The tap on the outer door was hesitant, but Captain Thrajj heard it. “Come,” he said, his deep voice carrying into the anteroom outside his office.
The door slid open, and Megis Mon, the Thrill Deputy Chief Engineer, sidled into the room. “Captain.”
Thrajj was a Bifroni, and knew that he looked intimidating to a small species like the Thrills. He stayed seated behind his desk and tilted his head to one side. “Deputy Engineer, what can I do for you?”
“It’s the Chief,” said Mon, holding xir first set of hands clasped together, nervously. “I confess to be worried about his mental state and general health.”
Thrills were known to be a race of healers and carers, coming from their evolutionary line of hive-based societies. The Chief Medical Officer on the Endeavour was a Thrill. “Why are you worried?”
“His behaviour has been… erratic, the last three shifts. His voice became faint, then disappeared altogether. Chief Medic Doran signed him off for one week, and he has remained in his quarters with his pet feline ever since. His card has not been logged through the commissary, but he has been seen using food dispensers near his quarters at odd hours of the ship’s cycle. I pulled the last three records of his usage.” Mon carefully placed a data chip on the Captain’s desk.
He picked it up and fed it into the reader on the desk. “Liquid foods.”
“We know how much he likes a solid meal, even more so than the other Humans on the ship. No, I am more concerned with the last item on the list.”
“Why is that? It looks like the standard checmical composition for water.”
“He asked for water at boiling point. I checked the chemical makeup of that last additive. It’s an acid.”
Thrajj frowned. “Acid?”
“He’s requested a gallon of boiling acid then went back to his room, and now he’s not answering his comm line!” said Mon, agitated now.
“Mon, calm down,” said Thrajj, lowering his big, horned head. “How many times have you shipped out with Humans?”
“This is my second cruise, Captain.”
“I was a young ensign when the Human Federation first took to the stars and made contact,” said Thrajj. “This is my fifty-second year of having Humans on my ships. Now, I’ll let you in on a secret.” He leaned forward, and a smile formed on his lips. “With the Humans, there is always an explanation. They are a hardy species, they come from a homeworld that will kill you or I, but not only did they survive it, they tamed it. Then they went into space, and they tamed a lot of other worlds as well. And with Humans, there is always a reasonable explanation. Come, we shall go and see what the Chief Medic has to say, and then we shall go and see Chief MacDonald.”
===
“I signed him off for one ship week, that is correct,” said the CMO, another Thrill who went by Doran Dom. “He has a mild viral infection, but one I have had experience in dealing with in the past. it is not transmissible to any of the other crew except other Humans, so it appears as if he has quarantined himself to avoid infecting others.”
“Have you any idea why he would request a gallon of boiling acid?” asked Thrajj.
“As to that, I have no idea,”said Dom. “His mental state when he left here was fine.”
===
“Cap’n”, said the broad voice of Chief MacDonald. “I’d offer to let you in, but I don’t want the crew catching what I have.”
He sounded… hoarser that he normally did, as though his voice hadn’t been used in a few days and he was trying to remember how to use it. The tiny viewscreen on the panel outside his room showed the Chief’s face, as much of it as could be seen behind the flaming red beard.
“That’s fine, Chief, we can talk like this. Your deputy is very worried about you.”
“Ach, I’m fine. Or I will be in another few days. I have the dispenser down the hall and Pancake here to keep me company.” He hoisted the calico cat into the camera’s view. Pancake miaowed.
“Can you explain the boiling acid you requested from the dispenser?” asked Mon, fretfully.
“Boiling acid?” repeated MacDonald, a look of puzzlement on his face.
“Your last three requests from the dspenser were two heplings of a hot liquid meal, and a gallon of boiling acid. We’’d like to know what that’s for,” said Thrajj.
The Chief stared for a second, before bursting out laughing.
“Oh, stars, oh my, that’s…” he broke off, tears of mirth running down his face. “I requested hot water with lemon, so I could add honey to it for my sore throat. It’s an old method of getting fluids and electrolytes into a sick person. Did you think I would do something stupid with it?”
“Thrills have a duty of care to their comrades,” said Mon stiffly.
“Mon, my friend, you could have asked and I would have told you. Look, when you say boiling acid, it makes it sound so much worse than it is. It’s citric acid, from fruits grown on Earth. We take the fruit and slice it up, we add honey from bees, and we pour hot water on top and mix it all up.”
“You weren’t answering your comm!” xe shouted.
“I apologise,” said the Chief gravely. “I was probably asleep. I took a pill last night to help me sleep.”
