By Tony Owens
Klinko, the King of Klowns, watched as the robot juggled a number of watermelons and a chainsaw.
‘That’s impressive,’ he said.
The robot’s creator, Dr Ernest Frankenstein, beamed. ‘Given my family history, I thought robotics would be a logical career path.’
‘I guess so, but aren’t you worried about that history?’
Ernest was silent for a moment. They stood in the car park outside EF Robotronics Laboratory, situated between Jimmy Whale’s Discount Tool Shed and the illuminating delights of Boris’s Tiki Torch Bazaar. A worker was casually varnishing a shipment of new Tiki Torches and placing them onto a palette to dry.
‘The only suggestion I’d make,’ said Klinko, ‘would be for your robotic friend to lose the cigarette.’
Indeed, the robot had an unlit smoke dangling from the air intake valve where the mouth was painted on.
‘I thought it would make him look a bit more human, less menacing.’
‘True, but if we’re going to take him on at Hernandez’s Circus of Terror, we’ve got to abide by the strict anti-smoking laws. Anyway, what sort of signal does that send to the kids?’
Ernest nodded and made some adjustments to the controls. With an almost human-like sigh, the robot removed the cigarette from its ‘mouth’ and tossed it away. It flew with superhuman speed, glowing as it encountered the friction of the atmosphere and burst into flame. It alighted on the palette, in more ways than one. Several freshly treated torches burst into flame.
‘So how is he powered?’ asked Klinko, both men oblivious to the conflagration that had taken hold.
‘Inside the head is a metallic grid on which I’ve grafted a brain tissue cell line. It’s like flowers growing on a trellis, but sentient.’ Ernest seemed pleased with his little analogy though Klinko was beginning to feel a little uneasy. He looked across the carpark and noticed a sign at the tool shop he hadn’t picked up on before — ‘Pitchfork Sale - Up to 75% Off.’ A healthy looking crowd had gathered to take advantage of the discounted garden implements
‘This cell line, where exactly did you get it?’
‘It was bequeathed to me as part of my grandfather’s estate. He inherited it from his father and so on.’
Both men looked up now as a fire alarm was going off at the torch shop. Workers frantically tried to save some of the burning torches from the palette. By this time a crowd of shoppers had emerged from the hardware store, holding their newly purchased pitchforks aloft for safety. Sirens could be heard in the distance. People began to run in the direction of the only avenue available for escape — straight towards Klinko, Dr Frankenstein and his creation.
‘This situation is not developing quite as optimally as I might have hoped,’ said the doctor.
The murmuring crowd of pitchfork wielding customers and blazing torch holding workers flooded up the hill. The monster, accessing some genetic memory, was becoming visibly agitated.
‘We need to get to the fire evacuation point,’ said Klinko. ‘Where is it?’
Before Ernest answered, Klinko knew with a sinking feeling what he was going to say.
‘Just up there,’ he replied. ‘Next to the old windmill.’
‘Of course,’ muttered Klinko. They started to run.
About the Author
Tony Owens
Tony Owens is an ESL teacher living in Brisbane with his wife and son.
His short fiction has appeared in the anthologies In Fabula-Divino, Zombies Ain’t Funny,18, Darkest Depths and Andromeda Spaceways Magazine 2017’s Best Stories.
He is a proud member of the Vision Writers Group and his ultimate ambition is to find the literary sweet-spot between H.P. Lovecraft and P.G. Wodehouse.
Ion Newcombe is the editor and publisher of AntipodeanSF, Australia’s longest running online speculative fiction magazine, regularly issued since January 1998, and conceived back around November 2007. He has been a zealous reader and occasional writer of SF since his childhood in the 1960s, and even sold a few stories here and there back in the '90s.
Mark Webb's midlife crisis came in the form of attempting to write speculative fiction at a very slow pace. His wife maintains this is a good outcome considering the more expensive and cliched alternatives. Evidence of Mark's attempts to procrastinate in his writing, including general musings and reviews of books he has been reading, can be found at www.markwebb.name.
Natsumi Tanaka is a writer living in Kyoto, Japan. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous Japanese magazines such as Anima Solaris, Kotori no kyuden, and Tanpen.
Evan James Sheldon’s work has appeared recently in American Literary Review, the Cincinnati Review, and New Flash Fiction Review.
Jake Dean is a writer and waverider living on Kaurna land in South Australia.
Matthew R. Doherty currently resides in Leeds, England, where he spends most of his free time writing about military history, but his other consuming passion is for science fiction.
Joanna is a writer who lives in the bush near the Glasshouse Mountains in Queensland.
Geraldine Borella writes adult short stories and stories for children and has been published in anthologies for both. In 2018, one of her children’s short stories placed second in The Buzz Words Short Story Prize and she won an ASA Emerging Writer’s Mentorship. She currently works part-time as a hospital pharmacist and as an online creative writing tutor.
Andrew writes science-fiction and fantasy from the state of Maryland on the eastern coast of the United States, often drawing ideas from jogs through forest trails at sunrise or a tasty beer at sunset. 
Tim Borella has never lost his childhood passion for SF and writing in general and has been lucky enough to have worked most of his life as a pilot — in other words, he’s never properly grown up.
Old enough to just remember the first manned Moon landing, Kevin was so impressed he made science his life.
Simon Petrie, born and educated in New Zealand, now lives in the Australian Capital Territory, where he is paid to be careful with words.
Margaret lives the good life on a small piece of rural New South Wales Australia, with an amazing man, a couple of pets, and several rambunctious wombats.
Although a writer of the baby boom persuasion, Ed has not boomed for quite a while.
Laurie Bell lives in Melbourne, Australia. She was that girl you found with her nose always buried in a book. She has been writing ever since she was a little girl and first picked up a pen. From books to short stories, radio plays to snippets of ideas and reading them aloud to anyone who will listen.
Garry Dean lives on the Mid Coast of New South Wales Australia, and has been a fan of SF for most of his natural life. Being vision impaired, he makes good use of voice recognition and text to speech in order to write. Many of his stories have appeared in AntipodeanSF over the years, and his love of all things audio led him to join the narration team in 2017.
Sarah Pratt is an avid fiction writer and a Marketing Consultant.
Timothy Gwyn is a professional pilot in Canada, where he flies to remote communities. During a lull in his flying career, he was a radio announcer for three years, and he is also an author.
Pixie is a voice actor, cabaret performer & slam poet From the Blue Mountains in NSW.
