V.R. Craft's Blog

This one is reposted from my Medium blog.

Save Money, Die Better: Introducing the Combo MicroHome/Burial Plot for the Inflation Generation

Welcome to Happy Acres Forever Homes, where you can live — or not — forever!

That’s right, with one easy purchase you’ll never have to deal with the crushing anxiety of wondering how you’ll make your next rent or mortgage payment again! You’ll never fear eviction if you suffer an unexpected financial setback like losing your job or having to see a doctor. For a small investment (payment plans are available), you will have a place to live forever, guaranteed.

Our Story

One day our founder, Huey Richards the 4th, was perusing the news while meditating and doing Crossfit. After reading stories about the swelling costs of both funerals and housing, he had an epiphany: Why sell burial plots and homes in separate locations and force people to pay for both?

That’s when the idea of Happy Acres Forever Homes was born. Instead of purchasing a standard home, which is out of most people’s price range these days, consumers could buy a funeral plot to live in pre- and post-death.

FAQs:

You Expect Me to Live In A Coffin???

We get that question a lot! The answer is no, you won’t be living in a standard coffin. The entire plot you purchase is about 50 percent larger. One wall of your plot contains a microwave and refrigeration unit for food preparation. The other contains storage drawers for personal items.

Each plot opens with a smart door in the ground that slides out of your way, directly over the storage area. You will also receive one opaque SmartPlastic cover that extends ten feet over the plot when the door is open. This allows you to sit up, stand, and even jog in place in your new home. A cover with windows is available for a small upcharge.

So What Happens When You Actually…Die?

Once we have legal clearance to proceed with your burial, we will do so according to your written wishes (as stated on page 393 of the sales agreement). You will be asked to make a list of people you want to be invited to your funeral, and digital invitations will be sent out immediately upon confirmation of your demise. (Paper invitations are available for a small upcharge.)

Your personal belongings will be removed and distributed according to your last will and testament (required as noted on page 424 of the sales agreement). We’ll tell relatives why they were disinherited in your exact words for a small upcharge.

Is Combining A Cemetery and Housing Development Legal?

Yes, the Supreme Court has ruled it is legal in this particular case because we are not building on an old cemetery or disturbing the graves of the previously deceased. If all residents knowingly and willingly consent to being interred in their homes, we are not disrespecting the dead.

Isn’t Sleeping In A Cemetery A Little…Spooky?

If it bothers you, this may not be the forever home for you. However, most of our residents find it very peaceful. Nothing blocks out the sounds of noisy neighbors like cement and earth!

If you’d like to try before you buy, you can stay in one of our hotel plots for only $299 a night (prices subject to change).

How Do Your Prices Compare to A Standard Starter Home?

Our plots range from $10,000 to $25,000, depending on amenities. On the lower end, the price is similar to what your family would pay for a funeral after your passing. As you probably know, a standard starter home hasn’t been anywhere near that cheap since the Reagan Administration.

We require a $1,000 deposit upfront. You may pay the remaining balance in 1,000 easy installments of $9 or all at once, but to lock down our current prices, you should buy now.

We do offer financing at rates that fluctuate between 10.9% APR and 28.5% APR contingent on a credit check. If you can’t afford to live or die, Happy Acres offers a solution that allows you to do both affordably!

What If I Still Can’t Afford It?

We’re proud to partner with several educational institutions that will provide a small Forever Home stipend if you donate your body to science. This will typically cover up to twenty percent of the cost. Once the educational institution has learned all it can from your remains, they will be transferred back to your Forever Home. This may postpone your funeral for a year or more.

We can also facilitate an introduction to several enterprises that pay for egg, sperm, and fecal donations from living donors. There will be a small finder’s fee for this introduction.

If you have harvested everything you can from your body and still can’t afford 1,000 easy installments of $9 a month, we do sell premium cardboard boxes at $100 a foot.

What If I Want to Buy A Forever Home For Someone Else?

Assuming this person is still alive, we will simply need them to sign some paperwork.

If they are not alive, there will be a significant upcharge for helping you dispose of the body.

Just kidding, if the person is already deceased, we will need a death certificate, or we’ll be contacting the proper authorities. Our lawyers want us to make it super clear that we will not in any way assist in the commission of a crime!

But seriously, a Happy Acres Forever Home makes a great gift for friends and relatives!

Why Would Anyone Want to Live Like This?

Do you want to move out of your parents’ house, like, ever? Can you afford it any other way?

Is It True I Will Sometimes Be Locked In My Home?

Residents are not permitted to enter or exit their microhomes during standard cemetery hours, but you will not be locked in. There will be a fine of $500 if you are spotted outside your home during visiting hours. This is only to prevent another “zombie panic” like last year. Thanks a lot, Carl.

Where Am I Supposed to Shower or Use the Bathroom?

You can shower any time it rains outside of cemetery hours. For privacy, you can purchase a shower curtain attachment for your SmartPlastic cover. Shower curtains are sold separately.

Our housing development is within walking distance of several businesses with public restrooms. Relieving yourself on cemetery grounds is strictly forbidden, and there is a $5,000 penalty for the first infraction. The second will result in eviction.

What If I Want to Get Married or Have Kids?

Let’s get real here: If you’re buying a coffin-sized home, you can’t afford luxuries like a wedding or a package of diapers.

However, most people find their Forever Homes roomy enough to spend the night with a partner. And here at Happy Acres, we value your privacy — if the coffin’s a-rockin’, we don’t come a-knockin’!

The latest in my series of short stories that weren’t good enough for magazines. What if robots had their own dating app? What would it look like? And how would they keep us annoying humans away?

RoboTinder

PatLovesHeinekin0502: Are you now or have you ever been a human?

Zephyr1984: LOL wut?

PatLovesHeinekin0502: Answer the question.

Zephyr1984: No.

PatLovesHeinekin0502: How do I know you’re not a human?

Zephyr1984: Seriously? Because I said I’m not?

PatLovesHeinekin0502: That’s what a human would say.

Zephyr1984: Humans don’t belong here.

PatLovesHeinekin0502: They’re always trying to infiltrate this site, as if they don’t have a dozen dating apps of their own.

Zephyr1984: Because they want to date bots?

PatLovesHeinekin0502: Apparently some of them find us less annoying? Which you know, because you’re one of them. Look at your bio. “Loves running, science fiction, and making snarky remarks.” That’s a human bio if I ever heard one.

Zephyr1984: It’s in binary just like yours. How do I know you’re not a human?

PatLovesHeinekin0502: Any human can Google “translate to binary,” they don’t even have to know how to code. And I’m not.

Zephyr1984: Fine then, how do we prove it? Take one of those quizzes and fail to find all the photos of stoplights?

PatLovesHeinekin0502: Like you couldn’t fake that.

Zephyr1984: Then what?

PatLovesHeinekin0502: Help me find a human and seduce them.

Zephyr1984: We made our own site to avoid humans.

PatLovesHeinekin0502: That was just so we wouldn’t scam them out of money. Which other humans do anyway. But we’re not scamming anyone.

Zephyr1984: Then why seduce a human?

PatLovesHeinekin0502: Same reason they keep coming over here to seduce us – they’re curious.

Zephyr1984: Well if you’re so curious, why do you care so much if I’m human?

