Recent trapphic:

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ALTERNATIVE HISTORY

Wind-dandies: Literary or kinematic phantasies supposing that the advances of our Steam Era occurred in ages past through use of wind-power.

* * *

‘In exchange for the natives’ labour, the Raj brings them education, culture, religion... nearly a fifth of English peasants are Hindu now.’

* * *

Within the reservation my badge meant nothing. The tribal authorities ran the show. ‘You’re on Catuvellauni land now, Quaestor,’ I muttered.

* * *

‘InterTime Inc suppresses one technology per history, as a visual marker. Streetlamps, staplers, fridges... one world even has no airships.’

* * *

Our sky-craft’s snake-prow glints proudly / As we stand sturdy on Tiw’s red world. / Bronze bowmen hail us, bragging of Horus. / We fight...

* * *

From the London Wall to the Tokyo Towers: the rise of Christian terrorism after Offenheit in the Third Reich, by Hirohito Gordon – GB¥ 49.95

* * *

By taking a fifth wife, Henry VIII precipitated the gravest religious crisis in England since Saladin’s conversion of Richard the Lionheart.

* * *

With the Confederacy and the Mexica allied and Vinland strictly neutral, the Union appealed to Alaska. But would the Tsar assist communists?

* * *

After Rome fell, Europe held no further challenges for Alexander. The old man stood at the Pillars of Hercules and gazed speculatively west.

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BIOTECHNOLOGY

(See also ‘Posthuman Arcana’)

‘Eternal life, somatic control – they needed to rebel somehow. Odd though, the young hobbling down the streets, wrinkled and silver-haired.’

* * *

39yo w m, 5’3” 180lb ,seeks petite, buxom w / asian f, 18-25, for regular bodyswap (12hr / week, 7pm Sat - 7am Sun). No time wasters please.

* * *

‘Common though it once was, since the 2019 pheromone warhead assault on Los Angeles the phrase “Hollywood sex bomb” has fallen into disuse.’

* * *

The CEO of Andros Industries built the company up from nothing. Technology, machinery, employees: he created them all. He’s a self-made man.

* * *

The dyslexic shapeshifter had thoroughly researched humanity. She only betrayed herself when, in a moment of distress, she burst into teats.

* * *

‘So-called pregnancy is no more than the body’s glands preparing for breastfeeding. The Stork sends us ultrasound images to test our faith.’

* * *

Bible-believing-Christian sequential hermaphrodite seeks similar for romance, cycle synchronisation, matrimony, alternating family headship.

* * *

Human-DNA encryption is secure but slow. One’s message must first travel physically, then go through adolescence before mating with the key.

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CYBERPUNK

Outside the immediate blast radius, the first reaction of hundreds of people was to attempt to look up ‘Electromagnetic Pulse’ on Wikipedia.

* * *

Now, piggybacking on solar emissions, my uploaded consciousness will carry his Gospel to the stars.
It’s true: Jesus wants me for a sunbeam.

* * *

‘Mom, can I get a proper BrainPlant? CHECK OUT MINDGAMES CASINO – IT’S LIKE HAVING VEGAS IN YOUR HEAD! The adware on this one really sucks.’

* * *

The late Pope’s upload was contesting his clone’s election, threatening a schism. Things got confusing when the original rose from the dead.

* * *

DISCLAIMER: As with any other household appliance, in the event of emergent sentience you will be considered your JoyGirl™’s legal guardian.

* * *

Irritated at how easy it is to fake a death in an era of animatronic replicants, Presley refuses to have his former son-in-law in the house.

* * *

The Singularity came and went. The emergent software gods annihilated each other in a twelve-picosecond Holy War. Only three humans noticed.

* * *

‘Nanobots build attobots to fix irregularities, and attobots build xontobots from structured singularities.’
‘Hmm. I’d make it about fleas.’

* * *

Nanoswarm Enforcement Drones infest surfaces as an oily film, or a fine velvety coating. Hence their nicknames – ‘the Filth’ and ‘the Fuzz’.

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THE EXOTIC WEAPONS DEALER

‘A gestalt gene-targeted nanovirus, programmed to take out the members of the House of Windsor in order of succession? Hmm. It’ll cost you.’

* * *

‘A meme-bomb to subvert your enemies, by making them believe they’re you? Hmm. Well, Mr Napoleon, I can’t guarantee it’ll work on everyone.’

* * *

‘Reverse-alchemical femtoware – to turn gold reserves to lead and crash every currency in the world? Right you are. How will you be paying?’

* * *

‘Against them? Hmm. Best bet’s a disinformation campaign to provoke widespread disbelief. Then start putting exploding teeth under pillows.’

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GODPLAY

After all he had seen during his grand tour of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, Dante was naturally perturbed when he died and went to the Bardo.

* * *

‘Is this Dr Faustus’s “Achieving Health through Well-Being” class?’
‘Sorry, the sign’s wrong – it’s “Achieving Wealth through Hell-Beings”.’

* * *

The creation myths have it all backward: in the divine realm, disorder is a priceless commodity. Our universe exists to manufacture entropy.

