Unidentified Funny Objects

by Resnick, Mike

  UNIDENTIFIED FUNNY OBJECTS

  Edited by Alex Shvartsman

  Copyright Page

  UNIDENTIFIED FUNNY OBJECTS

  Edited by Alex Shvartsman

  UFO Publishing

  1685 E 15th St.

  Brooklyn, NY 11229

  www.ufopub.com

  Copyright © 2012 by UFO Publishing

  Stories copyright © 2012 by the authors

  Interior illustrations © Phil Selby and Mike Jacobsen

  Octopus illustration © Ron and Joe (Art Parts)

  All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

  Cover art: Dixon Leavitt

  Typesetting & prepress production: Windhaven Press (www.windhaven.com)

  Graphics design: Emerson Matsuuchi

  Graphics wrangler: Joan Barger

  Logo design: Martin Dare

  Copy editor: Elektra Hammond

  Associate editors: Cyd Athens, James Beamon, Anatoly Belilovsky, Leah Cypess, Frank Dutkiewicz, Michael Haynes, Nathaniel Lee, Fran Wilde

  electronic versions by Elizabeth K Campbell Antimatter ePress: http://www.antimatterepress.wordpress.com/

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Cover Art by Dixon Leavitt

  UNIDENTIFIED FUNNY OBJECTS

  Copyright Page

  Alex Shvartsman: Foreword

  Scott Almes: Timber!

  Jake Kerr: The Alien Invasion as Seen in the Twitter Stream of @dweebless

  Stephanie Burgis: Dreaming Harry

  James Beamon: Fight Finale from the Near Future

  Jennifer Pelland: Temporal Shimmies

  K.G. Jewell: The Day They Repossessed My Zombies

  Lavie Tidhar: Moon Landing

  Chuck Rothman: The Last Dragon Slayer

  Deborah Walker: The Venus of Willendorf

  Ken Liu: Love Thy Neighbors

  Nathaniel Lee: The Alchemist’s Children

  Leah Cypess: The Fifty-One Suitors of Princess Jamatpie

  Sergey Lukyanenko: If You Act Now

  Zach Shephard: No Silver Lining

  Michael Kurland: Go Karts of the Gods

  Stephen D. Rogers: My Kingdom for a Horse

  Marko Kloos: Cake from Mars

  Jeff Stehman: An Unchanted Sword

  Don Sakers: The Real Thing

  Bruce Golden: 2001 Revisited via 1969

  Jamie Lackey: First Date

  Ferrett Steinmetz: One-Hand Tantra

  Anatoly Belilovsky: Of Mat and Math

  Siobhan Gallagher: All I Want for Christmas

  David Sklar: The Velveteen Golem

  Matt Mikalatos: The Working Stiff

  Jody Lynn Nye: Worm’s Eye View

  Charity Tahmaseb: The Secret Life of Sleeping Beauty

  Mike Resnick: El and Al vs. Himmler’s Horrendous Horde from Hell

  About the Publisher

  FOREWORD

  Alex Shvartsman

  A good humor story is hard to find.

  Don’t get me wrong—there are many outstanding humor books out there. Throughout the history of speculative fiction, humor has always played an important role within the genre. There are the clever flash fiction stories of Fredric Brown, the dry wit of Douglas Adams, the satire of Harry Harrison, the puns of Robert Asprin, and the comedy of Terry Pratchett, among countless others.

  And yet, such works are but a tiny fraction of the quality genre fiction out there, especially when it comes to short stories. Top science fiction and fantasy magazines will occasionally publish a humorous story, but not in every issue. You may also find an odd humor piece relegated to the back of some anthologies as a nice way to close out those books. Yet when was the last time you held an entire collection of contemporary SF/F humor in a single volume?

  When the idea to create a humor anthology first occurred to me, I researched online and was surprised to learn that no such books have been published in the last decade, at least not any that could be easily found. There were occasional humor collections with a very specific narrow theme (such as Deals with the Devil) but nothing that attempted to represent the full scope of speculative humor.

  For many readers, Unidentified Funny Objects will be the first such book. The associate editors and I have labored to put together the best possible collection of humorous stories. We read well over nine hundred submissions to select the twenty-nine tales presented here.

  My goal was to feature the widest possible variety of genres and styles. Within this book you’ll find tales ranging from a 350 word flash piece to a 10,000-plus word novella. Stories vary from gently humorous to laugh-out-loud funny, from absurdist to zany, from family friendly to edgy and pushing beyond PG-13 limits.

  We’ve included fiction from masters of speculative humor such as Mike Resnick and Jody Lynn Nye as well as brand-new names you will undoubtedly hear more about in coming years, such as James Beamon and Zach Shephard. There’s also a translated story from Russia’s most popular fantasist Sergey Lukyanenko. Although his Night Watch novels are extremely popular around the world, this is his first short story professionally published in the United States.

  I hope there’s enough interest in Unidentified Funny Objects for it to become an annual anthology. I also see it as an ongoing project, with additional free content published monthly on our web site. Please visit www.ufopub.com to read several more stories I enjoyed but couldn’t fit into the book as well as bios of all the authors.

