FEATURED STORY
RECENT STORIES
STORIES BY TOPIC
NEWS
TRANSPORTER
Take me to a...
SEARCH
Enter any portion of the author name or story title:
For more options, try our:
SUBSCRIBE
Sign up for free daily sci-fi!
your email will be kept private
TIDBITS
Get a copy of Not Just Rockets and Robots: Daily Science Fiction Year One. 260 adventures into new worlds, fantastical and science fictional. Rocket Dragons Ignite: the anthology for year two, is also available!
SUBMIT
Publish your stories or art on Daily Science Fiction:
If you've already submitted a story, you may check its:
DAILY SCI-FI
Not just rockets & robots...
"Science Fiction" means—to us—everything found in the science fiction section of a bookstore, or at a science fiction convention, or amongst the winners of the Hugo awards given by the World Science Fiction Society. This includes the genres of science fiction (or sci-fi), fantasy, slipstream, alternative history, and even stories with lighter speculative elements. We hope you enjoy the broad range that SF has to offer.






Collision with Car

Aaron DaMommio is a husband, father, writer, juggler, and expert washer of dishes who lives in Austin, Texas. You can find him on the web at aarondamommio.blogspot.com.

Really, Harry shouldn't have been surprised. It was one of the most common death predictions. Still, they said no matter what your verdict, it was hard, seeing it in print. So yeah, it bothered him when the machine spit out his: a little slip of paper, like you'd find in a fortune cookie, with three words: Collision with car.
Oh, it certainly could have been worse. It could have been something slow and lingering, like AIDS (he hadn't exactly been careful), or tawdry like Beaten to death by ex-wife. That wouldn't have surprised him either--she blamed him for everything. He was a handsome guy. He was supposed to resist every woman that threw herself at him?
The machine was never wrong, though. Give it a blood sample, and it would tell you how you'd die. Just usually in so few words it was almost useless. He should probably count his blessings: at least the thing had played it straight with him.
Still. Sales was a traveling job, and he'd really put in the miles the last couple of years, despite how he'd been finding it harder and harder to make himself get on planes.
Didn't matter how big the jet was, they all looked flimsy to him. It was like strapping yourself to a rocket and hoping it was a dud. He'd been turning down trips, taking assignments to places close enough to drive. His boss was starting to get annoyed.
What was Harry supposed to do now, quit driving too?
It wasn't long before he saw the block-lettered note as a kind of salvation, because he no longer had any reason to avoid flying.
It wasn't easy. Fear wasn't reasonable. But he took a flight, and then another, and it got easier. He went to the Ottawa convention; they loved his presentation.
He was back, baby, back.
He laughed through the train ride to the airport, watching the hoi polloi suffering through traffic eight lanes wide and then watching it again as the plane carried him higher and higher.
Then they were falling, diving. No time for breath. People were screaming. A steward bounced around the cabin like a Superball.
Harry was still laughing, thinking Collision with car, until he looked out the window and saw the way the plane was lining up for a run at the freeway below.
The pilots were amazing. They pulled the plane out of its dive, found a clear patch of highway, and painted it with rubber.
When they stopped, people were shook up, but they were all smiling, laughing. He lined up like a robot with everyone else to use the slides that the flight attendants activated.
Then he stood on the shoulder, waiting for the airline to send a bus. He edged back from the road, cringing as the cars whizzed by, close enough to touch.
The End
This story was first published on Tuesday, November 27th, 2018


Author Comments

This story was inspired by and uses the "Machine of Death" concept created by Ryan North in Dinosaur Comics, and later used for the Machine of Death anthology.

- Aaron DaMommio
Become a Member!

We hope you're enjoying Collision with Car by Aaron DaMommio.

Please support Daily Science Fiction by becoming a member.

Daily Science Fiction is not accepting memberships or donations at this time.

Rate This Story
Please click to rate this story from 1 (ho-hum) to 7 (excellent!):

Please don't read too much into these ratings. For many reasons, a superior story may not get a superior score.

5.1 Rocket Dragons Average
Share This Story
Join Mailing list
Please join our mailing list and receive free daily sci-fi (your email address will be kept 100% private):