A nanode arm blossomed up from the halocopter's floor. In its hand lay a tiny golden box, a promise of perfect bliss. “Dessert, sir?” came Bell-C's voice from invisible speakers, but sadly, the six-course inflight dinner still lay too heavy in William Rose's belly. “No, but leave it there,” he said. “And give me transparency.”
A look around. An empty white room with no windows. Features present: black leather armchair. White fluorescent lamps, constant buzzing from furthest left lamp (probable cause: defective ballast unable to maintain constant output of electrical current). A black center table. An empty glass of water. The doctor. Middle-aged Caucasian male. Trimmed goatee, graying hair, blue eyes ringed with flecks of gold ...
One evening Iphigenia found a creature at the bottom of the Garden, lying in one of the flowerbeds that pressed up against the base of the high Wall. She knew it was a Witch because it looked just like the pictures in the Book...
"Lockdown initiated," Alice’s preternaturally calm AI voice announced. "Virate presence detected with 98% confidence." I scrambled to my feet, pulled by hysteresis hinges in my suit’s exoskeletal loadout. "Here?" I swept the muzzle of my rifle around the room. "Where?"
On the very last day of his life, Ken Sato was walking on a beach just down the hill from where his home used to be. The dark waves of the Sea of Okhotsk churned and crashed on the rocks in the distance. Lost in thought, he didn’t notice the seaweed-covered body until he almost tripped over it.
After a claustrophobic elevator ride down five stories beneath the rugged surface of Idaho, former teacher Lena Lehrer followed the small group of job candidates into the doomsday bunker.
As Elton Lye walked home from work, the purple lights in the sky were momentary flashes of white-edged lavender high in the hills, bright enough to leave ghost trails on your vision. A ripple of flashes would shimmer across the hills and thunder would follow. Less a chorus of grand booms than a chattering of ugly thumps, an argument of hollow claps. It was the nightly light drizzle of Solar Coalition Expeditionary Force artillery... The SCEF was slowly reducing the dense woodland ten kilometers west of the city to mulch and steam... Elton didn't know how many resistance fighters were still holed up in those forests. He imagined the Coalition didn’t either...
Morning’s sounds reached Serai, the shush of the scythes, the hum of the looms, and the chanting of the brothers up the hill, but beyond it, growing steadily louder, came the rush of the approaching whirligig. Her heartbeat quickened. A Princess was coming. “Quickly, Serai!” Father Speaker called. “Only children daydream.”
Two days after he died, the photo of my neighbor vanished. It had hung on my wall for years, right above the bowl where I kept my keys.
My wife and daughter fade away as the screen goes black. I toss my phone into the bin along with my ring, wallet, and keys. The receptionist pulls it away without looking up... As he turns back and begins to type, I think about work, about the traffic getting here, about Kaily getting her treatment today. Only six and having to spend so many days of her life in that specialty center. I need to thank Talia for taking her to all her appointments. She always thanks me for coming here, for getting us the extra money to pay for the treatments, but I never thank her for having to watch our daughter suffer discomfort.