A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 33

The Howard Effect (opinion)

SPOILER ALERT:  Howard the Duck has an appearance in Guardians of the Galaxy.

Hmm.  Maybe I should’ve given everyone a little more alert.  Ah, well.  Too late now.  If you’re the kind of person who cares about Howard, you already know.  And if you aren’t, you don’t care.  So it’s largely irrelevant.

I went into GotG knowing Howard would appear in the ending stinger.  I was still surprised by how much I genuinely loved his appearance.  There was at least one other guy in the audience who loved it as much as me, the both of us howling with delight.  For many others, it’s a neutral or negative reaction.  Most people don’t know much about the history of Howard the Duck (and it is a surprisingly colorful one, both in the comics and outside of the medium), and their main frame of reference is probably the notorious film flop from 1986.  The truth is that, in many ways, Howard the Duck is an influential and defining element of the superhero genre in comic books.

Yeah, I said it, and I stick by it

It’s true that I love weird stuff in fantasy.  Just read any of my books to get that, and that I love Howard comes as no surprise.  The difference is that while I also love obscure characters like Devil Dinosaur and Fin Fang Foom, Howard isn’t nearly as obscure as one might believe.  In one way or another, he’s been a part of the Marvel Universe for decades now.  Howard’s first appearance was in ’73, and since then, he’s been walking around in Marvel in one form or another.  The premise behind Howard has always been of unabashed weirdness.  Howard is a grumpy everyman.  Half of his adventures are traditional superheroics.  Half are surreal satire.  The guy is a difficult duck to peg down, and that’s what makes him so unique, even among a universe of strange heroes and weird villains.

The thing about Howard though is that, given that he lives in the Marvel Universe, he’s hardly that strange a character.  This is a universe where getting bitten by a radioactive spider turned a teenager into a superhero, where a billionaire built his own power armor to fight the Commies, and where a magic alien with an enchanted hammer are all perfectly reasonable things to exist.  In the swamps of Florida, a mystical plant monster protects the Nexus of Realities, and Dracula isn’t just a myth.  He’s fought everyone from the X-Men to the Silver Surfer.  That’s right.  In the Marvel Universe, Dracula, lord of the undead, fought the Silver Surfer, sentinel of the spaceways.

There are a million other examples, of course.  The history of the Marvel Universe is full of weirdness.  Howard the Duck fits perfectly fine within it.  So why are people so quick to dismiss Howard?  It’s probably because Howard is unabashadly weird.  Howard is a cartoon character in a world full of cartoon characters, but only Howard comes out and admits it.  Some efforts have been made by other writers to make Howard “more believable”.  He was retroactively stated to have come from an alternate Earth where ducks became sentient humanoids, but that was a later invention.  Howard was originally from a world of talking animals because he’s not supposed to make conventional sense.  Again, hardly that weird since the Marvel Universe is full of alternate dimensions and strange places that don’t make conventional sense.  But again, those get away with it by pretending to be well thought out and more serious.

GotG takes the weirdness of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and cranks it up to eleven.  Not only is not set on Earth, it makes almost no effort to make Earth or humans seem important to the plot.  Aside from the beginning, everything takes place in a distant science fiction reality.  Everyone, aside from Star-Lord, is an alien.  There’s a talking raccoon, a walking tree, spaceship battles, and melodrama that comes from a villain who seeks to destroy a planet because that’s how bad he is.  It works because it isn’t trying to hide from this, and once we leave Earth, we are expected to want to be here in this universe of adventure.  Given the backdrop, the story, the characters, and everything else about this movie, Howard the Duck is perfectly acceptable.

Yet Howard is probably the biggest gamble the film takes.  True, he doesn’t contribute to the plot, and this is a movie with a lot of unashamed fantasy.  But Howard’s presence is something more.  It’s a signal that in this shared fantasy universe, everything is possible.  While Thanos’s cameo in The Avengers was the first sign of that, he still pales beside Howard, who asks the audience to put aside all their baggage and embrace the full on weirdness that is the superhero genre.  I still can’t believe that anyone allowed James Gunn to include it.  It is the most unbelievable thing I have seen in a superhero movie.  EVER.

But it is what I’ve come to love about the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  I don’t like or love all the movies.  Many of them are just so so for me, and others are good without being great.  But never before has such a concerted effort been made to bring the “Anything Goes” reality of comic book superheroes to life.  Regardless of my feel for any particular film among them, the genius of these movies has been the steady inoculation of non-fantasy fans to the most bizarre fantasy genre imaginable.  It’s worked, too, because three years ago, I’m sure a GotG movie would’ve flopped.  Instead, it’s poised to be a huge hit, and why not?  It’s fun.  It has good characters.  It takes more risks than it’s generally given credit for, and it succeeds by being every bit as fantastic as it can be.

But Howard is the real lynchpin.  His appearance says that, yes, anything goes here, and that, behind the scenes, somebody is thinking that if you build audience goodwill, if you care about what you’re doing, then, yes, even a talking duck has a place in your comic book universe.

That’s the Howard Effect.  And damn if it isn’t energizing to a writer who loves the weird stuff and obscure characters.  Devil Dinosaur?  Squirrel Girl?  M.O.D.O.K.?  Beta Ray Bill?  It’s all possible now.

Thanks, Howard.

And welcome back to the mainstream.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

 

The Button (short fiction)

“I vote red,” said George. He always voted red. His human disguise was short and squat. There was little doubt the native reaction to his unattractive form had colored his perception, but he hadn’t liked Earth or this assignment from the beginning. He was also vurugian, and while Brenda tried not to hold that against him, vurugians usually voted for red.

“Blue,” said Harold.

“Oh, come on.” George sighed. “They’re not ready. That’s obvious.”

“I think they are.”

George grumbled. “All they do is fight.”

“All we do is fight,” said Brenda.

“That’s different, and you know it. We fight with words, diplomatic withdrawals, sternly issued condemnations. They still use bombs and guns. Barbarians.”

“I still think there’s hope for them,” said Harold. But he would. The yort had a longstanding cultural optimism.

The server came over and refilled their drinks. They didn’t bother censoring themselves as she did so. She wouldn’t understand what they were talking about, and even if she did, no one would believe her.

“I’m telling you they aren’t ready,” said George, “and they’ll never be ready.”

“You don’t know that,” said Harold. “They’ve made tremendous progress, if you consider the larger picture.”

George harrumphed. There was a slight whistle as he did so. Vurugian harrumphing employed the gills.

“What do you think?” he asked her.

