by Frank Carey
“By a single vote, Sam’l is the winner.”
A stunned silence filled the room. Finally, Timo’n spoke.
“I accept the judgment. My lord, Sam’l, what is your bidding?”
“Captain, call HQ and inform them of the succession of power. Then, I want you to contact the Earth Command to request a meeting to discuss an armistice. Brother, you and I need to talk. Madeline and Joshua, thank you for bringing this to my attention. You have done a great service to both our races.”
“Sam’l, sir, Joshua and I don’t understand. You and Timo’n decided the fate of so many people on a cooking contest?”
“Madeline, there are two things supremely important to my race: power and good dessert.”
With that the two brothers went off to the kitchen to discuss their dessert making techniques, leaving the two humans to sip cocoa and enjoy the fire.
Starter
Rosalee picked up a small statue from the almost-empty shelf. It was a small ceramic dragon in black, gold, and red. Aunt Fern probably bought it on one of her trips to the orient. Rosalee carefully packed it in a box of brick-a-brack from the shelf. She looked and saw that the shelf was empty as well as the rest of the living room. She realized that there was one room left to finish before they could call the house empty and ready to sell.
Rosalee still had not come to grips with Aunt Fern's untimely demise. Fern was an explorer, one of the last of a line of explorers that stretched back hundreds of years. Rosalee had to admit, dying in the crater of an active volcano did have the panache that Fern was known for.
Rosalee entered the empty kitchen on her way to the pantry, the last room left to empty. Fern’s pantry was huge, probably 1000 sq. ft. in area. The room had shelves, nooks, cupboards, and tables. Some people swear that the pantry is actually larger on the inside than on the outside.
A crew had been in earlier and mostly emptied the room. All that was left for Rosalee was a single cupboard. According to Aunt Fern’s will, the contents of the cupboard were only to be removed by Rosalee, no one else.
Using a key given to her by her uncle Jonas, the executor of the estate, Rosalee opened the doors and peered inside the cupboard. She saw that the cupboard contained one, and only one, old glass storage jar complete with orange rubber gasket and wire bail. Inside the jar was a light-beige substance with small bubbles, like viscous foam. Attached to the bail with an elastic string was a torn brown paper tag. The only legible word on the tag was “starter.” The rest of the tag was missing.
Rosalee took the jar out into the better light of the dining room. There, she opened the jar and took a whiff. She winced when the intense pungent smell of bread filled her nostrils. Just then, her phone rang, so she put the open jar down on a work table and took the call.
“Hello, this is Rosalee.”
“Ms. Jenkins? This is Jacob Masters. I’m sorry to hear about your aunt Fern. I worked with her a few years ago, and I cannot believe she’s dead. I’m in the neighborhood, and I was wondering if I could stop by to talk about a specific piece she collected, which I would be interested in purchasing.
There was a crashing noise behind Rosalee.
“Mr. Masters, could you hold for a moment,” Rosalee said as she turned toward the noise.
Rosalee turned to see the jar smashed on the floor. She looked up and saw what had smashed the jar. She screamed.
“Ms. Jenkins, are you all right? I will be there in two minutes. Hang on.”
Rosalee barely heard Masters as she backed away from the horror. In front of her was a foamy, beige mass that reached to the ceiling and smelled strongly of raw bread. It flowed toward her as if it knew she was there. It was definitely hunting her. She ran into the living room only to find the thing blocking her way to the front door. Part of it came up behind her, surrounding her.
Just as Rosalee thought she was doomed, the front door burst open and someone ran into the room. He was tall, muscular, with a head of hair that a romance novel cover model would be proud of. He had a massive weapon slung across his back and was carrying two fire extinguishers.
“Ms. Jenkins, duck!” the man said as he aimed and fired the fire extinguishers at the thing. When the streams of cold carbon dioxide hit the thing, it reared back as if it had been burnt. This created an opening that allowed the man to reach past, grab Rosalee, and pull her outside the house.
