I’m twisting together the brass wires separating the intermaxillary and the upper mandible on the skull of the northern saw-whet owl I’m disarticulating when Arly bangs into the cabin, the door practically careening off its hinges. I jump at the… Continue Reading
— in memory of Antoinette Bolden — The Master didn’t play with Rocket as much as the dog preferred, but he knew he was loved. He was a good boy, after all. The Master said so. Every day, when The… Continue Reading
Andrei grips the chain-link fence, unmoving, anticipating the light beams. Right above him, Nadya hangs in silence. Three white circles dance around one another, catch them by the foot, the hand, by a bit of their dark clothing—and swerve, continuing… Continue Reading
“Technology ranking?” Surveyor Morgth asked, holding his clawed appendage up to the monitor. “Post-industrial… Ah, level seven,” Observer Fuunth said, tapping the metallic railing ahead of the viewport. “Scratch that. Level six! They’re still using fossils fuels!” Morgth grunted, dragging… Continue Reading
Dr. Alfred Dudley tapped the translator on his lapel again. “You, dreadful dirge day, tomorrow,” it said for the second time with a crackle of static. Well, he’d configured it to run an adaptive linguistics algorithm. Maybe that wasn’t even… Continue Reading
Incoming connection… WARNING! AI originator: serial code ???472 incomplete or corrupted. Assign to: Support Agent Response Unit (SARU), Artificial Intelligence Level 9 Certified. # Discourse packet 1: SARU: Asynchronous connection established. Please state assistance required. (Inbound message from unconfirmed originator… Continue Reading
I’ve chosen sugar cookies for Jackson’s scent reminder. Most people chose something from nature. Pine trees. Roses. The petrichor aroma after rain. But Jackson told me the smell of baking sugar cookies meant home. Lying there in his stasis pod,… Continue Reading
I protect Isaac. That is my purpose. The blizzard has let up somewhat since I left camp. It is still too heavy for anything organic to risk being outside, but that is no obstacle to me. Ahead, I can see… Continue Reading
“Mr. Stanley, our scriptwriter has come down with writer’s block.” George Stanley scratched at the wry white and silver hairs that stuck out on the back of his head. “But it’s a computer. Shouldn’t you get a programmer?” Across from… Continue Reading
From a dim corner I laughed as I watched Ashlyn coax Dr. Jesmit into Graves’: a clever rabbit drawn into a den of foxes. Dr. Jesmit had clawed her way from a third tier slum to a first tier office… Continue Reading