“The entire shell is Chronium. That shields the op…”
“You mean chrome. Chromium?”
“Ahem. Crow NEE Uhm. Chronium. As in Chronos. Yes… so, it shields the operator from time partic…”
“Chronons, right!”
“Ye… Look are you going to kee…”
“…p interrupting? No. Sorry. Just. Just excited. Distracted. Do carry on…”
“Right. I know you created the concept, and were very keen to be the first test subject, but the engineering team has had to adapt a great deal of the original design. Are you su…”
“Yes. Totally re… Damn. I did it again, didn’t I?”
“Let’s just get you inside,...
She'd have preferred the electric chair, but he wouldn't have it. "Think about how much easier it would be on everyone hon," Sarah said as she stared down at her son, sitting in his black Quickie wheelchair. "You wouldn't have to roll yourself so much and your father and I wouldn't have to help you up those steep hills if you had this chair."
Mark stared at the other wheelchair, with its electric motor, and grimaced. "Ma, I'm already lazy as it is," he told her bluntly. "If I don't roll myself my arms will atrophy as much as my...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
She was crouched over an open laptop, her scowl lit up by the screen as she stabbed cmd+R repeatedly. The browser blinked frantically as it reloaded the same white text area on the same light blue background over and over and over again.
"It's past midnight in the U.S.," she muttered. "Why hasn't the prompt been updated yet?"
She scrolled down the rest of the page, cmd-clicking every link until the Twitter page popped up.
"GODDAMMIT," she cried, 'THEY'RE ON THE WEST COAST."
You gave me the best summer of my life. The summer before I went to college, I wished that everything we had shared would never change.
We kissed on the bench in my backyard, in your car in the rain, at the movies...Then once I got to college, it was your apartment.
Back to summer; I can't think of better moments I could have shared with anyone else.
After my sophomore year, I didn't see you again. And I'll always think of the night you proposed, watching MTV, high, at 4am.
I will remember the way you used to look...
My feet ached, but it was well worth it. I was close to finding the lost city of the Incans. I had walked through endless jungle paths, forgotten by the human nation. But i had come to a semi-clearing. There were immense boulders, at least half the size of a skyscraper back home in New York. I pulled vines and ivy off a strange looking stone, to find a wonder: an opening. I ventured down, flashlight searching the earthy walls. Suddenly, i felt a hand clamp over my mouth. They dragged me to the ground and pushed a filthy rag...
Sarah's excitement about back-packing around the world had been building for months as her departure date grew closer. With this came an ever increasing list of things to do and more importantly to Sarah, things to buy, she didn't afterall want to be the least fashionable backpacker in Peru, despite other friends who'd gone on similar adventures telling her 'Once you get there, you won't care what you look like.' So hours and hours later of jamming her backpack with the latest boho looks from Urban Outfitters, 10 pairs of shoes and 10 bangles, Sarah's mother came into the room...
The audience stared open mouthed at me. I sat motionless for a moment, lost in the dazzle of it all. The lights, the people, I had never sang in front of so many people before. I sang a long song, filled with passion, and sang it like I was starving to sing. After I had finished, there was not a sound in the theatre. You could have heard a pin drop. As I sat still, I grew more anxious by the second. Until finally I saw a lone figure in the back, slowly rise and clap. The clap was slow,...
She awoke tied to a post. It hurt throughout her face. The stupid chloroform had probably affected her oxygen levels, so she breathed fresh air in great gasps. the man stood in front of her, staring at her. "Willing to show us now? there is still a harem in Sauti Arabia that's looking for a girl like you." he said softly. She responded by spitting on his shoes. He pulled out a rag and tried to press it to her face, but she wrapped her hands around the pole and kicked upward as hard as she could, catching him in...
"Travel light, but take everything with you." That was the only advice my father ever gave me, before he left. I was six.
I took it to heart, it was the only thing I had of him. I never knew where he went, he told me it was important, but that's what you tell a child when you have to leave, no matter the reason. So when mother died, I was seventeen with nothing to me but that advice. I decided to seek out my father, to know where he had gone, to walk in his footsteps. I needed to...
She didn't look at him. She couldn't look at him. What would he think? she wondered as she sipped her wine and kept her eyes averted while he looked at her steadily, scratching his prematurely grey beard. "What's wrong?" he asked in his tenor voice.
"Nothing," she lied, and felt guilty for it.
"Come on," Mark said. He rolled over to Mary, took her hand and squeezed it gently. "We've been friends since we were kids, darlin'. You can tell me anything. Just like I can tell you anything."
"I love you," she blurted. Mark blinked at her as she...