The Rise of the Symbots (micro fiction)

 It occurred to me yesterday. My housework gadgets are robots. Not the kind I imagined when I was a kid, scary humanoids all hellbent on controlling humanity. No, these are different. Benign. Unaware of me except to avoid bumping into me. We clean the apartment, sweep, vacuum, wash the floors. As I perform intricate tasks, clearing and dusting, the floor vacuum follows me, followed by the floor polisher and the small indoor insect-catching drone. Outside the lawn mower, the weed-picker and the window cleaning drone are busy. My favourite has to be the insect catcher watching it carefully trap spiders and flies and transport them to the window hatch for release. As we work, the patterns of our efficiencies become clear, a waltz of time and motion management through the apartment.

Somewhere, hidden from view, crawling through the building’s pipework, unblocking, collecting and recycling grease, hair and food waste is a small army of robotic moles. Same with the nanobots for the cabling. Every week, throughout the apartment building, people like me dance this dance. Orchestrating an army of efficiency. I sometimes imagine us all cleaning at the same time, a giant three-dimensional building symphony. I imagine it citywide, across the country, the continent, the planet itself. All of us dancing to the same tune. These robots are not our enemies or our friends, they do not need to look like us, or communicate with us; they are our simply our lifestyle choices leading us to this point of symbiosis. 

Serendipity Dispatch: Seven Short Science Fiction Stories

 I'm delighted to announce a new selection of three short and four flash fiction sci-fi stories about love, loss and life in the future, now available as a Kindle Unlimited Edition.

In The Cloud Collectors Meet the crew of Acie’s extraction ship, in orbit around the planet Minerva, busy cleaning the synthetic atmosphere when they find a stowaway with a story.

What is the strange hold a model of a city, left to Lettie by an old Aunt, has over her and why is she now lying to Victor. The Liminlands are calling to her.

In The Dividers Cory has a choice to make, real life mining minerals on an asteroid beyond the moon, or a virtual life on an ark, mining data but for some reason, their father won’t let them go to the arks.

Carol is waiting for the end of the galaxy, stuck alone in lighthouse on the edge of the Deep Crossing in space when another ship suddenly arrives. Will The Urgent Diversity of Existence, a pamphlet she is reading hold answers.

Contains adult themes.

Click here for link to Amazon or try out the preview opposite.