Stranger Than Friction

by Anthony Watson

It was supposed to have been the greatest breakthrough in engineering since time began. The first step in producing a perpetual motion machine - thereby solving the energy crisis and, by dint, preventing the global warming catastrophe. Friction was the key; the force that meant any moving parts in a machine would grip each other – albeit weakly – whenever they came in contact and therefore always lose energy as heat as they pulled themselves apart again. Astradyne Labs had, after decades of research and experimentation, finally designed a process whereby a truly frictionless material could be manufactured. They were however, unable to bring the product to the mass market. When the first sample of the new material emerged from the final processor, it immediately slipped off the tray it had emerged onto, stopping only when it ran up against a wall (where it remains to this day, impossible to pick up).

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Anthony Watson has placed short stories, novellas and novels with a number of small presses. He was co-founder of Dark Minds Press and worked as editor there for ten years before leaving to concentrate on writing. He writes supernatural horror with most of his stories set in historical timeframes. Following the publication of Witnesses in 2017, his second novel The Fallen was published in October 2020 by Demain Publishing. As well as writing, he posts occasional book reviews at his Dark Musings blog which can be found here.