As an immortal vampire, I spent countless centuries working to protect myself against my weaknesses. Everyone knows about the famous ones. Sunlight, holy symbols, and stakes to the heart are all a part of the public consciousness. But each vampire has another, secret weakness. It is a part of the magic. You can’t gain great supernatural power without giving something up in return. Mine was defenestration, and I worked hard to keep myself free from the threat without revealing it. But one evening, thanks to a wet floor and a careless passerby, all my careful planning went out the window.
When we found a Lost and Found Box in the dungeon, one of the archers reached in and pulled out a faded blue-gray sweater. “You should put that back,” I said. “Why?” she asked. “Your paladin senses offended?” “That’s a Jumpermorph,” I said. “It’s like a mimic. It disguises itself as clothes and exudes an aura of coziness. It feels so soft and comfortable that you have to try it on. And then it’s already over.” She snorted and threw it into her bag. The next morning all we found in her sleeping bag was a pile of empty clothes.
The Starship Fugacious was lauded as a triumphant success and condemned as space travel’s most catastrophic failure. The brainchild of a Martian trillionaire, the ship’s maiden voyage was only a few hundred thousand miles, but it would make the trip at nearly the speed of light. He wanted to use time dilation to achieve immortality. Heedless of the warnings of his engineers, the trillionaire loaded up the ship and pushed the button. According to observers, the ship was vaporized as soon as the engines started, but no wreckage was recovered. His adherents claim he’ll return at the end of history.
The Beast was coming, and today he would kill it. He heard the creature’s fearsome roar and felt the rumble of its approach. But he was not afraid. In his youth he’d ran from it and its monstrous appetites. but he had learned to stalk it from the shadows. He finally found a weakness. He crouched to strike from behind as the monster passed. At the last moment, he leapt from behind and grabbed for the Beast’s long tail. I looked up from vacuuming when the machine suddenly stopped. The cat had pulled the cord out of the wall again.
Each day Eugene found a little more hair in the shower drain. He’d expected it. His grandfather had been as bald as an egg. But he thought he had more time. He did everything he could to the hair loss. He tried scientific treatments, then quack treatments, and finally expensive hairpieces that didn’t fool anyone. When the Devil came with an offer, Eugene signed on the dotted line. He sold his soul for a thick, luxurious head of hair with no regrets. But there were a pair of cowlicks on either side of his head that he could never tame.
It was a slow day in the library. Since the passengers had tablets which pulled their digital selections directly from the archives, they were mostly slow days. The Librarian sighed. With all the numinous entertainments available on the ship, who would want to come down here for a moldy old paperback, anyway? She looked out at the stars. There was at least one important duty ahead of her. Someday, she would appoint a successor. If the ship’s engines held, they would be the one to share the lost knowledge of Earth when the generation ship landed. Until then, she waited.
When the objects appeared overnight in the square, the townsfolk didn’t know what to make of them There was fine paper and cloth, but they were ripped and stained. There were odd cups of soft metal and cores of mysterious fruit that looked like it had been eaten and discarded. The priest advised they bury the lot, and be not tempted by the strange objects. One farmer surreptitiously took a seed, intending to bury it himself and see what grew. Centuries later, the inventor tested his time machine on trash, heedless of the effect a malfunction might have on history.
The habitation quarters on the Martian Colony were barely livable. It wasn’t something that the Company had invested in outside of the Executive Suites. We’d all signed the contract. And it wasn’t like we could catch a flight back to Earth. It took me months to scrounge enough material. Waste cloth and polymer binding, mostly. The Company tracked everything with ruthless efficiency. Management claimed it was because the colony’s survival was still tenuous. We shared silent looks that spoke the truth: They were bastards. Once I patched together the quilt, my sleeping quarters finally started to feel something like home.
The legends said that monks first learned to brew coffee from a goat. Suspicious, a powerful wizard scried back in time to learn the truth of the matter. Eventually he found the event and was surprised to find the legends were accurate. He saw the goat eat the fallen fruit and the learned men observing its reaction. Then he saw the creature slink off and transform into a dragon. The Wizard decided to abandon his research. If the dragons wanted humanity to drink coffee, they probably had a good reason, and only a fool meddled with dragons and their politics.
As dawn spread over the campsite, the paladin practiced his devotions. His swinging blade coruscated in the light of the rising sun. The thief watched from the shadows. He appreciated the efficiency of combining sword practice with prayer, although he found the routine somewhat flashy for his taste. “Is there something I can help you with?” The paladin asked. He appreciated his companion’s skills, but found the little man odious company. “Oh, don’t mind me,” the thief replied. The paladin went back to ignoring him. If there was one thing the thief could always steal from him, it was time.
Hugh J. O'Donnell 