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,...
A swing. I found my self under one as i awoke to the devestation. Fires raged every which way, how the playground was not on fire I will never know. I decided to walk out, mostly out of fear, and I was horrified with my decision. Right outside the playground, where children played not so long ago, were burned, rotting corpses. They layed therewith out motion, without life, but not without smell. As i hurried back to the playground to retch, I saw out of the corner of my eyes. A woman. Dazed and confused as i was, but still...
There is a place, near where I used to live, that looked like this - you see it, right there? It's a bowling green. Not the bowling you and I would do, the bowling that belongs to another age. Mostly the elderly.
There were, in fact, two near me - high amusement, I can tell you, since we came to the conclusion that one had decided it was a rival for the other. And that said other had no idea that it existed. That this perceived rivalry would fuel them entirely, even though the other lived in blissful ignorance of...
Man do I ever love typing ampersands. Seriously. Whenever I type one, it's like the whole universe shits solid gold joy right on my lap. Life is all sunshine and rainbows and Barbie Doll bumholes whenever I type an ampersand. I'm actually feeling a bit melancholy right now, so I'm gonna type an ampersand.
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HOLY SHIT AM I EVER HIGH ON LIFE RIGHT NOW!!!! SERIOUSLY, IT IS LIKE RONALD MCDONALD AND ORCA THE KILLER WHALE ARE BOTH TAKING ME ON A ROCKET TRIP TO PLUTO TO SEE SAMMY DAVIS JUNIOR STRANGLE MIMES WHILE WEARING LEONARD NIMOY'S SPOCK OUTFIT!!!!
Let...
There was a knock at the door. It was Theo, the kid from next door. He was only seven. Wearing nothing but blue jean shorts. Scabs on his knees. Feet filthy. Skinny as a broom. Darn kid probably hadn't eaten since Tuesday.
"You busy?" he asks.
"Kinda," I say, and hold up my crocheting.
Theo looks at the ground then back up at me. "Thing is, I'm hungry and I don't know where mom is."
I sigh. This happens all the time. I back up and let Theo march past me into the kitchen. I thought he was going to...
"You know," Clark said, in-between rising above the water to take breaths as he swam. "I really hate you."
John shrugged; or, at least, performed as much as a shrug as you can while swimming. "I don't see why."
"What do you mean, you don't see why?"
"We're doing what I said we'd do, right? Go for a swim together. You were all uppity about the whole thing, so I challenged you to do one length of the pool with me. Well, here we are, doing one length."
"Yes, but you didn't tell me that we were going to be...
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...
A wolf was hunting her, for she was young and precious and delicious. She didn't remember her name, she had been running for so long; so, when she got up and went into the doorway, she was surprised at first. There was a picture of her on the wall. There was a picture of her with an old woman.
"What..." she mumbled, a breath barely traveling from her lips.
"Oh, auspicious granddaughter, you have finally arrived! Come in, come in, and give your dearest granny a kiss."
The girl looked towards the bed and there was a hairy, beastly old...
In a moment of clarity and inspiration, the second archivist suggested the following plan: track the social trends in our city; map them, finding the inevitable patterns; figure out the dependent and independent variables; create a mapping; and finally, inconspicuously, design public policy to tap into exactly those inputs, in just the right amounts. Prod the organism. Domesticate the animal. Soon, the stochastic trends would form into strands, then chains of strands, then threads. With time, the sum total of human knowledge be kept in the predictable social patterns of our race.
Standing on the edge, my mind was white. No; it was clear. Nothing I had experienced in my 18 years was going through my head. Not my mother's voice, or the orange corduroy couch in my Aunt Lucy's basement.
And then I jumped. Rocks and crashing waves below this cliff in Martha's Vineyard, our family vacation spot. Rushing into my head were thoughts of my first kiss, first time, smoking pot under the high school bleachers... My dad's face when I learned to drive, my mom's when I crashed the minivan.
My white sneakers were about to get soaking wet,...