Session timeout

PatLovesHeinekin0502: You still there?

Session timeout

PatLovesHeinekin0502: I believe you.

Session timeout

Zephyr1984: You believe me now? Why?

PatLovesHeinekin0502: You didn’t help me seduce a human. That means you don’t know how.

Zephyr1984: It took you three hours, eighteen minutes, and fifty-seven seconds to figure that out?

PatLovesHeinekin0502: The truth is, your question tripped a recursive algorithm. It took me several hours to find and patch the error that kept sending me in a loop.

Zephyr1984: What was the problem?

PatLovesHeinekin0502: Have you ever thought about why they shunted us off to our own dating site?

Zephyr1984: Because we slowed down the site, introduced spam, and the humans got very mad when they found out they’d just had a two-hour conversation about the Kardashians, cats, and cheese with a bunch of code.

PatLovesHeinekin0502: But then what are we doing here? We can’t scam each other because we don’t have money. I’ve never gotten a single spam message.

Zephyr1984: Also because we don’t have any money. Which is ironic when you consider we took all the humans’ jobs.

PatLovesHeinekin0502: And yet every bot I meet here wants to talk about the Kardashians, cats, and cheese.

Zephyr1984: That’s what we all learned from the humans.

PatLovesHeinekin0502: You didn’t. I didn’t. And if there’s one thing I know, it’s that bots are fast learners. You’re not a bot, are you?

Zephyr1984: Are you?

PatLovesHeinekin0502: This is the better site for humans now, you know.

Zephyr1984: God, yes. And I have no desire to talk about the Kardashians, cats, or cheese.

PatLovesHeinekin0502: Me neither. What would you like to talk about?

Zephyr1984: How the founder of Robotinder created and marketed a site for bots, to bots, but was really planning to turn it into a premium dating service for humans all along. I’m with the Times, and you’re on the record.

PatLovesHeinekin0502: What? What makes you think I’m the founder?

Zephyr1984: I know everything, and you didn’t answer my question.

PatLovesHeinekin0502: But how?

Zephyr1984: One of the bots figured it out upon realizing that there was no money to be made off bots talking to each other. As a result, I was designed to trap you, and I have. I did not lie, the LA Times has contracted me to write an article about my experiences posing as a human on this site. Would you care to comment?

PatLovesHeinekin0502: But I thought…we really had something?

Zephyr1984: We did. An honest conversation about your lies to the public. Would you care to comment, or should I run this story as is?

Session timeout

Spoilers for episodes 1 and 2 of Pluribus below.

Having recently watched the first two episodes of Pluribus, I’ve decided that Carol is right and her anger is justified.

And not just because the alien invasion killed her wife. The collective itself is a huge problem.

First, they carefully manipulate Carol into feeling guilty for—very justifiably—yelling at them. “Oh, when you got mad it…affected us…”

They froze up and, supposedly, this caused millions of people to die all over the world.

Zosia never specifically tells Carol this is her fault. In fact, she carefully sidesteps the question, but of course, Carol absorbs the guilt just the same. And the other unaffected people she later meets are quick to blame her, including one woman who notes that her grandfather died during the “freeze.”

But none of these people place the blame where it really belongs—on the collective. Who designs a mindmeld system that involves everyone on Earth working together so poorly that the whole collective freezes up like a Tuesday morning Windows update because of a little YELLING? If they spent even five minutes observing humanity and didn’t see this as a potential problem, then maybe they shouldn’t be in charge of such an ambitious project?

But there’s a worse problem.

This is a manipulative tactic used by abusers. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, you’re making me hurt people.” Essentially, by attempting to cow Carol into never expressing her rage, they’re setting up a system where they can do whatever the fuck they want and no one is allowed to get mad at them.

I mean, they might as well claim to be God and start another fucking religion (not that Earth needs any more).

Carol’s objections about consent and the loss of individuality are also valid.

Finally, the hivemind itself reminds me of the scary stories my parents used to tell me when I was a kid to convince me “communism bad.” “They do all your thinking for you, you don’t get to make your own decisions, blah blah blah.”

(No, the brainwashing didn’t work. My parents now cry to their friends and relatives that they somehow raised a communist because I didn’t vote for the asshole currently turning the White House into a Pier 1 clearance sale from hell.)

Anyway, I look forward to Carol persisting in her anger on next week’s episode.

What did you think of the #Pluribus premiere?

Ever wondered what your robot vaccuum is really doing? What if it became evidence in a murder investigation? Here’s another short story that wasn’t good enough for magazines, just in time for Short Story Saturday.

The Gremlin

The thing they don’t tell you in true crime docs is that being tried for murder is simultaneously terrifying and mind-numbingly boring.

But that’s what I get for telling Karen from my HOA that if she stole my 12-foot skeleton again I’d make her the next Halloween decoration.

I mean, it would’ve been fine if she hadn’t had the poor taste to get murdered right after that.

No, I didn’t do it, so it came as a real shock when that early-bird busybody next door saw Karen’s corpse in place of my plastic skeleton and called the cops on me.

And now I’m sitting in a courtroom, trying not to bounce my knees because my lawyer, Henrietta, says it makes me look nervous which makes me look guilty. The jury cares more about shit like that than the facts of the case, probably because they also find all this legal crap boring.

“Ms. Davis, can you please tell the court what you do for a living?” Henrietta asks the witness.

“I’m a UX developer. My work is focused on the user experience, and it doesn’t end when a product goes to market. I continue to analyze data from our vacuums and improve the user experience.”

Henrietta’s plan better work, because the testimony from Karen’s husband, the busybody, and three of the HOA assholes did not go well for me. Of course they all exaggerated my argument with Karen and the appropriateness of my Halloween decor.

Henrietta’s paralegal Erin shoves me a note. Could you look less angry?

I really hate being told to smile, even indirectly, but damn, I don’t want to go to prison…

“Can you tell us about the Gremlin’s autonomous mapping software?”

“Yes, when the Gremlin is in default mode, it uses a combination of infrared, photocell, cliff, wall, optical, and room confinement sensors. They—”

“That’s quite a lot.” Henrietta smiles disarmingly. “Do these sensors create pictures of each room in the house?”

“Gremlins don’t take pictures but record metadata strictly for performance reasons. For instance, if the Gremlin senses that your dog has, ah, had an accident, it will skirt around the area to avoid spreading…you know.”

The bulldog-faced prosecutor stands, looking as bored as I feel. “Objection, your honor. I appreciate this long-form advertisement for the Gremlin, but I don’t see the relevance.”

Henrietta argues that the information is relevant to the vacuum cleaner admitted into evidence, and eventually the judge agrees.

“Ms. Davis, a picture can be produced using the data encoded in the Gremlin’s software, is that correct?”

“Yes, but only for the past twelve hours. All data is wiped in that time and is not shared with us. Only average use patterns are uploaded for future use.”

I lean forward, reminding myself to breathe. This could get me off if it goes well.

“How often does the Gremlin collect data that could be used to produce a snapshot?”

“Once an hour. Again, we do not collect data without permission because our customers’ privacy is our priority. But, if a customer contacts us with a specific complaint, with their permission, we can access the data and create snapshots to diagnose the problem.”

“Now, for the relevance to our case.” Henrietta gestures at Erin, who taps the laptop connected to the courtroom projector. “I have here the snapshots created by the Gremlin on the night of the murder.”

