Tag Archive: Five Minute Escape


“Five-Minute Escape” short-short story: The Contest”

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May 7, 2013

 

Mini adventures. Mini Sci-Fi. Mini History. Mini Fantasy. Mini-escapes. That’s what you can expect from the “Five-Minute Escape” short-short story!

TIME: Before. PLACE: Far Away

EVENT: “THE CONTEST”

“Prepare to be terminated, TX17!”

The cyborg Zarg swung slowly around his opponent looking for an opening. TX17 stared back silently, the ‘bot’s body crouching, menacing, poised for a swing.

Zarg struck first, landing a glancing blow on TX17’s shoulder. TX17 laughed. “I would have expected better of you Zarg. You’ve grown weak since our last encounter. Perhaps you rely too much on the other?”

“Just limbering up, TX17,” said Zarg. “I will not be defeated. The fate of my people depends on me. They have told me so.”

TX17 laughed again. “Your people? They care nothing for you, Zarg! You are expendable. You exist only for this contest. After I break you, your people will abandon you, fool! You are nothing to them. Nothing!”

Zarg snarled, feeling the pain, the truth of TX17’s words. Mindlessly, he waded forward, opening himself to attack in his rage. TX17 swung, clipping Zarg in the chest. Zarg grunted, feeling the shock in his composites. In a haze, he fired back a counter jab blindly. Missed. Retreated. Was hammered as he back-peddled.

“You grow careless, Zarg,” TX17 said, his voice menacing in its calm. “You let your anger direct you. In the end—now—it will defeat you.”

TX17 slid forward, smiling. A fist powered forward, connected, crashed. Stunned, Zarg wobbled. His right arm dangled uselessly. In desperation, he jabbed again. Missed again. Felt a punishing blow slam his forehead.

“Goodbye, Zarg,” he heard TX17 say. Then Zarg swung. He struck with all the strength remaining to him. He struck, his fear, his rage giving him extra strength. He struck for the controller who had already abandoned him, convinced of his defeat.

And connected.

With a joy that was almost religious in its fervor, Zarg watched as TX17’s red head popped up from his body.

He hoped the controller would be happy.

 

********

 

“Hey! What a gyp! How did you do that? You didn’t even have your hands on the joysticks!”

Bobby Espiranto stared down at the “Battlin’ ‘Bot’s” toy boxing ring and frowned. “I didn’t do anything, Johnny,” he said. “It must have popped a spring or something and clocked your ‘Bot by accident. Anyway, I won. I knocked your Bot’s block off.”

“Yeah, you cheated you mean,” said Johnny Franzen. “You taking your hands off the joysticks was just a way to make me drop my guard! I know a gyp when I see one!”

“Honest, I didn’t, Johnny-Boy. The crummy thing must be busted.”

“Well…all right. But don’t take your hands off next time till after I knock your block off, OK?”

“Deal,” said Bobby. “Say…you don’t suppose maybe it did it somehow? I mean, maybe it didn’t wanna lose, or something.”

Johnny laughed. “It’s a toy, dummy! Next you’ll be tellin’ me they have feelings. C’mon, dopey, lets go outside and play with something else.”

“Yeah, OK,” said Bobby. “Let’s go. Who needs this junky thing anyhow?”

 

THE END

For a really “Boss” clip showing the “Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot” toy in action, please visit the following site: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV7cx4cQOuU

 

ABOUT THIS BLOG…

Each “Five-Minute Escape“ short-short story in this blog series will be kept under 1500 words; most will clock in at about 500. The “Five-Minute Escape” short-short story will allow you to log on, take a fast trip, and get back quick to what you should have been doing in the first place…though hopefully the experience will stay with you long after you have moved on to something else. Subscribe to the blog and take a weekly…”Five-Minute Escape!”

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“Five-Minute Escape” short-short story: The Stampede”

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May 3, 2013

Mini adventures. Mini Sci-Fi. Mini History. Mini Fantasy. Mini-escapes. That’s what you can expect from the “Five-Minute Escape” short-short story!

TIME: April 17, 1869. PLACE: Midway to Abilene, Texas, riding the Chisholm Trail

EVENT: “THE STAMPEDE”

Copyright Terofil Gizelbach, 2013

 

Cutter never knew what spooked ‘em.

He only knew that a minute earlier the ground had exploded into a rumble, and that the dust had swirled up in night clouds cut with fleeting moonlit glimpses of galloping longhorns with lolling tongues and wide frightened eyes. There was no turning this herd: they came in a wall. A yell would be swallowed in the pounding of hooves like a yippee in a thunderstorm. A gunshot would only spook them to gallop faster. They would have to stretch themselves out.

