Post 11- Derelict

Now, depending on how I feel, I may continue this one. It could become something awesome. The following is titled 'Derelict'.

Derelict

It wasn't the cold that was getting on his nerves. No, it was the lack of all pattern; the randomness of his situation, the unknown that could at any time take his life.


Brady was sitting in a command chair with rusted springs. It creaked as he leaned left and right to view the displays layered in front of him like a bunch of cards. Each one detailed some important aspect of the station: monitors, cameras, scans, life readings, oxygen levels, and more de-humanizing numbers. One in particular kept his rapt attention. It was a simple one, intended to allow the ship's crew to assess life loss in certain areas. Currently, the Command Bridge read as 'occupied'.


As if to say that all he was doing was 'occupying' the space. Hmph.


He had been in this station since he landed several years ago. Well, he liked to think it was several years ago. In all honesty he had no idea how long it had been. Perhaps decades. Maybe only days. Time was relative, and in his situation, every moment he was alive and trying to survive in this place lasted.


Even though Brady had learned how to use most of the emergency systems on the station, a few sections of the hull still couldn't be viewed. Either there had been catastrophic failures there, or, more realistically, there simply was no surveillance in those areas. The latter implying that there was no need to watch over them, or something more frightening, a dark thought at the back of his mind that kept coming back: he wasn't meant to see it, or something was there that had turned it off. Each thought intrigued him and left him a goal to reach.


Outside the sun remained undying; it's bright UV rays were dissipated with a dimmed 'windshield' of sorts, so the bridge crew wouldn't be blinded. The massively thick and dense opaque glass circumnavigated the entire bridge, outlaying the borders of the station and allowing a grand view of the solar system and it's bewilderingly shiny star. But as long as Brady watched, nothing changed. And, if by chance something incredibly fortuitous was to happen out there in the cold space of the solar system, he had no way to contact anyone. And, even more likely, he wouldn't even see them.


While he was far from giving up hope, the long days and cold life he was living had taken it's toll, and he needed to get his mind off the endless problems ahead of him. Looking at the readouts for temperature, Brady noticed a small spike somewhere nearby the food and loading bay. Just for the change of pace, Brady stood up, donned his freshly washed 'Crew' jacket and left the bridge.


While not nearly as dark and imposing as a derelict station may imply, it was still quiet, and that was what gave Brady chills. Sounds were always preferred; it allowed him to know where or even what something was, and it gave him warning. But no sounds...no sounds meant anything could come at any moment. Luckily about the only thing he heard over the low din of emergency lights and heating tubes was the sound of his metallic boots clanking along the floor.


The walk was long, but soon he was standing in front of a large sealing door. If he wanted inside the food bay he'd have to open it, so he bent over and turned on the magnets on the bottom of his boots. He stood up and looked over the edges of the door, looking for an access panel that could somehow open it, but it seemed reluctant to release its secrets; there wasn't one. But before long his curiosity won out, and he managed to find a hidden latch attached to a small panel that was flush with the wall. He opened it and saw a single lever, which he pulled, turned, and manipulated in the only way it would go. There was a loud whoosh as the door's pneumatic locks disengaged, and it opened. Immediately it was obvious it still had an atmosphere and gravity, but Brady got a whiff of something terrible. A smell undulating out of the food bay was overpowering, and only getting stronger as the door continued to open. It was as if the entire bay's refrigeration had failed and everything had rotted. In a rush Brady grabbed the jacket and put it on his face as a sort of makeshift filter, and while he could still smell it, the bay wasn't making him sway or stagger anymore. With a loud thud the doors slammed into the opposite side and sat, opened fully. Brady could now listen, and inside, he heard soft sounds and little dings. It was apparently something small, or several small things, moving around inside the bay. The reason for the stench was still beyond Brady's grasp. He stepped over the threshold and crossed a light beam along the bottom of the door's entrance. In a moment likely reminiscent of when the doors were originally closed, the sensor triggered by his foot started to re-close it. 'Started'; there was a single warning tone and then they slammed shut faster than Brady could have anticipated if he had even wanted to get out. If he hadn't already stepped inside, then the pressure from the giant doors would have popped him open and split him in two. Brady remembered there wasn't any sign of a struggle outside the door, and there wasn't anything here, so maybe whatever had been blocked out had managed to get in. That worried Brady.


