This month’s theme:
Wikiflash 2018

Last year in October, facing writer’s block, I came up with an odd way to force myself to write: I visited Wikipedia and kept clicking on the “Random article” option, and when the title of an article spiked an idea, I wrote a story reflecting that title. It was a lot of fun—so much so that I’m doing it again.

“Six”
Mainstream
This is just a taste of what Alzheimer’s does to a person.
Alzheimer’s Association: www.alz.org
By David M. Fitzpatrick

“Sex?”

“No, Grampie… six.”

“Eh? Sox? Like the Red Sox or the White Sox?”

“SIX, Grampie. The number SIX.”

“Oh. Thought you said ‘sax’ or something… like ‘saxophone.’ Or ‘sucks.’”

“You need to get new batteries for your hearing aids.”

“Right. But what about six? Six what?”

“You asked me when Grammie died. It was 2006.”

“Oh, no, my grandmother died… oh, must have been during World War II.”

“No, MY grandmother—your wife. You were married to her for sixty years, Grampie. Her name was Esther.”

“I didn’t have a wife named Esther! Where do you come up with these things?”

“…Okay, Grampie.”

“And who the hell are you to come in here asking me all this stuff, anyway? I don’t take kindly to strangers coming into my home without my permission!”

“It’s… it’s a nursing home, Grampie.”

“You don’t call me that! Now, you get along outta here, or I’ll call my grandson to come throw you out. You got that?”

“…Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

…

“I keep thinking about the number six today, son. Didn’t you graduate high school in 1966?”

“That… that was my father, Grampie. He was your son. He’s not with us anymore. He… didn’t come back from Vietnam.”

“That ain’t right. My son was here just a few minutes ago. He was talking about… about six. Something about six…”

“Solar Eclipse of June 12, 2029”
Science fiction
We CAN escape our primitive barbarism.
National Science Foundation: www.nsf.gov
By David M. Fitzpatrick

They were in orbit, watching the shadow of the Moon fall over the Earth, They were in the observation dome, floating in microgravity and watching in silent awe as the elongated shadow crawled across the terminator. It grew less stretched, and soon it was centered almost perfectly over the North Pole. The aurora borealis danced around the top of the world like psychedelic lights in a discotheque.

“Spectacular,” Astronaut Miller said. She was the current station commander. “And even more spectacular that we can be up here to witness it from above.”

“Amazing,” Cosmonaut Feschenko commented, nodding her head in agreement. “It is indeed a testament to how humanity has crawled out of primitive barbarism and learned to let science and reason rule our lives.”

“What the hell is that?” Taikonaut Zhang said. She was pointing.

At the peak of the shadow’s dome, two smaller domes had appeared. They were very tiny, but they were visibly moving as they appeared to creep higher. As the three spacefarers watched with wide eyes and gaping mouths, the new shadows stretched above the Moon’s dome, and it was clear that they weren’t smaller domes: They were extending, growing longer—like rabbit ears. Like someone standing behind another person, giving the victory sign to create the ears. It was unmistakable.

“What the hell?” Miller cried.

They all figured it out and turned themselves about with their hands. Clearly visible out the other side of the observation dome was the Moon, blocking out the Sun. They all half-expected to see giant fingers, each the size of Florida, poking up from behind the Moon. There was nothing.

The trio turned themselves back, and the rabbit ears were gone. All that was there was the Moon’s shadow, slowly moving across the Northern Hemisphere.

“There is no way that we all imagined that, comrades,” Feschenko said through gritted teeth.

“We should have taken a picture,” Zhang said. “I don’t suppose the external cameras caught it?”

Miller floated to the comm panel and informed Houston that they had a problem. After a hurried discussion, Mission Control gave them an answer.

“Commander, in fact we lost video feed about five minutes ago,” the technician said. “It just came back online, but we definitely had an unexplained blackout. Why do you ask?”

Miller looked at her crewmates, a grim expression on her face. “Just wondering, Houston. We’re all experiencing a bit of mass hysteria up here…”

*   *   *

On the dark side of the Moon, the two cigar-shaped spaceships settled quietly down on the surface. Each was truly monstrous—each the length of the peninsula angling off the bottom of one of the planet’s continents.

“Close call,” said the captain to the sprawling bridge crew. “Good thing we jammed transmissions, but next time let’s get that invisibility shield up before we come out of hyperspace. Any chance we were spotted?”

“Doesn’t look like it, sir.”

“Good,” he replied. “Those people have potential, but for all of their scientific and technological advances, they’re still primitive and barbaric. They’re not ready to know about us yet. So deploy the excavators and let’s bury these ships under this moon’s crust. When they’re ready, we’ll let them know that they have neighbors.”

“At least a couple more centuries, sir?”

