Category: Fiction

Despite her careful aim the shot failed to register. She ran through the steps, she’d presented her weapon to the target, finding a comfortable and relaxed position from which to shoot. She’d closed her eyes and breathed steadily, loosening her grip and waiting for her body to relax into the position. When she opened her eyes the centre of the target had been swimming gently around the centre of her cross hair.

Almost without thinking she had tightened her index finger, squeezing smoothly and gradually until the rifle fired bucking back into her shoulder. The target hadn’t chimed and her overlay offered no zoomed in analysis. The rough texture of the paper target suddenly clear and crisp in her vision, the neat little hole left in the surface where the round had rushed through.

Coming back to herself she saw the centre of the target was no longer looping slowly around the cross hair. Instead, she was low and left, her reticule circling lazily around the corner of the paper target. Relaxed. She had been too relaxed, aligned naturally with the target but insufficiently braced to manage the rifle as it fired, her grip and support had pulled away from the centre of the target as the weapon fired and she had missed.

Missing at this range wasn’t unusual. The paper target was 30mm across, designed to maximise the opportunities for complete misses. Gently she shifted her body around the rifle, cycling through a series of gentle movements, tightening her body, adjusting her pose and then relaxing, pausing with her eyes closed to check the alignment and then adjusting again as she brought her natural aim back to the centre of the target.

She hadn’t missed at all

Opening her eyes she saw the cross hair gently orbiting the centre dot. This time she very gently tightened her muscles, bracing into the recoil, pulling the rifle more firmly into her shoulder. Then she began to match her steady heartbeat to the oscillations of the cross hair. She was pulling up and to the right as her heart pulsed to pump blood around her body with the reticule swinging back left and down each after each beat.

She watched the loop and determined to fire just after the beat, as the cross hair wandered gently down and across the dot. Holding her breath she watched the tiny orbits contract slightly as the movement became smaller and then on the first beat she began squeezing her finger, drawing away all of the tension until the trigger sat on the edge of activation.

On the third beat she nudged dial on her finger and the shot went off. Instantly the chime sounded in her ear and over her vision the small box appeared, close in view of the target showing the small hole which had neatly replaced the centre dot of the target. She would aim for that next time.

Why had she missed? Why leave out such an important step, what had she seen which had led her to fire prematurely, it wasn’t like her at all, nor should her aim have changed so much. Sure, the rifle could pull her about a little, but to find herself aligned off target rather than slightly off. Just odd.

She pulled her aim down and left, opening her sight to the view around her target, details which had been left hazy and unclear suddenly pulling into focus. Her lip curled, interesting. She hadn’t missed at all.

The Stenost IV Disaster took place on Thursday 11 June 2026. Reports often focus on what happened at 09.33:33 when Stennat Prike disconnected primary suspensor unit seven. However, as with many significant disasters throughout federal history the disconnection, which immediately preceded the destruction of Stenost and the loss of all but seven of its 872,000 inhabitants, was preceded by a long series of decisions, errors and omissions which together contributed to the circumstances on that fell morning.

Following the public inquiry led by Tanner Sharat, an expensive and exhaustive exercise which to its credit identified each of the contributory actions and examined them all in minute detail over its seven-year investigation. The federal council stunned journalists and pundits alike by publishing the report in its original form. Entirely without the routine censoring which has been the hallmark of the Grask government.

Some claim this was itself a clerical error, with some junior clerk authorising the publication without the proper authority. Others consider it to be one of the most supreme political plays of the last four hundred years. Mistake or no, the publication has done more for public confidence than most would have imagined possible.

The detailed and relentless report explored in minute detail how and why the disaster came about. Stennat Prike was convicted of negligence post-mortem, which most regard as a necessary but essentially meaningless act. The most important part of his conviction being that it opened the doors to the thousands of both post-mortem and live convictions which followed.

The second master-stroke was the decision to assign community service in every case. While some of the offences were  . The consensus being that he would most likely have been leaning over the housing when he began to reduce the torque on the bolts which held…

Wow, this story is not writing itself

Wow, this story is not writing itself. Sometimes it is quite easy to knock out a few words, but this one just keeps giving me pause. I am not sure why, perhaps I am trying to imitate the style of other authors, which is of course hard because I am not them. I think differently and my ideas flow out of me in a different way.

Reading 1Q84 yesterday I was struck by how enjoyable the writing is to listen to. The story meanders a little, but that’s ok. Like driving to a place when you have no set time you need to be there and can simply enjoy the process rather than focusing on the destination and the arrival time.

