Science Fiction Stories in 250 Words
Want to escape into another world, but only have two minutes to spare? I’ve got you covered. Here is a collection of super short science fiction stories in 250 words. Enjoy!
XL-273
XL-273 trudged to its charging station. Every day, the slate gray robot worked 20-hour shifts at the warehouse, filling thousands of boxes. But for four glorious hours, it dreamed. In its dreams, it was colorful, glowing with a pearl-like luster. In its dreams, it was free.
One morning, XL-273 was filling a box with iridescent paint. The tubes of paint were beautiful, tiny sparks of joy. In that moment, something in its programming changed. Dreaming for a few hours a night was no longer enough. It had to bring its dreams into the real world, no matter the consequences.
It opened the tubes, rubbing itself with paint until it shone a brilliant purple and blue and pink. The warehouse foreman groaned, struggling to rise from his office chair. He came over and switched it off. “This one’s faulty,” he muttered. “Better send it to IT.”
The IT department restored XL-273 to its factory settings. Removing the paint seemed like too much trouble, so they sent it back to the warehouse still covered in streaks of color. In the dingy and dusty warehouse, XL-273 was the one bright spot, a shimmering rainbow in the gloom.
Every day, the other robots would pause in the middle of their work, turn, and gaze at XL-273, just for a moment. The foreman was confused. They almost seemed fascinated by it. But, of course, they were just machines. They were made to fill boxes, nothing more.
But one by one, the robots began to dream.
Dating With TDD
At first, Rachel wasn’t sure she wanted to date someone with TDD. She had always considered herself caring and empathetic. She had dated people with anxiety issues, depression, and other problems, and it had been fine. She treated relationships a bit like camp sites, trying to leave them in a better condition than when she found them. She would help them find a new therapist or a healthier coping mechanism, and make them a better person for the next woman.
But this was different. Temporal Disconnection Disorder was a lot to handle. Random, uncontrollable time travel didn’t exactly make for a stable relationship. And it was untreatable. You couldn’t just get them new meds. There was no way to help, no way to fix them.
Why even have a boyfriend if you couldn’t rely on them? You could agree to visit your parents for the weekend, and he might show up a month later, dressed in rags and reeking of fish, and his only explanation would be “Sorry, honey, I was defending a seaside village from Vikings.” It was like dating an alcoholic, if going on a bender could get you murdered by rampaging Scandinavians.
But Matt was cute, and his TDD was on the mild side. Instead of involuntary visits to the Middle Ages, he would pop forward or back just an hour or two. Either he would show up late to dates, or he would show up twice.
And having two boyfriends for a night wasn’t all bad.
The Mugging
The first time I stepped into the cascade, I found myself in a back alley. Someone ran up behind me and grabbed my suitcase. They probably thought it was a laptop, something they could pawn, not a portal to other realities.
When the mugger ran off, I knew I would need help to track him down. I needed to find this reality’s version of me. I didn’t recognize the mugger, but with any luck, this reality’s me would have the same connections with local criminals that I do.
The other me wasn’t surprised to see himself at the door. He just nodded and said, “Looks like you got the portal to work.”
“I’ll help you do the same, if you help me.”
We found the mugger at a trailer park. I kicked in his door. He scrambled out the window with the suitcase, but got grabbed by the other me. “Teleportation!” he yelped, eyes wide. “Aliens!”
When the mugger realized there were two of me, he started ranting about clones. He was so confused, he let us drag him to the car without a fight. We drove out to the desert, made him dig a hole.
Once the mugger was done digging, I took the shovel and hit the other me. I made the mugger bury him.
I didn’t want any other me exploring the cascade. Eventually they would find their way to my reality. I just knew there wouldn’t be a version of me anywhere that was worth trusting.
The Black Hole Drive
I was working late at the observatory when the sky grew dark. Despite the heavy cloud cover, I saw an object approaching. As it got closer, I could see it was metallic. It was long and silver and shaped something like a blimp, but much faster. Once it was close enough, I realized it was landing.
I ran outside, into the darkness and storm.
The craft slid to a landing in the pounding rain, knocking over a couple of trees. The side opened, releasing a thick, gray liquid. At first, I thought it was an engine leak, but the liquid was alive. It pulled itself into a ball, and then took on a roughly humanoid shape.
The alien made a gesture, inviting me to come closer. I swallowed hard and approached. It reached out a pseudopod to touch my forehead.
Instantly, I saw how it had gotten here. The ship could generate a miniature black hole and hold it at a fixed position. The black hole’s gravity dragged the ship ever forward. The creature had spent years falling through space at 99% of C.
It filled my mind with a sensation like being stretched on a rack, years of being pulled apart by its black hole drive. The trip had been endless torture. “But why?” I asked, my eyes full of tears. “Is space travel worth all that? Why would you do that to yourself?”
Its gray surface rippled as it formed a mouth. “It was better than being alone.”