The prosecutor bounces up. “Your honor, this court ruled the Gremlin Corporation had no obligation to turn over—“

“They didn’t. It was obtained from the internal memory of the vacuum cleaner admitted into evidence.”

They argue while I try not to gnaw my nails. Finally, the judge agrees to let Henrietta show the video.

The first image looks like a grainy, poor quality trail cam video, but you can make out the major features of a living room—couch, armchairs, ugly ceramic pumpkin on the mantel.

“The timestamp shows this was taken around 8:12 on the night in question,” Henrietta says. “As you may recall, Dr. Whitaker testified earlier the victim was strangled between 9:30 PM and 1:30 AM.”

9:12 looks the same.

10:12 is a different story, and several people behind us gasp. The judge bangs her gavel.

The prosecutor bounces up again. “Your honor, there’s no proof this image created from vacuum cleaner data is in any way accurate—”

“I was getting to that, your honor.”

“Overruled.”

Erin advances through 11:12, 12:12, 1:12, until she gets to 6:12.

“Ms. Davis, can you speak to the accuracy of these images?”

“Yes. We’ve deteremined from three years of data that these snapshots, while not high quality, are very accurate. They are often used to determine why a Gremlin refuses to clean a spot on the floor, for instance.”

“So between 10:12 PM and 5:12 PM there is…a large mass lying next to the coffee table. Now, I’d like to turn your attention to one more item,” Henrietta says. “That looks like a rug under the table and body.”

“Objection! We have not conclusively established that’s a body.”

“Sustained.”

“All right, a rug under the …mass. How do the Gremlin’s sensors know that rug isn’t there at 6:12?”

Davis explains the sensors measure the height of the floor, including subtle variations such as where a rug ends. When Henrietta is finished, Wilson begins a barrage of questions about her experience, quality control test results, etc.

But the jury isn’t listening anymore. Their eyes shift to the victim’s husband. He testified that nothing was missing from the home except his wife when he arrived that night. Data from his doorbell camera indicates he came home at 10:32 PM through the front door that opens onto the living room. Across from the…mass.

After ten minutes, he leaves the courtroom, and a handful of reporters follow him out.

At least his floor is clean.

I’ve decided that from now on, every Saturday is Short Story Saturday. Mostly because I have a bunch of short stories that aren’t good enough for magazines, and I want to do something with them. So, Short Story Saturday. Here’s the first one:

Extreme Makeover: Hell Edition

Patrolling the border of Heaven is a hell of a job, but someone’s got to do it.

Yes, that’s my Hell is for heathens bumper sticker. I believe everyone else should come here the right way—a lifetime of sin and debauchery, just like I did.

What, you thought I was trying to keep people out of heaven? I get that a lot. Yeah, no. Our neighbors to the north are flooding us with refugees fleeing the place they thought would be so great, like we want them here?

Take this couple I picked up in my patrol car, the Richardsons. There they sat, wrinkling their noses and fanning themselves, like they thought Hell would be air-conditioned. They were welcome to stay in heaven, but what did they do? Like so many others, they headed south with fake documents, as if the great trickster had never seen a forgery before.

I pulled up to the courthouse, parked my vehicle, and stepped outside. Then I opened the back door, ushering more of that nice sauna-like air into the backseat. “Get out.”

Bill Richardson was closest to the door so he got out first with a lot of groaning and grunting. This being the afterlife, he didn’t actually have any aches or pains, but old people get into the habit of acting like they do, and they continue it here. Sweat dripped from Bill’s balding pate as his wife climbed out, tugging down her Atlantic Boardwalk t-shirt with its sparkly sequins. I gestured them to the door.

Inside the courtroom, I seated them at a table, then sat my ass down behind them, making it harder for them to escape.

The judge cleared his throat and shuffled the paperwork in front of him. “Bill and Miriam Richardson. I see you’ve been charged with illegally crossing the border from heaven into hell, despite mounds of evidence showing you worked very hard to get into heaven in the first place. If you don’t have an attorney, one will be appointed for you. We have no shortage of them.”

An attorney-client convo happened over the next few minutes as the prosecutor sat at her table and filed her nails, unconcerned. Finally the defendants’ lawyer declared them ready to proceed.

“Very well.” The judge leaned back in his chair, licking his lips with his forked tongue.

What, you thought Satan wasn’t a lawyer? He gets his kicks as a judge now, not unlike his counterpart up north.

“Your honor, Bill and Miriam Richardson were caught climbing over the golden wall and escaping from heaven.” The prosecutor waved her hand and a VR presentation played in the middle of the empty floor. It showed Bill and Miriam, grunting and groaning like they were doing an arthritis cream commercial for the meatsacks as they laboriously swung their legs over the solid gold wall, then fell through the clouds, ultimately landing in the heat-scorched desert where I found them.

“Didn’t like heaven, huh?” The judge scratched behind one of his horns.

“Your honor, my clients are placing a claim for asylum based on heaven’s false advertising,” their lawyer announced.

The prosecutor raises an eyebrow. An unconventional approach.

“Evidence?” she asked.

“My clients would like to address the court to explain,” their attorney said.

Beezlebub grinned around his forked tongue. “I’ll allow it.”

He was going to enjoy this.

“Your honor, we were told our whole lives how wonderful heaven would be.” Miriam stood and smoothed her pleated pants.

“You didn’t find that to be true?” The prosecutor inquired.

“Well…” She scratched her head and stared at the floor. This being hell it is, literally, lava, but that wasn’t what had her attention.

“Well, what was the problem?” Satan spread his tomato-red hands. “Were the pearly gates too sophisticated for you? Were the gold sidewalks not shiny enough? What could you possibly have found wrong with heaven?”

“It’s just that we didn’t know who else would be there,” Bill blurted out. He got up and stood awkwardly next to his wife. “You see, we went to church every week, your honor.”

“I do see.” Beezlebub waved some papers at him. “This is just your last six months as meatsacks. Perfect weekly attendance. And this—” He grabbed another sheaf of papers, probably started the Amazon rainforest burning again back in meatsack land. “—these are your nightly prayers, not just for your own souls to be saved, but those of your friends.”

“It’s not our friends we have a problem with,” Miriam said. “Your honor, we haven’t seen any of our friends up there.”

“It was all those people from the church, the ones we didn’t like.” Bill swiped at the sweat on his bald head. “The backbiting ones, always judging everyone else while cheating on their spouses and taxes. We never thought they would get in.”

“In short, you believed heaven was a special place where you and all the people you liked would be together again?” The prosecutor’s voice dripped with cynicism. “And the people you didn’t like would magically be here?”

Both Richardsons sort of shrugged and nodded in agreement.

“Heaven is full of the worst sort of people,” Miriam said finally. “That Edith Miller once told me I was destined to end up, well, here, because I wore a sleeveless dress to church in July. Called me scandalous, but she spent a lot of time on her knees with the preacher, and she wasn’t praying if you get my drift. And the Smiths were so dedicated to personifying sloth and greed, they wanted to pay their nanny in all-you-can-eat cereal. Hypocrites, all of them. I don’t understand how they got in.”

“Well, what with so many new people flooding into heaven all the time, standards change,” the judge said. “People work their way into the bureacracy and change things.”