Cutter bent to the saddle and was swept alongside, praying that his mount, Angel, had eyes better than his own, and that the palomino would be surefooted. Watch fer gopher holes, he urged her mentally, taking hold of the saddle horn. Don’t you step in no dang crack, Girl.

The chuck wagon loomed ahead, and Cutter saw Cookie diving for the safety of a buckboard. The stampede rushed past, stamping down bedrolls and saddles. Cooking utensils, pots, and dinners were obliterated into dust. Cutter cursed, and wove Angel through the debris. He heard the crack of a pistol ahead, saw the shadowy figure of another rider. Save yer dern ammo, Cutter thought. Aint nothin’ stoppin’ this skedaddle but a case of the tireds.

The stampede rumbled on, irresistible, surging. The rider was lost in veils of dust. Cutter heard no more shots.

The cattle swung right, angling between two thickets of mesquite. Angel stumbled, and Cutter jumped from the saddle as the horse went down. He hit on one knee, felt a jabbing pain. Angel righted herself and was off, reins flopping wildly behind.

Cutter staggered up and began to run for the mesquites, feeling the rumble from the cows through the heels of his boots. A longhorn brushed by him, catching his shirt with a horn, then was swallowed by the stampede. Cutter ran in a hobble, cursing the stabbing pain. He saw an arm of the herd wheel in his direction, and he redoubled his efforts. He could smell them near, in a musk of hot, sweaty, frightened, and dusty.

Heedless of thorns, Cutter threw himself at the nearest mesquite. It was a small squatty thing, and Cutter prayed that it would shield him. He clambered up, the branches razoring his cheek. He could sense them coming—not by the sound, which was deafening—but by the trembling of the mesquite as he climbed.

The herd thundered past, parting, sweeping by in a mad rush that ended at the edge of a ravine some three miles distant.

The dust began to settle.

Cutter stared after the herd for a long moment, savoring the breath in his lungs. Then he went about the business of extricating himself from the thorns and branches of the mesquite, and cursing the ruination of his favorite shirt.

“You lookin’ fer fruit, Cutter?” drawled a voice from behind. “I might be plum wrong, but that don’t look like no dang apple tree to me.”

Cutter flushed. He’d hoped to recover his mount before being discovered. Wiping the blood and dirt from his face, he said: “Nah. Thought I’d have a climb here and have a look see. Never seen a stampede from a tree afore. Was mite interestin’. You oughta try her sometime, Spencer.”

The rider cracked a grin across a grizzled jaw and offered up a calloused hand. “I reckon I will sometime, Cutter. I just reckon I will.”

 

The End

 

(For more information about the Chisholm Trail, please try this excellent link:  http://www.kancoll.org/khq/1936/36_1_rossel.htm

ABOUT THIS BLOG…

Each “Five-Minute Escape“ short-short story in this blog series will be kept under 1500 words; most will clock in at about 500. The “Five-Minute Escape” short-short story will allow you to log on, take a fast trip, and get back quick to what you should have been doing in the first place…though hopefully the experience will stay with you long after you have moved on to something else. Subscribe to the blog and take a weekly…”Five-Minute Escape!”

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“Five-Minute Escape” short-short story: The Dream”

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May 1, 2013

Mini adventures. Mini Sci-Fi. Mini History. Mini Fantasy. Mini-escapes. That’s what you can expect from the “Five-Minute Escape” short-short story!

TIME: November 21, 1944. PLACE: Onboard a night train bound for San Diego.

EVENT: “THE DREAM”

 

The scent of her perfume woke him.

The train rocked gently. Track clacked away into the night. The window vibrated against his cheek. He was aware of her, like a dream, before he opened his eyes.

She stood five feet from him, in the aisle, her face lovely in profile, in the light that flashed intermittently from the windows. Her brown hair curled over her shoulders, golden with highlights. She wore an expensive evening dress, a mystery in coach. He could feel her sadness.

He watched her sleepily, through half lashes, inexplicably loving her, even though five minutes before he had not known of her existence.

She turned and sat three seats up, clenching a magazine, which she twisted in nervous hands. She stared out the window, into the darkness, the softness of her cheek beckoning. In the loneliness of the deserted car she filled his heart.

Who was she? What was she doing here? He closed his eyes, imagining her, imagining being with her. Wishing that there was no war, no Marines. Wishing that his leave was beginning, not ending, and that he wasn’t due on base in the morning…

A station clanged past. He awoke with a start.

She was gone.

He went to her seat. Found her discarded magazine. Took it, held it gently. Sat in her seat, missing her. Wishing that he had talked to her. Comforted her. Known her.