Walking forward he began to see signs he'd never had on the other levels of the station that pointed to its age. Evidently the food bay had been abandoned a ridiculously long time prior, and it's stocks were crumbling over the counters and left out all over. There were no crumbs here, no bits of left overs, no sign there had been any food except for the containers and their symbols. Indeed, the scent was a mystery. It hadn't killed him or made him pass out, so it wasn't a gas leak; then again, if the station had been offline as long as he thought, all the gas would have dissipated by this point. So what was this stench?


Brady kept walking, but the bay was large and the smell seemed to get worse as he ventured deeper. There was barely any light in the ceiling above, with only the odd pinprick showing the evidence of what used to be there. Ahead, from one of the side rooms in the offices, Brady heard a crash. It sounded like paper or cardboard toppling over; maybe some papers being blown off a desk or something, he thought to himself. He tentatively took a step forward and put his foot down on something wholly different from the metal floor, something so soft he nearly lost his balance. He looked down to see a small circle of dark material oozing out from under his heel. Lifting his foot he saw it was in fact a small scaly oval, nearly flat, bleeding dark blood onto the grating. Brady kicked it over, and recognized it as one of the creatures typically used in trash compactors. It was a bottom feeder, with a mouth underneath its body. Harmless. He breathed a sigh of relief; they were known to give off terrible stenches thanks to their digestive tracts and the long time it took them to process food, which simultaneously allowed them to eat nearly anything and survive for long periods of time. Even, Brady surmised, in zero gravity that had been on many sections of the ship. He had a lot more of these little guys to look forward to.

Sorry!

I haven't posted anything the last day or two, but I've been incredibly busy. Just letting you guys know.

Post 10-Smoke And Ash

So that it remains a bit of an easter egg for people who keep up with my blog, i'll post my IP novel in bits and pieces as the weeks go on.

Part 1 of Smoke and Ash

Professor Brown was looking up at the class from his dais, his love of the soapbox very evident in the way he carried his words and his gestures. He was a man of reason, and he was obviously begging the students to think. Not to just find the answer, because that was too easy; no, he wanted them to analyze the statement. And so he continued.

"Tragedy lies in acceptance. Why is that? I think the question here is, does it appear tragic from your perspective, or from theirs?" Brown scowled when no one answered, and Michael, either from necessity or boredom, raised his hand. All of the eyes in the room turned on him.

The daydream broke. The first thing to flood back was the noise; a city as large as this one was full of sounds. Car alarms, police and firetruck sirens, the white noise of electronic signs advertsiing the latest bullshit product. Even the water, something so clean and pure, was just adding to the cacophony. Then he saw the lights, brightly lit in windows up 20 floors and open signs coloring the urban landscape. It was all chaotic, but patterned. Like a complex machine working in unison to produce the most unhappy thing in mankind's history.

This was a cold city. Michael Flynn was sopping wet, stuck between the smelly dwellers of the its underworld like a pocket full of change. The water seeping through the buildings and cluttering the drains only spread the filth from its center, and it rained heavily often enough to ensure a near constant atmosphere of dreariness. He felt worthless in this drenching rain, and his white knuckles were clenched in anger at himself for not being prepared for it.