The captain sighed. “At least.”

“Dear Son”
Time travel
We can be better. Support progressive causes.
Democratic National Committee: www.democrats.org
By David M. Fitzpatrick

Dear Son:

I just couldn’t live in our time anymore. And you know how fascinated I am with history, but it would have been even worse to go backward in time. That’s why I’ve gone to the future.

If I’ve done my math right, this letter should have appeared in your office, right on your desk, just a few minutes after I left 2018 forever. Spacetime is finicky; you have to find the right coordinates in four dimensions, and then you have to figure out where your starting and ending points are. That is, I’m still on Earth, but I’m a thousand years in the future, and the Earth has moved through space and time over that period. And with the continuous expansion of the fabric of space… well, no need to bore you.

So I’m here. I’m sorry that we’ll never see or talk to each other again. You know that I love you. But the very things I’ve escaped in the twenty-first century are the things that you’ve embraced. I raised you to think for yourself and to make your own decisions, and somehow you chose this extreme-right theocratic stance that I abhor. I respect your right to believe what you wish, even when they are so abhorrent. What I cannot respect is your fierce crusade to force everyone to believe as you do, or else they must suffer your vision of the consequences.

I knew that the future would be better. I knew that the primitive concepts of religion would die out eventually. I knew that there would be peace and harmony in the world. I knew that there truly would be equal rights for all. I knew that no one would judge human beings by the color of their skin or their cultures, what genitals they have or genders they identify as, or anything other than the merits of their actions—anything other than the people they are.

I put every drop of power I could into this trip, and I could only get a thousand years ahead. I was prepared to do it again, if need be, but I have found the world that I have dreamed of.

I have seen the destiny of humanity. The world as you know it will die. It will be reborn, rising like a phoenix out of the ashes. Humanity will go on to become something wonderful—what we’ve always been capable of, what you’ll be able to accomplish once you shed your hatred and intolerance.

Don’t think that it was easy to leave you. As much as you have tasked me, challenged me, frustrated me, infuriated me, and disappointed me, I have always loved you deeply. I hope that you live the rest of your life knowing that.

I hope that you find peace in your life. I hope that you let go of your hate and open your mind. You’re in such a position to do such great things, and I hope that you will realize that you have but one life, and that you can choose to do better than you have done.

In fact, I know that you will. Maybe it took me leaving your forever for you to become someone else.

With all my love,
-Dad

*   *   *

Gregory Dillingham sat in his chair, stunned, as he finished reading the handwritten letter. He looked up at the empty office, feeling it a bit difficult to catch his breath.

His father was gone. A thousand years into the future. He’d never see him again. As far as his father knew, Gregory had been dead for ten centuries.

Sorrow welled up in him. He and his father had never seen eye to eye, but he always thought he’d have a chance to find closure with the old man. And he’d always felt that his father had been overly critical for the sake of being such. But… no man devises a way to put a thousand years between himself and his world—and his own son!—unless he really meant the beliefs he claimed to live by.

Images flooded through his mind—images from a lifetime of opposing his father, of making extreme choices, of finding popularity in those choices, of fighting to force everyone to fall into lockstep with his religious and social and political beliefs.

Was he that selfish? Had he always been that hateful and intolerant?

Was his father one hundred percent correct?

Gregory sighed, sagging back in the big chair, even as the door opened.

“Sir, Marine One has landed,” the agent said.

Gregory stood up from the Resolute Desk, snatching up the letter and tucking it in his inside jacket pocket. “I’ll be out in a moment.”

The agent nodded and exited into the West Wing, leaving President Dillingham alone in the Oval Office.

He wanted to cry, but there would be time for that later. Clearly, there were more important things that he had to do. Maybe the next millennium depended on it.

“Banned Books Week”
Dystopian
This is from my forthcoming book PLANET TRUMP, a collection of 70 stories of extreme-right dystopias, as “Burning in Hell on Earth.” When this Wikipedia article came up, it was like fate.
Banned Books Week: www.bannedbooksweek.org
By David M. Fitzpatrick

Lindsay stood in the crowd, a safe distance from the pile, and tried not to cry. She knew that there were others like her present, but they were few, and none dared admit their feelings.

The crowd chanted in unison, urging on the city councilors who were gathered by the big pile. They grinned in mad, wide-eyed excitement as they upended metal cans and soaked the pile in gasoline. The crowd roared its approval.
Barbarians, Lindsay thought.

Lindsay could see many titles from where she stood. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth. Countless scientific texts on every subject imaginable. Fiction that wasn’t culturally accepted. Anything that wasn’t approved, or that was considered blasphemous, under the new laws was torched—here, and across the country. Across the world.

