Category: Flash Fiction

Arnold had been subjected to vaccines his entire life and accepted needing them–but these days he questioned them.  Do they cause autism?  Impair children?  Seniors?  Create cancers?  Then a new Prime Minister appointed a new Health Secretary who promised (despite his public history) that he was not against vaccines—and then from the start he dismissed […]

Citizens needed stronger leaders and their need led to governments becoming autocracies.  To explain: while lives were generally good, they always could be better.  Decades of voting for politicians they only saw on TV had deadened the hearts of citizens to democracy.  There was a huge disconnect between voters and the people courting them.  Citizens […]

Ivan worried the robots in his life were not better.  His dishwasher could be larger.  His robot vacuum had trouble with rugs.  His automatic interior house lighting confused very cloudy for evening, making the house lights too bright.  His sex doll made unpleasant noises when lubricating.  Ivan apparently had the best robots available.  If he […]

Norman loved playing video games in his spare time.  He worked for a gaming company, helping design new games.  Norman became particular entranced by a beta version of a new game designed by a colleague, a young woman.  It was a role-playing adventure, set in current times in a big city, where Norman’s avatar was […]

How Does A Child See The World? How does a child see the world?  As a place to play.  As a place of discoveries.  As a place of fun.  Then the child grows up.  Encounters bullies, criticism, stress.  But.  Before that.  Everything is a wonder.  A bouncing ball is a wonder.  An eagle floating in […]

Arnold was exhausted.  He concluded it was because he was around other people.  When he sat at home alone, he had plenty of energy, or at least enough.  At 80, he never had quite enough energy.  Alone, he interacted with people by a distance, with delays—texts, emails.  No matter how stressful the interaction was, now […]

A New Climate Change Jack was increasingly concerned about climate change.  Not tornadoes or atmospheric rivers or heat waves.  Jack was concerned about farts.  People ate healthier, with far more fiber, resulting in a wave of farts.  Riding in an elevator was often an unpleasant experience, as was being stuck in a meeting with ten […]

A group of elephants, wisest of the beasts, wanted a leader and asked the Wise Old Elephant what to do.  She asked why they could not make their own decision.  They did not understand her response and created a King. The Rhinos said don’t do it, but the elephants would not listen. He was not […]

Emily Dickinson hated submitting.  It was demeaning, ill fitting.  She wrote for herself and felt no need for her work to be judged by others.  But.  By her sixties she had many poems sitting unknown on her shelves and now believed people should read them.  She had to get her work published.  Yet Emily Dickinson […]