A man to his left was mumbling something under his breath, but with all the noise it was nearly impossible to understand. Then it all seemed to slow down. A car passed by and hit a deep pothole, deep enough to rip off the hubcap but leave the car driving. The owner must have never tightened the bolts, Michael thought, as it tore through wind and rain in his direction. It spun in the breeze, a whirling dervish of death, throwing the teardrops of rain around it in a spectacular display of perfect symmetry. The people in front of Michael parted, ducking or moving slowly to the side as he and the man just stood there watching it turn. From the corner of his eye Michael saw him look directly at it, mouth agape. Time seemed to stop. The hubcap sat, as if displayed in a museum gallery, it's edges dripping, tongues of blue flame jetting off in every direction. The first had already hit Michael in the face, throwing water into his eyes and blinding his vision in this most key moment. Finally, in the time it took a man to blink, it shot forward the last few feet to Michael's face. The man pulled Michael's arm just enough to allow only the smallest cut to appear on his cheek, as the metal disk hurtled behind them and through a window. It hadn't taken much to save his life, but clearly Michael was lucky.

“Thank. You...” He told the man, between bouts of labored, excited breathing.

In response the man stood, and looked at Michael with darker eyes than night. His murmurs were gone and in their place there seemed to be this quiet stoic nature, a clear transposition of something Michael couldn't comprehend. He gazed, unblinking, for several more seconds and then walked away, leaving the crowd around Michael stunned and surprised at his sudden exit.

“W-w...wait! What's your name?” Michael called after him.

“Jonathan,” He replied over the loud roar of the city, “Jonathan Bridges.” And with that, he rounded a corner and disappeared.

With such a close call, Michael was not only stunned but also frightened. Sitting on the bus home, feeling it lurch through the city streets, he watched the swarms of people get on and off. In between the waves he thought about what had happened. Why had he lived? The people who ducked out of the way were gifted with decisiveness, but Michael was too shocked to move. That frightened him more than anything, that at any moment he could be gone, split in two from a falling window railing or crushed by the very seat in front of him should the bus crash. He didn't know a single soul there, and, truthfully, he wouldn't have saved any of them. So who exactly was Jonathan, a man willing to save another, and more importantly, how did he save Michael? Truly he must have been a good man, why else would he have done it? And the man was fast, too fast, of that he was sure. Probably hopped up on some kind of new drug or aphrodisiac, Michael concluded.

When the bus finally left the gray streets and steel buildings behind, Michael was calm. Even though he lived just outside it, he felt much more secure and stable outside the towering walls. When he got off the bus, life seemed like a dream. Not a dream in the normal sense, but as if nothing in the past few hours had actually happened. He felt, standing there in the now dry, cold, biting wind of fall, that he had been reborn. It was then Michael sensed the chill on his spine, one that was hidden discretely amidst his shivering arms and legs. He was cold and uncomfortable. Michael stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked briskly home, the thought of something watching over him constantly at the back of his mind.

That night Michael Flynn dreamed he was running. He was afraid and a hand reached out from the darkness to pull him out. Its fingernails were crusted over with blood, cracked and marked with lines of age or of death; Michael couldn't be sure which. He sensed it had a voracious appetite for blood and when it turned in the black, its palm out, a crease appeared. Split lengthwise the hand bent backwards, allowing a cavity of red to appear. With a snarl it filled with teeth and lurched forwards, fingers extended like the feathers of a carnivorous bird, ready to devour Michael. Unable to get away, he was grabbed by the jaws and felt his very soul cracking as it bit down into him. Blood, guts, and bile poured out of his waist as his lower half was torn away. Held in its fingers Michael was eaten, bit by bit. But the atmosphere changed when it reached his chest. There was warmth there. When the beast tore into him, Michael's lungs poured out viscous fog; eyes opened on each fingertip and cried out in pain, the hand coughing up the body it had just consumed. Like a seamstress, the smoke slowly stitched his lower half together and took shape as the parts he had lost, coiling expertly betwixt his stomach and ribs. Built anew, Michael stood strong, watching the hand's eyes tear up and its mouth contort and cough with the force of having to give up its prize. Michael sucked in, letting the black, empty air fill his lungs, and breathed out onto the beast, dousing it in fire and smoke, causing it to cinder and burn. It fell to the ground and flopped about. It screamed before ceasing to move, and then turned to ash.

