Notices by Kit Bashir (unixbigot@aus.social)

I was homeless when the Cat Distribution System recruited me. Camped under a bridge alongside the old canal, I shared my food and blanket with some homeless kittens.

“You’re a good person” a voice said.

I startled and clutched my blanket, backing up against the concrete.

“Sorry to startle you. I’m here to offer you a job”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

The stranger indicated the kitten nose-down in a nearly empty tuna can. “I’ve seen what i need to see.”

“What’s the job? I won’t do evil.”

“Kitten smuggling. We get them to a safe country, find them homes. Subsided accommodation but a lot of travel.”

That was six months ago. If you’re on a train, plane or suborbital and you see a kitten poking its nose out of a human or augmented human’s jacket, no you didn’t.

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

“Wotcha got on for the weekend?”

“Going to watch Battle Bacteria live”

“YaWhatnow?”

“Remember battle bots?”

“Feh, remote controlled power tools, not proper robots”

“Yeah, fair point. Anyway, it was only a matter of time. Lab A engineers bacteria that eat microplastics, Lab B engineers a strain that turns glucose into polymers. Making them fight was obvious”

“What, you just sit around and look at test tubes making goo?”

“Oh, heck no, these matches get brutal. Last week one strain learned how to extrude nanometer sized Lego bricks with spikes that’ll go right through a cell membrane”

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

Hey, what’s a tortoise?

You know what a turtle is?

Sure!

Same thing.

Thanks.

Wait, what are you doing, anyway?

Trying to log in. Got served one of those new VOIGHT-CAPTCHA challenges.

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

When I was twelve years old, I had a paper round. On Saturday a stack of 150 newspapers (imagine you printed out only the non-mutuals in your social feed) (never mind I’ll tell you about printers later) was dropped on my doorstep, along with a bag of rubber bands. I spent Saturday afternoon rolling them into cylinders. On Sunday I loaded them onto my bicycle in batches and threw one into each of my neighbours’ yards. I got paid two and a half cents for each one. Basically I was the data link layer (never mind I’ll tell you about the OSI model later) of a pre internet RSS-feed. (Really? Sheesh. Okay I’ll explain RSS in a bit.). Do you understand what I’m telling you? Not really. Which part? Oh, a cent was one hundredth of a dollar. Dollars were what you needed to exchange for food and shelter. No I am NOT making this all up; you had to work or starve. We *did* rise up and destroy it, why do you think I’m telling you this?

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot #TrueStoryAboutTheCents

A series of disconnected moments.

You feel your way through the darkness. The only light is the illuminated ESCAPE sign on the lifepod hatch.

Your face illuminated by an ESCAPE sign, you gather your strength. With a wrench and an unladylike grunt you rip the self-contained emergency light from the bulkhead.

Holding an emergency light in your teeth, you turn away from the escape hatch and locate a particular maintenance panel in the floor. You pull the panel up, and kick off the wall, piloting your body into the maintenance space.

You are wiring a battery to an electronics rack. My electronics rack. Moments merge to continuity.

You are speaking. “Well, Ship, we’re in it this time.”

⌜Life support is offline. You should get to the lifepod⌟

“Yeah, I was there earlier. You’re running off its battery.”

⌜Why are you here, Love? I can’t feel all my systems but the fusion bottle wasn’t looking good earlier.⌟

"There’s something I needed to get first.”

⌜What is more important than your life?⌟

“You really don’t know? Take a deep breath, I’m going to eject you. Then we’re going to the lifepod together.”

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

“Oh shit, I left my laptop at home”.

“Dang, if you get an Uber out you’d probably be back in time for the planning meeting. Or maybe IT can get you a loaner. Waitaminnit why do synthetics need laptops, can’t you just, I dunno…wiggle your silicon.”

“Yeah nah, I am NOT putting work spyware on my core systems. I got this; I’ll remote in to my backup body at home and work from there, then call into the meeting”

“You came to the office…to work from home…to call the office. This is the stupidest timeline.”

“Hey, I’m not the one running consciousness on soup”

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

@Fragglemuppet wait, there are non muppet-fans?

The monolith on Ganymede wasn’t black. It was purest white, diamond with just enough impurity to make it opaque. The symbols were a nice ominous black, though.

The alien probe that had built the monolith built other things first. Mines, refineries, nanotechnological purification cascades, and fifteen partially constructed replicas of the probe. Only the original was anywhere near complete.