“Yes, what do you think?” asked Harold.

It came down to her. It always did.

She mused on the device in her pocket. Pushing its red button would summon an extermination fleet to purge the human race from the universe. Pushing the blue would bring forth diplomatic envoys to welcome humanity to the stars.

“We wait,” she said.

“How long?” asked George.

“As long as it takes,” she replied. “Until two out of the three of us can make up our mind.”

George glared at her. “Two of us have made up our mind. You’re the one who is stalling.”

“Now, now,” said Harold. “I’m sure Brenda is simply trying to do the best job she can.”

“You don’t need me,” said Brenda. “If you two could ever agree . . . . ”

“Like that will ever happen,” said George. He threw a couple of bucks on the table for his share of lunch. It wasn’t enough. It never was. He stormed away.

“Same time next month then,” said Harold. He tossed enough for his share and George’s along with a generous tip. Harold bent and whistled in a traditional yort departure bow.

The Earth wasn’t ready for the stars, and she agreed with George that they probably never would be. Brenda couldn’t, in good conscience, unleash them on the rest of the universe, but they had another month to change her mind.

Her phone rang. It was Steve, reminding her to pick up some eggs on the way home.

“Love you, babe,” he said, to the not-quite-woman that carried the fate of his world in her pocket.

“Love you, too,” she said with a smile.

One of These Doomsdays, Chapter Four

The hum in Felix’s jaw told him it was a robot day. Even before looking out his window, he knew this was going to busy one. His fillings practically vibrated out of his teeth, and he had to pop some painkillers to concentrate.

A glance out the window confirmed the streets were crawling with robots. They were all trudging, rolling, and flying in one direction, and he was relieved to see them moving away from the apartment.

Then he realized they were heading in Gretel’s direction.

He sat on the couch and rubbed his jaw.

“Shit.”

The cat rubbed against his legs to remind him to feed it. He checked the window. A goliath, huge walking tanks, stomped past. He hadn’t seen one of those in a while.

“Damn it.”

Orb drones swept over the city. They scanned every building for signs of life. Every time they cleared a building, they’d chime in unison. Then they’d scan it again, just to be sure. The other robots would pause hopefully, then continue on their way once no targets appeared.

They were looking for Gretel. If she had taken the time to collect some tinfoil, she’d be fine. If she hadn’t trusted him enough to take his advice, it was her own damned fault. If she expected him to risk his neck to go save her, she was an idiot.

He was a survivor. Like her. He didn’t take risks.

The cat rubbed against his legs.

“So I took a risk one time,” he said. “But you’re just a cat. She should know better.”

The cat blinked its bright green eyes, judging him.

“You’re really starting to piss me off, cat.”

Grumbling, Felix put on his foil hat. He’d never reach Gretel in time on foot, so he found the bicycle he kept in the back. He’d never used it, but it’d been in the apartment when moving in and he’d never gotten rid of it. It wasn’t in great shape, but it would work.

Once on the street, the robots continued to ignore him. Moving fast was always a chancy proposition, but if he’d wanted to play it safe, he would’ve stayed tucked away in his safe haven, watching TV.

He pedaled down the street at a leisurely rate. Faster than he could walk, but not much faster than a good run. The orb drones hovering overhead beeped as he sped past them. It might have been just a thing they did or they might have been alerting the other machines that a human was still alive. He tried not to think too much about it.

It was strange to suddenly not care about playing it safe anymore. When it’d only been him, alone, in this empty city, there’d been no reason to take any chances. Survival had been his only concern. It had been like an automatic reflex, an instinct to keep going though there wasn’t anything worth going on for.

It was all a question of numbers. Too many people made it all seem so insignificant. Not enough rendered it all meaningless.

With two people, it came into focus. He was the last man on Earth rushing to the rescue of the last woman. It mattered. Not in any significant, cosmic way, but in a way that would affect tomorrow and all the tomorrows beyond it.

Several melvins came clomping down the far end of the street. They scanned the area while the drones beeped steadily. They were looking for him. Under other circumstances, he would’ve turned and gone home.

He turned down an alley. An old soda can caught on his front wheel, and he tumbled forward, banging his head, skinning his elbow. The pain blurred his vision. He scrambled to pick up the bike, only to discover the cheap frame had bent in the crash.

An orb shrieked just overhead like an old steam whistle. Three melvins lurched into view from the way he’d entered the alley. A clunky goliath entered from the other end, boxing him in.

The goliaths were a cross between a tank and a spider, with eight long legs and a pair of cannons that served as a head. They weren’t much sharper than the melvins, but now that he was boxed in, how smart did they have to be?

A melvin reached out in his general area. It nearly caught him but snatched up the bicycle instead. Felix backed away slowly, holding his tinfoil hat in place with both hands. A trickle of blood ran down his nose from the scrape on his forehead. He ignored it.

The melvins inspected the bicycle like a puzzle they didn’t understand while the goliath trudged ever closer. The orb continued to whistle. Felix hugged the wall, and moved, ever so slowly, around the melvins. They twisted the bike like a pretzel before discarding it. The goliath’s cannon swept the alley from side to side. It made a heavy thunk sound like a shell being loaded into a chamber.

Felix had never been very smart. Or very tough. Or very much of anything. But if there was one thing he was good at, it was keeping calm. It’d kept him alive this long, and while some small instinct told him to run for it, he ignored that.

He slipped out of the alley, leaving the robots to search for a human that wasn’t there anymore. He’d lost his bike, but walking was safer. It’d been stupid to use the bicycle in the first place. It wouldn’t do any good to get himself killed on his way to save Gretel.

He briskly strolled to the rescue. The robots were out in force, more than he’d seen in ages. Melvin squads strolled through the streets. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of drones. He’d never seen more than one goliath in a day before. Today, he saw seven.

He walked among them without drawing attention to himself. As long as he didn’t run, the orbs didn’t notice him and as long as he didn’t get too close to the melvins, they didn’t spot him, though they were usually scanning where he had been only a few moments ago while looking for him. The goliaths were morons. At one point, one almost stepped on Felix, but even that had only been an accident as it trudged relentlessly on its way.

He reached the Overlook Hotel in fifteen minutes without incident. He worried for just a moment that Gretel had lied to him about calling the place home. He put those worries aside when he noticed the dozens upon dozens of orbs around the building. Gremlins, weird little robots built like headless monkeys, scaled the outside. They were scanning the place for her, and he only hoped they hadn’t found her yet.

