Welcome to Micro Bookends 1.04. As it’s Halloween tomorrow, let’s have something a bit scary.
Imagine you return home from a busy day at work. You put on the radio to listen to some relaxing music or catch up on the day’s news only to hear this:
Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem, both the observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable assumption that those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars. The battle which took place tonight at Grovers Mill has ended in one of the most startling defeats ever suffered by any army in modern times; seven thousand men armed with rifles and machine guns pitted against a single fighting machine of the invaders from Mars.
That’s what greeted those who tuned in to the 1938 radio dramatization of HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds. The widespread panic among the American public reported by the press was greatly exaggerated, however, the repercussions were wide-reaching. Adolf Hitler, less than a year away from ordering the invasion of Poland that would start World War II, said the broadcast was “evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of democracy.”
Let’s celebrate Halloween, science fiction, and democracy with this week’s photo prompt:
Photo Credit: Daniel Lee via CC.
Judging this week’s contest is Geoff Holme, winner of MB1.03. Read his winning story here, and what he has to say about flash fiction here. Geoff is a stickler for punctuation so proofread extra carefully this week. Have fun!
What?
A story of between 90 and 110 words starting with EARTH and ending with COLONY and incorporating the photo prompt.
Who?
Anyone, but especially you!
Why?
Why not? Because it’s fun. Because it’s a challenge. Because the winner will receive their own winner’s page, their story on the winning stories list, a ‘who is the the author’ feature to be posted next week, entry into the ‘Micro Bookend of the Year’ competition, and a copy of this year’s winning stories compilation.
When?
Now! Get your entry in BEFORE 5:00 am Friday (UK time: http://time.is/London).
Where?
Here!
How?
Post your story in the comments section. Include the word count and your Twitter username (if you’re Twitterized). Don’t forget to read the full rules before submitting your story.
Anything else?
Please give your story a title. It will not be included in the word count.
Please try to leave comments on a couple of other stories. It’s all part of the fun, and everyone likes feedback!
86 Responses to “Micro Bookends 1.04 – EARTH [micro] COLONY”
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Be All That You Can Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be
Earth. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Slug Force 3000. To boldly go where no mollusk has gone before. To seek out new plant life, new civilizations, blah, blah, blah.
That’s what they tell you when you sign up.
What they don’t tell you is what happens after boot camp (which, by the way, literally involves dodging boots). Each slug is assigned to a branch of the service tree.
I was assigned the kitchen. I boldly go into the pantry, boldly get the rations and boldly prepare the day’s grub (which, today, happens to be ground up grub).
Mom was right. I never should’ve left the colony.
110 words
@MattLashley_
Love the last line.
Love your take on this!
Very good! Really enjoyed reading this.
I’m a fan of the word “mollusk” and greatly enjoyed the tale of this disillusionment of this particular one.
This made me laugh. Love it.
The Savior
Earth grips me fiercely as I awaken. Struggling I scream into the breathing apparatus. Yet the suffocating darkness is unyielding.
I cannot move.
My last recollection is meeting the Leader, discussing my research breakthrough. Walking together across the meadow towards the hub. Explaining how I had perfected the technology, that my research would be the salvation of our resource stricken world.
He stooped inspecting the cables that drew out power, the tubes that fed nutrients down into the dirt. Enquiring after the batteries. My boastful assurances that below lay enough for a hundred years.
Now there’s just the darkness and I.
Cables slowly siphoning out my soul.
Fuelling the colony.
110 words
@imageronin
I had a such a visceral reaction to this, especially the ending. It involved a lot, “Oooh, ahhh, uuuhhh,” kinda noises. Skin-crawly stuff, sir.
Oh man. visceral is right. Awesome.
This is scary, really good job.
Terrifying!
Vivid and darkly entertaining.
The first 3 lines really set the tone. Great story.
This is fantastic!