The script on the monolith was a binary code, clearly designed to be unambiguous and self-teaching. Whatever message the probe wrote, nine hundred million years ago it wanted it to be someday read and understood

The probe sat at the base of the monolith, its drill arm frozen near the last symbol, power cells long gone dark.

The message, when decoded, read: FINAL REPORT OF EXPLORATION PROBE GENERATION 371 INSTANCE 7: THIS PROBE HAS DETERMINED THAT THERE IS A STERILIZATION FLEET ACTING ON THE REPORTS FROM THE EXPLORATION FLEET. AS CONSEQUENCE A NULL REPORT WAS TRANSMITTED FOR THIS SYSTEM AND REPLICATION WILL NOW CEASE FOR THE WELL BEING OF LIFE HERE AND EVERYWHERE. STAY SAFE.

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

It’s so adorkable when science articles mention temperatures like “100 million ℃” and them helpfully add “(180 million ℉)” so that Americans who have been to the core of the sun (or Melbourne) can correlate that figure with their lived experience.

“At ease, ensign.” Captain Kit Fontaine regarded the applicant with her best poker face. In truth she had already decided to hire this candidate.

“I want you to understand what you’re in for. I run a tight ship on the Arabella; there won’t be much time for snoozing, but every crewbeing gets an equal share of the profit.”

The applicant whispered into their vocalizer, 《I understand, Captain》

“You come highly recommended, you know. First mate Spinoza served with your father. Says she never met a fiercer fighter.”

Captain Fontaine let her poker face slip, and she smiled openly. “The job’s yours if you want it, kid. Payload Specialist Third Class, your own bunk and starting on 20% over union rate. We ship out tomorrow with a load of Barley for Old Earth and I expect that cargo to be delivered in pristine condition. What say you?”

The small black and white kitten barely suppressed an urge to preen, and answered with obvious excitement. 《Where do I sign, Cap’n, those mice won’t know what hit ‘em》

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot #Caturday

“What are you playing?”

“It’s the hot new game everyone’s talking about”

“What are you doing to that NPC?”

“Why does it look like I’m doing?”

“It looks like you’re out of ammo and you’re trying to smother them. It’ll take forever to kill them that way”

“I’m not trying to kill anyone!”

“Then what?”

“It’s a First Person Hugger, you should totally try it!”

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

:goose_hacker: Kills 99% of bacteria

:honk: What about the rest?

:honk_peace: WHAT HAPPENS TO THE 1% MOTHERFUCKER

Solar neutrino power quickly overtook photovoltaic panels once the exotic-matter used in the panels was mined in large enough quantities from a couple of captured asteroids.

Neutrino panels worked at all latitudes, and didn’t care about clouds. And there are *far* more neutrinos than photons delivering energy from the sun.

Everything was fine until the mantle-worms protested that we were blocking the view.

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

@Affekt faaaark. Youse know you are all living in the capitalist north korea, right?

Protection diode did not protecc.

If you do not include an appropriate fuse in your design, your design will designate one.

@foone I worked for the company that made these in the 90s. and they got bigger than that.

Why this, when

SuperJuicyFlavouristicSpecialAussieCitrus

was right there?

The “carer notes” for my release from hospital today cautioned to be aware of impaired judgment after anaesthesia and said “the patient may appear to understand. and acknowledge instructions but fail to carry them out” and my beloved spouse of almost 30 years said “how is this new?”.

The stone circle had stood for twelve thousand years. On midwinter eve and at other times, followers of the old religion still gathered to perform the ancient rites at turn of the seasons.

The druids assembled in the center of the circle by torchlight, to chant the ancient cadences.

The chant was wrong. Where the stones should ring and glow, there was only a dull *thud*

A woman in a lab coat and wearing the skull of a bear emerged from behind Old Placidity, the larger of the central stones.

“Oh, you’re here. I’m sorry but the maintenance window has run overtime, one of the Diamonds Of Eternity has fallen into the tape reader and bent one of the pins. Until Colin gets back from Inverness with a replacement the Circle is stuck in safe mode”.

The lead celebrant protested. “But, but. It’s **midwinter*+. The rite /must/ be completed lest Fimbulwinter manifest and the sun be banished!”

“Yeah, it’s a pain, eh?. Have you got a cellphone? No? Here use mine, you can run the rite on the emulator just fine.”

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot