Just figured I'd repost my 150 word flashfic from July 2018 here, called "The Apple Jack".

I jacked in, let my eyes settle. Ear twitch here and here, and I was there. Orange’d pay good for Apple intel, and if family was hurt, what of it? A cred was a cred.

The ice on the site was bog-standard. Fine if you weren’t expecting trouble, but there was always another corp around the corner, and a good decker could find a way to make a profit.

A standard ice-breaker did the trick. Saw a flash, but nothing showed on a scan. Easy as pie.

The maze beyond was trickier and a mind was behind the attacks, but I still broke through to—

Nothing? Faint laughter. A trace!

I cut the connection, looked at my empty account, and swore. A message blinked.

“Too slow, Babs! You need creds, come visit your family sometime, hmm?”

I guess now I’ll have to.

It's one of these cases where it's short, but I felt something was there. I kind of like the alternate universe sketched out here. It's also in my anthology of short stories, but I'm not sure about adding an anthology to the group when only one story is relevant...

--Sweetie Belle

7745435 I like it.

7745466
Thanks!

It was originally written for a monthly flashfic contest, hence the word count. Prompt was "What were you thinking?". I'd been wanting to do something cyberpunk, and this was a classic plot. Babs seemed like a great character to use for it, and a lot of it came together because of my thinking of a really bad pun.

I'll also say that I actually quite like the idea of using ear movements to control things in cyberspace. It seems like a rather natural thing to do when you have cyberpunk ponies...

--Sweetie Belle