Fried

The fairgrounds where alive with rich fried smells and an almost sickly sweetness. Oliver felt the warm glow of teenage invincibility, the weight of a full wallet and the pangs of an empty stomach.

The nearest cart had ‘Cheeze-covered deep fried donuts’. He wasn’t sure the combination would work, but he tried one anyway. A cheddar-chocolate mashup was dunked again in the deep fryer for him after being coated with a fresh batter. Ignoring the warning about the temperature he took a large bite.

It wasn’t horrible, but it not something he’d buy again. The chocolate and the cheese seemed to be headed in different palate directions. Either of them individually seemed good though, so he scanned the grounds for something less experimental.

Another fryer enabled vendor had both deep fried chocolate bars and deep fried cheese. The line was long enough he didn’t want to wait twice, so he got both at the same time. The battered butter also tempted him so he got all three.

Repair

 

Demi-assistant Pavel trudged along the hallway with a metallic half sphere, holding it almost comfortably with two hands. He elbowed the door to the Quarter-prefect’s office with a kind of tired sigh.

“We’ve got a...” he began

“Put it on the ... well, floor I suppose.” interrupted Quarter-prefect Claut.

“...broken...” Pavel trailed off, the word hanging in the air, looking for somewhere to land.

The room was full of half spherical shapes, matching the one in Pavel’s arms. Six on the large desk, a dozen on the floor and one on each of the otherwise empty three chairs in the room. They looked a bit worse for wear than the one that had just joined them, but still theoretically functional.

Claut growled lightly and Pavel left quickly. “What now?” the Quarter-prefect asked of no one in particular. He grabbed a random tool from his desk drawer and shuffled over to the new object in the room. Tapping it loudly in several places he made a note of the echoes.

Placing it down gingerly on the floor he weaved between the mess on the floor to a writing board. #22 Dorsal section intact, three empty cavities – positions 9A, B and C. A blueprint of the device was nearby for reference, but Claut had memorized it in the years prior.

The half-spheres were a strange type of mechanical life they had found underground about nine years ago. The faculty had be studying them in hopes of discovering their secrets. They hadn’t learned much, but found them very useful for pest control and building inspection.

For the most part they simply just worked. They seemed to thrive without appreciable amounts of water or food, but various hints made the scientists classify them as living nonetheless.

Cracker Jack

 

Jack was almost happy with his job at the cracker factory. As with any manufacturing job he got a healthy supply of the featured product. He, more than most people, took full advantage of his allowance, frequently bringing home large bags of cosmetic rejects and malformed opening and closing batches.

He would enjoy them with jam, honey, marmalade, peanut butter, yeast extract, chocolate spread and anything else he had on hand. Like his job, he was almost happy with the results. Something was missing though, and he asked for a few shifts in the mixing room to perform some quiet experiments.

Normally management wouldn’t allow for any deviation from the formulations, but Jack was careful to keep his mixes off the production line. He’d take the bags of dough home, and finish making the crackers himself.

His main thought was to substitute the plain salt for subtle herb blend. It wasn’t much, and he could hardly taste the difference himself, but something it the texture just worked better. The crackers didn’t break the same way and certain toppings seemed to highlight a different part of the concoction.

He quietly tried a taste test at work, but his colleagues always defaulted to the normal batch. Not that they disliked the new variation, but they were the kind of people who liked monotony. Or so Jack reasoned.

The Game

Kasper and Valencie were two titans of the game. They each had a loyal following. A cloud of admirers, imitators, disciples that stood fiercely behind their selected champion.

Kasper was measured, with a deep and long strategy that built up slowly through the match. Valencie was the opposite, quick and reckless with an edge of chaos. The possibilities of their meeting tantalized everyone.

Under the surface of the game, the two had a mutual respect for each other, but a professional jealousy as well. Neither would hold back in their upcoming match.

One crisp fall day, the two fell into the other’s shadow – bright lights and cameras making that image literal.

Sustenance Depot

 

Jal put her food-cred card in the front slot of the small grey box sitting outside the Sustenance Depot. It was a half block from her place of work, an insignificant factory where they 3d printed various high tensile strength parts. A moment later a door to the depot opened and a voice ushered her inside.

The room was long and narrow, mirroring the others beside it with their own doors. Along the length were shelves packed tightly with various foodstuffs. In front of each of them was a light, colour coded and numbered to indicate the approximate price. Green for basic fruit or vegetable, blue for exotic plant, yellow for basic protein, orange for premium and so on. Jal was hungry and felt like splurging, so she grabbed a three light orange dish – locking out the other protein choices. A small moment of calculation and the blue lights turned off as did some of the multi light green dishes. Weighing her remaining options, she settled for a two light pile of nutritious looking leaves.

She wasn’t quite sure what they were and it really didn’t matter. Food was food and as far as she knew she didn’t dislike anything. A few white and tan lights at the far end of the room lit up – indicating sauces and drinks that would compliment her choices so far. A small chime indicated she had used half of her decision time. She glanced back but didn’t see anyone else through the one way glass outside. It seemed unlikely the place would shut down early then, but apparently it didn’t want you to relax either. ‘Maybe they want to keep us thinking quickly’ she pondered.

Time Opus

 Terk matched frequencies with the other time traveller. A flurry of text messages and videos appeared on his computer. With them Terk could see what the other traveller had done and what kind of timeline they were looking for.

It was like the basic timeline – with a few prominent changes. First – more high level ‘coincidences’ between people. That usually meant a high amount of delicate and deliberate temporal interference. Nothing too direct, but obvious enough evidence to anyone that looked into it.

Second. A higher proportion of people being neurodiverse, which would expose the first change more quickly. It seemed like an interesting idea, though one that might backfire just as spectacularly.

Terk realized the other time traveller would have to settle for a lot of ‘misremembered’ things from other people – before their stories and the actual happenings would actually line up. More importantly they’d have to keep any such discrepancies to themselves, lest the AI timeline scanners prune their progress.

Terk could see that their ‘fictional’ writing seemed to acknowledge this limitation – eventually. He sent a confirmation of a topic they had been thinking about. It had been a sticking point in the night vision network they had been sharing for the last little while.

Radio Gaga

 

“We welcome you back to 99.9 – The official radio station of summer!” exclaimed the dj with forced enthusiasm on the pre-recorded playback. Just then the phone rang.

“Hi! 99.9 you’re on the air!”

“What makes you the radio station of summer? Is there an official selection process? Do you have a certificate?” the caller said with all seriousness.

The DJ blinked. Thankfully it was radio. “It’s just a thing we say man, chill.” he laughed and hung up.

The phone rang again. “Hi! 99.9 you’re on the air!”

“You hung up on me. We weren’t finished yet.”

“Oh. Sorry man.”

<Click>

Another laugh. The switchboard lit up. The DJ was a bit surprised. He picked a line at random.

“Hi! 99.9 you’re on the air!” he intoned.

“I think the previous caller had a point.”

“Oh really? Well sorry, that’s just what marketing says to say from May to August.”

<click>