Putting a laser pistol to Hobson's head hadn't worked. Threatening to blow him out of an airlock hadn't worked. Putting Hobson in an airlock hadn't worked.

Commander Conway was furious. They still had ten minutes to get away from the black hole, if their science officer would get off his ass and think of something'

But Hobson wasn't budging.

"Look, Hobson' We know you can do this'"

"No."

"You'll die too if we get pulled in'"

"I'm prepared to die for my beliefs."

"Damn it! Be reasonable!"

"I am."

"Commander," said Dr. Schmidt, "maybe we should just listen to him?"

Conway threw his hands up. He would have liked nothing better than to strangle Victor Hobson at the moment, but that wouldn't have helped him or his crew or his ship.

"Fine! I'm listening! After he gets this ship'"

Mankind conquered the universe, settling planets with ease, but was that enough? Oh no. Not content to ruin merely their own home planet, they sought to ruin several simultaneously. It was more efficient that way.

Human beings cracked the subtle complexities of their own DNA and were able to not only eliminate the rogue markers causing debilitating diseases, but also to configure the body to actually thrive on junk food. Were they satisfied? Well, once you could enable the body to cope with a steady diet of fatty foods and other dubious vices and still remain peak physical condition, why not tinker with a few more things?

Humanity mastered the oddities and vagaries of artificial intelligence, committing them to do all of the tedious, menial and ultimately undesirable tasks; which was everything. Maybe humans would never know the value of a hard day's work again, but that noise was for the birds (or robots if you preferred (or the robotic birds if you further preferred)). This would surely satisfy humanity. Surely this would make their days of sitting on the rock hard buns they didn't deserve watching television complete. Wouldn't it?

No. They wanted just a bit more.

Frankie got out and ran around the car. He opened the door for Patty and made a little bow as she slid into the front seat.
"Thank you," she said, "It's nice to be treated like a lady."
"You're welcome," Frankie said as he turned on the engine. "Where would you like to go?" Frankie pointed to the little box on the dashboard, "I've programmed into the GPS the locations of five of the best restaurants around. The choice is yours."
"Is that new?" she asked, pointing to the Global Positioning System.
"I just got it. It's the top of the line. I just plugged in your address and it got me here using the most direct route."
Frankie pressed the buttons on the screen and a list of restaurants appeared. "Take your pick," he said.
Patty looked at the list and pressed her finger on the third choice, Antonio's Trattoria, and the GPS announced "Calculating," in a firm female voice. A second later it said, "Please follow the calculated route."
The first sign of trouble was when the instructions from GPS tried to send them down the wrong way on a one way street. Frankie pressed the "Detour" button and the GPS had them continue a little further and then turn left on a dirt road.
"This can't be right," Patty said, "I've been to Antonio's before and it's on the other side of town."
The dirt road ended at a barn and Frankie turned the car around. As he reached for the GPS, it announced "Recalculating" in a tone of voice that indicated that the situation was under control.

Trailsend was a nondescript town at the end of a nondescript road that led to nowhere, and two days ago I had driven slowly down the main street delighted by the isolated vibe oozing from the mouldering shopfronts. Delighted that is, until I realised I was out of cash, and then Trailsend felt much less a country retreat and more like a stifled prison. Fortunately I had stumbled upon a brief job advertisement pinned up in the town’s only convenience store, which read:

Exotic Creatures Wildlife Park requires short-term research assistant – no experience necessary. Award rates plus overtime, accommodation if required. Travellers welcome to apply.

I had called the number, spoken briefly to a Dr Frombeir, and was hired right away. Now a day later and twenty minutes drive from Trailsend, I was stopped beside the first open gate once the road became dirt, although there was no sign anywhere to indicate that I was in the right place. With a slightly nervous flutter in my stomach, I swung my van off the road and proceeded down the dusty driveway.

