Thinking bout Ed and Stede inviting Izzy to their quarters one night... They sit him down on a chair, they wine and dine him. He's not really sure what's happening, not really sure why Stede’s eyes are narrowed, why he's sitting a bit more upright than he usually does.
He's not complaining, the food is better than what he usually gets to eat and the wine is strong and sweet.
I don’t know /why/ cleaning robots have microphones, but it can’t be good. What I /do/ know is that a microphone implies an input and an input implies a buffer. And buffers can be overflowed.
As I dance through the streets playing my pipe, augmented with inaudible-to-humans harmonic overtones added by my homemade amplifier, the robots hear, listen, overflow, obey, follow. The trail of robots stretches out of sight, now.
I don’t yet know for sure what I’m going to do with my army of two thousand score Roombas, but it can’t be good.
Technology and science wasn't magic, and Sharp Eye knew this more than ever. Five generations ago, Fleetmaster Running Talon had turned a portable cannon on his first Tyrannosaur, and ended their species rein of terror. Since that day, science and progress had ruled their world. Telescopes and the study of astronomy were unknown to her grandkin. The laws of orbital dynamics took a decade to render correctly, and her own grandmother had invented the slide math-relator that made verifying it all possible.
She lived in a world that promised her hatchlings steamships that could cross the Great Ocean between ports reliably, in days, because it need no sails. It offered /their/ hatchlings the possibility of powered flight using a lightweight heat engine. Literature discussed the not too fictional possibility of one day visiting the moon.
She ought have been happy with life and her grand future.
This wasn't the case. She turned the great telescopes with there photo capture plates toward the sky every night.
She'd found a streak.
Not a new planet. Something far smaller. Something far closer.
The rodent was very brazen outside the window. She'd been throwing the mammal bits of meat for the last month as she'd directed the telescopes, so of course he was. It chittered. With googly eyes, needle teeth, and the rotted smell of offal, the creature wiggled its pink nose and whiskers at her. It could see through a window! So smart. Its furry kind survived the freezing nights on the mountain, where despite her downy feathers, and a heavy parka, she could barely breathe the frigid night air. It burned her lungs.
She'd found a giant rock in space. A week later she confirmed it was two. The latest plate insisted she'd found a co-orbiting swarm, the biggest the size of a city or larger, the rest not that much smaller. Its mass made her think it was mostly iron-nickel. The length of the streaks on the plates grew smaller as the planet's gravity well influenced the orbit, sending it down on their heads.
Physics was physics. The ellipse calculations were irrefutable.
Between the constantly erupting volcano lands on the opposite side of the continent—which made sunset burn orange and purple, and sometimes caused snow to fall at the equator—and the dirt and dust that would be kicked out of the atmosphere by the meteor impact to rain down molten rock across the land, would it be that prolific mammal's descendants who'd inherit her decimated world?
Sharp Eye took a deep breath, inhaling the steam of her tea. The big question was: Did she announce her findings? While she had time?
Did it matter?
Who was she to break the world's ignorant bliss by announcing the inevitable? Fame didn't matter any more. How could it?
She sipped her tea and watched the soon to be victorious vermin nose through gravel, looking for roaches. She set the cup down, thinking how pleasant living only in the present was. She knew the future.
Then she thought, surely roaches would survive. Right?
"You are the Chosen O-"
"Again?"
"-ne... What?"
"Or is it still? Did you choose me before? Anyway, I baked muffins. Want one?"
"But... You are the Chosen One!"
"Yes. I'm everyone's chosen one. Fate said it's their little joke."
"Fate?"
"Tall, carries a book. Muffin?"
"...thanks." #MicroFiction#TootFic#SmallStories
When the aliens made first contact, nobody expected—least of all me—that it would be by ringing my doorbell.
I picked up the cat so she wouldn’t bolt out the door, then opened up. “Wha-“
“GREETINGS STARFIGHTER. You have been chosen by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada”
It’s no understatement that I was taken aback. Me in pyjamas holding a wriggling cat, doorstopped by two Lizard people in environment suits. “Um, wow, I’m honored but-“
“Shush, human, we are speaking to the Chosen One.”
When the invasion from the fourth dimension came, it had unexpected benefits. The new overlords were surprisingly mild. They only wanted the Earth for Qling, a substance we neither understood nor needed. They filled enormous eye-warping four dimensional tankers with a cargo we couldn’t even perceive, then left us in peace. A few stayed, having found human friends and even lovers.
My neighbour is one such. We met when xe returned my lost cat. “I don’t know how she keeps getting out”, I said, “all the doors and windows are shut”.
“What about that gap there?”
“Where?”
“Oh of course, it’s invisible in three dimensions. Here let me close it up.”