Bert

Hiro moved to a dark, alien world decades ago, and now is a simple, caring grandfather, who loves to spoil his grandkids and just wants to help his family out. However, when he is left alone to care for his grandchildren's beloved alien pet, he maybe proves to be a little too helpful in his effort to 'take care of' Bert. This story was based on a true story a former coworker told me. He was gifted a bunny by a different coworker and over time, his kids sort of lost interest in the bunny (as kids do). One day his wife asked him to take care of Bert the Bunny while she took the kids out-- and yes, that ended the exact way you think it did. I believe this story also made it to the local radio station, so if you heard this before, it's probably the same Bert. I wanted to write a story featuring a side character from several other stories in my System Elsewhere Universe (indeed, I am putting on airs claiming to have to a 'shared universe', but hey why not). Hiro is one of those characters who gets mentioned a lot, but never really a mainline plot, so I thought I would lift the tragic story of Bert the Bunny and shove it into a Sci-fi setting. Bert becomes an alien (also showing another perspective of animals that play a large role in other works), Hiro gets to be showcased as the well-meaning but tragically misguided grandfather, and the setting becomes a Rogue Planet going through the edges of a Gamma Ray burst (because rogue planets are fun). This is about as family friendly as I get, and if you've read this far, you get the idea that this is pretty dark. But I always liked dark stories, growing up R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike books as well as the short story collections like Scary Stories to Read in the Dark. I would like to try to add more stories with this vibe, though I struggle to keep PG (if you read my other stories, you know I can barely keep it R). Maybe I will be inspired by another pet-murdering colleague. Keywords: Science Fiction, Hard Science Fiction, fantasy, dark humor, alien, cute alien.

Anne R. lives in Massachusetts with Duck, her water-obsessed black lab mix. She can say hello in six languages (but not much else in five of them), works part time crunching numbers and the other part scuba diving. Anne loves to read science-fiction and horror, follow pop-culture, and sketch. No part of her writing is generated with AI. If you love it or hate it -- rest assured, it was made by a human (em dashes and all). She can be indirectly reached on X (twitter) at @KT7777akajersey Or Tiktok.com/@kt.williams.aka.m