Tag: Humor

Short Story: His(Its?) Image

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Nobody believed it. Who would blame them though? It was a difficult thing to believe that one; there was confirmation of God’s existence; two, he was actually hooked into the internet, hip to all of the millions of slangs and cultures; and three that all those social-media posts begging for likes to save cancer-victims, help lost puppies, and vote on the newest teen idol were actually serious.

For his– or rather Its, which is a whole, other complicated conversation we’re not having right now– part, God seemed to be an okay guy (thing?). At least in the last few thousand years, he hadn’t directly caused any kind of mass murder, flooding, or pestilence. Not that there weren’t any, just none he had a direct hand in. Even the good things were none of his doing, sliced bread, the internet, free porn– those were things we’d given ourselves through the freewill he’d set in motion. (If you believe the stories, anyway.)

It was like he– it? Can a limitless entity really be confined to a single gender? I’m sure all those homophobic preachers might have something to say about it, but not me. Mostly I’m focused on the existential properties of the question, and whether or not human language will have to compensate for this new class of being, especially if it turns out he is not the only one. Like I said, ‘nother conversation for ‘nother day.

Anyway, it was like he’d set us up on this crazy green and blue rock, then loosed us to the rigors of time so he might come back later and reap the rewards. The internet had to have been one of those things that finally drew him back. Before he’d sent an ambassador (more than one if you believe the various stories) to speak to us in his name, each with their own language and ways to best keep the people in those parts of the world on the straight and narrow. Really gotta’ hand it to him, did a mostly good job– you know aside from the middle east and the third of the world starving.

But that’s yet another conversation for yet another day. Staying on track.

Seems the Good Lord had set up a kind of system networked into social-media of all things. In retrospect, it wasn’t a bad idea. There’s billions of computers hooked into the net, almost as many people behind them watching everything from social-media updates to, well, porn, and not a one of them was really listening to the Good Lord’s words anymore.

I can only imagine that to a creature like God the internet represented this vast, instant-feedback system where the commodity of information was like a tasty morsel of ambrosia. See, that’s the thing we never think about when we think of a God, or rather the God. Omnipotent may mean unlimited power, but who the hell has the time to be paying that much attention? I mean, if we’re created in his— it’s?– image, wouldn’t He/It be just as prone toward Attention Deficit Disorder?

Each of us has some form of ADD. Granted not everyone needs medication for it, but we all have a point where we can no longer stand to pay attention. Be it from hunger, exhaustion, or sheer boredom, we’ll each eventually turn away, look away, or pass out until we can come back with fresh eyes. It’s the human condition. We’re just sort of flawed in that way. It runs deep too, so deep, it was almost easy for us to miss that He/It was the same way.

After all, familiarity is comfort, and all beings that we know of seek comfort. Why would He/it be different? In the end, maybe that’s the whole “meaning of life thing:” so no one has to be alone. I mean, sure there were creatures before us, but they weren’t sentient. It’s more than likely that if He/It did anything to create us, it was with a push to the hominid populous’ evolution toward our creation. Then, let it stew for a few million years, and voila, sentient life!

But then we sort of spiraled out of control. We bred like rabbits and took over the face of the Earth. Those telepathic communications that he told us about in his books became overwhelming. Then, for a few millenia, he just sort of slinked away from us for a couple aspirin and a drink. Then one drink turned into five, then five into ten and soon enough he was passed out on the bar-room floor, only to awake in an alley-way dumpster with a hang-over and no shoes– wait, that was exactly my last Friday— Still you get the point. He/it got overwhelmed and he took off for a bit to unwind, prepared to come back later with fresh eyes. (Not literally of course, from all evidence we have He/It doesn’t need new eyes, though I’m sure He/It could conjure them in a moment.)

Maybe those fresh eyes helped, or maybe the hangover finally pounded a realization into his head– like that time I woke up in the Rusty Clam’s Alley with a hooker kicking me and telling me I was scaring off the Johns. I mean really, like I was the problem there. Get over yourself guy. What was I saying? Oh right, the epiphany. It was like that time I woke up and realized maybe the smell in my pants was my fault, and I should probably quit drinking before the hooker kicked me one too many times.

