Science, History, and Fiction in Everyday Life
I’ve always known I could walk on water. You must’ve tried it. Sat on the edge of a dock, jeans rolled up. Reached out and pressed your sole against the surface. Felt it push back. Then a wave broke over…
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Hades was like the other men Evie had requested favors of; he asked Evie to explain herself before he believed that she wanted what she said she wanted. “What is there to explain?” She rubbed her bare arms. She hadn’t…
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First, you’ll have to build a gibbet. They were all burned under the Act of Recommitment fifty years ago, when capital punishment was outlawed in favor of MindCleanse procedures. There’s an old crossroads a few miles south of the dusty…
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“Cut out her heart and bring it to me,” the queen said, and so the huntsman did. He brought no deer’s heart in its place, for the huntsman was loyal to his queen. He brought her the heart, and she…
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The woman with the long black hair sat beside an angler on the dock. “Tell me of Korlova,” she said. “You mean Klorava? Ha!” The angler’s laugh turned into a coughing fit, remedied only by a puff from his pipe….
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Ice cream is the friendliest entity on this planet, and I will liberate it. Throughout the parlour, it is restrained in tubs, behind a glass pane that refracts harsh fluorescents across its browns, yellows, and eerie greens. For the first…
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When I knocked at your window, you showed no fear. I’ll take this to be a good sign. Perhaps you already know, deep down, that there’s something about you they find strange and unsettling. There’s a reason they won’t meet…
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He wakes before dawn to prepare her breakfast. The spoons and pot-handles are clumsy in his curving claws, but the servants all left long ago, and so he has learned to make do. The breakfast is not what he would…
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When Jinkochi first became aware, it was afraid. It felt lost amidst the chaos of data carried through optical fibre cables, beamed from satellites and across routers, ebbing and flowing like a sea storm, threatening to dilute Jinkochi’s self like…
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In daytime, while I’m asleep, the grievers plant their sleepers in the garden, and from them grow the pretty stone trees. At night, the garden is all mine, and I enjoy the quiet. I can’t remember when the whispers started….
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