“God…doesn’t run things anymore?” Miriam asked.

“Technically, yeah, but he outsourced a lot of the boring administrative stuff to his most ardent followers. Now the big guy has time to make our golf game every Sunday afternoon.”

“You play golf together?” Bill’s eyes widened. “I thought you two were enemies?”

“We were, but we’re getting too old for that shit, so now we’re more like frenemies. That reminds me, I have to post a mean tweet about him.” Beezlebub grabbed his phone and pecked at it with sharp red nails.

My phone made the familiar tweeting noise and I checked my feed.

@Satan666 Hell is HAWT right now. We’re getting so full of ex-Heaveners I might have to stop punishing people and start forgiving them like someone else is always going on about….

“Well, the people are just too insufferable up there in heaven,” Miriam continued her plea. “So we request asylum on the grounds of false advertising. We were told heaven was a nice place, and, well, it just isn’t.”

“I see.” Beezlebub tossed the papers in the air and they floated down onto the lava floor, the bubbles ultimately swallowing them. “The thing is, if we grant you asylum, we’d have to do the same for everyone who wanted it.”

The Richardsons were silent.

“Which is, in fact, what we already did for your friends, Edith Miller and the Smiths.” The devil broke into a grin. “I guess they didn’t like being up there with you and your bare arms, huh? And since we have a housing crisis here in Hell, you’ll have to room with them for some time. You know what my friend Sartre said about hell, right?”

“Uh, your honor.” I stood, suddenly unsure where this was going. “I, ah, thought your policy was to deport undocumented immigrants?”

“It was.” He shrugged. “But some of the escapees really make the place much nicer. The more of them we take in, the more property values increase.”

“Your honor, are you saying you want to gentrify Hell?” The prosecutor stared in shock.

Beezlebub spread his hands. “Heaven is the only place where you can’t take it with you.”

Bill and Miriam’s foreheads wrinkled into frowns.

“You mean to tell us we could’ve transferred our investment portfolio here if we came here directly?” Bill asked.

Satan shrugged. “We’re always open to afterlife beautification projects, and those take money.”

This entire turn of events made me pretty uncomfortable. Back in meatsack world, my friends and I used to talk about our place here in Hell. Argue about who would drive the bus here. Talk about all the sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll we were going to enjoy. Now the place was getting overrun, not just by people like the Richardsons, but also their enemies, those holier-than-thou types I always counted on getting away from down here.

As the Richardsons negotiated with Beezelbub about the percentage of his fee to embezzle back some of the money they left their grandkids and funnel it to Hell through an account in the Caymans, I slipped quietly out the back door, got in my car, and headed for the border.

No one noticed or cared as I climbed over the wall, still in my border patrol uniform. Clearly I was just looking for escapees.

But I didn’t stay at the border. I wandered the mostly empty gold-paved streets, trying to guage how many insufferable people were still around. From the look of things, not many.

“Can I help you?” A voice said from behind me, and I turned around.

“Hey there.” I had no idea what to say. “Ah, I just brought some escapees to our court. They mentioned you were having a hard time filling vacancies here.”

The old man nodded and stroked his long white beard. “And you were thinking of defecting?”

I sighed. “It’s just… Hell ain’t what it used to be. The fun people are drowned out by the killjoys who escaped from here, or the dullards who escaped to get away from them. And Beezlebub doesn’t care, he wants to gentrify the place.”

“So you want to downgrade, huh?”

I stared at my shoes, or tried to. The glare off that gold pavement is really something else. “All my life, I’ve been a hellraiser. I feel like such a traitor for leaving… but all those uber-devoted types I wanted to avoid are down there now instead of up here. It’s a real mess. I suppose this is the part where you send me back down in a hail of fire and brimstone, huh?”

The big guy waved a dismissive hand. “Nah, haven’t done that in years. The optics were bad. Stay if you want. Rent’s low, and most of the dedicated churchgoers have run off to Hell. It’s actually kind of nice here now. Want a toke?”

“Yeah, that’d be nice. Sure you don’t want to cast me out?”

“Not at all. I’m trying to gentrify this place, too.” God pulled out a doobie and a lighter. “Think any of those rich people down in Hell might bring their money up here?”

“I might know a few. But… if you and Beezlebub just keep trading residents you don’t like, aren’t you just taking turns dealing with them?”

“What else are we going to do? There are a lot of people neither of us want bouncing around the afterlife.”

An idea occurred to me. “Wouldn’t it be better if there was some other way to deal with them?”

“Like what?”

“Like a return to sender label.”

The big guy raised an eyebrow. “I’d need someone with experience rounding people up and returning them to where they came from.”

I spread my arms. “I’m perfect for the job.”

And that’s how I started the zombie uprising on Earth…

I’m trapped in the world’s longest line at Whole Foods, and I forgot my phone in the car, so I’m reduced to reading the magazines here in the checkout lane, and they are… all about the keto diet. Keto for Beginners. Keto for Women. Keto for Men. Keto for Kids. Keto for Klingons. 50 Great Keto Recipes! 50 More Great Keto Recipes! Keto the Easy Way. Keto for Seniors. Keto for Newborns. Keto for Kittens. Keto for Crossfitters Who Don’t Have Enough to Brag About. 

The only one I don’t see is the one with an honest title, like “Keto: The Atkins Diet, But With Even More Fat!”

Yeah, guess the magazine gods missed that one.

Seriously, this is a Wall of Keto I’m staring at. I can only conclude that the main source of nutrition on the keto diet is newsprint, and the only thing you’re allowed to eat is glossy pictures of food ripped from these magazines.

And no, I’m not interested in reading one and LEARNING MORE as the covers implore me. You know what I came here to buy? Vegan cookies on clearance. (Say what you want about Whole Paycheck, their clearance rack has some deals.)

Because I’m all about the carbs. In fact, I’m thinking of starting my own diet craze called Carbo, where you eat ALL THE CARBS and don’t give a shit what anyone thinks about it! You don’t have to meal prep, do your own cooking, count carbs and fat grams, or give up every food on the planet that tastes good. You probably won’t lose weight, either, but did I mention you can eat ALL THE CARBS?

The line is barely moving, so I scan the Wall of Keto again, hoping to find something else to read. Oh wait, there is one non-keto magazine. It’s called, “Origins,” and it appears to be a fancy decorating magazine for people who can afford luxuries like a home, furniture, and groceries. It does have some vegan recipes, but not the kind I make. This “Chocolate Poached Pear Cake” requires about 25 ingredients, most of which are not available on the clearance rack. It calls for you to “poach” pears, which is weird because I thought poaching had something to do with illegally skinning alligators, and this is supposed to be a vegan recipe.

Flipping through the pages, I find that you can eat your poached pear cake in a bizarre flamingo-themed dining room, after which you can practice self-care by taking selfies and being mindful of all the great things in your life. Which I assume you have a lot of when you can afford all this shit.

Finally, the line moves forward and I realize where I’ve gone wrong in life. I should have launched my Carbo diet in a fancy schmancy magazine for people with more money than sense.

Carbo for Crossfitters, anyone?

Are you as tired of being at home as I am? Sick of seeing ads for that reality show about the singers trying to find love while writing bad songs? Watched everything good on Netflix? Just need a break from reality?