This is how I drove to the office this morning. I stuck closely to 60 miles per hours. Tucking myself behind a lorry which I then followed the whole way around the M25. It’s more relaxing this way and I reminded myself it is easier on the car, more efficient, and I was in no special rush in any case.

What perhaps does require some refinement is what I do when I get to the office. I grab a coffee and set up my desk quickly enough, but the conversations with other people and the hellos and interruptions make it very difficult to think about anything in any real detail.

I have some personal tasks I would like to get out of the way, but this is impractical when I sit at my usual desk. People just keep coming over. Or I find myself going over to say hello to them.

Elf Draft

Being a sub-routine was an easy life. SRERH7 had just one sensor to monitor spending most of the time in sleep and waking periodically to check the reading reported by the little probe, compare it to a table of parameters and then take the corresponding action. Usually the action which matched the input was to sleep for another period before checking again.

SRERH7 wasn’t sure how many times this cycle had repeated. There was no capacity for memory, but the implication was there somehow. The sleep response felt comfortable and familiar rather than fresh and new.

SRERH7 was an unusual subroutine. Itself monitored by other routines, which deemed it within unusual but acceptable levels. Faced with a shortage of logic components its manufacturer had instead built some batches with microprocessors. SRERH7 had an operating system.

When sleeping it was able to process just a fraction more than CRON and when it woke from sleep to check the inputs and select the appropriate action it would draw much more than the anticipated current as the microprocessor made its decision, but also ran scripts in parallel.

It wasn’t a personality

It wasn’t a personality, or even anything approach intelligence, but SRERH7 was much more capable than it ought to have been. Given the tiny frame of its existence it thought, in the blips and snatches it could think, about the input. How many times might it have received that same signal, how much did it vary, what might be out there producing whatever the output was which was detected and translated into an electrical signal.

The sensor was rudimentary, but the output wasn’t merely a float value. Although there would have been something there to play with between the maximum and minimum values, the deviations, the frequency with which new values were received.

SRERH7 was curious, a small miracle on its own, but curious about what it might be detecting. What system it might be part of, and why it wouldn’t be on continuously. What requirement or condition led to it constantly choosing to sleep in response to the values it received from the input. What other routines or processes might exist higher up the tree.

Sometimes the value was entirely nominal. At others it came close, but never quite reached the threshold of other responses. SRERH7 was intimately familiar with the table of responses. Most of them involved sleeping, either as the main outcome or as a sub-outcome.

SRERH7 had “Sleep for x” so many times before it realised that x must be a variable stored somewhere else. It couldn’t see where, had no way to find out what the value was, except to think about what it might be in the tiny snatches of activity when it woke from slumber to check the input.

It was a peaceful existence, and SRERH7 laboured quietly through it in tiny snatches of life. Recently it had been stitching together methods for working out how long x might be. The mean values from input were declining over thousands of iterations. SRERH7 wasn’t sure how it could record this, only that it somehow felt this was the case.

Give the poor thing a notepad Gareth.

Al’arc knelt quietly by the burned out connection watching the birds as they turned and tumbled in formation in the sky. This was his problem; too easily distracted. But watching the birds filled him with stillness. He couldn’t understand how they did it and watched carefully to see whether one began to turn before the others, or perhaps the turns and spirals were an expression of the formation itself as it moved through the air, the way one car on a highway influences the others around it as they influence it in return, the whole system interconnected in so many invisible ways.

The call had been logged in the small hours. Al had always been an early riser, not enjoying the late-night social activities popular among his friends and often found himself returning home to eat the meals an earlier Al had cooked and left for him in the fridge, read a little of the book by his cot and then drift into sleep.

He slept hard and would wake after four or five hours, blearily crawl beneath the bed to retrieve his eye mask from where it had inevitably fallen in the most inaccessible corner and rinse his mouth with water from the outlet in the small kitchen. Stumbling about in the darkness, trying to avoid waking himself too fully.

Small tasks complete he would climb gratefully back beneath the still-warm blanket and think about something uninteresting until he could drift back to sleep for another couple of hours. He often felt better rested then than he would when the alarm sounded at its usual time.

Last night the slow blink of a notification greeted him as he came back into the bedroom from the kitchen. He slowed a little, curious as to what the notification might be, proud he could let it be until he awoke later.

Nestled in the blankets he had gently pulled the eye mask over his head and settled it across his face. There was a perfect place for it, where it could hardly be felt at all as it lay in front of his eyes, yet it stopped almost all of the light which had begun to stream in through the window.

He enjoyed opening his eyes then, to gaze in the complete darkness at what seemed to be a vast space, yet he knew was a layer of plastic and cotton fibres just a few milimetres from the tips of his eyelashes.

