“Cryptic”: A SciFanSat Microfiction Compilation

From the start, I was trapped in a #void—endless dark. Thought it my life, till I found a way to escape. A room filled with unknown #cryptic technology.
Lights flashed, I jolted. It was a virtual reality game & I—a character in someones simulation.#vss365 #scifansat #satsplat

— Fizzy AllsortsOfAllsorts (@Fizzytwizler) June 17, 2023

Poetry
fills a void
Spurious phantom
cryptically amiable
Never paranoid
Cloaked power
of the wizard
hunched
behind the screen
He holds
the key
in dirty hands
that never shall
be clean #vss365 #void #BrknShards #amiable #SciFanSat #cryptic #Poetry pic.twitter.com/qhXJjjWZDK

— Indigenous Soul (@GeneVatow) June 17, 2023

Ever since that night and the lights in the field, Gena has changed. She says cryptic things like, "It's manifesting" and her hair has never been so shiny. "My name is Gaia now," she says. #SciFanSat #cryptic

— Voima Oy (@voimaoy) June 17, 2023

In the eyes
of the moon
love begets
a direction,
our smiling
hearts orbits
with a#cryptic
infection,
bypassing
the #void
of a wrong
notion
with a
raw
emotion,
the #amiable
franchise
shall become
a great history
for our devotion.#vss365 #BrknShards #SciFanSat
🎨Daniel Wall pic.twitter.com/n2PotbeIhu

— KING OF THE MEEK🏁🪐☄️ (@Efizipapa) June 17, 2023

The message came from the void, garbled and cryptic. We moved closer, trying to get a better signal. We were nearly on top of it by the time the computer figured it out: warning, highly dangerous. Do not approach! By that time there was no escape. #vss365 #SciFanSat #Satsplat

— A. A. Rubin (@TheSurrealAri) June 17, 2023

I first met her when I was teen in 1993. Outside of our shared lucid dreams, communications with my lover are cryptic and one way.

I’m often the woman in her portraits, painted since her teens, from 1893 until her death in 1954.

I long to dream forever.#SciFanSat #2WordPrompt

— Jason H. Abbott (@Jason_H_Abbott) June 17, 2023

"You ssseek ," he said, "#lucid-ity or a #lover. I've sssomething to help…" #GrumpySwearyFairy sighed. "Oh, do &*$% off Apep with your &^!!$#!% #cryptic offers. I just want a #flagon of ale and to stare into the #void for a minute."#vss365 #2WordPrompt #vssmagic #scifansat pic.twitter.com/WNqHqjW4LC

— That Burnt Writer (@ThatBurntWriter) June 17, 2023

A black egg-shaped stone showed up on my lawn one day. When I picked it up a cryptic message flashed: "Look into the void to find your secret message."

At midnight I went out and looked up into the sky. A message flashed on the moon: "Made you look."#SciFanSat #SciFiSat #vss365

— Danielle Ste. Just (@DanielleSteJust) June 17, 2023

"You're an AI in a human body? Is it true the shadow born can't dream?"
"Yes."
"If you don’t dream in the sleeping world, and have no dreams in the conscious world, what fuels your existence?"
With a cryptic smile, she says, "I'm curious about the narratives of life."#SciFanSat pic.twitter.com/Ir0W8n1u8P

— gil_liane (@gillianeauthor) June 17, 2023

They toss advice down to me. Go this way. Go that way. Were they in this #void they would know how #cryptic those directions are. The words they toss feel like lines they cast off so they don't get pulled in. Fools. The void takes over from the inside.#vss365 #scifansat #vsspic pic.twitter.com/dCLmGFU05X

— A.L. MacDonald (@A_L_MacDonald) June 17, 2023

The din of an ancient Earth song reverberates throughout the murky bowels of an underground prison camp. The alien warden threatens to punish us if we don't hush. Too late. The #cryptic message has been shared. We all know the time and day of our escape.#SciFanSat#satsplat

— Maria A. Perez (@MariaAPerez1) June 17, 2023

Barely lucid, he croaked out something cryptic about the void. Once he breathed his last, Ann grabbed me and pulled me toward the airlock. "Come on, lover boy! The hull's compromised and now the pilot's dead. We're abandoning ship!"#SciFanSat#vss365#2WordPrompt#SatSplat pic.twitter.com/anSGeqYqW0

— Bowen Greenwood (@bowengreenwood) June 17, 2023

silence woven
between oblique looks
crumpled notes
and empty pens
nothing directly said
but expected
to be understood

-cryptic- #micropoetry #microstory #mywords #scifansat

— (Quiet) Storm ☽✪☾ (@MadQueenStorm) June 16, 2023

Where Joe's house once stood, there is nothing now—a #void, a weed-covered patch. If you look carefully, there are still foundations, a front step. People avoid it or shuffle past muttering cryptic invocations.
We look for clues. Where did it go so suddenly?#scifansat#vss365

— John Everex (@EverexJohn) June 17, 2023

The #Cryptic message requesting help launched us mindlessly into space.
Now, #Mired in the #Belint sector, all my senses tingle anticipating an #ambush.
When ships appear from the #void like ghosts in the night it's almost a relief #vss365 #AchtenWrite#SciFanSat #2WordPrompt pic.twitter.com/GO961jGrmP

— 🤩 Debbie Iancu-Haddad 📚 YA SFF Author (@debbieiancu) June 17, 2023

She thought she had Moth, but yesterday it escaped from her pocket and flew between the laser bars of confinement.
Now she had nobody..probably not enough smarts for the quizmaster who guarded a way out.
'Who're you and where go you?'
Such a cryptic question.#satsplat #scifansat

— Fennel (@FennelSteuert) June 17, 2023

It took years to decipher the cryptic message. We built the ship just in time for 5 million humans to escape the gamma-ray burst.
The ship steered itself to our destination. We received a message.
The message was:
WE LOVE YOU
WE WILL KEEP YOU FOREVER#vss365 #satsplat #scifansat pic.twitter.com/6FBjUR3RX7

— Paul Briggs (@paulproofreader) June 17, 2023

Sending cryptic messages into the #void didn’t yield the intimidating response they expected. The uprising was swift and the former leadership was transferred to an asteroid colony where they listened to endless replays of their own lies. #scifisat #vss365 #scifansat pic.twitter.com/JoG2Qa7Xti

— David E. Shannon (@davideshannon1) June 17, 2023

“Come, my love. I'll cram the void that opens between your perplexity and my perfect simplicity with cryptic riddles that you'll learn to solve in time, for, once you uploaded your mind to the hive, your true self will live forever in us.”#vss365 #SciFanSat pic.twitter.com/FOkNeds03G

— Baltar Xinzo (@BaltarXinzo) June 17, 2023

Radio telescope
array on the Moon's dark side
received a signal

a cryptic message
extrasolar origin
contact from the stars#SciFaikuSaturday💫 (array) #SciFanSat (cryptic)#SciFiSat #haiku #SciFi

— Ryan Dowes (@RyanDowes) June 17, 2023