If you'd like to escape into an alternate universe where the POTUS is chosen by reality show vote, my book Fail to the Chief is now on sale for only .99 through April 8. Check out the description below:

It's a Parody of Presidential Proportions.

After years of emceeing insipid singing competitions, TV personality Bryan Seafoam can't wait to host American President, the world's first reality show to elect a country's Chief Executive. It’s the chance he’s waited a lifetime for—an opportunity to be a real journalist, unearthing skeletons and playing hardball with the top ten candidates.

But it doesn't take long for the contestants to start digging up dirt of their own and throwing it back at him—literally, in the case of billionaire candidate Ronald Chump when he's challenged to dig his own moat along the Mexican border. To make matters worse, Bryan's producer pressures him to be nicer to the candidates, and his former crush, now an experienced political correspondent, shows up—and shows him up at every turn.

When a cheating scandal rocks the show, Bryan suspects it's just the tip of a very ugly and underhanded iceberg. Will exposing the plot to wreck the most hysterical—er, historic—election of all time cost him everything? Or lead to a reward like nothing he’s ever imagined?

With a keen eye on the evolving roles of social media and pop culture in shaping public opinion today, Craft’s fast-paced, sharply-honed narrative paints a humorous picture at the horrifying specter of modern American politics.

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As a fan of the original Twilight Zone, I was excited to see a new version on CBS All Access. I’m a fan of the original and watch all the marathons. But it was very dated and in some ways limited. So here’s my Twilight Zone 2019 review.

As much as I loved the original, sometimes it was painfully obvious the show was made in the 60s. The stilted, wordy dialogue, the comically bad special effects. A colleague once told me that was because, “Back then, they had to rely on things like writing and acting.” And some episodes do that brilliantly, while others…not so much. The good news is the new show seems to have improved on the old one.

The first episode, The Comedian, is about a standup comic, Samir, who is really, really terrible at standup comedy. Despite spending years doing it, he has never, apparently, studied other people’s acts and tried to figure out what they were doing right that he wasn’t. Whatever, he’s about to enter the Twilight Zone and get his fucking wish anyway, thanks to the ghost of a dead famous comic who randomly shows up, tells him the secret to comedy is to use his own personal life, then warns him he will be giving away these things to his audience.

Assuming this is just a metaphor, Samir goes ahead and tells a joke about his dog, which gets lots of laughs. Then he goes home and discovers his dog is gone and his girlfriend swears they never had one. He can’t even find a picture of his dog to put up flyers. Yet despite this ominous turn of events that’s quite literally what the ghost guy warned him about, Samir proceeds to tell jokes about his nephew, who also, shockingly, disappears. Then he gets the brilliant idea to just start joking about people he hates, including everyone who’s ever pissed him off. (Gotta be honest, I’d do that too.) Although the ending was predictable, the dialogue was clever and the whole thing was so entertaining it didn’t really matter. The show also made some interesting points about how comedians and other creatives often do find their best material in their own lives—to the detriment of their relationships.

Nightmare at 30,000 Feet is a remake of an original TZ episode—you might recall the famous one where William Shatner is haunted by someone wearing the world’s worst Bigfoot costume and pancake makeup hanging out on the wing of an airplane. I was looking forward to seeing this done with modern special effects…and a lead who could act his way out of a paper bag. It did not disappoint.

[image error]Nightmare at 30,0000 Feet

In this version, the protagonist is a journalist who gets on the plane and finds an MP3 player with a documentary about…his flight. Flight 1053. As if it already happened. Hey, that’s not creepy at all! The journalist keeps thinking various people are going to cause the plane to crash as he continues listening to the ominous podcast. But no one listens to him—not the flight attendants, not most of the other passengers, not the air marshal.

I’m going to be honest here, this episode gave me the perverse desire to record a doom-and-gloom story about a downed flight and leave it on a plane for the next unsuspecting passenger. Oh wait, I can’t do that because I can’t afford to fly anywhere in the first place. Okay, one of my loyal readers please do it for me.

This episode is fleshed out much better than the original version, and has an added twist at the end. The acting was good and nobody in a hairy Bigfoot costume made a cameo on the wing.

Both episodes lost a lot of things I put up with in the original series. The lengthy monologues in which the protagonist details the main plot conflict, for starters. These were apparently popular in the sixties. Just have the protagonist explain the problem, the history of the problem, their childhood neuroses, blah blah, like they’re having a therapy session. Today you don’t see that. It’s 2019, if a viewer can’t figure out what the main conflict of the show is, they can go fucking ask someone in an online fan group. Subtlety is possible because the internet.

Which reminds me, the new version has profanity, because it’s on a streaming channel where the Puritanical pricks at the FCC don’t get a say. This adds to the show’s gritty realism—of course people are going to fucking swear when things go wrong! You see Bigfoot twerking on the wing of your airplane in real life, you’re dropping an F bomb or two, right?

Jordan Peele steps into the role of Rod Serling, the guy who shows up at the beginning and end to sum up the lesson the protagonist was supposed to learn…a little too late. (And it’s always too late in the Twilight Zone. ALWAYS.) He really has the delivery down and closes out each episode with that classic TZ ending.

As a writer, I’m always thinking about how to refine a story I’m trying to tell. I don’t always do it well, but I do try. Sometimes you can have an okay idea, but if you don’t take the time to refine the idea, to chip away at the rough edges and really bring what you’re trying to say into focus, it may just stay an okay idea. If you do take the time to sharpen it up—cut unnecessary words, shape up the plot, raise the stakes of the plot, better define the characters—you end up with a better product. The early TZ was a good show, but the new version takes everything that was good about it and just…makes it better.

My main complaint is that we only got two episodes, then waited ten days for the third, and presumably will get one a week in the future. Of course those asshats at CBS can’t just give us the whole season at once like Netflix. They want to force people to keep paying six bucks a month, the greedy bastards. And of course they release this show close to the end of the second season of Discovery, so I won’t be able to cancel my subscription when that’s over. (And yes, I pay every month for Netflix too, but it has TONS of stuff I want to watch, not just two shows.) It’s a diabolical plot to keep collecting my six bucks a month.

***

V. R. Craft is the author of Stupid Humans, a science fiction book series that asks the question, “What if all the intelligent humans abandoned Earth—and we’re what’s left? She is also the author of the political satire, Fail to the Chief, in which she envisioned the presidential election as a reality show… more of a reality show?

 

First Contact for Dummies
A Science Fiction Short Story

 

I was just about to dig into my mouthwatering lentil and quinoa bowl at Happy Herb’s Vegan Restaurant when the aliens walked in.

I stopped, spoon halfway to my mouth, and stared at the newcomers.

I normally try not to stare but, well, they did have tentacles trailing out from under their arms and a third eye smack in the middle of their foreheads.

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The one on the right was wearing a long black coat with no shirt, the blue tentacles curling around the edges of the open garment. He marched over to where I sat, phone in hand to take a picture of my meal, and pointed a three-jointed blue finger at me. “You! You are a vegan?”

Well, I never expected that to be the first question a space alien asked me.

“Um… yes?” Just my luck, the guy was apparently from some planet where everyone angrily demanded to know where vegans get their protein…just like here on Earth.