For Him/It, the realization was probably two-fold; we had internet, (Holy shit, free Porn! He/It exclaimed if I’m anything like His/Its image) and now he had an awesome little tool to make all those telepathic prayers easier to deal with.

So, He/It did what any smart Deity would and set up a kind of super-cool bot-net that translated the telepathic message into their own, electronic equivalents. Those lists were somehow programmed to prioritize and post themselves across the ‘net with “Like” and “Share” Goals. If they reached those goals, the bot-net would activate the telepathy machine– the same used to transfer prayers to text– and it would shell out a dose of miracles for whomever the prayer was for or about.

But see, that’s where He/It got things a little wrong. God forgot we’re created in his image, and we’re more than a little deficit in attention ourselves. So what happened? Well first off, no-one believed the profile actually was God. Then, nobody believed God would try to pass out prayers so cheaply. And Then? Some one found out it was real.

Oh yeah. You know that memetic saying that’s flooded every possible forum, chat-room, and website with comments that goes “don’t feed the trolls?” Well, that’s extremely difficult when everyone becomes a troll. See, the atheists weren’t angry that they’d been proven wrong, they were excited. With them were all of those would-be pious that lined up to beg and plead and pray.

But God? Well He/It’s kind’a got a funny sense of humor like that. I guess sort of like me too, in a way. He didn’t shut the bot-net down. Now, I can’t be sure what the hell he’s up to, but I know it’s still running. Every day, billions of posts flood His/Its little corner of the net, and every day, billions of people scramble to pray harder and like and share the ones that might be theirs. Its just so damned hard to tell anyway, so many people need money, or the cure for cancer, or for their pants to stop smelling strange, that it’s difficult to know exactly whose prayer is getting answered when they vote.

And here we come to my devious, devilishly simple bit of mischief. It isn’t mean, not even really difficult to do. In a way, I think He/It might agree with my cleverness. I created a second bot-net. One to spam the hell out of those posts. It’ll be sort of like that heaven and hell war, only digital and without any losers. Everyone will get what they want, have their prayers answered. It’s mischief, sure, but I was made in His/Its image, and he’s just as lazy, deficit, and cunning as I am if you believe it. In the end, maybe he’ll smite me. Or maybe, he’ll do nothing, happy that our ingenuity triumphed. Or maybe even, he’ll flip up the table and rage-quit and run back to the bar.

If so, cheers friend; maybe tomorrow my pants won’t smell so bad and you’ll have another one of your epiphanies. Until then, let the games begin and bring on the porn!

Short Story: The Grand Oops

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 3 Comments

The ship had lost control, the Pilot with his hands at its helm as useless as the Engineer in the decks fighting to restore lost power. The planet’s atmosphere set fire to the ship’s steep angle while the alarm klaxons blared inside of it. Sparks rained over the cock-pit from the largest bouts of turbulent friction that fried more systems, jolted the ship further from the Pilot’s grasp. Were he a less stubborn man, he’d have fled for the escape pods with the rest of the crew.

Unfortunately, even the inkling of fear he had was suppressed by his concentration and attempts to keep the stick straight. The Engineer would fight to her last breath to return control to him, patch the blown conduits and re-fire the engines. Until then, they were in free-fall at precisely the right angle to burn them up on re-entry or pancake them against the ground on impact. Emergency lighting kicked on through the ship, a main conduit severed on the exterior hull from the heat.

Another, apex up-heave from friction and the ship was cast sideways, helpless against the planet’s gravitational fury. The ship was certainly lighter now, beginning to spiral like a poorly thrown football. Still the Pilot fought, the Engineer cut, soldered, re-connected. Like the pilot, she knew of nothing else but the whims and will of her instincts exerted over her body. Long bits of copper cabling were yanked from one panel’s dark innards, sliced, spliced, and welded to another’s. Light flickered in the engineering compartment, then went out, plunged her into total darkness. She tripped over strewn tools, boxes, spare parts, groped for the dead-center of the room with a spanner in-hand.

The Pilot watched the blue sky turn red around him, become spackled and splattered with the gradated yellows and browns of a dusty, dune-laden desert. The ground approached at terminal velocity, ready to greet him with emptiness and death.

The Engineer’s hands worked double time. Her forehead poured sweat into already-useless eyes, burned them. She swallowed terror to crank back a nut that would re-seat the engines’ igniter. Then with a slap of a hand against a console, she lunged for the far wall, smacked a control panel.

