I drummed my fingers on the table beside her open grimoires. Not facing the bully, I turned my eyes toward the blonde, taking in her arrogant smile. She'd gotten me to do what she wanted. She held her wand steady, and the tip glowed like hot iron. "And that's all I need to do? I can't believe you're helping me like this after all we've been through..."
The bucket-full of water and me being hit by said bucket falling off the shelf above the door. The vanishing ink pen I used on a test. The worms in my box lunch. Other things. But I was also a T.A. Some responsibilities where inescapable.
I did volunteer to help Jill.
I wanted to laugh at the "we" in that last sentence, but sighed instead. She was predictable. Very predictable. "The mnemonic, the equations, the visualization. Spot on. It balances and your wand indicates that."
"So all I have to do is say what I want to conjure?"
Predictable. I didn't grin. Instead I switched to French, hopeful. "/Tu m'emmerdes avec tes questions!/"†
She blinked. "Merde? Isn't that French for—"
With magic you really need to be specific about where to target a spell affect and what you're asking for. She'd been specific about neither.
Where your wand is pointing is the default. Her's pointed above her head.
The spell understood what she wanted enough that the closest source proved to be the horse stables. I could see it out the dorm room window. The spell mucked every stall.
A load of small round spheres crashed down around her, bouncing off her head and bounding around the room. I squealed reflexively and jumped away.
I doubled over leaning against the door, laughing despite the smell. For her part, the bully sat stunned. Her expression wanted to be a smile. She had succeeded, after all. She also knew she'd been made the fool.
Exiting out the door was the better part of valor. I grabbed the nob.
"/Amélie/," came a growl.
=-=-=-=-=
† "You're so annoying with your questions!" Literally: "You're shitting on me with your questions."
It's 2026. The Fediverse is tens of thousands of instances, but they don't federate with each other because every single one of them is on a blocklist. Either the one now built into Mastodon, the one created to block the instances using the built-in blocklist because screw those guys, or the "free speech" one built to block both since neither of them are in favor of "free" speech. It's normal, now, to see many Mastodon users having multiple accounts on multiple instances. All talk of politics, religion, and sex is banned on almost all instances participating in a blocklist. Who knows what will start another FediWar, and get that instance attacked by the other side, with denial of service attacks, or swat teams, or anything else to destroy. For talk of politics and such, people now go to BlueSky, or the new Element features for forums. Oh, Matrix is just called Element now because that's basically the only client that works with Matrix version 450.5. Mastodon clients now have a "check in" feature, where you can check up on your friends, or enemies, on other instances. It just takes a username, and pulls an RSS feed from the other person's instance. There's even a "take screenshot" button beside each post, so you can paste it into Discord, or Element, with your friends and gossip about it. There's talk of a mythical server that doesn't have a block list, but FediExplorers still haven't found it.
But the fediverse is now cold, and spiteful, and angry. And alone. Because no one can live among others. No one understands anyone else anymore. It started out so small, and with the best of intentions. And now, for better or worse, social media is broken.
1000 richest people are approched. "The end of the world is here. Time to go to your doomsday bunker", they are told. The billionaires nodded. They knew this was coming. They were prepared.
So they gathered their loved ones and locked themselves in luxury bunkers. No contact to outside world.
10 years later they emerge. The world has healed. The air is breathable, people are happy. "What was the catastrophy?" they ask the first person they meet.
Thomas décida de couper par le parc. Devant les jeux pour les enfants lui revint le souvenir de ce jour lointain où il entreprit d'épater une grande brune en grimpant au sommet de la cage à poules, se rabotant les soeurs Brontë sur la barre supérieure ce faisant, sans laisser voir son calvaire, à peine pâlir. Thomas se méfiait des grandes brunes depuis lors.
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.
Au comble de l'exaspération devant l'incompréhension des adultes, Sophie-Bernadette choisit de se coiffer, pour la journée, d'une manière qui traduirait profondément sa révolte.
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?
Sa voisine était la frappadingue de l'immeuble. Quand Alice sonna chez elle pour lui demander de réceptionner un colis à sa place, elle la trouva avec un collier d'aimants autour du cou et une paire de ciseaux à la main. La voisine déclara qu'elle ne pouvait pas, parce que le soleil étant dans la maison de Saturne, c'était jour pour se couper les cheveux. Alice renonça à demander à quoi servait le collier.
"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.”