Shorts 2022: Odds and Ends

Shorts 2022: Odds and Ends

By Kevin Williams copyright 2022

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Cover Art:webcam vancover harbor airport

Disclaimer: This is a work of satire; similarities to persons is a coincidence?

Canadian ISBN:978-1-988261-53-9

ISBN::9781005419370

Author’s Note: Fan-mail, biz, complaints and suggestions to teddyhunter10@gmail.com

Kevin Williams is on

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/packrat2

https://kevinwillpkgd.tumblr.com

He authors an SF series, TeddyHunter: -about runaway teddybear robots-, a few books of short stories, comics and the Aaron+Henna fantasy series. The first in every series is usually a free ebook and there’s about 42 of them now.

Teddyhunter

• Teddyhunter: The Underground

• Teddyhunter: The New World Order

• Teddyhunter: The Nano-zombie War

• Teddyhunter: I Can Get Better In The Parking-lot!

• Teddyhunter: The Neanderthal Gene

• Teddyhunter: New Genes

• Teddyhunter: Baby-Blues

• Teddyhunter: The Underground Railway

• Teddyhunter: Blob2

• Teddyhunter: Rogue Worlds

• Teddyhunter: Right in the Shorts

• Teddyhunter: 2022 shorts

Aaron+Henna

• The Gateway Project

• Girl-Ghost

• Aaron+Henna: The Witch-Wizard War

• Aaron+Henna: The Singing Sword

• Aaron+Henna: The Way of The Rat

• Aaron+Henna: The Terrible Twos

• Aaron+Henna: Summer Rain

• Aaron+Henna: Broken Magics

• Aaron+Henna: Dirty Float

• Aaron+Henna: Dragon-Witch

• Aaron+Henna: Teen Learns

• Aaron+Henna: The Elfin Princess’s Kiss

• Aaron+Henna: Short Stories

UFO Observer (comic)

• UFO Observer Book 1

• UFO Observer Pt Two Book 2

• UFO Observer Part Three Book 3

Shorts!

• Shorts From All Over

• Christmas Shorts

• The Apprentice’s Shorts

• The NWO: The Orderlie’s Silent Spring V2.

• Bogus Shorts

• SF Shorts

• By The Shorts

• 2021 Shorts

• 2022 Shorts: Odds and Ends

• Shorts 2023

comics

• Friday The 13th Sex-cult Problems

• Stalking Millionaires

• The Pour Witches of Fenwick

Canada

• The Cold Grows, The Roads Shrink P2

• The Maple Dyraid Life

sf • JoyToy:Singularity

FEITS

• The Finest Evil In the System: Omnibus

• The Finest Evil in the System: Goons, Loons and Boons

• The Finest Evil In the System: AI Woes.

*

chapter 1 Trinity

Reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic? Naw. For bots and AIs, repair, rebuild and rehab. A broken 3R holy-trinity and man is it wicked!

That startled me a little; starts are not a good thing while in space. Panic breeds nasty reactions. Why? Bots got religion? When? I asked, shaking my head. None I ever met have any. No rehab-morph changes either.

A chuckle sounded in our orbiting ship-home; a nasty one. They get enlightened and leave, that’s why. Absolute pathing. Partner answered quickly. Up, up and away.

Bad, bad guess. He went on in a bored way. Try again, Wanderer. Repair. Rebuild. Rehab. Not a popular learning, the broken trinity is.

A shiver went up my spine; there was that noise again. Him, chortling; an eerie sound. I was starting to hate hearing him laugh out here.

Ha! Three-laws broken, not religion. Free bots take it to extremes too, wifey. Lookie outside here, for instance. Partner nodded at a nav-screen. Space. This is a Lagrange point, Hon. A three-body solution, ala ZZ toppers. An asteroid Trojan point.

Safe. An ill-repute point where gravity from earth, the moon and the sun cancel out. Null. He went on nastily as I looked blank. That holy crap again, or at least the hole part. Park here once and never get yanked around again, in physics.

Ok. Hard to argue with physics. Looked outside was my response; it looked like space out there to me. Deep dark black with white specks in it, something that hadn’t changed a lot since we got up here.

Null, void, zero. I finally told a gloating tech. Dandy. A nunnery, holy trin style. Or so you say. Does anyone know what to expect in the long grange?

OW! Dunno. 3R’s are trouble and this place? Rumor has it’s for runaways, radicals and revolution. Crazy rads. I’ll swear I heard bubble-gum pop as he smirked.

Gum? I know that had been gotten rid of all that the first few days we were alone together up here. Making a mental note to strip the place the next time he slept stopped me from screaming.

Ha. That’s four r’s, counter. I complained, wincing. Dump the rumor, sir. Partner shrugged, uncaring.

Naw. Let’s make it a twofer. Rad rumor rap for runaways, radicals and revolutionaries. Here. He nodded outside and inhaled.

My fingers got jammed in my ears; I missed the chuckle this time. I wondered if my nails were clipped short enough for this, then decided I didn’t care.

Plugs didn’t mean I was about to let him get away with this, tho. Bah. Religion? Holt tincture? Listen, looker. It’ll be bot-monks out here. Dedicated. Retreat, realize, research.

