Flash Fiction: Sense of Taste

    “If you knew that was tasteless bread,” Peter said. “You would have never taken the whole loaf.”
    “But it looked so much like corn bread,” The android replied.
    Peter was getting tired of teaching the logistics of taste. It had taken weeks for his android, a Humanics 180, to activate its taste buds.
    Peter had tried making breakfast that morning, some pancakes and an omlette. But the android just ate them like usual, no recognition of maple syrup or cheese. So it was back to the programming and Peter played around with its binary code.
    Turned out that a section of the code for taste was garbled thanks to a corroded chip. He took it straight from its head and slipped it into his overcoat. Back to the shop, in the corner, where all the Humanics chips were hidden from makers and breakers.
    180, being a discontinued model from recently, had an abundance of replacement chips. Each being full of updated firmware. Overwhelmed by the mass of compatibility, Peter left with a box.
    He plopped it on the workshop bench, sorting the chips from interpretation and recognition. He connected them to his desktop, trying to find the mint condition that would last for the android’s lifespan. Most turned up aged or corroding worse than the chip it already had.
    There was one chip that Peter was pleased with, a fresh recognition fragment. He plopped the chip into the android without further analysis, booting it back up.
    “Good evening, Peter,” It said, grinning.
    Peter exhaled a sigh of relief, “Lovely isn’t it?”
    “…Yes. If that’s what you believe.”
    “The sunset I mean.”
    “Ah! Makes sense now.”
    Peter took out the loaf of bread, a combination of grains and pepper baked from long ago. In Peter’s case, long ago was usually two weeks when he wasn’t programming casual games.
    He set it out on the table, sliced clean from beginning to end. Feasting on one slice each, they slowly made it through the loaf. Peter observed the android’s face, watching the twinges from its lips.
    When its face winced with distaste, Peter smiled, “If you knew that was tasteless bread, you would have never taken the whole loaf.”

For Writ's Summer Writing Challenge , extended to the end of September.

Flash Fiction: How Many Times?

            How many times?

            The same guy kept showing up at the cafe, armed with complaints. It never stopped; everything was a target for scrutiny.

            Yet I was stuck with him again. Good old Turner. Man of his word, if that word was in his favor that is. He was also politically passionate, an armchair pundit more or less.

            “So can’t wait for these elections to be over,” He said. “Time to get rid of these clowns and get a real politician.”

            He was on a non-stop tirade about some convention of politicians that ticked him off. It all had to do with the ties, always with the ties.

            “A true politician never wears a snap-on,” Was his favorite lesson. “To tie a tie is true dedication to this country.”

            The fact that he could pinpoint the type of tie a politician was wearing from a television screen would be surprising to most. But I was the only one who knew his TV-watching habits. Always in HD. Always in widescreen. Always on a channel I never heard of.

            How many times?

            His complaints about everything else were exactly the same. He darted the guys from work and school that were different from him from neckwear to personality.

            “So you remember Seamus from Marketing,” He said. “That lazy slob never did work on those group projects.”-He then put on a funny voice.-“I can’t do that. Ma won’t let me.”

            How many times?

            And if he wasn’t complaining politics or putting a bad name on everyone else, he was working on one thing.

            “Look, Ian,” He told me, taking out his tattered notebook. “I’ve got some good stuff going on in Act 3.”

            This was the only time he beamed, telling tales of the characters partying in some pavilion, or how ridiculous they all were on paper.

            “So once Act 1 gets finished then we can finally start that journey to Hollywood,” He said. “I’m still waiting, Ian.”

            How many times?

            That was a question that I’ve asked for years when it came to Turner. The grating finally broke as I snatched that notebook and strolled off back to the house. He never ran after me and I haven’t seen him since then.

            How many times did it take for me to realize? Why did I give myself up in the first place?

For The Knights of Microfiction curated by Kathy and Jessica McKendry

Friday Flash: Fear Messenger

            My RSS feeds told me the worst was yet to come. Every shooting and looting, every disaster that struck the town next door, and every missing persons report prophesied it. Nothing was over for too long as the mean world was just around corner.

             

           “Get your head off that machine,” My grandpa would tell me. “The work’s not gonna do itself you know.”

            

            But I couldn’t bear to leave the Messenger. Someday it would save my life and even the family. Yet I pried myself to the so-called real life.