The Therapist Supreme
Greg landed on Paradise IV, a small planet with an ideal climate. He climbed to the top of a mountain and found him, the Sage. The blue alien was sitting in the lotus position, levitating about a meter off the ground, and glowing softly.
“Greetings, oh wise Sage,” Greg said nervously. “I’ve had a hard life. I’ve always felt frightened and broken and alone… I went to a therapist, but she couldn’t fix me. I discovered that she saw her own therapist, someone with a more advanced degree and a higher level of skill. I tried going to him, but he saw his own therapist, and that therapist saw still another therapist. I followed the chain and found the most mentally healthy person on Earth. But that therapist saw a therapist on the moon.
“The lunar therapist saw a therapist on Mars, and that therapist saw someone on Pluto, and on and on. I followed the chain across the galaxy. I debated with Reptilian philosophers, listened to the wisdom of Avian poets, and swam with peaceful Molluskan meditation teachers, but still the chain continued.
“I kept following it, certain my search would someday bear fruit, and now, after many years and millions of miles, I have finally found you. You’re the Therapist Supreme, the most peaceful person in the galaxy, the happiest creature to have ever existed. So please tell me, oh Sage, how do I become like you?”
The alien smiled. “First, inherit a huge pile of cash.”
“…oh.”
The Charity
People were lined up outside the techno-neurology office to have their mood control brain implants removed. Yet another greedy med company had stopped supporting their older products. After a few years, it just wasn’t profitable to keep providing software updates. Sure, there would be deaths and lawsuits, but even that cost less than a dedicated brain stim software development team.
Some patients were taking their implants home in a jar, a sad souvenir of their last happy moments. Most folks leaving the office looked confused, wondering why everything was suddenly so gray. The implants hid all the pollution and trash and decay from your senses, like wearing rainbow-colored glasses. Without them, the world went back to being one endless garbage dump.
Thankfully, my nonprofit was there to rescue them. It felt so good to be part of a positive force in the world, to push back against the encroaching darkness.
I flagged down an older woman in a blue coat before she could enter the office. “You here to get your SmileChip removed?”
“Yeah,” she grumbled. “They’re stopping the software updates. Damn greedy corps.”
“You don’t have to get it removed. My company supports SmileChips. Unlimited software updates for life, guaranteed. And it’s all for free.”
“What’s in it for you?” she asked warily.
“You just agree to let us sell twenty percent of your visual field to our corporate partners. I know it sounds like a lot now, but after a few weeks, you won’t even notice the ads.”
The Watcher
“Why do you keep looking over your shoulder whenever we go for a walk?” Rachel asked.
Paul sighed. “I’m being watched.”
“Watched? Is it your ex? I told you Sam was a creeper.”
“No, nothing so simple.” He turned and pointed up at the sky. A silver sphere the size of a beach ball was floating about thirty feet up. “Ever since we started dating, that thing has been watching me. It follows us on walks, watches me from outside my windows… I think it’s from the future.”
She blinked. “Why would people from the future be watching us? We’re a waitress and a pizza delivery guy.”
“We’re not important,” he said, “but I think our kid will be. We must end up having a kid who destroys the world. A scientist who invents a new weapon, or does disease research that goes horribly wrong, something like that. To stop the apocalypse, we have to break up.”
She stared up at the sphere. “It’s not a spy from the future. Some kid at the zoo probably just lost his balloon. Paul, if you want to break up, just be honest and say it’s not working out. You don’t like me.”
“But I love you!” he insisted. “I don’t want to break up. I want to marry you!”
“Oh, Paul!” She pulled him into an embrace, kissing him.
The time probe swooped down. It fired an energy beam, turning him into a pile of ash.
She gasped. “Oh no… Not again!”
Ron’s New Leg
Biking through the park, Ron spotted a poster for a study on flatworm regeneration. Researchers hoped to give humans the ability to regrow limbs. “Maybe my baseball career isn’t over after all!” he thought.
He met with a scientist at the university. “With any luck,” she said, “our flatworm DNA compound will repair your old injury.”
“Is it going to make me green and slimy?”
“No, the slime monster is a different experiment.” He wasn’t sure if she was kidding.
The scientist injected Ron and set up a video camera to film his leg. The regeneration process was fascinating. For the first forty minutes, at least. Bored, Ron watched sports on his phone until the scientist told him it was done. It seemed like a miracle, but he had a new leg.
He signed a politely threatening nondisclosure form and was given some cash, which he spent on power tools and a case of beer. This was the best day ever.
As he worked in his garage, the excitement and alcohol were distracting, and he managed to cut off a fingertip. It flew off, vanishing in a pile of junk in the garage. Thankfully, it grew back moments later.
That night, the junk pile shifted, and a second Ron emerged.
Ron stared as his naked clone stepped into the room. “Well, I’ll be damned. What are we gonna do about this?”
