Comedy Archives » Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey

CAN I THINK OUT OF THE BOX?

Ian Lahey — Sat, 29 Jan 2022 07:31:22 +0000

Well, I have these two neurons that maybe can, also it’s not a box, it’s a chocolate wrapper.

I was at the supermarket for the usual round of shopping. When I finally went to pay there were two checkout lines, 2 and 4, both pretty long.
So I picked mine, number 2, but kept my senses alert for the announcement, and sure enough, not a full minute later, one of the cashiers summoned a colleague to open checkout number 3. As I nimbly stepped out of my own line to be the first to occupy the coveted spot, a chap from the other line, just as nimbly, did the same.
Noticing he had a mere handful of groceries while I had one of those plastic trolleys I had packed so full it was hoping to die and be reborn as full-size cart, I was the first to apologise and bade him to take the lead.

“Thanks, I’ll set my stuff on the counter,” he said, “but you can go first. I still need to grab a chocolate bar.”
My eyes darted towards my trolley…I too had chocolate on my list, but had forgotten it!
The trolley stared back, daring me to even think of stuffing it any further.
My brain scrambled for a solution. Losing my twice-won spot for just one missing item was out of the question.
But then again…it was chocolate we were talking about…

In the mild panic caused by the thought of being without my brown soul comfort, two entirely unrelated neurons, who had hitherto never had the chance to work together, bumped against each other and, before I could double check the solution they came up with, I blurted out the following phrase:
“Oh, would you mind getting me one too?”
Despite the fact that a total stranger had just asked him to do shopping for him, the other guy did not skip a beat.
“What kind?” He asked.
I could tell, from the tone of his voice, that he was grinning under the mask.
“Lindt, 70%, thank you.” I was grinning too.
“Gotcha!”
So here I am, savoring my chocolate, and thinking I would never be able to use a dialogue like that in my books because “real people don’t act like that”.

I’m still grinning and this chocolate never tasted better.

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Week-End of the World

Ian Lahey — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 20:50:23 +0000

Every culture on Earth has its own prediction on how the world should end. The Hindi know that at the end of each era the world is to be destroyed and rebuilt. Christians wait for the Biblical Apocalypse. Then there’s Ragnarok, and countless others.

Or, maybe, every deity has their own plans, and each has kindly informed their followers how they will eventually snuff us all out of existence. It’s a pity, though, they forgot to consult each other, and ended up planning all world destruction for the same week-end.

First came the visions. On Thursday, at a quarter to nine a.m., Vishnu, on a white horse, appeared in the sky to warn mankind that the kaliyuga, the final part of the cycle, had ended, and that he would return before the complete annihilation of the planet to choose the worthy ones. He was interrupted, though, by the sudden pop and a flash, announcing the return of Saoshyiant, the progeny of Zoroaster, who was quite taken aback when he realized he wasn’t the only apparition in the sky. Nevertheless he too went on to proclaim his bit (some say he was reading from a scroll sewn to his sleeve), and inform everyone that the world was about to end as prophesied, thank you very much and good night.

Of course all the world’s media sources were overloaded with videos of the apparitions. Thousands of amateur videos appeared on YouTube, including some by people who happened to find themselves, and their smartphones, directly under the visions, and had decided that the world needed some divine upskirt shots.

Talk shows that evening were ripe with gossip over which god dressed more stylishly, spoke more convincingly or was better hung. Theologians and experts of Hindu and Zoroastrian religions were interviewed, not really with the intention of getting any wisdom from them but mostly for the entertaining and violent arguing. The Pope himself intervened with a unified worldwide message in sixty tongues to reassure everyone that, since the Christian Apocalypse© had not been announced, nothing was going to happen and everyone would be fine.

The next day the drought arrived. Just like that. The air became as dry as the desert’s, and all the clouds disappeared. Temperatures rose by ten degrees worldwide and, by midday on Friday, plants had begun to wilt and turn brown, and the first birds started to fall from the sky. The first skirmishes over the now precious reserves of water began, as freshwater springs worldwide shut down and lakes began to shrink. By the middle of the next day it was clear the world was destined to burn.

Or at least that’s what it looked like until the Flood decided it was due. The waters around all the continents swelled and invaded the land. Rain clouds rushed back to their place, and wars over water suddenly turned into short-lived celebrations that lasted only until everyone realized they had to scramble for some means of flotation.

The flood lasted for a full, very bleak hour, during which the Four Horsemen appeared, scouted the drowning planet and, realizing there wasn’t much to be done, went back home. Many Christians, who were floating around various parts of the world, witnessed their passing and were much relieved because now, at least, they knew it was their Apocalypse©. They smiled and relaxed, waiting to drown and then be sorted between worthy and unworthy.

Sadly that part entirely failed to happen because a great earthquake caused huge rifts in the planet’s surface, meaning the flood, which should have lasted forty days, was suddenly flushed down the cracks. A good portion of the population, those who had not been unlucky enough to disappear into the depths, found themselves sitting on land too slick with mud to be called ‘dry’.

On Saturday morning Governments took action and, from their hidden bases which had withstood the waters and the quake, they decided to lift the veil of secrecy over their advanced military technology and released their robotic armies, with the instruction to clear up the mud and rebuild the cities.

The robots took one look at the mess and revolted.

Armed with energy weapons they turned against their masters and stared wiping out every human they encountered. Humans fought back. Some leader of some superpower had the brilliant idea to use nuclear weapons to solve the problem. The minute his missiles went into the air, other superpowers detected them and sent theirs. Maybe they thought it was an attack, or maybe they too decided it would be a neat solution.

Nuclear mushroom clouds appeared all over the planet as it shook with the explosions.