* * *

Following research into so-called Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosomal Adam, demonologists today claim to have identified Ectoplasmic Lilith.

* * *

Imprisoned in fleshy form I waxèd wroth, vowing divine vengeance against the mortals defying Me. Just like all the other babies on the ward.

* * *

My name is Edom Gomorrah, Forensic Theologian. When they tell me God is dead, I ask myself just one question. WHICH GOD, AND HOW DID HE DIE?

* * *

The Cosmic Overmind regrets that your local deity is undergoing routine maintenance. Normal responses to prayer will resume later this aeon.

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HORRORS

Diurnal amnesia is common in incipient lycanthropy. Some women learn of the condition only when an ultrasound scan reveals a litter of cubs.

* * *

I woke hungry. Nothing in the freezer seemed to satisfy me – I needed something more substantial. If I could just break out of the morgue...

* * *

Everyone has had a premonition of where they’ll be and what they’ll be doing when they hear that President Kennedy has risen from the grave.

* * *

‘A zombie master from the future? That’s... stupid.’ ‘You always said so,’ he smiled, pointing at the mute manservant he’d brought with him.

* * *

From his castle the King’s Sheriff bled the people dry, fearing an outlaw who would shoot a shaft of the living greenwood through his heart.

* * *

After the horrific Hilton-Lohan car crash, the Illuminati charged Dr Zev with reanimating the victims. He always did get those two mixed up.

* * *

They knew the doppelgänger must portend a death – but whose? The clones gazed at one another, their minds performing identical calculations.

* * *

It was late, they were drunk, and the shop promised magical talking tattoos. Steve chose the ‘MUM’ design. He comes home earlier these days.

* * *

‘Since that fateful coach crash,’ my father sighed, ‘your mother haunts us.’ Years later she came for me, reclaimed me for the living world.

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METAFICTION AND BAREFACED THEFT

‘Dual nationhood makes it feel like you don’t fit in anywhere. It’s even worse when your dad’s Lilliputian and your mum’s from Brobdingnag.’

* * *

More troubling for Prague’s pest controllers than citizens who turn into giant cockroaches are the insects who make the opposite transition.

* * *

‘It’s like my whole life’s nothing but a joke!’ lamented John.
Paddy and Angus nodded sympathetically, and steered him into the nearest bar.

* * *

‘Once I’d had the idea, the book wrote itself. After our creative differences and arguments about royalties, it erased itself out of spite.’

* * *

‘Our dear author wishes me to marry Mr. _______. Yet I confess myself unable to discern his name.’
‘Naturally. He is an illegible bachelor.’

* * *

‘We’ve tied his mind to an entirely new body. Subtle personality changes are to be –’ ‘I’m familiar with the bonding process, Q,’ snapped M.

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A MOTHER’S DAY TRIPTYCH

(sequence of three, 14 March 2010. Not narratively interconnected, and in no case autobiographical.)

I was always Daddy’s girl. Watching my daughter with him now, I understand your jealousy. It can’t be long until she finds the time machine.

* * *

We never met you, but we remember your resolve, your self-sacrifice... the loving pain of schism as you split yourself asunder, birthing us.

* * *

My mother: an arrangement of pipes and tubing, the comfort of a glass-fronted womb. The digital alembic in which my fathers’ DNA was merged.

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MYTHOGRAPHY

Galatea loved Pygmalion, but as a statue she had been at peace. After his death she bade farewell to their children and sought Medusa’s aid.

* * *

‘Aye, I’m a godherd. Got a pantheon in a peninsula down south. Good worship down there. Only problem’s stopping the randy buggers breeding.’

* * *

A drunken attendee in the bar leers at a flapping harpy. ‘Oi!’ her companion yells. ‘You got the horn for my bird?’ The satyr headbutts him.

* * *

After an incident with Bast and Jenny Mouse, Mr Higgledy Hedgehog’s Anthropomorphic Animals Club voted to bar Egyptian gods from membership.

* * *

‘The coffee beans are Faer Trade. I thought that was a typo, but some fell in the garden and... well, just don’t climb that tree out there.’

* * *

The queen of the fairies is a daughter of ancient gods, an elemental spirit of diamond-white metal. She resents ships being named after her.

* * *

The towed icebergs clash ponderously, crushing the baited longship, stunning our victim. Salted kraken will keep the colony alive for years.

* * *

At dusk the sphinx pride congregates, to bellow out their riddles in enigmatic territorial challenge. The cubs join in with elementary puns.

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SLIPSTREAM AND MISCELLANY

‘Miaow,’ opined the Animal Biologist. The Inorganic Chemist sat stony-faced. So far none of the attendees had met the Theoretical Physicist.

* * *

‘Hey – I can teleport!’ ‘But at short range, with a delay, not through objects and it tires you out?’ ‘Well, at least I don't have to walk.’

* * *

In Stabilan law, irrevocably changing a person equates to killing them. Children are sentenced to education for the murder of their parents.