  Good speculative humor may have been hard to find, but you have 320 pages of it in front of you. I hope you will enjoy the tales collected therein as much as I have.

  —Alex Shvartsman

  TIMBER!

  Scott Almes

  I realized I was in trouble when my realm-appointed lawyer showed up drunk and asked for spare coins. He made a valiant effort to defend me in the courtroom, but his lack of judicial knowledge, poor grasp of language, and mispronunciation of my name proved futile against the realm’s brilliant case. It didn’t help that the prosecutor was an experienced medium. He used my incorporeal, perpetually disappointed mother as a character witness.

  I was sentenced to death. The executioner immediately wheeled out a guillotine to a short round of applause.

  “They always like this part,” the executioner confided. “It’s a bit dramatic, but it keeps things flowing.”

  “I’m glad they’re having a good time,” I said.

  “That’s why I got into this line of work.” He tied up my hands and placed my head underneath the blade. “It’s a people business, you know?”

  I looked up. “This is a rather small guillotine.”

  “Travel-sized! The brochure says it has the class of a full-sized guillotine, but the portability of an axe.” The executioner leaned in. “Honestly, do you think the wheels are too much? They cost extra, but I believe they were worth it.”

  “Completely worth it. It’d be hell to carry.”

  “Exactly! If I hurt my back and I’m stuck in bed, how am I supposed to live my life? I might as well be dead.”

  “Be careful what you wish for.”

  “Ha, good one!”

  Then the blade came down.

  IT WAS MY FIRST BEHEADING, but my gut told me something didn’t go right.

  I woke up face down on a rug. The rug was in a library, so I guessed I was there too, but I was loopy and did
n’t trust my logic. I sat up and waited patiently for the room to stop flipping end over end.

  “You’re supposed to be thanking me,” said a voice.

  When the world settled, I saw an old man. A shabby wizard’s hat hung so crookedly on his head that his left eye peered through a hole in the brim. There was a steaming teapot sitting on the table next to him.

  “Well?” he prodded.

  “What?” I managed.

  “The thanking.”

  “Oh.” I paused. “Thanks for the tea.”

  “No, not for the tea!”

  “It’s not mine?” I suddenly, desperately wanted that tea.

  “It is yours,” he assured. “But it’s essential that you thank me for saving your life. Then you will feel indebted to me and we can work together.” He straightened himself. “You see, I enchanted that guillotine to summon you here when the blade came down.”

  He leaned forward, as if anticipating a treat.

  “Thanks?” I said.

  “Great! Now, to business!”

  The old man jumped off his stool, circling as he spoke, each word awkwardly punctuated with a tap from his cane. He complimented my many ingenious confidence schemes. He was honored to meet the man that resold the Arduian Queen her own castle, convinced the Farwellian fishermen to drag the Desert of the Dead, and tricked the entire town of Lamden to go without pants for an entire year.

  It seemed quite impressive, save for a single problem: I had no idea what he was talking about. However, he clearly went to great lengths to save my life and I didn’t want to disappoint him into reversing that decision. I played along, saying “Thank you” and “Honestly, it was child’s play” throughout his rant.

  “My name is Pinion, grandmaster enchanter,” he said at the end of his rant. “I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”

  I hadn’t.

  “May I call you Dunri?” he asked.

  “Why would you do that?”

  He blinked. “Isn’t that your name?”

  “Yes, of course,” I lied. “I’ve had so many names it’s hard to keep track. Dunri, Jeremiah, Copernicus, Hansel, Delilah.”

  Pinion led me to the window. His movements were excited and fast, like a bird walking on hot coals. I looked out the window before his excitement caused him to burst into flames.

  Outside was a vast, moving forest. The giant trees swayed back and forth, snoring as they slept in the afternoon sun. A few were awake and picked at some deer carcasses.

  “Treants,” I said. I had heard of the mystic living trees, but had never seen them with my own eyes. “They’re magnificent. Are you studying them?”

  “No, nothing of the sort,” Pinion replied.

  “Then what?”

  “Seeing as they are such magnificent creatures, I thought you’d help me round them up and cut them down. Tea?”

  I DRIFTED IN AND OUT as Pinion lectured me on his craft, especially during the portion on arcane standards and regulations. Luckily he repeated the important part several times: Pinion had discovered that treant wood could hold stronger enchantments than simple glass or stone.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “How tall do you think you’d be if it didn’t?” he replied.

  I instinctively rubbed the back of my neck, remembering the wooden guillotine.

  He needed a steady supply of treant wood, but was held up by activists. Their leader, Merri, had completely shut down his operation. She had forced his team of lumberjacks into a holding pattern.

  “That’s where you come in,” he said.

  “You need me to kill her?” I asked.

  “No, trick her into leaving my lumberjacks alone. Why would you kill her?”

  “Who said anything about killing her?”

  “You just did.”

  “Violence is a last resort.”

  “There’s to be no violence.”

  “Then why do you keep bringing it up?” I asked. “I’ll accept your job, but only on the condition of nonviolence.”