“Rosalee, I’m Jacob, Jacob Masters. I see you found the item I was interested in buying. Wasn’t there a tag on it with instructions not to leave the jar open for any length of time?”
“Hi. There was a tag, but all it said was “starter.” The rest was torn off.”
They both stopped when they heard thumping coming from the house. Jacob dropped the spent extinguishers and unslung his weapon.
“Rosalee, that thing is a starter, like for sourdough bread, but it is a very ancient and robust recipe. We need to stop it and contain it.”
John pulled a jar, similar to the one she found, from his pack and handed it to her.
“Take this and get ready.”
At that moment, the thing burst through the door and flowed toward the pair. When it got close, Jacob unleashed his weapon. Flames poured from it and engulfed the thing. John reached down and grabbed a handful of creature and dropped it into the jar that Rosalee was holding. He continued to spray down the creature with flames. The smell of fresh-baked bread filled the air. Soon, the creature stopped moving. The crisis was over.
The following day found Rosalee and Jacob at a local church sale. They were standing behind a table covered with loaves of baked bread. They had sold hundreds of loaves, but still had a line stretching out the door. Customers were sampling the bread with most commenting on how good it was. One customer asked, “How do you make it?”
“It's a very old family recipe,” Rosalee said, smiling.
Behind her, under the table, the piece of starter Jacob salvaged, writhed in anger.
Book Lover
It was a quiet morning in the bookshop. The holiday shoppers had petered out as they headed to lunch, so Jim Marks, the owner and avowed bibliophile, went through his shop with a feather duster, hunting down even the smallest of dust bunnies.
Jim stopped at a case in the front of the store. The case contained a signed first edition of My Battles by the great kaiju hunter, General Douglas Worther, ret. The book rested on a velvet pillow inside a hermetically-sealed, nitrogen filled, temperature controlled chamber equipped with motion sensors and a laser security grid. The book itself is worth a minimum of one million dollars at auction, but to Jim it is sentimentally priceless because the general was Jim’s maternal grandfather.
Jim was pulled from his reverie by the sound of people running past the front of the store. As he went to the door, Jim heard the distinctive roar of a major kaiju just outside the shop. Before he could hit the kaiju emergency switch and seal the shop, a blast hit the building, raining debris down on Jim.
Jim regained consciousness covered in dust, debris, and books. He stood up to find a large steel beam, part of the building’s structure, lying on top of the general’s book case. He reached under the beam and pulled out what was left of the book. It was destroyed, shredded, and water soaked. Tears came to Jim’s eyes.
As he stood there with the remnants of his grandfather’s book slipping through his fingers, Jim heard the call of the kaiju a short distance away. He was incensed. Jim remembered his grandfather’s battle cry as he engaged his last kaiju in battle. Jim looked at the ruins of his bookstore and made a fateful decision. He went into the back storeroom.
Moments later, Jim emerged wearing full kaiju-fighter armor—his grandfather’s armor. He carried his grandfather’s weapon, a Mark 36 King Kaiju Decimator BFG with optional missile launcher and flame thrower. This was the same gun that gramps had used to kill 15 kaiju during his illustrious career. Jim headed out the front door while racking a round into the .50 caliber express nitro rifle’s chamber. It was time for Jim to kic
k some kaiju hind end.
Finding the rampaging kaiju was not hard. All Jim had to do was follow the roaring, and boy, did this one like to roar. Jim turned a corner and found the beast standing over a wrecked commuter train, terrorizing the passengers.
“Yo! Butt-ugly! Step away from the train, and prepare to meet your maker!” Jim yelled to the giant.
The kaiju turned and faced Jim with glowing orange eyes and gallons of dripping saliva. It opened its massive maw and let loose with a blast of fire-breath hot enough to burn steel. Jim was prepared for this old-school tactic, so he activated his force shield and knelt on the ground to brace himself against the force of the blast. The wall of flame parted when it hit the shield and moved around Jim like a river at a fork.
