My Favourite Book of Stories
Editor’s note: Original books which survived into the new calendar era have become expensive to restore – or insure – and are necessarily restricted to Alpha-class citizens only. The fact that certain of our heroes insisted on retaining a ‘liberated’ paper copy can perhaps be excused. And although protective gloves are strongly advised, page-turning still holds a charm of its own.

Cally checked herself: she should not be doing this! But her duty watch on the flight deck was done: the down-time was her own. Sleep was impossible – the temptation was too strong. She needed to immerse herself in that other world again, to thread her own psyche into those past, fictional lives and ask herself – what if it was me?

That was the point of the exercise, surely? As a telepath, she could never know what it was to be human, forever separate from others. It needed a special key to open the door of that unknowable experience, and she had found it in the work of human writers. Certainly not all. Only a few. And of them, the one to which she kept returning wrote for children – supposedly, though sometimes it felt..universal?



Cally had no experience of young humans, for whom life was apparently a constant and intensely individual adventure of discovery: no past, no future, only the now. So unlike her own childhood! She found it addictive, intoxicating. But it was not something she wanted to share, not even with her close friends.

From the bottom of her storage unit she retrieved the box and gently unwrapped her illicit treasure. Having checked that the cabin door was locked, she curled up on the bunk, opened the book at random and read again,
"They might or they might not," said Winnie-the-Pooh. "You never can tell with bees."

Genuine question: does anyone read my ficlets? No problem if the answer's 'no', but it'd be good to know if they're surplus to requirements so I'd don't fritter away any more time on them.

I always read the ficlets I like to see how others use the prompts to form an idea.
And I've read the others this month and it seems we are all on the same wavelength....muggins here was going to have our heroes find a book depositary...and you guessed it, all the books mentioned by the others were in it...I even thought of a whole shelf load of Reader's Digest Editions!!! Which I have in abundance in my own house!!!!

Congrats to all.