A whole world on a single page!
The short story morsels of One Page Worlds are flash fiction adventures of all flavors. Every Wednesday will feature a complete story in one page, or the first page of what could be a novel or novelette.
Sharing the fun and geekery is the best part of writing! Please tweet or comment with your guesses on what genre, character, and job is central to each tale. Enjoy touring new universes each week with One Page Worlds!
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Gods in the servers should have worried them more than ghosts.
Blinking, the fox’s Optical Interface switched over to Line. Radiant, weaving circuitry replaced polluted brown clouds and street slush in Sune’s vision. Racks and racks crammed with blue information huddled amid jaundiced power cords and tarnished telephone wires. Those colors, all visible through solid mass, indicated no flickering electric weapons nearby. Sune could see all the electronic goings on at VenRom Plaza and hear the depressing reality.
More O.I. users outbound now, Yuko sent. Watch for the—
You take me for a kit? Sune replied. Five guards with O.I. sets visible. Only one threatens. No electric weapons that matter. VenRom’s campus is almost too widely spread for a fox like me to hide in. Pinging their servers now. Acquisition in three. Departure in five.
Sune whipped his lone tail skyward, connecting essence with server. Information gushed into him from the blue racks in the VenRom building, chilling him, pressing on his awareness.
Switch to Real, Yuko doublesent. Guard with old weaponry inbound. You won’t see the gun.
Fur rippling, Sune almost chuffed while CEOs' most private records streamed into his mind. We are gods in the servers, tiny no longer. Your land belongs to us. It never didn’t. We shall rewrite laws and buy it with your own—
Yuko’s roar of a send wakened Sune. The fox switched his O.I. to Real. Rainwashed and filthy, the VenRom building loomed in place of the server racks and wiring Sune had gorged on. A burly security man with a sidearm rounded the dumpster and blinked.
The opaque lenses of the O.I. over his eyes retracted into his skull.
Sune tasted the information he needed and flicked his tail at the guard. Re-connecting with the man’s O.I. and forcing him into Line made his gunshots fly wide, echoing among corporate buildings.
Pumping his legs, Sune leapt the dumpster and wormed through the fencing. We have it, Yuko. Without you, I am a kit.