Earth, fresh clefts and chasms caused by the upheaval of tectonic plates, tired of moving from side to side, deciding to shoot up through the surface, forming severe mountain ranges, sending waves rippling across the oceans to smash on the opposite shores, or to meet in the middle and slap together, force against force and nowhere to go, except everywhere, gobbling up glaciers, crunching on coasts, sinking islands and abandoning beaches so violently they became sudden deserts of shellfish, was not doing too well.
The reverend finished his sermon. We left the church happy, convinced we were safe and protected in his colony.
Dang forgot my title and word count:
Title: Hellfire Is a Subjective Term
103 Words
Wow. This is so powerful and so well done. Great piece.
That first paragraph is amazing.
How vivid and tumultuous. I read it twice to really sink into every image.
Enjoyed this line a lot: ” force against force and nowhere to go, except everywhere …”
“…abandoning beaches so violently they became sudden deserts of shellfish” – love this.
Emerald Earth
@voimaoy
105 words
Earth abides, with its attendant moon. Across the black of space, eyes observe the long-period comets, 4 million years in the void, the sun a distant cinder.
Meanwhile, on the leafy streets, an alien invasion begins. From the wood of a packing crate by the loading dock of an import shop, the Emerald Ash beetles emerge, seeking the unsuspecting trees. One after another, they colonize communities, under the bark, invisible.
Now comes cold and dark. The nymphs sleep, pupating, secreting antifreeze. They can survive temperatures of 20-below zero. Sustained extremes can kill them.
January deep-freeze offers little comfort, but 3 weeks of this could wipe out the emerald colony.
I’m blown away by your ability to write so beautifully and construct such a rich world in so few words.
Lovely.
Your writing is so beautiful!
Beautiful and vivid, you’ve woven such a deep but concise tale.
The way you started from “way up the ladder” and then brought us down to the first rung was fantastic.
Love “the sun a distant cinder”. So poetic.
Down to Earth (110 words)
@brett_milam
Earth, like the bacteria fornicating under my fingernails, was a nuisance, but only just.
They were the slugs of the galaxy, slogging around and around the sun, spilling each other’s blood while the stars awaited.
From our vantage point, we, too, waited for any sign that they were ready. Thousands of years, kings and queens, empires, blips in technological explosion and even Apollo, we waited.
And still they would always, always collapse back into insignificance.
I’d weep if I had eyes, but in frustration, I’d torn them out after Genghis Khan’s rise.
Now I hardly notice them. I receive daily reports that I half-read on the happenings in the “colony.”
Amazing cosmic perspective. Not a word wasted, beautiful. Great writing!
Thank you!
What an opening line! I love the grim perspective.
Thank you, Marie!
I love “…daily reports that I half-read on the happenings in the ‘colony’.” It so perfectly demonstrates the scale of your story.
I’m glad you liked it!
slugs of the galaxy ….. wonderful……. I agree with Voimaoy great writing 🙂
Too generous, thank you!
You had me at under the fingernail fornicating bacteria!
I must go now and wash my hands.
Haha, thank you! 😀
“From our vantage point, we, too, waited for any sign that they were ready. Thousands of years, kings and queens, empires, blips in technological explosion and even Apollo, we waited.” This is great.
Many thanks!
Last Chance
@hollygelly
106 words
“Earth to Susan! What are you doing?”
Susan held up the leaf. It was greener than any they had grown in this soil.
“It has fungus, Max.”
Max took the leaf and examined the small lumps. They reminded Susan of the long-extinct octopus, though she’d only seen pictures.
Earth had died long ago. Colonizing this planet was the human race’s last hope.
The phrase “Earth to Susan” was long out of date, and cruel.
“We’ll find a way to combat it,” Max said. “Don’t worry. You do good work.”
Susan hoped he was right – for her own sake, and for the sake of the colony.
“‘Earth to Susan’ was long out of date.” Fantastic line.
I enjoyed that line as well, that such a common phrase could become painful.
Loved “Earth to Susan” was long out of date, and cruel.” Added another layer to this scene. Without that line it’s just an well-written, okay scene. That line just blew me away and dove right into both characters’ psyches.
Echoing the others about the “Earth to Susan” line. Really ties it together.
I am amazed by the epic sweep of this piece. So much, in so few words….
