Sunday Shopping Spree

Author : Irene Montaner

“And have a nice day,” said the cashier, as he handed me the brown paper bag with my purchases inside.

“You too.” I smiled back at the young boy in front of me. Probably no older than twenty and enjoying the thrills of his first job.

“No, I won’t.”

“I can imagine,” I said sympathetically. I turned around and saw an endless queue of people, mostly women, grabbing onto baskets loaded with trashy clothes, cheap shoes and myriads of creams and make-up. Poor boy, tormented by his first job.

“No, you can’t.”

Whenever I looked, chaos seemed to reign in this gigantic shop. A whirlwind of people busied themselves on this Sunday afternoon unfolding every item of clothing that had been neatly folded before the shop opened, untidying every rack of shoes, and opening every cream that was sealed with a ‘do not open’ seal. Heaps of clothes lay outside the many changing rooms, waiting for some shop assistant to fold them again and bring them back to their place. It was a most apocalyptical image; the worst nightmare of a communist, socialist, or whatever they called themselves these days.

Sundays are the new Saturdays, or so they say. Every Sunday hordes of people took over every shopping centre in town and wasted their time eyeing and touching everything on display before queueing forever to spend every hard-earned cent in crap they didn’t need. Some people, especially young girls, still went shopping in groups, but most consumers were lonely creatures who wandered around distractedly, their eyes fixed on those tablets that tailored their shopping to their needs and suggested everything they didn’t even know they wanted. It was also their preferred method to request a different colour or size; no need to interact with the army of assistants that raced from one corner to another, folding as much clothes as they could and refilling the shelves depleted of stock. It wouldn’t be long before those exhausted employees would be replaced by cyborgs who would not complain about low salaries, ungrateful customers or nightmarish Sunday afternoons.

“Next,” said the young cashier, anger showing in his voice.

Who knows how long I’ve been blocking his queue. I stopped daydreaming and realised that this was more an epiphany than a dream. “Son, do you know who I am?”

“No, and I don’t care.”

“Well, no need for you to know or care anymore ‘cos you’re fired.”

“Say what?” he said, angrier than before.

“You’re fired but don’t take it personally. I just think that some multitasking robots could handle this Sunday mess more efficiently. And they wouldn’t cost me as much as you.”

THE END

Kyle’s Quandary

Author : Russell Bert Waters

Kyle staggered a bit, the bank line in front of him morphed into a field, then a grassy patch of hill, then back to the line.

The man ahead of him shot him a suspicious glance, then looked back ahead as though no one existed.

Kyle’s transaction went well, and he was on his way across the wood, then marble, then bare dirt, floor of the bank.

He held the door for a lady who became an angry black man then the lady again.

Next would be the hardest part, as the sun became moon, then sun, then white-out blizzard, then sun again.

He had teleported so many times, once he had perfected the ability, his mind would never quite be the same.

You can only mess with your surroundings so much, it seems.

He hailed a cab, bus, weird little radio-controlled train, cab, and got into the leather, vinyl, crushed velvet seat in the back.

The driver asked him where to, and he just said “home”.

This wasn’t the answer the driver wanted, but he started driving down the road, wooden bridge, patch of desert, anyway.

In his line of work he knew his passenger would eventually come to his or her senses and be more specific; if not, well, the fare would just keep on creeping up.

Kyle did come to, as he sat in the VIP lounge couch, bar stool, park bench, back seat, and looked out the window at all of the ever-shifting scenery.

“Four four five Park street, driver. I’m sorry. Not myself today.”

The Armenian man turned into a mid-thirties white midget and said “not a problem, we’ve all been there” and then he turned into a bearded Amish-looking fellow as he navigated the roads before him effortlessly.

It didn’t start out like this, but it sure hadn’t taken long to progress to this point.

The worst aspect was probably the random nosebleeds, those could be embarrassing and hard to explain to the random stranger, whose shoes you’ve just dripped on, in an elevator.