For a long time, he stared out her window into the dark, holding the magazine. He could still smell her perfume on the pages.

 

THE END

(For more information about troop movement on trains during World War II, please check out this excellent link: http://www.cwrr.com/Lounge/Stories/troops/troops.html)

 

ABOUT THIS BLOG…

Each “Five-Minute Escape“ short-short story in this blog series will be kept under 1500 words; most will clock in at about 500. The “Five-Minute Escape” short-short story will allow you to log on, take a fast trip, and get back quick to what you should have been doing in the first place…though hopefully the experience will stay with you long after you have moved on to something else. Subscribe to the blog and take a weekly…”Five-Minute Escape!”

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“Five-Minute Escape” short-short story: Hack-Job

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April 27, 2013

Mini adventures. Mini Sci-Fi. Mini History. Mini Fantasy. Mini-escapes. That’s what you can expect from the “Five-Minute Escape” short-short story!

TIME: Stardate 2348. PLACE: Star Sector Poluria onboard the Star Freighter “Tiberias”

EVENT: “HACK-JOB”

Kill a rogue E-5 Unit before it takes out the ten crewman trapped on the Hangar deck…Great. Ask me something easy, Security Officer Cash thought as he checked the load in his autogun. Twenty rounds, nitro-tipped. Enough to cut through anything but a ship’s hull. Enough to knock down an E-5. Even a hack-job that had killed two crewmen. If he could catch it napping…

Like all “aware” machinery, the E-5 Loader was docile normally. But somebody had altered this one’s programming. No brainer, probably a competing corporate council. Shut down the interplanetary transports and you shut down the corporation.

Cash shuffled forward, sweat trickling into his eyes. He ran a sleeve across his forehead. Soldiering was not really in his line. He was a security officer—but of the online kind, protecting the ship’s computers. He listened for the E5 as he moved, heard the deck plates thrumming ominously with vibrations from the ion propulsion unit in the engineering deck below. He rounded a corner, autogun poised, checking the corridor outside the hangar first with his intel-cam. Blue halls, exposed aluminum flooring…a body, sprawled across the deck. Victim number three. Cash nudged the man with his boot, checking for signs of life.

“Crewman down by airlock 2B. Talk to me, Bridge, I need intel–”

“Roger, the E5’s in Hangar bay 2-B, turning your direction,” his earpiece crackled back urgently. “Twenty meters and closing–”

So close. He stared pensively at the sign for hangar bay 2B. Paused his finger above its air lock release button. E-5’s weren’t conventionally armed; it had killed using its loading grippers. But if it’s waiting on the other side…

Cash triggered the hatch release button and darted into the hangar. He had a brief glimpse of towering shuttles, piles of machinery, shadows. The door clanged behind. Cash spun involuntarily at the noise, knowing even as he did so that it was a mistake. He felt himself being lifted; was hurled four meters to the deck, losing his autogun.

Cash rolled, grunting in pain as his arm flopped unnaturally beneath him. The  autogun—There! A meter, maybe less. The E-5—

Attacking. Treads spinning, it bore down upon him. Grippers extended. 450 man-killing kilograms of steel, reaching­–

Cash lunged for his weapon, moaning. The E-5’s gripper snapped down on his injured arm. With his left hand he clawed up the autogun, braced it against the deck.

“Trigger, pull, autofire—”

“Now! Now!” Explosions ripped through the hangar. Metal chunks flew from the E-5 in mini starbursts. The machine lurched, its vis-sensors blinking, its “brain” housing disintegrating into fragments. Cash grunted; shrapnel tore his shoulder. “He forced the autogun back on target, two rounds tipping the unit. Trigger, trigger, trigger, die, dammit, die! He fired, gritting his teeth, feeding more shots into the thing’s steel underbelly…until, after a second or two, the weapon clicked to empty and flames consumed the Loader.

I got it…got it…

He regarded the loader, remembering how to breathe. A lone vis-sensor stared back from the wreckage, wreathed in smoke. Firelight played off Cash’s fatigues and illuminated the shuttles looming overhead.

“I don’t understand,” said Cash over the crackle of the flames. “Why hack an E-5, one lousy E-5? Why not just hack the entire ship? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t m—”

He stiffened as, almost in answer, the vibrations from the ion propulsion unit in the engineering deck below ceased. Behind him, the airlock doors slid open. A generator hummed to life. With agonizing slowness, the hangar doors opened. He turned, watching the black slit between widening, yawning…

A diversion. The E-5 was nothing but a diversion to keep me busy.

Cash stared into deep space as air rushed from the ship. He whispered “No…” when the endless night poured in upon him.

