November 24 Monthly Micro Shortlist
Sci-fi, but tiny
The Shortlist is in!
This month’s Monthly Micro Competition shortlist is here. Congratulations to the ten stories that made this month’s shortlist, and commiserations to those that didn’t. Well done to everyone who wrote something and submitted it.
We have ten amazing stories for you to read and enjoy. Remember to cast your vote for the story you loved the most, as the micro with the most votes wins the coveted People’s Prize!
The prompt this month was a genre, SCIENCE FICTION, and the word limit was 150. Voting is open until 23.59 GMT on Monday 25th November and the winners will be announced on the 26th.
Adrift
After a while you forget you’re afraid. You retract your helmet and lift your face to a pink bloom of celestial cloud. It smells of sour milk and steel. It won’t be long now. You don’t dwell on the shattered craft that failed you or if there might yet be a way to escape. Explorer’s folly, they’d said when you left, and you don’t wonder now if they were right. You sit cross legged in a vast field of ilmenite dust, remove your glove and trace circles in the surface with your finger while you wait. You think of a lost planet far away, where you fished with your father on a clear lake, cooked your catch over the reckless embers of a coal fire, tasted sugar-white flesh in your mouth. As you breathe your last under a three-moon sky, you know, in the end, you were always going home.
A Mermaid Talks to an Alien in a Sea Cave
‘I thought you said you were Martians?’
‘An app translation error. We’re marsh people. From our planet’s wetlands.’
‘So why come to Earth?’
‘Plenty of water and food. Ideal temperatures. It seemed perfect until we met intelligent life.’
‘Dolphins?’
‘Yes, they explained their suffering. The nets, pollution, fish extinctions, climate
change.’
‘You talked to humans too?’
‘Not successfully. Their language is basic; doesn’t cover the higher frequencies. A male
attacked us so we submerged.’
‘Ever since our ancestors first encountered humans at sea, there have been terrible
stories of abuse. We avoid them now; especially the men.’
‘We’ll do the same.’
‘But you’ll stay?’
‘We have no choice. Our planet is overheating worse than yours; drying up. But we
think we can make a home here.’
‘Fantastic. We need an ally.’
‘And, of course, Earth has one redeeming feature: the oceans are full of our favourite
food.’
‘Seaweed?’
‘No. Plastics!’
Dog Eat Dog
There’s something wrong with the dog. Nalla has witnessed natural-reversion behaviour before, but never in the street like this. Only at the test facility downtown, times her cousin Kendy smuggled her in, the pair of them feral with insurgency. Nalla crouches, instinctively, and the dog’s snout smudges wet against her hand. Her grandaddy had owned an original-real dog. Cindy would shadow Nalla everywhere, make her feel protected. Nalla refocuses and tries a basic enquiry -latest ice mass loss?- but the dog just gazes at her. She should call it in. Any kind of malfunctioning roboticized creature is dangerous. Instead, she air-messages Kendy. He’s adept at erasing tracking chips. She could hide the dog, safeguard it at home. She scritches its ears. The dog plants a paw on Nalla’s arm. She can’t move. Then she hears it, from the dog’s radial transmitter: ‘Subject has failed susceptibility test. Send disposal unit.’
Give Thanks to The Trust
‘We give thanks to The Trust,’ my father says once we are sitting at the table ready to eat.
I mumble the words, head bowed, hair damp from the cold water I’d splashed over myself earlier. Hanging out in the wastelands makes you grimy. Grey ash-like flakes float in the air, cling to the skin, make you lick your lips to rid yourself of that strange lingering taste. Some of my friends say it’s the remains of those that burned. But none of us know.
We eat in silence. Something is not right. It’s there in my mother’s eyes, in the way she carefully serves my food, and in the way she gently brushes against me. After dinner and once my father has gone to write his sermon, I ask if my notification has arrived.
‘Yes,’ she whispers, pulling me close. ‘They’re coming. The Trust is coming. Run, child. Run.’
Opening Night at The Pestaurant, June 2054
The waiter deposits our plates with a flourish. My mealworm taco stares back at me. It smells like cooked wood.
Until then, surrounded by candlelight and laughter, I could pretend this was an ordinary night, from before. Before the droughts and wars and finally, for those left, the rebuilding. Before meat bans and belt-tightening.
