He was never one to read between the lines. Until now, that is.
Fighting his way through some badly-written medieval sword-and-sorcery tale and barely surviving, his mind kept thinking up synonyms to the expression “cruel and unusual punishment.”
He never expected anything like this, when the judge said, “Book him.”
Vampires and zombies emerged at the same time.
Nobody knows why.
They fought for their main resource: live humans.
Eventually, none were left. The zombies and vampires stopped fighting, with nothing left to fight for.
Gradually, with no “food” left, both groups faded away.
Guess that’s a happy ending, right?
I sang my song, and the robot listened intently.
“Let me prove that I can play. Let me add a solo, at the end,” it asked.
I recorded its solo, mixed it in with the song, and we both listened to the results.
The robot seemed content.
I was uneasy.
Writer’s / composer’s / performer’s / music producer’s note: this is the version of the song I originally intended to post yesterday, but I needed help to produce the synth solo at the end, which is why the original version fades out, instead of reaching the original ending I’d recorded. I won’t take credit for the synthy addition, but the person who contributed them wishes to remain anonymous (but not out of shame, from what I can tell.)
Today, instead of a 50-word story, I offer you a 50-word song, which I composed, recorded and mixed today, all by myself.
Click the play button to hear the results:
Robots can’t play
Ukelele
Their fingers are all wrong
And they’re much too strong
They’d squeeze it too tight
Plus they can’t fly a kite
Robots can’t play
Ukelele
They don’t know ’bout melody
Mess up the harmony
They can get in the rhyth’um
But a uke isn’t a drum
“How does the defendant plead?”
Just then, the defendant got up and announced:
“Not guilty, your honor, on account of my wife not being dead after all!”
Before anyone could object, the doors to the courtroom flew open, and an obviously zombified woman walked in.
“My love!” said the defendant.
“Bees are cool.”
“What do you mean?”
He shows her the bee he’s holding.
“Well, look at this one. Iridescent wings, yellow and black stripes…”
“You’re weird.”
“Out of all the animals I’ve seen, bees are the most beautiful.”
“I guess beauty really is in the eye of the bee-holder.”
He’d killed himself so many times that all his jokes about suicide rang hollow in his heart.
But he soldiered on, moving along the probability axis, from one alternate universe to another, killing any of his alternate selves that he found had not lived as worthy a life as his.
The prints were confirmed authentic. Everyone handled the gun at one point or another.
Ballistics confirmed that that gun had shot them all. However, the gun itself had never been fired.
It was also proven that the drawer hadn’t been opened for fifty years.
The victims were all under fifty.
The last man on Earth died for the fifteenth time.
The machine jolted him back to life, repairing any damage within minutes.
It did everything to keep him happy, producing entertainment, stimulating conversations, and everything else it thought he needed.
But it could not give him a purpose.
Meaningless immortality.
“That woman has two vaginas! What the–”
“CUT! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” asked the director.
“Well, I thought the original line was a bit predictable, so I thought I might just–” said the actor.
“Play it as written!”
“I’m firing my agent tonight,” muttered the actor.