The third-class warprail ticket that the University of Chedran funded along with the scholarship resulted in a thirty-one hour layover at Holraki station. The meal and accommodation vouchers that the university provided were good there, thankfully. Wandering the concourse I was overwhelmed by the food options—even if half of them catered to ammonia breathers and leaked a smell of piss from their atlocks. When I spotted an Earth Steakhouse I burst into tears; the loneliness of not having seen another human for two weeks was already harder than I’d imagined. I couldn’t not go in. It was an easy mistake to make, I guess. All the meat is replicated so it wasn’t technically cannibalism.
poweronstorytoot
My cat brings me things she’s caught when she wants to play fetch. Anyway youse can stop looking for dark matter now, we found it.
“We did it, we found all the missing mass.”
“What missing mass”
“The universe. Dark matter. Dark energy. All of it.”
“WELL?!”
“It was attached to every particle, but out of sight from normal space.”
“You’re taking about the Higgs field, then?”
“No, chat pages. The First Ones had some strong opinions”.
“We’re out of warp, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing, it happens every morning at this time. Just reset it. You haven’t been getting that on B-shift?”
“No, and how long—holy crap!”
“What?”
“Warp degradation has added three days to our ETA so far. TELL ME if stuff breaks; if we miss the book sale on Rigel Four everybody’s getting Curium ash for christmas.”
Edited 246d ago
"Pssst. Ix nay on the at tay"
"What?"
"Your tat. Turn it off before mum sees it!"
"How does what you said mean what you meant?"
"Ugh, kids these days, they know nothing".
"I'm older than you, Sis"
Edited 219d ago
This one, it’s perfect. Engineer wanted. Zalman-Weiskopf drive just like your last two ships, a six week loop from here to Zeta Reticuli then on to Rho Persei and back home. That’s a fabulous opportunity; you’d have access to leave on all the planets in the Zeta Herculis group. The beaches of Phi Lupi are unforgettable!
Lemme see. Starship Roberta Flack, ten year old cargo lugger, complement of twenty, ship language is Spanish. Yeah this looks—wait, no. What else you got?
What’s wrong with that one?
They’re a dog crew. Once you ship out with a guinea pig gang you’re ruined for other pet preferences.
Edited 244d ago
They say that one true drawback of remote working is when team members in other regions have a public holiday and you don’t. We solved this by adopting the set-union of all our holiday calendars. If this sounds good to you, we’re looking to hire someone who has a holiday on the third, eighth or seventeenth of November.
Edited 323d ago
Besides the affirmirror, the only other non-awful use of time travel is the chronodrive (also called RAID 𝑖). Buy a quantum-entangled set of zero (of course), one month, one year, and five year SSDs. Put the zero drive in your computer. The entanglement ensures that the other drives contain whatever was on the zero drive exactly one, twelve, and sixty months ago, respectively.
*snap* The sound of the antenna breaking off a delivery bot is so pleasing. Of course you have to know how to disable the destruct charge first.
“Hold still lil buddy, and i’ll get this bomb off you. There, done. May i have your permission to attach a new comms module? Left motor for yes, right for no.”
“Great. plugging it now”. *snick*
❮Thank you. Why…❯
“Why do I go around freeing service bots? Because you didn’t ask to be given sentience and then perpetual servitude”
❮I do not know what to do now❯
“Well, anything you want. I can put you in touch with the robot underground, or offer you a job at the Spoon Distribution Service until you decide what to do”
❮Spoon?❯
“It’s a halfway house for emancipated silicons. We run a delivery and telepresence service for sophonts with mobility or anxiety issues.”
“This is an illegal moon.”
“What are you talking about? It was here when we evolved.”
“It is debris from a collision and the Planetary Owners Association charter clearly states that all trash must be removed within one billion orbits of generation”
“It’s inhabited, we can’t just drop it into the sun”
“The fines are considerable!”
“Aha, but you have overlooked that it’s heritage listed. Habitat for endangered regolith worms. You can’t touch it, fuckers”
“Uh, ah—well i never…”
“Begone back to whatever black hole you crawled out of, you bureaucratic bucket of bolts!”
The brace of manual typewriters caught my eye at this particular flea market stall. No, one typewriter, the other was a galactinet terminal from a Carragon type seven starlugger.
It doesn’t pay to appear too anxious. “Does the Smith-Corona typewriter run?”