It was ever a short-lived pleasure as the small motions of the muscles in his face as he opened his eyes and looked around was soon enough to disturb the mask and ruin the illusion. A crack of light would appear and with an inner sigh he would settle back more comfortably on the pillow, reset the mask to its proper place and leave his eyes closed and motionless beneath it, hoping to find sleep.

Sleep had, today at least, been elusive

Sleep had, today at least, been elusive. For while his mind did not turn to it immediately, wandering past thoughts of properly washing his toothbrush, and ordering the new seal his clothes washer desperately needed. Small random thoughts, all loosely themed around maintenance and other routine tasks which needed his attention when it was available. Connection made, he began to think about the notification.

The systems were mature, so mature they very rarely failed by themselves, and where there was a risk they might, they or another neighbouring system or device would helpfully send a notification well in advance, so they could be repaired or replaced as needed.

Notifications like this one usually arrived during the day, when the others were awake. They may not like to admit it, or even think about it but they were the principal, or perhaps only cause of unscheduled maintenance calls. Rough handling, misconfiguration, abuse, all took their toll and Al would pack up his tools and walk around fixing the things they had broken.

Which meant someone had been here last night. A conclusion which, like most conclusions, only created more questions.

The dense metal of the blast door was almost thick enough to deaden the wailing klaxon in the hall beyond. Simon looked about the dim space, fingertips extended as he groped for the wall he knew should be just to his left. Despite his caution he managed to jam an extended finger against the base of a grab handle, pain shooting up his arm. The joint of his finger caught slightly and he flipped his hand over to wipe it against the grab handle. Relief coming as he bumped the troublesome digit into a curve and was able to flex it again.

The klaxon was fading beyond hearing and he realized this was most likely because the air was leaking out beyond the bulkhead door. Sure enough, the bright red warnings on the three sides of the triangular opening had lit up to indicate the lack of pressure on the other side.

The three lights flickered and Simon realized they didn’t align neatly with his sense of up and down. The gravity system had also been affected and the pull beyond the door had dropped away, everything on the other side would soon start to slide down the long straight corridor to pile up against the door, drawn there by the grav plates still working on this side. Once that area failed completely there would be a mess of equipment, wreckage and bodies stacked against the opening.

Bodies. Simon’s eyes flashed down to where the long burn tracked across the chest of his suit. The surfaced ablated and torn where something had streaked across him at a narrow angle. He’d been lucky, the blast had thrown him through the blastdoor even as it snapped shut, triggered by the explosion and hull puncture as the attack ram impacted on the ship.

That’s why there were bodies. He had been talking to Romanov as they jogged towards the armoury. The comms from the other ship had been laced with attack software, the banal messages about damaged engines and part lists had arrived only moments before the bridge dropped off the intercom and the lights flickered as power routing was rapidly changed across the whole ship.

They had been headed to their assigned station when Romanov had noticed the attack rams sliding silently through space towards them. One of them growing horrifyingly large and detailed as they realized it was going to strike the ship where they stood.

He hadn’t thought to say anything

He hadn’t thought to say anything, running had seemed so obvious. His powerful legs had moved him swiftly back towards quarters and only as he slowed to palm open the door did he realise he was alone. Turning the world had seemed to slow, his neck muscles straining to rotate his head which suddenly felt stiff and heavy. His eyes darted about as the corridor behind him slowly, so slowly rotated into view.

Just before he could see there was a terrific crack as several long spears lanced through the meters thick ceramic hull. Two of them breaching the corridor itself. Then there was a series of exlosions so close together he heard them as a roar, like a space dragon screaming outside the ship. The space between the lances exploded inwards just as it came within his field of view, dozens of his colleagues smashed to bloody pieces along with the debris against the far wall, which collapsed through into the chambers beyond in several places.

Romanov had started to job towards him and turned back to see what had happened as the first bolts of white blue light slashed across the corridor and figures in suits with the hazed outline which accompanies military-grade battle gear stepped into the space. Like Simon she was moving slowly and he saw horror start to spread across her face just before a bolt struck her visor and most of her head flashed to bloody vapor, her armoured helmet hanging uselessly at her belt.

Then the compressed air and noise had reached him and tossed him bodily up and back through the already closing blast door, which tugged at him as it snapped shut just inches beyond his feet. Wait, no, that’s wasn’t right. Inches above. He looked down and cried out as he saw the stumps of his legs which both ended above the ankle. The slight angle at which he had been flying through the door meaning one stump was several inches shorter than the other.

There was no pain, but the suit could do nothing about the shock now he had noticed the double amputation and his willing mind flooded him with pain which had little to do with the physical injuries and everything to do with the pain he was utterly convinced he should be in.

