In 500... (or less)

By authormsmiller

2.9K 712 1.3K

A collection of flash fiction, based off the Weekend Write-in Group prompts. More

A Fight in the Flight
The Swan
Being There is Half the Fun
Intersection
For the Love of a Strawberry
A Slight Alteration to the Tapestry
A Check with a Comma
A Typo for the Easily-Offended
The Tamer of Technology
I Cannot Tell a Lie
Tobacco-Free Zone
A Relatively Old Problem
The Bishop's Blessing
Jim's Fishing Trip
If You Want Something Done Right...
So Thick You Could Cut It With a Knife
The Outmoded Mouse
A Grifter in the Drifters
The Heist
The Body Remains
A Prisoner No More
Just Behind the Wall
The Half-Life of Inspiration
A Vision of Decisions
The Last Economist
A Safe Place to Land
The Newest Exhibit
To Err with the Ephemeris
Which Monster?
The Guessing Game
The Gaming Guild
The Garbage Bandit
Avaton
Holding It
Special Assignment
Eine Letzte Freude
One Man's Footnote...
Into the Wilderness
The Biggest Fan
The Maximum Capacity is Thirty
The Letter from Larry
Meeting the Neighbors
Check the Math
Missing You on Valentine's Day
Redemption
Endgame
The Canary
Divorce Papers
Hostile Territory
A Feast Ran Afoul
Two Minutes to Mars
Play Brawl!
South Pacific Soft Serve
Ad Infinitum
Not My Dam Problem
Private Prison
Amici Periculo
A Question of Sanity
The Risk of Revisions
Rat Hell
Solemn Search
Victory on the Ridge
Quite the Conundrum
More Than Money
Just Perfect
The Hunting Accident
Putting the Affairs in Order
A Moment in History
Miscalibration
Harried Handlers
Poker Party
Interstellar Inquisition
One Little Omission
Penance for the Pusillanimous
The Theory of Cynicism
The Spectre of the Sea
No One Will Mourn for Charlie
Orientation
No Question Unanswered
The Blizzard of 1950
The Lottery Scheme
The Tree in Robbers Roost
Dressing Up Jeff
Hard-headed
A Mile in Some Ragged Shoes
Oil Boom
For the Catalog
The Backroom Backfire
Making Emends
Heckler
Try...Catch
The Septuagenarian Sub
Pouring It On
Not in the Drop Box
Regimen
Coming In Hot
Willy the Woodchopper
An Undergrad Undertaking

A Note for All the Tomorrows

59 12 15
By authormsmiller

I'll write you this note, Gary. I don't know whether you'll find it. I guess it depends on how things go.

The experiment was a complete disaster. I hope this gets to you before you try again. I'm already a dead man, it's almost impossible to focus on writing this, let alone surviving this nightmare.You should see it, it is utter chaos. The same car in thousands of different places at once, overlapping with other cars. The stop lights are lit up with all three colors at once. Traffic is moving and stopped at the same time.

I should have predicted this. The only thing for certain here is that I didn't expect it. Everywhere around me, every possible outcome of every other decision from all of mankind is happening all at once. It doesn't work the way we thought it would.

Gary, you don't go to the future. You go to a future. The only certain thing in this future is that I stepped into our device. My decision is set in stone. The rest, well, that's up to everyone else.Do you have toast or a waffle for breakfast? Someone might die because of your choice. It sets off a sequence of events, a chain of probabilities. There are eight billion people all doing the same thing, making the same choices. I see the results of each choice all at once. The chain spawns nearly infinite possibilities. This is what tomorrow looks like.

You could wake up fabulously wealthy tomorrow, Gary. Or you could be dead. Or your brother could be. The chain of decisions could be five or so people doing one thing or another. Or it could be a million different people, following their own agendas.

My head is pounding, it's too much to take in. Don't do it, Gary. I'm going to put this note in my pocket, I hope you find it when you discover my body. Or you could go out for coffee and mess it all up. I won't know. If you do find this, look up Schrodinger's cat. I guess I can at least say I proved it's true.

One last thing: Turns out our definition of tomorrow is arbitrary. It's already tomorrow somewhere. I could go for some Excedrin, but the damn bottle is in 15 different places at once. I can't grab it. The hell with it.

Destroy the machine. Don't try it.

Damn, I see you now. At least a few thousand of you, suffering from the same symptoms as me. You idiot.

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