“How soon will you be back to work?” asked Thrajj.
“If Chief Dom will sign me off, I can be back the day after tomorrow. I feel much better, but I’d rather wait and make sure I’m completely clean before I rejoin the crew.”
“Very well, Chief. Thank you for your time.”
“Thank you, Captain, Deputy.”
“See?” said Thrajj, once the screen had gone dark. “Always a reasonable explanation.”
“Boiling. Acid.”
Thrajj snorted. “This is nothing. Come, we shall have a drink and I will tell you of the time a bunch of Humans taped a knife to a cleaning robot…”
city monsters tend to be harder to find, and for good reason. city ppl are so used to weird shit happening on the daily, that sometimes monsters dont really have to come up w/ an elaborate excuse for existing. they hide in plain sight.
like lamp posts? you think those are government-issued street lights? get real.
an incomplete list of unsettling short stories I read in textbooks
the scarlet ibis
marigolds
the diamond necklace
the monkey’s paw
the open boat
the lady and the tiger
the minister’s black veil
an occurrence at owl creek bridge
a rose for emily
(I found that one by googling “short story corpse in the house,” first result)
the cask of amontillado
the yellow wallpaper
the most dangerous game
a good man is hard to find
some are well-known, some obscure, some I enjoy as an adult, all made me uncomfortable between the ages of 11-15
add your own weird shit, I wanna be literary and disturbed
The Tell-Tale Heart, The Gift of the Magi, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County, Thank You Ma’am
the box social by james reaney. i remember we all had to silently read it in class, and you would hear the moment everyone reached the Part because some people would audibly go “what”
wHat did I just put my eyes on
“The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury
Not quite a short story, but read in class: “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” from The Twilight Zone
Harrison Bergeron, Cat and the Coffee Drinkers
“Where are you going and where have you been” by Joyce carol oates
“The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury
the lottery by shirley jackson
i can’t believe Roald Dahl’s “The Landlady” wasn’t already mentioned
and also it’s not so much unsettling as more absurdist but “The Leader” by Eugene Ionesco definitely made me go wtf
Ett halvt ark papper. I cried so much.
Ночь у мазара, А. Шалимов
A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
I Have no Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury
Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby, by Donald Barthelme
I read Ray Bradbury’s “All Summer In A Day” in seventh grade (it wasn’t assigned, I was just going through my textbook for new stuff to read) and as a bullied kid with SAD, it Fucked Me Up.
An Ordinary Day with Peanuts, by Shirley Jackson
Eh, this was more like community college, but The Star by Arthur C. Clarke
Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl
and this story that I can’t remember the name of and can’t find, though it might be by O. Henry? it’s about a bunch of demons who want to stop Santa Claus from going through with Christmas, and he must travel through the mountains they inhabit to escape their vices? (good christ I can’t remember the name for the life of me)
Ok but the laughing man and a good day for bananafish but j.d. Salinger
The City (195) Ray Bradbury. An intense commentary on colonialism and space exploration. I read it for a sci fi survey class.
Another short story I read in that sci fi class was Vaster than Empires and More Slow (1971) by Ursula K. Le Guin. A commentary on humanity and how human we believe ourselves to be. Also, an interesting commentary on mental health.
In the Woods Beneath the Cherry Blossoms in Full Bloom, written in 1947 by Ango Sakaguchi. It made my skin crawl the first time I read it.
I didn’t read it in a text book, but “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” haunted me for life.
I read most of Ray Bradbury’s stuff as a kid, and I remember being deeply horrified by almost all of it. “All Summer in a Day” was probably the worst, though, because holy shit I could relate to that girl. Could never remember the title, though, so thank you guys for the list!
Also of note: Harlan Ellison wrote one of the best episode of TOS Trek, “The City on the Edge of Forever”. The original screenplay is haunting.
almost all popular fiction about robots: given the chance to abuse something without repercussions, humanity would do so without hesitating, because we’re all just lazy, heartless bastards by nature
me, sprinkling cereal grains across the floor so my roomba doesn’t go hungry: who’s a good boy? 😀 who’s a good boy??? 😀 😀 is it YOU???? 😀 😀 😀 it’s YOU!!!!!!!
I’m no longer holding Star Trek or Star Wars “accountable” for their clunky-looking sixties-and-seventies future technology.
Why?
