Dystopian Psych Volume 3: Dystopian Psych, #3

By Nicholas Stillman

Explore the bright minds who struggle in the nightmarish societies of the near future:

"Mr. Frugal"

After botching a casino heist, the biggest cheapskate in the world must escape the mafia by becoming even less noticeable.

"Timelock"

While time traveling, a humble pianist must undo the cataclysmic futures he creates.

"Fear After Fear"

A roboticist develops the first artificial sentience from all the wrong emotions.

"The Deciders"

In the world's only safe vault, a talent judge must decide which auditioners to save from an apocalyptic gamma ray burst.

"Death Count"

A young daredevil loses abilities and gains new ones in a society built to engineer soldiers.

"The Wilderness Game"

Fleeing a degenerate city, a quiet game developer finds his countryside resort overrun by feral children.

"All the Way Down"

A father and his eight-year-old daughter receive hate mail from all of planet Earth.

Get Dystopian Psych Volume 3 now and peer into the dark psychology that awaits in us all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stillman Sci-Fi
• Release date: Jun 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386662853

Nicholas Stillman

Nicholas Stillman writes dark but entertaining science fiction. His weekly short stories and collections aim for variety and novelty with fun and thought-provoking twists. They often branch into dystopia, crime, horror, medical fiction, black comedy, romance, adventure, adult, and the completely new. Some of Stillman’s themes include civilizational collapse, addictions of the future, medicine in space, dark psychology, and the terrifying fate of our healthcare. Stillman offers monthly free short stories at StillmanSciFi.com. Get yourself free, easily accessible short stories for life--the perfect way for any science fiction fan to spend time on commutes or at home.

Book preview

Mr. Frugal

"YOU CHOSE TO WEAR that to the casino heist?" Kyle asked without turning in the driver seat.

As Stan Peckham climbed into the back of the convertible, he glanced down at himself and feigned surprise. His faded gray suit jacket stretched too tightly over his bony shoulders. The left sleeve had climbed halfway up his forearm again and stuck there. Pulling it down took constant management with incoming smirks from whoever walked by. The cuff flopped about freely, having lost its buttons over a decade ago while stuffed in a garbage bag of other secondhand clothes. A few rebellious button threads still sprouted from that cuff—from both cuffs as Stan now noticed. The wrinkles also remained, compressed into the fabric by that same overstuffed garbage bag in his bunker.

Stan closed the car door without answering and straightened his troublesome collar. The right half flipped up to chafe his neck again the moment he let it go. Kyle pulled away from the suburban sidewalk, still without turning to look in the backseat. Stan only saw clean hands gripping the steering wheel, perfectly crisp cuffs below those hands, and a slick, trim hairstyle. Stan had what people used to call a combover when such carefree hair solutions existed. If the front would grow at all like the shagginess he had at the back, some might call it a runaway mullet.

The convertible drove away from possibly the world’s last working payphone. Walking from the payphone to the car hadn’t smoothed out any wrinkles in Stan’s slacks and sweat-stained dress shirt as he had hoped. The wind did a lousy job too, having failed to blow away any of the musty smell whatsoever.

Kyle winced, and his nostrils tried to contort themselves shut. He finally dared a glance in the rearview mirror.

I guess that garb of yours can help us in a way, Kyle said. He eyed the worn areas of the road ahead in favor of the overworn suit behind him. It’ll keep the ladies away so you can focus. You’ve always blended in by not blending in, if that makes any sense. I remembered that one thing about you from high school. You seemed like the right man to call for this job. I need someone inconspicuous.

Oh, no problem there, Stan said. I may have retired from pumping gas, but those ladies you mentioned can still smell the fumes, it seems. I can act pretty discreet.

"Acting discreet. Right, Kyle said under his breath. So if you retired, what do you need this heist money for? To avoid reentering the workforce?"

No, Stan said. I mostly live in my homemade bunker, and I miscalculated how much charcoal I might need. You know, in case a nuclear winter hits us? All the fallout trying to seep in might overwhelm my ventilation system. So I just need that cut you offered to buy extra charcoal.

Kyle opened his mouth a bit and closed it again. Stan looked out not just the window next to him, but all of them. The telephone poles and houses flicked by like spices suddenly sprinkled into his life.

Charcoal, Kyle said to the road. That black, rocky stuff.

Right, Stan replied. I figure with the global economic collapse taking so long to happen, I can slip out for a day or two and risk buying a few more 50-kilogram bags of the stuff. I might get some extra iodine tablets too.

Iodine tablets, Kyle mumbled while he made some unnecessary lane checks. You must have saved every penny if you retired at 38 from, eh, gas station attending?

What, literally? Stan asked as he craned his neck at the gables rolling by. Yeah, I’ve got a few kegs of pennies. The copper price might go up a bit after World War Three. I hope so, anyway.

