The Tentacle
The Tentacle – May 24, 2020
The time machine itself was tied to a dock, looking like nothing so much as a segment of tentacle from a gigantic squid, only coming to the surface in defiance of natural law. In the late night storm, as the crew of four approached, it seemed the color had been leached away from the landscape, leaving a monochrome tableau illuminated solely by a single light atop a quickly constructed metal tower. The “sucker discs,” which gave the huge cylinder it’s cephalopod appearance, in the daylight might have been mistaken for semi-inflated innertubes, but they weren’t.
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Nix’ant
Nix’ant – May 16, 2020
Watching the sun go down, Kathleen Olufsen contemplated the day she had had and yet knew the worst was still to come. It was at times like this she wished she still smoked. She could have used the relief of inhaling some good old fashioned nicotine into her lungs and letting its calming chemicals do their trick. But ever since she’d come to Kepler-442b, which the first wave of inhabitants had nicknamed Nix’ant after the Gros Ventre trickster god, smoking had been off the plate. It was part of the conditioning built in during the hypersleep to get her, and all the other colonists, to the planet itself.
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Pancakes for breakfast
It could have been a normal Sunday morning, but someone up there must have had a different story in mind. Sometimes Matt felt like the universe was trying to test him and on good days life felt like a treasure hunt, but most of the time it was more of a maze that he seemed to be stuck in.
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The Beetle
The Beetle – May 10, 2020
So many things can be traced back a single moment. It’s probably cliché to say that, of course, since anything you do any choice you make, can lead you in a different direction. It’s like you’re constantly standing at a crossroads and the future is a back-handed superhero, beckoning you to do the right thing, make the right choice. But what if you don’t know what that choice is? What if the choice isn’t really a choice at all?
What if it’s something that just happens, an instinct or a reflex, which sets off a chain of events that has catastrophic consequences? What if I had never stepped on that damn beetle?
Silver
Silver – May 2, 2020
The folder landed on the gym floor in front of Silver. Then the woman who had thrown it sat down on a nearby bench to wait. Silver himself was in the middle of a set, the big man straining under the weight. Dammit he thought. What was she doing here? This was his time. He was counting the reps in his head – four, five remember to breathe six.
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The Stan Lee Controversy
Superman’s Connection to Lithuania