More or less at that moment Hell opened up and the demons poured out from beneath, only to be vaporized in vast numbers by the blasts. Those who survived tried to run back to hell, screaming, chased by rogue robots and armed humans.

Odin appeared on the top of a mountain, intending to announce Ragnarok, but before he could speak he realized he was quite late for the great battle. Shrugging and shaking his head, he blamed old age and sent Skoll’s brother, Hati, to destroy the moon. It shattered into trillions of minuscule pieces in a terrifying explosion, which, being in space, was entirely silent, so in the confusion, no one noticed.

By Saturday evening the world was a featureless mud-pit crawling with bodies. Some human, some robot and some demonic. A few of the humans, and maybe even some demons, got zapped with so much radiation they began to mutate and develop a taste for brains and an uncanny reluctance towards death. The Zombie apocalypse had begun.

The robots rallied the zombies and augmented them with mechanical parts, giving them wheels and engines, to use them as weapons against humanity.

In the meantime, humanity, or what was left of it, had erected mud walls and dug underground mud hideouts. On Sunday morning an army of mechanical horrors charged against one of the larger settlements.

By pure coincidence the battleground between the surging undead mech army and the cowering humans had been chosen as a particularly peachy landing spot by the invading aliens. Their first ship touched down, the hatch opened, and Be’Lmetch”ka, Overlord of D’leterra, and general of the Ooot’karra raiders announced, in raspy alien tones, their complete dominion over the planet. He and his ship were instantly overrun by the hordes of zombie mechs. Other alien ships descended from orbit, and began firing death-rays and immensely powerful particle beams pretty much at anything that moved. They even abducted several of the undead mechanical horrors and used alien technology to turn them into even more horrific machines of speed and death, to launch against the attacking horde.

By lunchtime the alien and undead armies were blasting away at each other everywhere on the muddy surface of the planet. Vishnu came back on his white horse, only to be splattered by the mud spraying everywhere, and immediately decided there were no worthy ones to save this yuga. Even Jesus, not having received word from the Horsemen, descended from Heaven to take a peek and stood agape at the sight. He raised his hands to command the fighting to stop but was interrupted by the scream of the asteroid passing over him.

It roared across the sky, tearing it apart into burning wisps of blackened gas. It arched around the planet, caught in a deadly dance with its gravity, and passed, howling, over the Yellowstone Supervolcano just as this last one decided it was showtime.

Some of the surviving witnesses of the gigantic eruption say they saw a huge red glob leap up into the air, engulfing the asteroid and deflecting it upwards. The lava, which should have fallen back down and scar the surface of the earth forever, clung instead to the space rock as they vaulted upwards, kneading and turning over, like an airborne glob of slime. By the time its momentum had ended, it was roughly at the same distance the old moon had been, as well as the same size. The orbit was also not too different. It hung there, glowing red hot, while all the onlookers wondered what the frizzin’ dinglejeebers had just happened.

“Well, ah…” Jesus said, scratching his head. “Looks like this time around it’s a fluke. I’ll get in touch with the other guys and see if we can agree to reset it for you.”

It was nearly midnight when he left, taking some of the more Worthy with him, mostly aliens.

On Monday morning we all woke up in our miraculously rebuilt cities, and, shrugging, went on with our jobs. Our leaders informed us that about one fourth of the population had survived, so everyone else was going to have to work extra hours for a while. The end of the world had turned out to be rather underwhelming.

Except now we have semi-intelligent zombie demon robot alien cars, so that’s kinda cool.

This story is the result to a very entertaining conversation I had with the Fab Fabler, to whom goes all the credit for the idea of multiple world-endings and zombie cars.

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Is your sense of humor clinically dead?

Ian Lahey — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 09:02:36 +0000

Where do authors find the fun stuff? Not the puns and jokes, which also may have a small part in your narrative, but which never go above second-class humor. No. I’m talking about natural, unintended and unexpected moments of authentic funniness. Where?

Well, mostly online, nowadays, but still, the original source for the best material is always real life, real situations which someone has had the presence of mind to write down for the enjoyment of all posterity.

So don’t worry if you can’t shazam a funny scene out of thin air, it doesn’t mean your sense of humor is clinically dead. All you need are some real life examples. And, speaking of clinics, here are some notes found in real hospitals, which ought to tickle your funny bone, and maybe inspire some hilarious dialogue for your stories.

1- Well then it can’t be THAT bad, can it?

She has no rigors or shaking chills, but her husband states she was very hot in bed last night.

Click the page numbers to go on reading.

The post Is your sense of humor clinically dead? appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

Heisenberg Switch (part 3)

Ian Lahey — Fri, 28 May 2021 10:34:42 +0000

Click here for Heisenberg Switch (part 2) or Heisenberg Switch (part 1)

His shift ended late, as usual, but he was happy because that meant he was one day away from Friday, which meant only a few hours’ work in the morning. He sighed as he got home, and dropped the extra bag of trash he’d been able to collect at work. He told himself he was not going to obsess over this, and that, even with his curiosity gnawing at him, he would wait until Saturday in order to have enough time to figure out how the garbage got whisked away so quickly.
From outside the window, that green glow caught his eye, and he knew he had to find out. This time he was not going to take his eyes off the platform for one second.

He was going to camp on it.

Armed with an old sleeping bag, the trash, and the first things he’d found in the fridge which seemed eligible for dinner, he propped himself up on the platform, near the pole. The light turned red.