Smoke and ash.

Post 9-Those Behind Your Sympathy and Love are Neither Sympathetic, Nor Lovely

The End of it!


Oh, and keep clicking guys!

She snidely asked why I wasn't reorganizing our very unpopular candle section, and pointed out that I had flipped the envelopes the exact opposite way they were meant to go according to Hallmark tradition and 'customer ease'. I wanted to say something to get her off my ass so badly that I accidentally muttered a bit out loud, and she swerved to face me, nearly knocking me over with her surgically attached moonscape. I then saw the second most terrifying thing in my life (the first being a rapid dog trying to tear my arm off), a woman both angry and embarrassed.

“Oh...fuck...”

I don't know what kind of chemical reactions take place within the female body and I never intend to find out, but what I saw was nothing like what they told me in chemistry class or health and wellness. She stomped and as the ground quaked she erupted.

Her red hair flew upward like lava spewing from a volcano (who I now refer to as her nicer sibling) as she verbally abused me, insulting my work ethics, incompatibility with the store's atmosphere, and overall inadequacy as a man. She destroyed me thoroughly and utterly, and to this day I remember how empty the store was because all the customers had managed to escape the danger by fleeing elsewhere. She even steamed. From her ears.

Incredible.

And so it was that my luckily short and, sadly, very revealing time at Hallmark ended. As I picked up my things and walked out the door, I turned and said to the barely walking time-bomb:

“Thank you for your time.”

What? Expected anger?

I'm the guy who worked at Hallmark.

Post 8-Those Behind Your Sympathy and Love Are Neither Sympathetic, Nor Lovely

Part 1 of ^That

Uncomfortable.

That word best describes the Hallmark store for men. What most don't realize is that those caring cards you send to your loved ones expressing sympathy, giving an apology or to celebrate an occasion come from some very detestable people who, in all honesty, should never be involved with such things at all. Such as my ex-boss, Theresa. Only one word could truly define her:

Attitude.

It described her better than anything else. She managed to displace air with her demeanor, make babies stop crying with her stare and could kill flowers with a smile. (Which, obviously, was bad for business and why we only sold fake flowers or scented candles). Then there was her ass. It's volume seemed stuffed full of all the hate she bore for everything we did, regardless of reason or right. She could move more air within our store than a jumbo jet engine could outside. Rightly so, she swaggered. Her legs had no choice but to move out of the way of one another as she navigated (or forced her way through) the aisles. Now, don't get me wrong; a bit of bu-dunk-a-dunk isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact sometimes it can be downright amazing and some people even make a living off of theirs. But Theresa was different. Her hindquarters were as completely disproportional to her body size as much as her dislike of us was to how we treated her, and that made her quite the oddity. It made it difficult for her to walk through doors, sit down, or even tell the employees to get moving because, let's face it; who honestly listens to someone that can't even control themselves?

So, there I was one day, watching the floor for grandmothers pushed to the edge by unruly and greedy grandchildren who, rather than pay for cards to appear like they cared, opted to steal them instead. And as 'Mama Mia' played for the thousandth time over the speakers, I saw Ms.Theresa (obviously single) waltz over indignantly looking for a fight with the only guy comfortable enough with his sexuality to do retail at a Hallmark store:

Me.

Post 7-General/GoW

General

I added a new header to the page and a news section on the right for some popular pages. News isn't an ad; it's just the news!