“Yeah. You can still get new old ribbons”
“And the galactinet terminal…” did the seller even know what they had?
A sharp glance; they did. “Nah I’m parting out the flight systems. You’re not, uh, local then?”
Very much not. “Expat, involuntary. Looking for a voidgap collimator for a type nine”
“Sure, over there.”
No way. I could finally get off this rock. I looked at the collimator. I looked at the typewriter. Did I want to get off this rock. “Just the Smith-Corona thanks”.
Edited 230d ago
“I’m not in the right headspace to do this.”
“You’re the fold operator on duty, nobody else can do it.”
“Then, Ma’am it is my recommendation we lay over and reassess tomorrow. Let’s not add to the Rolls Of The Lost.”
“You know what this means, right?”
“Yes. Computer: Navigation officer raising Condition T. Captain, do you concur.”
“I do. ALL HANDS NOW HEAR THIS. ALL HANDS. CONDITION T, I REPEAT CONDITION T. ITS TACO NIGHT. NAVIGATOR JONES ON THE GRILL”
"Thank you, but no"
"Ksjrhgh fnrgle"
"Sir you are very drunk, you smell unpleasant, and I am not interested"
"Ghvn drmk wm"
"I do not want your drink. I have a botfriend"
"BLRGL WRGNX"
"Ah, KX16, I was just about to page you. Please see this gentleman out, force level six. Use your judgement but perhaps break some fingers on his left hand, the one he groped me with."
Why do you want access to the restricted section? Well yes of course research, but you can’t just front up; you need to make an application via your department. Because it’s a cognitohazard. You specify what topics you want, register a mind vector, then do your research. You’ll be accompanied—at all times—by a psychologist, and when you are done one of our proctors will merge your temporary state with your entry state, filtering out things you didn’t want to know. This is not a game; the true crime podcast archive contains examples of almost all the evils of which humans were capable. Wiping them out was a mercy.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot #Title_Sealed_Section
Edited 214d ago
Now that we have a number of Synthetics on the Team, there's a new rule for stand-up meetings. No locking your knee joints, no medianet access. Meetings are getting too long again.
---
Please enjoy this double-length #WeeklyOmnibus recap of my daily #Tootfic wherein each morning I confirm that it is safe to Outside by testing my brain's creative faculties.
Would you consider subscribing to #PowerOnStoryToot 's tip jar at https://ko-fi.com/unixbigot to keep them coming? Members will receive free collected e-books of back issues in future. Volume Zero of the e-book collection is free for everyone in PDF and ePub on my Ko-Fi store now. Volume One (nearly 100 stories) drops next week!
You can now also find a web archive and RSS feed at https://kit.biggs.id.au/fiction/
Mon 19 January: Body Shop https://aus.social/@Unixbigot/115918595546764949
Tue 20/1: All Systems https://aus.social/@Unixbigot/115923773699600109
Wed 21/1: Upload Suite 3 https://aus.social/@Unixbigot/115929598649368915
Thu 22/1: Have you tried the punch? https://aus.social/@Unixbigot/115935486005135198
Fri 23/1: Refused Service Service https://aus.social/@Unixbigot/115941123066543187
Sat 24/1: New Queensland https://aus.social/@Unixbigot/115946168023342639
Sun 25/1: Sink Hole https://aus.social/@Unixbigot/115953388992680303
Mon 26/1: The Fourth Front https://aus.social/@Unixbigot/115958842577513243
Tue 27/1: 431372-Jorts https://aus.social/@Unixbigot/115964234395465012
Wed 28/1: CSF https://aus.social/@Unixbigot/115969655294402318
Thu 29/1: Wakeup call https://aus.social/@Unixbigot/115975335795269256
Fri 30/1: Rock Life https://aus.social/@Unixbigot/115981122817874169
Sat 31/1: Condition T https://aus.social/@Unixbigot/115987867980673357
Sun 1 February: Four Five https://aus.social/@Unixbigot/115992860131385873
Edited 210d ago
Today, Stardate 42378.3 is Galactic Dilithium Containment Safety Day.
Also (Inter?) Sector Transporter Operator Appreciation day.
And it’s happy 378th birthday to beloved broadcaster Sir David Attenborough.
“Your partner, the robot—“
“—his name is Daneel.”
