Echoless Well

The town of Bottomless Well was famous for one reason only.

No one could ever remember any water being drawn from the well. Yet, thanks to its purported wish granting properties, people still visited from miles around.

The well was meant to be a mystery, like God or a woman's heart; it was better not knowing where the bottom lay.

When scientists discovered that the floor reached exactly 36 feet and 7 inches underground, and that the peculiar convex shape and absorptive qualities of the rock prevented any sound from escaping, the villagers pragmatically changed the name. Life carried on as before.

Alpha Eridanus - The End of the River

It’d been generations since the biomass telescopes first detected life on Achernar.  It took a hundred years to construct the ship and train the families who’d carry Earth’s hopes into the stars.  The journey itself took several hundred more.  Finally, Captain Monroe is ready to make landfall.  In doing so, he’ll confirm what they’d detected last week – that Achernar is a planet of weeds.  Specifically, one weed, iterated endlessly over an unbroken landmass.

The landing party dutifully disperses to take samples of the colorless alien, but Monroe’s eyes look skyward.  The ship’s biomass telescopes had picked up another faint signal….

Medical Mystery

The doctors had never seen anything like it exactly. They took x-rays. They called in colleagues. They consulted every textbook they could find.

"You can see the glow through his stomach."

"How the heck is it still burning?"

"The melted wax must be damaging his digestive system."

"And you say it doesn't hurt?" they asked.

"Not in the least," the patient responded.

"Well, I guess we'll have to operate."

The examination was interrupted by a forbidding woman entering the room, who looked to be the afflicted's personal assistant.

"Don't let Mr. Copperfield worry you," she admonished. "He's just showing off."

Apocrypha of Natural History - Act III

Amidst all the trimmings that the gardeners of our reality have deemed inappropriate for existence, all the strange treasures from lost histories, only one thing interests the Thief.  Despite its quiet profile, it’s the one artifact that promises to fracture the Thief’s world and reinvent it anew.  Gingerly, the Thief opens the chest….

A scroll, written in ancient Aramaic, tells a story.  It tells of a world where Mashup Month was never possible.  Where thegooddoctor rose, put on his man-panties, and never enriched my weblog with delightful synergies of truth and fiction.

The Thief places the scroll in her bag.

Ivanhoe - In Space

The crew fixated on the deeps of the sky.  Their opponent was 400,000km away and bearing down.  In five seconds the two ships would close the distance.

At 199,000km, hungry sensors licked the perfectly rounded and mirrored surfaces the ships presented – each scanning for micron-wide fissures.  The rival captain thought he found one first and, at 35,000km, trained 100 million joules on the Ivanhoe.  The attack revealed an uneven aperture, and the Ivanhoe responded instantly.

For a moment, the two glassy hulls were centimeters apart.  Then they were again impossibly distant – one, a smoldering husk, and the other, a champion.

Apocrypha of Natural History - Act II

Deep beneath the museum, the Thief discovers a cavernous warehouse – the burial ground of suppressed truths.  Searching the labyrinthine storeroom, the Thief moves past the delicately jointed skeleton of a thunderbolt hanging from the ceiling and the limestone fossils of clouds, dense with capillary beds.  Past tall shelves laden with jars of preserved fetuses that link man, not to primates, but to a race of loping salamanders.  Past photographs that prove mountains are the work of one very prolific man, now over 4000 years old and living in East L.A.  Suddenly, the Thief stops short before a modest little chest….

Sergio Leone Versus Time Square's Naked Cowboy

A high, warbling whistle split the air, interrupting the Naked Cowboy’s three-line act.

“Who’re you?”

“In this world there are two types of people my friend: those with guitars and diapers, and those with loaded guns.”

The Naked Cowboy’s gaze drifted to the pistol casually pointed at his head.

“Hey man, I’m just here to take pictures!”

The Man With No Name squinted.  He squinted hard.  He squinted into the sun and his eyes glinted like steel spurs.  The Naked Cowboy started to pee a little.  Finally, the Man With No Name holstered his .45.

“Put on a goddamn poncho.”

Missed Opportunities

The Universe may not be infinite, but it's pretty darn close.

Odds are, somewhere in the cosmos a ship of fun loving aliens can be found cruising the star systems. These extra-terrestrials are the most beautiful beings in the universe. You say it's unlikely, but in fact it's almost a certainty. It's simple mathematics.

The next generation of astronauts, or the generation after that, could be the first Earthlings to encounter these beautiful alien party babes. Unfortunately, every one of our astronauts is a socially retarded science geek. The party of the eon is going to fly right past us.

Total And Complete Awesomeness

"This place is awesome!"

"Seriously. It's the best place ever."

"So much better than I imagined. Like your imagination is rendered completely inadequate by the fact there's no way to even conceive total and complete awesomeness."

"The omniscience is a nice touch. Really puts the whole thing over the top."

"Only one thing bothers me."

"What's that?"

"Why did we have to be alive at all? Why not just start off in heaven and stay here the whole time? Because not being in heaven really sucks."

"Yeah. If God really loved us, he would have skipped the whole living part."

The Election

Charlton Heston chewed through debates like a drunk cow gnaws at grass.

"Not only did I play Moses, but I could win this election with a camel as a running mate."

Afterwards, he was asked to clarify. "No, I'm not speaking metaphorically. An honest to God live camel. I've got one on the ranch, and if it isn't more fit to govern than my opponent, then this cow's had too much vodka."

Only after the election did the voting populace realize Charlton Heston had died in 2008. And that's the story of how a camel became President of the United States.