Love Story

Their marriage in trouble, Jack and Jill went the extra mile.

Jack went to a therapist and bought True Love. An injected endorphin recalibrator later, what had been dubious was now clear.

He rushed back to his home and to his Jill, who was coming back from her own therapist.

She had bought True Hate and a gun on the street.

Jack forgave his loved one with his dying breath.

.finis. 

Trade Route

It wasn't the first cargo to come through the newly opened trade route, but it was the most important yet. Its symbolic and artistic value would justify by itself the countless men and women sent to death in the long search for the final leg of the route.

An small black boat parted the mist and approached the shore. The hooded figure standing on it delivered without words a bundle of papers to the trader nervously waiting. The trader quickly thumbed the pages.

It was, indeed, Homer's promised new epic. The Napoleonica.

Well worth the blood and toil spent to open the route. Well worth the two coins they had to pay for every trip of the ferryman across the dark river.

.finis.

Of Crows and Fires

The creeping embrace of certain death was followed after an immeasurable interval by all the pains of Hell. He wasn't surprised; it was fitting punishment for what he had done.

He felt himself gasp in gulps that didn't seem to come from his own body.

"Open your eyes, Doctor Frankenstein," said a guttural, monstrous voice coming from deep in the darkness. "You are alive again, and there's work for us to do."

.finis. 

Special Unit

Sam was clinging to his last hours of leave with almost insane desperation. But it wasn't insane; that was the problem. Sam knew he was sane, almost alone among the members of his special unit.

'Special Unit.' Sitting in a park bench with an ice cream he wasn't eating, the neutral words made him feel nauseous. Logistics planners with OCD. Sociopathic snipers. Technicians so neurotic they couldn't function outside the ordered environment of the unit.

Some 'special unit.' Sam cursed the psychology degree that had landed him this commission. Were it not for his sincere patriotism, he'd have considered leaving the unit and going back to his parents' home country, politics notwithstanding.

But he had a duty and he would do it, even if he lost his sanity in the process.

A woman sat next to him in the park bench.

"Do you remember me?" she said.

"No," said Sam, uncomfortable.

"You do, Ted."

Something shifted inside him. "I do."

The woman waited until the man's secondary personality surfaced completely, and then both spies exchanged information in quiet, even tones.

.finis.

Positive

Once upon a time we thought ourselves haunted by spam.

There were just too many emails. Too much time was lost checking them by hand. Then they came up with Bayesian filters.

If it looked like spam -if the arcane maths matched up- then it was tagged as such. But people were lazy, and the filters were good, and pretty soon everybody was deleting the tagged ones at first sight.

One day people didn't even let them reach the inbox. Some legitimate messages didn't reach you, perhaps, but the alternative was too much work, the inconvenience too high, and nobody could argue against the impartiality of statistics.

Bayes' even hand.

Our inbox folders were cleaner. We moved on to other things.

Once upon a time we thought ourselves haunted by terror.

There were just too many suspects. Too much time was lost checking them by hand.

.finis. 

Focus

I wave to Mike and Ted as I enter the crime scene.

The coroner is already waiting for me. "Hurry up," he says. "I want to bag this guy before it gets any hotter."

It's a quarter past ten in the morning, and the sun through the apartment's windows is falling right over the victim's face. There's a trail of blood leading to the body.

I grimace, remembering how heavy he had felt, and then raise my camera to cover my satisfied smile. The sunlight's effect over the pale skin was worth last night's effort.

I start taking pictures. Beautiful.

.finis. 

The Great Escape

It became, over the years, a city of freaks, crazies, deviants, and nerds. So one day they built a wall around it, closed the door, and threw away the key.

Nobody ever escaped the lockup.

(Nobody ever wanted to. At night bright shadows dance over the city.)

.finis.