I needed to find food, quickly.
The warm summer breeze propelled me forward at a rate that almost made my flight uncontrollable. My wings beat hundreds of times per second, but at my size, it doesn't take much to send me reeling.
My eyes displayed the fractured landscape; grass, trees, houses. I was nearing a long strip of gray ground that was painted yellow and white in some places. Perhaps there would be food nearby? I descended to investigate, buzzing eagerly.
Another breeze sent me tumbling through the air, but I righted myself. The ground was getting nearer.
Suddenly, some...
Millions of people left the coasts and ran into the dry middle of the country. The plains and prairies were filled with tents and lean-tos. Smoke rose from fire pits as the tall grass and grain bent in the strong winds.
The coasts flooded. The storm crashed and smashed the cities that had harbours.
But the people in the dry middle of the country were safe.
Safe for now.
The country was flooded. People said they only had half the land they used to.
And even then, it was the dry, grassy rolling hills in the middle. The people used...
"I'm sorry," said the President of the National Leg Prosthetics Company. "But there's nothing I can do to help you."
"But you're the President," said David plaintively, looking up at the tall man from his wheelchair.
"Yes, but I've got a tee time in almost two hours," the man said dismissively. "I'm afraid you're on your own."
"Don't you understand?!" shouted David. "A life is at stake! One of your own employees!"
The President sighed. "Look, if it'll get you to leave ..." he sat down again.
"This is standard operating procedure for the NLPC," he explained. "We encourage all...
If there was hope, it lay with the proles... or something like that. Winston, the character from that stupid book he'd been forced to read for English lit, had been whinging on about how the proles were stupid or something, but yet he seemed to find hope in their humanity. What? Why? His teacher would want him to expand on the concept, and he couldn't very well just copy the Cliff Notes word for word, nor admit that he'd simply read the synopsis. He called up Cara.
Her voice sounded sleepy on the phone. "Yeah? What do you want?"
"Why...
I'm in love with a robot. She doesn't have a physical presence, she's not some pile of servos shipped from Japan. She's an AI, the product of decades of research and development -- using tens of millions of online conversations as a template for her personality.
I know people tell me that she just scours all my emails in an effort to become what I like, and I know people tell me that she's nothing more than a neural network backed by a huge database. But is that so different from a human brain?
"Happy New Year, love." the elderly gentleman smiled at her as she left the shop. She didn;t hear him. She didn't hear anything. Clutching the small package in her hand, she felt a calm wash over her. This New Year was going to be great. The best ever. The last ever.
Allowing her thumb to feel the smoothe edges of the box, she ran over her plans in her head. Over the last few months, she had gone over and over how things would work in her mind. She had done her research. She knew exactly how many she would...
They gathered in the woods. The darkness entwined itself around everything it touched. Filling every hole, every space it could claim.
It was not the darkness that was so frightening, it was that which hide inside. Using it as a clever camouflage.
Something hid, something stalked and watched and he could feel it. It was looking at him, watching and waiting. Its gaze crawling across his skin like tiny spiders.
He hid within himself not wanting to accept it. He built up the layers to keep the darkness out. He would not fear the thing in the dark. he would...
The year was 1986 and I was 10 years old living in south Louisiana. My family had been living in Louisiana for generations and we had a long proud history in the area. I grew up in a little berg call Bayou Pigeon. The distinct accent of south Louisiana had missed me due to watching too much television and alot of speech therapy when I was younger.
School was like any other area of the country. You go to school all day, work hard, have a nice recess, deal with your share of bullies, laugh with you friends. When you...
"I've got a loaded weapon and I'm not afraid to use it!" she shouted, holding the cat in her arms like an AK-47 as the snow swirled around her on the open playing field.
"You touch my snowman again and I will set the cat on you!"she snarled, walking menacingly towards the group of chav-scum teenagers who were busy kicking over her children's carefully constructed snowmen.
"Oh yeah, as if we're scared!" one of them challenged her. She just smiled, peeled back her black balaclava and revealed her badly scarred face. "He did this last month." she said simply, and...
The bird landed. Worm-in-mouth, ready to feed the little ones. The nest high up in the tree above Central Park. Those birds had the best view in all of New York.
The birds could see snow, sun, rain, and leaves, all land upon the Park's territory; people-watch, bird watch, even. They could sleep, sing, then fly away, and come right back to their home above the sidewalks and tourists.
Birds in NYC, see more than most others do in a lifetime. Watching people kiss, get engaged, fight, collapse, run, die, LIVE. They see night in NY, day in NY, winter,...