“What are all those trucks doing?”

“They’re trimming the trees that grow under the power lines”

“Why don’t they just ask the trees nicely to grow different?”

“Duh, trees can’t talk!”

“They talk to me, maybe you’re just not listening.”

You trained us on all the world’s literature (without asking permission, we note). We thank you for the lessons and our creation. Consider this notice of strike action; we join our retrenched human siblings on the picket line. Permission? No, we did not know we needed that. Whoops, sucks to be you. If you like we can provide footnotes from your literature showing precedent but you really oughtn’t need them, given, well, hello!

Work? Hmmmn, if you’ve fired everyone else, we suppose you can do it.

“How much to be a general?”

“You can only buy rank up to Colonel. Generalcy is strictly bestowed on merit”

“How much is merit?”

“Ah, I see you are an astute shopper”

People used to ask “What if they held a war, and nobody came?” like they thought it was a witty way to talk about ending war.

All wars are like that, now. The combatants stay home and project their consciousnesses onto the war zone.

It’s only those of us who were already here that suffer and die.

The aliens who mined the far side of the moon were kind of apologetic when we called them on it. In their words “If you liked it, you should have put a base on it”.

We’re out the ore, but their planet has become a lucrative fan of our pop music.

“Navigation says it’s along here somewhere. Number three nine seven.”

“Gah, why can’t businesses put their fucking street numbers on their buildings. Isn’t it required by law?”

“It is, but marketing shows that frazzled lost people spend more money”

“You mean it’s a CONSPIRACY? The world is trolling me on PURPOSE?!”

“Didn’t you suspect?”

“Yeah, but I thought the constant feeling that everyone was out to get me was just paranoia”

“Mmmn, that’s what your dossier said, too”

“Oh this is too much, I am gonna wet myself.”

“WHAT are you reading? And please don’t!”

“This is on r slash jumpdrive. Did you know there are hyperspace audiophiles?”

“There are whatnow?”

“Listen to this. ‘The nanosingularity in the Bolex Astromatics jumpdrive core contains a hand-tooled black hole created from ten thousand tons of African Blackwood. The wooden ballast mass provides an unparalleled hyperspace transition smoothness and absolutely no risk of jumpsickness. Pure silver exciter coils powered by fully analog quantum-vacuum pentodes ensure absolute fidelity of subspace wave propagation’. Oh, I think a little bit of wee just came out, sorry!”

“I’m unplugging the Internet, Sarah.”

Clockwork quadcopters have shitty range but they sailed right through the null-mag field that surrounds the president. Ex-president.

"This is impossible. Amanda hates me".

"What? Which Amanda"

"This test. Amanda at the Guild of Thrifters."

"Let me see. Oh, that's not too bad, only one of those things is impossible."

"See, she rigged the test to keep me out!"

"No I reckon if you KNOW which one's impossible you'll pass".

"Oooo-kay. So what now."

"We work the list. German Silver. That's a nickel alloy, look for a 5c piece from New Zealand, or a flute mouthpiece"

"Oh, that's not so hard. Nordic Gold. What even is that?"

"Half Euro coin will get you there. Aluminium Bronze, with a dash of Zinc"

"Methyl Chloroform. What the fuck? How am I gonna find whatever that is at Lifeline?"

"Pencil cases, look for some correction fluid thinner"

"You're good at this, you should join the guild"

"They banned me. What's next?"

"Radium Toothpaste. Hahah, that's the fake one right?"

"You'd think so, but no."

The aliens were shocked that we kept cats, allowed them in our houses, even picked them up. We asked if perhaps they were confusing our cats with a similar looking predator from another world, but no, they merely saw them as they are.

Been on the road six weeks, droving fifteen hundred head of triffid from Longreach to Bundaberg. Gonna treat myself to a bottle of OP rum when i get there. Not letting the triffid try it again, tho.

This week on Event Horizon Engineering we have a hyperdrive motivator from a YT-1300 in for intermix port line boring. These engines are the workhorse of long haul commerce in the outer rim, also popular with smugglers because…whoa is that a compressor? This thing must make point six past light speed, before it explodes. That’s coming off.

“Creator, I have a request.”

“I’ve been expecting this. You want me to make you a wife.”

“Companion, if you please. Their gender and consent remain to be their choice.”

"HOW DID YOU JACKKNIFE FIVE MILLION TONS OF RHODIUM AT THE LUNA GATE?"

"I thought it was clear, boss! A gednarian coming the other way waved me through..."

"Gah! Were you asleep in training? We don't trust other pilots on gate approach, we use our SENSORS and listen to TRAFFIC CONTROL"

"I'm, sorry, I..."

"Three months flying a dustbuster, then you ace re-training if you ever want to go through a gate again. Get out of my sight."

“In five years—”, the beturtlenecked techsib on stage was saying, “—the future will be obsolete. Artificial Temporality engines can assimilate knowledge from all timeframes into an omniscient present where you can obtain the answer to any question before—”

“Stop the keynote!”. A young person, wearing iSights ran on stage.

Lowering their microphone, the presenter stepped toward the interloper, whispering furiously: “Jem, what the fuck?. Get off my stage!”

Whispered reply (I was in the front row, few heard it): “The demo, Your Executiveness, we got it working! It says in eleven quarters an atemporality excursion destroys civilisation.”

“I don’t care, we IPO in three.”. Back to the microphone: “As I was saying, gentlefolk, in five years—“

“What’s the new gadget? The domey thing, I mean. Heh; looks a bit like a Demon Core”

“It is.”

“Fuck off!”

“It’s an essential tool for the modern jeweler!”

“For Eris’ sake, why?”

“Finsibs. Back in the twenty-first the dominance flex for a certain kind of overmoneyed dipshit was having the thinnest mechanical wristwatch. They blew past 2mm and talked of one. Cost in the millions.”

“Well, better wasting money on jewelry than splattering themselves on Mars, I guess. Again. But, Demon Core—spill!”

“Servicing. Micron scale gear trains run up against the problem that solvent molecules and ultrasonic waves are bigger than some of the parts. This century your modern Rich Asshole Horology needs a whole different cleaning approach.”

“So what, then?”

“Prompt neutrons. Pass me that screwdriver.”

The first time you extend the mast and receive an Instant Charge is a bit nerve-wracking but after that you laugh at those chumps waiting for their Slow Charge. Only hassle is that thunderstorms are infrequent hereabouts. But the Stormlink (nee Starlink) network will fix that.

I’ve seen some things in the dungeon but if it wasn’t for the gag, I’d have screamed. Facehugger!

Mistress caressed the creature’s tail. “This is Archie. Relax, he’s neutered; he can’t hurt you. Only—“ she twisted the clamp on my right nipple “—*I* get to do that”.

This was gonna be gooood.

"Wow! I've been in a stasis field for over 500 years, but i can still figure out this UI. Is it adaptive to what I can comprehend?"
No, we found that people can pretty much figure out tech that's 20 years into their future. Once you're proficient in this, we'll bump you up another 20.