“Three days?” McMurphy squeezed his cigar into pulp between his molars.
“Yessir. Could’ve been much longer.” The engineer jerked his head toward the whitewashed shack at the end of the tracks. [...]
Science Fiction
Rubes
Technorat
West London was, as always, abuzz. Even at 4:00 AM on a chilly November Tuesday, electric motorcars whirred down Kings Road, zipping people along, early to work or late from [...]
Callista
The stars were becoming transparent as light crept over the horizon. Greg hissed in frustration. If he didn’t get the fans on this part of the atmospheric controller fixed before [...]
Wish You Were Here
A scribble of lightning cracks from the roof of the house to the weedy lawn. I bend down, light up a cigarette on the flaming patch, and stomp out the [...]
The Battle for Moscow, Idaho
My severed fingers lay in the snow of the parking lot, flakes melting on their tips. Shoes squeaked in the snow. I had been shot somewhere in the chest with [...]
The Abilene Abduction
Before a microphone: “Sir, so you say you were abducted by aliens?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” says Harold Golt in Tony Lama boots, his daddy’s boots: resoled, real rattlesnake skin.
“Tell us about it.”
“On [...]
Changes
Do you know what they said to me one time when I was waiting for you? One of the doctors said, “Think of a balloon with many dots drawn on [...]
Thorndyke’s Folly
Shooting this press conference is the first worthwhile thing Francis Thorndyke will do in twenty-three years of life, and if he buggers it up he’ll forfeit his right ever to shoot anything more worthwhile than country bumpkins chasing cheeses down hills. His editor has vouchsafed this to him with the aid of an evocative metaphor involving bollocks, barbecues, and bamboo skewers. From my cubbyhole in the back of his mind…
Peter’s Shell
A three hundred foot-tall lighthouse with a red barbershop stripe made no sense in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, but Wendy wanted it, so it was there. Lighthouses were [...]
Pandora’s Blog
November 25
I got a bio internship at Portland State University starting next quarter, working for Professor H. He has a USDA grant for “Colony Collapse Disorder of the Western Honeybee,” [...]
The Vicissitudes of Time
“What’s it like to die?” she said.
“Do you want to find out?” he said.
He had met her at a roadside diner, on his way to Yuma. A little further down [...]
As You Desire Me
Today’s Numero Uno has a prepub fetish, so naturally I put on the prostitot body. He comes into my velvet-draped workplace and sees a twelve-year-old, tall for her age, with [...]
Missing in Action
It had taken sixty-seven days of incarceration before Elinor had deliberately destroyed her timing sensors. The little control nodule was buried under the skin at the back of her neck, [...]
In a Pale Room
Cecile had agreed to this charade of a tea, though she was by turns regretting and congratulating herself on her decision to meet Frank just this one last time as [...]
Keeping House
Amber spotted the wreckage on her way home from work. As she drove up Peacock Lane, ready to turn into her cul-de-sac, she saw the Lindstrom’s house, its roof completely [...]