The Confabulator Cafe

Author: dwilliams

  • Death World One

    I finally found the exit. We had to double-back from the Interstellar 405 to find the damn thing. The wormhole was not well marked, let me tell you. Earth is out in the middle of nowhere and there are hardly any beacons out there. It was not a great start to our vacation.

    The kids were in the backseat, hitting each other, pushing, pulling each other’s face tentacles. It had been a long trip to the Sol system. But goddammit, we were going to spend two weeks as a family. No vid screens. No comms devices. Just us and a whole planet full of untouched, pristine nature.

    Landing couldn’t come soon enough. It was either that, or risk injuring one of the kids when I lost my mind from their fighting. Which is to say that I set the ship down in the first piece of wilderness that I could find. We lucked out and the view outside of my window was breathtaking. We’d parked on a beautiful stretch of tangerine desert dotted with plateaus. A greenish-blue waterhole off to one side supported some kind of silvery-grayish-green shrubs all around us. It was absolutely perfect. (more…)

  • The 17-Year Harvest

    The old farmhouse survived the first alien harvest. The world watched while the ships settled into orbit 17 years ago. There was no communication, never any communication. And the world waited to see whether they came in peace. The house in Kansas wasn’t home to any great scientist or military general. Just a farmer who’d grown up with a wide view of the stars.

    The old farmhouse table was covered in astronomy books and tabloid clippings of the aliens. He picked his little girl up with his big, sunburned hands. Katie laughed and settled into his lap. From here, she surveyed the table like a little princess in a castle tower.

    “Icky,” she declared, waving one of the pictures around in her little, chubby hand.

    He laughed at her and his laugh was warm. It was so deep that it shook the little girl on his knee. That laugh, there in his lap, made her feel safe. Nothing could ever harm her there.

    “Not icky,” he said. “I think they’re actually quite pretty. I know they look like bugs, but the scientists on the news think they’re really just like men once you get past their funny costumes.”

    “Icky,” she repeated matter-of-factly, as though that was the definitive word on the subject.

    He laughed again and took the picture away from her.

    “I’m sure it seems that way now,” he said in that manner of patient fathers everywhere. “But you’ll grow up in a world full of aliens. How great will that be? And they’ll seem perfectly normal to you by the time you grow up.”

    She looked into his face with a five-year-old’s certainty that he was wrong. But some glimmer of childlike wonder in his eyes stopped her from saying anything.

    “Just think of the things they’ll be able to tell us once we learn to communicate with them,” he said.

    But that was before. Before the aliens stripped the world of whatever food and resources they could carry off in their ships. Before they left the cities in darkness and ruin and the remaining people in almost perpetual hunger. (more…)

  • Flight Mother

    It was a calm, crisp autumn day. Perfect weather for jetpack flying.

    Cadet Betty Clarke joined her partner, Cadet Margaret Leighton, looked smart in their sky blue uniforms and leather flight caps. They helped each other suit up on the flight field, checking over their instruments as they went. These were no longer the heavy packs that women had used during the war. These were streamlined affairs, sleek and beautiful.

    Betty stood to attention in front of their Flight Mother as they received their instructions. “All right girls, nothing fancy out there. There are ten targets. You’re to retrieve them and return here within the hour. If you fail, points will be deducted from your graduation score,” the Flight Mother said.

    She felt the wind on her face as they took off into the clear sky. The pit of her stomach dropped a bit as she looked down at the ground below, but it was exhilarating. She couldn’t help but smile as the flight school dropped further and further away. Flying was the only thing Betty had ever wanted to do.

    (more…)

  • Fwd: !Urgent – WORLD PEACE is In Your Hands

    Hello my dear woman. I hope that this email finds you well because I am in very great need of your help.

    You do not know me, but my parents are the King and Queen of a small, but very wealthy, nation. My parents, the King and Queen, feel that it is important for even their youngest child to give something back to the people. Because of that, I have been using my vast leisure time thinking very much about WORLD PEACE.

    I have in my possession a three-step plan to enact WORLD PEACE.

    (more…)

  • Eight Hours

    Commander Alexander Towncroft couldn’t sleep. And he hadn’t slept in several days. Earth’s first intergalactic embassy had the unfortunate luck to be positioned right next door to what must be the most unlikeable race on the planet, the Napli delegation. For days now, he’d heard nothing but their drums. Big drums, small drums, drums banging and bashing away outside of his walls. For three days he’d gone to work to their rhythm. And for three nights, just as he felt himself falling into sleep, they seemed to get louder just to jar him awake again. He could only be glad that they hadn’t developed a fondness for the cymbals, yet.

    He laid down for what he was sure would be another fitful night, knowing that he would toss and turn and hear the drums. Even a few hours would be better than nothing. He needed to be bright and shiny for tomorrow’s big welcome ceremony with the neighbors. It was an eight hour ceremony and he needed his strength. He could muffle the sounds, but even with a dozen pillows over his head he would never be able to block out the vibrations that were coming through the walls. His head felt like someone had inflated a bouncy castle inside of it and invited the neighborhood over for a sugar-fueled jumping contest. He could almost see the primary colors of it all invading the darkness of his room, but that was probably just the hallucinations setting in.

    “Bugger this,” he grumbled as he got up.

    (more…)

  • A Time to Love

    I.

    Valentine’s Day is always the same problem for Cupid.

    “Why do you always have to work on Valentine’s Day?” Mrs. Cupid asks.

    Cupid liked to trace it back to Santa Clause. For a long time, people were content to celebrate their love and devotion on Valentine’s Day without a mascot. They celebrated their love every day and Cupid only needed to be present for a few special events throughout a person’s life. But then that fat old man got his own holiday and everyone started to think about why Valentine’s Day didn’t have a human personification of its own. And now they expected him to work every single Valentine’s Day. Visiting every couple. For eternity.

    But this isn’t what she’s asking and he knows it.

    (more…)