Hole Punch by Simmons, Garth (the dot read aloud TXT) 📕

The sheriff paced back and forth with measured triumph.

"Through clever investigation we found you: after someone called us to tell us where you were! Another victory to the Martian Police and to me! For solving the Troubling Case Of The Martian Night Prowler!”

PERSPEX

I sat in my bedroom and looked at the special lamp I had gotten for Christmas.

If I turned the dial to the left a piece of green perspex moved over the light.

If I turned the dial to the right a piece of red perspex moved over the light.

Left = green.

Right = red.

Left = green.

Right = red.

Left = green.

Right = red.

I liked holding the dial halfway to create a half red or half green light.

I liked turning it back and forth so that it changed colour fast.

I liked how it clicked and how it changed colour.

UNFIXED

The city is swallowed deep in the walking anti-centre of the New Abstraction. The city is dead but it has living ghosts or fragmentary non-people. The warp an imposition through and over blurred architecture fragments of reason.

They remember science, order, structure and logic. All of these are now crushed and stretched. Imploded and exploded. No more assumptions. They've been carved apart. They cannot be measured anymore.

At random moments on the curve of the Clockwise Periphery, they hear something laughing backwards, a sidewards gash in the swirl of All-Sworling.

NEW WORLD DISORDER

The mobile phone shop was still there, standing intact between the other commercial derelicts. This was where Carlos had met his wife twenty years ago.

Carlos remembered the sales assistant that gave him the best deal of his life: a marriage, two children and a new Samsung with sixty minutes of free phone calls per month and unlimited text messages.

Carlos wiped away a tear with the stump of his hand.

This shop was once a gleaming place of products, customer service and salesmanship. Now it was just a derelict. An empty nothing.

Two teenage toughs stepped out of the empty nothing and grinned at Carlos. They had nose rings, dyed hair and swastika tattoos.

“Hey old man, I'm Captain What You Doing Here and this is Corporal Hold Still Whilst We Kill You.”

Carlos tried to run but his weak knees didn't take him far. Captain What You Doing Here shoved Carlos to the floor and punched him in the face. Corporal Hold Still Whilst We Kill You poured gasoline on him.

“You can't outrun the New World Disorder!” laughed Captain What Are You Doing Here.

As Carlos burned he tried to imagine a world in which consumer interests had been protected. A world where we can all hold hands and shop for shoes.

LORD GOD WORM

Lord God Worm was fat on muck and lived on the top of the sludge heap. All the other worms were hungry and beneath him.

"Please help us get to the top.”

"You can only get to the top if you follow your heart and not your needs," said Lord God Worm.

The worms simpered and begged and tried to climb up to the top of the heap. They slipped back to the bottom of the heap. Over and over again.

“How did you get to the top of the heap Lord God Worm?”

“It is not for me to explain how. It is for you to understand. Search within yourselves,” said Lord God Worm.

They tried to climb the sludge heap to get closer to Lord God Worm.

“You need to listen more and speak less, you need to care less about work and more about each other.”

These were words to climb by.

"When you think everything is someone else's fault, you will suffer a lot. When you realise that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy."

SERIOUS AND CREATIVE

Dave Beard, a bartender of the most serious bar in the creative quarter, showed off his creative tattoo as he seriously pulled a pint of serious Hoegaarden. He seriously clonked the pint of Hoegaarden on the serious bar in front of his serious and creative colleague: Keith Tattoo, who was seriously showing off his creative, serious beard.

"You working Saturday?" asked Dave Beard seriously, as he used his dishcloth to give the beer taps a creative but serious scrubbing.

"I am working Saturday, but I can make it out afterwards," answered Keith Tattoo seriously.

"Where are you working?" asked Dave Beard seriously.

"I work here," answered Keith Tattoo seriously.

"Where are you drinking afterwards?" asked Dave Beard seriously.

"I'm going to drink here," answered Keith Tattoo.

Seriously he swigged his serious ale. Seriously wiping away the foam from his mouth and in doing so showing off his creative, serious tattoo.

WAR BRICK

The Earth Empire War Brick pummelled through hyperspace. Sirens blared down its corridors.

“IMMINENT EMERGENCE FROM THE HYPERFUNNEL!” announced the massive black speakers.

“Oh crumbs.” said the wart dwarf engineer with his head in the fusion compartment. “I’m not sure I'll be able to fix these weapons on time.”

“PREPARE ALL FUSION CANNONS FOR IMMEDIATE BOMBARDMENT OF THE WEAKLING, ALIEN FREAKS!”

“Come on, come on,” said the wart dwarf engineer as he fumbled with some wires and loose parts.

Green lights glared into life within the fusion compartment.

“All systems go!” shouted the wart dwarf engineer.

* * *

Four hours later, the wart dwarf engineer stood with his mother: a tooth in a Petri dish. They looked out of their cabin window. It was a beautiful thing to see, the bombardment of an alien world. The wart dwarf engineer downed a shot Xerozine-Z.

“Good thing they had me on this War Brick!”

His tooth mother proudly decayed in her Petri dish.

SECRET SANTA

In the afternoon meeting today it is difficult to suppress my laughter as the news gets shared that ten people from "our team" will be made redundant in April. This will really ruin the Christmas cheer in the office.

I look at them, sat around the meeting room table, their faces like cockroaches trying