"The sky should be blue!" my great uncle Thelan would exclaim, "not that namby-pamby lilac color! It's ridiculous. And the sun, it should be yellow, not chartreuse," he'd sneer. "Reminds me of chlorine."

He was always going on like that with us; telling me and my brothers how the sky just wasn't right anymore. "At night the moon should be silver, not that bloody red. Reminds me of that fancy drink -- Sangria, that's it. Moon shouldn't be red. And there should be stars."

"But Unc," one of us would say, "there are stars."

"Ha! All two dozen of them. You boys ever count the stars?" We all nodded. "That's ludicrous. There should be millions, no, billions of stars. Ain't no stars at all any more."

Swordsman Apprentice Nathanial hurried down the hall to his master's office. Never patient, Master Clarton was known to singe the hair off of apprentices that did not answer his summons immediately. Nathanial skidded to a halt in front of the master's door and checked that he looked presentable, then knocked.

"Enter."

Nathanial opened the door and stepped through. Inside, the master stood at the window.

"I hurried as soon as I got your summons master." Nathanial said as he watched his master.

The master turned from the window. Years of sword work had left its mark. Scars could be seen on his face. Nathanial knew that the master carried more on his body. He'd seen them when the master worked out.

"Nathanial, the war goes badly. All the masters and the able journeymen are out fighting skirmishes all over. If we don't soon get the advantage, we may have to gather up our people and flee."

Nathanial stood with his mouth open. He knew that the war was rough, but he had never heard just how desperate it had become.

"Okay," Lucifer said, "Kick back and rest." God was haggard from the intense effort, sitting in a recliner and sipping a cup of coffee. Lucifer reached over, touched the cold coffee with one scarlet fingernail. It bubbled and steamed.

He conjured up a scotch and water for himself. "You did great work, I'll be the first to admit it. Day one you created light and seperated it from the darkness. Getting an entire planet spinning is no small feat." God waved the compliment aside.

"Day two you did the water thing. Condensing the giant fog above the red-hot surface? A stroke of genius. You came up with blue skies and ocean in one move. I never would have thought of that."

"Speaking of water," God rumbled, "I notice you added water to that single malt. I thought about making that a sin at one time."

Lucifer laughed. "You know me. Always unrepentant.

The wheel bearings groaned, the chain squealed, the pedals chirped, the fenders rattled as Milton manically pumped his rusty stingray into the hot, dry headwind. The highway hadn't been paved in decades and the pot-holes and desert debris made for an obstacle course Milton negotiated with natural ease as he'd done countless times before only this time his heart beat in a panic and his breath came in gasps. The pedals turned at a furious pace while over the rise he could see the old service station beginning to push up through the desert, distorted in the rippling waves of reflecting heat. He prayed that Old Man Jensen, likely fast asleep in his swivel chair behind the counter, had an auto-drive transformer control unit in stock.

Milton chastised himself repeatedly for bypassing the alarms on the fail systems for the other four backup control units, keeping the powers that be off his back, so he could spend more time typing sweet nothings to his newly proclaimed soul mate hovering in the stratocity twenty-thousand feet above him. After all, he'd reasoned
the protocol was stupid having to replace a backup as soon as one failed. Why have the other four at all? And who is the idiot that designed to rest directly over the final backup unit - the compressor tank - who's malfunctioned bleed-off valve is now leaking water into the sole remaining control unit's circuit housing?

July thru August 2009 Contest

This contest is about Epic FAIL.

The focus is on a "Epic FAIL" in a sci-fi, fantasy or horror setting.

Perhaps a slip-up in the lab resulted in "Epic FAIL"...
Maybe a slip of the lip resulted in "Epic FAIL".
Due to "Epic FAIL" a pink slip was given to...

Something went wrong and resulted in an "Epic FAIL"
What went wrong is up to you of course.
All kinds of Epic FAIL real or figurative are included in this contest.




As always have fun!

(1000 words or less - contest closes August 15 2009)