I Can't Possibly Be Wrong All the Time

It’s September, so I went through my social media feeds and grabbed all of the MicroStories I’d tweeted during the month of August.

As a reminder, these represent story-essences composed using no more than 269 characters (so I could tweet them with the hashtag #MicroStory.)

Usually, I only tweet Science Fiction and Fantasy #MicroStories. August was no exception.

For really great #MicroStory action, please follow @MicroSFF, the Twitter account that inspired me to participate in this minimalist writing exercise. That feed puts out great science fiction and fantasy MicroStories all the time.

(I want to make it clear that @MicroSFF is *not* a Twitter account of mine. Their flash-fiction tweets are excellent. Mine are okay.)

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The Girl with Spiders in Her Hair stalked towards the man in the corner.
“Spare me,” he begged.
Good luck with that.
“I’ll give you a horse whose lungs are tornadoes.”
She stopped.
“Girl, stick to the mission,” I said.
But then she turned. Literally and figuratively.
#MicroStory

The Man Who Moved Like Poetry hit me harder than I’d expected. Not a surprise, I have a weakness to poems.
Before he could finish me off – the Man with Wrong Hands blocked that punch.
Perfection fought unstoppable awkwardness.
But the mission couldn’t wait.
#MicroStory

“We have a horde of transrodents down on the Eastside – “
“Jesus, Sarge! You can’t say that. They’re people!”
“No, these are actual rats. Someone loaded them up with nanobots.”
“Oh.”
“Our options are limited until a sentience evaluation is done.”
“So, maybe people?”
#MicroStory

The transhuman collective challenged the notions of citizenship and democratic participation. Should each physical entity have a vote or should the hive-mind have one vote?
Most humans would rather grant citizenship to sentient computer simulations than transhumans.
#MicroStory

The star system was an oddity.
Among the rocky planets orbiting the star were dead, massive structures. So large they had their own satellite moons of rock and debris.
Two of those colossi had collided thousands of years ago.
Of course, that would be our landing site.
#MicroStory

“Who is he?”
“He doesn’t have a name like ours. But every minute he’s awake increases the chance that something bad will happen. He stays awake only long enough to support his sleeping as much as he can.”
“That sounds lonely. Our new task is to keep him awake?”
“Yes.”
#MicroStory

The xeno-catalogers called the dead race Inqubans.
We knew next to nothing about them, other than they could grow living starships.
And they grew them larger and larger.
And now the Inqubans were gone, but their angry artificial living dwarf planets acted like gods.
#MicroStory

The star system bore the hallmarks of being a battleground during the Great Last War, where impossibly-large warships dragged planets out of stable orbits as a consequence of fleet engagements.
It was an explorer’s big payday, provided no one else knew.
Someone knew.
#MicroStory

Exam week at Wizard College was particularly stressful.
To keep the students focused and grounded, the faculty would summon unquiet ghosts of former students who had succumbed to extremes in the face of exams.
Death was not an excused absence, academically.
#MicroStory

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Thank you to everyone who reads and enjoys my small stories. I tweet flash-fiction at irregular intervals on my Twitter account, @patman23. At more regular intervals on Twitter, I’ll be talking about my dogs, or television (mostly Game of Thrones), or raking leaves off of my lawn.

Header image is a picture I took of my daughter’s artistic rose creation using two colors of Starburts candy, with my dog Willow in the background. I won’t have heartburn if people want to share it but attribution would be nice.

Want to read my earlier MicroStory collections? I have my first three years’ worth of stories HERE

In general, I’m fine with anyone using the text of my MicroStories for non-commercial use. (Look how cute I am, thinking someone wants to make a t-shirt from one of my flash fiction bits. I say cute, but you can substitute in some other, more appropriate, adjective. I’m not the boss of you.)

© Patrick Sponaugle 2019 Some Rights Reserved