More gremlins filled the lobby. They scuttled about, overturning furniture and searching through nooks and crannies. One of the gremlins bumped into him by accident, and it pinged. The other nearby bots gathered around the first. Their pings reminded Felix of excited chatter. He hopped over several, tiptoed toward the elevator.

He didn’t push the button. He had no idea what floor Gretel called home. He pondered searching floor by floor, room by room. It would be a lot of work, and he still might not find her. He wasn’t even sure she was here at all or that, if she was, that the robots hadn’t gotten her yet.

The elevator dinged. Its doors slid open. Gretel stood before him.

The gremlins pinged, turned in their direction.

Felix jumped in the elevator, stabbed the close doors button. It shut just as several gremlins skittered toward them.

Gretel held a small piece of tinfoil on top of her head with one hand.

“Good thinking.” He whispered. He wasn’t sure if the robots could hear him or not, but it seemed a wise precaution. “But that’s not going to work for long. I made you this.”

He pulled a foil hat from his bag. Glaring, she snatched it away, put it on. She was reluctant to use the rubber band to secure it, but she did so when he reminded her how easily tinfoil hats blew off in a strong breeze.

“I feel goddamn ridiculous,” she said.

She looked goddamn ridiculous, but he kept that to himself.

The elevator dinged. It opened to the lobby, where the dozens of gremlins continued their search. They noisily tore apart all the furniture as if Gretel might be hiding inside a cushion.

Felix pushed the close button again before daring to speak.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” he said. “I thought I might be too late.”

He expected a smile. Maybe some gratitude. Perhaps a mumbled thank you at the very least.

She said, “Robots? For real?”

“For real. You’re not hurt, are you?”

“I just spent over an hour hiding in the corner of the penthouse with a piece of tinfoil on my head,” she said. “The only thing hurt is my pride.”

“That’s good. Guess it’s a good thing you remembered to do that, right?”

He didn’t mention that she’d only known to do that because he’d told her to, and that if she hadn’t gone off on her own and stayed the night at his place, she wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place. It didn’t seem like the right time for an “I told you so”.

But he had told her so.

“What now, champ?” she asked.

He was surprised she was deferring to his judgment, but it was logical. He had plenty of experience surviving the robot apocalypse.

“We go back to my place. We walk, don’t run. We don’t make a lot of noise. And if the robots notice us, we go another way, always walking.”

She adjusted her hat. It wasn’t a perfect fit. He’d had to estimate the size of her head, and he’d gotten that right. But he hadn’t taken into account her hair, which refused to lay as flat as he would’ve liked. He wasn’t as confident that it would fool the robot sensors, but he didn’t see the point in telling her that.

The door opened once more. He nodded to her. She nodded back. He considered taking her hand, but maybe that was presumptuous. He’d been alone too long. He’d lost all his social skills, if he had any social skills to begin with.

For just a moment, he missed when it was just him and the robots. No Gretel. No cat. Just a guy, killer machines, and a DVD collection. You never knew what you had until it was gone.

They made their way through the lobby. Felix’s fears that Gretel might be vulnerable weren’t groundless. The gremlins definitely noticed her more than him, but the hat still worked enough that they couldn’t quite figure out where she was. Felix and Gretel exited the Overlook Hotel. The robots, perhaps responding to residual traces of her, focused on the building. Felix was sure they were safe.

Felix’s fillings burned in an unfamiliar way, and he winced.

“What’s wrong?” asked Gretel. She sounded genuinely concerned, which would’ve pleased him more if it didn’t feel like his jaw was about to melt.

The nearby clouds lit up with a brilliant blue flash and only a few hundred feet away, a thirty story building spontaneously collapsed.

That was the wrong word for what happened to it. It fell over, but instead of ending up as a pile of rubble and ash, it shattered like it was made of glass, then each of the pieces popped as if they were nothing more than soap bubbles. A cloud of red and yellow smoke was all that was left of it.

A herd of mechanical giraffes emerged from the cloud. He knew they weren’t giraffes, but they sure as hell resembled them with their elongated limbs and tall necks. These were new.

The giraffes trotted quietly to stand in front of the Overlook Hotel. Felix and Gretel kept walking, but they watched over their shoulder as the giraffes’ pointed their heads, pyramid-shaped protrusions, at the building as the gremlins, orbs, and melvins retreated.

“What are they doing?” she asked.

His teeth hurt too much for him to answer. The giraffes fired a blinding disintegrator bolt into the hotel. It collapsed into nothing but vapor. Quietly, efficiently, the robots scattered in all directions, satisfied they’d accomplished their mission.

“What the hell was that?” Gretel gaped. It was the first time he’d seen her gape. He hadn’t known her that long, but it seemed out of character. “Why the hell would they do that?”

The answer was obvious. Unable to find her, the robots had resorted to scorched earth tactics.

“That . . . that . . . I . . . ” She stammered, trying to form a coherent thought.

An orb floated closer. It pinged once.

Felix put his finger to his lips, and she stifled herself.

After the destruction of the hotel, the robot forces became a lot less alert. It wasn’t hard to get back to Felix’s apartment, and it was only after he shut the door and gave her the okay nod that she finally spoke up.

“That is some messed up shit.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty messed up,” he agreed. “I’ve never seen them do that before.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Why would they disintegrate an entire building just to kill one person?”

He shrugged. “They don’t really seem to like people.”

“You don’t get it,” she said. “They’re robots. Aren’t they supposed to be logical? Do you understand how much energy it would take to disintegrate an entire building? It’s impossible. And if it’s not impossible, it’s goddamn inefficient.”

Felix grabbed a couple of beers out of the fridge. He handed one to Gretel. She took it absently, scanning the street from the window.

“We have to move,” she said. “We’re not safe here.”

He sat on the couch, petted the cat. “This is the safest place to be. You can take off your hat.”

She didn’t take it off. She ran her fingers around the rubber band securing it. “This is nuts.”

“Nuttier than zombies and giant ants?” asked Felix.

“I guess you’re right there, champ.” She smiled mirthlessly, sat on the couch with the cat between them. “How did you figure out that tinfoil thing?”

It was a question he’d never bothered to ask himself.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

The answer sounded wrong to him too. He strained his memory. He came up blank.

“I don’t have a clue. I guess I just knew.”

She didn’t believe him, and he couldn’t blame her. He didn’t believe himself.

He changed the subject. “How did you survive the ants?”

“I hid. Like you did. Except a place like this would never work. You need more radios. Tune enough of them from 89 to 94 megahertz and the ants will run in the other direction. The exact setting required depends on the barometric pressure.”