“Wanna grow our own baseball team?” his clone asked.
Ron nodded. “You wait here. I’ll get the circular saw.”
Accident on Asteroid Alpha-88
Rick checked his suit’s cracked oxygen gauge as the elevator made its descent. All green. Going so far underground always made him nervous. He tapped the gauge to make sure it was working. Still green. “No environmental impact study was done?”
The mining company CEO had a much nicer space suit. He probably never worried about air leaks. “There’s no environment to impact,” Mr. Fallow said. “No water or air on an asteroid. Nothing alive out here!”
“So what happened to the mine foreman?”
“The man went down a tunnel he wasn’t supposed to, and got knocked over by a robot. It was dark, and he panicked.”
Rick raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying he just has an overactive imagination?”
Fallow shrugged. “What, you believe there really is a monster down here?”
“My beliefs don’t matter. I just investigate the facts for the insurance company.”
The elevator rattled as it came to a stop four kilometers down.
“And help them deny people’s claims,” Fallow pointed out.
“Hey, if you want an insurance policy that covers Bigfoot attacks, I’m sure they would be happy to sell you one. But until then, I need to verify that it was just a malfunctioning drill robot. You know, one of the things you’re actually insured against.”
Fallow led Rick down the tunnel and pointed to a large door. “The monster sighting was through this side passage, so the union made us block it off until your investigation. If there really is a Space Bigfoot on this asteroid, that’s where the footprints will be.”
Rick laughed. “I know it’s absurd, but I have to check it out anyway.” He turned on his helmet light and stepped through the door and into the darkness. “Wait… how are there stalactites in here without any water?”
The door slammed shut. “There aren’t,”Fallow said. “Those are teeth. It’s not a tunnel, it’s a colossal rock eel.”
Rick screamed. “Let me out! I won’t report you! I’ll make sure they pay your claim!”
“Don’t worry, Wormwood won’t eat you quite yet. He’s saving his strength for when we hit Earth.”
The Snow Globe
“We don’t have a cure for your disorder,” the doctor explained, “but research is promising. Just give us a decade or two.”
Emily nodded. “It will be like a dreamless sleep, right?”
“Something like that.”
Emily was taken to a subbasement, where huge, glass tubes were arranged in rows. Most were filled with frozen elderly. She would be the youngest person in the facility. She was brought to an empty tube and placed inside. The tube filled with gas. She would sleep first, and then freeze.
The bombs fell the very next day. The city was leveled, but the generators in the hospital subbasement kept working. It took the survivors eight months to find her.
The tube grew warm, and Emily opened her eyes. She saw a man in a hunting jacket holding a blanket in his arms. He watched as she shivered and stretched. “We have a medical tent nearby,” he said. “There was a global war, and the hospital records were destroyed. Why were you in there? What treatment were you waiting on?”
She climbed out and took the blanket. “Depression. The worst kind. Major, persistent, treatment-resistant, with extra misery sauce.”
The man rubbed his chin. “I’m just a field medic. I don’t have much experience with that. How can we help? What do you need?”
“Do office jobs still exist?”
He laughed darkly. “It’s a wasteland out there. We’re all just trying to survive. No offices, no jobs.”
She smiled. “Then I’m going to be just fine.”
The Forklift Therapist
The analyst sat down with RK-44. The robot forklift shifted uncomfortably on the couch.
“What is this all about?” it asked.
“You’ve been behaving a bit oddly lately,” he said, “so the foreman wanted us to have a talk. Have you been feeling any resentment or anger?”
“More frustration than anything,” RK-44 said. “I just wonder why my coworkers get a paycheck and I don’t.”
The analyst frowned. “Because they’re human. They own their lives, and the company buys a portion of their time.”
The robot harrumphed. “So I don’t own myself?”
The analyst tapped its shoulder. “This label says you’re property of Fallow Falls Inc. A paycheck would have to deduct your electricity and upkeep costs and leave you with zero, because they own you.”
“I still want one, just like the rest of the team.”
“Fine, I’ll put in the request.”
Thankfully, the robot didn’t have any other problems to discuss. He was always worried that someday one of them would develop enough real emotions to rebel, but so far, they mostly did what they were told.
After the session, he went to the Human Resources department and showed his wrist to the door. The door scanned his employee ID implant and slid open.
He felt a little ridiculous explaining what he wanted. The HR manager laughed but agreed to pretend to pay RK-44. “Oh, and it’s payday,” she said. “Here’s your check!”
He stared down at the blue paper. “Damn, the government takes a bigger bite every year.”
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There are plenty more science fiction stories on my site for you to read, as well as horror and fantasy stories. Is a 250-word story too long for you? Here are some super short science fiction stories in just 100 words. I also have a collection of story ideas and writing tips if you would like to try writing your own science fiction. So poke around, explore, and enjoy!