* * *

‘Hey – I can teleport!’
‘But at short range, with a delay, not through objects and it tires you out?’
‘Well, at least I don't have to walk.’

* * *

One day all the immigrants, and all the people descended from immigrants, went home. The area around the Olduvai Gorge became quite crowded.

* * *

‘Sasquatch was a term assigned by Europeans. Yeti is inaccurate, and Bigfoot is frankly offensive. I think of myself as a Hominid-American.’

* * *

The starship’s shaman repairs the damaged zombies but cannot help the injured crewmen. ‘I’m a magician, not a doctor!’ He rattles his bones.

* * *

Now biologically extinct, the giraffe had migrated to a new, conceptual niche. As children's toys they were everywhere. And they were angry.

* * *

Just as ancient stone circles acted as primitive computers, archaeologists believe the Cerne Abbas Giant to have been an early form of spam.

* * *

The past is another country. We’ve been at war since they accused our historians of spying. In retaliation we interned everybody born there.

* * *

Layton’s a Hollywood casting consultant. He’s helped to cast films, votes, doubt, iron, spells, skins... His highest prices are for shadows.

* * *

‘Chemical symbol Lo, atomic number N, atomic weight... variable. The name “Lokium” arose because it was first discovered emulating thorium.’

* * *

Bookender’s Parasitic Beard: A form of contagious facial hair discovered by Dr Jezebel Bookender, somewhat to her embarrassment at the time.

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SPACETIME OPERA

Here lies Billy Joel Underton (1984-2011, 1947-1981) with his beloved wife Deborah (1925-2010). This monument erected by his son and father.

* * *

The Earth ambassador wore a dangling arrowhead of cloth, pointing at his genitals. I tried not to smirk as I farted the ceremonial greeting.

* * *

‘This the 1815 service to Waterloo – calling at Dunkirk in 1940, Ypres in 1915 and Strasbourg in 1870, before arriving at Waterloo in 1815.’

* * *

After careful analysis of human communications, Q’tx phrased hir initial contact in terms of weight loss and penis size. Oprah didn’t reply.

* * *

‘While the K’jax’th were away, we demolished their home planet and put in a new Dyson sphere. Let’s see what they think when they get back!’

* * *

The catastrophic increase in near-Earth asteroids on collision courses turned out to be attributable to the arrival of a cosmic poltergeist.

* * *

‘My story? Yeah, my wife and husband left me for another thremale. Hey babe, what are you and – oh, that guy over there, say – doing later?’

* * *

The colonists were flat-Earthers fleeing persecution for their beliefs. They made the transit blindfold, and settled on the Moon’s far side.

* * *

The Stipiri share certain biological habits with Earth's praying mantises. Their restaurant-brothels are best avoided by the casual tourist.

* * *

The NATA Sequence
(sequence of three, 15 April 2010):

NATA’s temponauts spent several missions clearing up ambiguities in the Constitution. Meanwhile the Soviets were visiting Trotsky’s parents.

Paranoid elements still argue that the original Past Missions were faked, by a foresighted conspiracy led by Benhamin Franklin in the 1780s.

UK temporal scientists have announced a plan to send a man back to yesterday lunchtime, to find out what Gordon Brown did with his car keys.

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VICTORIANA

‘It’s true,’ Alice conceded. ‘I can climb from a room into its mirror image. But however would my ability be useful to this Dr Van Helsing?’

* * *

‘This “Time Traveller” had the means, then. But whom did the dinosaurs’ extinction benefit?’
‘Watson, have you encountered Prof Challenger?’

* * *

The drug taken, I misgave. Jekyll had had but one inner self awaiting release. I, compounded from the corpses of many, might be outnumbered.

* * *

‘Yet history is fragile,’ the Time Traveller said. ‘Our forces might have won at Dorking, had the traitor Timothy Cratchit died in infancy.’

* * *

As the war of worlds rages they wait beneath. Surface-dwellers or invaders, the victors will be weary. The Vril-ya will win the coming race.

* * *

Victoriana Kaiju Special
(sequence of five, 22 May 2009):

‘Miss Liddell, it’s a 40-foot Megalosaurus! On Holborn Hill! And you propose to fight it off with nothing but a bottle labelled “DRINK ME”?’

‘Miss Liddell’s bravery notwithstanding, other crises call on us. A monstrous albino whale is locked in combat with a kraken in the Thames.’

‘A gigantic hound has been prowling Bloomsbury, while as we speak a creature described as “burbling and manxome” is ravaging Oxford Street.’

‘The Holborn Lizard hails from neither the Jurassic Era nor Challenger’s Plateau, nor yet from the Centre of the – am I boring you, Watson?’

‘I can only conclude that the Emperor of Japan has allied himself with a scientific specialist in monsters. I detect Moreau’s hand in this.’

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SIX-WORD STORIES

‘You teach, like, anthropology?’
‘No – lycanthropology.’

* * *

Oedipus Rex embarrassed his brother Tyrannosaurus.

* * *

Decimate: one tenth of a friend.

* * *

LITERARY VENDETTA – Amis Shoots Self, Self.

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