“Sam? Saaaaaam! There’s a dwarfy elf thing on the lawn!”
Sam rolled out of bed. “Quit gibbering, woman! What is it?” He stumbled to the window.
There was a hobbit in the front yard.
“Dwarfy elf thing?” said Sam. “You have to read some Tolkien.”
He went back to sleep.
“Is this what happiness is supposed to be like?” he asked himself. “Am I happy?”
He stepped out of his door. “Have I ever been happy?”
He made his way toward town.
“Oh, right. This makes me happy!” he thought, as his robot hands crushed another puny human head.
Tom Brendlinger often goes by the username of TomBrend.
The floor of the small, drably painted room was covered in sticky notes. Frantic “To Do” lists were scribbled on them, with frequent duplications and repetitions.
A brilliant man had once lived here.
He’d been obsessive-compulsive. That explained the sticky notes.
The battery-powered light bulb he’d swallowed explained the brilliance.
“‘You saved my life, Ratman! How can I thank you?’ – ‘I didn’t save you so you could thank me, Mr. Cheese. I just wanted to eat you myself!’ – ‘Oh no! Help me, someone!”
“Rusty, stop playing with your food!” snapped mother. “Why can’t you act like we normal mice do?”
“They emerged at twenty-three hundred hours and were above sixty major population centers within thirty minutes. For twelve hours they scanned us in ways we don’t even understand.”
“And then they just… left?”
“Yep. Gone.”
“Any theories?”
“We think maybe they were looking for something. And they didn’t find it.”
It was New Year’s Eve, and the world was quiet. There were no people banging on pots and pans, no fireworks, no descending balls of light.
The humans peacefully, mysteriously slept.
Arthur C. Clarke predicted contact with extraterrestrial life in the year twenty-ten.
He was wrong by half an hour.
She was a natural athlete; she was born running and never stopped. She had a long career as a world champion and Olympic gold-medalist in track and field.
At the age of one hundred and three she stumbled over a chair, which gave Death a chance to finally overtake her.
Eagor was asleep on the couch.
“Lazy nephew,” muttered Dr. Frankensteve affectionately. “I shall soon cure that!” He drew a device covered in blinking lights out of his pocket.
With a flash, Eagor was transformed into a super industrious bumblebeaver.
“What have I done!?” cried Dr. Frankensteve, and changed him back.
“I missed the train again,” whined Alyssa over the phone to Gunther, her unsympathetic pet gorilla.
Gunther said, “Suck it up, princess,” but it was in sign language, so Alyssa didn’t see.
“Thanks for listening, hun,” said Alyssa. “See you tonight!”
As usual, Gunther spent the day plotting his escape.
“My stuff is in the truck already. Where’s yours?”
“I still think this is a colossal waste of time.”
“Look, I don’t make the rules. On Boxing Day we pack stuff, drive it around, and unpack it again. It’s tradition.”
“No, it’s idiotic.”
“Are you calling me stupid?”
“Absolutely yes.”