Waves, Winds, and Whys

The man watching the sea spoke in a language that carried no sound. The ships are coming.

A world away, the man sitting in front of the fire smiled. Ships are fated to come to your islands, my friend, just as men are fated to come to my lands.

The man standing over the wave-stricken rock shook his head. It's too soon.

We will both pay a price if I do what you ask.

Now it was the man watching the sea who smiled. How could it be otherwise?

As you wish.

The man in the Amazon jungle set a butterfly free, watching its wings flap as it flew. A week later a typhoon destroyed Kublai Khan's fleet as it approached Japan.

.finis.

After Troy

You laugh and cheer with the other soldiers, mocking the bodies of the martians. Dead, every awful, monstrous thing from Mars. Dead. Most likely from some bacteria in the air, say the scientists, and it's so funny that it almost makes it worth the ruined Big Ben and the rubble that used to be Trafalgar Square. The wimpy bastards died from the flu. You laugh so much you start coughing.

You keep coughing, and soon other soldiers start coughing, too.

Your autopsies show that it was a martian virus. The scientists figure out a cure, but not soon enough to make a difference.

.finis.

Self-defense

As always, he checked his bedroom for booby traps. He didn't find anything unusual, just knives in the mattress, an explosive charge in the bedside lamp, and a short, probably poisoned needle in his toothbrush. He went to bed and fell asleep soon.

Around midnight he arose and sleepwalked to the kitchen, where he rigged the microwave to explode.

.finis.

Precision Targeting

He waited until the forum's collective discourse reached a place dangerously close to his target idea, and the he posted his carefully crafted trolling message. He was a master of such things, and the post derailed the forum's deliberation, effectively killing for the time being the idea being born.

The assassin made himself a cup of coffee. It was a fun job, and it paid well, but it worried him not knowing who was paying him to do it, and their reasons for doing so. Perhaps... The phone rang. A telemarketer, and an especially bothersome one at that.

By the time the assassin could hang up the phone, he had completely lost his train of thought.

.finis.

Well Defined Expertise

I made a note to keep an eye on her when a psychopath with an axe killed everybody in her grandfather's hotel but her.

When her boat sunk and an unknown species of sharks ate her boyfriend and her friends I put a full time surveillance team on her.

The surveillance team was killed by a malfunctioning autonomous border defense robot. She survived, of course, but my mention of her was dismissed by my skeptical boss.

Then a pack of dogs exposed to a military grade adrenal stimulant got somehow loose in her neighborhood. As the paramedics helped her -and only her- out of her building, my boss relented and told me to hire her as an independent survival consultant.

I blanched and offered my resignation on the spot. I had meant to trick the enemy into hiring her.

After all, she was always the only survivor.

.finis.

20/20

He aimed high into the sky, fired his rifle once, and began to disarm and pack it. He didn't think about where the bullet would fall.

Precog snipers never had to.

.finis.

Heart Strings

By 2017, clinical depression is easily treatable and virtually eradicated in the United States, except as an inexpensive replacement to incarceration for certain crimes. Repeated offenses are extremely rare.