“Light it up!”

The Pilot fought his turbulent tumult for a set of switches, tripped them up. Then with a mutter of “about fucking time,” he threw the ignition switch. The turbine-shaped engines at the ship’s rear glowed blue, sputtered and spit fire. Then with blast of thrust, the turbine’s rocketed the ship forward toward the ground.

“Woah, woah, woah!” The pilot said.

He yanked back on the stick, control returned to him. The ship’s trajectory made a wide, deep parabola, its vertex only meters from the ground. Another jolt said something was ripped off the ship’s belly as its rising ascent signaled a high-pitched, roaring laughter from the Pilot. It bled through the ship’s open comm to the Engineer’s ears with a heaving bosom in the darkened enclosure. She sank back against a wall, leaned forward with her hands on her thighs.

“You’re worth every penny, Em,” He shouted between laughs.

“Thank you, sir,” she panted. She took a breath, then, “We need to set down to asses exterior damage. We can’t follow the pods’ tracking beacons until I restore power to the Auxiliary systems.”

“Roger that, I’m on it.”

He straightened the ship out mid-way up the parabola’s far-side, jetted forward at full speed to come around again. The ship angled downward gradually, sank onto a damaged landing gear just over the rise of a high plateau that made a mockery of the ship’s ninety-foot height– even more so of its blocky, three-hundred foot length and hundred-foot wingspan. It set down at a lean, its left-most rear gear jammed in place from a severed hydraulic line somewhere in its housing.

The Pilot jogged through the ship’s innards with a set of flash-lights. All along the way, the random, over-loaded circuits of secondary and tertiary systems spit angry sparks at him, or arced the last of their currents over load-bearing struts and supports. He hurried into the Engineering compartment, ready to aid the woman doubled over against the wall.

“I wanna’ raise,” she panted at him.

He laughed with an affirming nod, “Consider it done.”

“Good,” she said as she straightened from the wall. “Let’s get this tub back in order.”

It was only a few hours before she’d gotten the ship fully-running again, retraced the escape-pods’ trajectory toward the crew. They were mostly intact, save a few cuts and bruises from their bumpy rides and rougher landings. In less than a day, the ship was repaired– even the landing gear’s hydraulics that required the ship to be re-started. It hovered above the ground as the last gear extended, and with an exhausted collapse, fell back to the ground more level than before.

The ongoing question all through-out the repairs was what had happened. There had been no epic space battle, no forced ejection from hyper-flight, nothing as an obvious prelude to damage. In fact, the flight had been rather dull; a routine delivery of medical supplies to a Galactic Alliance outpost– a high-paid, by the books courier job. Sabotage was the next concern on the list, but all of their advanced tech and good-old fashioned interrogation techniques told both them no-one aboard was guilty of wrongdoing.

All theories of foul play were thrown out as the Engineer set about searching for the problem’s physical source. The main culprit had to be a conduit between the engine’s cock-pit controls and the engines themselves. Indeed, it didn’t take much in-depth examination to locate the faulty part; a stripped and corroded, five-prong connector mid-way through the ship’s wiring.

“It was supposed to have been replaced,” The Pilot said cheekily to the Engineer.

“Yes, sir,” she dead-panned. “Then you said to leave it and if the tub was gonna’ fall outta’ the sky that you’d make sure it never hit the ground.”

“I did?” The Pilot asked blankly.

“Yes, sir, right before you unbuckled your pants and closed the door to the consort’s chambers in my face,” the Engineer said.

“Oh.” He stared off with a distant duality of shame and mortification, “Oops.”

“A grand “oops,” sir,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

He shrugged, shook off his trance, “Well, I was right though, we didn’t hit the ground. See? Gotta’ trust in your Captain, Em.”

He turned from the Engineering compartment with a smarmy smile. Em stared upward in defeat, shook her head.

Bonus Short Story: You’re On!

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 6 Comments

You’re On

“I don’t give a good god-damn who you are, get out of my house!”

Arvin was pissed. Clearly. The fact that he shouted this particular phrase down the barrel of long-nose .44 didn’t hurt in conveying his otherwise less-than-mellow state. The problem was, at least from his wife’s perspective, there wasn’t quite anyone there for him to be shouting at.

