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Latest Stories

March 19, 2024
Fantasy Stories Wondering Monk

Just My Imagination

The alarm clock went off and started playing an awful tune. Tom opened his eyes and closed them back, squinting. He reopened one eye and stood up to stop the torture. The phone was on the desk, in the furthest spot from the bed. Although he changed his way of…
March 19, 2024
Science Fiction Stories Ocelotlzin

Earth Is Dead

Recording… It doesn't matter who I was; I probably lived a long time ago, and I am now just a voice someone added to the audio-visual records. What is essential is the recollection of events that lead to the current state. So, a little history needs to be…
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…

These high-end robots are so life-like that you sometimes forget that they are not humans. But that is a big mistake. Pardon me, the politically correct term is electronic people.

I work at the Institute for Ethical Studies. As you doubtlessly know, that is a think tank for the Progressive Party. One of my colleagues there is an electronic person named Andrew. The electronic people at the institute rarely generate ideas that become papers or policy statements. Their job is more to challenge the human workers and offer quick sources of information.

Andrew and I had been discussing human nature. We agreed that people are born good, but that they are corrupted by society.

“That means that everyone is corrupt,” Andrew insisted.

“No, it doesn’t,” I argued. “It just means that no one is perfect. In fact, if a good person does something that he knows is bad, his sense of guilt forces him to try even harder to make up for his transgression.”

Andrew scoffed, and I told him that I had a terribly guilty secret in my past. I saw that I wasn’t going to convince him until I told him what I had been hiding for over twenty years, something I had never told anyone. I would not have shared this with a real person, but at the time I thought an electronic person would not go around gossiping, so that what I had revealed to Andrew would not go out of the room. I remember it was a damp, dreary day, and rather than go home at 5:00, I got a sandwich in the commissary and even had a nip from the bottle of Dewars that I keep in my desk. Maybe that is why my guard was down a little.

I forgot about the conversation or at least avoided thinking about it until the scandal about Congressman Corbett broke. The story dribbled out bit by bit over several weeks until Corbett was forced to resign. He owed his decades-long career in Congress to dirty tricks that he played on anyone who had the nerve to run against him. He got some kind of dirt on opponents or framed them so that they did not dare mount a real campaign against him.

Corbett did not do the dirty work himself. His chief of staff, Malcolm Reynolds, did it for him. Of course I knew Reynolds. He was a man with no conscience, a sniveling hypocrite, who would sell his own grandmother if he could gain some political advantage from the deal. He was being investigated by the FBI. There was a good chance that he would end up in jail.

For several days I enjoyed the schadenfreude, but then I got scared when I realized how Reynolds’ story had been discovered. He had an electronic person as an aide. His aide, whose name was Oswald, I believe, was involved in all the dirty work, no doubt. Very likely Oswald was the actual perpetrator, following Reynolds’ orders. Oswald would no more turn Reynolds in than Andrew would turn me in.  That wasn’t the problem.

When I was a young man, I was an aide to Senator Shelton. I learned a lot about politics on that job and was ready to run for Congress myself. Unfortunately I got involved with one of the secretaries in the senator’s office, Sharon Peasley, and she got pregnant. We were in New Hampshire, the senator’s home state, hiking in the foothills of the White Mountains when she told me the news.

I’ll never forget the scene that day. We were at the edge of a tall knoll. I could see the rolling hills stretching across miles of greenery. She seemed horrified when I suggested an abortion. “Well, if you prefer, I will pay child support,” I told her.

“Child support!” she yelled. “No, you have to marry me!”

I liked Sharon, but there was no way that I would marry her. She was a nice young woman, but she didn’t have the class to be a congressman’s wife. I turned toward her suddenly, and she fell backwards over the edge of knoll. I looked down and saw her, her head twisted in an unnatural position. I knew she was dead.

No one knew we had gone hiking together, and I never told anyone, except Andrew, what had happened. I never did run for office, and I never married. Though I rarely think of the events in the White Mountains that day, I have tried to make up for it by helping Senator Shelton do the good work he did until he retired.

When I thought Congressman Corbett and Malcolm Reynolds, I realized how the FBI cracked the case. They must have found what they wanted through Reynolds’ electronic person, Oswald. When you talk to an electronic person, you forget that they don’t have personal loyalties or that their memory is not like ours. The reason they have access to all that information is that the data is not stored in their metal and plastic heads. It is stored in the cloud. Of course it is password protected, but if they want to get to it, determined members of the Department of Information can hack the stuff that’s stored on the cloud.

Although I have never held office, I have been a staff member to various office holders in the Progressive Party. When the Nationalist Party gets back in power, someone in the Department of Information will hack Andrew and get my confession. After that it will be only a matter of time before I hear a knock on my door.

 

End

CARL PERRIN started writing when he was in high school. His short stories have appeared in The Mountain Laurel, Northern New England Review, Kennebec, Short-Story.Me, and CommuterLit among others. His book-length fiction includes Elmhurst Community Theatre, a novel, and RFD 1, Grangely, a collection of humorous short stories. He is the author of several textbooks, including Successful Resumes, and Get Your Point Across, a business writing text. The memoir of his teaching career Touching Eternity, was a finalist in the 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Award.

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