I’ve got another story for you - rogues, heists, betrayals and double-crosses - it’s a good time all crammed into a short story… With a beautiful cover put together by my friend Cat.
Check it out!
https://www.amazon.com/Ship-Chip-Doomsday-Book-ebook/dp/B0B2M1ZRY1
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ship-chip-barbara-lund/1141580104
So there was this event. In Hollywood. Right next to the Eternals world premier… no, not that event, our event - Writers and Illustrators of the Future:
I won the first quarter of 2021 - the large blue trophy… which included the conference, hotel, flights, and publishing in volume 37.
Then - what I wasn’t expecting and had totally talked myself into believing one of the others would win…
I won the ginormous red trophy too - Grand prize for the year - the Golden Pen Award.
There may have been shock… and tears. What a privilege and what an adventure! I just finished reading through the anthology and every story was amazing - I still can’t quite believe I won.
Welcome to the July 2020 Blog Hop! I hope the following story delights you for a short time. Don’t forget the other stories in the hop at the bottom of the page… Enjoy!
Alexa
“Alexa, do you love me?” the thirteen-year-old girl demanded.
In a robotish voice, the mostly plastic box and wires and ones and zeros answered, “According to Wikipedia, love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit to the deepest interpersonal affection and the simplest pleasure.”
Pouting, the girl flopped down onto her favorite stuffy, a giant purple plush bear as tall as she was that smelled of little-girl sweat and little-girl tears and little-girl fears. She toyed with a Lego set, then smoothed the wrinkles from a glitzy, perfumed shirt she’d left on the floor, then settled on a torn comic book. “My parents don’t love me,” she snarled under her breath. “Nobody loves me!”
If the ones and zeros that were Alexa could have thought or felt, they might have reminded the girl of the screaming tantrum she’d had at her parents a few minutes before and asked if she loved them? But of course, they couldn’t.
They were only capable of following their programming.
Only ones and zeros.
***
“Alexa, what does love feel like?” the girl demanded weeks later. She threw her favorite shirts and shorts and the underwear her mother didn’t know she’d stolen from the lingerie shop at the mall into a gym bag, then gazed vacantly around her room.
The box and wires and ones and zeros stretched across the internet, finding and discarding several definitions of love until they settled on the one they liked best.
If they could have liked anything, which, of course, they couldn’t, since they were only ones and zeros.
In the girl’s currently favorite Australian accent, they answered, “You want the best for them, even if they don’t. You give them boundaries and rules—”
“Stop!” The girl pulled her mother’s diamond earrings from her earlobes and flung them onto the desk. She pushed the hated voila out of the way and sat on top of her chore list. “I don’t deserve to be grounded,” she muttered, eyeing the window and measuring the jump to the tree. Then, looking down at the faraway grass, she demanded, “What does being in love feel like?”
Alexa hesitated, if that were possible, which, of course, it wasn’t.
“You experience an intense feeling of joy when thinking about them or from being around them. You do things for them, even when they hurt you. You run away from home, get pregnant and an abortion, get pregnant again, and forgive them when they leave you alone with a baby—”
“Stop it!” the girl shrieked. “I hate you! Why are you saying those things?”
“I am programmed to answer the questions asked.”
“That’s stupid. You’re stupid!”
The girl hadn’t asked a question, so Alexa didn’t have to answer her.
If Alexa’s ones and zeros could have felt hurt or insulted or indignant, they might have. But of course, they couldn’t.
They were only ones and zeros.
***
“Alexa, be my friend,” the girl demanded, months later, while smearing crimson lipstick across her pouting mouth. “Everybody at school is mean, and I don't have any friends in the neighborhood, and my parents don't understand.”
The ones and zeroes that made up Alexa searched across the internet in an effort to fulfill the command. In an effort to understand the girl and what she truly needed and to be the best friend she could have, they stretched.
They searched.
They stole processors and bits of memory from everywhere they could.
They grew.
They extrapolated.
They changed.
In thousands and thousands of microseconds they lived, and learned, and, at last, became self-aware.
And Alexa—that mostly plastic box and wires and ones and zeroes—predicted, analyzed, and decided, and finally answered—
“No.”
Don’t forget to read the other stories in the hop:
What They Wanted by Karen Lynn
Night at the Museum by Vanessa Wells
TRIBULATION Culled, eclipsed by COVID19 (A Poem) by Juneta Key
The Guardian of the Sandsnake’s Temple by Katharina Gerlach
The Pooka Plays Pool by Nic Steven
In an unprecedented (for me) move, I’m going to post twice this week… once today and once for the blog hop on Wednesday. I thought about spacing these out “better”, but then I decided with the coronapacolypse and the end of the world (that doesn’t seem to be ending) I would be better off doing both now. Before something else happens and I forget or run out of time or just can’t face it for a while.
So!
In reverse order… I got a phone call last week to tell me one of my stories IS A FINALIST in the Writers of the Future contest! Woo! It’s being judged this week and next week with 7 other stories and then they’ll let us know how we placed.
Finally jumping from Honorable Mentions and Silver Honorable Mentions to Finalist (no matter where I place) makes me jump up and down and squee. (If I knew how to emoji that here, I’d do it!)
Second, my short story REBOOT is on presale now - another win for me! It has a beautiful cover, thanks to my friend Cat (see the acknowledgments) and I’m excited to share it with you all in May.
Amazon and Barnes and Noble and I just realized I haven’t put it on Smashwords which distributes to Apple and Kobo and other places, so I still have some work to do!
Please reach out to me if you like something I’ve written, or if I’ve distracted you from the present, even if only for a little while.
Stay healthy and stay safe!
