Joan's EPPIE award-winning book,
THE ADMINISTRATOR,
has been nominated for yet
another award.
If you haven't read it yet,
you are missing a real treat!
It is available from FictionWorks.
Hit Delete
By Brent Lillie
BY MID-AFTERNOON on Tuesday the news room was a dead zone. His police rounds completed, Gerard idly tapped away at his computer, putting the finishing touches to a story about a boating accident on the Pioneer River. The paper’s owner and editor, Fred Schuman, peered over his chief reporter’s shoulder and gave a derisive snort.
“The word’s ‘flips’ not ‘flies’, Anderson,” Schuman growled. “The boat flipped, it didn’t fly, for God’s sake. You’ve been with the paper for ten years, can’t you use a keyboard yet?”
Gerard highlighted ‘flies’.
“You missed the ‘f’.”
“Thanks.”
Flopping back into his chair, the reporter sipped at his lukewarm coffee. Jesus Christ, Schuman and his family, what a bunch of sugar-coated arseholes. He stared out the window at the gray columns of smoke rising from the stacks. Day after day, a sugary blitz. The brownish, molasses-scented pall sagged over the town, miring everyone, everything in place.
A fly settled on the rim of the coffee mug just as Gerard tapped the computer’s delete button. Abruptly, the fly disappeared. It did not buzz away, nor did it dive into what remained of the coffee and complete three quick laps of the mug in a relaxed, proficient breaststroke. No, at the precise moment Gerard had deleted ‘flies’ on the computer, the fly had been deleted as well.
Quickly and methodically, Gerard gathered every pencil he could find, positioning them at various points around the office. On the computer he typed ‘pencils’ and hit the delete button. Zip. The pencils vanished. What’s more, there was no doubt in Gerard’s mind that there were no more pencils in existence anywhere in the world at that particular moment.
Just as methodically, he disposed of cockroaches, immediately reducing the building’s population by thousands. Gerard was about to type ‘murderers’ when he came to his senses. He checked ‘murder’ in the computer’s thesaurus.
Slayer. Butcher. Alarm bells rang.
The definitions were much too generalized. He didn’t want to wreck things, like some moronic protagonist in an SF story. What if his computer was a modern-day genie in a bottle? One reckless wish could upset the delicate universal balance.
What if he deleted death? ‘Mindless Zombies Ravage Earth’. Great headline. Bad idea. Cancer? ‘Demi-God Anderson Cures Millions’. Better. Maybe a few doctors would be out of a job but they wouldn’t starve. Gerard knew demi-gods couldn’t afford to be selfish. Everything he deleted would have to be for the common good.
Except one thing, that is.
He grinned and typed ‘Schumans’. There was a noise from the outer office. Gerard hurriedly highlighted the word and hit the delete button.
* * *
Empty vehicles clogged the freeways, roads and backstreets. Shops and offices, parks and homes were deserted in the city, the country - all over the world.
In the office of a small, regional daily an unattended computer sits on a battered desk. There are two letters on the monitor screen: ‘Sc’.
- E N D -
Author's Bio:
Brent Lillie’s stories have appeared in Aurealis, Eidolon, Antipodean SF and Redsine, as well as in numerous non-generic publications including Men’s Health and Penthouse. ‘THE JAM JAR’ won the second Aurealis Millenium Short Story Competition.
Brent lives in Tugun, about an hour’s drive south of Brisbane, on Australia’s east coast.
