Stretch your brain
The night was black and starless. Even the moon dared not sail that darkened sky. But below, New Manzhouli's neon glow dazzled, cold and bright. Yuxi stood in the in-between. She could be a phoenix rising from electric ashes, or the angel of death descending from the heavens into the City of Dis. Tonight, she… Continue reading Let’s Do This Again Real Soon
Xyrl dipped the little twin-engine skimmer below the landing pads of Tower LN-T6. The air was thick with smog. Fullerenes doped with xenon and argon made for a wild violet dawn. Xyrl was just pleased that the pollutants provided some lift and saved fuel. It kept the skimmer near the spiring arresters of the lightning… Continue reading Something in the Machine
The flickering neon of the city below played against the moonlight through the prismatic plates of the dome that covered the sky over Karachkina. Rain was due in the weather cycle and the climod stacks were geysering water vapor and particulate nutrients for cloud formation. There were still a few hours before the fat drops… Continue reading Kite
The ice giant Rosen is only a pale crescent in the violet sky of its largest moon. Ivodus looks up and thinks it looks like the closed eye of a sleeping god. Or a dead one. This place sets off strange and indistinct memories, more feelings than specific recollections, and he doesn't like it. It… Continue reading Knowing the Enemy
Chief Petty Officer Brayden Sullivan hadn't been on a single straight-forward operation in his impressive career, and this was clearly not going to be the first. He went over it again in his head. He had plenty of time to think about it. He'd be freefalling from the mesosphere for more than five minutes. The… Continue reading False Flag on the Balena Assetata
The fires that night were so bright that I got out of bed thinking it was sunrise. I pulled up the time out of habit, and when I saw the hour I leapt from the fold-out to the balcony door and slid it open in one explosive movement. My conapt was on the 177th floor.… Continue reading Throw Away Your Body Parts
The Queensboro Bridge was all backed up. Karsyn had never been in a traffic jam before—there hadn't been a traffic jam in New York for decades. She peered out the window; it looked like there was something going on at the old additions that led down to Roosevelt Island, but it was hard to tell.… Continue reading Can’t Stop Progress
The city was bedding down for the night; the city of analysts and wrench-turners, of school children and factory workers and project managers, that is. The Night City—that parasite that succeeded in entangling itself within and around its daytime sibling without strangling it, that sunless city of teal-lighted windows scattered among the daytime's disused towers… Continue reading A98 in Progress
It came down like snow. Like a blizzard, in fact, smearing the space between the cloud tops and the ground into a disorienting blur of whirling, blinding, chaotic particles. For a moment, just before descent, Ken became absorbed in the abstract motion and found it profoundly beautiful. Perhaps it was this tendency—to become transfixed by… Continue reading Cosmic Justice
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