I Can't Possibly Be Wrong All the Time

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

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. June 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 ship orbiting the Artifact is of Verathandi design. We don’t know which faction of Verats they’re from. Unfortunately, our former engineer had deleted the Verat semantic ontology module from our translator for his porn collection. We’ll see.”
*final log entry*
#MicroStory

Command had lost a fleet combating the Minotaur, an aggressive alien object in trans-Jovian orbit.
A sabotage team’s ship got inside; they didn’t return but the monster had quieted.
A rescue ship failed to return. As did the next.
Was the next ship just a sacrifice?
#MicroStory

“You are free to explore and colonize sterile, lifeless moons and worlds. Avoid inhabited planets and even those with conditions conducive to humans. You must earn your place. After all, your world was protected from interference for millennia.”
#MicroStory

Second Contact was largely a rush of alien civilizations sending us religious missionaries.
Xenosociology was still in its infancy, so debates were ongoing if this was aliens truly trying to evangelize, or to see just how gullible humans were.
#MicroStory

The Human Exceptionalism extremists violated treaties and landed on one of the lush, uninhabited off-limit worlds.
“If the aliens don’t want us here, they can come and root us out.”
The alien ambassadors said they don’t enforce these restrictions.
They didn’t have to.
#MicroStory

Every day for a week, a man arduously climbed to the summit and shouted the same apology to the sky. After a week, the sky thundered.
“You know I forgive you, but maybe you should apologize to those you’ve wronged.”
The exhausted man sighed.
“I’m working up to that.”
#MicroStory

We called the gas giant Galleria, because of the inexplicable art. On each of the world’s many rocky moons, the survey team found an enormous bas-relief carving.
A huge, smooth cephalopod. An enormous insect in profile.
A gigantic nude woman, her hair forever flowing.
#MicroStory

In theory, Morren’s Manual presented a complete, logical framework that would allow a powerful wizard to unambiguously invoke a Wish, burning their magical reserves permanently to cast a one-time reality-breaking spell.
Morren accidentally wished for such a manual.
#MicroStory

Right-wing bloggers and podcasters furiously railed that the restrictions being mandated by the government were turning the compliant populace into zombies.
Which was ironic, since it was the feral zombies who were literally turning the non-compliant into zombies.
#MicroStory

“We don’t know why our village is spared,” the chief said. “There’s no secret protective talisman, no ancient weapon here that the dragon fears.”
“You don’t give it … virgins?” I asked.
“Only tax collectors.”
Getting to the dragon would be easier than I’d thought.
#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 was taken by me, after I’d noticed my dog Chi Chi the Pug was having a sad episode or something under the table. That also feels like a microstory.

Want to read my earlier MicroStory collections? I have my first three years’ worth of stories HERE and the second 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 2020 Some Rights Reserved