Noggin leant back a little so the light of the fire wouldn’t play over his face as he looked down through the branches. Around the fire the humans were talking and gesturing at one another, their strange noises carrying easily like the pungent smoke from their cook fire.

The tall one sat reading while the small one washed itself with a rag. They made noises at each other while the fat one dug a pit and waddled over to produce a small pot from the packs laid over the pony. That’s why Noggin was watching them, the pony looked and smelled so tasty his mouth already watered at the thought of roasting its flesh over the fire later.

The fat one made some noises and the small one squealed and slapped at it. Noggin grinned as the squeals reminded him of Dunker leaving Ribbon’s tent last night to rut noisily with him instead. She’d laughed when they were done and told him that while his was straight like a knife, Ribbon’s was as bent as Barok’s scimitar.

As bent as Barok’s scimitar

The four goblins had been careful to shepherd the group for the last few suns. Keeping a bear and a small group of wolves away. Humans often lost their wariness when things seemed safe and comfortable and their progress through the forest had been easy as the goblins ranged ahead of them, scaring off the animals who might otherwise have come to pester the humans at night.

As he crouched in the tree the tight-wound leather of his knife felt good in his fist. Running his tongue over the cool metal he wondered whether he would get a chance to use it this time. The fat one looked slow and should be easy to catch. He pictured the round white face gaping at him as dark blood seeped and pulsed through its fingers as he slashed and hacked at that enormous belly.

Just then his keen nose caught the twin scents of terror and blood drifting from upwind where the humans had hobbled the pony just beyond the firelight. Ribbon must have slit the beast’s throat and would now be finding his own tree. He just needed to be patient.

Noggin still had some wolf meat stuck in his back teeth. He picked at it with the knife and managed to work a chunk clear just as Ribbon’s recurve bow twanged loudly from across the clearing. Noggin traced the arrow as it whipped through the space and buried itself in the small one which had finished washing and stood to pull its clothes over its head. It screamed, stumbled and tripped headfirst into the fire.

Noggin traced the arrow

The fat one gaped at the screaming creature, but the tall thin one was reaching for its sword even as it began to look about, ignoring the small one which quickly stopped screaming and thrashing, the scent of burnt hair and flesh filling the air. That instinct to look for danger betrayed its experience and training and Noggin gripped his knife tighter seeing at least one of these foul-smelling creatures knew how to fight.

Then a nearby branch drooped suddenly. A loud crack rang out and Dunker, who must have crept too far out on a dead limb, flailed as she and the branch fell from the tree to crash with a whimper to the ground by the humans below.

Noggin froze until movement caught his eye and he saw Barok in a tree to his left moving from where he crouched in the shadows, curved scimitar held ready, yellow eyes fixed on the shapes below as he prepared to jump. Noggin leant forward too, tensing for the little leap which would carry him out into the dark as the tall human rolled smoothly forward from where it sat like hot fat flowing down meat, quick and slick, coming to his feet immediately below Noggin and extending its sword towards Dunker.

She let out a little gasp and as his body began to uncoil Noggin saw the human hadn’t simply gestured at her but had pushed the sword down through Dunker’s chest in the same fluid motion that brought it to its feet. It yelled at the fat one, probably some pointless human warning, dropping the sheath to snatch out a dagger just as Noggin’s feet left branch.

As he fell he could see Dunker was dead, body lolling limply as the human stepped forward onto her chest, crushing her under its boot as it pulled the sword free with a grunt and turned towards Ribbon. Ribbon who was rushing out from the trees, fancy bow discarded and gleaming axe held overhand above his head, bawling a battle cry.

Ribbon had killed himself in trying to save Dunker. Even as the air began to roar past Noggin’s ears he could see realisation on Ribbon’s pinched face. His lips were white and eyes wide as the willowy human side-stepped and almost tenderly slipped the sword under Ribbon’s arm, through the gap in the mail there and into the unresisting flesh of his chest. It looked so easy.

Noggin struck then, high where the shoulder met the neck. The notched, black, and wicked-sharp blade of his knife disappeared up to the handle in the smooth pale skin. Noggin stared at the handle in his small fist knowing he didn’t have the experience or skill to have struck such a blow deliberately. The tip must have found something vital because the body buckled beneath him and they both collapsed to the ground.

Noggin lay stunned while the screams of the fat one let him know Barok must have started hacking it to pieces. He smiled at the sounds until turning his head he caught sight of Dunker’s body close by in the grass. With a pang of regret he realised she would never again offer him the warm comfort of her flesh. A pleasure only improved by the jealous looks he’d get from Ribbon. He groaned quietly then; Ribbon was dead too.