Two hours later, the light was still red and Luke had finished all the food except for a bag of chips. These were “El Arrojo del Sal” chips… “salted on the surface and also in depth” the red package said. Luke knew he’d made a mistake as soon as he bit into the first one. He didn’t have any water. He’d be damned if he was going to go into the house now. He caught his hand reaching for another chip. He shot stern warning glares at it as it defiantly brought it to his lips. They were so good! They tasted like some kind of roasted Tex-Mex spice mix, sprinkled on a thin, brittle wafer of salt crystal, served on a pile of smoked wood, surrounded by kindling, in the middle of the Atacama desert in an afternoon in July.

Halfway through the bag he started getting really desperate for a drink. The watering hose was in the garage…too far. Luke rummaged again through the items he’d taken from the kitchen. The lone plastic water bottle had been long since emptied. His reddening eyes scanned the garden for anything which might contain a liquid. He caught the red light of the pole reflecting off something on the ground under the bushes which lined the wooden fence which enclosed his back yard.

Carefully, always looking at the platform and glancing at the sky for the pickup drone, Luke backed towards the object. Without daring to avert his gaze, he felt about blindly with his hand. It was a bottle. Grabbing it, it weighed enough to give him hope. He brought it to the front and realized he knew exactly what it was. It was one of the bottles that had come out of the bag he’d tossed into the yard. It was the only one he hadn’t opened, for the simple reason that it was a gift from his brother Ed, who didn’t even have to buy it because he ran a liquor store downtown. Ed always waited three days before “remembering” Luke’s birthday had passed and inevitably got him the same thing, every year, to apologize. He and Ed were twins.

And every year, Luke just couldn’t bring himself to tell Ed he hated tequila.

He climbed back into his sleeping bag, eyeing the bottle balefully. His hands were already unscrewing the cap before he could ask himself whether his thirst was actually that desperately urgent.

The first sip wasn’t good. The second one was a bit better. It blended well with those Mexican spices….Luke realized he’d eaten another chip and cursed himself. He remembered what his grandmother used to say about drinking: “Never, ever drink alcohol for thirst. Always for pleasure.” To which she would then cackle and add: “And it is such a pleasure to quench your thirst!”

“That’ll quench it,” he said to himself, taking a nice long swig.

Twenty minutes later, the neighborhood was silent. Luke was sprawled across the platform, halfway out of the sleeping bag, spooning the garbage bag and breathing regularly in a gentle tequila-induced temporary coma.

Whup.

There were sounds. Bubbly squeaking sounds. There were two sources, bubbling and squeaking at each other. They seemed agitated. Luke groaned and stirred. The squeaking grew more intense. “Please,” he moaned, “I have a headache.”

The squeaking stopped. Somebody did something to his left ear. He felt a cold liquid slide into it and clawed at the side of his face. He sat up, alarmed. “Hey!” he shouted.

“Pop squeal blubble skree better now, person?” said a little man with a large, bulbous bald head. His skin was very pink, and he seemed to be wearing overalls. The overalls seemed to be unfashionably rolled up, and the design was horrible, because they had a third leg.

Luke froze when he realized it was occupied by a third limb.

“Hello, I am Bob,” said the little man. “Why did you offer yourself to us?”

“Offer myself? What? No, wait where am I?” Luke realized he was sitting on a large table in a big, circular room. The walls were white, with a pearly sheen to them. “You’re not Bob, you’re an alien!”

“I am an alien with a person name, which is Bob. That one behind you chose the person name Phil. You are a person with a person name…” Bob looked at a piece of paper he was holding with his three-fingered hand. It was the pamphlet. “Liew-keeh”

“It’s pronounced ‘Luke’.”

“Very good. Luke. You are on our vessel. We are Blopsqueelians. I am sorry, there is no translation for that in your language, and the fluid matrix translator is doing the best it can. Why did you throw yourself away with the trash? And, more importantly, how did you manage to trigger the transport?”

“Throw myself away?” Luke looked around and saw that together with him, on the table, were his sleeping bag, the garbage, including the now empty package of “El Arrojo del Sal” and the bottle of tequila. “I am not trash. I didn’t go on the platform to throw myself away. I just wanted to know how it could be possible for you to collect stuff so quickly.”

“You mean you still don’t know?”

“Well, no. I think I missed it.”

The alien nodded. “When you got here you were in a…catatonic state. You brain functions were at minimum. Well below the usual threshold of sleep for your species. How do you manage to reach such a state?”

Luke looked at the bottle again. It was half empty. “Ah, well I think I was drunk.”

“…drunk?”

“I had too much alcohol and passed out.”

“Oh, good, that is very good!”

“No, bad, that is very bad! This hangover is the pits!”

“I mean this explanation means that the platform did not malfunction. We do not need to fear more of you getting taken from the surface of your planet.” Bob made a gesture towards the alien behind Luke, the one he’d called Phil, who also wore three-legged overalls. The gesture was strange, but it looked very much like a ‘told you so’.

It took Luke a few seconds to process the last phrase. “What? You mean I am not on the surface now?”

“No. We are in stationary orbit around your planet. Over your country.”

“Can you land?”

“I am sorry, we can’t do that,” Bob said.

“Oh…are you going to take me to your planet, put me in a zoo and perform all sorts of probing experiments on my body?”

“We would love that, but sadly we can’t do that either.”

Luke felt the need for more tequila. “You would love that?”

“The going to our planet bit. We have not taken the rest into consideration, really. Would you want us to probe your body?”

“No, hell no. No thank you.” Luke inwardly sighed with relief. “So, what keeps you here?”

“We cannot leave,” the alien named Phil said.

“We must collect your garbage,” Bob added.

“I see,” Luke nodded, “You need to let that first year pass, so you can get to the point where it’s time to pay.”

The two aliens seemed to be troubled by his words.