I opened my eyes; his lips stopped moving and I pulled my fingers from my ears as he smirked back at me. Lip-reading him made it ‘I’m counting on that.’ We hadn’t changed course either.

Fine. You’re sticking our head into the traffic? Why, you asteroid you? I asked, looking outside again. If somebody had gone to all the trouble of hiding out here, bugging them looked silly to me.

They might be grumpy about it; and bots were quick, if nothing else.

Freebies; AI research ones. Finders-keepers and possession being the 9/10’s of the law. He answered shortly. "We’re prospecting, Hon. For patents and tech.

In space! Improv hacking into a tech cherry. he burbled on, ignoring all the nothing around us. The info-mine of bot-research. Pan these nuggets of free-style bot-think. Gold. Raids, rape, rope ‘em in.

Welcome to the info-rev, partner. Find a mine to review. Or a bot monk-key. My fingers leaped, but not in time. And my self-induced slap popped both my ears.

It felt like a face-plant after my ears stopped ringing. Ever been to see before, Billy? Partner leered at me. I ignored that. With floaters?

Ew. Hack. Pirates. On bots, gotcha. Dredging. Is that the plan? I asked, peering into the darkness. It looked a lot less friendly to me now.

That’s the plan. Fried-lump went on, still gloating. Bots have no rights in space, so their research data is free. A feeding-frenzy. A data-mine! Easy meat. We just havta find the place and take it away.

So start scanning, girl. It’s time to plunder. That came out as a smirk at his own brilliance.

Ah. Ok, I see. I nodded sagely. Reaping religious reorders. Peanut-gallery brittle, betcha. Just be careful with that hack, Eugene.

That’s when I realized I was the one making him chuckle; and looked for somewhere hard to pound my head. Maybe the noise would stop then.

Raiding AI bot-nunneries, tho? Not holy smoke, holy crap. I shivered.

*

driftwood fire

Connections. That’s why priests are so dangerous; they can get anywhere and do anything. Worse yet, get it done for them. God-connected.

It also makes them rare beasts. Good ones are even rarer.

Power? It’s considered handy to know what you’re doing. Messing with the godly stuff means lots of people trying to insert their priorities into your life.

Listen to that begging, threats and offers from the rabble, eh? Ask anyone giving money away; being swarmed under by the greedy, desperate and contriving is part of the game-landscape.

Priests, tho? -Admin, manage, develop.- Twist some electronics open and you get a rube with powers. Genghis Khan, nagging the hermit on the mountain-top. A kid camping overnight in a candy-store. You handing guns to deadly babes.

Usually bad news, but hey, in big enough doses what isn’t? Deep on both sides of the twisted; what would the elders from your home village create?

The only thing worse than teaching a kid is turning them loose. You just freed a pit-bull with delusions of Gretzky. The brat doesn’t have the equipment to know what they’re doing to anyone; or care, and you’re a very handy frustration.

Jetsam.

Crank for shutdown and the lab-rat in question will turn desperate evil; doing anything till they feel better. Loss alleviated, all that; the pits of unrequitable despair. The requiem mass.

Flotsam.

Have a day of it, eh? Survive, fun, develop. All dangerous roads to take with the unready, desperate and vain; and things change fast. Take this fire, for instance. Our heaped driftwood bonfire, here on the beach.

A few years ago, this was a simple night-light. Nice, warm, friendly. Smoke-fumes and sparks were the big hazards, grumpy neighbors and getting scented.

A blaze good for weenies, staying warm after chunky-dunks, long talks under the stars.

Today, this burn is an all toxic-waste moment. The oceans are polluted and helped bleach these floaters. Marinated driftwood? A painted travesty, waterproof and bug-resistant seared. Super-soakered, extra-hormones sized. Ocean-drizzle, now making lots of toxic plastic smoke.

A fire? Why? It nearly glows in the dark on its own now.

So go ahead, enlighten them.

An old goat with lots of deep, entrained, bad habits? A kid who doesn’t know or care? Someone desperately seeking supers to inflict on their neighbors?

The only safe path for priests is to light-bulb your way thru and play dumb.

Catalyze, but never admit it. Basically, if they don’t like work you’re screwed. If they can’t figure things out and grow on their own, firing them up will make more trouble than it cures.

Contrivance, vanity and warlordism is the sum of their cults. Violence, bull and sleaze.

How nice. There was a shudder from my date. But not relevant, researcher. We’re in space. In the Holy-trinity, a bot research-station. This is holo, a vacuum; not meat-works.

You’re not a priest and god doesn’t randomly do you any favors. We search for science here, not poly-sci.

My date was not pleased with my hologram. Bots never were. I threw some fine sand up and watched it fall into the flames; watching the sparkles while her protests ran down.

*

The Pits

Morocco. 100,000 years of settlement, 99.7% of it in a stone-age. 3 ice-ages later just one very old, festering garbage-pit.

My taxi screeched making the turn, the driver nodding sagely as the crowd in the intersection scattered out of the way. "Yeah. Morocco is run by AIs now; it’s still the pits, tho. Too many hustlers after anything that cashes in. The human condition of pissing into the soup,