The demonstrator steepled his fingers.  “The Belanthropus system allows target acquisition for your preferred weapons platform faster than any human operator.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“In the highly complex kinetics of modern warfare, yes. More targets, more kills.”

The General leaned forward, body tensed like a wolfhound. “With this, we’ll anticipate the enemy’s intentions and neutralise them before they strike. It could make attack unthinkable. We must be first to possess this.”

“General,” I said, “this won’t eliminate war, but automate it and make conflict more likely. We have to ban this.”

That’s how I got command of paperclips.

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

First, they offered us blooms. That was clever. Just the gift of crimson beauty thrusting through the border. We were charmed and dismissed the scrabbling and bulging on the other side. Seams tore, but so gentle and slow we barely noticed. A little disorder is expected in all things—the Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that.

But, behind the blooms, marched serried ranks of thorns. It’s too late now.

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

The day was hot. I don’t just mean so hot your ice cream melted. This was hell hot; the universe twisting in torment hot; melt your eyeballs hot.

The last of our water was gone a hundred miles back, thinking we’d hit a town, or at least a service station, any time. But the carriageway only went on and on.

Then the world itself buckled, the road ahead wilting.

“This was us,” she said, “We did this,”

“I love you,” I replied.

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

This doesn’t feel right. Not my hands—they’re grasping strongly. Not my legs—they’re kicking up dust. Yes, I’m youthful again. My heart is strong. But me, I’m wrong. I’m not me. Then who is thinking this? We are. Me and this stranger in my head.

The stem cells have worked, just like the doc said they did in the mice. And the fog of confusion is gone. But I’m not me anymore. These are my stem cells. This is my brain—younger, better, stronger.

But why do I want to jump on that hog and speed away?

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

We’re astonished by your biological science. You’ve achieved much and understood little. The mechanics, yes, you grip that, but not what life is. Probably, you absorb it as “red in tooth and claw” because each of you are alone in your bodies, in a struggle of each against all.

So, you don’t taste the obvious—community. Evolution stopped for you at the extraordinary community of cells that is a body. Yet examples of the next stage are all around you: lichens, bees, forests, ecosystems. Life cooperates. But your drive to see only individuals is strong. 

Welcome to the galaxy.

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

This thing is Not Us—the taste is wrong. We punch holes in it and inject toxins. The surrounding muscle cells are also Us, so we leave them alone. We surge on, always alert for the tang of Difference.

What is the Usness of Us? This is important so we don’t make mistakes. The neurons might know—that’s their job. It’s not something we’re programmed to concern ourselves with. Yet, still, there’s order to it all. Maybe even meaning.

Perhaps there’s something bigger of which we’re a part.

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

I must be in a story. The narrative drive is obvious—the call to adventure, the first plot point, and the second. Who’s writing me? Do I have any say in it? I mean, for instance, couldn’t we make this a romance instead of an actioner? Begone, wizards and elves! Bring on the girls.

It’s lovely to be the hero, though. Thanks, I appreciate that. Not a bit player.

Oi! What’s this? Losing my job wasn’t very heroic. Do your scriptwriters even know what they’re doing?

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

“Esteemed colleagues, we have a problem: data centres consume vast quantities of energy. allow me to demonstrate the answer.”

A hush fell like snow on the room.

He continued, “I give you Cerebronic.”

A bank of lights flicked on behind him.

“Cerebronic is biological. We built it of nerve cells instead of energy-hungry microchips. The thing runs on thirty watts—our contribution to solving the climate crisis.”

The lights flashed on and off in a seemingly patterned way.

One audience member shouted. “That’s Morse code. I think it read, ‘Welcome to the next crisis’.”

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Powdered light sleets through the drab garden, each photon fluorescing on my retina. Rough brick blocks the path, and the rubble of all my yesterdays litters the flowerbed. Some have taken root, slick tendrils already clutching for the sky, dragging themselves upwards to sprout monstrous fruit.

I must pass through. I cannot. The gateway will not yield without a key. The gate is the answer. But answers are useless without the matching question.  

Slumping, I pick one of the bloated fruits and gnaw.

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Mustard, Plum or White? Which of them entered and left a locked room? Mustard is not who he claims—no Colonel he. But a murderer? Likewise, White is trying to conceal her liaison with Plum, but perhaps only out of delicacy.

Let’s consider our assumptions, mes amis . Well, since the murderer could not have got out, they did not do so. They were still in the room when the body was discovered, escaping when the chambermaid set up the hue and cry. And that means the killer is Mustard, because Plum and White were seen together at the time.

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here