When he made it home he thanked the driver, who now appeared to be an elderly Jewish man with eyeglasses.

The doorman at his apartment building was always glad to see him, as the door behind him shifted, and he changed repeatedly, he mentioned that Kyle had a visitor while he was out.

Kyle didn’t bother to ask for a description, because if he saw the person, they would likely not appear the same for more than a second or two anyway.

He collapsed onto his couch, pile of discarded tires, abandoned piece of plywood, and began to channel surf on his TV.

He wasn’t really paying attention, because, as with every other aspect of his life, Mr. Clean just became Jamie Lee Curtis, and it was just all getting so very disquieting.

There was a specialist in Minnesota he could see, who could maybe help him somehow, but he was increasingly afraid to teleport anywhere again.

“Maybe I’ll go tomorrow” he said to himself, as he stared at the wall, mountains, sparkling field of snow, behind the TV screen.

He lay his head down and decided he’d take a nap and dream of things that become other things, while longing for the day something inside his head would finally pop and end all of this. “I will go tomorrow” he mumbled, as his world went black.

Soda Pop

Author : Henry Peter Gribbin

In the far corner of a basement laundry room of an apartment building a portal to another dimension was located. One of the tenants, a young redhead with bright green eyes by the name of Maureen, had a strong feeling that something wasn’t quite right about this room every time she did a load of wash. One day she found what she was looking for. In the corner of her eye she saw a flicker of movement. She went over to the corner and behind the water heater she stuck her hand out. It disappeared. She could still feel it so she stuck her shoulder and eventually her whole body through. She appeared on the other side, but the other side of what? Everything felt the same but everything felt different. She went upstairs and went outside. It was her building and her street, but then again it wasn’t. The street she had known for years was a bustling avenue full of cars and trucks. This street was bustling with bicyclists and pedestrians. She decided to take a walk. The air smelled fresh and clean. Fast food establishments and taverns were replaced by bookstores and vegan restaurants.

Maureen discovered she was very thirsty. She found a corner store which she entered. She could find no soda or for that matter no cigarettes, candy bars, potato chips or any form of fast food one was used to seeing in a corner store. She did find a glass bottle of cold water, but when to tried to purchase it the sales clerk returned her money. “No funny money here, Miss,” he said. The bill felt right but the face wasn’t right. He could see she was perplexed, so since the store was empty at the time he has a chat with the young woman. His name was Eric, and he was not just the clerk but the owner.

To make a long story short Eric and Maureen went into business together. After appearing in her world how could he not believe her story. They made a bundle together. While people in his world were generally healthy and ate all the right foods, when they had the chance to smoke cigarettes or gorge themselves on chips and cookies they jumped at the chance. Three times a week Maureen would slip back to the other side and return with goodies. They sold at Eric’s store at a very steep price. Since she couldn’t spend the money she earned in her old world she made her home in Eric’s.

Maureen quickly made the transition to her new world. A big corporation made a deal with her and Eric. They were going to mass produce the items that Maureen was bringing over from the other side. Unfortunately for Maureen, the portal closed while she was on her way back with one last haul. But don’t fret for Maureen. She is a very resourceful young woman and one day she may find another portal. Let’s hope it is to the same dimension.

Generational

Author : Craig Finlay

It seemed fine, to place it there. You were on the weekly trip to the greenhouse with Mom and Dad and Stella holding your hand the whole way as you skipped 10 meters at a time through the light gravity of the inner ring. It was warmer there, drawing heat from the power core. Perfect for plants and the misting sprays hung so long in the light gravity you didn’t need to pretend like you’d ever seen a cloud.

The odd way things impose when you’re too damn small to use the world correctly. Not just the adults and the air you could see but the banks of ferns and the ever-novel soil that held them. You’d taste it, quickly. And every time knew you missed it somehow, despite never having had it, never having walked on Earth.

And really, that was it. The knowing of it all. What Stella told you. That we’d never leave the ship. That we were born to fly the ship and we would die, too. We’d teach our children the ways and workings. Let them fly into the orbit of some other sun. Your parents were so angry when you asked them about death and children and Stella promised to never ever tell you a secret again you little twerp.