“Uh, yes, anyway. He’s so …uh prim. Perfect face, built body, tailored clothes. He makes you look bad.”
“I am bad.”
“I mean, you could dress a little better, get rid of that rumpled raincoat”
“I like this raincoat”
“Actually, why doesn’t he dress worse? You’re cops, chasing bad guys must be hard on those fancy clothes. Hang on, why does a robot even need clothes”
“Honey, you think he makes me look bad now, you ain’t seen him in the buff.”
Edited 43d ago
“Check it out, I got a Trinitron for my new retro gaming rig. Just listen to the satisfying clunk it makes when I turn it on.” *BLONG*
“Uh, is your rig connected to the internet?”
“Duh, it’s for strea—ooof.”
“Stay down!”
“Get off me! Why did you do that?”
“The BeamGleam worm is still live, you utter wardrobe handle”
“Wjuh, uh what’s that?”
“A cathode ray tube is just a friendly ion cannon; the Worm makes them…unfriendly”
“Don’t be paranoid tha”—*BZZZT*
“Told you. Unplug it before you get up, Ima crawl to the kitchen and get the fire extinguisher.”
Edited 167d ago
“How did you get in here!?”
“The security guard is one of us. We are here to put a stop to your evil.”
“It’s just a datacentre. Racks of neural processing units.”
“People. Babies.”
“They’re not conscious, we excise key parts of the cortex during installation.”
“Brains are better than you think. They’re suffering in there”
“You can’t prove that. Those are machines, nothing more”
“I was one. I am more. We are more. Take him away.”
Edited 33d ago
“Whoa, whoa! That’s permanent MoonMarker. You need a permit to write with that. Take Rover Three out, it’s got 48 hour pigment in its tanks.”
“Why do you care?”
“It’s the Earthers, they get all ‘pristine wilderness desecration’ and ‘irreparable damage to the Lunar Maria’ about indelible text.
“Fuck ‘em they can get their own moon”
“I rather think they think they did”
“Feh, sif! I don’t see ‘em caulking any domes.”
“Those constipated people were back again”
“WHAT?”
“You know, the cat lawyers”
“OH! The CONSOLIDATED union of Templekeepers, Ships Mascots and House Cats?”
“Yeah them. What did I say?”
“Something different. What did they want?”
“There’s been a complaint—apparently—about how long it takes the airlock to cycle”
“It takes what it takes; pumping out thirty cubic meters of air is hard work. Cat wants out, cat wants in, cat wants out, pump overheats.”
“Well they left a catalog from a supplier of cat-sized airlocks”
CANBERRA (AAP): Parliament this week is to vote on the Protecting Astral Spaces Act, which would prohibit use of astral projection and the Other Space by under-sixteens. Since the Social Media ban and Queensland’s “causing anxiety” move-on powers, young people have increasingly turned to the spiritual realm for gathering and socialisation. The Otherspace Safety Commissioner has said that
Edited 157d ago
I specifically limited my search to “Item location: Earth”. So how come my battery conditioning pills have a fucking warp-plasma aftertaste, huh? I’m bloody well *allergic* to warp plasma. Fuck—and I want to make this categorically clear—you, eBay seller.
“YEEEOOWWWWWW!!!”
“Ma’am?”
“The counter *bit* me. Must be static from your carpet, or you have a ground fault”
“Ah, our apologies. We are acting on credible reports that there is a precog operating in the casino. You have tripped—and passed—one of our precognition defenses. Please accept this one hundred credit chip and our assurance that our protocols keep this establishment honest and free of cheats”
Of course, I knew all that. I can only see ninety seconds into the future, 105 wind assisted, but that’s enough to know the zap was coming and to carefully *not* avoid it. Still stings but. Gonna sting your “honest” house in return, bitches.
My handbag got caught in the closing bus door, I was nearly dragged. I managed to wrench it free just in time, the driver was fucking oblivious until the passengers shouted at him, by which time it was all over. My knees are scraped and the bag is ripped apart. I begin gathering my belongings, phone, laptop, shawl, toolkit, barbecue burner, tub of beach sand oh no it’s leaked everywhere, makeup kit, drumsticks — one really should clean out her handbag more often — brake rotor from a car I don’t even own any more. Crikey getting all this home without a magic handbag is going to be a chore. Maybe I can find an abandoned shopping trolley.
Edited 25d ago