Today's #Scifi #fantasy short story #TheWorldFullofLeftovers

         

         First off the thing about my story Greetings from a Book is now on Connie Flynn's two Facebook pages. Look at the left sides as you scroll down. https://www.facebook.com/ConnieFlynnAuthor

https://www.facebook.com/bootcampfor.novelists Thanks for having me on your pages Connie!

        Also today I saw Men in Black 3 with my bro and Dad. I liked it. Here's pretty much how the movie goes: It's about guys wearing black. And their wearing black because their an old fashioned mob in the modern era. And the three comes not from the fact its the third movie in a series but from the fact that there are three main characters. Three brothers who both have equal rights to the title of mob boss. The story starts off with a mob party thing, a decent plot device to introduce the main characters. One of the brothers causes massive drama at the party by revealing that he is engaged to the daughter of a rival mob boss and that he has brought her to the party. The don is furious and orders her to be sent to sleep with the fishes. In a plot twist it is revealed they live no where near a river or lake so he orders her shot instead. When one of the don's minions shoots her the eldest brother(the youngest brother is the one engaged, I'm going to have to distinguish by age because the don named all three brothers John) jumps in the way of the bullet. He survives because, in another plot twist, he is revealed to be a vampire. However then the middle brother is revealed to be a vampire hunter. He became one after his best friend was killed by an evil vampire. The eldest brother leaves with the middle brother taking chase. The entire movie turns into a cat and mouse type of thing as the vampire brother is trying to save the youngest brother and his betrothed from being killed by the don's men while trying to avoid being killed by the middle brother.

       Nah, just kidding! Men in Black 3 is actually a pretty awesome sci-fi movie. I really recommend it. Anyway onto the flash fiction!

         The World Full of Leftovers

          Quickly imagine a utopian world caused by the mastery of magic. Where magic has become the fuel in massive generators that provide clean power that allow for giant cities planet wide. The magic allows for miracles as well, curing diseases and making food grow like never before.

Now imagine BOOM! All those generators blow up all at once and wipe out the utopia. Ruins are left of course but the vast majority of humanity is wiped out. That's the world I live in. But I live in it many generations after the catastrophe.

         I bet many of you think that life after a catastrophe can be terrible. But see there were so many cities that once the initial disasters killed off 99.999% percent of the human populace and left the rest of us to recover we were actually left quite happy. Cities were collapsed but miles upon miles of cultivated land were left. When the generators of magic blew their forces broke bones and killed humans and animals and some of the lesser buildings and parts but so much was left in tact that a new utopia was made. A utopia for scavengers. I've found “science fiction-fantasy” books during my scavenging days about worlds of scavenging where there's little resources. But this: Complete opposite. When the generators were active they produced so much magic that allowed them to make so much. The only problem in that utopia was the billions upon billions of people on the planet. The utopia was a crazy-beautiful place from what I read in the history books.

         But I'm fine with my own utopia.

        Though the generators are gone billions of hover cars are left over, still operational. We scavenge many magical machines that were independent from the generators. We have magical planes too. Engines in these devices won't break easy and we have so many of them that we never have to worry about running out of them.

        Ah, who am I kidding? There is something bad in everything. I'm telling you everything good to mask the bad. Everything I said before was true. We have so much of the basic material. We have the leftovers of billions. But can you figure out the one thing that we don't have the excess of? Think about it.

        It's people. After all, our era is after 99.999% of the human population was wiped out.

        I don't know where in your world you live but I know you have some sort of class. Our class is branded into our left arm. Yes, like animals. But its a reason its our left arm. It's always a smaller mark and a symbol. As your class, and pretty much your job, changes, it gets branded further and further down your arm. When it gets all the way down they start the the other way down your right arm. Faking a branding is punishable by death.

        I was born into an industrial scavenger unit. Thus I was branded that way. I'm the daughter of the captain of the unit. His wife is the only other woman on the ship. She's more muscular than half the men. The captain's even bigger. The crew was shocked to see me born as a frail young girl. Since I couldn't help with the physical scavenging Mom and Dad taught me how to organize the books and sort all the parts.

Plus they spent a lot of their time teaching me how to sing.

       “You don't need to know now why this is important but you need to learn how to sing. It is a valuable skill you may need later in life. It saved your Mom's life.” Dad told me. I asked both Mom and Dad what was so important about learning how to sing but they wouldn't tell me. They just kept teaching me.  Fortunately I liked it.

      I learned why when I was nineteen.

      We ran into some men who worked for the Queen. Some of her less noble men. She had her more honorable army men then she had her pirates. The crooks she hired out of necessity and to get her the things she wanted but were less moral to acquire.

       The exchange was simple. We hand over everything we have and in exchange we get our lives and a “pass”. A “pass” was something the Queen invented out of her own twisted guilt. Whoever held one wouldn't be bothered by pirates in the future. She didn't want to have people attacked repeatedly out of bad luck. And the pirates wanted me along with the parts we held.

       Girls my age were valuable. Remember the people shortage? Remember how I was nineteen? I was at a good age. And the queen always wanted more people in her capital. Then my parents asked me to sing. So I sang for the pirates. My parents told me to sing the national anthem, the song they had taught me the most. Which is something that struck me odd as a little girl because of the unit's usual hate of the Queen(But they applauded me anyway when I practiced it when I was young).

     “You two are clever.” said the pirate captain. “You taught her to sing. And well. That's the best singing I've ever heard. So I'm going to have to send her straight to the Queen's court because I can't resist that kind of cash reward. After all the Queen's going to love the national anthem sung that well.” The pirate laughed. “And your girl isn't going to be forced to be a breeder or a worker or anything like that because that would reflect badly on the Queen because having her singers outsourced would make her look cheap among her subordinates. So you aren't just a stupid scavenging unit. Good job.”

       So that's what happened. I was promptly branded with the singer class symbol under my scavenger unit brand symbol under my left arm. And that's what I've been doing ever since is sing, sing, sing. I'm glad I know my parents are safe with that pass. I'm glad they know from the pirate's words that I'm okay. As for the future, I study in my spare time. The other singers do it too. When you get too old you don't look good enough to sing in court so you get put off to some other job. Naturally I'd prefer to be branded into being some sort of bookkeeper or scholar than a maid or weaver. Though besides the fear for our position in society we don't really want for much in our world. It's all there for the taking.

 

      This work is copyright Langdon Kennedy you may share this(email it, print it, post it on your own website, broadcast it, etc.) work unaltered as long as you credit me as the author and share a link to this blog with it and it is not for profit. If you have any questions and/or are unclear of these conditions email me at llkenne1@asu.edu