            

            All those people and their newspapers. Such smelly ink and banter ruled the day even if the beer remained untouched. I could still recall that debate over some opinion piece on property rights.

            How could those suits be so lax in a time of constant crisis? A criminal could be released from court thanks to corruption. With the disease being disguised as a request for a bathroom break. It would fester despair for many years knowing that Louis ‘roll-up’ Coe is still at large; released from prison after five hours.

            The Messenger knew how to solve my worries no matter what it was. Surviving many a year from killers, drug dealers, hurricanes, and even that strange man across the street. It definitely was no easy feat.

            And just yesterday I finally met someone who realized the insanity of it all, someone who knew the Messenger. He took me through downtown so I could meet the protector of day-to-day humanity.

            However, I was disappointed to find out who…it was. Multiple monitors were on display behind the windows, playing the reports I watch on my feeds.

            “You may just want the basic package,” He said.

For Flash Fiction Project prompt #42.

Flash Fiction: Friday Night Frustrations

           Andy walked into Mark’s apartment as a waterlogged fisherman who caught a school of disappointment. Mark paused his game of bus simulator still on the first level.

           

           “Did you find it,” He asked, taking a sip of his green tea.

           

            Andy sighed, “The rental store’s been gone for years now.”

           

           “Yeah,” Mark agreed, grinning. “But what about that Redbox?”

            Something clicked inside Andy’s brain and the door slammed behind him. Mark shrugged and returned to his game where he navigated through intersections. Every bus stop had Mark biting his lower lip, sweating.

            He muttered to himself, “C’mon. C’mon.”

            All he had to do was brake and turn precisely in short taps and flicks. Then victory would be achieved with his passengers disembarking for the mall. It was just within his reach and…

            “Found it,” Andy said.

            Mark jumped in shock, his game docking him some points for slamming into the bus stop.  He got up and walked towards Andy in a stride of stomping.

            “What was that for,” He asked, snatching the DVD case from Andy. “I almost had it.”

            “What do you mean almost,” Andy said, pointing at the case. “You have it now, thief.”

            Mark growled and gestured Andy to follow. They sat at the sofa where the TV screen blinked, “Game Over”.

            Mark lifted his palm towards the screen, “You do not know how frustrating it is to drive a bus. Took me about 15 tries before now just to get near the end of the level! Had to break out the instruction manual just to get the hang of driving it and now you ruined everything!”

            Andy looked at the screen, baffled. He could not understand the importance of the video game that made Mark sulk from reality into the television.

            “Does George Clooney drive buses now,” He asked.

            Mark just shrugged back to reality, “Maybe People magazine knows something about it.”

            He continued on into the kitchen and took out the lasagna from the oven. They ate and discussed Andy’s discovery of online shopping and the countless speedo swimsuits he ordered. He then took out the Redbox’s latest bounty, battered and bruised from the laptop bag.

            “Great thing about my laptop,” Andy said, booting it up. “Takes on DVDs and plays them.”

            Mark exhaled in relief. This time he would be able to see Ocean’s Eleven in its full glory. Even when Andy inserted the DVD into the optical disk drive, Mark was starring at the computer screen ready for the movie to begin.

            “It’s a shame about the graphics card,” Andy said.

            Mark jerked his head from the monitor, “Huh?”

            “I mean, it can do YouTube and play high-res games,” Andy said. “But it has this strange…thing going on.”

            Mark frowned. The same situation with his TV played through his mind on repeat. He took out a frying pan, and prepared his throwing hand.

            “Relax, Mark,” Andy shouted. “It can read the disc, but…ah! There’s the problem!”

            They spent the rest of the evening watching Oceans Eleven with the Rat Pack in all their glory. Andy spent the following morning calling the computer shop trying to find a specialist in optical temporal disk drives.

              

For Flash Fiction Project prompt #44.

Flash Fiction: Serviced Comsumers

           The priest gestured for his following to be seated. He took out a cooking pot and placed it on a nearby column; a small one painted black from top to bottom. He squatted down and fiddled around with the column.

            The audience was looking at him, baffled. The priest kept lifting the pot up and down, looking down at the column when the former happened. It was all there, the red rings of the burner operating as usual. He placed the pot back on the column and addressed a confused mass.

            “Seems that Sir is out of range,” He said. “Let’s try the prayers again. Reach out and pull Sir back in.”