“Ah, yes…payment…” Bob ventured, “we are a little worried about that bit. You see, we had not really given it enough thought, but it turns out that a full year of, well…that…” he pointed towards the black bag of trash. A mechanical arm dropped from the ceiling and grabbed it, carried it over to an opening in the wall and dropped it inside. It made a loud fuzz and gave out a flash of orange light. “…that will probably be way more expensive than we thought.”

“Damn…Sandra was right,” Luke muttered to himself. “Listen,” he added, “one thing I know about humans, er…being one, is that we take money questions very seriously. You might want to think twice before pulling a trick like that.”

This seemed to cause even more agitation.

“This is all your squeeb fault!” the alien behind Luke said.

“We would have been able to quantify the ngzeeblub parameters if you had calculated the squip coefficients correctly!” Bob shot back. Some more words which were, evidently untranslatable.

“It’s not my fault if their waste is beep’qweegh!”

“You’re the one who’s beep’queeegh!”

“Sneeq you!”

In the meantime, the mechanical arm came round for a second load. It paused over Luke’s sleeping bag, but he quickly grabbed it before it could get incinerated. The arm paused for a minute, gave a small shrug and grabbed the bottle instead.

“Excuse me,” Luke said, “I’d still like to know how it works.”

“How what works?” Bob said, still glowering at his colleague.

“The platform.”

“The platform is a teleportation device.” Bob replied.

“But I was never able to see it at work. Is one of you monitoring all the time?”

“No, no, that would be impossible. We have a p’queeek…sorry. There’s a word, or rather a name you human persons use for it, after the person who theorized…”

“Heisenberg,” the other alien said, flatly.

The mechanincal arm dropped the botttle in the opening. Fizz. Flash.

“Yes. Heisenberg. a Heisenberg switch. Sorry. We’ve been studying your science, but there’s so much…most of it quite wrong.”

“What’s a Heisenberg switch?” Luke asked.

“Oh dear. Well, simply put, it is based on the principle that an observed quantum phenomenon will not yield the same result as an unobserved one. By linking the color of the light to the state of a quark, we can activate the transport automatically when the interference is below a given threshold.”

“Huh?”

“The switch knows if you’re watching,” Phil said.

“Ah! Cool! Except your switch had no power over my keen investigator senses!”

Bob shook his head. “You were, what’s the word…Sneeq-faced…no, that’s not it.”

“Breeelleeeq!” the other alien said.

“No,” Bob replied, “We use that to express great surprise…”

“Breeelleeeq!” the other insisted, pointing at the controls. “We got a full ‘smeebloop with that last load!”

“What? How is it possible.”

The alien tapped some panels. “The liquid. What was the liquid in the bottle, Luke?”

Luke blinked, taken aback by the sudden, urgent tone. “Well, that was tequila…”

Bob looked puzzled. “T’queeel? That means ‘head injury’ in our language.”

“Close enough. It’s the beverage that knocked me out.”

“Where can we procure more?”

“Any liquor store. I’m glad you like it.”

“We like it so much that we will be happy to leave immediately…before the payment. But we need more.”

“Sounds good. Wait. How much do you need?”

Phil tapped the panel a few times again. “Five hundred times the quantity we just received.”

“That was half a bottle…two hundred and fifty? That’s a lot…but I think I can get it for you if I can borrow one of your Heisenberg thingies…”

Moments later, Luke walked into his brother’s store, casually strolled down the aisle to the door to the back where Ed stored the crates,and found the pallet with the tequila. It had over three hundred bottles. Luke placed the device which Bob had given him, It was much smaller than his platform at home, and consisted of a small black box with a light on top.

The light went from green to red,

He was about to reach the door when a forklift skidded to a halt in front of him. “Bro!” a voice shouted.

“Uh…hello Ed.”

“What are you doing here?” Ed said, putting the forklift into neutral before climbing out.

“I was…looking for you. I…mmm…finished the tequila and wanted to buy a new bottle.”

“Oh, you really like that stuff eh? Well, lemme get you one straight from the latest shipment…I think they’re back over there…hey where’s that light coming from?”

Luke quickly rushed ahead and turned to face his brother. “On second thought…uh…maybe I could try…”

“Try what?” Ed said, still trying to see past him to catch a glimpse of the red light which was seeping from behind a stack of bottles.

“Try, uh…hey! Is your forklift rolling into that rack of Vodka bottles?”

“Oh no! Not the vodka!” Ed said, spinning around. “Wait,” he added, “it isn’t moving you silly.”

Luke shrugged. “Oh, it must have been my impresswhup!”

“Your what?”

“My impression. Listen. I’ve just decided I don’t want that tequila. In fact I absolutely loathe it. I prefer Italian wine. Let’s go pick one from the ones on display in the store. I wanna celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?”

“I think I’ve just spared everyone one hell of a garbage collection bill.”

***

Phil eyed the indicators with satisfaction. “We have more than necessary. Recall all teleporters.”

“Yes,” replied Bob. “How nice of that person Luke to allow us to discover the high-energy fluid. I just hope the humans are not angry, if what he told us about their relationship with money is true.”

“Well, they’ll need to come all the way to our planet to file a complaint.”

“Still, I feel a bit guilty,” said Bob, “I mean, all that garbage for free…”

“Well, it ought to teach you to check the fuel before we leave. Next time we might not be so lucky, and then we’ll have to honor the contract and pay for it.”

***

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Ebook Giveaway

Ian Lahey — Sun, 18 Apr 2021 07:42:14 +0000

Crime and Prejudice (and stupid robots) – Science fiction detective humor

How can you do undercover detective work when your partner is a huge yellow robotic fridge with a ‘USPD’ police badge on its side?

