Origins by Dan Bieger

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SUMMARY: Entry into January Flash Fiction contest

The first thing you must do is clear your mind of the stereotypes. You want to be able to construct a new frame work, a new paradigm, a new vision...a new stereotype.
Then, you want to follow it through to its logical conclusion just like Brennan would have done. And, when you do, you're going to end up with...well, something surprising, at the very least. Take the latest VR shoot "em-up. What you have is this massive armada from the far corner of the galaxy coming to invade poor old Earth. Why? Because they can. What other reason do our most ancient fears need to invade?

A long time ago in a future far away, the clones fought to save the primes. They had no choice, genetics and all that kind of thing, you know, but fight they did and win they didn't so the armada escaped to continue its march towards destiny.

The first clone looked up at its prime with intense curiosity. The only thought that stood out from that first encounter, the only concept indelibly imprinted in that first clone's memory was: "so, that's what I'm all about."

Lyle Rains looked across the room at Ed Logg. The specifics of their conversation, other than their game, was not recorded. Much later, the blogs would speculate back and forth but the closest anyone ever came to the substance of that conversation was a fourth grade science project in New Wassila where the sole phrase generated for that retrospective was: "It sure ain't no pac-man."

The author lay in his bed, ideas swirling in the darkened room baiting the poor man into their clutches. He wanted to sleep, didn't want to start another project, he had a string of best sellers already under his belt. But the ideas swirled and swirled before his mind's eyes refusing to return to the Muse's vault. Suppose that mankind reached the stars. Oh, hell, all the science fiction of the 60s held that supposition. Suppose that mankind encountered an implacable enemy that hated mankind more than it hated its own females. Why, there would be an interstellar war, wouldn't there? And how do you tell the story of an interstellar war? With a plucky young hero modeled after some lesser known real-life hero, say Audie Murphy. And then, you take some famous battles from history, say Megiddo, Chaeronea, and Manzikert. Yep, you got yourself a story.

Watching science run amok, the man decided he must do something, act somehow, alert people to the consequences of all this frenzy. An author by trade, he picked up his quill and began to write. He avoided direct reference to any state or any agency or any individual or any specific line of research. Instead, he produced a race of aliens living very close to humanity, a race bent on invasion and destruction of all humanity because...well, because they needed a new planet. Why else would the bad guys do something silly except for a damned good reason?

The poet sat in the inn, his lyre fully tuned, his voice appropriately mellowed with rot-gut mead that – while it oiled his throat – set his stomach to churning up evil visions, visions so real that he did not so much bring them to life for his audience as simply pointing out their existence and let the audience do the rest.