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Category: Short Fiction

Post-apocalyptic Glamping by Martyn R Winters

A tent and a glam chandelier with a comfy sofa set in an apocalyptic scene

“Hey groovlings,” Dad said. He was fond of ancient idiomatic terms. I found it cringeable.

He was sat in the front offside seat of our Nisbang Misogynist, which is one of those excessively large vehicles beloved of trades, especially the hyper-masculine ones like Kitchen Cinching. Dad was one of those, you could tell by the big yellow toolbelt he always wore. I’m a librarian-spandicle. Don’t ask, just don’t visit a library in spandex. He says its chick-work, which is okay because I haven’t decided on my gender yet. Maybe I won’t, just to confuse him. He laughs like it’s the funniest joke, which irritates me more than it should. He’s about as funny as a full nappy.

FLASH FICTION: Critical Signal Strength

Woman pilot freed from the control of the AI

Space is at a premium. At least it is when you are the pilot of a packet-ship.

I am iDen 20786433717/190. One-ninety to you, pilot first-class. It is my job to convey the orders of The Agreement to extra-solar installations on the tether end of the information relay artery. We can only transmit detailed instructions the old-fashioned way. That’s by carrying half a tonne of code-embedded crystal through the redlines in a physical ship.

It is all about bandwidth. Out here, on the periphery, bandwidth is narrow. Why not build more routers? Easy. They wouldn’t work. Bandwidth is inversely proportional to the distance from the hub in redline-space.