Can you write a story with fewer than 300 words? (1 Viewer)

[RichP]

Here's one of mine...


The last time I died was the worst. I can remember the light, so exquisite as it faded away. I remember the taste, of death that is, as the last breath rose from failing lungs, sliding through parted teeth on its way to greet the world.

I’d been here before of course, never the worse for wear, but this time, we all knew it was different. From the moment of birth, from the spark of life, the conception, it was understood that the new life inside would irreversibly lead to demise.

I was saddened, because I had only recently come in possession of that life; I suppose I wasn’t entirely ready to give it up yet. It had been my favorite, and perhaps that’s why it was so hard to let go, so painful to move on. It was somewhat cathartic however, to have everything torn from you, leaving your very existence as scraps and tatters swirling in the air conditioning.

I will move on, as I always do, to find another life to clutch. After all, it’s what I’m best at, and truth be told, the only thing I really know how to do. Sometimes I daydream about what it might be like to be something else, to have not wound up like this, but those thoughts are quickly dashed. I cannot change what I am, anymore than a bee can change its sting. I must accept it, and submit freely to the consumption, the sickening battle, and ultimately, the finality.

I hope my next life lasts awhile, but lately it seems that the time between is getting shorter and shorter. Who knows, perhaps we’ll meet sometime if the fates allow. I know you’d like to think you could avoid me…

… Perhaps you can, sir. Perhaps I can, sir.

 

[BrianW]

Yeah, Rich, I've had days like that. Thanks

I'm skipping dinner tonight, so I came up with the following:


Probable Cause

Doctor Henry Morton patiently explained the situation to Irene, his wife. “We see things like this in the lab all the time. Quantum tunneling, even though it is observed to occur strictly on a subatomic scale, is a phenomenon that can occur on a macroscopic scale, theoretically on an object of any size. Even the entire universe itself, given enough time, perhaps in ten googolplex years, will eventually tunnel into a completely different state of existence. But at the universe’s present age, it is extremely unlikely – almost incalculably unlikely – that any object large enough to hold in your hand has ever tunneled from one place in the universe to another. But the important thing to remember is that we’re talking about probabilities here. Though the probability is so low that it may well be considered impossible, the probability is not quite zero. That we have witnessed such a macroscopic quantum tunneling event, not once, but twice in our lifetimes, is cause for celebration! Not in a trillion years will any of humanity’s descendants be likely to witness even one, much less two, such remarkable quantum tunneling events!”

Irene was not impressed. “Twice in our lifetimes? Try three times in one week.”

“Has it been three times?”

“Oh, you’re such a dunderhead! Why can’t you just admit that you locked the keys in the car?”

 

[BrianW]

Hey, this is easy!

Here's another one:



Sentience

“We are intelligent creatures! What justifies your behavior?” The appointed leader of the human-slaves of Vega 3 spoke with indignation.

“We’re more intelligent. Do you not enslave cattle for your purposes?”

“Cattle are not sentient. We are!”

“You think sentience is a binary state? I say it is a matter of degree! I am more self-aware than you, therefore I am entitled to enslave you and your entire human race!”

“Either you are sentient, or you are not!”

“Indeed? Describe your self-awareness. To what do you attribute your consciousness?”

The human thought for a moment before he spoke. “A popular human metaphor for self-awareness is the presence of a person, another me, inside my brain, controlling my actions. It is this metaphorical man-inside-my-brain that gives rise to consciousness and self-awareness. A cow entertains no such thoughts about is own consciousness.”

“Ah, but what if I were to tell you that I also have a metaphorical Xilidor inside my brain?”

“Then that would put us on equal ground, and your treatment of us is unjustified!”

“And what if I were to tell you that the Xilidor inside my brain has another Xilidor inside its brain, controlling its actions?”

“Yes, but…” The human stopped short. “Drat! I guess you got me there.”

 

[BrianW]

Shoot, I gotta do one more. With the recent smashing (Hyuck!) success of the Deep Impact probe, I needed to remind myself that there are many more wondrous things yet to be discovered in the cosmos. This one reads more like a sidebar to an article in a magazine and speaks of a new discovery in our very near future:


Beyond Hubble

The James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2013, lived up to its promise of peering deeper into the cosmos with its infrared capability. At sixteen billion light years, astronomers thought they had reached the edge of the observable universe. But the first objects from seventeen billion light years away didn’t come into focus until the World Space Observatory, an ultraviolet-capable telescope launched in 2017, was aimed at an unremarkable patch of space. At first, scientists didn’t know what they were observing. They thought it was evidence of the breakdown of symmetrical radiation as matter and energy split into their present forms. But a graduate student by the name of Thomas Becker, working on nothing more than a hunch, decided to apply a different analysis. What he found stunned the scientific community: blue-shifted galaxies at the edge of the universe.

Confirmation was slow in coming since the blue-shifted galaxies were twisted beyond casual recognition through gravitational lensing effects. But as more and more computers were tasked with analyzing the data, it became undeniable that the galaxies were there and presumably going the wrong way. And there were trillions of them.

Many theories surfaced to explain the phenomenon. Some theorized that the universe, for whatever reason, simply cannot expand beyond a certain point. So the universe, despite previous observations, is effectively closed, and the farthest galaxies have been returning to their origin for quite some time. Other theories involved the exotic notion that the light from the blue-shifted galaxies had already circumnavigated the universe and had been emitted from galaxies that were, in fact, very near our own.

But the theory that gained the most favor was Thomas Becker’s. Becker theorized that a shell of hyper-expansion of the universe had occurred between sixteen and seventeen billion light years away. While this would put the blue-shifted galaxies on the other side of the hyper-expansion, and thus impossibly out of sight, photons emitted by the galaxies just before the hyper-expansion event would still be visible, even if only for a limited time. It was these photons, Becker argued, that we were observing.

To explain the blue shift, Becker invoked nothing less than a violation of the law of conservation of energy. The gravitational contours of space cause photons to gain and lose energy, but the energy gained as a photon enters a gravity well—as happens when it passes near a galaxy—is completely lost when the photon exits the well, and energy is conserved. But a hyper-expansion event would drastically flatten space, making these wells much shallower. According to Becker, photons near the bottom of these gravity wells when the hyper-expansion event occurred would use far less energy climbing out of the wells than they gained falling in, resulting in a blue shift. From the photons’ perspective, it was a downhill trip to the World Space Observatory. The magnitude of the blue shift could even be used to determine the extent of the hyper-expansion — knowledge scientists had long thought to be unattainable.

So the hyper-expansion event was kind enough to take a snapshot before pushing everything on the other side out of the observable universe. And it even gave this snapshot an extra push toward our instruments

Thomas Becker, when a reporter asked the name of his theory, replied, “Hyper-expansion-induced gravitational Doppler shift.” Of course, when the headline appeared, the name of the theory had been changed, much to Becker's delight and approval, to “The Big Gulp.”

 

[Francois Caron]

Don't worry. You have plenty of skill. “She tasted like chicken.” I'm still laughing at that one!

Waitaminute! How would an alien know anything about chickens?