So it seemed fine, you found a tree frog in the greenhouse that clung to the underside of hemp tree leaf. There were very few but you found one. Low, where you could see just fine. Uncle Mack said you could be a Southerner, not a Yankee yet. As if such had meaning still.

And it clung to glass when you placed it there. And to your hand when they told you to put it back, clung green and still. You managed it into your hands. It seemed fine that you squeezed tighter and tried one great leap to get out but your hands closed too quickly. And fine too when you returned it limp to the leaves.

Stella was right and she had a way of saying something that was self-evidently true and somehow make it seem profound. But you had nothing to say to Mom and Dad and Uncle Mack when they asked you again and again about the frog and why you squeezed it until it went limp and laid it back on the leaf. Staring then, just staring and not saying anything, at the same knot of grain on the tabletop Mom’s heirloom, real wood. Staring and hoping you could bore into the rings of the knot and make a whole big enough to climb in, just you and a frog that still breathes and clings, and finally make an escape.

They didn’t ask me, of course – how could they? But everyone finds themselves in odd atmospheres now and then, something that felt fine. There’s no damn reason for it, no greater take.

Not when you’re six.

Six is such a goddamned mystery.

Cereal

Author : Josh Thompson

A planet full of gods is not a nice place. Ancient humans knew this and their legends were full of betrayal and conflict and suffering. If anything, the inhuman powers of the gods brought out what was most human in them. That was the ultimate lesson of those tales, but humanity forgot, as ages passed and gods changed. As civilizations rose and fell, perhaps they became uncomfortable telling the stories of powerful and violent deities because they were slowly becoming what they had told of.

Alberta woke up.

She still needed to sleep. She wondered if that made her at least a little human. She wondered what being human even meant. She looked human. Her thoughts were human. She didn’t feel human. It had been a long time since that.

She stretched her arm forward. Its brilliant, stark outline extended in contrast to the endless ocean that engulfed her. The pure ceramic white of the layer shielding her fragile body from that emptiness shone brightly. She watched it contort and flex. It was not a suit of armour; it was an extension of herself. In the depths of space, it was her.

She uncurled her legs and looked downwards towards herself. Her body was shiny and perfect and the same as it had always been. She looked to her left, then rotated until what had been her left was above her head. There was a cloud of hydrogen a few thousand kilometers away. In a white hot veil of fusion and energy, she was there. She barely noticed traveling there. Her arm still extended in front of her, she watched the gas swirl around it. Maybe this fog would one day make a star. She pulled a swathe of the cloud into an infinitesimal glow in the palm of her hand. She couldn’t be human, she thought, as the tiny ball of light dimmed and shaped itself into a bowl of cereal. Humans could never do this. Was she a god, she pondered, as she turned the hydrogen around her into breathable air in a fiery outpouring of radiation and heat? Her undented, blank white mask disappeared around her mouth, and she raised a spoonful of cereal to her lips. She still ate cereal every time she woke up. She had never heard of any gods that did that.

She wondered if she would ever get bored of her cereal. She doubted that. She’d had a long, long time to get bored of things, but she’d never failed to do this one thing. She didn’t need to eat anymore, but it was some measure of normalcy. Very long ago she’d instructed the artificial intelligence augmenting her own to remove the number of bowls of cereal she’d eaten from its array of tracked data. Even though it was the only constant ritual left in her life, knowing just how many times she’d done it was depressing.

She still had emotions, though she probably had a slightly different perspective than most humans had, she mused. The gods of human legends had been jealous, and proud, and vengeful. She wondered if the absence of other humans caused the absence of those feelings in her, or if the absence of those feelings was in fact the absence of her humanity. Those gods had also been loving, and righteous, and generous. She was none of those things. She wondered if humanity’s legends would have been different if those peoples had known what it was like to experience godhood, but then she caught herself. She knew far better than that.