For the last twenty years, Arvin and Marjorie Dunn had been blissfully married. They’d survived a long-distance college relationship, ten years of growing older and bitter, tying the knot and two kids that were now grown and out of the house. In all that time, Marjorie hadn’t seen Arvin raise his voice nor hand in anger. He’d never needed to. He was a frightfully stern-looking man, with eyebrows made for the colossal grump he appeared to be. But really, he was a teddy-bear– all soft and cuddly, and stuffed with more plumped up fibrous tissue than a life-size version of the aforementioned.

In the moment, it didn’t seem to matter. Any of it, in fact. He cocked back the hammer of his home-defense .44, ready to rain swift hell-fire on the air. Marjorie was still frozen in horror behind him, not sure whether to run or cry, but all the same unwilling to anger the beast with the large revolver. She wasn’t sure what to do, nor of how things had progressed quite to this point.

She’d already traced it’s origins; this had all started when the Matthews’ moved out. They’d been the Dunn’s neighbors for nigh-on fifteen years, had been there twice as long as anyone else in the suburb– one of the first families to settle the subdivision when it was first built. Granted Warner Matthews was always a couple decades older than Arvin, they grew together as friends.

And for fifteen years, the two men grew older, fatter, balder while they counted the time in barbecues and beers, football games and nachos, and fourth of Julys and hot dogs. They were the best of friends, helped to keep each other grounded. That’s not to say that Darlene Matthews wasn’t the same for Marjorie. They too were the best of friends, but in the way of women whom largely preferred to sit at home with books or cross-stitching were. They just weren’t quite the level of close the other two were.

It was always known between Arvin and Warner that one day the latter’s pension would come due. He and Darlene would pack up their most precious belongings, sell the rest, then run off to Florida to live out their days. Promises to visit on both sides might eventually be upheld, but unfortunately, it just hadn’t been long enough yet to tell if there was any truthfulness to that.

Indeed, the day they did finally finished selling off the less-desirable elements of their home and history, they packed up Warner’s old pick-up (Darlene’s car atop a long-bed trailer towed behind it) and drove off into the sunset. Arvin was happy for them then, as any man or woman might be watching another achieve their dream. He was even happier the next week when they received a post-card of the new condo on the beach in an envelope with a picture of the boat the couple had bought from selling their vehicles.

But that too, was the day when all of this started. It seemed innocuous enough when Marjorie returned home with groceries, and Arvin saying something about new neighbors. Being laden with armfuls of groceries, she didn’t quite hear him, and his mind was too easily swept up in aiding her in the task otherwise. The conversation didn’t re-emerge until the next day, when once again Marjorie came in from the car, keys jangling as she set them in the bowl just inside the door.

Arvin said something about new neighbors again, this time mentioning that he’d only seen the one car. Evidently the new couple– a husband and wife in their thirties– preferred to share a car rather than have two payments. Marjorie’s suggestion to run across the lawn and introduce themselves was met with the curious recollection that he’d seen them both leave just before she’d arrived home.

“Well then,” Marjorie replied. “You’ll just have to make sure you tell me when they’re back so we can introduce ourselves. Otherwise we’re gonna’ be livin’ next to strangers ’til we’re dust.”

He’d chuckled with a casual compliance, but the thought had left his mind somewhere between there and dinner, and by the time that was over, he wasn’t sure he had the energy to get off the couch. The cycle of one thing or another keeping them from meeting their neighbors continued for almost a full week.

That’s when Marjorie noticed the first of a series of insidious changes in Arvin. Where he’d always been one to rise with the sun, have himself a wholesome breakfast before work, then putter off to wile away the day at the salt mines, he was suddenly late for work. For anyone else, it might’ve slipped by unnoticed, but Arvin was a punctual man. Provided you caught him on a normal day, you’d be able to set your watch by him– so long as you knew what time he did what each day.

For Marjorie, this lapse raised her guard. Ever the housewife, she watched three days pass like this, her time wasted in worry rather than up-keeping the house and flower-beds. The front petunias withered, only saved by a short rainstorm that managed to perk them back up. Even so, Marjorie’s routine was as shaken up as Arvin’s.