            The prayers were like any other in the Order of Serviced Consumers. Starting with “O’ great Sir”, then something about domestic goods and being blessed to use them, and ending it with “Have a nice day”. The church prayed, their sound amplified throughout the architecture of large spaces.

            The pot remained silent. No boiling and certainly no mobile phones were going to pop out at this rate. Out of range was definitely the problem.

            “Manager McGuffin,” a girl called out. “Maybe Sir prefers landline.”

            McGuffin walked forward and leaned out, searching. Then succeeding after trying to squint through forests of six-foot one, “What do you mean, lady?”

            “Well, you remember back to the Founding,” the girl said. “When everyone was hooked on smartphones.”

                The early days of Serviced Consumers mostly consisted of crowdsourcing through social networking and flyers on café bulletin boards. Some of the founders used smartphones to ease the tedious booting up business they were annoyed with. Easy and portable, they worked for the Founders.

            Problem was their early followers. Some of them had a fondness for playing with computers.

            Manager McGuffin smiled, “Most landlines are immune to the dark arts. Good mind, lady.”

            He then walked from the nearby pews to an ambry. He looked through the self with the Etch-a-Sketchs, beta max tapes and a Dreamcast until he found a landline. It was just a standard one from the late 20^th century with the phone cord, receiver, and square buttons.

            He took it out and plugged it into the column, opening a small hatch for the phone cord. The prayers happened again while McGuffin dialed some numbers. Moments later, his face became pale.

            “Employees of Sir,” He asked. “Any idea where the nearest phone company is?” 

For Flash Fiction Project: Prompt 40.

Flash Fiction: Of Prose and Lectures

This is for an assignment for Literary+ where each assigned pair wrote 100 word bios. Then we wrote a flash fiction, up to 300 words, based on each other's bios. Unfortunately, the bio I based this piece on no longer exists, but the narrative alone should alleviate this issue.

            Rehearsal time, and the director paced the stage, sweating bullets. The cast sat behind him, some on their mobiles and others trying to memorize their lines. The script was one giant poem, a convenient mnemonic aid from a poetic scriptwriter. The problem was the performance itself. Those action cues could not cue themselves.

            The director turned to the cast. One inhale, one exhale.

            “Remember this is only a play,” He said. “Acting is all part of the show.”

            “But sir,” An actress said. “What’s a play?”

            He usually forgot about that bit. The cast arrived out of nowhere, like a poof and there they were. Grown-up, but with very little knowledge of the arts. Everything else was fair game.

            So the director once again explained the concept of plays, actors, actresses, and scripts. The cast acknowledged every little detail, even the history of Shakespeare.

            “Alright,” The director said. “Are you all ready now?”

            One big, “Yes”, from the cast and it began again.

            The execution of the early cues and lines went smoothly. The director relaxed his shoulders and calves standing in a corner.  It was further near the end when…

            “Sir, what does this all mean,” One of the actors said.

            He showed the director a page of the script. The verses combined the English of centuries past with some twenty-first century jargon. He then got up and addressed the cast yet again.

            He lectured on about the English language, bringing up the Shakespeare bits again alongside other dialects, mostly colonial nineteenth-century. The cast nodded through all this and continued the rehearsal.

            It was over by evening and the cast took off for dinner, drinks, and five-hour naps. The director remained at the venue, contemplating on becoming a professor instead.

From the Fishtank: Always Listen to Town Hall

This first originally appeared on my musings blog for a writing challenge by Rachael Harrie.

Shadows crept across the wall, prompting Lacey to wake up from her daily slumber. 

“Another day,” She muttered. She got up and stumbled towards the kitchen. She fixed herself a cup of macaroni and cheese and orange soda, the true breakfast of champions. As the meal cooled down, she checked her e-mail and found a message from Town Hall; reminding people to keep their shirts on when going outside, summer or winter. Lacey yawned and continued to eat. Shortly after, she prepared herself for the big day, ready to take on the local Skip-Bo champion, Fischer, and take his title. Then she swiftly opened the front door, ready to take on the world, until she saw her neighbor. 

He was mowing the grass, no shirt, no shoes, and not even pants. His chest was sweaty with greasy black hairs disorganized by the power of balding and lack of grooming. The only thing he wore was a pair of boxers with bulldogs scattered about. 

“Evenin’ Lacey,” He said, taking his eyes off the grass. Lacey went pale, chills running up and down her entire body, and eyelids heavy. She passed out on the pavement, and for the evening, everything faded.