Ain’t No Cure For Love

by SaraG

2145 AC

The Earl of Knutterbury got out of the time machine that the weird stranger had given him and entered the building with “Health.Inc” written in large neon letters over the portico. As soon as he wasn’t looking, the machine imploded silently and disappeared.

“I’ve got the disease of love,” he told the receptionist. The Earl was embarrassed to talk about such matters in front of a woman, even though her cleavage indicated that she wasn’t a lady.

“Ain’t no cure for that,” the girl laughed.

“I meant Venus’s disease.” The Earl saw the confused look in her face. “Syphilis!,” he shouted and blushed.

#

“Tertiary syphilis? Are you sure?,” the CEO of Health.Inc asked.

“Absolutely sir. There’s also some brain damage, which penicillin won’t reverse. Should we give him complete neuro-regenerative treatment?”

The CEO looked at his aide as if the man had lost his mind.

“Of course! The publicity is well worth the cost. Imagine, a nineteenth century gentleman, come to get treatment from Health.Inc. Besides, we have the contract to consider…” The contract stated that Health.Inc had to treat every human and household pet within the confines of the European Union. In exchange, they had been awarded the succulent biological arms contracts.

“Sir, please reconsider, what if more of these health tourists come? We can’t treat everyone!”

“Stop angsting. There won’t be any others. Random space-time anomaly, wasn’t that what the physics called it?”

“But his time-machine?”

“Doesn’t exist. Did anyone see him walking out of any time-machine? Where is it? Show it to me! Son, he has neurological damage, he’s probably seeing little green men.”

#

2434 AC

“Brilliant! What a trick, drowning them in medical refugees so they had to divert their funds from biological weapons. How the hell did you think of it?,” Brillo asked.

Aro leaned back in the semi-sentient chair and listened to it purr. Brillo was an idiot, but still, it was nice to be adored.

“It wasn’t so difficult. Come on, if you want, you can help me with the next intervention. Which century do you want, twentieth, or twenty-first? It’s up to you.”

The Boring Seed

by Kat Beyer

My uncle gave me a thunderstorm seed for my 14th birthday. I had just unwrapped three PS games (none of the cool ones, Mom didn’t want the violence to rot my moral fiber, whatever) and a Judy Blume book from my misguided Aunt Cheryl (hello, I’m a boy! What was she thinking?!). I picked up a tiny box next, and when I read Uncle Tom’s name in the card, I felt a jolt of disappointment: this was the uncle who had given me a power drill the year before, and frankly I was expecting something, well, bigger.

But I smiled my fake polite smile, which I have had plenty of chance to practice with six aunts and uncles and not enough kids to dilute their attention, and unwrapped the box.

At the exact moment that I opened the lid and saw the plain gray seed, about the same size as a cherry pit, my uncle said, “I know it looks kind of boring.”

“Yeah,” I said, relieved.

“Well, don’t be fooled when something comes in a boring package. Don’t touch it!”

I pulled my finger back.

“What is it?” I asked, automatically putting the box in Aunt Cheryl’s hand when she reached for it.

Each aunt examined it, nodding solemnly before she passed it to the next, and I could tell everyone else knew it was.

“Something for the future,” he said mysteriously. “Plant it when you want something exciting to happen, but only when you’re really serious, not when you just feel bored. Plant it before a hot date,” he smiled.

“Tom,” said Aunt Cheryl in a scolding voice, but I saw her cheek twitch before she could hide her smile. He ignored her the same way I ignore my sister sometimes.

“Don’t you think he’s a little young…?” My mother asked him in the kitchen later, when she thought I was outside playing with my youngest uncle.

“Oh, I don’t know. You guys have already got him thinking about Yale,” he said, laughing.

I forgot about the thunderstorm seed until the night before my junior prom. I had a special date for the prom: a girl I hadn’t noticed at the start of the year, mostly because she sat at the front of the class with the other brains. But one day in February, when school couldn’t have been any grayer, she made a joke and I fell out of my seat laughing.

And so, in that spring when prom dresses and acceptance letters bloomed, on a nervous night after I had picked up my tuxedo, I planted the seed.

All I can say is, bless Uncle Tom. He never told me where he got it from.