On the fourth day, she paced about the house, so tense at Arvin’s shift she wasn’t sure what to do. Over the previous days and nights, Arvin had spoken more of the young couple next door. He’d managed to run into one of them at the gas-station and introduce himself. Unfortunately, due to their schedules, the two were almost never home, both instead absorbed by positions at a mutual job concerning computer-something or other– Arvin couldn’t recall, he was too old for computers to make sense to him.

On that fourth day, Marjorie devised a plan. By four AM of the fifth day after Arvin’s failure to rise began, she was up. She lurked in the shadows of the window that faced the Matthews’ old house. She refused to leave, almost refused to blink, even when Arvin rose, once more late for work. He left as the sun settled into its passage through-out the sky, and by the time Marjorie recognized high-noon coming, she’d devised another plan.

She didn’t wait to execute it. Instead, she sneaked over to the Matthews’ old house, through the back, wooden gate, and across the paver-block patio that Arvin and Warner had built one summer a decade ago. She rifled through the mulched flower-bed beside the back door, fished out an old, fake rock that contained a key to the door. Evidently, the new neighbors hadn’t moved it yet, or even replaced the locks: the key slid in just as it should, turned without issue.

She slipped into the house only to be chased out moments later by a bilious feeling that sent shivers through her spine: the house was empty, just as she, Arvin, and the Matthews’ had left it after they’d filled Warner’s pick-up and Darlene’s car.

To be standing between the kitchen and front room now, watching her husband curse and swear with a gun in his hand made her feel all the more guilty. When he’d returned from work, she’d confronted him. With little more than a short argument, and a promise to bring one of them over, he’d left the house. What Marjorie didn’t realize was that he’d retrieved the .44 from the bedroom after he’d stormed off. Why was anyone’s guess, but all the same here they were.

“I said get out of my house god damn it!”

“Arvin there’s no-one there!” Marjorie wailed.

“The hell there isn’t!” He said.

He fired two rounds through the air into the man he saw before him. A moment later, the man was on the ground before Arvin, blood pooling on the cream, shag-carpet. Suddenly Marjorie saw him too, but it wasn’t a man. Instead, the long, distended features of caricatured humanoid creature lay before them. Arvin dropped the gun, back-stepped in horror. He’d grown too frustrated, angry at the world and the break in his routine. Marjorie hadn’t seen him snap at his co-workers, or flip off other drivers, or feel the rise in his pulse and blood-pressure during the argument.

It all seemed to make sense to Arvin, but to Marjorie, nothing made sense.

“My god, what is that?” Arvin said, finally seeing the creature’s true form.

A woman appeared in the doorway, fell to the ground wailing, “No, no!”

The woman suddenly lit with a bright, glowing light. A similar figure to the creature became apparent through it. Marjorie fainted.

When she awoke, Arvin and the two creatures were grouped around her, but they once more resembled their human selves.

“Honey, I think we need to listen to these people,” Arvin said, still sickly pale.

The woman spoke, the man still clutching his side, though no longer bleeding. “We’re terribly sorry for all of this. We knew we could not keep the masquerade up forever.”

“I… I shot him,” Arvin said breathlessly.

The wounded man gave a grunt, “We heal… quickly.”

“You’re… not human, are you?” Marjorie asked.

The woman shook her head. The man attempted a joke, “For once that’s… a good thing.”

“I-I didn’t know… I swear. After what Marjorie said… I-I-I thought you weren’t real.”

The man gave a shrug. The woman grimaced, “This wouldn’t have happened if we were honest with you to begin with.”

“Honest?” Marjorie asked. “About what?”

The two creatures exchanged a look, then, the man gave a pained nod to his partner. She frowned, “The Matthews, the ones you believed lived beside you? We’re them.” A mutual “Huh?” escaped the Dunns. The creature claiming to be Mrs. Matthews explained, “We’ve lived her for a long time. A lot longer than the short life-span humans carry.”

“Problem is…” the man said. “Every few decades we have to change our appearance or else we draw suspicion. I mean, we can fool you with gradual aging, but eventually humans have to die.”

“We don’t die so easily,” the woman added.

“So clearly,” Marjorie said, overwhelmed.

Arvin shook off his guilt long enough to speak, “So… you’re telling me, you two are… what Aliens? And every sixty or seventy years you change your appearance to keep blending?”