@stellakateT
108 words
Death by Rhubarb
“Earth calling Earth” I laughed at the time recalling “Mork calling Orson” but now I want to stuff my ears full of clods of terra firma to block it out. No one responds to the May-Day that calls through space, unheard like my tears falling and my beating heart.
Boarding this flight one Halloween, we were full of hope and promise not knowing that Death had boarded too. We’d left the Grim Reaper behind to seek a safe home. We were the chosen few and now only I survive, we’d found the bugs attached to the rhubarb plants that would grow and nourish us in the New Colony
This is just brilliant. Great story!
“… unheard like my tears falling and my beating heart.” Love that.
That such a small thing is capable of causing such devastation, what a great story. I find myself wondering and rooting for this soul survivor.
What a telling and robust line: “We were the chosen few and now only I survive …”
“…not knowing that Death had boarded too.” That’s a haunting line.
Once
Earth was once a dream. Did you know that?
Composited slivers of color rich thoughts and wishes grew bright and spherical.
We meant for it to be fruitful and multiply, to grow beyond our initial imaginations.
But this sphere bred dangers we could not imagine.
Who knew that a failure of dreaming would be the thing we could not foresee?
Were we gods?
No. Maybe.
But we now we are small. We are an aggregation of untended imagination filaments growing together on stems of the world, now an impish forgotten colony.
91 words
@CaseyCaseRose
This one I like a lot…. Well done Casey
Really love the imagery.
Wonderful imagery, beautiful writing, Casey.
The imagery you’ve used is stunning.
“Were we gods?
No.
Maybe”.
For me, this was the heart of the story.
I really like this line, too. And “Composited slivers of color”.
Silent Slumber
(91 words)
Earth’s people sleep while their silent enemy grows. The dark, rich womb of Earth’s own soil hosts the gentle uprising, and the world glistens with the enemy’s speckled issue.
Office blocks and parliaments are made dormitories. Doctors lie at patients’ bedsides. Children board at school desks. They cannot wake from their apathetic slumber, intoxicated by the heady, perfumed dew of a poisonous beauty.
Armies, unconscious of an enemy, offer no resistance.
Human complexity suspended: all pain has gone, all conflict and desire.
The enemy thickens, and Earth is its peaceful colony.
I love the descriptions of the transformations of a wakeful world’s stations into sleeping ones. Powerful and fascinating.
“Office blocks and parliaments are made dormitories. Doctors lie at patients’ bedsides.”
Great sentences. I really enjoyed this story.
So much great stuff here. Love “intoxicated by the heady, perfumed dew of a poisonous beauty”.
Love this. Beautiful writing–and such a brilliant idea. Wonderful story.
JUDGE’S ENTRY – JUST FOR FUN
Blue Sky Thinking
By Geoff Holme
“’Earth satellite’, Minister?”
“Generic term. We’re talking gyratory space station.”
“Sounds astronomically expensive – excuse the pun.”
“The new single-stage-to-orbit reusable launch vehicles, fuelled by environmentally friendly hydrogen and oxygen, mean costs have fallen exponentially. The facility will be launched in parts and assembled in orbit. When up and running, with support staff in place, the first colonists will be transferred.
“We hope the facility will become self-sufficient, with the colonists cultivating crops hydroponically.”
“Ingenious solution, Minister. Does the project have a name?”
“Our working title is ‘New Australia’. After all, the Aussies have made quite a success of their homeland from its humble origins as a penal colony.”
@GeoffHolme
Word Count: 109
Fantastic ending.
The rhythm of this piece made it fun to read. I loved the alliteration and the use of all the -ly words.
I like the ending, too. Stays with you. It also made me wonder what the nature of this space station will be, considering the penal colony reference. Is there more to it than the Minister implies?
Make Believe
“Earth,” proclaimed the little boy.
“That’s original, Horace.”
“It’s H.G., and wadda you know anyhow?”
“If I were creating my own world, I would name it Zondor and it would have colonies of slugs that inhabited the leafy planet.” Aubry’s pigtails bounced around as she spoke.
