They stood by the charred crater that had been their home and listened to the wind.
It told them, You’ve been hard done by.
It said, They had no right.
It whispered, Independence is our destiny.
It commanded, Hoist the New Antland flag, stand tall, and let the humans come.
The reporter looked away as the private’s family marched out to face the television cameras. A soggy flag drooped at half-mast on their porch. They spoke of a kid who led rubber band fights, flashlight tag, bicycle jousts. His pen paused, hovered. A phrase consumed his mind: pornographer of sorrow.
Joseph S. Pete won a four month’s supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon by placing second in the poetry category of the 2010 PBR Art Contest. John Donne couldn’t say the same.
War was tough, and we had grown soft. The killing proved too much, and so we did the only logical thing. Create two opposing supercomputers to simulate everything for us.
Except they realised the solution faster than we could imagine, and then it was no longer a simulation. We’d lost.
Nathan Barber is a student currently studying nuclear engineering. Most people who know him well find his choice of study material slightly unnerving given his eagerness to capture the essence of a ‘mad scientist.’
“What are you up to?” muttered Wendel, eyes narrowed.
None of the fifty-seven fuzzy orange caterpillars inching across his driveway offered an explanation.
“I don’t trust you,” said Wendel. Then he stomped one, for emphasis.
Deep underground, the Caterpillar Council murmured grimly. Casualties had always been inevitable in this war.
Two rectangular prongs and one round prong. Perfection.
Joe had worked at Hob’s Hardware long enough to know that, at least. These three prongs were the holy triumvirate, the electron bearers, the voltage senders, the ohm inducers.
In these troubled days, that was all he was truly certain of anymore.
“Tonight we shall incur the esteem of our ancestors!” bellowed King Tawnyfeathers as his eager army growled in anticipation.
But his heart wasn’t in this fight. He wished he were lying in his garden, gazing at the clouds, interred in the earth he had cultivated.
Ah, to be a potato…
This story was based on a title suggestion by Claire Martin via Facebook.
A bubbling creek wended its way through the sun-dappled wood, between the wild apple trees and the bushes drooping with juicy purple berries.
An inquisitive fawn dipped its tongue into the creek and pulled away with a frightened bleat.
Upstream, where the beavers built and warred, the bricked-in bayou boiled.
Huddled in the muddy trenches, they dodged raindrops and warded off bullets with prayers.
“Man, this is really serious!” one soldier shouted to the other.
“Yeah, he usually writes lighthearted stories! This subject matter doesn’t really lend itself to jokes!”
“He’ll probably do some kind of meta-level cop-out with it!”
Ecstatically they haul our creaking wooden horse to the center of their city. The molten sun cooks our hidden wooden womb while spitting sweat blinds us.
My beating heart embraces the huge coming of death that will bring an end to this, the greatest war the world has ever seen.
Mike Cahill is the President of www.futureknowledge.biz. He borrowed the title of this story from Plato.
After winning the war, they had to figure out what to do with their free time.
They tried paintball, laser tag, Nerf guns, video games, team sports, martial arts, strip poker, and full-contact chess, but nothing quite filled their need.
They needed a new enemy; they built a space ship.