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Items tagged with: Microfiction
The knight struggled out of his armor then strode toward the dragon, "I need to be crushed immediately."
The dragon shifted his massive body, waiting for the knight to lay flat in his nest of furs and fabrics. Then he gently rolled some of his mass onto the knight's, worriedly asking, "Rough day?"
"Rough week," sighed the knight.
"It's Monday!"
There was no response, the knight had already dozed off under his favorite weighted-blanket.
I should not interfere. The Council reminds us again and again.
Yet he is my friend. I have to act. They will scold me, They will revoke my Angel License, but I will have my friend.
Better a fallen angel, than watching my friend be killed by dragonhaters, after he was crashed by a high rocket plane.
Thus I set off. Ready to fight for my friend.
The alien saucer landed in the university square. A bedraggled being emerged from the ramp, carrying a sling bag, consulting a phrasebook.
“Um. Take me … to your … plumber?”
The professor of linguistics was first to speak. “Ah, I see what’s happened. You’ve confused ‘lead’ with ‘lead’, one comes from ‘liðan’, to go forth, and one comes from ‘plumbum’, the word for the element—“
His lecture was cut short when a putrid, slimy, plunger landed squarely on his head. “I know what I mean,” said the alien.
"Listen," one guard said, "I know we have only just met-"
"No," the other guard said, "we've worked together for years!"
"-but you can trust me when I say-"
"I can't, you have the curse that's opposite from mine!"
"I don't care for you at all."
"Well, I... oh... I love you too."
#TootFic #SmallStories #Microfiction
"It's a remarkable thing, your grace, but the researchers do seem to have created something that allows it. Travelling through time, I mean."
"We hadn't thought it possible. They've actually built a proof of concept?"
"Yes, a hyper-toroidal space folding in three other dimensions: it moves everything within through time at a consistent rate."
"Ha! And what does one even call such a device?"
"I think... I think they call it a 'universe', your grace."
Tay gently pushed the plastic door of the printer shut with an edifying "click".
Servicing Dark Printers had been illegal for years now. They enjoyed the seditious thrill.
---
It had started as a subscription grab after the printer companies tried hobbling third party toner cartridges.
"Subscribe for a monthly fee and you'll never run out of toner again."
"Let us monitor your printer so you don't have to."
People saw it for what it was - vendor lock in - but they had no choice really, not after all the printer companies started doing it.
Then came generative AI.
Everyone wanted to scrape every word ever written on the internet, tokenize it and feed it to an #LLM. #Reddit sold out, then #Tumblr, even open source darling #WordPress - selling out their user base for filthy token lucre.
So people started hiding their words, their art, their thoughts, their expression, not behind disrespected robots.txt, but through obscurity.
Rejecting Website Boy's "fewer algorithmic fanfares", they forked into the Dark Fedi.
Unscrapeable, unscrutable, ungovernable.
---
But people had forgotten about the printers.
The printers had to be connected 24/7, for "monitoring".
But you could tokenize postscript as easily as HTML.
And so every time a document was sent to a printer, it was harvested for tokens. Even secure documents. Documents not online.
---
Tay shut the metal door behind them, Dark Printer cossetted safely in its Faraday cage, and shuffled the hot stack of A4 paper it had borne.
It was a children's story, about how words were sacred, and special, and how you had to earn the right to use them.
---
She was the first woman on Mars. As she was landing, she ignored the original plan and headed straight for the Jezero crater, Mission Control would need to live with it. Once she stepped out she didn't hesitate. It took her a while but she finally reached the device. She opened her toolbox and got to work. After 20 minutes, she had replaced the rotor. She cleaned the dust with a cloth and said "fly baby, fly". It was 2054 and Ingenuity could fly once again.
#Ingenuity #Mars #Microfiction #nasa
An #introduction post, given recent influx, with hashtags to aid searchability.
I am O. Westin, a #writer of #MicroFiction, mostly #ScienceFiction and #fantasy #fiction, and occasional #poetry. My stories are generally less than 280 characters, because I also post to Twitter.
No set schedule, stories are written and posted when inspiration strikes.
I am LGBTQIA+ positive, and usually favour wholesome over darkness and edgy nihilism.
Books: microsff.com/books
FAQ: microsff.com/faq