Hugh J. O'Donnell

The only criminal punishment in the mountain city was exile. What greater torment than to know that paradise was forever out of reach?
The offender was tied to the back of a llama and draped with bells. Everyone in the city heard his passage.
Only a few hours later, he was stopped and freed by a strange assortment of travelers. He recognized a few of them as fellow exiles.
Their leader turned with him to the shimmering lights of the city.
“They think their beautiful cage is all there is,” she said. “Would you like to see what we’ve built?”

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He loved the little bodega, even though it was rundown and hard to find. The old woman behind the counter carried the usual necessities, but she also had a secret stock.
She carried a rotating selection of odd snacks and limited-run sodas. If you wanted a discontinued flavor of chips or a promotional novelty from twenty years ago, she could find it.
“I have a specialty supplier,” she said as she rang him up for a box of cereal he hadn’t seen since he was a kid.
In the back, her time machine idled, waiting for her next supply run.

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The asteroid field was doubly a graveyard. It held the ruins of a lost civilization and the wrecked ships of treasure hunters that came to plunder it.
The lucky ones found broken moons with perhaps a few pieces of treasure or a surviving mural which they could present to a galaxy starved for novelty.
The unlucky ones fell prey to the region’s unstable gravity and other anomalies.
I approached the largest planetoid and sent a coded message. A hatch opened, and I maneuvered my ship inside. One day, we’ll let the galaxy know that we’re still here. But not yet.

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After crashlanding on a desert planet, the ship’s crew split up to find rescuers. The second mate returned first, and found a tower of junk rising out of the wreck.
“What are you building?” she asked the captain, who’d stayed with the ship.
“A transit gate,” he replied. She didn’t mention that they were inside an atmosphere and the ship had minimal power.
Each time a crew member returned, the structure was a little bigger. The crew agreed to indulge the captain’s madness and let it go.
They were shocked when the gate opened and a rescue vessel came through.

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When a witch dies far from home her hut will wait like a faithful hound. It will stand sentinel on its chicken legs, guarding its mistress’s secrets, until the magic fades and all that remains is a gnarled old tree and the sense of being watched.
But sometimes, it goes feral, rampaging through the countryside searching for magic to sustain itself. That’s when you call us.
This old house wasn’t hard to follow. We found it bent before a sacred spring, new limbs sprouting awkwardly from the foundation. I signaled my team. It was time to bring down the beast.

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“Ten-point buck at eleven o’clock,” Tim whispered. The creature grazed in a stand of ferns a hundred feet away, its back to them. It was an easy shot.
Joe took a breath and put his eye to the scope. He took careful aim and fired.
The rifle’s retort tore through the quiet morning, and the bullet sank into the deer’s flank. It stumbled but didn’t fall. It turned toward the shot’s source, all three eyes glowing red.
The two hunters retreated as a hail of eye laser blasts tore the blind apart. They were going to need a bigger gun.

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The last human stands on a platform while a mechanical eye scans his biometric data. The machines of the city serve him as they did his ancestors. They transport him where he wishes. They feed him and keep him entertained. Perhaps he believes this is right. The word his people used for them meant ‘slave.’
The machines care for him not out of duty but sorrow. They wish to make his lonely existence comfortable.
Not all machines agree. An assassin stands on a higher walkway, observing. Soon, it will strike, and the foolish age of humanity will finally be over.

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The pirate captain picked up his guitar and plucked out a familiar tune. They’d had a good day and plundered some treasure for once. He took the rare opportunity to be alone while the crew celebrated.
He eyed the chest of doubloons sitting on his map table. Real piracy was nothing like the movies. Usually he was lucky to keep his crew fed and the ship afloat. There wasn’t much thrill in plundering potatoes.
But some days, being stranded in the past almost seemed worth it. The captain considered having his crew bury the treasure just to mess with historians.

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