The Good was the worst. The Bad was worthless. The Zombie, at least, was willing. Life is so energy intensive. Though the Zombie held few thoughts in its putrefying head, this one stuck as flies buzzed feverishly around, attracted by the kill on the street. The Good had done it. Savagely struck down the child and then walked on fingering his rosary beads as if he’d just blessed the poor little soul.
By majoki3 months ago in Fiction
Her eyes were oceans of possibility. Blue and depthless. And I was shipwrecked. A fallen eyelash crushed the sails and within moments my ship foundered in the shoals of the iris. When I climbed, half drowned, upon the pupil, I was looking straight down into her optic nerve.
The shovel chimed lightly against a larger rock and the gravedigger paused in the hole. Sharp gusts lifted the loosened dirt, whirling it across the high plain into the reddening dawn.
Arvidas stared at his radar screen trying to see the clearest path through. But the Kessler Run was Scylla and Charybdis resurrected in space. Unspeakable horror. And no way out without terrible loss.
They took a step forward. A warning siren sounded as sentry guns auto-targeted. Red lights flashed threateningly along the top of the border wall as a digital voice commanded, “Stop. Do not enter the barrier zone. The defense guns are programmed to fire at any incursion into the barrier zone.”
The toy soldier guarded the corner of the commander’s makeshift field desk. The faded tin sentry with chipped red jacket, high peaked cap and bent bayonet stood upon the order.
Snow on the convent. War in the fields. Sister Maryna prayed. Then programmed. Children would not have to suffer this world of cratered streets, gutted homes, crushed dreams. Sister Maryna understood what needed to be done and coded.
Sergeant Taylor always checks us thoroughly before sending us in: regulation uniform, backpacks, anti-ballistic helmets, Kevlar vests, and, of course, your gun. You can’t go anywhere in this place and be safe without your gun.
Life is strange. Living in the mouth of a SHARK is stranger. Many would dispute my use of the term life. Technically, I don’t get to claim that I’m alive. No remora gets to have a life in the classic sense. When you are of a class of scavenger bot with low level AI, you aren’t recognized for much beyond your capacity to mindlessly feed on the damaging space dust that ionizes the precious methylium plates forming the hull of a Star Hunter And Rebel Killer. (Even to a remora like me, it is clear that acronyms have not advanced nearly as fast as interstellar drives in the past few hundred years).
“A synaptic map of the brain.” “Social media pathways on the Internet.” “A spider web. If the spider had taken acid.” The program director waited as each volunteer gave their interpretation of the sprawling diagram being displayed in the research center’s conference room.
On Splinx, you have to follow the rules if you wanna break the law. Rule 1: Phasespace is your friend. Rule 2: In phasespace you have no friends.
It has been noted that the first few dozen steps tend to dictate the following few thousand. For sheep. I wonder what that makes me. I’ve been on this trajectory for 80,000 years, and it’ll be another 1000 years before I reach Proxima Centauri b.
