The conversation lasted two words: "Good Luck." She said. Tantor took a deep breath as he walked down the silent hallway. The foot steps of his armored boots echoed off the walls.
"This is Green leader, reaching jump pods now." He spoke into the headset in his helmet. "Rodger that Tantor, Greens two, three and four are ready to jump." The cybernatic AI downloaded into his HUD replied.
"What about Black team?" he asked.
"Blackheart's team is also ready to drop." she answered. The jump pod's hatch slowly opened upward. Tantor took a deep breath and sat down into the...
Phons and Ramon had worked this beat for awhile, all of Phons' three years on the force. Today was as beautiful as the tourists bobbing around the stores. The two strolled the sidewalk enjoying their usual eye-candy.
Ramon spots a nice blonde, and turns to point it out to Phons, but he's looking at something in the sky. Glancing back to the blonde he notices she too is looking up. He glances up and immediately gets a face-full of glare, quickly wrenching away and furiously blinking. He smacks Phons on the belly for a moment, "Hey..."
Phons doesn't budge. Ramon...
"I think there's a problem with the design!" Clair blurted. The table of nerdy glasses and hazy schematics looked up one by one.
Burt suddenly took her by the arm, turning her slightly but firmly. "We're hours away from the prototype run and you think there's something we haven't considered?"
"It's the idea in general. If the particle resonance is what we think it is then why are we trying to counter the harmonics? I mean--what could that do to the very fabric--"
Burt collapses to a singularity point, everything in the room suddenly expanding at the edges and warping...
The lamp wouldn't turn on. Lucy shifted, humping herself up on the mattress to look at the actual location of the light, fingers searching to see if, perhaps, she just hadn't hit the right button. But it was still there. The cheap lamp she had bought with her sister at Target while decorating the apartment she hadn't wanted to get.
"Unf," Lucy muttered under her breath. Light bulbs. She had no clue where light bulbs were. Forcing herself up, she headed out of her room and into the bathroom, flicking on the light there. But still, there was no light....
The bird landed. Crunch. The baseball bat followed quickly after. Another sparrow came too close and the burly man pivoted, keeping his hands close to his core, pounding the bird into deep left field. Children scampered behind him, scooping the carnage into banker's boxes.
75, 76, 77. 77! That's $19.25!
At a quarter per sparrow, the money wasn't great, but for a handful of the invasive species, one could get a loaf of bread.
The initiative had been welcome by ecologists and nationalists alike. "An English bird has no place in American habitats," one said. "An English bird has no...
He had hoped it wouldn't come to this. Making a strategic withdrawal into a tunnel, luring in the rest of the elite squadron that pursued him to pick them off two or three at a time now that they were forced into tighter quarters. He had not heard the sound of the train from far off, and figured he had the time to keep running, slash a few soldiers, put some distance between them, and repeat.
The tunnel was deceptively longer than he presumed.
He ducked beneath the spray of incoming bullets before making a horizontal slash, Rihatsu cleaving through...
Heavy midnight. The crawl of the planchette under our fingertips. The triptych was coming alive. One creature sprang from the painted panel. A beast, horned and elephantine, illuminated by the moon through the cellar window.
It spoke to us through the board:
“Extradimensional bovine dreamfeeders graze upon fronds that sprout from the heads of sleepers. These dreams—long, lush, iridescent fancies rooted in neuronic soil and flowering up into the night—are their food.
“The beasts lumber through a meadow of musing at night, their jaws drooling plasmic sludge, their snorts ruffling moppet heads from across the chasm of dimension. They pass...
An old sepia photo can be a bullet. It can tear through the lineup of neurons, neatly lined up like socks on a bed. It can make you aware that you are your latest incarnation. That you have been here before.
A mother and her child. Doesn't that child look familiar? Who remembers his own birth? Especially when it was 70 years ago? Today I am 27. I have been 27 many times now, projecting myself a year into the future so that I could live as 27 for a year, then my past self projecting himself a year into...
Two rows of terrified youth, each plastered, clingingly, to the fences on opposite sides of the tennis court. 16 bouncing 4-square balls. 16 times times 20 opponents per side: the numbers were staggering. The odds of being struck by lightning paled in comparison. You could win lotto 35 goddamn times before you'd escape a barrage like this.
And someone said "GO!"
They raced to the balls, grabbing all the resources they could muster for their side, hoarding the ammunition. When one side has only 3 balls, it's much easier to keep track of who's hunting you.
Her side had 11...
In hindsight, the solution was simple. But Tim hadn't thought that five minutes ago.
The boy pounded the keyboard furiously; letters, numbers and symbols flashing across the screen.
Dave peered over the other boys shoulder, tentatively.
"Are you sure you can do this?" he asked.
Tim ignored this comment. Of course he could do it. Yes, they would detect the hack in a matter of minutes, but he never doubted his ability to circumvent their security before then.
He began to type faster, his fingers a blur.
Dave stepped back, sweat beginning to bead his head. If they could get...