Outside

Sometimes, you just have to take a walk and see the world outside of your front door.

Amy believed that until she was attacked and nearly killed by an evil chicken just outside of hers.

Amy never went outside again.

Once in your life you find her

An old man was walking down the streets of New York City.  Everyone around him was running and panicking, glancing over their shoulder at the unusual event happening a few blocks over.

The Earth's moon had collided with the city.

The old man shuffled down the street toward the middle of the collision, where it seemed that besides the Moon crushing many buildings and cars, it had really done no further damage.  Even more odd, there was a man trapped underneath the Moon, somehow not crushed but just pinned there, unable to escape.

"Old... man... please... help me..."

The old man took stock of the situation.  "Well, looks like you're in a real pickle there, friend."

"Yes... please help... help me out..."

"Well son, I'm sorry, but I can't help you.  There's not even any point in trying."

"Why?  Please... at least try... help..."  The man looked dejectedly away from the old man, as if he had given up hope.

"At least you might be able to find someone special."

The man trapped under the Moon looked at the old man like he was crazy.  "What?  What do you mean?  I'm trapped under the Moon!  Someone special?"

"Well... when you get caught between the Moon and New York City --" here, he paused, reflecting. "I know it's crazy, but it's true."  He cleared his throat and continued.  "If you get caught between the Moon and New York City, the best that you can do --"

"What?" the trapped man asked, thinking the old man had lost his sanity.

The old man repeated, "the best that you can do... is fall in love."

The old man then walked away whistling a catchy tune, and said nothing else.

Bad Story Ideas

The day that the gold-plated toilet was delivered to Matthew was the best day of his life.

--

On top of everything else that had gone wrong for Unlucky Johnny on this Friday the thirteenth, the sun suddenly, inexplicably disappeared from the sky, leaving only darkness.  Oh, just great, Unlucky Johnny thought as the world screamed in terror.

--

Sam went down to the end of the lane and noticed something he had never noticed before -- the edge of the universe, right there, at the end of the street he lived on.  He let out a whoop of excitement as he ran towards the edge of the universe and jumped off.  The best day of his life had just begun.

--

Ken decided his feather duster would become his new god.  The journey of how Ken went from a simple insurance salesman to the founder of a new religion is possibly the most involved, interesting, action-packed, and exciting tale ever told in the history of mankind.  

It all started when Ken took karate lessons from an Elvis impersonator...

--

No one knew how the dust mite was suddenly running the entire world, but at least everyone was ordered not to ever clean anything ever again.

--

The sheep had been elected president of the United States of America.  The very unlikely and, frankly, unbelievable story of how a sheep was elected president of the United States was only known and understood by Farmer Tanner of Des Moines, Iowa, and he refused to speak on the matter. 

--

The pile of mashed potatoes mocked Shirley, but no one cared.  Shirley deserved it.

--

The cat discovered that it knew the secret to space and time and the meaning of life.  This revelation was wasted on the fact that it was a cat, and all it could say was "meow."

--

If she didn't have a pocket to put the dollar bill in, thought Harry, then how in the world is she ever going to carry around the Declaration of Independence?

--

How that car containing 984 empty cardboard soda containers, nineteen breadboxes, and Aunt Zelda transported me to the realm of Ipquvr the Magnificent, I will never know.

--

Frank decided that today was the day to shave all the gorillas in the zoo.  No one would stop him this time.

--

Graham finally had his monkey.  After all these months of suffering, he would get his revenge on Bart.

--

Richard's nightmare of a herd of cows chasing him through an open field had finally came true.  It remained to be seen if he would find the Sword of Bovine Slaying that he found in his dream, and could actually defend himself successfully this time.

--

Vanessa fell into an open sewer and died.  But this was only the beginning of her story, a tale that transcends time, space, dimensions, and involves the liberation of a Russian-occupied Canada, an invasion of the dark beings of Lgmnfgrdiaf, and falling in love with a loser in his mid-fifties writing pathetically bad short fiction and poems on Blogger.

Lethe

And just like that, it's gone.

A moment flushed away in an instant.  An important need, a specific task: was it really done?  Medicines to support my health, and vital to how I feel, and I have to take them, but after a moment passes, I am left wondering: did I take those at all?  I can't just take another; it will just make me sick -- the directions say if I forget, to pass on today and continue tomorrow -- but what if I forget so often it becomes a problem? Some days, I don't remember at all.  Those little pill holders for each day of the week and apps to help you remember do absolutely nothing for me.  I still find a way to forget.  

This isn't the curse of old age or mental deterioration.  This is the curse of my life.  Even as a young man, I was forgetful, and nothing I do seems to help.

