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Latest Stories

March 08, 2024
Flash Fiction Benoit

Some Enchanted Evening

It was a rugby tackle with tears: Chrissy burst in, sobbing and babbling, hugging James. Her face was all wet, eyes wild. What…? My parents split up, Dad has moved in with his boyfriend and I cannot join them. I am shut out. I have lost my dad. Torrent of…
March 08, 2024
Horror Stories Marvel Chukwudi Pephel

In The Hands Of My Legs

The car pulled up in front of the large salon. The neon sign, that sexy broad thing, on the salon'sroof read "Mr. Gil's All-night Salon". The exhaust pipe of the car was pumping solid smoke, theswirls moving from the car and towards the salon.…
March 07, 2024
Mystery Stories Vanessa Leigh Giles

Casualty of Love in the Time of Coronavirus

Chapter 1 Until Death do us Part ‘Ring, ring!’. I answered the telephone and asked, “Hello, good evening. Who’s this? “Hello.” This is Dr. Smith from Red Cross hospital. “Is this Mr. Locke, John?”, he asked, hesitantly scratching his bald head. “Yes, doctor.…
March 07, 2024
Crime Stories Robert Pook

Bar Room Trigger

Another return journey on footpaths so familiar. He strides across each crack in each paving stone. Regular loose drain covers sidestepped. Mapping long ago mapped in Richard’s desolate mind. His pace hastened by the sight of the oncoming storm. Quickening…
March 04, 2024
Horror Stories Ano Chinemerem

Sanctity

Where should I begin? I could begin by telling you about this comely boy, whom every notable person around the streets agrees his smile could charm the bills off one. Between one smile, there was his goodness, his dreams and humanity—a little far ahead?— but…
March 04, 2024
Flash Fiction Emanuel Diaz

Et Mortui Partium

As Rafael stepped out into the rain, it wasn't the ordinary drops that fell from the sky. Instead, it was a storm of souls, each one taking the form of shimmering jewelry as it cascaded toward the ground. Rubies, diamonds, and sapphires twinkled amidst the…
February 29, 2024
Poetry Jing Li Ava

London

‘Am I in London?’ "I am." Where is Elizabeth? Happy living story All of your chapter Bounlance joy Please my heart Power hand Wise mind Our baby Vow vow Love all love Miss I miss Endless wonder Bring us together Love all love Miss I miss For everything My…
February 29, 2024
Flash Fiction Rob Pook

Life Sentence of The Smith

Born nine months after his country won the World Cup.A child prodigy.Cast off at age twenty-four.Husband, father, emigree, away on the other side of the world.The blue-collar life.The dreams of success.The search for fulfillment.The long years of empty…
February 29, 2024
Mystery Stories Joshua Lowther

The Operator

Jason looked over to his right, his eyes barely able to focus themselves on the subject of his attention. His neck ached terribly from the strenuous movement. He was tired. The captain’s gaze came to rest on the rookie sonar operator sitting tense at his…
February 29, 2024
Flash Fiction Salvatore Difalco

The Chute

At dusk, we left our unit with a soft pink bundle. I carried it through the wet streets and into the black woods. I said I’d take it all the way, the bundle, but that we had to drop it in together. My wife’s green eyes flashed. “Don’t make me do that.” I…
February 29, 2024
Fantasy Stories Marvel Chukwudi Pephel

Tragopolis

In the heart of a vast and mysterious forest lay a city like no other – Tragopolis. It was a fablesque city hidden from the prying eyes of the outside world. It was a place where secrets bloomed as bountifully as the surrounding flora. It was a city where…
February 15, 2024
Science Fiction Stories Jasnoor

Ethan Sheldon's Death

<< Ethan Sheldon’s [Deceased] Brain Autopsy >> Damn, this one's going to be a long one—an all-nighter mopping the floors in this creepy ass place. There is no music or sound except the splashing noise of cleaning fluid. I'm in a hallway; there's nothing to…

It was hard enough to be forced out of my job, but it was really humiliating to be replaced by a robot. For years robots have been doing repetitive jobs like welding the same spot on products that move down an assembly line. In the last few years they have been doing more sophisticated jobs. They can assemble financial information from the internet and create a first-rate report on the market. They can take patient’s medical history as well as a trained nurse. They can even make diagnoses better than most doctors. The best surgeons now are robots. A human surgeon has to set the thing up, but the robot does the actual cutting, and the result is better than if it had been done by a human doctor.

But I didn’t believe that a robot could replace me. I’m a grief counselor. I guide people through their mourning, through the stages of disbelief, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. How could a robot do that?

I went to my office that morning and saw that my name had been taken off the door. In its place someone had painted Dr. Alistair Sim. Not Alistair Sim, MD or Alistair Sim, Ph. D., but Dr. Alistair Sim. What was going on? Some of my patients were there, looking down when I came into the waiting room. Before I could ask what was going on, the clinic director, Charles Foster, was there.

“Sorry you had to learn it this way, Frederick,” he said. “I had hoped to catch you before you got to your office. Why don’t we go to my office,” taking me by the arm.