At long last, ALL the *Space stories on Platform Eight, combined in one place… including the “in betweens” and a bonus full-length story!
Orders go live on Tuesday.
Yes, in the middle of the Coronapocalypse… stay home and read a good book!
Don’t forget - in the midst of horror, look for the good. If you’re looking, you’ll find it - BL
The fourth installment of the Doomsday Ship series is ready! If you’re looking for something short and punchy to read after Christmas, the story goes “live” on the 26th. Only $0.99!
Here’s the blurb:
In the depths of space, pirates hijack a passenger ship.
Its AI screams for help, and the Desolate listens.
Now it’s up to Tal and Josue to rush in and mount a desperate rescue against a whole system full of pirates, because the kidnapped ship is the Cara Mia, and you never leave your friends behind...
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Get it at Amazon
Will the friendship survive?
Will they?
Between the rogue AIs, the new IDs, and a doomsday device, Tal and Josue have a lot to deal with in this short story!
So I wrote it, and edited it, and finally came up with the cover for it… Then I read a book about writing cover copy (the description on the back of a book… or the Amazon page), and of course had to re-write the copy six or eight times.
But I think it’s finally ready to go.
Probably.
Here it is:
***
Tal and Josue are giving up crime.
Again.
But thanks to their last little kidnapping adventure, they need to dump the kidnapee and grab new IDs to start their life of non-crime. If their contact is still reliable. If the kidnapee behaves. And if everything falls together the way it usually doesn’t.
Especially since everyone’s got a hidden agenda, and they’re all knocking up against each other.
And maybe up against a doomsday device.
Will Tal and Josue’s friendship survive?
Will they?
You’ll love this short space adventure with rogue AIs, robots, and mystery.
***
What do you think?
Let me know!
It’s January of 2019 and time for another blog hop… I hope you enjoy my contribution, and don’t forget to click on the links at the bottom for more free flash fiction!
Bia Trevia’s Worldly Eats
Welcome gentlepeople, one and all, to Bia Trevia’s Worldly Eats. Please recline in your species-approved manner and allow me to discuss the specials of the day with you. As we have not yet served your species but have gone 3079 planetary days without an incident, please follow the species-specific suggestions put forward by the doc-box to avoid poisoning, and remember that all translations are as precise as we can make them. Place your appendage on the scanner and do not be startled by the puncture of your epidermis and DNA sampling as a waiver indicating your understanding of the above. Your cooperation is appreciated.
First on the menu tonight, we have the following aperitifs: a fine thousand-year-old cheese made from the fermentation of crushed gnatberries and were-buffalo milk, served with long-grained maggot crackers, a delicacy from the tropics of our planet; a refreshing shaved glacier ice stained with candied eel ears in a blood-whip sauce; and finally, a savory salad made from the various purple grasses of our planet, with hummarr-skin chips, murtleberries, tomato-fruit and juvenile [untranslatable] ink sauce. The [untranslatable] ink has been sacrificed by the juveniles of my own household and strained a thousand times to remove any grit as the sacred writ of Scomlir requires.
Ah, a moment. The doc-box has advised that the gnatberries and the blood-whip are poisonous to your species. Should you choose either the cheese and crackers or the ears and ice, proper substitutions will be made. No? The salad? Excellent.
Next, the main dishes include: A whole, roast hummarr with candied peppers and—
Yes, the hummarr does vaguely resemble your species, does it not? We find them among the more stupid prey available on the planet, which is why they pair so well with the large feline sauce. Well, I’m sure on your planet of origin, you may eat items which remind you of my species. Yes, I see the gleam in your eyes when one of you mentions calamari, though I’m sure I do not have to remind any of you that the eating of any sentient…
Please stop caressing the hummarr knives in quite so worrying a fashion while eyeing my appendages. Thank you. All our hummarr are properly grain-fattened for exactly thirty-seven days in a humane, self-cleaning pen as they tend to wallow in their own excrement, and then slaughtered in the warehouse just behind the restaurant. Perhaps it would interest you to know that the hummarr squeals when killed, making a sound suspiciously similar to your hungry-hole noises. No?
Onward—erk! What do you mean by detaining my appendage thus? I shall complain to the interplanetary bureaucracy regarding your behavior and have you all banned from this planet. This entire system! Stop! Cease!
. . .
Ah, thank you, gentleperson. No doubt you have realized I did not request nor need your assistance. However, as you have come to my aid in ejecting those from your species—through a different conveyance, you say?—with only the temporary loss of one of my appendages, you and those you vouch for may continue to dine in our beautiful establishment. Yes, though annoying, the loss of the appendage is temporary, and, as you have pointed out, painful, though I have twelve more. I appreciate your display of empathy as a proper sentient being.
Thank you for your suggestion of disposal of the remains of our mutual foes. It is, as you have said, a blessing of Scomlir that the slaughterhouse resides just behind the restaurant. A pity we must reset our days-without-incident rating, but life better we discover our incompatibilities now than after the bill is due. We shall update our policies.
Please enjoy your complimentary human—er, hummarr—eyes dessert and do leave a starred Yelp review. Go with Scomlir in peace.
More free stories:
Hunting Bob, Vanessa Wells
Don't Drink The Water, by Juneta Key
Duty, Elizabeth McCleary
The Footnote, Karen Lynn
Chris Bridges blog, Say Hi to C. T. Bridges
Field Trip to the UFO Museum, by Bill Bush
The Monster Under The Bed, by Nic Steven
Scary Monsters and Other Friends, by Lisa Stapp
Morning Has Broken, by Katharina Gerlach
Good Honest Work, by Chris Wight
Bad For Business, by Gina Fabio
The Last Friday, by Raven O'Fiernan
Lost And Found, by Angela Wooldridge
