It's A Pirate's Life For Me

The boat listed back and forth in the gradual waves under a massive, cloudless sky. Drake, scratching at his stubbled face, stared across the empty horizon. As the sunlight refracted in time to the vessel's movement, he could not spy even a mirage. The sea was parched of features, as it had been for countless weeks. Drake could not remember the last time they had encountered another ship, or his last sip of whiskey.

Drake sighed and went back to swabbing the deck. Life as a pirate was much less interesting than the stories had made it out to be.

Stardust

In the fairy tales, people go chasing after stardust because of its supposed magical properties. Legends are passed down of heroes anointed with the stuff and of diseases cured. There was one tale that my mother used to tell of a unicorn who had never tasted anything but stardust and you could ride her into magical realms. Stardust is the tears of angels, the remains of miracles.

Maybe there is some stardust in the universe that's like that, but I have found it's nothing but radiation and horrific burning. Leastways, it's the stardust that gave me all these awful scars.

Charlie Stiff

Charlie woke up unable to move. He wasn't limp like a sack of potatoes that could be thrown over a shoulder. He was stiff as a metal rod.

His wife considered it a fitting retribution or all his years of unyielding stubbornness. His doctors thought they had discovered a new, more virulent strain of tetanus. Charlie didn't care about the cause. Through clenched teeth, he tried to make it clear he just wanted a cure.

But there was no cure. Charlie Stiff spent the rest of his life frozen in place, his dreams of winning the limbo world championships destroyed.

The Dreamer

As a boy, Howard dreamed of giant spiders in his father's tool shed. They were black with red spots and the size of a large dog.

He'd not thought of that dream in years. But when the town was invaded by giant spiders, he realized his dreams predicted the future.

He'd also once dreamed that tornadoes were actually giant tomatoes. One of them landed on his preschool and smashed everything. He now expected a giant tomato to hit and wipe out the spiders before more of his family was killed.

It turns out that giant spiders thrive on tomato sauce.

Maximum Adrenalin

Jordan Acker feared nothing.

He attacked danger with his shirt off. He used any tool at hand as a weapon, whether a mop or a bottle of mustard, and his kung fu skills sent would-be criminals running and impressed every club bouncer and traffic cop he encountered. His heart beat pounded in his chest more loudly than his fists bounced off the walls. When he drove, people dove out of his way lest they be heedlessly run down. He was the latest breed of action star.

At least that's what he felt like while on one of his cocaine binges.

Balloon Pop

At the top of the cliff, Kurt ran back forth with a bag full of rocks, trying to pop any of the various-colored balloons that were floating past him. His sole task was to make sure that none of the balloons reached so high as to pass the tree line.

After a while, Kurt realized that the variegated balloon colors signified different values. For example, if he popped a green balloon, he was given a piece of pie. Each color offered something unique.

If his life weren't in such danger, he'd have thought this would make an outstanding video game.

A Phalanx Of Ducklings

A phalanx of cars had stopped along the highway. It was raining and I didn't want to get out, but I finally grabbed my umbrella. The smiling faces indicated no one had been injured.

I pushed my way through the crowd. What had stopped traffic wasn't some kind of accident or road construction, but a family of ducklings swimming in a puddle that had formed inside a pothole. They were really the cutest thing you'd ever seen. There was room enough to drive past, but everyone was happy to spend the afternoon watching them. Some of us fed them breadcrumbs.

The Original Olympians

The original Olympic Games started out of a desire to bring together the warring factions of the Greek City States to do battle inside an arena instead of on the fields of war. Each city would select its best heroes to compete in the most basic athletic pursuits: running short and long distances, wrestling, and hurling a spear or a disc. The champions would achieve the honor of bringing glory and fame to their homeland.

The original Olympic Games ended when a tribe of storm giants descended from the mountains and slaughtered every single one of the participants and spectators.

The Information Overload

I was fifteen the year information came alive. Before that, we had a vague sense that information was becoming more dangerous, that there was a potential for catastrophe, but everyone was too busy making money to worry much about the ramifications.

Now our only hope is that knowledge can somehow overcome the information overload. Information bangs on pots and pans demanding your attention. It feeds off it. Knowledge sits quietly in its room waiting to be called upon.

It's still an open question which is more powerful. But either way, the days of humanity dominating the Earth are long over.

Forgoing Responsibility

In the manner of all bloated bureaucracies, responsibility for the mistake was passed from desk to desk like a 12-year-old orphan moves through foster homes. Everyone knew it was a fireable offense and so the smart tactic was to duck under the nearest mound of paperwork whenever the department head glanced over. Eventually some new crisis would strike a floor or two above, and they'd all breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Of course that left Brenda on the hook again. As PR manager, it was her job to explain how a toaster oven had murdered a family of five.