It was picture day. Mom took us all to the park. The whole family, I mean. It was her, dad, both sets of grandparents, all 8 great-grandparents, my sister, my brother, his kid, and all our aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins and third cousins and their dogs and cats and kindergarten teachers. There were 63,293 of us in all. And mom had us all wear the same thing: blue jeans and red shirts.
We all gathered under the shade of the mighty elm and then the photographer took the picture. She had to take 37 shots to...
"I'm gonna kick your butt!" Heather yelled from the other side of the playground. She dangled on the monkey bars, high enough to break an arm if she fell. Gene's lips curled upward at the thought.
"What? Little prissy Heather is gonna actually do something for once?" This sort of drama wasn't uncommon at Lakewood Elementary School among the fourth- and fifth-graders.
"As a matter of fact, yes." Heather dropped down from the bars and marched across the wood chips to where I stood at the top of the slide. She looked up at me and added, "And I'm gonna...
"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."
The girl adjusted the ancient headset irritably. Stupid thing was a poor substitute for her surround sound wireless earbuds, and frankly time was crucial in her quest--she had five minutes to get to the bottom of the mountain or the Ravaging Horde would catch up t0 her and her guild would never forgive her.
They'd given her the manuscript to protect, after all! And it was supposed to be because she'd been an all-star runner in middle school, as if that had anything to do with anything. But her headphones not working was totally an exo.
She tapped the ridiculous...
I was hit in the face with a solid WHAP!! A SMACK!! A fist hitting my face with a CRACK!! My nose is broken. Oh, why did I have to go and insult the gang leader in prison. I didn't know! All I knew was that he was being an a-hole to me, so I called him just that. And now I'm tied to a cafeteria chair and all I hear is CRACK SMACK WHAP!! The security aren't doing anything. I guess they're afraid of them too. Oh I'm screwed. Here it comes again. WHAP!!
So, maybe she wasn't what a guy wanted in a girlfriend. She was loud, and rowdy. Always speaking her mind, blunt to a fault.
She didn't know what guys wanted, They just didn't want her.
21 years old and not one date, not even a first kiss. "Failure." She breathed.
"Did you say something, Charlotte?" Her mother asked, she shook her head.
"Nope." She continued to look out the window as her mother drove down the highway.
What was wrong with her, she didn't feel ugly. and she liked her sense of humor, but then why was she so invisible...
I can taste the tingle on my tongue the second it touches. I can smell the sweet/sour, crisp, smell. The food is amazing here. They have things I have never seen before. All of the yellows, oranges, blues and reds. The rainbow of food. The tastes of everything is new and refreshing. None of it makes sense. How can a place like this, make such beautiful flavors? The new discoveries of flavors and smells fills my mind. What new things can they even make? Find? The question lingers in my mind.
Portraits lined the hallway. No matter where you stood, it seemed like the eyes were following you, staring at you in disdain. Freddy didn't care for the effect, so he hurried his way through the hall to the sitting room.
A large statue stood in the center of the room. The white marble figure resembled a famous historical figure, but Freddy couldn't quite place just which one--perhaps Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin 1.0, to be exact. Ben Franklin 1.2 was currently going through some new, more rigorous testing because Baron Von Bonn's steambot army made short work of the original. Luckily,...
He wanted people to know he'd been there, so he left his shoes. There was nothing else he could leave. He trudged back up the hill towards camp. But the boots stayed. Years after, as groups of people ventured to the clear lake, they saw his shoes and left their own shoes. Without meaning to, he had started a tradition. Pairs of shoes after pairs of shoes were left by the lake, a little memento of the wearer there by the lake forever. Pairs of shoes after pairs of shoes after pairs of shoes.
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...