“Pretty smart. How’d you figure that out?”

The look on her face said it all. She was suddenly realizing everything he just had.

“This is weird, right?” She took a long drink. “This is fucking weird.”

“Fucking weird,” he agreed. “Want to watch a movie or something? I’ve got a bunch.”

“No, thanks. Think I’d rather go ahead and have sex if it’s cool with you.”

He wasn’t sure he heard her right at first. It was the way she said it, like she wasn’t that excited about it.

“Or we could just watch a movie if you prefer,” she said. “Whatever.”

“No, sex would be good. It’d be great actually.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, champ.” She started unbuttoning her shirt. “And don’t expect me to orgasm. For Christ’s sake, just accept that. I don’t want to have to tell you to climb off of me because of your ego.”

“No problem.” He expected, given the circumstances, this would all be over very quickly.

“Also, I don’t really like anything kinky. And don’t try talking dirty. I hate that shit. Some guys want to hold a fucking conversation.” She chuckled. “Fucking conversation. I didn’t mean it like that, but it’s kind of funny, huh?”

“Funny.” He took another drink of his beer. He didn’t like dirt talk either, but she was beginning to make this seem like a chore.

“Are you sure you really want to do this?” he asked.

“Why? You don’t want to do it now?” She paused unhooking her bra.

He stared at her chest before looking away. “No, but I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“What else are we going to do?” she asked.

It was a good question. An impossible question. The idea of talking for any length of time filled him with anxiety. They could sit quietly and watch a movie. There was safety in that, but it felt like a squandered opportunity. They were two people. They should’ve been able to relate to one another some way.

Sex was it. It wasn’t the best way. It wasn’t something he was even looking forward to. The years of isolation had reduced them to animals, but with the added burden of self-consciousness. At least sex was honest. At least sex didn’t involve talking.

He sat on the couch and tentatively, awkwardly, made a move. They kissed, a timid, frightened thing. Dissatisfying. Clumsy.

But it was honest, and it sure as hell beat talking.

They continued to make-out awkwardly, and it didn’t help anything that he wasn’t concentrating on the moment, but on everything else. His most pressing thought: Would the cat be jealous?

His hope was that with a little effort things would get better, and by the time they got to sex, it would be good.

It wasn’t.

Sofas for Less (short fiction)

Cindy and Cragg

Dating a Saturnite was hard on Cindy’s furniture. He’d already crushed two sofas, knocked over several lamps, and busted her favorite end table. It wasn’t his fault. Cragg was always aware of the delicate Terrans around him, but the Terrans didn’t always return the favor. He was a mountain on legs, and Terrans, by default, assumed mountains weren’t going anywhere. So Cragg was constantly having to shift position to avoid them. Cathy and Laura had gotten better at it. But by then, the damage had been done. Cindy wasn’t buying another couch to sacrifice to her dating life.

Now she was here at Saturnite City Emporium, for all your Saturnite needs (or so they claimed), and shopping for reinforced furniture. The salesman, a sharp-dressed Terran, showed her a polka-dotted monstrosity.

“It’s on clearance,” he said. “Can’t go wrong with this model. Guaranteed uncrushable.”

Laura said, “God, no, Mom. You cannot buy that horror. I don’t care how on sale it is.”

Furniture capable of withstanding Saturnite bulk had a hefty price tag, but Cindy had to agree. The price was right, but the polka-dots weren’t a cost she was willing to pay.

“Tell her I’m right, Cragg,” said Laura.

Cragg, his face inscrutable as it usually was, grunted.

“See? He completely agrees with me?”

“We’re on a budget,” reminded Cindy.

“Whatever. Why’d you bring me if you didn’t want my opinion? I’m the one who is going to spend most my time looking at it. You’ll be at work. Cragg doesn’t even come over that often.”

Cindy loved her daughter, but there were times Laura made things more difficult.

“Is there anything you like, Cragg?” asked Cindy.

His slab of a face made no expression. His emerald eyes blinked. He paused as if preparing a great statement and everyone, Cindy, Laura, and the salesman, leaned forward in anticipation.

“They are all acceptable.”

Cindy, Laura, and the salesman all sighed.

“We’re buying this so you can spend more time at my place,” said Cindy. “You could at least act like you care.”

Cragg frowned. It was hard to tell because his face was something of a permanent frown. “I don’t understand nor care for Terran aesthetics. These are all functional.”

“Functional, he says,” grumbled Laura.

“I got news for you, Cragg,” said Cindy, an edge in her voice that surprised her as much as anyone else. “You’re dating a Terran. It’s time to care a little bit.”

“Fine.” Cragg pointed to a zebra-striped design. “That one.”

“Ick,” said Laura, and Cindy agreed.

“Do you even want to be here?” asked Cindy of Cragg.

He paused again. Though this turned out to not be a pause, but just a very long silent reply.

“I like you, Cragg,” she said. “But you could at least pretend to give a shit.”

The Saturnite grumbled, lumbering away. The salesman excused himself to help a more productive customer.

“Little hard on the guy, weren’t you, Mom?” asked Laura.

“Don’t you start.”

“Are you really mad at him? Or are you just worried because things are getting serious?”

Cindy laughed. “I’m not a teenager, Laura. I’ve been in plenty of relationships.”

“Yeah, but buying furniture together, that’s pretty serious.”

“It is not.”

“Mom, you’re about to drop too much money on a couch just so you can snuggle up to your boyfriend and watch movies together. That’s serious. It’s been a while since you’ve liked a guy this much. I can tell. Maybe the last time was dad. We both know how that worked out. Nobody can blame you for being a little gunshy.”

Cindy didn’t bother denying it. “You’re a pretty smart kid, sometimes.”

Laura smiled. “I’m told I take after my father.”

Cragg lumbered back over. He carried a sofa over his shoulder. It was the same gray shade as his own granite complexion. “I find this one acceptable.” He paused. “That is, if you do as well.”

“It’s okay with me,” said Laura.

Cindy nodded.

The salesman was beside them again, eager to snag a customer. “That’s terrific. Anything else I can do for you fine folks?”

“Yes, we’d like to take a look at your beds,” said Cindy.

Laura gagged. “Oh, ick. Ick, ick, ick. Why the hell did you bring me?”

Cindy winked at Cragg, who cracked a smile.

Find the Lady (short fiction)

“How long has he been dead?” I asked.

“About an hour,” replied his wife. “Is that too long?”

I glanced at Lorenzo’s wife, his kids, his elderly mother.

“It’s not good, but I think I can still help.”

