Archive for fiblet

Remora

Just below the surface, now. The stars so close he can almost see them. The prep compartment is equal parts hope and terror: just a few more meters to the shuttle, Heinwald can see the docking hatch right there in front of him. But isn’t this always where the monster jumps out? Isn’t it during […]

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Defective.

Ancient. Capricious. Vengeful. They lived among the stars and they hurled firebolts that would destroy any world they touched. We could see their tracks, once we knew how to look: faint wisps of ionized hydrogen out in the Oort, barely detectable after cooling for a dozen years; warmer footprints smoldering in the Kuiper and inside […]

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The Guts of God (or, Why I Haven’t Been Blogging Lately)

Someone is waiting for me outside my building. He calls me by name; I have never seen him before. He begs me to share my wisdom, and does not believe me when I tell him I have none to offer. I am part of the overmind, he insists. I am connected to the Divine, I’ve […]

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Contracting Iris

Her eyes stare back from the bathroom mirror. Her pupils seem just the slightest bit cloudy. Or maybe it’s her imagination; maybe all these insights and wild guesses have primed her to see things that aren’t there. She reaches for the wall, never taking her eyes from her reflection. Flips off the light switch. Two […]

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Strategic Retreat

Solway’s holding the torch when Heinwald emerges into the corridor. She points it at the breach like a flamethrower. Heinwald ducks out of the way as the three tracks of breathing filling his helmet drop to two, to one; the others have killed their radios. Heinwald does the same, joins his fellows, leans in until […]

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Frozen 3

For three hours Moore had barely moved a muscle. He’d sat petrified as they stepped over Sengupta’s body and left him behind—the vampire in the lead, the biologist bumbling haplessly in her wake. He’d sat as the deck tilted a little, and a little more, some small abstract part of him marveling that his chair […]

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Howard Roarke: The Gritty Reboot

Thalberg again. “I didn’t know you built robots, Mr. Gregory.” Leon squints into his spex. “I don’t.” “I’m in Point Grey right now, looking at one that has your handiwork all over it.” “Point Gr—oh.” It comes back to him. “Vortex.” The feed switches to Thalberg’s drone, hovering over a dead Honda Kamakiri splayed across […]

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Flyswatter

Something reaches down and lifts Cyclopterus like a toy in a bathtub. Inertia pushes Galik into his seat. The vessel tilts, nose down: slides fast-forward as though surfing some invisible wave. Moreno curses and grabs the stick as Cyclopterus threatens to turn, to tumble. Wipe out… In the next moment everything is calm as glass […]

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Step Function

A lot of disgruntlement hereabouts regarding Google’s smiley annexation of Toronto’s waterfront. A certain lack of transparency over who owns the panopticon being erected by Sidewalk Labs, who owns the data to be harvested from every footstep in the Quayside Zone. People quitting in protest; others patting us on the head, assuring us in kindly […]

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Object Lesson

Baird Stoller never even pretended to be on our side. Aki Sok did her best, then took her lumps when it wasn’t good enough. Ekanga Mosko was a whole other thing. Recruited, committed, trusted with the secrets of the sanctum—then caught copying specs down in the Glade, loading himself up with secrets to buy his […]

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