Gasoline cans empty, the councilors moved quickly back as the man in the silver fireproof suit stepped forward. The crowd sucked in a collective gasp and swarmed back. The silver man brought his flamethrower, with its flickering pilot, to bear. When he pressed the trigger, the device spat terrible flame on the pile of books like an evil dragon breathing fire on an army of courageous knights.

Lindsay withdrew from the crowd, toward the darkness of the trees beyond. Sam waited there, his face grim.

“Did you get them?” she asked.

“As many as I could,” he said.

He handed it to her. It was small, the size of her pinky, but she knew the capacity of that storage device.

“There are millions on that,” he said. “I’ll keep getting more. I get online every night to find more. There are hundreds of us on the Internet working together to collect and digitize as many titles as we can before they’re gone. As long as they don’t catch us, we can keep getting as many books as possible from countries where they’re not banned.”

Lindsay shuddered. “There are fewer countries every year. The more these barbarians fall in line with this uncivilized censorship, the rarer these electronic books will be.” She held the storage device up to look at it in the darkness. “Make as many copies as you can. We have to get as many distributed to people like us as possible. And hide more.”

“I’m on it.”

They turned back to the crowd, which was silhouetted against the towering pillar of fire that lit up the night. Black smoke rose toward the heavens. The crowd cheered, mindless and accepting, at the sight.

“They can burn all the books they want,” Lindsay said, tucking the storage device in her pocket, “but they’ll never destroy every file.”

They parted ways in the dark, while the barbarians howled.

“Helltank”
I’ve written about Blue Blaze here a couple of times, and she has my attention. I want to keep writing about her. Even as a superhero, she battles misogyny, mistreatment, and a lack of equal rights.
ACLU: www.aclu.org
Superhero
By David M. Fitzpatrick

Jillian saw it on TV: Some big, bad supervillain was duking it out with Ultrawarrior on the capitol lawn in Midway City… and Ultrawarrior was losing. Some huge guy calling himself Helltank.

Jillian never slept—one of her powers. It was a blessing and a curse. But she’d just spent the night doing her vigilante bit, protecting innocent citizens from criminals. The more she used her powers, the weaker they got. She knew she needed a few hours to be back to full strength… but Cole needed her now.

She super-sped her way through getting back into her costume—royal blue, with a dark-blue cape, and BB in silver letters across her ample breasts. She used to hate those big things before she got her powers. Now, with her strength, they weren’t a pain to haul around. She just hated how all the men of the world seemed to judge her on those instead of her deeds.

Enough of that. Cole needed help, and she’d listened to everyone going on about how perfect he was, and how the woman hero had to be treated with some kind of kid gloves. She’d show them.

*   *   *

Blue Blaze flew over the city, and she saw the smoke before she cleared the buildings at City Center. Midway City was the state capital, and the big dome was damaged. She saw Ultrawarrior crawling out of the dome’s marble, where he’d evidently just been thrown, and on the sprawling lawn below she saw Helltank. He stood a good nine feet tall and had biceps bigger around that Ultrawarrior’s very muscular barrel chest. His legs were like tree trunks, and every muscle on his body was visible and bulging. He only wore an oversized Speedo of sorts, besides the helmet on his head and the gauntlets on his hands. He looked look more like a fantasy barbarian than a tank.

His helmet, which was black like obsidian, was on fire—bizarrely green flames burning atop it and roaring three feet above his head. The gauntlets matched the helmet in their sleek black color. They also burned with green flames. Beyond, a dozen cars and trucks were ablaze, several of them turned over. The guy had done some damage.

She flew full speed to meet up with Cole. He wore a red bodysuit and a flowing blue cape, and had a big U on his chest.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He was a beefy, muscular black man, and devastatingly handsome—and that was going some for Jillian, who liked the ladies. “I’m okay,” he said with a nod, “but glad to see you. This guy is tough. Stronger than me.”

“Then he’s way stronger than me!”

“But there are two of us now—LOOK OUT!”

Helltank had launched a pair of green fireballs from his gauntlets, and the huge spheres, two feet across each, roared toward them. Ultrawarrior met them head-on; he had superpowers that let him resist fire. Jillian had no special resistance without her blaze power, and that was running low. She flew straight up as the green explosion kicked Cole back again. She had to hit Helltank from another angle.

“Blue Blaze!” roared the giant man-ogre, his voice a reverberating bass that sounded as if it were being channeled through a high-wattage sound system. “Nice of you to join us. I’ll enjoy taking care of Midway City’s twin champions!”

He pointed a massive fist at her and launched a fireball. She outmaneuvered it easily. She looked back to see that it was streaking into the sky, and she could tell that it was shrinking as it went. Good. Less disaster elsewhere.