I’d done some research into Lorenzo’s life. He’d been a good man. Not the kind of man to change the world, but he had friends, family. He wasn’t perfect, but he hadn’t made this world a worse place. If he had, I would’ve found out, and I wouldn’t have been here.

Saving good people was my calling. Not my job, though I did get paid for it. Not my hobby, though I did enjoy it. It was what I was made to do. For generations my family had been thwarting death. Grandpa used a flute that caused the Reaper to dance until he agreed to restore the recent dead to life. Mom baked cakes so delicious that death would gladly release a soul in its grasp for a taste.

They were always with risk. Death had finally claimed Grandpa when he’d sneezed during a tune. Mom had put a pinch too much lemon in a cupcake. The penalty for playing against the Reaper was always the same.

I set up my folding card table at the foot of Frank’s bed. The Reaper appeared. No one else saw him. Death appeared differently to different people. For Grandpa, he’d been a horned man in a white suit. For Mom, a matronly housewife with pale skin and empty eyes. For me, the Reaper was nothing but a crimson skeleton with a scythe. I’d tried making Red Skelton jokes to the Reaper, but they seemed to go over his head.

“Hiya, Red,” I said.

The Reaper grinned his horrible grin. “Again we play this game, Cassandra. Aren’t you tired of it yet?”

“Aren’t you?”

The Reaper’s jaws parted as if he might be laughing, but no sound came out. Just as well. I didn’t want to hear Death laugh.

“We are both at the mercy of our natures,” he said, “and forces beyond our ken.”

That there were forces beyond the Reaper’s ken filled me with equal parts hope and dread.

“I’d love to chat, but I have a date in about an hour and I’m running a little late.”

Death gestured toward the table. “Proceed.”

I dropped three cards on the table. “Find the lady, win a soul. Find the lady, anybody can do it. A child could do it. Heck, I’m practically giving souls away.” I shuffled the cards in rapid succession. The banter was part of the ritual. “If you don’t find the lady, you only have yourself to blame. She wants you to find her. I want you to find her. The question is, do you want to find her?”

I stopped shuffling, and waited for the Reaper to make his choice. He tapped a boney finger against his teeth, then pointed to the card in the center. I flipped it over to reveal the ace of spades. Death snapped his fingers. Don’t ask me how.

“Well, shit.”

The color returned to Lorenzo’s cheeks as he sprang back to life. He gasped for breath and struggled with rigor mortis in his limbs. He’d get better. Coming back to life was always a little unpleasant at first.

“Better luck next time,” I said to the Reaper.

“One of these days, Cassandra . . . ” Death faded away. There was no need to finish the sentence.

Grandpa played the flute. Mom baked cakes. I played three card monte. The difference between their games and mine?

I cheated.

I tucked the queen of hearts I’d palmed into my pocket with a smile. One day, Death would catch on. But not today.

I folded up my table, wished Lorenzo and his family a long and happy life.

The Last Sentence (short fiction)

It was decided at some point that humans were not that humane. They were careless creatures, cruel, vicious, petty, and flawed. Once they realized this about themselves, they decided to fix it the same way they tried to fix everything.

With machines.

The robots were tasked with all those delicate jobs humans weren’t cut out for. Anything that required a fair hand, an ethical standard, pure objectivity. That was the great thing about the robots. You fed them directives. They carried them out. They never wavered. They never faltered. When a robot was tasked with guarding a million dollars, it would never be tempted to steal it. When a robot was told to enforce the law, it did so without malice, without risk of racial profiling, without the corruption that came with the power. And after a while, it was noted that even jobs like plumbing and car sales were rife with human failings. So quietly, without much objection from anyone, the robots took over everything, and nearly everyone agreed it was for the better.

There were those who argued that the human race themselves had become superfluous at a certain point. Ed had never quite believed that until everyone else in the world was dead, and he was the last man. And yet, the world kept chugging away. Cleaner now. Nicer. Perhaps more sterile, but functional. No wars. No crime. No strife. Ed found it rather boring, but that might have been because he was stuck in a prison cell most of that time.

The guard robot checked in on him. “Exercise time in fifteen minutes,” it said. Right on time. It was always right on time.

“Any news from the warden system?” asked Ed.

“No human life detected,” replied the guard with the cool indifference of reporting the weather. Slightly cloudy. 32 percent humidity. 100 percent chance of human extinction.

Ed lay back on his cot. He was here because he’d killed a man. He deserved to be here. He’d done the crime. He’d accepted the time. Prison wasn’t so bad now that it was run by machines, but he missed the people. God, he missed the people. They’d been lousy and foolish, but now that they were gone, he saw their worthy moments. Humans were stupid, but they aspired. Some of them anyway. But robots just did their job.

“Don’t suppose the governor system came through my pardon yet?”

“Pardon request denied. You have yet to serve minimum sentence for your crime.”

“There’s no one else out there. Don’t suppose we could make an exception?”

The guard didn’t respond. There would be no exceptions. Robots followed the rules. Humans broke the rules. That was why Ed was on this side of the bars, and the robots made sure he stayed there.

He wondered what the world would look like once he got out. If he got out. He had no doubt the robots would be fair when his parole finally came up for review, and he was a model prisoner. Always did as he was told. Never made any trouble. But fifteen years was a long time. He might go crazy. He might screw up.

He was only human.

The Roommate (short fiction)

They were all dead. A room full of people I barely knew

It was all my fault. Understand, I wasn’t talking in the abstract. I wasn’t pulling one of those “If only I’d gotten here sooner . . . “ guilty hero moments. I was the bad guy. I’d killed them, and, sure, it’d been an accident, but I couldn’t claim to be a choirgirl.

My only excuse was that I hadn’t thought it would actually work. You find a magic spell on the internet. You mix the ingredients into a cake. You say the incantation. You leave the cake out where your mooching roommate will find it. You wait for nature to take its course.

The cake was only supposed to subvert Laura to my will, to make her my mental slave. Petty? Yes. But Laura was a lousy roommate. She never did the dishes. She was always late with her half of the rent. And she was always eating my food. If by some chance the spell worked, I only wanted her to stop doing that. And maybe quack like a duck. Just once.

But here she was. Dead. Her and her latest boyfriend (whose name I’d never caught) and two guys and a girl I’d never seen before. All dead. The cursed death cake still stuck in their mouths. Their eyes, white and frosty, stared blindly.

The perfect trap. A cake labeled “Jenny’s: Do Not Eat.” I might as well have pulled out a gun and shot them myself.

