The Speculative Edge

The Speculative Edge
My story, Contest, was rejected today. I read a sample issue of The Speculative Edge and thought my story fit their guidelines, but I was wrong. The editor said "I however liked your writing style and have been looking for more flash fiction like this. If you have any other speculative stories around this length (300-800 words) I would be happy to take a look. If you have a couple that might fit, feel free to send me two or three."

Contest

The competition came to our little town every two years. Sponsored by the largest, information diffusion and outbreak detection center in the Northwest. The prize this year was ten thousand credits and a ramjet shuttle trip to Mumbai. Several of us had entered in previous years, but the group of us that hung around together never won, although Debbie placed second two years before.

We inserted our temporary ID tag and took the mover to the deck, three levels down. We moved into the auditorium and took our seats in front of the work stations. Anticipation was high, and we tried to appear nonchalant, knowing that our group were so close that everyone knew how the other’s felt.

The invigilator spoke to us for a few minutes, laying out the strict rules of engagement. We heard very precise and deliberate instructions, and a no-nonsense sternness painted everything else, including the invigilator’s suit, her glasses and accessories.

Three strangers excused themselves and left the auditorium. They offered some feeble excuses, but we all knew they had lost their nerve after sizing the rest of us up, and taking a peek at some of the equipment we brought with us.

Each of us were to have a turn, then as necessary, each of us would offer suggestions for improvements, deletions, methods of operation and so on.

A woman named Mary went first. She showed her device, put it through its paces, and running it full speed, and over-clocked, without any external cooling or venting. We were amazed, and Mary gloated. Don was next with his apparatus. It was almost at the limit of the size allowed, but it performed beautifully, and no one could detect any output errors at first inspection. Debbie was next. She based her appliance on an older, laser model she had shown before. This one was a little different. It was faster, seemed to pull power out of the air, and was extremely prolific. We didn’t have time to run any quality checks on the output, but we trusted that it did a good job. Billy Bob was next in order to demo his contrivance. He pulled it out of a sleek, fluted, nanotube case and plugged in a small, hydrogen fuel cell. It hummed for a few seconds and a flexible, oleophobic screen and lens slid out of the side to project a hundred or so lines of text on the far wall of the room. We all could see the text of the piece of science fiction he was working on. He fed his device a few more parameters, shut off the granny filters, and pressed a few buttons before a second piece of fiction was displayed on the wall. His optional hard copy device supplied a copy of the second piece for each of us to read and edit. There were no questions or comments. The Invigilator appeared, smiled, shook Billy Bob’s hand and awarded him the Grand Prix.

The winning piece of fiction was published within days. As previously agreed and attested to, Billy Bob was not allowed simultaneous submissions, so he and his machine were taken to the shredder, nearby.