Because the Enterprise is off on a years-long voyage through space. There’s no Verizon store, no Radio Shack, no Geek Squad out there. If the Klingons fire photon torpedoes and the bridge shakes and Spock’s head bangs against the fancy iPad72 touchscreen and cracks the glass, the ship’s toast. If Han Solo’s fingerprints get all over the starchart and the touch-calibration is off by half a centimeter, the Falcon is going right into a star. But if Mister Worf accidentally twists the command knob too hard and pops it off, he can just screw that thing right back on and it will keep working. Dust gets in there? Take it apart and clean it out. All the plugs are big and universal, all the power cells are functional and have a decent battery life, and nothing is built to expire in the next six months so you have to buy a new one.
That tech isn’t anachronistic or suffering a bad case of Zeerust–it’s practical, effective, and it works. Apple tried launching its own space exploration craft, it had to come back for full repairs within three months, and then it had to be upgraded over the next two.
But this? This is just good, long-lasting, fully-functional, and reliable craftsmanship.
The actual real-life space shuttles’ electronics looked pretty much like that for their entire lifespan and this is exactly why.
Maybe somebody’s already made a post about this but consider, in the vein of “humans are space orcs”: humans are the only spacefaring group seemingly unfazed with ship malfunctions. Continuous ones. We just roll with it. Red lights on the dashboard indicating “hull breach”? Those have been on for a month, it’s fine. Rear engine stuck? Nah, just jiggle the throttle a little. AI on the fritz? Yeah, he’s been like that, just give him a sec to wake up. We come from a long tradition of ignoring lights in our cars and running our computers so hot we can heat small houses you better believe that’s following us out into space.
Also ducktape. Ducktape is the answer to everything.
And if duct tape won’t do the trick, there’s WD-40.
man i had a dream that magic was discovered in the near future
but it was like. shitty unbalanced fantasy magic. like within a few weeks people had wikis and guides up on how to glitch in immortality potions and time spells. people are just tossing homemade black holes around. i looked on the news and saw some speedrunner made it to the edge of the universe
if you ever doubt your writing, be it your themes, or the reason behind it, remember that h.g wells wrote war of the worlds both as a commentary on colonialism and the horrors it brings, and because he fucking hated his neighbours and his 13 hour job, and wanted to write about the town in which he lived getting blasted to the fucking ground by lasers into an irreparable heap and all of the townspeople dying painfully
you, too, can channel your hatred for that guy that lives down the hall and blasts music at 4am into the one of the most influential science fiction stories ever written! fuck it! i believe in you!!
This is one of the most inspirational things I’ve ever seen
ok so has anyone thought about afrofuturist designs for the lion king… in space
pride rock as like, an asteroid mining cooperative. mufasa as the director, scar frustrated and jealous— he wants to turn the venture into a proper corporation, make some money, earn power and fame, control the whole of local space. iron is the lifeblood of a fleet, iron is power, iron is strength. but mufasa only cares for his wives, for his friends, for his gardens. mufasa sits on the bridge of his flagship— the petty manager of an insignificant fleet— and he plays and laughs with his wife and son and he thinks that’s enough.
‘long live the king,’ scar purrs as he cuts loose his brother’s safety lines, kicks him off the rock and away into the endless night. ‘run,’ scar says to his grief-mad nephew, opening the door of a tiny, understocked shuttle. ‘you killed your father, little boy, now run or die.’
and once scar takes over the running of pride rock, the shifts are too long, the quotas too high, the maintenance cycles too infrequent. mistakes mount up, people start to get hurt, to die, pride rock is turning more of a profit than ever but why are things getting rougher and harder for its crew? who are these grinning security contractors, striding through the corridors, snapping at the crew’s heels, reporting to scar— what does everyone need to be protected from?
pride rock has been nala’s entire world but it is dying, rotting from the inside as its crew, as her family starts to cough up grey dust, as they amputate frozen fingertips, as they patch their ragged exosuits and coax just another cycle of work out of rattling deathtrap power tools, as their greenrooms rot for lack of clean air or water, for lack of anyone with the time to care for them.
‘we’ll start over,’ nala says. ‘there’s another field of good rock out there in the dark— somewhere— i’ll find it and claim it and come back. we can be a co-operative again. we can be happy.’
sarabi kisses her forehead, patches her exosuit, collects her the best of every valve and gasket, the sturdiest oxygen tanks, the cleverest HUD interface, the most efficient water reclamators. sarafina adjusts the inventory system, marks one of their skippers down as destroyed, lays her shawl across the pilot’s seat, something of home to carry out into the dark. goes through the search and navigation programs line by line, grooming out every little tangle or bug.
their daughter— their princess, their hope— sets forth, out into the endless darkness between stars. as mufasa did, so many years ago.
DarkestElemental616 