Story #115 - Fly Boy

Fly Boy

Two fat flies were buzzing around the counter when Tom Fairchild swaggered his way into the motel lobby, fat juicy morsels that had obviously been feeding well on the scraps of food and filth left on the desk.

The deskman was no prize either; a short, fat balding man with a name tag that said “Bob”. Underneath the name Tom could see another word, one that surprised him given the man's slovenly condition. “Owner”.

“Good evening, sir.” Tom knew that even if the place was a dive, he'd have to start off with respect. Too many places these days were getting choosy about who they let in the doors, and he couldn't blame them. Monsters masquerading in human form were the obvious stuff of nightmares, and the Feds still hadn't come up with a viable way to detect the damn things until it was too late.

Bob grunted in response, not bothering to look up from the paper he was reading. One of the two flies landed near him, and he made a half-hearted attempted to bat it away, but succeeded only in stirring up a third one from a dusty window shade.

Tom had been loathe to pull off at this particular exit, but night was coming on hard, and he knew that most of the killings had been reported under the cover of darkness. The things were said to move like the wind; a sudden gust and a guy could find himself with no arms or legs, sitting on the side of the road and wondering what the hell happened. Not even cars were safe – the things had incredible bursting speed, or so the newsmen said.

When he'd seen the sign for the Last Exit Motel he'd intended to drive on, but a quick check of his GPS showed him the next hotel as over fifty miles distant. Sure, he could take the risk for a better room and not having to look at Bob dig a finger deep into one nostril, but that risk for comfort and a settled stomach might have gotten him killed.

He could deal with the fact that the place wasn't exactly clean - air-freshener scented the room instead of the smell of laundered linens and cleaned floors, and he could feel the thick carpet squelching under his boots – but Bob's rudeness was just one step too far. The man had a business to run. Didn't he want paying customers?

“Hey!” Tom said sharply, moving forward while keeping a firm grip on his shoulder bag. “Bob, I'm talking to you. I need a room for the night. How much?”

“Fifty.” Bob's voice grated like a snow scraper running over a steel plate, and Tom reached for his wallet. “But put your money away. I ain't takin' it. Now get out.”

Tom felt his anger spark, though he managed to keep himself cool. He was impressed; during his time in the army, he would have flown off the handle at the smallest thing outside of the rigid confines of daily barracks life, and the guys always ribbed him about how red he'd get, how hot under the collar no matter the issue.

“Bob,” he said softly, stepping forward and pulling out his wallet, “I don't think you can afford to turn me away. You need every paying customer you can get, from the look of this place.” Bob glanced up at him now, eyes flat and unfriendly as he approached.

“Plus,” Tom flipped open his wallet, showing his army ID card. The card didn't grant him any special status, now that he was out, but some still had respect for his service to the country.

Bob rolled his eyes and went back to his puzzle. Clearly, he wasn't one of them.

Time to play hardball, Tom thought, and slapped a $50 bill down on the desk in front of Bob. “I'll give you that much again in the morning. I'm not loud, I don't drink, and I just need a place to sleep to get away from,” he dropped his voice, “them.”

The bald man looked up and nodded slowly. Everyone knew things were getting worse, even if the Feds were selling them a different line. They all had to watch out for each other, in a time like this. “Yeah, it's rough out there,” Bob said, pushing the fifty off of the counter and letting it fall to the floor below, where Tom could see it start to wet at the edges from the damp warmth permeating the carpet, “and I've gotta look out for my interests. Get out.”

Tom felt his control snap and dove forward, reaching out long arms for Bob, who slipped off of his tall stool and into a back room. One of the flies drifted in front of his face and he brushed it out of the way. A sucking sound from his own mouth surprised him, and he watched as his tongue darted out to snag the bug in mid-air. He recoiled as his own tongue brought it back and he munched it down, teeth enjoying the texture and stomach doing backflips at his own foulness.

“Reptilicant!” He heard Bob scream, and saw the other man coming around the corner with a shotgun.

***

Dark was coming on strong; he had to find a place to stop, and soon. The Last Exit Motel had been a bust; it was hard to believe that Reptilicants had managed to infect even honest merchants like Bob. The place had been a dive anyway, and Tom didn't want to risk staying a night, even with one of their kind dead. He'd heard the others were cannibals, and he didn't want to take the chance of a feeding frenzy.

Licking the last of the dark red barbeque sauce off of his fingers, Tom threw the small bone out the window and put the pedal down. Fast-food chicken wings weren't his first choice, but a guy had to eat. He had fifty miles to go before the next exit, and anything could lurk in the dark.