Tonight’s meant to be a celebration of things going back to normal. Because what’s more normal than eating transgenic fucking grasshoppers?
You smile, grab your fork. Always trying to make the best of things.
– Tastes like chicken, you say.
I imagine biting into a roast bird, skin crackling, rosemary oil dribbling.
You laugh but I’ve seen your scars: criss-crossing your back; airplane trails in a long-ago sky, faded as our dreams.
I force a bite. If I pretend really hard, it could be minced beef sticking between my teeth, filling the yawning gap inside.
Retirement
Sherburn’s fingers traced the image of his daughter’s face. ‘Why do I have to be here?’
’You know the answer, Dad. Everyone over 75 has to be in the Retirement Home. Which reminds me. You’re going to the orientation dinner tonight, right?’
’I’m afraid that’s required, too.’ He smiled and ended the call.
The orientation ‘dinner’ consisted of him, seated in front of a giant wallscreen, and the
orderly who escorted him. He understood, as an uploaded, virtual person, he didn’t need food. Still, it seemed like there should be something.
The wallscreen came to life. He wanted to look away, but the orderly made him watch. It was part of the agreement the Earth had made with the invading aliens. Besides, it would bring closure.
He watched as two reptilian aliens sat at a table in real-life and consumed his former
body – and understood he could never go back.
Striking
On Mars, he digs like he dug yesterday, and the day before. First, swiping away unrooted topsoil, triangulating downward until he finds the packed maroon chunks that are easier removed by hand.
His left glove snags on a sharpened edge of his hole and tears. Not deep enough to expose skin but enough to force a pause. A heavy sigh. He’d walk a bit further afield this time; far enough that he can’t see the other gold rushers bobbing against the dunes.
When he does look down again, he sees it. Something running thicker than water but
thinner than oil. He touches it and his glove comes back chartreuse.
Later, he’d tell the press that he thought of closing up the hole because of the danger. The possibility.
What he really did was bow his head. Cry into his second-hand face shield and whisper, maybe I’ve found my way out.
The Last Catch
The aquarium wall separated us but I pressed close, my hands leaving blurry smudges. Sudden tears clouded my sight. I blinked and gazed into the greenery of their eyes.
It had been twelve moon rises since they’d been captured. Their ship had appeared drifting in space until caught up in our trailing net. The captain had summoned me, the onboard expert in alien flora and fauna, for research, tests and conclusions about the usefulness of our new encounter.
Dutifully I’d conducted the standard risk assessments, extracted fluids, studied reactions. I’d regarded them as I would any other laboratory experiment. I’d produced an interim report assuring the captain of their low intelligence and benign nature. The next stage would involve attempting some sort of rudimentary communication. I assembled my usual toolkit of flash cards, musical instruments and keypads. It was all going smoothly, until they started to sing.
The Time Puddle Above Evelyn’s Garden
A brackish-looking puddle materializes above Evelyn’s garden. She pours a cup of tea with hands that swell in the oceanic currents of arthritis. She ponders the undulating impossibility over her morning pills.
Evelyn’s galoshes squelch to a stop between rows of heirlooms and soft clouds of dill.
She looks up.
An alternate Evelyn peers back.
An Evelyn who compressed time and space when she was young, instead of marrying a
man who snuffed her brilliance.
The Evelyns reach for themselves.
They dip fingers through their reflection.
Tomatoes ripen and fall, dill seeds litter the ground.
A garden without an Evelyn.
Where to Find Eden
Long pale fingers, pluck an object from the woodland floor. The tips glow with the thrill of the find.
“Found something,” Almay shouts.
She shows the treasure to the senior archaeologist. It doesn’t look much; a small green apple. They crane their necks upwards to see a canopy of gnarled branches above them.
“This must be the tree from the ancient Earth texts,” Majori says, placing a palm against the crevasses of the bark. Nothing like this grows on their barren planet.
“And if this is the tree, then this could be the place we’ve been searching for.”
They observe myriad greens surrounding them; buds, flowers and fruit growing in
abundance. The smell of ancient wood, filling their lungs.
“It certainly looks like a garden of paradise. With riches like this, it’s inconceivable Earth
had to be abandoned.”
They place their hands on the tree in reverence. Fingers glowing.