It was Andy from the grave.
"Can you speak up?" Caroline, distracted anyway by something on TV, couldn't understand him.
"I said it's Andy. From the grave. That's the muffling, the grave."
"Well, it doesn't help you're such a mumbler anyway. Wait, do you mean you're actually calling from the coffin?"
"Not really," said Andy, "but I am dead somewhere. I don't feel like I'm in a box. I feel like I'm in a cloud."
"That could be the coffin. I saw it," Caroline remembered, "it was plush."
"That's nice."
"Listen, did you want something? I've gotta head out in...
All I could do was stare down at the text book and pretend that I was listening to the class going on around me. I just wanted to be free again. I flicked between the pages and the past documented in the battered book. I wonder if when those sailors set out that they even thought for a glimmer of a second that their whole adventure would be covered by a short paragraph in a 10th grade history book and a photo that barely even grasped what their lives were like and how tragic that journey was. I knew that...
The dapper man picked up a penny. He rolled it around in his fingers, enjoying the coolness of it. It was raining, and he had had only seen it because the bronze colour had shone up in the middle of a shallow puddle.
The dapper man remembered a rhyme he had heard when he was tiny. See a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck. He thought there might be more to it than that, but that was enough for now. He had a Very Important Meeting to go to that afternoon, and if a bit...
Golden skin glowed in the afternoon sun, revealing a fine tracery of pale blue at the inside of the wrist. Lips, lush lips, parted to accept the ripe perfection of the strawberry I offered. A low sound of appreciation trickled out. I watched Circ eat with a simple joy and relish of the experience that I had never witnessed before.
Had humanity strayed so far away from its own innate abilities?
The robot blinked and met my eyes, smiling. I watched the fine structure of her irises flex.
"Like that?" She nodded at my question and I offered the next...
The singer still held onto his microphone as he slumped to the stage. He felt as through a very large hand was pulling him very quickly through an ocean of green water. The crowd retreated, their faces elongating. Their cheers elongated, too, as though one corner of the cheer had been nailed to a doorway and then stretched around the world.
The world is elastic, he thought, and couldn't imagine why he hadn't noticed this before. Everything has a soft suppleness to it if you look hard enough, or perhaps if you learn not to look so closely.
Even the...
"The river's on fire," said my son. The river did seem to be on fire, if you were only looking at the river.
"No, the sky is," I told him. A reflection from above. He shrugged his shoulders.
He didn't ask why the sky was on fire, just bowed his over over the rowboat's side and continued looking for fish. Small, darting, the color of the river bed, the fish beneath the fire, the river beneath the fire.
My eyes toward the sky, waiting for the fire to come down.
Holographic women are all the rage. Easier than humans to be around. No talking back or gorging on chocolates to ruin their figures.
Only costs a thousand a minute, for a rich guy like me it's nothing. Won't be long before the price will be cheap so everyone will have them.
Dating agencies will be redundant as everyone will have their own virtual mate, eager to please. With the headgear it feels like you are with a real live woman.
Today I had a shock. Mirabelle somehow changed into a man, mistake in the software I guess, but until much...
It came out of nowhere. A rock. A killer.
It was bigger than anything I'd ever seen since breaking orbit, but that wasn't saying much for a rookie like me. My console alerted me to the spinning asteroid and woke me from the warmest blanket of a dream. Of course, that's how it always happens, right?
I make my way up to the cockpit, though it's only on the other side of the thin partition of my shuttle. The Gen-Mark II was designed to hold four and that's how it was filled when we left dock last year. Now mine...
When I took Peter his final cup of coffee of the day knowing that tomorrow he'll be somewhere special instead of his smelly flat, I had a strong conviction that I had made the right decision, even though it was unlikely anyone else would understand. That's because they didn't have the knowledge I did. Secret. Life changing. Extraordinary.
In the morning we walked downstairs to the waiting car, Peter was chatting merrily unware his life was going to change forever.
Meanwhile I was perplexed why I couldn't open the door to my padded cell. Peter would be scared in the...
I shot my butler. R500's faults were many, burning the morning toast, giving me a crumpled newspaper to read, ushering guests into the wrong rooms to name a few. Robots should know better, after all their programming is far superior to our brains.
After a week of complaints from Marie, my third wife, the sexiest one I've had, R500 had to go. I used my new rifle to shoot him outside in the garden, scaring the peacocks strutting around on the lawn.
Obviously it was the wrong method of dispatch, he's back in the house, ironing my dress shirt for...