The siege of the bank had been going on for hours. Scores of police blocked off the street, and on top of a nearby building a TV news crew broadcast the standoff to a waiting nation.

Then the crew noticed movement. A young woman, dressed in a black skirt,leather vest, and Doc Martins, wearing headphones, was making her way through the police lines. She spoke to no-one, but no-one tried to stop her. She walked up to the front door of the bank, and went inside.

After a few minutes, the bank robbers and the hostages all started filing out, most of them with their heads hung low, some crying. One of the bank robbers raised a gun to his own head, and then just gave up, dropped it, and sat down, head in his hands.

From the flanks, the police moved in and secured everyone. The police in the centre did nothing at all. A few of them had likewise sat down and appeared to be oblivious to what was going on around them.

The news crews closed in.

Getting a coherent story out of anyone proved difficult. Most people just asked what the point was. Some shrugged and said nothing at all. Eventually the news crews pieced together what had happened. Wherever the young woman had walked, people around her were struck with a sense of hopelessness, despair, or just all consuming apathy. Those on the edges were least affected, those closest, the most.

The rooftop news crew kept watch as the crowds slowly dispersed. After an hour or so the mystery woman walked out, looked around, looked up at the news crew and gave them the finger. Then she walked off, the world just a little greyer and duller as she passed.

The city had a new hero. The Goth. And she didn't care.

#Goth #Superhero #SFF #SF #microfic #tootfic #microfiction #IAmWriting

The siege of the bank had been going on for hours. Scores of police blocked off the street, and on top of a nearby building a TV news crew broadcast the standoff to a waiting nation.

Then the crew noticed movement. A young woman, dressed in a black skirt,leather vest, and Doc Martins, wearing headphones, was making her way through the police lines. She spoke to no-one, but no-one tried to stop her. She walked up to the front door of the bank, and went inside.

After a few minutes, the bank robbers and the hostages all started filing out, most of them with their heads hung low, some crying. One of the bank robbers raised a gun to his own head, and then just gave up, dropped it, and sat down, head in his hands.

From the flanks, the police moved in and secured everyone. The police in the centre did nothing at all. A few of them had likewise sat down and appeared to be oblivious to what was going on around them.

The news crews closed in.

Getting a coherent story out of anyone proved difficult. Most people just asked what the point was. Some shrugged and said nothing at all. Eventually the news crews pieced together what had happened. Wherever the young woman had walked, people around her were struck with a sense of hopelessness, despair, or just all consuming apathy. Those on the edges were least affected, those closest, the most.

The rooftop news crew kept watch as the crowds slowly dispersed. After an hour or so the mystery woman walked out, looked around, looked up at the news crew and gave them the finger. Then she walked off, the world just a little greyer and duller as she passed.

The city had a new hero. The Goth. And she didn't care.

#Goth #Superhero #SFF #SF #microfic #tootfic #microfiction #IAmWriting

"This artifact must be extremely old, the inscriptions on it are written in the language of the Gods."

"Really? Wow, Aramaic? Egyptian? Sanskrit?"

"No, perl."

#microfic

It started slowly.

Seattle-based companies made the move to Vancouver, with generous re-location packages.

The Valley, bit by bit, moved northward, first capitalising on the cheaper real estate in Portland and Seattle, then joining the ex-SFats in Canada.

---

SoCal had crumbled a decade prior - the nexus of water-guzzling, power-sucking AIs that mimicked Hollywood actors only worked as long as there was water and power - and Hollywood actors to mimic.

The LA fires of '32 had destroyed so much infrastructure the city was broke - and dry.
And once they'd been cloned and recast as AI avatars of themselves, actors retired - on albeit reduced residuals. No-one flew to LAX with a dream and a cardigan. Those left were either ICE agents or Undocumented they hunted.

---

The Big Beautiful Bill had exactly the intended effect - an unbridgeable chasm between rich and poor. You either had capital or you died - usually from something preventable like gum disease or pneumonia.

Those with capital moved north.

Those who only had labour - human, devalued yet expensive, connective yet computed labour - stayed. Inflation grew. The $USD sank.

The future, as the Great Dismal wrote, was already here - it just wasn't evenly distributed.

Five eyes became three when Australia and Aotearoa ripped up ANZUS in '30. Canada followed and Starmer, enjoying an unprecedented fourth term in a time of turmoil, made it one in '31.

---

NoCal took a little longer - the vulture capitalists hanging on to the carrion of would-be unicorns, hoping to get a RoI.

After adding AI to everything, they had to enshittify to get a return. Inferencing a 5Q parameter model doesn't scale, even with a Redis cache the size of Sonoma county.

AI had, paradoxically, re-ignited the Open Source movement, who, determinists at heart, rejected the stochastic musings of the Bullshit Machines.

A team from Eleuther paired up with Wikipedia and dropped a reciprocal-licensed distilled RAG model that inferenced quicker than DeepSeek. They might have had help from CC Signals, who reached out to people interested in opening their information - but not for profit.

Then they used BitTorrent to do results caching. Inference cost dropped to marginal. A couple of big names saw, ahem, a slight decrease in market cap.

---

Anyway, enough of the history lesson!

We're delighted to welcome you to Victoria Island, the new headquarters of FAANG, Inc.

We've pivoted a little in the last few years, and now most of our work involves geo-engineering so we can stay under 3 degrees.

We like it here, and we hope you do, too.

#TootFic#AlternateHistory#MicroFic#MicroFiction