  “Very good,” he said. “Now, your fee. I have heard rumors that your special talents in deception and trickery do come at a price. Shall a thousand kovacs suffice?”

  By my conservative estimates, I was worth about three kovacs.

  “I accept!” I declared. “Now, let’s discuss my advance.”

  “There will be no advance,” he said. “However…”

  He waved his hands and started to mumble. I asked him to repeat himself a few times before I realized he was casting a spell, not trying to get my attention. A wooden guillotine magically glided into the room.

  “This is the twin of the guillotine you met earlier,” he explained. “If you fail, I need but repeat a simple command word and you’ll be summoned underneath it. This blade is also enchanted.”

  “So, when the blade comes down I’ll be transported back to the courtroom?”

  “No, it chops your head off. The enchantment will light your corpse on fire afterwards. Now, shall we be off?”

  THAT NIGHT, PINION LED ME into town to show me the inn that Merri frequented.

  Along the way, I did what I believed any good conman would do, and practiced all of my fake voices. Pinion didn’t seem interested and told me that most of them sounded the same. I found this a little insulting, as half of them were supposed to be women.

  When we got to town, I immediately went into a store of fine gentlemen’s wares and bought a fake moustache. I didn’t have any money, so I traded my belt for it. I walked out wearing it proudly.

  Once again, Pinion didn’t seem amused.

  “She’s never seen you before,” he said. “Why do you need a disguise?”

  “A disguise is always a good idea,” I said, using my wiseman voice.

  “She doesn’t trust people with mustaches.”

  “And how can you possible know that?”

  Before I could explain the true correlation between mustaches and trustworthiness, he tore it off my face and suddenly I was worth only two kovacs.

  JUST OUTSIDE THE INN, I employed my best confidence scheme to persuade Pinion to give me beer money. After relenting, he confided in me that he had a hard time telling the difference between trickery and shameless begging. I told him that was exactly the expertise that he’d paid for, explained there were countless tools in my arsenal, and ran into the inn before he asked any more questions.

  I went straight to the bar. The bartender had some enchanting skills of her own. She poured me a beer and tapped the glass, which sent a web of frost up the sides. I was so impressed I quickly spent all of my money to see her do it again.

  I was being wobbly and sad that my money was gone until I remembered that I was supposed to be looking for Merri and doing conman things. Then I realized that I had created a great cover identity, a common drunkard, and spent a moment congratulating myself.

  I scanned the bar and spotted a likely candidate. Pinion had given me a detailed description, but had bookended it with two long rants, making it hard to concentrate on what he had said. I prepared to make my move, went over a few opening lines in my head, and fell off my stool.

  Somebody pulled me up. I kept my bearings on where I thought I saw Merri, but was disappointed to realize that my target was actually a stuffed panther.

  “That is a big cat. Not Merri,” I said aloud to prevent making the same mistake again.

  “I’m Merri,” said the stranger holding me up.

  I turned to look at her. She did, in fact, look very Merri-ish. I told her so.

  “You must be a bit of a lightweight,” she said.

  “I haven’t eaten since I was beheaded.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I said thanks for helping me up.”

  She was very pretty, in a blurry sort of way. She got me a glass of water and stabilized me in a chair with armrests.

  “So, what made you take a few too many pulls from the barrel?” she asked.

  Even in my hazy state, I knew that was a good opening
.

  “I am frustrated with the cold, careless bastards that exist in our realm!” I leaned over and used my secretive voice. “Did you know there’s an enchanter around here that’s trying to chop down mermaids?”

  “The treants, right? Not mermaids.”

  “Of course, treants! Mermaids? Ha! Nobody cares about mermaids.”

  “Actually, I’ve led a few marches against the wrongful fishing of mermaids.”

  “Naturally,” I said matter-of-factly. “Everybody loves mermaids.”

  “But you just—”

  “Said that I’m infuriated they’re chopping down treants. That’s what I definitely said. I remember it. I was there.”

  Merri paused and looked me over. “Well, if you believe what you say, perhaps you’d be interested in volunteering tomorrow?”

  PINION PREPARED A BEDROOM for me at his tower. I stumbled in late and he woke me up after only a few hours of sleep. He flung open the shades and sunlight came barging through the window like a horde of barbarians.

  “A conman needs his sleep,” I told him sagely.

  “We have to go over your plan,” he said.

  I thought carefully, and added, “If a conman cannot get sleep, then bacon must be provided.” I then explained to him the long tradition of bacon and confidence schemes and how they were perfectly wed like the stars and the sky.

  As he cooked, a fleet of enchanted brooms swept in and gave the entire room a once over. Pinion explained how he had carved each one from treant wood. I only half-listened because they would not stop chasing me around the table.

  We sat down and I tried to eat, but my wooden stool kept walking away from the table. I chose to eat while standing. After I was done, I noticed that Pinion was staring at me. I leaned a few inches in either direction and his eyes followed me the entire time. He sneezed, but his eyes didn’t close.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “Are there eggs?” I asked.

  “No. I mean, there are eggs, but…”

  I made him cook me eggs before we continued. They were a bit on the runny side. I told him so.