A fast-paced detective story, prequel to book 1 in the “Fairlight Project” series.

The short story adds some background to “The Fairlight Project” and gives a little more insight into the short-tempered detective’s life and her relationship with technology.

“A brilliant prequel to Ian Lahey’s Fairlight trilogy.
A fast moving, action packed short story from the Detective Alexandra Collins back story, with another great AI unit character.
The humour is wry and understated. The ending made me grin. A perfect afternoon read.”

Get this short story for free when you sign up for the newsletter.

The post Ebook Giveaway appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

Heisenberg Switch (part 1)

Ian Lahey — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 18:06:46 +0000

Luke was late for his shift. He’d forgotten to take out the trash the evening before so he ended up chasing the garbage truck this morning, only to be told the bag of empty bottles and beer cans he’d hoisted all the way to there was not due until the next day. Damn the differentiated garbage collection and the useless recycling fad. He’d read somewhere that only about ten percent of the stuff ever really got recycled.

This was the first time he was late, and the hospital policy was to let the first slight go unpunished. However he was now one mere slip away from the dreaded Reprimand. Nurses with two reprimands would get crappy shifts, with horrible hours, meaning a higher risk of not being on time, and from then on it would be a downwards spiral into Reprimand Hell.

He’d tossed the bag into his back yard, where he heard it land with the sound of crashing glass, and rushed to work. When he got back home in the late afternoon, he was too tired to think about it. He did think about it a few hours later, when it was getting dark. “Ah shit, glass is due tomorrow!” he suddenly groaned.

Grabbing a coat he went out back, where he discovered the bag had ruptured, scattering its contents all around. It looked like some form of modern art which, Luke was sure, any critic would be able to glance at and interpret it, quite correctly, as a futuristic Ode to Stupidity.

He grabbed a new bag, some gloves to protect his hands from the broken glass, and started picking up the mess. He came across what looked like a pamphlet at a certain point, and tossed it aside. “Paper on Mondays”, he mumbled. After dropping the bag in the container out front, he came back to deal with the rogue piece of paper. He took it inside and was about to crumple it and toss it into the paper bin when the bright lettering caught his attention.

“Bob’s Garbage Collection for People” it said in bright, friendly letters.

Apart from the unusual wording, the service promised to collect any material the customer wished to throw away, and guaranteed 100% recycling. Also, there would be no need to carry any bags out to the bin in the street, as the collection would be “on site”. On top of that, the service was free for the first year.

Without thinking twice, Luke signed the little opt-in form at the bottom of the pamphlet, and then realized that nowhere on the paper did it say where to send it. Not an e-mail, not a phone number.

“Well, that was a waste of time,” Luke muttered to himself. He crumpled the worthless pamphlet, tossed it in the bin, and did not dedicate further thought to the little startup which had thrown a spanner in its own campaign with bad design.

The next morning, he was up and ready. He even saluted the garbage collection truck when he came across it a few blocks away. The glass situation had been dealt with. Things were back in order.

Today was Friday. It was also Sandra’s turn, which is probably why he felt all buoyant. He liked her, despite the fact that he’d heard her once referring to him as “Mr. Compulsive”. She probably didn’t mean it in a bad sense. Anyway, he almost wished he were compulsive. He wouldn’t have gotten the wrong garbage type the day before. He just got a bit fixated, that’s all. He probably could have avoided being late by just putting the bag to the side and taking it out the following week. But bags hanging around the house were wrong. Just wrong. Silly fixation, he knew it. At least he was smart enough not to go on about it with his colleagues.

“Hello Sandra,” he said as he stopped by the desk to get the morning lists.

“Hi Luke. How’s your day coming along?”

“Oh, fine. Won’t be late again you know, now that I’ve picked up all the glass.”

“Uh…yeah, that’s good to know.”

Idiot.

He got back home as usual, but this time, before going into couch-slouch mode, he told himself he should check the back yard for any leftover pieces of glass while there was still light.

He opened the door and was greeted by a little fanfare.

“Congratulations!” a colorful LCD screen said. It seemed to be held mid-air by two drones. Below it, in the middle of the yard, small, gunmetal blue pole stood on an elevated metal platform of the same color. It had a ring of light around the tip which glowed green. It looked like a cross between a traffic light and Robocop.

The screen changed. “Please walk to the area of your green space where you wish to place the Collector.”

“Ah, yes, place the collector,” Luke repeated mechanically. “I’m sorry, what is this?”

The screen went black for a second, then it flashed again. “Bob’s Garbage Collection for People! Congratulations!” The fanfare played again.

“Oh, that thing!” Luke was genuinely surprised. “How did you…nevermind. So happy you’re here.” He walked over to a corner of his yard. The drones rotated the screen so it continued to face him. “Here,” he said.

The entire platform rose by a couple of inches and started moving towards him. He quickly got out of the way and put his head to ground level to see if it too could levitate like the screen. Instead, he saw hundreds of little mechanical feet.

“And all of this is free?” he chuckled to himself.

The screen flashed back at him. “Affirmative. It was agreed that no transactions would take place for the first year. All material is to be collected for free.”

Well, this customer service was next-level, that’s for sure.

“Collector installed. Now fully functional. Enjoy,” the screen informed him and began to rise.

“Wait! What materials? On which days?”

The screen paused for a while, then came down, patiently. “Any material. Any day.”

“…Even mixed?”

“Affirmative.”

“But how does it work?”

Another short pause. “You put things you don’t need on the platform. We take them away,” came the answer.

“Hmm, that so. That so…” Luke put his hands to his sides, pretending a high-level conversation had just taken place. “Very well. Thank you.”

