The President grinned impishly. “Life in the fishbowl. Just smile and wave, Jessica. Smile and wave!”

New Year's Eve

By Melanie E.

Originally posted to the BCTS Patreon on December 31st, 2022

“Good morning, everyone,” Allan- my university lecturer- says as I (and no doubt all of the other students on my course) get my notepad out. “I’ll let you all have a couple of minutes to get set up, then we’ll begin.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” I say, mirroring the sad smile of the long-haired girl on my phone screen.

“Yeah,” Leanne sighs sadly. “I should be getting to work too in the next couple of minutes. Well, not technically ‘getting to’, but you know what I mean, right?”

“Bein’ a girl doesn’t mean you need to be a victim.”

“Uh huh,” Dr. Singh said, his voice indicating deep skepticism. “Officer Wolf also wrote that you claimed to be a missing professor of something or other.”

“That’s ‘Distinguished Professor of Something-or-Other’ to you,” I said indignantly.

In a world without women, the trans woman is Queen. Taken from the old saying "in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

No one knew who started it, but the Americans accused the Chinese and the Russians. Both of those countries accused each other. The Gynax virus had effectively wiped out 98% of women.

It was thought that it came from a mutated virus that was meant to mimic the beneficial effects of female hormones on the immune system. During the covid outbreak, more women recovered than men, and fewer were hospitalized.

Fathers
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

I found a canoe. I had taken a job for a few days cleaning out an old shed behind a house on the shore bought by somebody in the city. The realtor said that I could stay in the basement under the house for a few days and earn some cash for emptying the contents of the shed into a dumpster, sweeping the floors and wiping the place down.

I pulled the front door open with a jerk, surprising an imposing man with a completely bald head just as he was about to hit the door again. “If you say anything about knockers, you’re a dead man!” I growled.

Collateral
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

I was on holiday on my own. I had broken up with my girlfriend holly and I decided to drive my car all the way down to Cabo – just time on the road to clear my head. I just wanted to go somewhere where the booze was cheap and forget everything. I just jumped in and drove and drove.

“Do not open or scan battery,” Worm replied in his flatest voice.

“What will happen if we do?”

“Boom,” he said.

Wildman’s Wife
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

I reached into my purse and flipped him my drivers’ license. “That’s me,” I said. “Or was, up until a month ago. I have sixty years of memories to go with the photo. If I was scammed, the scammers are the functional equivalent of an advanced species. And there’s no way that I could ‘delude’ myself into a working knowledge of Old English, Norman French, Greek, Classical Latin, Church Latin and Hochdeutch, with a smattering of other languages besides.”

Third Wife
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

I had always had long hair. My mother let me grow it. She said that she had long hair when she was younger but cut it when she had children. She liked to brush it.

At high school I wore it in a long braid oiled so that it did not have too much volume. After it was washed it would gain volume and look like girl’s hair, which was not a look I wanted. It was interested in girls and so I wanted to be masculine. In fact, girls used to like to play with my hair.

Smalltown Heroine
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

I was always a small-town kid. I was brought up by loving parents in a small town in Alabama. We had not much money, but what we had was enough. I played with local kids, just like any other boy. It was just that I was a little different.

I say ‘a little different’, because it was never a major thing for me. I liked to think of Crystal as an imaginary friend, like maybe every other only child has. It was just that she was a girl, and she was part of me.

Author retains all rights to this original work of fiction.

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Friday, June 8th, 4:51 p.m., Phoenix, Arizona
Getting back to the office turned out to be a quicker trip than I thought it would be, though I had to use Lyft first to get my car from the police station. This late in the day, the office was almost empty, and my attempt to find Valerie and recruit her in my quest to deal with Gabriella fell way short. She'd gone home for the day due to a sick child. Damn it!

The author retains all rights to this original work of fiction.

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Ask the Right Questions, Chapter 1 of 6

--- Six years and 5 days ago ---

June 3rd, 20:23 local time, Patsah Melah, Afghanistan
I had been connected on and off to the SAT-Link laptop since arriving an hour ago at our position on the outskirts of Patsah Melah. Colonel Flagg's delegation was just east of our position over the Afghanistan/Pakistan border and had arrived about three hours ahead of our making it to Patsah Melah.

Gregory attempts to get answers to what is happening to him.

I was starting to think that a Distinguished Professor of Linguistics ought to be able to come up with something more penetrating, more insightful, or at very least more likely to generate an informative response from others. Not that my use of “what” as an interrogative pronoun was in any way improper, of course. I was just surrounded by idiots.