I should have known it was coming. A few weeks ago I blew up at one of my patients, Florence Gurdey. Florence had lost her husband almost ten years ago, and she was still grieving him. Every week I listened to the same story, over and over and over again. “How can I get along without him?” she would ask. “Life has changed so much with Reggie gone. There’s nothing left for me. Blah Blah Blah.” Then she would start crying. Her chin would begin to quiver, and pretty soon tears would be rolling down her fat cheeks. Then she would bawling out loud.

I couldn’t do anything except hand her a Kleenex and say, “There, there, there.” I got so goddamned tired of listening to her go through the same act week after week that I just lost it.

“What you could do,” I said quietly, “is get off your fat ass and do something instead of sitting around feeling sorry for yourself all the time.” Of course I apologized, but it was too late.

When we got to Charles’s office, he said, “You’ve been with us--how long is it--twenty-six years?”

He knew damned well how long I had been at the clinic. No doubt he had looked at my personnel record before he made his decision.

“You’ve done a wonderful job here, Frederick, and you have earned a rest. Some of those retirement villages in Arizona are really great, I understand. I wouldn’t mind getting out of Boston myself,” he said, pretending to shiver. The temperatures had not risen above the freezing point in over two weeks, and a heavy snow was forecast for the next day.

“But I’m not ready to retire,” I said.

“I know what you mean,” Charles said, “but we have to move with the times. They have all kinds of activities there: tennis, amateur theatre, a jazz band, a book club, swimming pools. You’ll meet some old friends. Elmer Baskins is at the place we’re sending you.” He was so smooth. He never mentioned Florence Gurdey, but he didn’t have to.

“You’ll love it there,” patting me on the arm.

No, I wouldn’t. I would hate it. I knew I would hate it. I remembered Baskins, but I was never particularly friendly with him. Really I had no friends, a lot of acquaintances, but no real friends. I had no real interests. My life for the past 26 years had been the job, and now they were taking that away from me.

“I know it’s hard to accept, Frederick,” he shrugged, “but so much has changed. We have to change with it. We really don’t have a choice.”

“The one who is replacing me, this Doctor Alistair Sim, is a robot, isn’t he?”

“I know, Frederick, but if you look around, you’ll see that more and more of our staff are robots.”

“But how can they do the things that people want? How can they relate to human beings?’ I was almost on the point of tears.

“That’s just the point. Studies have shown that they are more effective than humans as counselors.”

I glared at him.

“We don’t have to send them to graduate school. We can just upload the data into their hard drive. Then with machine learning, they can pick new information more quickly and accurately than a human can. Particularly as people get older, they find it harder to adjust to new developments in therapy.”

“Older! I’m only forty-nine!”

“That means you’ll have more years to enjoy your retirement.”

“You know what you can do with your new developments in therapy!” I yelled as I stormed out of the office.

Afterwards I regretted losing my temper. I wouldn’t have minded accepting a demotion, like just working part-time or taking only the easy cases. I would get on my knees and apologize to Florence Gurdey if I had to. I was sure something could be worked out so that I wouldn’t have to retire.

But Charles wouldn’t see me, and less than a month later I was in the Peaceful Dreams retirement village in Mesa, Arizona. I hated it as much as I thought it would. For a couple of months I didn’t even come out of my condo except to buy groceries, and I wasn’t even eating much. Most of the time I just sat there, staring at the walls, a nauseous pea-soup color that I hated.

Then one day I was sitting on my porch, and someone came up and introduced himself. “Hello, my name is Malek.”

The designers are so talented that it is hard to recognize a robot these days, but I knew Malek was a robot. “You look like a chess player,” he said.

Oh, yeah? What does a chess player look like? It was true, I used to play chess, though I was never very good at it.

He pulled a chessboard out of a little case he was carrying and set up the board on the table beside me. I knew I could never compete against a robot in playing chess. What followed was more of a chess lesson than a game. Afterwards he thanked me and left. He was back the next day, and every afternoon we played chess and talked. Over time he learned a lot about me.

There was not a lot to learn about him. Once he said to me, “My memory is not like yours. You remember events that were part of your life. I remember mostly data that has been put in my hard drive and things that I learn while interacting with humans.”

I began to think of Malek as a friend and looked forward to our afternoon sessions. Then I began to wonder: What is a robot doing at a retirement village? The next time I saw him, I asked him.

He seemed flustered almost, unable to give me an answer. “I’m just a robot, Frederick,” he said. “Mine not to reason why. I just go where they send me and do whatever they program me to do.”

A few days later he was gone. No one at Peaceful Dreams could tell me where he had gone or why he had been there, but I knew. Malek was a robot grief counselor. I felt stupid because I had not seen through it before, but it had worked. He had been sent to help me through a rough time, and it had worked.

End

My stories have appeared in Mountain Laurel, Northern New England Review, Short-Story.Me, Commuter Lit, Mad Swirl, Kennebec, Every Day Fiction, Bindweed, and Bewildering Stories among others.

 

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