The Pill

Note: This story was published in Mobius Blvd #20.

 There is a lot of talk about how to write brilliant characters convincingly. Some writers feel it’s all about having a large vocabulary. Other make their intelligent characters act erratic. While there are smart people who use big words and behave unpredictably, the smartest people I’ve met don’t do either. The most common shared characteristic I’ve seen is that very smart people are able to grasp multiple paths of action and consequence, and they do it very quickly.

You see this play out in business and music and science and even sports, but the cleanest example I’ve seen of this is with games like chess. At the highest levels, moves are made not on instinct or a surface level understanding of the response it will elicit, but with the next five or six moves and counters already considered and planned for.

Being smarter doesn’t make a person a better human being any more than being taller does. Just like height, that level of intelligence has to have its downsides. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live with a genius who couldn’t shut it off? To have every off-hand comment and action processed to that degree? That was the question I was thinking of while on vacation in the North Carolina mountains. Toss in an alien invasion, shadowy government oversight, and let me design an alien boardgame, and you’ve got yourself a story call “The Pill.”

Mobius Blvd is a new one for me to publish in, but it’s the same editor as Dark Horses Magazine. I hope you enjoy it!