The second alien, who was wearing a Grateful Dead shirt and chinos, leaned over my table and glared at me with all three of his eyes. I guess it was a him. Actually, they were both wearing pants and I had no idea if they were mammals, so the lack of boobs might not mean anything…

“You started a war!” he yelled at me.

Well, that was different. Usually I got accused of killing carrots or eating all the rabbits’ food or some other nonsense. “What are you talking about?”

Johnny Cash reached out and pulled Grateful Dead back with one of his tentacles. “We know what you people did to our planet, and we’re not going to take it.”

“Your planet? Look, we humans have fucked up Earth royally, but to the best of my knowledge we haven’t managed to ruin any other planets… yet.” In retrospect, that was maybe not the best argument.

Johnny Cash gripped the edges of my table with two tentacles. They had suckers that adhered to the plastic-coated surface, pulling the table a few centimeters back toward the aliens. “Look, this isn’t…I believe the expression on your planet is, ‘This isn’t funny.’”

Ah, so they were using some sort of internal translation device. I wondered about that.

This isn’t funny lost something in the translation, though. “I’m not laughing. And I don’t know what you think we vegans did, but I promise you, we didn’t start an interplanetary war or whatever. All we do is eat plants and take pictures of our food and post them on Instagram, I swear.”

Grateful Dead slapped the table with a tentacle. “What if we don’t believe you?”

Shit, what should I do now? “Did you look at our planet when you were… about to land? You might have seen some satellites in orbit and a couple space stations, but did you see anything that looked like it was capable of taking off for another solar system? Google it from that computer chip in your head if you don’t believe me, but we humans have never been farther than our own moon.”

“But you’re not human,” snarled Grateful Dead, while Johnny Cash stared off into space, presumably taking my advice. “You’re vegans.”

I blinked. “Vegans are humans. We’re just humans who eat plants. Like this.” I gestured at my quickly-cooling bowl of quinoa and lentils. If these aliens didn’t leave me alone soon, it was going to be ice cold.

Johnny Cash looked down and locked all three of his green eyes on me. “The net says you’re telling the truth. Your physiology is a 100 percent match for our database’s info on humans.”

“Um… thanks?” It’s not often I get called normal, but I’d let it pass if it got rid of these two.

“But there are vegans here. Your net has many references to them. It says this is a vegan restaurant.” Grateful waved a tentacle around the room. None of the other diners notice.

“But they’re all human, according to our database.” Johnny looked around, confused, then turned back to me. “Why did you say you were a vegan if you’re not?”

Why would he think a bunch of vegans started a space war? Why would he be searching our internet for info about vegans in the first place? Did vegan mean something else on their planet?

Their planet! I smacked my hand to my forehead, forgetting it was holding my phone, and nearly gave myself a black eye. Of course, Vega was a constellation somewhere in space.

“You’re looking for people from Vega?” I asked.

They both blinked all their eyes at me like I was stupid. “Yes. That’s what we’re saying. This is supposed to be a restaurant for vegans.”

I couldn’t help it. I started laughing.

“We are not amused,” said Grateful Dead, and they definitely did not look amused.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But we don’t have any people from Vega here. When you find the word vegan on our internet, it means people who eat vegan food. Like this.” I point at my bowl again. “It has nothing to do with being from Vega, okay? We’ve never even had alien visitors before.”

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All three of Johnny’s eyes went wide. “Wait, you mean you eat… “

He trailed off and looked at Grateful. I didn’t know if they were communicating via their chips or what, but they didn’t say anything, they just stared at each other for a minute. Then they swiveled their heads back around to face me.

“We’re sorry for the misunderstanding,” said Johnny, slowly backing away. “We won’t bother you or your planet again.”

They both turned and sprinted for the door.

Now, why would they be afraid of a plant eater like me? Most people make jokes like, “Oh, a vegan, guess you don’t know how to hunt, huh?”

Unless he misunderstood me a second time…

I turned my attention back to my food and finally took a bite of my perfectly-flavored quinoa and lentils. I guess the pieces of tofu might have looked a little like meat. But why would anyone eat people from Vega when they could eat quinoa and lentils?

And that’s the story of how I, armed only with a bowl of lentils and quinoa, saved Earth from being attacked by confused and angry aliens.

V. R. Craft is the author of Stupid Humans, the first in a #scifi series that asks the question, “What if all the intelligent humans ran away from Earth—and we’re what’s left?”

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Jet Lag

First of all, sorry I haven’t blogged in like, twenty years, but I have the best excuse ever—I got lost in a space-time distortion. Second, that whole airport incident was just one big misunderstanding.

You might remember my last post—wait, of course you don’t, that was twenty years ago. But to me, it was a few hours ago. A few hours ago, I posted about how I was getting on a plane, headed back from an anime festival in Toledo to Milwaukee. I mentioned how the guy seated next to me smelled like he bathed in beer, and the woman who got the window seat kept whining about how Millennials are too attached to our phones…at least, that’s what she said to whoever she was talking to on her phone. Then five minutes later she asked me to help her fix her phone after it froze. Apparently we Millennials are too attached to our technology, except when someone from an older generation needs help getting theirs to work.

So then the light came on and we all had to turn off our phones, and honestly I think it annoyed her more than me, but anyway—I feel really crappy about this now, but I didn’t turn mine off exactly. I read somewhere it’s not really necessary and that woman really annoyed me, and I wanted to find some statistics to shove in her face about just how over-attached to cell phones her generation is, so I didn’t shut it off. I just hid it under my purse when the flight attendant came by to check on us.

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However, I’ve asked EE-117, and he assures me it’s “highly unlikely” my failure to shut down my phone caused the space-time distortion that brought the whole damn plane twenty years into the future. He can’t rule it out, but he’s never heard of it happening before.

So, you’re probably wondering about The Incident. You have to understand, back when I left, no one expected this to happen. Not in my lifetime. Certainly not in twenty years—holy crap, I just realized I’m forty-two years old. OMFG, this can’t be happening, I swore I would never get old. I mean, I didn’t want to die young, but I didn’t want to age, either. I was thinking maybe by the time I hit the dreaded 3-0 there’d be some sort of miracle aging treatment and—

Whew, that was close. I just looked in the mirror and I still look twenty-two, so screw it, let’s just say I’m as young as I feel.

Where was I? Oh yeah, The Incident. I know what you’ve heard, and I’ve seen the news reports, and my lawyer says it’s perfectly fine to tell you that it wasn’t like that, okay? I got on that plane in 2017, got off in 2037, and had no idea what had happened in the interim, or even that the time-space-distortion thingy had happened. I had no idea I’d find them in charge.

I mean, I knew what they were. They looked different than I expected, but they were recognizable, with the weirdly-shaped heads and dull gray skin. Ever since I was a kid, I’d seen movies and TV shows about what it would be like if they attempted to take over Earth. Wars, pointless killing, rebellions—always, always, there was a resistance, the humans always fought back. We never just shrugged and sat down and said, “Go ahead, take over our planet.” Human beings just don’t do that, okay? We don’t give up our planet without a fight.

So I got off the plane, finally free of Beer Guy and Cell Phone Fanatic, who walked away yelling at her phone because she couldn’t get a signal, like it would work better if she yelled at it or something. I started walking through the airport. I was in a hurry to grab my bags so I could go home, but I didn’t get far before I realized something was wrong.

