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#FridayFlash: The Chosen One

The Chosen One

by Tony Noland

From a distant planet, they came to Earth, scanning every one of humanity's three billion minds. Men and women, from the cradle to the deathbed, every member of every race in every city, hamlet and forsaken wilderness was logged and evaluated. In their silent, invisible isolation, they tested us for intelligence, cleverness, empathy, creativity, aggression, self-awareness, passion and a hundred other traits.

They needed a person with exactly the right balance of qualities; they didn't find one. Their need was great, however, so they waited. Under their gaze, for three centuries we lived and died, fighting our wars and making our pacts, increasing our numbers from three billion to seven, eleven, fifteen. They waited and scanned, waited and scanned.

They chose me.

When I was born, I was put on the list of "possibles", with all the others who had scan results like mine. We were less than nine million individuals among all of Earth's billions, and from that moment, they watched my mind develop. Thirteen years later, I killed a man to protect my sister; they moved me up to the list of "probables", one of forty thousand. When my wife of eleven months died in a fire our absentee landlord set to get insurance money, my tiny son lived for only seven hours after I cut him from her still-smoking belly. They moved me up to the final list of "confirmed", the list with only two other names.

I found all this out later.

For what they wanted done, they needed a perfect match, the very best. They captured all three of us for the final testing: the Brazilian, the American and me. The Brazilian looked like a tough bastard, scarred and tattooed, missing the ring finger of his left hand. The American was a hard kind of pretty, medium height, blond hair, small breasts and wide hips. I don't know what either of them thought of me. I didn't ask.

The silver-blue walls disappeared and the voices told us they’d been searching for the right person for a long time, that we were all going to be sent on a job. The Brazilian and the American eyed each other, and me, suspiciously.

I didn't waste time with looks or questions. I leapt at the Brazilian and jabbed a hand into his neck, crushing his windpipe. His reaction time was good, although not good enough. His uppercut caught me in the jaw, but he was already as good as dead. I rode out the force of his punch to flip backwards towards the American.

She was in a fighting stance and I landed with arms deliberately flailing. She fell for it; her right hand felt like a piece of rebar as it came in hard to break my collarbone, as I expected. She'd looked like someone who fought to disable, not kill. I shifted my stance to let my shoulder take the hit and I elbowed her in the right breast. She hunched up and I killed her with the palm of my hand, brought down hard on the back of her neck.

A short fight with me still standing - my favorite kind. My jaw and shoulder hurt, but everything still worked. I turned to face my ... host. The human-shaped mask it was wearing looked puzzled.

It waved a hand at the pretty corpse and the choking, clutching man on the floor. “Why did you do this?” it asked.

“They weren’t paying attention, were they? You said you’d been searching for the right person. Person, singular. That meant that two of us were the wrong person.”

“And if that had been simply an error in translation?”

I shrugged. “It doesn't seem likely that you’d make a mistake like that.”

The being looked through the wall to where four more of them stood. A discussion took place, just like so many of the job interviews I’d been through with people who had a tricky job that they needed done thoroughly.

The last list now had only one name on it.

They chose me.



UPDATE: Read more about this story here.

35 comments:

  1. Ohhhhhhh yet again you've written something awesome and made it seem so effortless. You're a top dude, sir.

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  2. GAH! Sort of a Macbeth-like character, ain't he? I'm not sure whether I want him to win or to get his ass handed to him. Maybe I just want him to grow a heart.

    Good story on lots of levels. Well done, T-dawg.

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  3. APPLAUSE! Wonderful, Tony. See? This is why it's terrible important to pay attention in grammar studies.

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  4. You gotta admire his ice cold logic. There can only be 1 top dog, even among 15 billion. Nice stuff.

    Marc Nash

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  5. Super stuff Tony. Hooked me from soup to nuts. He's a super darwinian. Peace...

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  6. Very cool story. The background at the beginning and action at the end all blended very well, making this an excellent story. Well done!

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  7. Daaaaaaaaamn! That was cold. But cool story!

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  8. Such an awesome story, yet sad at the same time.