Part 5 of GoW - The End

My eyes open, again, but the air around me is murky. My hands are free and I feel a liquid that covers my whole body. I realize I am in a vat, connected to oxygen and food lines. I reach behind and feel the sockets, well cut and shaped, placed along the back of my neck. There is a slight bump, and then the muffled sound of a generator firing signals the start of the draining process. As the water in the vat recedes I sink to the bottom. My legs are weak and cannot bear my weight easily, and I am unable to brace myself before the latch sounds and the door swings open, casting me in the glow of the room as I collapse on the floor. I remove the oxygen mask, as if from habit, and cough up the wet contents of my stomach. Looking around I see more casualties populating the cloning vat lab. I feel cold as I take my first steps and grab some clothes from a nearby technician who points me in the direction of my station quarters. He is disinterested.

It is a long walk to my home, and I receive looks from people as they realize my status as a pilot of the State. My home is welcoming, with bright lights, bustling shop-keeps and smiling tourists. Ships fly by the viewing windows and massive vessels sit parked in the hangars. The people who do notice me and stare I do not smile to. Outside of the recreational zero-gravity park I notice a young women, much younger than me, dancing. She is a tiny beautiful thing with feathers in her hair and a short dress. I watch her for a while and catch her eye as she dances. She comes close and whispers in my ear some pretty words; I accept. I take her to my room and pay her well. 

We finish and she stands, dresses and leaves quickly, allowing the crowd outside to clap and cheer as she leaves. But as she does she glances over her shoulder, and instantly I am reminded of my wife. I slam the door, pick up a headset and patch into a network. To call her; to hear her. I keep trying the connection multiple times, trying to find her. Out of habit I reach down to finger my ring, only to find it is gone. Looking around I don't see it; it doesn't fall out when I empty the pockets of the free clothes I was given, nor when I search the pockets of the clothes hanging in my closet. A note lies on my desk welcoming me back, but there is no ring. My food-cooling-unit is empty say for a few beers and what looks like ancient leftovers, but still no ring. I am unable to find it as I toss over furniture, flip my mattress, and disassemble my quarters.

Looking back I see now what we are. They tell us they copy our brains at the time of bridge-breach and transfer it to a new body. They prefer the term 'extension of life' to immortality. As I recall myself tossing over furniture and crying out in vain, searching for the one thing most valuable to me, I know that somewhere out there, drifting lazily through space is a ship with laser burns, dead crew members, broken propulsion systems, and a breached and empty captain's bridge.

Nearby floats a body with a ring on its left index finger.

Post 6-Soot

Shortest of shorts, SOOT was an old thing i wrote during a class...yeah. Still creeps me out a little.

The sound of hammers and industry echo through the halls. You can smell soot on the breeze coming from above, and the occasional bit of dust falls at your feet as you work. Grinding metal, clanging slabs of concrete, and the various sounds of construction surround you. Yet you are alone. You've always been alone. You've always hated them for putting you in here, forcing you to bang worthless pieces of raw material together. You pull a lever all day, bringing down a hammer of judgement set to withstand anything placed beneath it. Anything...

“Hey Bob. Mornin'.” you hear from behind you. You turn and see a small man suffering from pattern baldness shuffle up to you. He doesn't even reach your chest. “Morning.” you quietly reply.

He pipes up, “I just wanted to see if you had any extra shifts or days that you wanted off; I need a few extra hours this month.” A long pause and a few suggestive slams of the hammer later: “Bob?”

In a quick movement you grab him by the scruff of his collar and throw him under the hammer without looking. It doesn't take more than your left hand to do it. You pull the lever and smile as his screams are ended by the guttural thump of the piston. The crunching bone and stench of blood fill the air, but what remains is quickly sent downstream to the next station.

It's only a matter of time until they come asking questions. But they never suspect the quiet ones. Oh, no. Never.

Post 5-GoW

Part 4 of GoW

The space around me brightens as my eyes adjust to the darkness. I see a sun far off, millions of miles away and yearn for its warmth. It smiles oddly and tells me that the operation was a success, and it hands me a key card. The ring now sits next to my bed on a small table, and I don't cry. I accept the piece of integrated metal as my only reward and stand, ready to take on my role as a pilot of my people.