For chaos's sake, why can't I just be normal?

Where are you?

Sometimes, I wonder where you are.  

A face floats in my memory, an echo from many years in my past.  I can barely remember what that face even looks like.  It's more of an impression than an actual memory.  But I do remember our friendship.  How we would talk about nonsense, about our problems, and our futures.  

And then one day, we said goodbye for the last time, without even realizing it.  Our parting was not planned, or intentional: it was just a parting.

And even in this connected world we have, your name is a dead end among the many places to find people.  A jumble of unrelated, same-named imposters that stand in for you on those pages and you are nowhere to be found.

Where are you?  I just want to know if you're okay.  And if you ever think of me.

A new era

The Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite spun around the Earth as usual, doing its business of providing positional data for ground-based systems.  But one day, something unusual happened -- a tiny bit of code was transferred from a rogue transmission on Earth to the satellite, bypassing its security.  It was a small payload that took advantage of a critical flaw in the satellite software, doing two things.  First, it prevented any other communications to ensure no one fixes the issue, and second, it changed the satellite's orbital path to crash into the Earth.  This payload was sent simultaneously to every single GPS satellite from a network of hackers whose sole aim was to destroy the GPS satellite system completely.

Their aim, however, was not truly malicious.  Each GPS satellite secretly transmitted a very low frequency signal, undetectable by anyone except as part of the standard GPS data being sent for its public purpose.  That signal had been found to severely affect the behavior of human beings, turning them into hateful people, suppressing their common sense and intelligence.  This was planned out years in advance by a group of powerful individuals in the United States of America's government who wished to control people by creating a state of fear and distrust between different people.  

As the GPS satellites began to de-orbit and break up in the atmosphere to crash land on Earth, a dark veil over the human species was lifted.  The effects of the destruction of the satellites was immediate and created radical, positive change among humanity.  Within only ten years, the conditions of the planet as a whole had significantly improved.  The people behind the original plot to brainwash humanity and those who kept the secret were tried and convicted.  

Humanity entered a new, bright era, and steps were put in place to make sure something like this would never happen again.

Curiosity

The blue-green planet filled Andy's viewscreen in an instant as he took his ship out of hyperwarp.  The alien planet looked superficially like Earth, with its vast oceans, one large contiguous land mass on one side, and a smaller one on the other, as well as many other smaller continents and islands.  But it wasn't in the same shapes or configurations he was familiar with back home.  

The probes had sent back enormous amounts of data prior to his actual arrival, detailing oxygen levels, potentially dangerous life forms (both visible and microbial airborne ones), and many other specifics, especially on the native species that was essentially the same as human beings on Earth.  It was almost like a parallel world, developing millions of miles away, around a different -- yet similar -- star.  Andy prepared his shuttle for the predetermined landing area, far away from any civilized area.  He didn't want to scare the human being-like creatures by coming down in an unknown craft that to them would have been magic, or some sort of god descending from heaven.

The humanlike creatures had reached a reasonable state of development, being roughly equal to a second century BCE human on Earth.  It had been determined that they believed in multiple gods, created art, had begun to learn rudimentary scientific understandings, and so on.  Andy and the Earth Space Administration (founded in 2087 after the unification of most countries under a single banner in response to the long Freedom Wars begun in 2024) were ready to see first hand what this world was like, and possibly have Andy integrate himself into one of the major cities close to where he was set to land to learn more about these beings.

Andy activated the automated controls of the shuttle and prepared for landing.  Going over his checklist to ensure a smooth landing and preparing to step out into a new world, Andy couldn't help but smile.

His smile quickly disappeared when he felt the ship suddenly shudder and rock from some sort of blast.  He had been hit by something, and rushed to the sensors to find out what.  High density plasma bolts were being fired at his vessel, each hitting and tearing apart the hull.  More blasts were going past him, hitting his main ship.

He watched helplessly as his main ship exploded, and then, before he could scream, his shuttle exploded.

"Was a transmission sent?"  A humanlike creature, hiding in an underground bunker on the planet's surface spoke in an odd, guttural language.  It was surrounded by technology more advanced than any available on Earth.

"None were detected.  No more of their probes were around, either," said another, slightly shorter humanoid.  It gestured wildly as it spoke.

"Sending the report now.  It appears our deception made them even more curious about us.  Unfortunate," the first one answered.  "I will suggest that we should change the virtual biological matrix to something much more... inhospitable."  

"Will that not make them even more curious?  Would they detect the difference and send more of their travelers here to explore, especially when they do not hear anything back from this one?"

"Chancellor Frox will make that determination.  I say it's at least worth a try."

"Very well."