Flash
Headstart Elan
Pre-conception screening hadn’t turned up anything, so the Kieslowski-Millers spent their entire discretionary health stipend on a Headstart Elan package for Harriet-to-be. Most parents of healthy children did. Continue reading
Etcheverry, Cordel, Fomalhaut
“Your first task,” he said trying to mime the body shape of the creature. “Is to convince it to evert its gastrocysts. It will only do that if you can offer it something enticing. I found quite by accident that it is overly fond of anything tannic. Leather, for instance.” Continue reading
Lithography
After the tenth time of running the simulator, of tracing the paths of transistors plotted onto paper that fills the conference walls, I call my engineers and tell them to burn to metal. Only twelve nanometers now. The warren has gone so deep, so much farther than I could have imagined when I was cutting … Continue reading
Miss Marple, Psychic Detective
Miss Marple, psychic detective, looked over the scene in silence. A body was splayed across the red velvet blanket of a four-poster bed. “The murder victim was found wearing a tutu and tricornered hat,” she said. “Some people might find that strange, but in fact that was what Mr. … Continue reading
Remembrance of Time Defeated
The Hadronic Empress is startled awake by the sound of bleating klaxons. When she opens her eyes the flashing lights stab her vision, and she throws an arm, thin and wobbly like a chicken wing, across her face. She tries to uncoil herself from her gilded Throne of a Million Triumphs, but her left leg … Continue reading
Funeral Suppers
Of course you don’t remember Jeremy, my dear; you weren’t born yet, so you didn’t get any of him,
Shining City – one
For the first time in fifteen years I looked up from my road to see the sky. Presumably every possible