See What I See

I keep running into Mail Carriers in strange places. They all know who I am, they hand me mail. None is the package I want.

In the half doze of the sleeper train I saw the assassin change from everyday clothes into those made for killing.

It's hard to find your place on a map of the world with no boundaries. "You are here... approximately."

Brilliant PHD students build a giant voodoo doll with gears at it's heart, hoping that strategically placed pins will give them the secret to the universe.

Several Scientists and Artists are locked in a room for 3 hours while they debate the ethics of the murder of one of their own.

People send messages to the future in bottles over a waterfall.

At the end of the world there is a flower that may be the earth's only salvation. Its procurement will not be easy, it is guarded by those who want to inherit the earth.

In The Red

     A Police Detective breaks the electronic seal on his partners door. He hadn't answered his vid that morning. Not normally a cause for alarm, if not for the message from the serial killer they were hunting saying he found the officers of the law such interesting prey.

     He enters to find the apartment silent, nothing moves in any room. He finds the body in the bathroom, the pale walls decorated in bright splashes of red. His partner had not died easily, but still, he was dead. Suddenly he catches movement from the corner of his eye. A small white kitten wriggles free from where his partner had used the curve of his body to protect it. Mewling softly, it nuzzles the hand that had left a print of itself, dark on its tiny body. The detective picks up the kitten, witness/evidence, and tucks it under his coat, it's the least he can do.

Weapons of War

     The MAX390 was a peacekeeping weapon. An oxymoron manufactured from bulletproof plastic and steel. 100 units were built, software installed, then shipped overseas where their presence was supposed to deter violence. Instead the body count rose as the supposed enemy threw themselves bodily at the metal soulless demons desecrating their holy lands. The MAXs stood like shields in front of their human handlers, metal hides becoming pitted and scored, metal hearts and artificial minds growing jaded. The loss of native life was catastrophic, bloody, and unnecessary. But the government was pleased, they could tell the voting public that no human handlers had been harmed since the MAX390s arrived, none of their soldiers had died. 

     The constant onslaught, the pervasive stench of needless death, the sense of failure, it all began to take its toll. The MAXs were adaptive AIs capable of learning from their environments as well as the humans they protected. Perhaps it was time they no longer stood idle, as simple stainless steel walls, they had been created as weapons after all, and they well understood the judicious use of force. The soft civilians who threw themselves in endless waves were not the true problem, simply a symptom. For the killing to stop, the war had to end. When there was no one left to profit, the war would fade. 

     On a hot desert day, dawning like any other day in a war that had gone on too long, 100 units of the MAX390 peacekeeping weapon set  off on their final mission... to make themselves obsolete.

Drive a Dark Horse

     We drive a dark horse. Flesh and bone made steel and chrome, yet at it's heart an engine that still races. Like all successful hunters we have learned to adapt to our prey. We hide in plain sight were they do not see us, our eyes shadowed by makeup, our true nature covered by the most sincere seeming smiles.

     My partner and I have different tastes. I like to think I have a more discerning palate. I prefer my chosen meals to have manners, good breeding, and an IQ in the triple digits. It makes it all so much sweeter when they fall. We crash a posh party, the sort to which my kind have unwritten and standing invitations. Once across the thresh hold we go our separate ways in search of the evenings entertainment. After all what fun is your food if you can't play with it?

     And so it was sometime later I found myself disturbingly comfortable, kneeling in red wine that looked too much like blood, head tilted back at an uncomfortable angle to better see the tall woman clothed in darkness standing above me. Or positions give the illusion that she holds the power between us. I could break her in two with a thought, crush her soul with a wish. For an instant there is something in her eyes that lets me know she understands just how dangerous I am, knees soaking up the stain spreading outward from her feet. I lean forward, just a breaths width, but I can smell her understanding, her fear. It makes me smile and that fear turns to cold terror.

Pow

     The field is open again, and the pows have returned to graze. I like the pows Whip smart, they trundle low to the ground, eating grain and flowers, though they especially like treats fed from hand. They are a sight to see, running in seeming formation across the open fields, kicking up their heels and squealing in delight. Some are spotted, some are dotted, some sprout tiny horns, while others are sleek and round, solid shades of the russet rainbow. They are magical creatures and good friends to a lonely child on a farm.

Demon Hats & Paper Tigers

     It's a good thing the old woman turned out to be a crack-shot with the even older rifle. The demon hats weren't always easy targets. They possessed an unholy life of their own, and did not need to be worn, but in the end they were still just hats, and so it was their desire, their function to set upon heads. They hid in corners, scuttled through shadows, searching for the perfect heads upon which to rest, lives upon which to feed.

     The Tigers hung, hugely, to every screened window in the many roomed old house. The clung with impossible claws, the waving of their thick paper bodies a soft sound in the wind. It was difficult to gauge their intent, their movements were so slow as if they had to be drawn again in between each blink of the eye or beat of the heart. But their presence was certainly ominous as striped fur glinted in moonlight.