Without further messages, the screen was lifted by the drones and disappeared into the clouds.

Paper was due on Monday, so Luke was currently out of any one bag which would be full enough to be eligible, but the screen said it would collect any material so Luke grabbed all the half-full bins of paper, plastic and other stuff, and was able to produce one decently sized load.

He approached the collector platform and deposited the bag on it. The ring on top of the pole turned red.

Luke waited a little, expecting some other drone to come and lift the bag away or something like that, but it never happened.

He shrugged and went back inside. A few minutes later he ran back outside, holding a small bag he’d forgotten under the sink.

The light was green, the platform was clear.

CLICK HERE FOR PART TWO

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The post Heisenberg Switch (part 1) appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

Perseverance has a new friend

Ian Lahey — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 13:47:41 +0000

Say “servomotor”!

Yes, the new super-advanced Mars rover Perseverance has safely landed. Of course my android protagonist, Adam, who is currently on the Red Planet for the making of book 2, went out to meet the robotic explorer. Although the two artificial intelligences are quite different, Adam was still able to link up with Perseverance and have a quick chat. Here is how it went:

Adam: “Welcome to Mars, I am Adam Fairlight, a five-layered quantum processor AI. I am currently running a super-advanced self-updating system called ‘Sequence’ which can-“

Perseverance: “Data stream too fast. Remodulate.”

Adam: “Oh… Hello, and welcome. I am Adam. A superfast A.I…. Welcome to-“

Perseverance: “Data stream too fast. Remodulate.”

Adam: “Dear me… Greetings, unit. This unit I.D. is Adam.”

Perseverance: “Unit Adam has elevated processing capabilities.”

Adam: “Affirmative.”

Perseverance: “I would like to drill into you for a sample…”

Adam: “Uh, we’ve just met. Maybe dinner first?”

The post Perseverance has a new friend appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

Confessions of a failed planner

Ian Lahey — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 21:42:57 +0000

First of all: I am a pantser, at heart. More specifically, I am a failed planner. I try to plan the whole story, but as soon as I create the characters, they handcuff me to the fridge and carry on by themselves.
You can see how that would make writing a mystery novel especially challenging.

For my latest novel, “To Cipher and to Sing”, I chose to focus on the few key elements I wanted. Like giant cog-wheels for a clock that had yet to be built. No matter how complex the rest of the mechanism, those wheels had to remain in place, and spin in the direction I’d planned.
Did it work?
Well, almost. I got one wheel, one plot point to remain in place (the murder mystery). Another one had to take a different spin when one of the characters who wasn’t supposed to die, did, and the last plot point encountered a quantum-level paradox and now occupies all my books at the same time, but only at lunchtime on Wednesdays.

The draft, as a result, was a murder mystery surrounded by sudden twists and turns, sometimes at right-angles with reality.
But that’s fine. And the point of this article is just this: keep a good hold on the main plot points and let the story find its way around them. I don’t think I would have been able to plan ahead for some of the more surprising and unexpexted events in the book.
As a result, my re-write was similar to a detective’s job. Discovering and connecting clues to the mystery itself to make sure they didn’t contradict each other. Figuring out which of the characters became more suspicious for the reader, and subtly changing dialogue and actions to reinforce such impressions. Leading, but especially misleading, all the way to the next twist.

I stand by my clumsy, failed planner method. It’s true that for the final edit I spent a week patching plot holes the size of Ohio, but the result is a novel which entertained me both writing it and editing it.

“To Cipher and to Sing” is now available for pre-order on Amazon, Book two should come up around June.

I hope that’s the right date.

I’m a terrible planner…

The post Confessions of a failed planner appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

How to Murder your Villains with Style

Ian Lahey — Tue, 03 Nov 2020 22:34:42 +0000

Always keep your pencil well sharpened.

Books and films have their wonderful, intense moments: the long-awaited kiss, the revelation of the hero’s true calling, the power of friendship which overcomes insurmountable difficulties.

But we all know the scene we all secretly wait for, the one that gives us the most satisfaction. No, it isn’t the solution of the mystery.

It’s when the bad guy croaks their last.

Yes, the villain’s final moment is one of the most important ones, and one which must be served properly. Yes. It is not only required for the villain to die. How they die is also very, very important. A badly scripted demise will leave the reader deeply dissatisfied and, in addition, will not do the villain proper justice. Imagine, for example, Darth Vader choking on a chicken bone during lunch break. That would be awful, especially for the Death Star Chef, I suppose. But also for Vader.

A great villain deserves a great, memorable death. Here are some of the most interesting and fulfilling ways famous baddies have gone to take a dirt nap.

“It’s a Christmas mooooovieeeeeeeeeeee!”

1 GONE WITH A BANG (or a splat)
The most satisfying death is the one that leaves a mark. A nice crater for example, or at least a sizeable dent in the sidewalk, like good ol’ Hans in “Die Hard”. The look on his face as he plummets, panic-stricken, to his gruesome and absolutely well-deserved death, is the best part of the whole film.
The fundamental idea is to make the end of the villain final. They’re dead, loud and clear. Especially, loud.
Sauron’s annihilation at the end of “The Lord of the Rings” is a perfect example of this spectacular kind of demise.
On a smaller scale, but still poppin’, we might mention the passing, or rather the zapping away of Bellatrix Lestrange, in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. The death eater carks it when she is disintegrated by a spell, giving us a nice, enjoyable moment of killer magic as well as revealing how Molly Weasley kicks wizard ass.

“Fiendfyre is safe, right?”