I'm above myself. Beyond my being. My neck is cut open; wires are being inserted into it, and a hole is drilled in my skull. Suddenly it all blurs and readouts cloud my vision. Temperature, velocity, transversal, shields, armor status, weapon mounts, and more. The teacher tells me I am ready, and pats me on the shoulder as he hands me my first beer. I optimize the systems with a few quick adjustments, and grab the can, open it and drink.

The beer flows around my face and I wipe it away in the zero gravity, questioning the validity of even this seemingly empty space. I sense I may be imagining it and that I'll wake up at any time. I am not dead yet, and it all seems too...manufactured. The placement of the can, the likelihood of a bridge breach and no self destruct activation sequence. After all, simulations are usually very expansive and contain tricks to encourage you to excel. But what exactly could a simulated death prove? What could it show?

The old man...

He is all I see now.

Life. Death.

I wish I was able to gaze in awe at the tremendous power of the universe as my blood froze.

I wish my wife was still here.

I wish I could feel warm again...I am so cold. Everything is so slow....

Post 4-GoW

Part 3 of GoW

I suppose that the unplugging could have shorted a few circuits in my brain, but I began to think as I drifted out into the cold. I didn't feel pain as I bounced off the molten edges of the perfect hole left by the laser fire, nor did I feel the melting of my own flesh from the contact with superheated metal. Instead, I imagined I was back in station, sitting in my little hub-world, surrounded by pilots, traders, depraived psychotics and beautiful, lustful women. The looks I receive as I walk past cloning vats towards the massive central conduit to get food, as people notice the sockets on my neck and the metal protrusions on my forehead, the whole airy nature of it all. But clearer than all of these visions is the warmth between my legs as I am pleasured by an enterprising young women of an unclear ethnic origin. Her thrusts, the dancing of the feathers on her head and the color of her make-up overshadow the grease on her fingers and the tears in her dress as she makes her living.

She is much better than my wife.

Something hits me in the face and I blink; I see a can of beer flipping end over end to the left ever so slowly, aiming to escape the reach of my grasp. I reach out for what feels like hours, and close my fingers over the logo. It takes a long time to bring it to my face and to regard it with weary, tired eyes. Eyes that are tired of the endless fight within myself; eyes that are tired of trying to escape who I am via the romanticism of piloting and the allure of alcohol, the way it blurs the present. But looking at it now, it is laughable how easily all of the struggle is ended by a much more efficient method; death. As I consider this and relax my body, I'm reminded again of my wife. She is floating beside me, holding me in her arms. The hospital room is dimly lit, and my head hurts. She is crying as I lay here, eyes unable to open. I know she is sad and want to hold her close, but I can't feel my legs, or any part of me. All I can feel is her hand slowly let go of mine, and then the softest sensation of weight on my chest as a ring is placed upon it. The can laughs at me.

Post 3-GoW

Part 2 of Gust of Wind

In the oldest tales we recite about honor and duty, there is something known as 'sword time', or the brain's ability to slow things down when in a heightened state of tension, fear or stress. Pilots reported it all the time while on psychosomatic drugs that boosted their performance, stating it allowed them to do millions of actions in a single minute because they perceive it as being far longer. I was feeling that sense now, with the ship loftily sitting in space, dead for all intensive purposes, waiting for my turn on the list. I didn't hear or feel the light slicing through the reinforced section surrounding my command center, but I saw it creep ever so slowly across the wastes of space until it contacted the edges of the bridge. It contoured to the shape of the ship and depressed the last bit of armor there, melting it atom by atom in front of my eyes. The myriad of items around my desk started to shake as the breach became more pronounced, but my hands were steady as I watched the girders and steel burn white hot under the power of a sun. When the light finally came through, it washed over the deck and left a smattering of ozone and electricity scents in my nose, while gibbering bits of magma-like molten metal exploded from the hole and cascaded to the floor. It was a beautiful sight that was terribly short lived.

