Data Driven

Micro fiction: Help wanted ads, 2067

The job ads posted on March 35, 2067:

LIAR. BS, Five years’ experience.

LIAR, SENIOR OMISSIONS AGENT. MS, Ten years’ experience.

FOOL. GED preferred.

Porcelain Sanitation Engineer: No prior violent convictions; human preferred.

POLITICIAN: LAWMAKER. State, republic, compensation to be discussed. No prior social errors. GED preferred but not a must. Citizen or equivalent. No smokers. No Martians.

LIAR, ENTRY LEVEL/INTERNSHIP. Course credit possible. Modern methods/statistical, data driven.

You ever feel like you're a ghost in a house where the family didn't live long enough to move in?

You've been in a sarcophagus for thousands of years like the Velveteen Rabbit,

a flap flips open:

“here comes the boy,

here comes love,”

a pair of eyes, feast and play

and NOTHING.

NOBODY.

One wing and you dove

for an airless

shore—