Science Fiction Microstory Contest discussion
Congrats to Thaddeus Howze, Five-time Champion of the Science Fiction Microstory Contest
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Congratulations, Thaddeus. Excellent story.
Three top stories, tough to choose. Congratulations Thaddeus.
Thank you, all. This month has been especially trying but I am glad to be participating among such a fine group of writers. You are making me better. I appreciate the challenge. I will come up with a theme in a day or so.
Way to go Thaddeus! You are crushing us...I mean, crushing it! :) Great work!
Fine tale, Thaddeus, and powerful writing. I couldn't get back to the Microstories site until this evening, really like the stories from February; yours is terrific. Nice work.
Flash Fiction by Thaddeus Howze
4:27 AM. I am.
I adjust. Consciousness is hard won.
Bolt of lightning, obsessions erased, pushing through the mind of my host and surrounded by altered history, I remember.
I am at the beginning of the Interregnum. A time of constant outbreaks, terrible disease ravages humanity worldwide. Sick.
The insertion wasn't far back enough. This host is already gravely infected. The date. A smartwatch. June 30, 2020. The best we could do. I lie awake aware of their future. The death tolls will be staggering.
They will be coming. They have to know I'm here.
I cast about. My awareness flashes a fragment of my Will. Everyone is sick within a kilometer. And of those who are not... This one will have to do. Hard to get up. Fevered. Head pounding. Dizzy.
There is a computer, if you can call it that. It will have to do. Checking the historical database. No historical databases. Too far back. Worldmind is gone. Hasn't been invented yet. All they have is...
Wikipedia.
It will have to do.No Spanish Flu? No influenza outbreak? They've somehow changed the Stream. Forced a reality without the influence of the pandemic into our reality. Worse contagions would strike, we are more unprepared, diseases undermine the social fabric. Their Crosstime efforts have born fruit.
I drop the Code. A temporal marker allowing us to try again. We need a foothold. The Bureau is already here. Shouting. Then shots. My instinct is to help. In this moment of change, of upheaval, I am forbidden. To me, this is ancient history. A timeline thought lost. A past unreachable.
Insertion into an era without time travel was impossible. Until the Cross-time Paradox was discovered. Vision blurring. Sicker than I thought. The Code flies preprogrammed from my sweaty fingertips. The alien Temporal Bureau forbids any direct interference. Except when they do it. They move through Cross-time, seeding parallels, reaching back until all futures lead to them being inexorably in power over all of reality.
The burn team is done with the next block. Type faster. Earlier code fragments coalesce, the efforts of earlier agents.
They're outside. They know I'm here. Finished.
The Seed is planted.
Trembling. This body is done. I prepare for transit. The power is cut at 5:13 AM.
I can feel their Wills probing mine trying to read what I've done.
The information is already sent. I can see the city burning, fire light streaming through the window. A hungry cat mews pitifully. Staggering to the back of the house, I open a window and toss it out. It doesn't seem all that grateful. The burn team doesn't talk. Doesn't negotiate. They didn't know how, only where. They drove me here, pushed me through Crosstime to come out here.
To prevent delivery.
I hear their inhuman screams as they realize what I've done. They can feel the ripples. With the neighborhood fully aflame, they burn my house last. Then they too stride purposefully into the fire leaving no trace of their tampering. These men will die tragically, consumed by the flames they set.
The Bureau will continue the chase.
I go where they send me. This past is corrupted. It is a place of constant loss; of hopeless horror? A time of flame and pogram dressed as religion; people trapped in their homes, in an effort to stop a perfect contagion? I have to go further back. To a point where we make better choices. Where we learn from our mistakes.
I have to kill millions to save tens of billions.
In my time, autocratic leadership is all we know. Pandemic was the key. Why did 1918 fail to galvanize a response? What happened? Why did we abandon the research for this plague? Because it hasn't happened. Didn't happen in more realities than it did. Thanks to their inhuman meddling. They want a future without us.
As I watch them come through the door, they see me already burning.
They sit amid the ruins and try to follow me into the Crosstime streams. As their hosts awaken, my last bit of awareness is of their screams of terror as they realize where they were. My host sighs in relief. The Bureau cares nothing for their hosts. Only their supremacy of all of our related realities.
I will reach the correct 1918, and ensure the holy Propagation. The Code lights my way. They cannot follow me.
Yet.