A teacher controls her students with an edible microchip. A reporter turns into a rhinoceros. A couple's efforts to eat local go frighteningly awry. If you're looking to be surprised, puzzled, or just plain entertained, pick up this omnibus. There's something for everyone!
More than twenty years in the making, UNPREDICTABLE WORLDS contains all of Jessica Knauss’s published and prize-winning short fiction as of March 2015 and a few of her best stories never before seen in print or ebook. Zany plots and outrageous characters will stretch your belief and tug at your heart.
WARNING: These stories contain exaggeration, elision, and disregard for “the real world.” Some even exhibit a tone of blatant optimism. However, they respect human speech patterns, admire good grammar, and hold proper punctuation in the highest regard.
Unpredictable Worlds receives five-star reviews on a consistent basis, and won a Reader's Favorite 5-Star Review medal.
I was going to the charity dinner because, since I worked for the school, it was free. That’s the sort of charity a teacher really needs. Like most, I didn’t become a teacher for the money. But I didn’t do it because I like children, either. Nor do I believe they are our future—just the opposite.
The only reason I’ve been successful as a teacher is that my ex-fiancé had developed a biological, programmable computer chip and was willing to test it on humans. I asked no questions: I’m no scientist. I put a single, tiny chip into each fortune cookie I passed out on the first day—full attendance, zero distrust—ostensibly as a predictor for the class year. The ones whose tongues touched the exact chip molecule mentioned some bitterness, but most of the thirty fourth-graders crunched happily away.
Children who received no instruction in obedience at home often did not receive a morning meal, either, and weren’t going to complain when presented with any food, much less an innocuous fortune cookie.
The next day, I gave them spinach—mushy, stinky, gross—and said, “Eat your spinach, children,” in the same way my mother used to tell me to eat disgusting things, that way that set me obstinately against whatever it was. Notwithstanding their looks of dismay, even terror, every last one picked up the plastic fork provided and lifted a bite of green stuff into their mouths.
The chip was a complete success!
Soon the administrative offices were deluged with calls and letters thanking and congratulating Miss Matheson (I wasn’t married yet) for the amazing changes in the behavior of my fourth-graders. Because I was a novice, my teacher assistant had been at the school for many years, and she spread the word far and wide that there was nothing special or even very good about what I was doing in the classroom....
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by Aline Bremer
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