The man’s features flickered from the handsome thirty-something to the wrinkled, white-haired countenance of Warner Matthews. “That’s the long and short of it, pal,” he said with Warner’s tell-tale buddyism.

“Warner?” Arvin said. “It really is you!”

The man morphed back into the thirty-something, gave a nod, “Yeah-huh.”

The woman explained to Marjorie directly, “We didn’t want to move away from our home, our friends. So we just pretended to. We’re still waiting on having the new furniture delivered– that’s why the house is empty.”

“But what about not seeing you?” Marjorie asked.

The man replied, “Just bad luck. We had the day off today. When you came in to examine the house we hid ourselves– the same way we trick you into seeing these forms instead of our true ones.”

“The trickery requires focus, concentration, that’s why you saw him when he was shot,” the would-be Darlene said.

“My god,” Arvin said. “You really are our neighbors then.”

The young man chuckled, already almost fully head, “Yep, that’s us.”

“Can you ever forgive me for shooting you?”

Warner smiled, “You’re my friend, Arv and I couldn’t trick your wife and you together yet. It was as much my doing as yours. I wasn’t sure if I should tell you everything, and I’d’ve had to after we saw Marjorie break in earlier.”

“So… it’s really my fault, isn’t it?” Marjorie asked.

“Let’s just say,” Darlene began. “Everyone made mistakes.”

The human couple swallowed hard and exchanged a look. Arvin glanced up at his extra-earthly neighbor, “Lemme’ at least make it up to you. I got some steaks and some beer, we’ll have a cook-out– just like old times.”

Darlene and Warner exchanged a laugh, the latter nodded, “You’re on pal.”

A sort of (not so) quick update.

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

So, it’s been a while since I’ve said anything directly to you, my dear readers. I tend to want my work to speak for itself and don’t have much to say otherwise anyhow. Today though, I thought I’d update everyone.

As promised, each week I’ve been posting new stories, poems, or chapters of novellas and the like. For now this will stay the same. I’ve been toying with the notion of adding another day of content, but I haven’t quite worked that out yet. Rest assured that I’m still working many hours every day to keep the content coming. As you may have noticed, there’s quite a wide variety as far as genres go. While I consider myself primarily a sci-fi author, I’m no stranger to working outside that genre. (Or even outside definable monikers altogether)

So, what’s this really about? Anything special to talk about? Or just more mindless ravings from the innards of madman? Little bit of both actually. I’d like to first say thank you to everyone that has read, continues to read, or is discovering my work for the first time. I love that the internet’s given all of us a place to share these things, and the power to do what we love. While I do intend to do more with other forms of work in the future, (Ie, Novels, traditional and/or self-publishing, etc) there will always be a commitment to this site.

On that note, I would like to say that I’m working on bringing purchasable, ebook formats of certain works to the digital marketplaces. It will take some time, but keep an eye out for forthcoming details. You might be thinking; Oh, but it’s free here, why would I pay for it then? Well simply, we’ve all got to eat. Even immortals like myself– though I generally prefer the hearts of vanquished foes.

Whatever is eventually compiled and up for purchase will remain free on the site, but e-books/sales will allow people that format, which is slightly more accessible and easy to read. Apart from eventually helping me upgrade the site to a real, paid version, this will also help me avoid bread-lines somewhat, if not entirely. (I mean, they’re so damned long nowadays!) There may also be some kind of crowd-funding venture in the future, but again, I’ll keep everyone updated if/when that happens.

So there’s the thing no-one really likes to talk about, but that I kinda’ have to broach. I’m not deluded to think I’ll end up with some crazy cash-flow or pile of gold, but I’d like to be able to provide the aforementioned, and unfortunately, can’t do it without at least some avenue of funding behind it.

Phew! Okay, that wasn’t so awful, was it? (I would like to reiterate: No-one should feel obligated to commit funds– or maybe they should, you know, if they’re the guilty type. In that case, shut up and give me money!)

Anywho, tomorrow’s another short story as usual for Tuesdays and there may be a bonus story this week, but I’m not certain yet. So thanks for reading, and don’t forget to keep an eye out for more updates. I’ll give more info when it’s relevant. For now, enjoy what’s here and what’s to come, and thanks for reading!

SMN