He was absent. Again. The kid would only show up on test days - on which he performed well enough. But that wasn't the point. All the other students showed up every day, and worked earnestly. And taught each other. And applied the concepts. He would pass the exams but forget all the material down the road. It would be like most of the bright students - playing with ideas. Treating it all as a show - as a game. Show up to perform. Wasting their talent. Lacking direction. Lacking any real purpose. Where was the kid going to get...

Sometimes I am shocked at the state of America today. The young people just have not respect - no decency at all. They go around and do whatever they wish - guided, though, not by their wishes but by the pulsing masses. Every time that I see it I am disgusted. I see it and shrink. I don't understand it entirely. But this one thing is like my only weakness. Maybe I am like them. I just following a whim of someone else - or something. I'd like to think that I could have a justification for something that hits...

My feet ached, but it was well worth it. Not only that, I was starving. Twenty-six point two miles. It was a stupid decision, but I'm glad I made it. A marathon isn't the sort of thing most people do on the spur of the moment. I mean, I'd thought about it before. But I'd never trained for it. I just wanted to do something that I would remember. Something that would make me feel alive. I wasn't even sure I would do it until this morning. I wasn't sure I'd go along with it even at the start line....

It is beautiful. The trail was never going to end. Or at least I wasn't going to make it to the end. I won't live forever. I will die before we reach the end of the trail. We'd been traveling for three years. By all calculations it will take another four to five years. I realized that as I was digging through the journals from the explorers before us. I realized that the rest all knew that, they just didn't want to tell me. To tell me that what I had fought for wasn't ever going to be mine.
But...

"I'm in love with a robot."
"What?!"
"I am in love with a robot. I really am. I just realized it."
"I am concerned that you don't know what love is."
"Well - me too, but that's not the point. I am concerned that you don't know what robots are."
"What is a robot? Who is this robot that you "love?"
"A robot is someone who functions on the basis of identifiable algorithms or functions. It is someone who may appear human but is not. You."

When I was young I found a baby sparrow. Fallen from his nest. Abandoned. I took him home and nurtured him. Cared for him. I named him Franklin. Day by day he grew stronger. He was soon able to fly. He'd fly about but always return. Until one day. He flew away. I rode around the neighborhood looking for him. Then I realized he was gone forever. I started looking always for a new baby sparrow. But I never found one. I am glad. I think just one baby sparrow was perfect.

This happened every single time.He stared at the blank piece of paper. It was taunting him. He sharpened his pencil again. He traced the edges of the paper again. He looked out the window. The rain was falling again. Softly. Looking back at the paper, he wondered why he ever tried to write. He put the pencil to the paper, thinking the action would prompt the thought. But it just left a small mark. He smudged it with his finger. If he could just write something. He tried to think about what he was feeling. Nothing. He tried to think...

"This, class, is an example of a cemetery. Does anyone know what a cemetery was?"

"A cemetery was a place where bodies were buried up until the last century when death was eradicated."

"Yes. That is correct. It is quite sad, isn't it?"

It was just a test. Just to see what it was like, or what he was like. With trepidation he inched his way forward. There he was finally. Sitting on the edge of the cliff. Life had been rough lately, or rather it had been rough to live his life of boredom. The doldrums. He wanted to see what he was made of. Sitting there on the edge of the cliff he thought he might be able to make some meaning of life. He was not planning on jumping. Life was lame, but not that lame. He just figured that...

The bird landed. The men initiated procedures drilled into them back on earth and dream't of for the past month. The main hatch slowly opened. The first men stepped out onto the Martian surface. This would be their home. For the rest of their lives, they'd volunteered knowing they wouldn't ever return to earth. Alphonso stepped forward and turned back to face the rest of them. This is what they had rehearsed. He flipped the switch that would enable the broadcast to be heard by everyone on earth, instead of the internal channel to the corporation. He began to speak,...