Fiction: Corpses

First, Stephanie killed Grant, which he hadn’t been expecting. Then Loren killed Stephanie, which she hadn’t been expecting.

Now Loren had two dead bodies on his hands, which he had been expecting, but he still had no idea how to proceed. That part of the plan had never coalesced in Loren’s mind.

All the shooting had taken place in Loren’s cabin in the woods, so there were no witnesses and no concerned neighbors to call the police. There was simply the matter of the two corpses bleeding on the thick rug that protected the hardwood floor.

Spring had loosened winter’s grip on the soil, but Loren’s back began to ache as he thought of all the trouble it would be to dig graves, or even a grave. That sort of manual labor just wasn’t normal. Nor did he know how to use a backhoe even if he had had access to one.

He also lacked a vat of acid in which to dissolve his victims. The nearest river was miles away over rough terrain, and drought had turned it into more of a creek than an actual hide-the-body-in-the-depths river.

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Fiction: Security Breach

Arvid8 sat in the security room watching the monitors. The half-starved population outside the gates knew about Lord Grazorius’s food storehouse; Arvid8 looked for criminals who had slipped past the guards. Peasants could be tricky.

He was also vigilant for smaller intruders. Mice still plagued humanity in the late 22nd century. There hadn’t been any trouble since the Great Raid when more than ninety mice made off with an astonishing amount of food. Lord Grazorius had been furious, and security had installed hundreds of additional traps.

Arvid8 heard a motion alarm. He switched the view to the holographic tank, recreating the scene life size in his office.

A single mouse crept toward a box of food. The trap sitting by the box caught the mouse’s attention. As it should, Arvid8 thought as he magnified the view.

The trap’s enclosure was almost invisible. The mouse walked straight in and a little door folded down, sealing the opening. The mouse walked onto the platform and grabbed the bait. As the trigger tripped, the powerful spring propelled the titanium hammer onto the mouse’s back.

The hammer bent around the rodent.

Arvid8 gasped as he watched the unharmed mouse eat its prize. Then it backed out from under the hammer and one back leg kicked the trap’s door open. The mouse skittered out and looked directly into the hidden camera, making Arvid8 feel uneasy.

The mouse leaped to the box of foodstuffs, and its powerful jaws made short work of one corner of the steel box. Arvid8 dispatched a hunter-killer robot, but the mouse fled with its loot.

Arvid8 cleared the holoimage and turned to his hardwired communicator.

“Security Control, this is Security 2, Arvid8.”

“Go ahead, Security 2.”

“I need a probe team in here, armed and with extra robots for perimeter security. And tell Lord Grazorius the mice have evolved again.”

Fiction: Outstanding in Their Fields

The oblong little spacecraft overtook the truck on the road and landed gently in front of it, scarcely disturbing the gravel. The driver of the truck, a Blazer from the previous decade, slowed and stopped and stared.

A hatch opened on the side of the spaceship and an extraterrestrial, all four-foot-five of him, stepped down to the ground, his iridescent green scales shining in the afternoon sun. He approached the truck’s driver, a stocky man wearing a brand-new seed cap.

“Good soil to you,” the alien said. He held a small, round device from which the English words flowed; nothing about his mouth seemed capable of producing those sounds.

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