Requests

Lunch with Napoleon was a bust.  King George now saw the fun-sized Emperor was determined to have his Waterloo.

“Plan B,” George thought as he fitted the Crown Jewels into the contraption on his arm.  Sighting down it, he wondered if decapitating Napoleon with an energy weapon could really affect France’s entry into the American Revolutionary War, considering it concluded thirty years prior.

No matter.  Mad George was determined to regain the colonies.  If there was a chance it would disrupt history, he’d kill every last goddamn Frenchmen in the continuum.

Sometimes, he liked letting the prophyria do the thinking.

The Last Great American

Ronald Reagan was the last American president born in a log cabin. His parents taught him self-reliance at an early age. He read the Fountainhead while he was still in the womb and was so inspired by Ayn Rand's message of individualism that he was the attending physician at his own birth.

He left home at age three to enter show business. He sang Yankee Doodle Dandy to Soviet peasants and they tipped enough to fund his education at the Harvard of the South.

He kept Walter Mondale's head mounted over his fireplace as a souvenir of the '84 election.

A Greener And More Reasonable World

She was at Processing, adding the monthly recycling to the family account, when the officer grasped Rayn’s shoulder.

“Come with me son.”

“What? No, there’s some mistake.  We’re under our credit limit!  We grow our own food, we hardly use the transit system- wait!”  But, even as she protested, she saw the look in her son’s eyes, and understood.  Suddenly the last months – the mysterious class absences, the inexplicable weight gain – made sense.

Possibly – depending on how much meat he’d eaten and how hard he labored at the government farms – Rayn might see his mother again.  The Republic wasn’t unreasonable.

The New Continent

Sophia forced her way down to the wharf. After six weeks at sea, she felt nauseous, unholy, drenched. Stepping into the teeming crowd was like her first baptism. Her sins were washed away by the dirt. Sophia was free.

But life on the New Continent never proved that easy. For would be tyrants, her accent was an invitation. Sophia would never be entirely free of her cursed heritage.

Sophia dreamed not for herself, but for her children and grandchildren. She lived in their future, among the accepted, in a world where being descended from Americans was no longer a crime.

King George And The Second Boston Tea Party

The Boston chapter of the Tea Party asked every newcomer to show identification. Too many liberal reporters had painted them in a bad light.

The old man was stopped at the front door. "ID please."

"I don't have any."

"Why not?"

"Because ID's are a plot by the socialist government to try and rob us of our freedom. Before you know it, they'll have us locked up in death camps."

"He's one of us."

Sweet success. First the time machine, and now this. George may not be royalty in this century, but his divine right to rule was still recognized.

The Perfect Trap

“And then I’ll have ten spicy tacos with another fifteen taquitos and a side of guac.”

“That will be one dollar sir.”

“This is incredible!”

His dollar was halfway to the register when he was thrown to the ground by a cataclysmic force.  Suddenly, the force directed itself outwards, and the walls and ceiling separated into dense gray powder, quickly carried away by the tremendous wind.  Around the perimeter where the building used to be, the mightiest of the Aesir stood looking inward.

Walking over to Loki, Odin grinned over the prostrate trickster.

“I can’t believe you fell for this!”

The Perfect Gentleman

His ties always match his shirt and jacket.

When picking up a date, he knocks on the door. He never honks his horn or yells at her balcony.

When ordering at the restaurant, he allows her to chose her own dish.

You would never know how considerably rich he is.

The only time he curses is in the telling of a story. And even then, not if any minors are present.

When you make a mistake in his presence, he tolerates it graciously.

When he gets a woman pregnant he always pays for the abortion.

He is the perfect gentleman.

Carrier's Cross Hospital For Charitable Cases

Only the poorest, most unfortunate souls go to die at Carrier's Cross Hospital For Charitable Cases. But die they do.

The institution instills such fear into the neighboring denizens that they suffer severed limbs and advanced stages of the most grisly diseases rather than cross its threshold.

Nurse Wembley laments their reputation, for every one of the doctors and custodians care for their charges with the utmost diligence. Most are in fact volunteers, as they receive only the tiniest contributions from the city.

The majority of their budget, therefore, must come from selling cadavers to Carrier's Cross Butchery and Deli.

Powering A Greener World

The turbine blade arced high into the evening sky over Runsfeld.  Though it was over a hundred meters long and traveling at great speed, from the ground it looked just like a petal, carried soundlessly on a capricious summer updraft.

The Republic heavily regulated all pollutant energy sources, generally reserving them for government use, and without cheap fuel, it was too expensive to run the machines that could repair the wind farm, especially for rural Runsfeld.  Still, they needed the electricity the turbines provided.

When the errant blade finally collided with Runsfeld’s vegon cafeteria, it was nothing like a petal.

Putting Her PhD To Work

Megan loved when someone asked about her job, especially a man.

"I perform all the routine maintenance on board the Alanwich Industry spacecrafts. I ensure the safety and reliability of every major and minor system, including propulsion, navigation, life support, and gravitation. I check hull integrity before every flight. I monitor the amount of deterioration on both external and internal components and replace any that have worn down. I wash the windows and surveillance cameras to maintain maximum visibility.

"I even keep the toilets clean, if you can believe that."

"So basically you're a janitor."

"You mean a space janitor."