Kyle pressed his lips tightly together. Only when the city bloomed in the windshield did he talk again.

Well, Stan, Kyle said, I have an underworld of my own, as you must have surmised by now. Not a fallout shelter, though. Something more flashy. I do casinos. And I do them without their consent, if you get me. And I’ve gotten good and known in this flashier little underworld. Now this particular heist requires that you wear and later turn in those items I mentioned on the phone. You’ll find them in the compartment in the door there. Put them on now, and the rest simply involves following instructions.

Stan found the palm-size steel compartment in the side of the car door. He opened the lid, revealing an armrest ashtray. The inside looked blackened and grayed enough to have encoffined over a hundred bozos’ cigarette butts. Now it held a university lapel pin, a beige earpiece, and a stack of red casino chips tucked in sideways. Stan pocketed the chips. The top third of his breast pocket had torn and flopped over, but it could still hold heavy items and would probably serve for another eight months.

The earpiece looked as discrete as a modern hearing aid, smaller than the dried-out jellybean still lost in Stan’s back pocket. He pushed the device into his right ear until it held. He affixed the lapel pin to the front of his suit jacket, on the left lapel because that one stayed flat most of the time. As a bonus, his left lapel also stayed a few inches higher than the right one, and it rode up even higher for some reason whenever he walked.

The world outside the car slowed down as though to give him time to fumble with the lapel pin. After snapping it on, he briefly turned it toward his face to stare into the reflective shield emblem of Dalhousie University. The dark camera lens took up the entire shape of the shield and almost looked too reflective, too noticeable. However, its rattly journey through the ashtray had given the pin a gray and grubby coat. It looked old and unsightly. The girls would run for their lives.

Stan looked up at the decaying city all around him. The crumbly and corroded buildings nearly oozed around Kyle’s convertible like a gray sludge. The traffic, at least, consisted of mostly newer models of cars. The cracked streets didn’t seem to know what to do with so much glimmer. Stan shuddered, as the opening between the grainy towers ahead looked like a concrete mouth of sorts. It eagerly took in the colorful cars and sleek, candylike minivans. The main street, however, demanded a slow, puttering pace as though the traffic moved through a giant urban bowel.

The shuffling urbanites, too pudgy to build anew, had at least resisted getting processed into more grit and grayness. Some of their suits, to Stan’s fascination, had evolved out of the gray, concrete-camouflage fashions. Pedestrians wore the classic black, but also maroon, baby blue, yellow, and even some startling limy neon. In the mere two years Stan had kept himself bunkered, the overcrowding worsened, yet the masses brightened themselves in defiance. Even the youngsters wore spiffy suits with newfangled frill designs, styles that must have sprung up recently. The trends appeared to cry out in anticonformity, until Stan noticed one thing and shuddered a second time: everyone wore suits now, vibrant or otherwise.

Can you hear me, Stan? Kyle mumbled. His voice did not rise over the gentle hum of the engine. But it came in clear through the earpiece.

Yup, Stan said.

Kyle parked beside a towering casino, the Night Chimes with its name spelled in bubbly lights beneath its rooftop. He turned to his laptop and some mysterious slabs of tech set up where cupholders normally reside. The apparatus had plenty of wires, all bundled, coiled, and taped down to the adapters for emergency quick-carry.

Stan touched the lapel pin.

Don’t touch the lapel pin, Kyle said.

I just wanted to adjust it, Stan said.

Don’t adjust it. I can rotate the screen from here.

It looks a little askew, though.

Don’t look at it, ever.

What if I go to the washroom to kill time? Stan asked.

Don’t, Kyle replied.

In the rearview mirror, Kyle’s glaring eyes said one thing: people have invested their legbones in this heist.

Stan gawked around at the alleyway across the street. A skinny dishwasher came out and heaved a sixty-pound bin of perfectly eatable leftovers into a dumpster. The bin thudded like thunder as he tapped it empty. The young man’s wet dress shirt rippled in the wind, and his tie got in the way. He peeled a perfectly good leaf of lettuce off his shirt and flung it on the ground. Stan had to look away.

Kyle typed briefly on his laptop. When finished, he still didn’t turn to face Stan.

Alright, Kyle said through the earpiece, "go in the main entrance and roam the first floor without coming off as a loiterer. Use those spending chips to look like a normal gambler."

Stan got out of the car. It drove off while the door still swung closed. Two young women walked by and giggled at him as he shrugged at the sky. Their pantsuits looked both sophisticated and impenetrable.

Stan straightened his suit jacket while entering the casino, but the left side rode up again. He threw a nervous glance at the booth cashier. He waited for her eyes, under all that springy permed hair, to glare up or go askance at him. He waited for her to scrutinize him and gasp at the ragged loner strolling in without buying chips. But she only looked at her nails and