From the way it had all gone, I imagined I might have felt some sort of fear, or sadness, maybe even disappointment in my own failure to protect my ship and crew, but none of that washed over me. The last 'feeling' I remember is the sense of decompression, the loss of gravity, and the extreme pain, impossibly bearable, as my sockets were shredded and the plugs into my brain were ripped out through the force of air vacating the bridge. I took longer to fly out the breach than my belongings, and was able to look back at the console with an eye for how it would have appeared off the assembly line, clean and pristine, lacking any and all human additives.

Post 2

Part 1 of Gust of Wind

I once talked to an old, scarred man who made a living as a war veteran on government pensions. He told me what it was like to be in space, unsupported, unprotected by the man-made survival aids that allowed us to colonize space so effectively. He said it was like stepping into the cold mind of a serial killer; it was cool, calculated and maliciously efficient, and you were helpless to the power of it all. In fact, he had said, you were more in awe of the auspicious fate you were about to befall.

He regreted not letting it take him then and there.

He was so very, very wrong.

It all happened so fast...the overheating of the systems of my ship; the sounds of gunfire and energy depreciations throughout the superstructure went from distant sputters on the outer shields to interior explosions that shook the supports. The crew of my vessel were blown to pieces, flung aside and ejected out of the holes in the hull; I watched them die over the cameras installed in the weapon and shield maintanence bays, their lifeless, dismembered corpses being filtered into the vastness. Lances of laser energy whipped across the hard armor plating again and again, crackling with fantastic beauty, burning it and lacerating it until eventually close range cannons could pierce into the hull. All of this happened as I managed all ten thousand systems on the ship, but even my cybernetic implants couldn't boost my cognitive abilities enough to stop the kind of damage I was receiving. The sockets at the base of my neck where all of my enhancemants were connected to my synapse would have been warm to the touch had I taken the precious time to feel them, and I could feel the pull of the connective cords to the console as I quickly swiveled my head from side to side, glancing at damage readouts and shield continuity. Via my plugs I could feel her cry; my ship was lazily drifting without engines operable after the first few hits, and the shrieks of the armor melting, the cracks of the pipes and the implosions from hull breaches all added together into a caucophony of screaming that translated to my mind as a sort of 'human-machine' link. I could feel my ship take slower and slower breaths, I could feel her dieing, slowly, as she was repeatedly beaten by the powerful weapons arrayed against her. It was a deep sorrow that filled me, one that reflected my feelings as a pilot; I hadn't wanted this...

When finally she was silenced, her screams finished, I looked around my workstation. I was allowed the briefest moment of trepidation as I gently patted the console and reconciled with her for all the pain. I watched the lights dim and felt the warmth of her heart die.

I was to, in short order, prove the old man with the story wrong.

i'll be posting random snippets of my stories, as variety is the spice of life. Enjoy.

New Beginning

Hey there folks, for those of you linking over from my other blogs, awesome. I'm looking forward to posting my writing/news comments/introspective looks at life.

Here's a sample for today:

The daydream broke. The first thing to flood back was the noise; a city as large as this one was full of sounds. Car alarms, police and firetruck sirens, the white noise of electronic signs advertsiing the latest bullshit product. Even the water, something so clean and pure, was just adding to the caucophony. Then he saw the lights, brightly lit in windows up 20 floors and open signs coloring the urban landscape. It was all chaotic, but patterned. Like a complex machine working in unison to produce the most unhappy thing in mankind's history.

This was a cold city. Michael Flynn was sopping wet, stuck between the smelly dwellers of the its underworld like a pocket full of change. The water seeping through the buildings and cluttering the drains only spread the filth from its center, and it rained heavily often enough to ensure a near constant atmosphere of dreariness. He felt worthless in this drenching rain, and his white knuckles were clenched in anger at himself for not being prepared for it.