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  9. Awesome story. I felt bad for him up until he killed his opponents, but now I want to know why they needed him.

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  10. Cold indeed... but wickedly entertaining, T-Dawg. I like THAT nickname.

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  11. Holy hair trigger, Batman. Awesome, excellent story.

    Now I'm wondering just what his assignment will be. I am afraid.

    Great tale-telling... I like T-Dawg, too. :)

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  12. Excellent turn at the end Tony. This gentleman certainly knows how to take an interview.

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  13. How depressing that if it came to that, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that would be the guy who'd win. And who'd represent us. Great story, Tony.

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  14. All of history and countless evolutionary leaps to distill the ultimate bastard. The implications of this thinking makes me realise I need to man-up ... real soon.

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  15. Excellent, Tony. Fast paced and that last line stopped everything cold. Bravo.

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  16. Deliciously dark and superb as always.
    Adam B @revhappiness

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  17. Tight, gripping and a great premise for a storyline. This, I really liked.

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  18. startling. The still-smoking belly c-section is quite the imagery.

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  19. In the beginning I thought I had read this before. Then you took it into a whole new direction. Great job.

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  20. Brilliant. Good read, enjoyed it immensely:)

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  21. Thank you, everyone! The unnamed protag here is a right bastard, but seems to be pretty close to perfect for what the aliens are looking for.

    I've had it suggested to me that I should carry this on into a novella. What do you think? Turn this guy loose amid the seedier parts of the cosmos?

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  22. Well, my vote is yes for novella. *looks to make sure there are no hanging chads*

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  23. scifi noir - well done great combo..

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  24. He really wanted to be the one. Who doesn't want to be special out of billions?

    What's this novella people are voting on?

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  25. I have to be honest, I like the story but the protags actions at the end seemed out of place with the rest. He killed to protect his sister then tried to save his unborn... odd leap to killing just to be the only one left in the room.

    Maybe it's just me, but it struck me as out of place.

    Still a good story however. :)

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  26. Anthony makes a good point about his motivations ... but terrific story and i like Linda's comment - pure darwinian action here. Very good read, Tony!

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  27. Very nice "Survival of the Fittest" type tale. I like how the line "They chose me" repeats at the end.

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  28. Well done, but it definitely feels like the start of something bigger. I want to see what happens next. Great job with this one Tony.

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  29. @Anthony: You make a good point. How could someone who was so caring be so ruthless? Well, those two acts were only two of the events in a very eventful life, a life that shaped the protag into the man he is today. The experience of trying (and failing) to save his wife, then going to incredible lengths to save his son only to watch him die a few hours later - well, things like that change a man, don't they?

    @John: It was suggested to me that this piece reads more as the opening of a longer story than as a complete story. I agree, since I deliberately left out almost all the pertinent info about this situation. I don't say what the aliens want, why they have to use a human for it, why they felt they had to rush the selection process NOW after 300 patient years, not even what the protag's name is. However, was trying to get feedback as to whether or not it would be worth it to pursue this story. It's a ridiculous question, since I already have plenty of unfinished stories, unedited novels and unwritten assignments.

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  30. Love it. It reads like a prologue to a novel.
    P.S. Remind me of this story if we're ever standing in line together, will you? ;)

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  31. Ghods, I so want to know what the mission is, and why it has to be a human. He's cold, but he's been through some hard lessons - only a few of which we've been told.
    Good stuff!
    -MEG

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  32. What a cold, hard badass. Reminds me of the most recent Predator movie. But unless he picked up some people skills, I'm not sure I'd want to read a whole book with this guy. Nothing to sympathize with yet. Good read, and I wonder if maybe he jumped the gun a bit at the end, too. We'll never know.

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  33. Well executed . . . . Internally consistent, self-contained . . . . But I still want to know what happens next!!! What's the job? What could require those specific traits and skills? What what what? It's driving me mad?

    Really, though, good story, Tony.











    (No. Really. What. Is. The. Job?)

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  34. I love the pace of this. You managed to fit so much into a flash story. Very impressive writing, I enjoyed this a lot. Wouldn't like to meet him down a dark alley. Or any alley, in fact!

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