So far in March, I haven’t stitched much but I’ve done quite a bit of writing.  I even went to the League of Utah Writers Infinite Monkey’s chapter meeting. The presentation was on writing flash fiction and we rolled the dice – horror, inanimate protagonist, outer space, gritty style, and I forget what the last one was.

Here is my flash fiction:

Today was his birthday.  It was going to be hell.

Normally she didn’t mind doing shifting but this one she dreaded.  It wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t been trapped in that ship for the first 100 decades of her personal memory.  True, she could have washed between her ears like so many of her colleagues but she found the thought of losing her original personality frightening. She wasn’t like the others who put on new personas as often as seasonal fashion.  Of course, not washing meant that she realized the others changed when they didn’t remember.  But this job, luckily, only came up on his birthday and so many years she had missed the short straw.

In some ways it was intriguing, he was classified as the oldest living AI in anyone’s data banks.  She knew the truth of his sentience.

Sentience gave him rights, and she was not above the law.  Only one had returned from his birthday bash in all the records she had reviewed.  The law stated every sentient AI had the right to a day in a shifter’s body.  Hadn’t she escaped the ship by using her day out to capture this body?  Tricking the machine designed to validate the original shifter’s return? She knew her true fear was turnabout as fair play and if he hadn’t been washed, he might remember; remember her.

She stood before the airlock, and steeling herself, pressed the opener.

“Welcome, Ophelia, Shall we trade places again?”