I Killed Ficlets

A couple of years ago John Scalzi announced the launch of Ficlets (which I am not linking to for reasons to be clear by the end of this paragraph). I toyed with the idea of writing some things there, but always chickened out. On 1Dec I finally posted one. On 2Dec, the Ficlets admin announced the site would be closing 15Jan2009.

Sorry, I really did not mean to bring down the site. This is the Ficlet that did it.

---

"It's wearing the brown coat. Standing next to the fountain."

"Right then," with as much Brit twang as I could put on it to try break the tension.

He cut his eyes back, but did not turn his head my way.

"You stay here with the tag." A tube that looks and works like an Epi-Pen nestled in my jacket pocket. "I'll circle around with the others. When I leave it will know you are here. It will sense you. Knows your brain implants. Plus yours are mostly down. We will cover the other routes out. When it gets close enough, tag it. Should choose escape over reprisal. Probably. Tag will lock it down. Maybe"

"Okay."

"Without the tag it could take another month to find it. More bodies. One shot. Don't miss"

"Right."

Unspoken: Screw this up and it's back to the white coats poking around in my skull to see the effects of being occupied by a rogue AI.

Lyle walked way. I took the tagger from my pocket. If he was wrong about the AI choosing escape, I might die. If I missed the tag, I was about to lose my mind again.