A warning box popped up “This printer software is a Beta edition which provides additional capabilities for your wireless enabled printer. Do you wish to install?” Being an adventurous soul, I pressed YES.
The pictures I printed from my phone looked great. My boarding passes printed just fine. I didn’t give any more thought to the printer or the printer driver until 2AM that morning.
It took a minute for the whir of the printer to soak into my consciousness. “What to hell?” I thought and went to check on it.
The picture on the printer didn’t make sense at first, a ball of flames. It wasn’t until I looked behind the flames that my heart stopped. That was my kitchen! It looked like the coffee pot had caught on fire and the cabinets were burning. I ran down the stairs two at a time.
At first, everything looked normal. The coffee pot was where I had left it and nothing was on fire. When I checked the reservoir on the coffee pot, it was empty. I had forgotten to fill it! In the morning when it kicked on, it could very well have caught fire. As strange as it seemed, the picture appeared to have warned me, as if it had come from the future. I made a mental note to call tech support in the morning and went back to bed.
I was packing my bags for my trip in the morning when I heard the printer start again. With a bit of trepidation, I picked up the picture that had emerged. Again, it was hard to look at, my cat flattened on the road with a pool of blood under her head. Back downstairs I headed, out onto the porch and I called for Phoebe.
Surprised to see me before I normally called for her, she came bounding in from by the side of the road and rubbed my leg. At that moment, a low rider with dark-tinted windows came screaming around the corner and flew down the street. Another minute and Phoebe would have looked just like the photo.
I didn’t have time to ponder how unlikely it was to have a printer that foretold the future. If I didn’t get busy, I was going to miss my flight. I poured Phoebe some extra kibble and finished packing. Without a moment to spare, I grabbed my bag and headed out.
The house was quiet for awhile, only the sound of Phoebe eating her kibble broke the silence. Until the printer kicked on again. In the printout tray, a picture emerged. A picture of flight 4371 sitting on the runway with flames spewing from the fuselage. It didn’t show any survivors.
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© 2011 by Dan Marvin
Dan Marvin lives and writes from his horse farm in Kentucky. His flash fiction stories have appeared in such publications as Golden Visions Magazine, Alien Skin, Short Humour, Flashshot, and many others. His books “Briefs for the Reading Room” and “Thomas Granger” are available through Amazon and on the Kindle. “Dan Marvin’s Change of Briefs” will be published soon. For more information about Dan’s writing, visit www.danmarvin.net
Tags: Dan Marvin
February 2nd, 2011 at 9:03 pm
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