“Shit, Laura,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

I thought about hiding the bodies, but that was a hell of a lot of work. I wasn’t smart enough to get away with murder. While I screwed up my courage to call the cops, I did the dishes.

“Always leaving me to do the dishes, Laura,” I grumbled. “Just like you.”

A pale hand reached over my shoulder, and I jumped. I dropped the plate. It shattered on the floor.

Laura, pale and lifeless, somehow moving anyway, silently went to work on the dishes in the sink. Her friends all stood around, staring at me expectedly. I guess the spell had worked out after all. Only with a small side effect.

“Clean that up,” I told the boyfriend. He grabbed a broom and dustpan and started sweeping.

Maybe I wouldn’t need to call the cops right away. It might be nice to finally have a roommate willing to do her share of the chores.

One of These Doomsdays, Chapter Three

The next day, the robots were back, and they appeared to have frightened off the zombies. The day after that, the zombies returned. And so it went, alternating between robots and the walking dead, separated by the days, refusing to mingle.

He’d mastered his robot survival technique a while ago, so those days were easy. It didn’t take long to figure out how to deal with zombies. They were stupid and slow, and maybe if he ran into a few dozen at once, he’d be in trouble. The most he ever saw was a group of seven, and they were pretty far gone, even for decayed dead people.  He spent several days learning what he could about the hungry dead because he liked learning rules and it was something to do.

The zombies’ normal senses failed quickly as they rotted, replaced by a new system of vibration and heat detection. It was reliable, but even that went south after a while. Then they could only trudge around or stand there, gaping and wheezing.

You could tell how old they were by the quality of their wheeze. The fresher zombies groaned. Those were the ones Felix had to watch out for. Not that they ever got close to him. He wasn’t an idiot.

In the second stage, the groan became more of a gurgle. They couldn’t see or smell anything, but their heat / vibration sense was accurate enough to get them where they were going.

Once the gurgle became a dry wheeze, it signaled the end of their cycle. Zombies could die. They’d crawl around a bit or twitch on the ground, but eventually, they’d stop moving.

He tried to document the rate of decay, if only to give himself a project, but the world reset every day. A crawler might be lurking outside his apartment building one day, but come the next zombie day, it would be gone.

Just for fun, he’d spent a day luring zombies into parked cars. The next zombie day, not only were the zombies gone, but the cars weren’t even the same. He’d never noticed that before.

It was at this point that Felix decided something strange was going on here.

Well, stranger than he first realized.

The world had a reset button. It wasn’t perfect. Little details like cars might not always be the same. But the buildings stayed put, and the zombies and robot messes cleaned up every day.

After a few weeks, his real foe reappeared.

Boredom.

It all got very repetitive once again. The cat didn’t seem to notice as long as Felix kept it fed, but its company left a lot to be desired. A dog would’ve been cooler, could go with him on his trips through the city. Felix would name the dog Shep or Blueberry. And then, at some point, Shep or Blueberry would save Felix from a robot or zombie attack. The loyal dog would give his dying breath for his master, and it’d all be very tragic and beautiful in a tragically beautiful way.

But the cat (that Felix hadn’t gotten around to naming yet) was far less likely to do any of that. Even if it did, it wouldn’t be the same. It was just a fucking cat. Nobody told stories about a boy and his fucking cat.

He sat on his sofa, contemplating the cat, his only friend in the whole damn world.

It rubbed against his legs and purred. Felix felt guilty for thinking bad about the cat, but then he decided that was the genius of the cat. It wasn’t doing anything useful. It was just acting nice, rubbing against Felix’s legs, making him feel bad without actually helping him.

As mad as he wanted to be about that, he couldn’t resist the cat’s manipulations. He reached down, petted it, smiled despite himself. The cat pressed its head into his hand and meowed.

“You’re still an asshole.”

The air popped.

Felix, who at this point was highly attuned to anything unusual, got up from the sofa and listened. He didn’t know why he stood, but it always seemed like he listened harder when on his feet.

Two more pops.

Car backfires. Gunshots. Fireworks. Something else.

He grabbed his baseball bat and his gun. He wasn’t very good with the revolver, but he’d decided he should carry one on zombie days. He’d gotten over his reluctance to shoot the undead. He’d stopped seeing them as people weeks ago.

It’d be safer to not investigate the pops, but it wasn’t as if he could stop himself. He couldn’t turn away from something new.

“Keep an eye on the place, would you?”

He used the same joke every time. The cat never seemed to appreciate it.

Felix ventured out. The street was empty of zombies, but as soon as he stepped into the late afternoon, he heard the pop again.

It wasn’t hard to track it down, even with the echoing canyon that was the empty city. He knew the layout of the blocks thoroughly, could’ve walked it all with a blindfold on. Ten minutes later, he found the source.

A woman.

A human woman.

A human, living breathing woman.

His first thought was that he wished she was prettier. Stupid, but that was what it was.

His second thought was that if he didn’t do something soon she’d be killed by the twenty or thirty zombies closing in on her from all sides.

This was where a dog would’ve been handy. He resisted the urge to rush in, gun blazing. He was more likely to trip and end up shooting himself than come to the rescue. Most of the zombies weren’t too close, and the few within range, she took down with expert marksmanship.

Blam. Headshot. Blam. Headshot. Blam. Headshot. Blam. Throatshot. Grimace. Reload like a pro. Blam. Headshot.

She probably didn’t need rescuing. Shame. He would’ve liked the chance to make a good impression.

He waited until there weren’t any zombies close to her (for her safety), while she was reloading (for his), to finally call out to her.

“Hi!”

He winced. Damn, that sounded stupid.

The woman pivoted in his direction, and he was glad he’d waited because he had no doubt she would’ve blown a hole in his face.

“I’m not a zombie!” he shouted.

She returned to reloading. “No shit!”

The way she said it made him feel like an idiot.

He pointed to the postal carrier zombie shuffling up behind her. “Hey, uh, hey!”

She turned, fired her pistol, dropping the carrier with one clean shot.

“Good job!” Felix offered two thumbs up.

Again, she gave him a look that implied she found him more annoying than the walking dead around her.

Several of the zombies moved toward him. He drew his gun and took a moment to carefully aim. His first shot sheared off the top of the closest zombie’s skull but didn’t put it down. His second tore off the left side of its jaw.

“Goddamnit.”

He was never any good with the gun. He should’ve known better than to try. He put it away and grabbed his bat. It was easier to bash in the zombie’s skull this way, and he didn’t screw it up. With three solid strikes, he crushed the corpse’s head.

