Stretch your brain
Riggs woke first, greeted by the playful chuckling of the creek and the crisp autumn smell of rain clouds coming down from the escarpment. And by a fully armored man in a long brown cape carrying some sort of weird pulse rifle. Standing beside the man was a twelve-foot blue robot looking something like a… Continue reading Alphanebulon-3 and Brian
"It's raining, Detective," said her assistant. "Bring a coat." The voice was only in her head, but when the neurons were cajoled into firing in just the right sequence the effect was no different than a face to face conversation. Reality was only a matter of interpretation—always had been. Take the rain, for instance. Brigid… Continue reading A Couple Questions
Colin grabbed the kid. Kid—that's how Colin thought of him, but of course he was a grown man. A grown man was any man old enough to bear the full weight of the consequences of his actions, even if that weight crushed him. And a kid, well, a kid was anyone who chose the wrong… Continue reading Won’t Hurt a Bit
"We're here to collect," said the short guy with the pinched rodent face, widow's peak, and black bomber jacket with the cuffs rolled up. Fleur shifted in her high back upholstered leather chair behind an oak desk that was reinforced with steel plating and carbon fiber to catch bullets when the need inevitably came, and… Continue reading The Body
Kaiden wiped his face with his sleeve as he stepped under an awning and out of the rain. The sky had been blue and cloudless this afternoon, but the low, heavy clouds that now covered the city were as black and malevolent as smoke from a burning mountain of coal. Couldn't predict the weather an… Continue reading What Came Next
Despite his cracked ribs and the burnt flesh above his hip, Seiko managed to laugh. "Do you know what your problem is?" Astrid didn't answer. She was busy dragging herself away, leaving dark red smears across the cold floor of the Second Law's bridge. "You're not prepared to die." He laughed again, but it morphed into… Continue reading Modus Vivendi
Ruth picked up the emptied plates from around the galley table, trying to remember each woman's name as she gathered utensils and cups: Cherry had the red hair, and Tootsie had a gap between her big front teeth and had an accent from the outer colonies, Kat was a tank made out of muscle and… Continue reading Sugar Rush
Peyton nervously bounced her leg, making an exceptionally loud jangling sound as the chains of her shackles rattled against the steel of the floor and bench. The holding cell at Top End Spaceport—outside of Darwin—was little more than a seat in the center of a three meter cube. The ceiling was one big light panel,… Continue reading Bloodrunning
The small freighter fell out of FTL after what felt like only a heartbeat to the two-man crew. "That's it?" "That's it," said Gilderson. Technically he was a pilot, but the onboard AIs did all of the real flying. This left him with a lot of down time, which suited him fine. Under the neon… Continue reading Io
They were still called printers, but the machines were unlike anything imaginable to Gutenberg, or Galvani, or Gates. They looked like empty rooms. Drop in your raw material—didn't really matter what it was, as long as you had enough mass—and let the nanomites turn it into something else. Turn ashes into drinking water; spent power… Continue reading Copies of Copies
Warmup Pages 