Riffs
another nervous laugh
She was joking with her colleagues in the lab and the faint trace of a smile was still on her lips as she looked into the microscope. Within seconds all of the happiness of the morning had drained from her. She pulled back with a quick jerk, breathed a momentary breath to refocus and [...]
the long drive
He let the needle drop lightly onto the groove and imagined the cars on the other side of the wall becoming traffic. The cigarette lighters now all fueling electronic daydreams, the radio dead and long gone, the lights now smarter than they were when he was young… this is the road today. Telephonic [...]
illuminated truth mine
Along the long runway illuminated creatures move and sense the night has taken them as far as it can. They slip into their holes and wait for the punishing sun to take its place at the head of the corporate day. They had been mining all night and still nothing… still no sign of [...]
exchanging flame
[GEARBOY56]:You stupid shit. the 344 NEVER had the killswitch in the firstplace!!! They did away with that early in the development cycle of the 324… a good 3 YEARS before the 344 was even conceptualized…. [nodemaster]: OK — if by killswitch you mean the actual switch, but I was making a finer point [...]
routine mission
The liftoff was rocky but it soon made sense. There was little effort and no fanfare and that kind of made Wade feel better… nothing burned him more than screwing up in front of an audience. He had settled into his chair and started taking the readings that needed to be taken in [...]
describing morning
The day starts out in rushes… in fits and jumps and spasms of uncertainty and foggy motor function. The water that beats down is hot and the steam that surrounds deepens the sense of disconnection. The television is annoying and the smell of coffee is the only life in the room. The [...]
power failure
The energy is dwindling into nothing… it is sapped and gone… thirty percent and falling fast. HE tried to think… tried to get a solution… a fix… away out but he couldn’t get past everything that HE had been up to now. HE couldn’t leave behind outdated modes of being in order to [...]
notes out of order
…the scandal is life really… the way it breaks and manipulates… the development of its characters… the shattering of soul into individual psyche… the relentless posturing of ego… each of us autonomous, fractured, opaque gaps… information congealed… clots of the free roaming brought together under terrific stress… we form like diamonds… soiled by the weight [...]
disinformation
There was an impossibly yellow truck sitting outside his apartment… it had been there for almost two days and the neighbors were starting to ask him questions. He wanted to answer them… and sometimes did… with fabulous stories about how the truck was in fact outfitted with a detection system for airborne viruses and [...]
the beauty of the wake
I start off drifting without knowing where I may land. The direction is arbitrary and the destination is unknown. The light may or may not be bright enough to see… sometimes I float blindly through darkness while others I am led by a brilliant wash of daylight. Inevitably I’ll stop and take [...]