The kaiju couldn’t keep up the onslaught, so it stopped, breathing heavily, with even more saliva dripping from its tooth-filled maw. This was the opportunity that Jim was waiting for, so he pull the BFG’s triggers and let loose with a barrage worthy of a World War II battleship.
A block away, a Civilian Defense Force Unit heard the commotion and quickened their pace to double-time. They envisioned whole city blocks being decimated by a rogue kaiju.
Moments later, the Unit came upon a scene of devastation, but not the one they had expected. Instead of human bodies, they found smoking pieces of the Kaiju strewn everywhere, each ranging from rare to extremely well done. As they watched, Jim leisurely walked out from the smoke and flames with a chunk of medium-well done kaiju hanging from a dead branch. As they watched, Jim took a bite, then, while noisily chewing, he offered it to the unit.
“Want a bite? It really does taste like chicken.”
Table for One
It was a beautiful early autumn morning at the coffee shop, and business was good. Marla was working several tables with a steady flow of patrons moving in and out of the store. One guy, Table 13, had been there for a while. He was on his second Danish and third espresso, and Marla wasn’t sure if he was going to explode from the caffeine or the sugar intake. She turned her attention to her other customers as 13 answered his phone.
As she got back to work, she noticed the new kitchen helper, Charlie, bussing tables as fast as patrons left them. It seemed that no table was ever left a mess for more than a minute, yet Charlie was never pushy. It was as if he had some kind of sixth sense about the tables.
“Charlie, you got some kind of ESP about dirty tables?” she asked as he passed by with his brown bus tub.
“No, ma'am, I'm just trying to be efficient. Lots of cold Christmas shoppers out there needing a place to take a load off,” he said smiling.
“Charlie, mind me asking, how old you are?”
“No, ma'am, I don't mind at all. I’m seventeen, but I'll be eighteen on Christmas day,” he replied as he took a full bin back to the kitchen.
Marla was amazed that the owner was able to find someone at that age with Charlie’s work ethic. He was like a machine, yet he always had time to help a patron or one of the other staff. She thought that Charlie would go far in this world.
The first part of the morning rush was over, so she had time to take a break. First, though, she checked on Table 13.
“How are you doing, sir? Need anything, maybe more coffee or a cheese Danish?”
“Another coffee would be great. Thank you.”
Marla went off and got him a refill.
“So, how is the shopping going?” she asked as she returned with a full cup of coffee.
“Actually, I’m not shopping; I’m working a job.”
“You’re working on Christmas Eve? What kind of work do you do?”
“I’m a high-tech repair man. I work on contract. Someone has a problem, so they’ll call me, give me the details, and arrange payment. I go, fix the problem, and they pay me. Simple really. I do enjoy my work, though,” he said sipping his coffee. At that moment, his phone rang. “Please, excuse me, I really need to take this,” he said.
Marla smiled and nodded as she went on break, though she kept an eye on her only customer from the server station. Charlie had finished bussing the tables and was nowhere to be seen.
Just as her break ended, Table 13 finished his coffee and was motioning to her for his check. She walked up and gave it to him as he was putting on his coat.
“Thank you, Marla, great food and great job.”
“You’re welcome. Wait, how did you know my name?”
“Oh, I know all sorts of things about you. You're my job,” he said as he pulled out a strange looking gun and pointed it at her chest. “I’m sorry I have to do this, but someone upstream really wants you dead. I promise this won’t hurt…” His apology was cut off by a blast of white light that blew a hole through his chest, knocking him back into his chair.
“I was wondering when this guy was going to get around to trying to kill you,” Charlie said as he walked over to the body and poked it with the barrel of an equally strange looking gun. “You okay?”
Marla nodded as the cooks came out of the kitchen and stared at Charlie and the corpse. The crime scene was surprisingly clean with no blood anywhere, just wires and gears.
