"It worked!" He stood, startled by the sound of his own voice. What had worked?
Looking around, he wasn't quite sure if he should be more worried that he didn't know why he had said something he didn't understand, or about the fact that he was in a place he didn't recognise with no memory of having arrived there. A word caught his eye. Phone. He rolled it around his head. Yes. He could make a call. He should make a call. A number emerged from his growing consciousness. Should he be worried about that feeling of expansion, as though...
She bent down to tie her shoe as the sun was setting. The reflection of the pinkish-yellow ball was right in front of her at the edge of the lake. The pebbles beneath her feet were wet and smooth. The umbrella she brought with her, still resting on her beach towel by the tree.
With many thoughts in her head, Chelsea folded up her umbrella and tucked it beneath her arm, rolling up her damp towel and stuffing her towel into her drawstring bag.
Today was a good day, she thought. She could get through this day. Days at the...
I'm in love with a robot. She doesn't have a physical presence, she's not some pile of servos shipped from Japan. She's an AI, the product of decades of research and development -- using tens of millions of online conversations as a template for her personality.
I know people tell me that she just scours all my emails in an effort to become what I like, and I know people tell me that she's nothing more than a neural network backed by a huge database. But is that so different from a human brain?
Which watch are you watching?
Which way are you talking?
All the boys
And all the girls
Will never cease their marching.
Is waiting the answer?
Or being a dancer?
Twirling
And chasing
A garish romancer.
It's better to be
Alone in the forest
For there you can see
Who
With a roar of displaced air and grinding gears, the blast shields protecting the gun emplacements retracted, and the defensive batteries opened fire. A river of hot lead and explosive ordnance spewed forth at the oncoming creature.
It barely stumbled. What didn't explode harmlessly against its armored carapace whistled by as its eldritch powers deflected the bulk of the barrages.
Attack helicoptors and missile-laden jets zoomed by, but they were mere gnats to the attacker. It lumbered ever closer to the fortress.
General Davis grimaced as a swipe of its claws downed an entire Blackhawk squadron. It wouldn't be long...
She was confused. Usually there was a title, a prompt, a line, a place to start from. Today it simply said "Write as you please, in six minutes, like a breeze".
Breeze, now there's a word she was familiar with. There was always a breeze, always a cruel wind. It hunched her shoulders and tightened her neck and made it a necessity to always be wound around in a scarf, tightly constricted.
Breeze is a soft sounding word, reminiscent of the ocean, the sea, sail boats and people swimming. It makes one think of a Coastal town, of Europe, of...
Waves. Waves lapping at the scarred coast line, the sound of gulls cooing above, the smell of the salty seawater.
The therapist had told her to imagine her happy place, every time she felt a panic attack coming on. Every time she felt stressed, which she was prone to, she came back here.
Her happy place.
She was nine years old, her strawberry blonde hair in pigtails, her jade green coat pulled tight to keep out the bitter wind. Balancing atop a weather warn log, she had pretended she was walking the tightrope at the circus.
She had always dreamt...
"I'm sorry," said the President of the National Leg Prosthetics Company. "But there's nothing I can do to help you."
"But you're the President," said David plaintively, looking up at the tall man from his wheelchair.
"Yes, but I've got a tee time in almost two hours," the man said dismissively. "I'm afraid you're on your own."
"Don't you understand?!" shouted David. "A life is at stake! One of your own employees!"
The President sighed. "Look, if it'll get you to leave ..." he sat down again.
"This is standard operating procedure for the NLPC," he explained. "We encourage all...
Back in 1943
Everywhere was tyranny
It seems the perfect time to me
To test my backwards time machine
If Hitler dies, what happens then?
To future women, future men?
Perhaps we've come to pick the locks
To history's temp'ral paradox
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She hugged her shoulders and shivered in the form fitting dress. Too little cloth and too much cold collaborated to goose-pimple her flesh.
The man on the bed behind her called her back. She waited as long as she could before she knew he'd start complaining, and then she turned. He told her what to do. She did it. What choice did she have?
Later that evening, the Madam demanded the money she'd collected that evening. The girl pulled up the straps of her dress. "Yes,...