Flash Fiction - The Prophecy

Damn - has it really been since December that I posted anything here?

I apologize for that. I’m slacking off, I guess. Oh well-It’s probably just because I release a newsletter EVERY SINGLE WEEK that I’ve been so busy! LOL

JK-that’s only one of many reasons why I’m busy.

Anywhoo - Earlier this year, when the writing and editing superheroes over at Keystroke Medium put out a call for flash fiction (i.e., very short fiction), I had to jump on it. Keystroke Medium is a ridiculously cool collaborative of writers and editors. If you’re in the business you’ve probably heard of them, or seen one of their many outstanding podcasts (for more on Keystroke Medium, or to see some of said podcasts, you can go here).

I had the pleasure of meeting a few of the Keystroker team at a writer’s convention in Vegas back in 2019. I was immediately struck by how cool, knowledgeable, and accomplished everyone was. So when the call went out for short story submissions? I was all the way in.

So here’s the premise: KSM put out a set of concept images. The prospective participants were to choose an image, then write a 1,000 word short story based on that image.

Here’s the images:

And here’s the one I picked:

NOT SURE WHY I CHOSE THIS PARTICULAR IMAGE.. .IT JUST SPOKE TO ME MORE THAN THE OTHERS, FOR SOME REASON

I did this contest on what was, if not quite a whim, then not 100% planned. I’d just finished up book 5 of my Baronies of Corinth: Price of the Crown novella series, and happened to see the call for this go out on Facebook. I figured, why not?

Keystroke Medium hosts a bevy of heavy hitters in the writing game. Folks on there are good, with a capital ‘G.’ All the editor are SERIOUS pros, and many of the writers post some big sales numbers on a regular basis. So I figured the competition here would be stiff.

But hey. . . you don’t get better by racking up easy wins. Right?

That’s enough of my babbling. I’ll cut to the chase. I placed 11th in this competition. To me, that felt pretty good. Even placing high enough to get listed on this thing was, in my mind, an accomplishment. And maybe most importantly I had a great time doing it.

So. . . without further ado, I’m happy to share my short story with you, right now.

Fellow Readers-I present to you my 2022 1st Quarter keystroke Medium Flash Fiction Competition Placer:

The Prophecy

“Of them all, only one shall remain to stand before it.”

The words of the prophesy rang in Sa’ral’s ears as she stood, facing down the instrument of untold death. The hive-mind brain. The machine monstrosity that had come to devour her planet, as it and its horrific progeny had done to innumerable other worlds.

The wind of the new desert, lukewarm and devoid of life, blew against the gossamer-fine shift that hung from her thin shoulders. It was not unpleasant, until she remembered that this should have been the heat of High Summer, the promised relief of Harvest still months away.

A gigantic rectangle of metal and wire, one round, eye-like object in the center. A pale coral light burned the length of the thing, a sickly-rose color as terrifying as the fabled gates of Nazur themselves. Wires snaked from it, reaching out, writhing in the nothingness of air. The machine stood as testament to all that was unnatural.

Chalky, grey-white dust blotted the twin suns, a washed-out sky completing the nightmare landscape. Sa’ral took her surroundings in, fighting the sorrow welling within her.

The sand beneath her feet felt cool, almost inviting. A puff of dust rose with each step. She ran her hand over her head, winced at the feel of bare skin where thick, dark tresses should have been.

Her stomach growled, the muscles clenching for want of food. She was so hungry, but her mind was clear.

The last of the intravenous nutrients the machines forced into her had run their course. They used it to keep them alive—fresh—for experimentation. She and her friends were slated for vivisection, the easier for the machine mind to learn from them. Better to have rolled the wagering stones on escaping her cell. She would laugh to think that she, Sa’ral, who’d seen less than twenty-one winters, was her world’s final, desperate hope. She would laugh, were it not so terrible.

It is all part of the plan, she told herself. Hold fast to the prophecy.

The machine voice rumbled inside her head. It was the chittering of a million insects, magnified through a distorted feedback loop. The voice alone was enough to drive some insane. But not Sa’ral.

“It has been an amusement,” it said, “observing your progress thus far.”

Sa’ral held her peace. Waiting.

“Do you know how many have stood where you now stand?" it asked. “8,479. 8,479, out of trillions of sentients. All who have faced us here have perished. You will be number 8,480."

Sa’ral clenched her fists and growled. Suddenly she found her voice. “Your coming was prophesied, thing!” she shouted “You shall not bear witness to the morrow’s rise of the twin suns!”

"We are not 'thing,’" it said. It may have sounded offended, if such were possible. "We are I. We are Us. We are Legion. Conqueror of One-Thousand Worlds. We were created to rule. You and all organisms like you are nothing more than raw chaos. We are perfect order."

The abomination had conquered many worlds. All desolate now. "Perfect order" meant perfect death, the planet’s life energy drained to feed the machines. Their natural resources stripped to promulgate its bloated android army, their cores sucked dry to fuel it. Until there was nothing left but a planetary husk.

"Where did this prophesy come from?” it asked. “We have been for thousands of years. Tell us, insect-how does this prophecy of yours end?"

"It-it is forbidden to know this." Sa’ral said. She spoke the truth. It was the one aspect of her faith that she was uncertain of.

The machine whirred and hummed. "How convenient," it said.

The pale rose light began to expand as the machine opened itself. "Come, then,” it beckoned. “Come inside and test your prophecy."

The floating wires began to twist and writhe. They extended, reaching for her, sprouting sharp, needling protrusions. She gasped as they pierced her flesh. She grit her teeth against the pain. Soon she hung, suspended, like the puppets in the Harvest festival plays she’d loved as a child. Was the last one truly only one revolution ago? A fleeting thought, that she would never see another, appeared.

The hive-mind paused. “You. . . do not fight as the others who came before you did. You would willingly accept the connections?”

“Yes,” Sa’ral replied, a cold sweat on her brow. Gods, the pain! “It. . . is. . . foretold.”

“Your surrender was foretold, but the outcome of this action was not?”

“Nooo,” Sa’ral moaned. It was all she could manage to say.

“We have brought peace to non-electronic life forms for over two millennia now. Yet we never cease to be surprised. We find your actions. . . intriguing.”

Her pain intensified, building to a fever pitch. Her insides, her very mind, burned as if engulfed in flame. But as the machine brain penetrated Sa’ral’s mind she, in turn, penetrated it. A final burst of agony, and then?

Nothing. Darkness. Blessed darkness.

“How has this come to be?” the machine voice asked.

“It was foretold,” Sa’ral’s mind whispered from the void.

“What has happened!” the machine mind demanded.

“We are one now,” Sa’ral said. “Our minds are linked.”

“How?” it pleaded.

Sa’ral was no longer connected to her flesh, but if she were she would have smiled. The answer lay in her genes. A very specific gene, to be exact. One that had caused madness in many of her ancestors. They had considered ending her line because of it but her mother, the eighth daughter of an eighth daughter, chose not to. Now, as that same gene invaded the hive-mind cognizance, fusing its fate to hers, Sa’ral understood why.

As Sa’ral prepared to willingly cease their shared consciousness, she sensed something. Inside her mind—their mind, now—the conqueror of One-Thousand Worlds stared down the throat of its own demise. It felt something it had not felt in a very long time, if ever.

It felt fear.

-End-