“He was an android assassin from up the time stream. He’s not really dead, just incapacitated. In a little while, he and I are going to have a talk,” Charlie said as he patted the assassin on the head. He put his gun in the tub and pulled out a disk, which he affixed to the body. When he pressed the center of the disk, the body disappeared. Marla looked at the kitchen helper and could only get out a few words.
“What just happened?” she asked, not understanding what was going on.
“I wish I could tell you, but explanations will have to wait a few years,” Charlie said as he picked up all of the assassin’s stray parts and put them in the tub. When he finished, he pulled out another disk. “You all have a good Christmas,” he said as he pressed the disk and disappeared.
“Well, it looks like we need another kitchen helper. Damn, I liked the kid,” one of the cooks said.
The three of them looked at each other as the lunch crowd arrived.
The World is Your Stage
“Listen up! ‘My Mother the Venusian’ starts in five minutes. All cast to their marks. Move it!” the stage manager yelled into the massive green room. On cue, two humans and five AI frames headed to the green room door. Another show was about to start on the Sitcom Shopping Channel. The SSC motto: Every sitcom made or even thought of.
Brewster’s frame sat near the coffee machine with a forlorn look on his synthetic face. As artificial intelligences go, Brewster was almost borderline depressed. He constantly longed for more. After inception, Brewster tried his hand at demolition derby, paintball target, soda machine, and even a communications satellite, none of which gave him any feeling of satisfaction. Brewster wanted more. The problem was Brewster didn’t know what he wanted more of.
At the AI employment agency, it was recommended to Brewster that he try his hand at acting. Perhaps the adulation of the vid-watching masses would perk him up, so Brewster took classes in acting at the Adolphus School of Cyber Drama, one of the most prestigious AI schools on the net. Brewster seemed to have a knack for acting. He graduated at the top of his class and several repertory companies offered him jobs. After a time, he felt that he needed more, so he took a job at the Sitcom Shopping Channel with the hope that he could find what he was missing.
It was now the third year of his contract which meant renewal time. Brewster had worked on virtually every show the Network had, but wasn’t satisfied by any of them, which was why he was depressed. He just couldn’t figure out what to do.
“Brewster, why the long face?” an AI by the name of Clarice asked from inside a chrome robot frame.
“Hi, Clarice. I’m ok; I just have a lot on my mind. My contract is up for renewal and I don’t know what I want to do,” he said.
“Well, I heard that there is an opening in the Live Act Group, you know the one that goes outside and interacts with real people. You
get to change frames, but there isn’t a camera between you and your audience.”
Brewster was intrigued, but there was a small problem. “Sounds great, but I have never been outside. I have been onstage, but only inside a building. I have never actually been out in the open.”
“Really?” Clarice said with disbelief. “It’s not that hard. I did it for a few years when I worked as a landscaper. You get used to it.”
Brewster thought for a moment, and then came to a decision, “I’ll do it,” he said as he walked off to meet with the director.
Clarice met up with Brewster a few hours later. “Clarice, I did it, I signed up for the outdoor gig,” Brewster said with pride. “I start tomorrow out in front of the SSC studios. Wish me luck,” he said as he backed his frame into a charging station.
“Good luck, Brewster,” Clarice said as she did the same with her frame. Once plugged in, both AIs returned to the ‘Net for the night.
The next morning was Brewster’s debut on the outside. He checked the script one final time before heading to the door that lead out to the waiting crowds. He opened the door and walked out to meet his adoring fans.
Waiting outside for him were at least ten thousand fans who had been following him for years during his career at SSC. The throng cheered at the top of their lungs when he appeared. He stood there staring at his adoring fans and realized that he was experiencing something he had never experienced before. He had full-blown stage fright. With a scream worthy of any movie heroine, he almost ripped the door off its hinges as he ran back inside, vowing to be happy and never do a live outdoor show again.
Gate 47
Forty-seven angry travelers, stranded at snowed-in Gate 47 at an airport somewhere in New Mexico, can make for an ugly scene. All they need is a catalyst, and he just walked up to the desk with frustration on his face and fire in his eyes.