He was disappointed to find the woman, occupied with shooting zombies, hadn’t noticed his kill.

“I got this one!” he shouted.

“Yeah, congratulations!” She blasted another two zombies in two quick shots.

The remaining undead weren’t much of a threat to either Felix or the woman. He bashed in the heads of two more while she picked off the rest. Then he walked over to her, his baseball bat covered in corpse goop, and tried to act casual.

“Hey, nice shooting.”

She reloaded her pistol, holstered it.

“Automatic, huh?” he said. “I went with a revolver. More stopping power. Magnum force.”

He sounded ridiculous, but he took some comfort in the fact that he was probably the last man on earth, so he had that going for him.

“First of all, that’s an IOF .32 revolver,” she said. “You’re thinking of a .357. Secondly, I’m carrying a .50 caliber desert eagle pistol, which has more stopping power than that pea shooter. Thirdly, it doesn’t matter how much stopping power you have if you can’t hit shit.”

“Wow. You know a lot about guns.”

“I know enough.”

There was an awkward silence between them.

“My name’s Felix,” he finally said.

“Uh huh.”

She started walking, and he walked with her.

“We might be the last two people on Earth,” he said. Given her icy demeanor, he thought it good to remind her.

“Where did the ants go?” she asked.

“Ants?”

“Giant ants,” she said. “Size of horses, jet planes. Hard to miss.”

“I haven’t seen any giant ants,” he replied. “Just robots and zombies.”

She stopped suddenly, and he walked a few steps past her.

“Robots?” she said.

“I think they’re from outer space. I don’t know for sure. I don’t know why they’re doing this to us though. I’m Felix, by the way.”

“Heard you the first time.” The woman took a drink from a canteen. “So where are these robots?”

“They don’t show up on zombie days.”

“And the ants?” she asked.

“Haven’t seen any ants.” He didn’t know why he sounded apologetic for saying that. “So where did you come from?”

“Uptown. Overstreet Hotel.”

“How long have you been there?”

“Four-hundred-seven days,” she said. “Where did you come from?”

“I live just a few blocks away from here. Not far.”

“When did you get here?”

“Get here? I’ve been here for a while now.”

She gave him a narrow eyed stare. Like she didn’t believe him. It pissed him off.

“I’ve been there like . . . I don’t know,” he said. “I lost count a while ago. But it was a while ago. Maybe four or five years. Maybe three. I don’t know.”

She shrugged. “Whatever.”

“I can show you my place if you don’t believe me,” he said.

“Yeah, okay.”

She said it begrudgingly, like she was placating a child.

“You can trust me.” He blurted it out, realizing it was an untrustworthy thing to say.

She shrugged again. “Whatever.”

“I’m not dangerous.” He couldn’t figure out why he was saying such stupid things, but in his defense, he hadn’t talked to anyone other than a cat in ages.

“I know.”

She turned from him. It wasn’t because she trusted him. She saw him as harmless. She walked a wide path around a mound of meat in a tuxedo that was a re-killed zombies, but she was perfectly fine with exposing her back to him.

He found that insulting. He couldn’t say why.

She stopped, looked over her shoulder at Felix. “Are you going to lead the way, champ?”

He started walking. She followed, scanning the area with a steady, sweeping gaze. She was like as soldier on high alert.

“It’s okay,” he said. “The zombies are pretty easy to stay ahead of. Just avoid blind corners and tight spots.”

She grunted.

“So do you have a name?” he asked.

“Gretel,” she said.

“Hmm. Funny name.”

She didn’t reply.

“Not there’s anything wrong with that,” he said. “I mean, it’s sort of classic.”

Still no reply.

“You don’t look like a Gretel though.” He tried to stop digging himself deeper, but her silence was overpowering. “I mean, I don’t know what a Gretel looks like. I guess I picture pig-tails and lederhosen. Although I don’t know if German women wear lederhosen.”

His throat, in a well-meaning effort to shut him up, went dry. He croaked onward.

“Also, y’know, I don’t usually think of people like you with a name like Gretel.”

He shut up. It was too late then, and he was grateful for her silence because—

“People like me,” she said with flat displeasure.

It was his turn to be quiet.

“What kind of person am I?” she asked.

“People,” he said. “Just people.”

“Just people? Or just black people?”

Great. Last two people on Earth, and he was coming across as a racist asshole.

“It’s just this way. Right over here.”

He ran ahead, putting some space between them. He started thinking about his place. Was it tidy enough? Did he have any porn lying out? He was careful with his porn. It was something he took very seriously, and even after the robot apocalypse, it was a habit he hadn’t broken.

He hadn’t made a great impression. He didn’t want to worsen it.

They made it back to the apartment without any further zombie incidents. The few undead they ran across were far off and easily avoided. He rushed into the apartment ahead of her and started straightening up in a flurry. A few old soda cans and beer bottles. Some paper plates he hadn’t pitched in the garbage yet.

Gretel glanced around the apartment. He studied her face for any sign of approval or revulsion. He saw nothing.

“Where are your radios?” she asked.

“I don’t listen to a lot of music.”

“How do you keep the ants out?”

“I used to put the food away,” he said, “but it wasn’t really necessary because I don’t think there are any ants left.”

She glanced at him.

“You mean the giant ants.” He shrugged. “I haven’t seen any of those around.” Again, he didn’t know why he sounded so apologetic about it.
She grunted. “I believe you. The ants would’ve eaten you if you’d been living here.”

The cat raised its head and appraised Gretel. She did the same.

“Where did you find that?” she asked.

“Just out and about,” replied Felix. “Funny. Seems like years since I saw another living creature. Then the cat comes along. And now you.”

Gretel paced the room before sitting on the couch beside the cat. She picked up an old People magazine and thumbed through it. “Nice setup. Tin foil is a bit odd.”

“Keeps the robots at bay.”

She nodded to herself. To his relief, it didn’t seem like a humor the crazy guy nod.

“Can I get you something?” he asked. “Something to drink maybe?”

“Take a Coke if you’ve got one, champ.”

He grabbed a couple of sodas out of the fridge. He sat on the other end of the sofa with the cat between them. They drank the sodas in silence.

“We’re not going to have sex yet,” she said as calmly as if discussing the weather.

“Oh. Okay.”

The thought had occurred to him, but in a vague, at some point in the future, way. He assumed something would happen at one point by virtue of their situation, but he wasn’t certain he was ready for something like that. Thinking about it gave him a nervous erection. He hid it by turning away and rearranging his DVD collection.