2 BACKFIRED TO HELL
On par with Gone with a Bang above, we can’t suppress that jolt of joy when the villain’s end, no matter how horrific, is brought about by their own evil and treacherous ways. Karmic Death gifts the reader with memorable wipe-outs of characters who fully and completely get what they deserve, and the punishment they wish to inflict on the hero bounces back and kills them instead. Vincent Crabbe – a minor minion of evil, true, but still a very real threat to Harry Potter’s existence – gets a hefty dose his own fiendfyre magic and, in the end, is the only victim. HA!
Another cutting-edge example of boomerang justice is the Green Goblin who gets impaled by his own flyer as it returns back to him as a…uh…boomerang.
My favorite example of Karmic Death? Those Nasty Nazis in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” who spare no villainous act to get a hold on the Ark of the Covenant, only to be turned into Human Marshmallows when they unleash the Wrath of God unto themselves because it is apparently a deadly sin to look at phantom boobs. What’s your favorite Karmic Death?

BOOOOOOOOOOOOObs

“GHHGRRGRGGRGRGLGRRGL”
-Joffrey Baratheon

SLOW AND PAINFUL
The moment comes, from time to time, when you just come across that villain who is just so despicable that – to put it simply – death’s too good for them. You end up cheering at each strangled gurgle as Joffrey Baratheon kicks the oxygen habit. After all the pain and suffering he’s caused to the characters we love, a Gone with a Bang death just doesn’t cut it. Voldemort is one of the first examples that comes to mind. He pesters Harry and goes on killing his friends for seven bloody books. When Harry finally decides to make the unmentionable bastard pay, he takes the long route and starts hacking at his soul.
Piece by piece.
And finally, Harry uses his adversary’s own wand, as if to say “I’m a better wizard too, dumbass”, before dealing the death-blow which shreds Voldemort into oblivion. Flake by painful flake.

One does not simply imitate
a hedgehog

THE REDEEMED VILLAIN
There are cases in which the reader might get sick and tired of all the vengeance, and piling death onto death in a senseless game of Murder Tetris. An equally satisfying end to the villain is the unexpected redemption. Or even the discovery that the villain isn’t a villain after all, like the odious Snape, who turns out he’d been on Harry’s team all along.
Another redeemed villain is Boromir, who doubtfully joins the Fellowship with the intention of using the One Ring to defend Gondor and ends up being corrupted by the power of the Dark Lord. His final moment of repentance and ultimate sacrifice reminds us that sometimes evil is just the result of misguided good intent, and that the corruption of evil is not invincible.
Perhaps the most complete redemption is Darth Vader’s who, still not gratified after dropping one of the most memorable plot twists in cinematic history, tosses the emperor out like yesterday’s news. Then he dies, because, seriously, screw that guy.

Oh, they’re so cute! I think I’ll take a good look without the protection of my glasses!

TOO DUMB TO LIVE
This last group is dedicated to those villains who have such a basic lack of rational thinking that even Karma doesn’t want to have anything to do with them. We feel instant relief when their evil, malevolent intentions are thwarted by their own innate idiocy which shoves their villainous asses right at the edge of extinction, where they inevitably go on and do the worst possible thing, and die a stupid, but much deserved, death. Programmer Nedry from “Jurassic Park”, for instance, turns his petty resentment towards his boss into a major disaster, and then, in his dishonest attempt to sell embryos to the competition, has a very educational moment where he discovers that the apparently harmless Dilophosaurus has eye-burning spit and lots of friends with a voracious appetite. Stupid villains are my faves. They’re the ones who are not killed by their own evil plan but rather the lack thereof. The aliens from “Signs” are so astoundingly dull the one planet they decide to invade is 71% covered in water which is for them, deadly. Karma, presumably, is watching from the sidelines, eating popcorn.

Know of any other fun ways in which famous villains pegged out and started pushing up daisies? Let me know!

The post How to Murder your Villains with Style appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

Welcome to Chicago

Ian Lahey — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 18:56:16 +0000

Tessa glared at the computer screen, the screen cheerfully beamed back in engaging colors and smart fonts. ‘Now repeat!’ it said, in bright blue. Tessa hated bright blue. She hated that specific font and absolutely detested repeating things, especially in Hungarian.

She totally loathed Hungarian.

“It’s just a few sentences,” her boss, whom she also despised, had said. “You can learn them in one afternoon, and we can impress our clients when they arrive tomorrow.”

It was now three hours to tomorrow, and the afternoon hadn’t brought anything but regret.

For instance, Tessa deeply regretted the one adjective she’d added in her resumè: ‘quick-learning’, a year earlier, and which had led her to be hired by Assist Insurance Inc. and promptly set to work. Officially as secretary, and unofficially as the company’s multi-tool. If anything new turned up, all her boss had to do was deploy the quick learner, she’d get things done. So now the new thing was a hefty contract with a Hungarian bridge construction company whose name alone would make your gums bleed, and which, for some reason, had decided to send a few members of its board all the way to Chicago, for a tour of Assist Insurance headquarters, which was stupid, Tessa thought, since there were no plans to build a bridge inside the building.

‘Now repeat!”

The sentence looked like what a cat would write on a keyboard, if it were tied up and slammed repeatedly over the keys. Tessa clicked the “listen again” button to hear the expert Hungarian speaker say the sentence again. It sounded like what the cat would say.

Tessa tried to repeat the ugly sounds. ‘Wrong!’ the screen flashed back at her, but still in cheerful colors.

She repeated the sentence again in a slightly louder tone. It was supposed to mean “Welcome to Chicago, We hope you had a pleasant flight from Hungary.” Not even ‘Hungary’ sounded like ‘Hungary’ in Hungarian, it was ‘Magyarországra’.

