[400 words]
The Favorite Breakfast Spot
The specials are not just whatever is lying about in great quantity – but have thought rolled into them and an appeal patrons appreciate. Then someone set the place on fire. People not eating there watch from across the street as Dotty, the old, kind waitress, brings eggs and ham, or pancakes and sausage, to diners who are, if not already alight, beginning to curl up at their edges, as does anything bout to burst into flame. We would call the fire department, but the clientele appears so satisfied it could be an imposition. But the arsonist is likely amongst us.
The Search for Meaning
Individual oboists, separated from their herd, are not intolerable. A lone oboists will still cast notes, sometimes creating bars of recognized melodies, usually engendering wanton dis-harmonies. One alone, though, is manageable. It is the great numbers of the herd, the clashing of disparate tones, cadences and rhythms, that produces power and danger. Ordinary musicians are swallowed by them. Those who only own instruments for status are humbled by them. But a solitary oboist – he can be defeated by a transistor radio. Or a child, fumbling a song. Or a church choir, even one that does not believe God is listening.
Variables
It is agreed that our volcano will explode the second Thursday every month, except December. December is a late shopping month, and taking time out for a volcanic eruption would inconvenience too many, put an unrecoverable hole in retail commerce. Not every monthly Thursday event will produce lava, but we mark the farthest extent lava might flow. The amount of ash is more mercurial, but it is ordered that by midnight the Thursday of the eruption, skies will again be clear. Whether or not eruption day will be a holiday is undecided, but calendar makers are testing pithy holiday names.
Welcoming Automation
Townspeople begin to disappear. Not openly, but in privacy. One day a neighbor is on a porch. The neighbor goes indoors. The neighbor is never seen again. Spouses travel door to door looking for their husbands, wives, children. Fewer people are on the sidewalks. Some houses take on an unattended look. Town parking is more available. Quibble has not been to the grocery mart recently, but imagines the check-out line will be less extreme, if not too many clerks have vanished. Vanishing clerks, not fewer customers, is an argument for self-service check-out. Perhaps the only argument Quibble can think of.
The latest of Ken Poyner’s twelve collections of poetry and flash fiction is “Science Is Not Enough,” speculative poetry. He lives in the lower right-hand corner of Virginia, and is married to a world champion female power lifter. He spent 33 years herding computers. See him in “Analog”, “Asimov’s”, “Café Irreal”, “Blue Unicorn” and another hundred or so places. www.kpoyner.com.