“We can’t stay here,” she said. “This place isn’t secure.”

“It’s kept me safe.”

“Safe against robots and zombie. The ants will chew right through these walls in a minute unless we get some radios.”

“There haven’t been any ants.”

“Maybe not right now, but I didn’t survive this long by getting sloppy. When the reset comes, the ants will come. They always do.” Gretel tossed the magazine on the coffee table.

“Wait. Shouldn’t we stick together?”

“I do better on my own. See you around, champ.”

She walked out the front door. He sat on the couch, unsure whether he should follow her. She might be right. He might be better off on his own, too. Saving the cat had nearly killed him, and it had wanted to be saved. Gretel viewed him as more of an inconvenience.

Felix jumped to his feet and ran after her. She was already halfway down the street.

He shouted after her. “If the robots come back, you’ll need tinfoil! Put it on your head! It masks your brainwaves. Or something!”

Gretel waved without looking back.

“Good luck!” he yelled.

She didn’t acknowledge that. He watched her walk away until she disappeared around the corner. He waited a while after that, listening for gunshots. He wanted an excuse to chase after her. Being the only two people on Earth should’ve been enough of a reason. It wasn’t.

He was also fairly certain she’d shoot him if she caught him following her, and he couldn’t judge her for that. He’d almost strangled the cat that first night.

Felix would give her space. He’d trust she was smart enough to listen to him about the foil. He scavenged some radios from electronics stores, just in case.

After that, he spent the rest of the day in his place, watching the door, checking the windows. Hoping that every zombie he saw would be Gretel coming back after changing her mind. Terrified of that possibility, too.

She didn’t return.

He fell asleep on the couch, wondering what strange monsters would be waiting for him tomorrow.

Citizen Drat (short fiction)

Empire City

Drats were something terrible. Small, deformed rats with wings, gills, and a venomous bite. The mutant rodents hadn’t even had the courtesy to replace the rat population because drats mostly ate inedible garbage and drank toxic waste. They were a nuisance that no one had been able to get rid.

Now Brenda was stuck in a room, trying to have a conversation with one.
This drat was three times bigger than most. Its wings were fully formed, which was unusual. Its red and blue fur had a few missing patches. It huddled in the corner, pulling its hat over its face to hide from the lights.

It was the hat that had brought her here.

She had them turn down the lights so that she could still see, but the drat wasn’t blinded by them.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m just here to talk.”

The drat bared its teeth at her and hissed. She wasn’t too worried about it biting her. Drat venom stung like hell, but it was usually only fatal to mutants. She wasn’t one. Not today. Who knew about tomorrow?

She pulled a candy bar from her pocket, opened it, tossed the wrapper to the drat. The creature gobbled it down. Its long, bent tail uncoiled. She ate her candy bar, despite the drat’s stench filling the room, as a gesture of friendship.

It put the small hat on its head, adjusted the brim so that it sat at an appealing angle. The hat must’ve belong to a child’s doll, Brenda guessed.

“I don’t suppose you can talk?” she asked. “This is so much easier if you can talk.”

The drat twitched. She tried measuring the intelligence in its beady red eyes.

“Nice hat,” she said.

The drat clutched the hat to its chest, and Brenda smiled. It wasn’t indicative of full sentience, but it was a start.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

The drat shook its head. It might have been mere imitation, a sophisticated reflex triggered by her tone and body language. But it might have been something more.

“Here’s the situation,” she said. “You bit someone, and that someone is very sick. Might even die. If you’re an animal, you’ll be put down. If I prove you’re more than that, you’ll probably get jail time. But after that, you won’t have to live in the sewers. Not if you don’t want to.”

The drat twitched. It cautiously skittered forward and held out its paw. She shook it. It offered her its hat, its only possession in the world, as payment.

“You keep it,” she said with a smile.

Thin Line (short fiction)

Empire City

The corpse of the cyborg gigantobear lay wrapped in the dozen tentacles of the equally terrible, equally dead tyranosquid. Technicians had worked for an hour to separate the two monsters of science gone wrong before calling it quits. Now they struggled to load the two abominations into a transport for proper disposal.

Justine Chang took a survey of the ruined lab where the battle had taken place. She made note of the damage, and of the potential danger the two monsters had posed to the city. Empire had a hell of a lot of weird science running loose, and it was her job to assess potential threats to the greater good. It wasn’t easy. The Learned Council had a generous policy toward accidents of high science. Mistakes were going to be made. Things were going to blow up. Genetically modified titans were going to grapple to the death now and then. There was a thin line between reckless scientific enthusiasm and genuine malicious genius.

She questioned the chief scientists involved. Dr. Vorlok was a short, squat man with a heavy beard and a monocle. Monocles always put Justine on edge. Dr. Khaos (with a K, he reminded her multiple times) was tall and lean with a limp and a vaguely European accent that she couldn’t place. This put her on edge too.

“Let’s go over it one more time, gentlemen,” she said. “Why were you building these monsters again?”

“The greater good,” said Vorlok.

“For scientific advancement,” added Khaos.

“Mmhmm.” She checked those boxes on her report. “And how did the bear—”

“Gigantobear,” corrected Vorlok.

“Sorry. Gigantobear. How did it escape again?”

“Containment protocols failed. You sabotaged it, didn’t you, Khaos? Admit it!”

Khaos snorted. “You are just fortunate that my tyranosquid was here. If your beast had gotten loose among the innocent citizens of this city . . . ”

“What are you talking about? My magnificent gigantobear kept your horrible mistake from harming anyone, and it was a good thing I had the foresight to create it.”

“It was a better thing that I was smart enough to employ my genius to counter your inevitable sloppiness.”

“So let me get this straight,” Justine said. “You built your gigantobear to keep the city safe from his tyranosquid, and you built the tyranosquid to keep the city safe from his gigantobear.”

They nodded, glaring at each other.

“And the greater good,” added Vorlok.

“Scientific advancement,” mumbled Khaos.

She thanked them for their time. She chalked this up to another scientific rivalry gone wrong. Such incidents were all too common in Empire. She made a note to recommend immediate separation of Vorlok and Khaos. It usually nipped the problem in the bud. She’d keep an eye on them in the meantime.

On her way out of the labs, she spotted a hunched woman in a labcoat cackling beside a thirty foot robot.

“It’s a trash collection automaton,” said the wild eyed engineer.

“And why does it have chainsaw arms?” asked Justine.

“Scientific advancement?” said the engineer, not sounding entirely convinced herself.

Shaking her head, Justine started filling out a fresh report.