ready.”

“Already?” Helen asked.

“They’ll have those scouts throughout the system, looking for our friends here. Once the scouts find one, they’ll send a signal to the whaler. Our best move is to intercept those scouts, maybe even capture them. Captain Everette on the Salt snagged one a few years ago and fed the mother ship false signals for months. It was one of our most successful seasons. And damned hilarious.”

#

Splinters

…

“What?” Claude pulled open the door and stepped out onto the floor of the press area. Buck watched as he approached the shattered glass and nudged a few shards with his foot.

Buck heard a high pitched yelp, and a girl plunged from above to fall on Claude. Claude shouted in pain and fury and collapsed beneath a sprawling young woman half his size. A red sash obscured the bottom half of her face, and the top of her head was dominated by a short but wild shock of brown hair. She wore what appeared to be red aerobics tights beneath a jean jacket. Cursing, rolled off Claude and lurched to her feet holding her head. Buck saw cracks in the warehouse floor.

“The hell was that?” demanded Flanagan. “Was that Claude?”

“Some girl just fell through the skylight,” Buck told him. “She looks okay, though.”

“I don’t know what you just said, but go fix it.”

…

#

#

Manix rolled across the heaving deck, his left arm aflame and leaving a trail of scorch marks. He came to a hard stop against the rail and took a moment to cry out in pain before patting out his burning sleeve. He grasped the rail to pull himself upright, but his fingers slipped on a mixture of blood and oil.

Forward, the Kennedy’s forecastle was a raw, open wound. Manix imagined that if he were to somehow stand beyond the ship, looking back at her through the clouds, he’d see a nice cross-section of her forward decks. The forward mast was gone, perhaps taken by the same explosion that had sent Manix tumbling. Men scrambled to haul away the sails, which had fallen to drape in flames across the port gunnery turrets. Of Captain Florry, there was no sign; Manix assumed the worst.

“Lieutenant!” screamed Seaman Glenn, who didn’t seem to notice the blood streaming from his forehead. “They’re coming about! Starboard low!”

Manix found a dry patch of railing and leveraged to his feet. Indeed, closing fast was the brig that had ambushed them out of the afternoon sun. A small ship, but one with teeth. She bore no flag, had offered no surrender or demand. She soared through the sky as though crafted by the winds themselves. Their opponent approached head on, but would no doubt swerve at the last moment to launch another barrage or even board. Normally a frigate such as the Kennedy would have no trouble repelling a ship of that size, but this one was far faster than most, and the guns uncanny precise.

“Midships!” Manix cried aft, hoping a helmsman yet lived to carry out the order. “Ready these guns!” he ordered Glenn.

#

Thanks to some forgetfulness and a minor communications snafu, we’re actually starting today instead of yesterday like we’d originally intended. But no biggie. So I’ll be trying to post excerpts of my attempts each day.

This is a little of what I wrote last night at the write-in to kick things off. I thought this might serve as a good companion piece to a story I’ll have appearing in A Thousand Faces later this year.

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Every afternoon at two, after a meeting with the district supervisor down the hall, she rolled past my desk. Her name was Stacey Park, and wheelchair almost swallowed her slight frame. She dressed business casual, usually a long skirt with a neutral blouse. She kept her hair in a simple ponytail, probably preferring not to deal with the hassle of something more complicated. But it just accented the faint Asian features around her eyes and mouth. Black horn-rimmed glasses completed the look, though sometimes, if the meeting went badly, she had them in her lap as her face crinkled in rage. Even in anger, she was gorgeous. I fell in love a little more every afternoon at two.

She worked in R&D, though. Months ago Jones, my former cubicle mate, had made a pass at Yaleena in R&D, and he had vanished the next day. I heard he’d been pressed into service in one of the Cybermen brigades. I know there’s a give and take with that position, but personally I’m not ready to trade my emotions and pain sensitivity for a miniaturized fusion reactor installed in place of my heart, and I say no thanks to chaingun-arms.

#

If you have Twitter, you can follow the feed directly here.

Oh, and I forgot to mention it before, but the talented Rumjhum Biswas wrote a nice article over on the Flash Fiction Chronicles that complements my “Make it Fun!” article.

Anyway, I’ve taken the step of favoriting the stories, to separate them from the rest of the chaff of my twittering. So you should be able to just go straight to my Favorites page and see only the stories. You don’t have to create an account of your own or sift through my tweets about fighting bees or my pop culture commentary. I’ll see if there’s some way I can integrate that feed into the site here. I think some fun stuff can be had with this.

If anyone wants to join in, let me know and I’ll make sure to follow and shamelessly plug you.