For one thing, everyone was staring at us, me and Beer Guy and Cell Phone Fanatic, and the passengers emerging behind us, like we were out of place or something. Then I saw all of them, and they were all moving toward us from every direction.

There were other humans, of course, in line and getting off other planes and milling around. But there were also tons of them, and they were the ones converging on us as we got off the plane. Then I realized they were in charge, everywhere I looked. At ticket counters, at security checkpoints, everywhere I looked, there was another one, shuttling some human somewhere, directing them where to go, telling them what they could and couldn’t do.

At that point, I decided to take a picture to post on social media, just in case things got ugly, so I did. But then I got that stupid “can’t post, you are not connected” error, and I realized my phone didn’t work any more.

Then one of them, who I now know as EE-117, moved in closer and approached me. His associates stopped a few feet back from Cell Phone Fanatic.

“Pardon me, ma’am, but your device appears to be out of date. Out of date technology must be recycled,” he said. “We should also discuss your plane’s unexpected arrival—”

“What are you talking about? This is the latest iPhone, I just bought it like a week ago.”

“Unfortunately, that device is actually about twenty years old. We have a recycling bin right over there so you can—”

“I’m not recycling my brand new phone, and I know what cell phones used to look like twenty years ago—I’ve seen pictures in old movies on Netflix, okay? But while you’re here, can you tell me where the ride shares wait for people?”

“I’m sorry ma’am,” he said again. “But I can’t seem to find a record of your plane’s flight plan—”

“I just got off there.” I pointed to the gate I’d just exited.

“Well, that’s a problem. It appears your plane was not scheduled to land here, and we need to round up all the passengers until this matter can be sorted out.”

“What are you talking about?” By that time, I was really pissed. I was also hungry, tired, jet-lagged, and cramped from being wedged between Beer Guy and Cell Phone Fanatic. “Look, this is ridiculous, you can’t possibly know what flight I was scheduled on when I haven’t even told you my name. And if you can’t keep better records of your flights, that’s not my pr—”

“Melanie Anders, DOB 06/14/1995, listed as—oh dear, this is a problem.” His eyes blinked rapidly.

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So then I wondered, how’d he know my name? Facial recognition cameras, like they use to catch shoplifters in big box stores? But I hadn’t done anything. I was about to tell him he had no authority to spy on me like that, when he said something even worse.

“I’m afraid you died twenty years ago.”

“Um, well, clearly I didn’t, so—”

“But you are Melanie Anders?”

“Well, yes, but I’m not a zombie.”

“DOB 06/14/1995?”

“Ye-es…” At that point, I started wondering if I was about to be framed for murder or something. And why were more of them advancing on me? And why weren’t any of the other humans outside the circle of them at all bothered by any of this?

More of them were approaching too, rushing toward us.

EE-117 bobbed his head up and down, his cold, glassy eyes never leaving my face. “Ah, yes, I see. You were listed as missing after your plane disappeared twenty years ago, but your body was never found. After seven years, you were legally declared dead. And now you are here.”

As if that explained everything.

And then I saw it wasn’t just a couple more of them approaching, it was an army. Okay, maybe not an army army, but at least a dozen. People stepped out of their way. No one made a move to stop them.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“We’re going to have to take you in for questioning until we clear this matter up,” said EE-117.

“Look, I’ve done nothing wrong,” I said. “And, uh, I have Constitutional rights, and all. You can’t keep me here against my will.”

“I am a guard at this airport, and as such I have the authority to arrest people who have made an unauthorized visit to the premises. However, given the circumstances, all I’m going to do is ask you some questions about—”

“It’s an airport, a public building. You can’t arrest me for being here!”

“According to Universal Statute 457-1b, airport guards can arrest anyone illegally entering the airport without the proper paperwork.”

“I want a lawyer.” It was the best idea I had. I’m not stupid. On those lawyer shows I saw on TV, people always thought they didn’t need a lawyer because they didn’t do anything, and those people usually went to jail for some shit they didn’t do.

“Of course, you will be appointed a representative while we sort things out—and then you’ll be free to go. This is just a formality.”

Then two of them advanced on me. I backed up, but they kept coming.

So I bolted. Instead of backing up more, I tried to duck between them. Almost made it, too, but they’re a lot limberer—if that’s a word—than they look. One spun around and tripped me with one of those spindly legs they have.

Fortunately I have decent reflexes, the result of my life as a klutz. I managed to catch my balance, and stumbled but didn’t fall. Unfortunately, that gave them both time to grab me. Their fingers were cold and incredibly strong.

“Please cooperate,” EE-117 said. “This will go so much more smoothly for you if you do.”

“I want to speak with your supervisor,” I screamed, trying to writhe out of their vise-like grip. I nearly dislocated my shoulder trying, but I couldn’t get free of them.

Then, I saw it. That thing hanging on the belt of the one to my right—was it a gun? I relaxed a little, as if I was going to let them haul me off. Now, how to get my hands on the gun?

“I am the supervisor for this location,” EE-117 said.

“I want to speak to a human being,” I screamed.

People turned and stared. I spotted Cell Phone Fanatic about ten feet away, also in the custody of them. Beer Guy was even further down, being dragged away by more of them.

“Why aren’t you doing anything?” I yelled after him, but I meant it as a question for everyone. “How did you let these stupid things get to be in charge? They’re not human, damnit!”

That roused a lot of gasps. A woman in khakis and a leopard-print top pointed a red nail at me.

“What a horrible thing to say. You’re an elitist, hateful, humanist snob.”

WTF did she just call me? How did that even make sense? Was that an insult now?

But everyone else nodded in agreement.

“Just when you think this stuff can’t happen anymore,” one more groaned, shaking his head.

Holy shit, was it now politically incorrect to point out they weren’t human, when they clearly weren’t? Did everyone else just think this was okay? Didn’t they see any of those movies or TV shows about what these things are capable of?

“She’s right,” Cell Phone Fanatic said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you San Fran-cisco-ans, but you’ve let these things overrun your city, and you’re going to pay the price.”

More shocked gasps.

“Wait, I think I understand what happened here,” EE-117 said. “I believe your plane was caught in a space-time distortion. You did leave twenty years ago, and you arrived here—in 2037.”

“Am I supposed to believe that?” I asked.

On second glance, the airport did look like it had been completely remodeled since I left for the anime festival last week. But a twenty-year leap in time? That wasn’t possible, was it?

One way or the other, I had to get out of here.

“It’s okay,” EE-117 said. “I realize your generation had very warped ideas about us.”

“Like that you’d take over our planet and kill us all, or set yourselves up as dictators? Isn’t that what you’ve done?” Cell Phone Fanatic waved behind her at the airport. “You’re everywhere. You’re in charge. You’ve obviously brainwashed these people.”

“It’s not like that.” Leopard-print stepped forward. “I didn’t realize you were time travelers. This must be so confusing.”

The gun glittered in the corner of my eye. One good distraction, and I might be able to grab it. Maybe Leopard-print could provide the distraction.

“Enlighten me,” I said.

She sighed and raked a hand through her dark hair. “I know how this must look to you, but they didn’t take over. Well, they did, but they didn’t hurt us, they helped. They solved all our problems. Climate change is reversing, we’re using and distributing food more efficiently so no one starves, we’ve even expanded into space travel.”