The stars beyond were very cold.

 

 

THE END

(For more information about industrial robots, please check out this excellent link: http://www.learnaboutrobots.com/industrial.htm)

ABOUT THIS BLOG…

Each “Five-Minute Escape“ short-short story in this blog series will be kept under 1500 words; most will clock in at about 500. The “Five-Minute Escape” short-short story will allow you to log on, take a fast trip, and get back quick to what you should have been doing in the first place…though hopefully the experience will stay with you long after you have moved on to something else. Subscribe to the blog and take a weekly…”Five-Minute Escape!”

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“Five-Minute Escape” short-short story: The Surrender

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March 19, 2013

Mini adventures. Mini Sci-Fi. Mini History. Mini Fantasy. Mini-escapes. That’s what you can expect from the “Five-Minute Escape” short-short story!

 

 TIME: SEPTEMBER 2, 1945. PLACE: THE SOUTH PACIFIC.

EVENT: THE SURRENDER.

 

THE great four-engined bomber, Sally Jo, droned in darkness towards its island base on Tinian. It’s bombardier, a thin, square-faced man, crouched at his post in the Plexiglas nose of the bomber and stared out at the formation. The silhouettes of over four hundred and fifty planes, B-29s all. 4500 men boring through the night in silver, blunt-nosed bullets.

The Pacific rolled in silence below, an indigo sheet cut by phosphorescent wave ribbons. A haze of clouds obscured the moon in grey wisps. The miles ticked by at three-hundred mph, unnoticed save by the plane’s navigator and the hands on the clock. Stillness hung in the pressurized cabin with the burn of stale coffee, for the men in the Sally Jo were tired. They had been flying formation for over fourteen hours. And they would fly for maybe two hours more, on this, the longest and last mission of the war…

“I’ve never seen so many ships,” the bombardier remarked, almost to himself. “Battleships, heavy and light cruisers, destroyers, carriers, cargo ships, transports, landing barges—maybe the whole damn navy crammed into Tokyo Bay. I felt…small, just being a part of it.”

“Don’t forget the hospital ships. They were large enough,” said the copilot bitterly, picturing the thousands of downed airmen and prisoners, beaten, diseased, and broken, awaiting transport back to the states. Victims—and yet at least they were alive. The copilot’s brother had had bled to death on Saipan.

The pilot shifted in his seat. “I remember the Missouri, with our sailors in dress whites lined up on deck,” he said, sipping cold coffee. “I saw the flag as we flew over. Our flag, flying over the surrender. God, what a beautiful thing that was: “Old Glory”…in Tokyo Bay.” He added almost in a whisper. The pilot had a child back home he had never seen.

“So now we go home,” said the copilot, frowning, thinking of his parents and the son that would never return.

“Home,” echoed the pilot, smiling.

““Maybe it will be different now,” said the bombardier after a time, staring at the bombsight, and wondering how many had died in fire below.

“Maybe,” said the copilot doubtfully.

“It’d better be,” said the pilot, remembering the bomb, the blackened ruins of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and a hundred other cities. “Next time won’t be so easy.”

“This time wasn’t so easy,” said the copilot.

The pilot sighed. “No. No, it wasn’t at that. It was damned hard. But it’s over.”

The bombardier shook his head. “No…no, it isn’t. Not yet,” he said, and working the guns began to fire into Pacific, the hammering of the turrets above and below vibrating the plane. He fired, not in short controlled bursts, but in one long lone steady stream, eating up the cartridges, emptying the magazines. And ahead–and behind–one by one, in the other planes other guns began to fire too, their ammo belts whirring and draining in sustained bursts. .50 caliber fire streamed into the night, arced, and was extinguished in the ocean. Until, at last, gun after gun blinked to silence, and the night fell again to the droning of radial engines.

“For peace,” said the Bombardier, still working the bombsight in his mind.

Peace,” said the pilot, imagining his child in his arms, and fearing for the future.

“Peace,” said the copilot, praying to a grave on Saipan…and, because the pilot was wrong, for his parents…

And the crew of the Sally Jo.

For whom the war would never entirely end.

 

The End

(For more information on the B-29 bomber and the men who flew them, please check out this excellent link: http://b-29.org/)

ABOUT THIS BLOG…

Each “Five-Minute Escape“ short-short story in this blog series will be kept under 1500 words; most will clock in at about 500. The “Five-Minute Escape” short-short story will allow you to log on, take a fast trip, and get back quick to what you should have been doing in the first place…though hopefully the experience will stay with you long after you have moved on to something else. Subscribe to the blog and take a weekly…”Five-Minute Escape!”

 

 

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