This was the first round of FFF that Gail headed up. Again, the rules were: twenty-four hours to write 350 words. The selected word has to appear in the story, and may or may not appear in the title. Any dictionary or slang definition of the word may be used, and the story can be any genre so long as it is fictitious prose. This round, the word was sleeve.

Innocent Mistake

“Goddamn government contracts,” Jim swore.

“Problem?” asked his coworker, Hank, walking up behind him.

Jim held up a scrap of paper with a serial number on it.

Hank took it from him. “Not on the shelf?”

Jim slammed the stock book shut. “Not on the shelf,” he repeated.

“Figures.”

They both went back to the aisle where the part was listed as being. There was a missing bin in the middle of the row, indicated by a jump in the numbering sequence.

“What’s the part?”

“A titanium tube of some sort,” said Jim. He picked up a brass tube in the next bin over. “Just like this, only stronger. Division five asked for it.”

Neither Jim nor Hank knew what division five did, only that they got first priority on any requests—and that they were always asking for bizarre parts that neither man could find.

“Whatever, just give them brass.”

“Yeah.” Jim sighed in resignation and returned to the table. He put the paperwork through with the part, bearing the serial number for titanium.

* * *

General George Hamilton escorted five congressmen to a staging platform in the middle of the Arizona desert.

“This, gentleman,” he said, “is the latest deterrent against the Russians.”

In the center of the concrete pad rested a fat metal egg. The General continued, “redesigned—more powerful than ever, but providing more protection against accidental detonation.”

Harold Strathmore, the republican from Nebraska, asked, “How much safer? Can you give us a number?”

“Better than that,” the General picked up a sledge and began circling the bomb. “I’ll give you a demonstration. As you know, the old models based on the original Los Alamos blueprints were prone to premature detonation. The triggers are now protected by titanium. You can bang this baby around all the way to Moscow, but it won’t detonate until it’s sitting in Khrushchev’s lap. The only way to set it off on the ground is to fracture the protective sleeve—damn near impossible with titanium.”

As proof of this, he raised the sledge and slammed it into the nose cone.


The story tied for first.

-Ted