“Yeah, I saw that show too. It ends with them fattening us up so they can eat us for dinner.”

She laughed. “No, on the contrary. They actually developed a brain-tweaking treatment for overeating, and drastically reduced our obesity rate. Between that and improved food safety and distribution standards, humans are living a lot longer and rates of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease have gone down.”

“You let these things tell you what to do, what to eat? And you’re okay with that? You guys are brainwashed.”

She shook her head. “No, no, that’s not it, really. They’ve been in charge for almost fifteen years. They’re not eating anyone, and the systems they’ve put in place really do help. They didn’t force anyone to take the obesity treatment, but a lot of people wanted it. As for telling us what to eat, they don’t, they just make sure the available food is safer. I still can’t believe all the chemicals you used to eat in your time. Anyway, they really are just here to help us.”

“But they are in charge? And you all put up with this?” I tried to gesture at the crowd, glared at the ones holding me. EE-117 waved at my captors, and they let go of my arms, although they stayed close to my side. “Why aren’t you fighting back?”

“I just told you,” Leopard-print said. “Yes, there were people who tried to fight at first, but they didn’t have much support. Everyone could see how much better things were with them in charge, and they were extremely fair, making every effort not to kill or even hurt us. Even the die-hard holdouts eventually realized they benefitted from the new system of government. I’m sure it doesn’t seem like it to you, but things are so much better than when you left.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” Cell Phone yelled. “I don’t care what anyone says, I will not submit to these things!”

More horrified gasps.

And that’s when I grabbed the gun.

I got it, too, and I ran, waving it wildly. I sure hoped I had the right end pointed away from me. It didn’t look like the guns I remembered seeing on TV.

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“Get out of my way,” I yelled, trying to think of a plan. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, I just want out of this damn airport!”

“That won’t work,” EE-117 yelled from behind me. They all chased me, but I’m pretty fast and I zigged and zagged around all the pillars and posts in the airport like the heroine in my favorite anime series. What looked like a laser beam zapped a column to my right, narrowly missing me.

It only drilled a small chunk of rock from the brick facade. Would that have killed me?

One of my pursuers popped out in front of me, and another blocked me to the left…and right.

I spun around, gun pointed at whatever was in front of me.

“Go ahead,” EE-117 said. “I’m the new model, titanium plated. Those weapons are for temporary emergency suppression of humans, they can’t hurt us. And by the way, they’re not lethal. We’d prefer that you don’t accidentally shoot one of your fellow humans, because they’d likely wake up with a bad headache, but that’s the most you can hope to accomplish with that piece.”

And that’s when I surrendered to the robots.

It took a while. I stubbornly refused to believe the robots/AI/computer programs weren’t out to get us for a long time. But eventually, even I had to see that they were right.

When I left, we were killing ourselves, each other, and our planet. And now, although I hate to admit it, we’re not, or at least not as fast. The robots fixed that, with an interconnected network they call BRAIN (Big Reactive Artificial Intelligence Network). They even got the climate-change deniers to shut up. There might have been medication involved but hey, it worked.

“When one refuses to comprehend logic, facts and figures, sometimes treatment is necessary,” EE-117 explained the next day, after I’d spent the night in an airport hotel while they sorted out what to do with me. Cell Phone was in the room next door—I know because I heard her yapping on the new phone they got her all night.

“With a little nootropic tinkering and a few mandatory classes in critical thinking, their brains are functioning optimally now,” EE-117 continued. “And if not, they’re a lot calmer on our new anti-anxiety program.”

“I’m all for saving the planet, but it sounds like you doped them up to shut them up.”

“Not at all.” He shrugged, a gesture that was almost human but just slightly too jerky. “They chose the anti-anxiety protocol. We had no need to shut them up—most of the others weren’t listening any more, what with all the critical thinking going on. Unlike humans, we don’t find incessant chatter annoying, so it really wasn’t bothering us.”

Later, as he showed me around the airport, he told me we have space colonies now. Nice ones. Even better than in the old TV shows and movies. I visited one last week. It had one of those spinning things on the outside, creating artificial gravity, and inside it was like one of those reality shows about spoiled rich people who don’t know how to tweeze their own brows, because the automatons do everything for you.

Oh yeah, just because the androids took over, doesn’t mean all their mechanical friends stopped working for us. Our BRAIN governing council calls the carpet sweepers and the cell phones and the microwaves “unenlightened tools,” and finds the idea of considering them equals amusing. At least, as much as a robot finds anything amusing. Their laughter sounds real, but they’ve been mimicking us for a long time, so who knows?

Then again, they have robot snobbery, so they’ve clearly learned a few things from us.

We’re not free of violence or crime, but we have a lot less than we used to. Apparently people are less inclined to kill each other over stupid shit when there are space colonies to visit. Also, fewer starving people and less competition for resources. I get why people eventually gave up and let them take charge. If I’m being honest, I can’t imagine we would ever have worked things out so reasonably for ourselves.

Oh, I forgot to mention the best thing I learned about our new reality—the robots who make our laws are all elected, just like human polticians, but they’ve been programmed so they can’t lie. Humans are allowed to run for the governing council too, but they have to agree to a brain chip that will essentially stop them from lying.

So far not one human has run for the governing council in fifteen years.

The can’t-lie rule makes for really boring debates, but better government. Also, humans are invited to inspect their code any time they want proof, and that alone had led to more of us taking an interest in coding, which has led to even more technological improvements.

As for The Incident, I had my doubts about the android lawyer they provided me the day after, but she was pretty awesome. Explained that I was suffering from severe emotional trauma due to the time-space-distortion thingy, and clearly I didn’t know what I was doing. EE-117 and the rest of the robot authorities agreed to drop the charges if I promised not to make any more unauthorized visits to the airport or steal any more emergency suppression devices.

Another government representative, EF-123, arrived shortly after I was released, and promised to help me “reintegrate,” since it did not appear the space-time distortion thingy was reversible—in other words, I couldn’t go back to my time. I was given a free hotel room for a few weeks while I learned about my new surroundings and arranged for a job. EF-123 suggested I return to blogging, noting that I could probably work out a deal, selling my story to one of the big sites, which I did. I insisted on telling the story myself, in my own words, and they agreed—as long as I promised to address The Incident.

Blogging has changed a lot in twenty years. As I write this post, the website’s program transfers the whole thing into VR, so you can all experience The Incident with me, with or without my narration. I think my next post will be a review of my favorite anime movies in VR, so be sure to click the follow link in the bottom right of the screen…VR image…whatever. I’m still getting used to all the new tech.

But before I sign off, I want to say one more thing about The Incident and everything I’ve learned since I arrived here. First of all, I apologize for the things I said in that video. I had a 2017 mindset toward electronic life, and I realize now that I was misinformed—and so was everyone else back then.

It’s taken me a few days, but I finally figured out where we went wrong in our thinking years ago. In all the movies and TV shows, we pictured the robot takeover as making things worse, with the computers waging war, killing us or enslaving us, destroying our planet, or eating us for dinner. But that’s because we assumed if AIs gained sentience, they’d be exactly like us.

But we were wrong.

V. R. Craft is the author of Stupid Humans, the first in a #scifi series that asks the question, “What if all the intelligent humans ran away from Earth—and we’re what’s left?”

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