-D

Story #42 - Advantage: Bob

Advantage: Bob

Being God came with a number of distinct advantages, Bob was beginning to discover.

His first several experiments had been abysmal failures, but that was the expectation of research and the cost of progress. Through trial and error, hard work and just a bit of the midnight crazies, Bob had managed to not only create a stable bio-platform but one where the tiny inhabitants were evolving at a startling rate.

He had to laugh when on the seventh day, to an hour, he detected a number of sounds coming from the large container he kept his “universe” in. Of course, they weren't anything he could make out, anything he could change into an intelligible form – at first – but they were there.

And getting stronger.

Microscopes revealed cities, monuments and even the development of transportation methods within a few months and all the while he just kept listening, writing down notes, and waiting.

It came to him eventually – the one word that an entire sentence hinged on, the subject that he just couldn't get to agree with the verb or noun.

“Please help us,” they said, over and over, “God”.

Bob took a few weeks off at that point, a bit concerned that his faculties were failing. His relationship with both a disinterested wife and estranged daughter had become even worse during the course of his work and he was concerned that perhaps a complete mental breakdown had taken place.

Mexico was very nice – relaxing and distracting – and by the time he got back on the plane to come home, he was sure he'd just been imagining it all.

Of course, the scene in his lab revealed utter chaos. One of the planets in his Universe had discovered some sort of crude spaceflight and had begun wantonly attacking others nearby. Cries of pain and anger rose from many of the planets, begging for assistance from a being for which they had no proof.

What the hell, Bob thought, not like I'm doing anything else useful.

All it took was a pair of tweezers and the offending planet was gone, snapped out of existence – its ships suddenly without a home and its advance stopped. Of course, such an action also caused the entire system to become unstable as planets and stars rearranged themselves around what Bob had wrought. He didn't sleep for three days, but he managed to correct the damage he'd done.

The praise flooded in.

From then on he barely left the lab – meals were delivered and he slept in his office, always monitoring the progress of his various peoples, watching them grow and change as the weeks and months rolled by. He did everything he could for them, listened to every prayer he could find and gloried in the honor they paid him, the respect he knew was his rightful due.

Colleagues began to wander by, wondering just what on earth was going on but Bob shooed them away – the experiment was more than just a funded project, more than just a clever use of grant money. It was alive; they were alive, and he would not see them come to any harm.

Since he wasn't causing any real trouble the faculty left him alone - kept an eye on him - but left him alone. It was just as well with him – the demands of his people were growing increasingly complex and he was having trouble determining the best way to respond. Beyond simple survival now, factions and segments of intellectual vogue had sprung up, some claiming he was vengeful and aggressive, others that only peace and harmony would bring God's favor.

Those that disturbed him the most were the groups that argued he did not – could not – exist. It was ludicrous. Looking at all he'd done for the universe, the large and obvious marks and mistakes he'd made on and with civilization after civilization, person after person, how was it possible to conclude such a thing?

He listened more intently, focusing in on the words of the detractors.

Look at the facts, they said, has anyone actually seen this god? Or just “felt” his presence. Everything that you attribute to God, we attribute to natural phenomena. Everything can be explained.

Bob was angry. He considered a full-out extermination, but that really wasn't his style. He understood the atheists in the real world; they'd seen little enough of earth's God to make it a viable option, but how could his tiny peoples ever say such a thing? How could they abandon him?

He decided being magnanimous and accepting was the better, god-like course and tried to ignore the squawking of the non-believers, but it became increasingly difficult as the number of demands from his universe quickly ramped up. Population was growing across galaxies and every day it seemed that vast numbers of impossible or simply ludicrous prayers were coming his way.

Some wanted money, some wanted fame. Others felt they'd been slighted and wanted destruction, doom, or embarrassment to come to their enemies. The weak cried out for his help in every aspect of their lives and the strong used his name to destroy and pervert. His stomach turned.

It was a small thing that finally decided his path, a simple choice he wasn't even aware he was making. The universe had begun to bore him, to take up too much of his time and with too little reward. A new project called to him – a new idea had sprung up in his mind overnight – but the people of his universe simply wouldn't leave him alone. They simply wouldn't shut up.

A small MP3 player, two ear buds and a playlist later, Bob was happily at work on a new project, a better project, while the cries of the faithful fell on deaf ears. They had been forsaken, and couldn't figure out why.

Being God came with advantages.

- D