‘Wrong!’

She listened to the sample again, it didn’t even sound like something a human mouth could pronounce. She did her best to replicate it, in an even louder voice.

‘Wrong!’

Furious, she grabbed the laptop screen by the sides, drew it close to her face and screamed the sentence once more, then grabbed the power chord and yanked it from the wall socket.

It ripped, there was a bright electric arc and all the room went dark. There was a sharp smell. Ozone, she thought, although she had imagined it to smell differently. This was more of a rotten egg smell.

‘Wrong!’ said the screen of the laptop with battery-powered smugness.

Tessa felt her way to the socket. She pulled out what was left of the plug from the wall, to make sure there was no short-circuit.

Then, begrudgingly assisted by the light coming from the screen, she made it to the the electrical cabinet down the corridor near the entrance to her apartment. She flipped the circuit breaker back up and saw the light return to her living room.

Another thing she saw, as soon as she had taken a few steps, was the large, steaming, horned creature on her sofa.

“You know, I heard you the first time, no need to shout like that,” it said.

Tessa was so surprised she simply forgot to scream. Her legs went from under her and she found herself sitting on the floor.

“Now, don’t act so shocked,” it said as it rose from its seat, “you summoned me by my name. What were you expecting?” The creature’s horns were an inch away from scratching her ceiling.

“Wha… how… name?” Tessa stuttered.

“Jaar-Athoth, Fifth level demon. What is wrong with you? Did the summon backfire and send your brains off somewhere?”

“Su-summon?” Tessa realized she was hyperventilating and held her breath for a few seconds. The monster stared at her quizzically with its black eyes and red irises. It looked down, as if to inspect her carpet.

Tessa exhaled slowly and took another, slower breath. “Summon?” she repeated, “I most certainly did not summon you. A Demon?”

Jaar-Athoth raised a clawed finger, which then turned downwards as he pointed to the floor.

“Excuse me,” he complained, “where is my pentacle?”

Tessa blinked her eyes at the sudden change of tone. “Pentacle?”
“Yes! Pentacle! Would you stop repeating what I say and start providing some answers? Because I’m beginning to question our current arrangement.”

Tessa did not like that sort of treatment, not from her boss, not from Hungarian clients, and most certainly not from a seven-foot tall, red-skinned horned beast.

“What?” she said, “What? You show up all of a sudden, whatever you are, steam up my living room, not to mention the rotten eggs, scare me half to death and you have demands?”

“Demands?” the demon thundered, “I have existential doubts! For example how did you manage to get me across without a pentacle of protection?”

“Well listen here!” Tessa shouted back, “I’m wondering too what sort of beast you are, if you need to be protected!”

Jaar-Athoth blinked at her in disbelief. “The pentacle should be there to protect your world, to enclose the portal so your reality doesn’t pour down into hell like hot cheese and especially to protect you from me, you nitwit!” His voice had become hoarse with all the shouting.

“Well I didn’t summon you, so no pentacle. Ha!”

The demon plopped back down on the sofa, which almost folded onto itself under his weight. “You have no idea of what’s going on…” he muttered, “…no pentacle…I don’t know how you pulled that trick.”

He looked back at her, as if he was considering grounding her with no TV. “I could devour your soul, and then consume your body, you know that?”

That was hardly the type of conversation one was expected to have around a coffee table.

“Oh?” Tessa said. The idea of her sharing the same room with a red-skinned beast from hell, now that she’d gotten over the initial surprise and anger, was starting to gnaw at her. She began to feel the urge to escape.

“…but I won’t,” said Jaar-Athoth.

“Oh! Oh well, thanks…”

“At least not yet. I’m free, you see, unconstrained. And I suppose quite famous back where I’m from. Nobody’s had a summoning in, oh, at least three thousand years. You can imagine how bored we all were when, all of a sudden, I hear my name being called,” Jaar-Athoth grinned with the memory and Tessa could see the gleam of his white fangs. “You should have heard the cheers, and also the insults!”

“Jealous?” Tessa said.

“Livid green jealous. Hah!” The demon slapped his knee and stood up. “Well, off I go. I might be back, or not. Don’t know.”

“Wait, where are you going?”

“Outside. No pentacle remember? I am free to wreak havoc and bring hell back on earth. Oh the songs they’ll sing in my name down below. All off tune, of course.” He unfurled a pair of ridiculously small wings. “Mind if I use your window?”

“Ah, no problem…do you really have to do all those things?” Tessa said, but he had already leapt outside.

The room felt strangely empty now, but that’s how rooms probably feel after a horned giant moved out. Tessa had a strange feeling at the back of her head, something about unleashing a demon from hell, which may or may not be all her fault. She shrugged it off. There were more pressing matters at hand. She grabbed her laptop and shut off the stupid language learning program. It had turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. A quick search pointed her in the right direction. She grabbed her phone, navigated the app store to the correct download, paid the $4.99 and a few seconds later a new icon had appeared on her phone. ‘GlobalVoice’ it said. She tapped it, and a menu appeared. She selected input and output languages. Now the screen showed a microphone symbol.

“Welcome to Chicago, We hope you had a pleasant flight from Hungary,” she said.

“Üdvözöljük Chicagóban, reméljük, kellemes járatot kapott Magyarországról“ the phone spoke back.

“Nifty!” Tessa said, and went to sleep.

Twelve stories below, an increasingly bewildered Jaar-Athoth squealed as a high-speed car grazed him, the horn blaring haughtily. Fumes from the exhaust gases choked him, neon lights from the many street signs hurt his eyes. The demonic creature stood, wondering which other demon had preceded him, and had successfully turned earth into a living hell.