Fiction

The end is coming. You've realized the end was coming for many days now — your end.

The barrack is only a flimsy facade of protection from the Northern Siberian Arctic onslaught of winter. It is your refuge of four thin walls: a roof, a door and window frames of timber felled by prisoners on last legs with axes and planes, axe blades you want to use slit your wrists. If only… if only the axe could cut deep enough to allow you to slowly bleed blood-red into the white snow, under your ever-green of trees, while watching a last gray-blue moon fade into the clouds along with your life. If only. You pray for an ending, pray for escape — but answered prayers only reach the dead here. You pray anyway.

Prunella’s fingers went to Genissley’s near perfect, but aging human skin. Doing a quick chemical analysis of her skin, she determined she was highly ex-foliated from using a medium grade falafel earlier in the day. Her skin was nearly pristine, although recently washed with filthy Outer Dome water. Her skin retained the residue of a no-fat, sugar-free Cinnamon Dolce Latte, with whip cream, the grit of the high explosive Oxymoron-2, along with bits and pieces of goat fur.

Jonas sat by the window, looking out to the main strip. A few cars drifted by, a few people followed. The waitress came by and spoke to him in a sympathetic voice. He knew it was only a matter of time now and when the truck did come into view, Jonas almost felt relieved. It screeched to a halt in front of the diner and a barrage of milkshake containers crashed against the glass where he sat. Everyone flinched but Jonas; he had seen this and a lot more. As the truck roared off, a thousand names being thrown his way and the waitress giving chase with her broom, Jonas actually smiled. Tomorrow, he thought and reached into his pocket for the cheque. Graduation day.

Editor's Note: Can an otherworldy father and son ever agree on American Football?

“Father,” the son said, the tone of his voice indicating a question or commentary to come.

“Yes, Son,” the father answered.

“Lady Sisley, my darling, I bought Disneyland yesterday,” Brandt David told the grand old dame as they languished in the relaxation and restoration chamber, deep in the bowels of Casa Buildmore. Billions of highly charged luxurion particles bombarded, stimulated and rejuvenated their cosseted skin, muscles and bones in radiated penetrations; skin so petted, pampered and pulsed alive by quantum particles that it glowed, radiant and glamorously rich in any mood lighting and for every high-society occasion.

Dusk stalked a tent on the North Ridge of Mount Everest. Sited well above the North Col, the small nylon dome shivered like a beaten dog beneath repeated blows from the wind. Two climbers crouched within their sleeping bags within the tent.

Prunella brought the Zeppelin down at the edge of The Dome, hoping for a gentle touchdown onto a recent snowfall that covered the bombed out, abandoned and derelict, Veterans & William L.E. Gates the 30th, golf course. The landing could be accomplished with all of the android crew pitching in willingly. They loved Prunella's so soft skin and her domination over their human nemesis and geeky turd-face overlord, Willard the Weird. Prunella had advanced skin, soft as kid gloves, while theirs was the texture of laminated cardboard.

My thoughts were mixed about the job I was about to take on, but the stories I heard on Droidon Station Seven had peaked my curiosity and I was anxious to get to it. We were in orbit over the planet and just about ready to descend.

London’s broken out in fires,
the budgets in the can.
Congress is a’ mired,
and we’re in Afghanistan.
Europe’s a total mess,
and China’s getting dissed,
Super-Hero-In-Training… where are you?

****

Augustus, our hero, is in bed pretending to be asleep.

“Augustus, you must get up. We’re in a terrible mess. There is no other but you.” The President of the Unites States is poking our tiny hero with the rubber tip of a tooth stimulator.