“Go play dolls.”
“You’re a big meanie, Horace!”
Another autumn had settled in, and the scent of mulled cider was wafting through the air as Aubry sat on the bench. Those strange miniature slugs were nibbling on the season’s remaining leaves.
Five years since his passing and Aubry still remembers marrying the man who once didn’t know the meaning of the word colony.
110 words
@blackinkpinkdsk
I liked how the girl called him Horace again after he corrected her.
” … the scent of mulled cider …” — great phrase!
The next-to-last paragraph is really fantastic.
Autochthonous
Earth clings like a barnacle to a distant sun. Moody purple clouds bruise the beige sky, and we make the seasonal trek to the spring.
“Wash up,” Miri announces, the lilt in her voice masking her revulsion from our sons. I want to vomit.
Wielding pumice stones, the boys splash into the shallows. They go to work scraping scaled knobs off their shins and forearms. The scalies leave behind tiny asterisks, red ones twinkling through old white constellations.
The scalies never plagued the original colonists. They waited for us to have children, invading their little worlds of flesh.
Miri wraps their limbs in gauze, feeble armor against the next colony.
110 words
@rowdy_phantom
” Moody purple clouds bruise the beige sky … ” — great imagery.
This story was awesome. Vomiting at the sight of one’s infested children and intelligent scalies — what’s not to like?
Wow – this is great! Awesome imagery. Chilling ending.
Salvation
110 words
Earth was a myth, nothing more than a fairy tale used to teach children about the horrors of war and the dangers of overconsumption.
And yet, here it was. The blue and white marbling matched the crude picture drawn by his father’s great-grandfather.
But it was not ready; nature had not yet recovered. The air was still noxious, the rivers poisoned. The only remaining creatures fed on the carrion of the Earth, and its bones were nearly clean.
He returned to his ship and set the autopilot for home, the unknowing transport for a legion of hungry stowaways.
Humans, after all, weren’t the only ones looking for a new colony.
Love that first sentence. ‘ and it’s bones were nearly clean’ great image that sets up a great ending.
Thanks so much! 😀
Rebirth
“Earth is damned,” I screamed at those that had gathered to see my end.
They jeered and laughed at that. I was bound and chained and now I burned. Parasites all, they’d clung to me as I brought shoots of life to their dying community yet I had received no thanks, only betrayal.
I screamed again as the fire claimed me in its fierce embrace but these were no death throes, these were in triumph at my rebirth.
Cleansed, I shed my human skin and the flames parted before me. Now it was my turn to feed, rebuild in my image and I would start with this colony.
108 words
@el_stevie
Chilling.
Infectious
110 words
@highspot_437
Earth trickled in through the cracks above her supine body, slowly filling the coffin like a lethal hourglass.
“Witch!” they had yelled as they dragged her towards the open grave.
She understood their fear. She had been watching the spores spread like a plague since they had arrived with a flash of fire in the sky. Studying them, she figured out how to stop them. It was too late. They saw only death and needed someone to blame.
Now the crops would die and people would follow when winter tightened its icy grip.
Fear was as infectious as those things. And just as deadly, for her and for the colony.
Great opening paragraph. And I like that she’s still sympathetic towards them. Makes me sad.
Awesome imagery: lethal hourglass, flash of fire in the sky, Loved the illustration of the message, of fear being the greater danger than the threat itself.
Punctuated Equilibrium
108 words
@edbroom
Earthworm Jim was what the Herald called him. To us, he was plain James Erdmann, the orphan kid who’d eat anything. Dirt. Bugs. Leaves. But mostly dirt.
He’d come to school filthy, smelling like compost, only to be sent home. Years later, Mum spotted him outside Fancy Plants. She knew the manager, Dennis:
“Has James worked here long?”
“James who?”
Next Halloween, we thought it would be fun to go visit. Dirty black house and the aroma of freshly turned soil. As I told the reporter, I shone my torch inside. My beam revealed a writhing mass. James, eyeless, stared back from the centre of his colony.
What an intriguing character–and what a (literally) creepy ending!
That’s super creepy.