She looked across the way, and Ultrawarrior met her gaze. It was like they were thinking the same thing—an unspoken plan. She rocketed as fast as she could up and over, arcing high above Helltank, even as Ultrawarrior flew low to distract him. When she was in position, she kicked up the speed and rocketed towards the villain’s head. Ultrawarrior shot forward, aiming for his legs.

The heroes hit their target at the same time, and Hellcat was spun like a pinwheel, hitting the ground hard enough to leave a crater in the grass. He roared in anguish and clambered to his feet, even as Blue Blaze and Ultrawarrior circled back and zeroed in on him for another hit. This time, they screamed in from the sides.

But he was ready this time, spinning about to bat Ultrawarrior like a baseball, and the big hero  tumbled through the air and into the side of a government building. Blue Blaze couldn’t react in time—and the other giant gauntlet snapped about and grabbed her just as she was about to impact him. He locked his fist around her, holding her like a child would hold a Barbie doll, and squeezed. It hurt.

“Little lady,” he roared with a toothy grin, “you’re out of your league.”

And as he squeezed harder, he lit up the green fire and she was engulfed. She’d felt the heat building, and before the flames erupted she generated her blue force field around her body. That stopped her from burning, but it was still really hot and she couldn’t hold out for long. She fought against his godlike grip, but couldn’t move.

She could imagine the news reports now. The misogynists would scoff at her feeble attempts. Call her little lady, just like Helltank.

She saw Cole coming in like a missile, and when he knocked Helltank backward like an bowling pin, the villain released her. She escaped the immediate area as Helltank hit the grass of the outdoor mall and slid, gouging out a deep trench as he went. Ultrawarrior landed atop the big juggernaut before he’d stopped moving and began punching the monster as hard as he could, over and over. But Blue Blaze knew it wouldn’t last.

She didn’t have the strength. She had to use her head.

She flew around as Helltank managed to get his gauntlets around Ultrawarrior, holding the hero’s arms to his sides. The green fire roared to life, and she could see the pain on Ultrawarrior’s face.

Jillian’s powers were weak. It had been a long night. Even at full strength, Helltank would beat her in a fight, but she was depleted. Her force fields were already weakened, and protecting herself from his fire hadn’t helped.

She hovered above the scene for a moment, surveying. The man was practically naked except for the helmet and gloves. They were a matching set. They had to be the source of his power. The helmet encompassed his head, with a steel strap under his chin. Probably something magical. She had to remove it.

She heard Ultrawarrior holler in anguish, unable to free himself, and the green fires completely engulfing him. Blue Blaze flew around to come in again, and this time she targeted with precision. With both of Helltank’s gauntlets occupied with Cole, she met no resistance when she flew right up behind him. She shifted whatever power she had left into her force fields and protected her arms from the fire, and she summoned all her strength when she grabbed hold of it and wrenched.

Helltank roared with fury, but her hands found the metal strap under his chin, and she pulled with all her might. It was a snug fit, but she managed to free it—and she rocketed into the sky with it.

Below, she could see Helltank release Ultrawarrior, even as he shrank. Like a balloon losing air, the monstrous figure lost volume. He was maybe eight feet tall now, but he’d lost substantial muscle mass. The gauntlets looked loose.

“Get the gauntlets!” she hollered to Ultrawarrior, who wasted no time in reaching out, grabbing them, and yanking them off the now-smaller hands and forearms.

Like magic, Helltank’s still-massive form shrank even more rapidly, and his deep-bass roaring transitioned through baritone and into tenor as he collapsed. When it was over, a skinny little man remained in his stretchy Speedo.

“I’ll get you one day, Blue Blaze!” he howled, but now he sounded like a weak little man.

All around, citizens cheered.

*   *   *

She was beat. She hadn’t even taken off her costume when Ultrawarrior flew in through her window and joined her on the couch. Her TV was on, and the talking heads—including many of the men—were raving about her.

“Ultrawarrior couldn’t have done it without her,” one man said. “If Blue Blaze hadn’t used her head to figure Helltank out, he’d have mowed through Midway City. I can’t imagine the death and destruction he’d have left in his wake.”

“Yes—we all know that Ultrawarrior has her on strength and invulnerability, but here it took smarts and reasoning to defeat him,” one woman said.

Jillian and Cole exchanged amused glances.

“So I’m the big, dumb street fighter, and you’re the one with the brain,” he said with a grin.

“I’ll take it.”

On the TV, the commentators had adopted a nickname that Helltank himself had given them: They were calling Ultrawarrior and Blue Blaze the Twin Champions of Midway City.

“Twin Champions,” Cole mused. “I like it.”

She grinned from ear to ear. “I LOVE it!”
 

David M. Fitzpatrick is a fiction writer in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.