“The Bicamerals would think of it as more of a— a pilgrimage, I suppose.” His mouth tightened at one corner: a small lopsided grimace. “You remember the Theseus mission.” It was too rhetorical for a question mark. “Of course.” “You know the fuelling technology it used— uses.” Brüks shrugged. “Icarus cracks the antimatter, masers out […]
Archive for fiblet
30
May
2013
Worst Date Ever.
“Catch.” He turned, flinched, brought his hands up barely in time to catch the box sailing towards him. It might have held a large pizza, judging by size and shape; maybe three of them, stacked. Scasers, adhesives, bladders of synthetic blood nestled in molded depressions under the lid. Some kind of bare-bones first-aid kit. “Fix […]
15
Apr
2013
Probably Just Another in a List Going Back to Constantine…
An Enemy Within: The Bicameral Threat to Institutional Religion in the Twenty-First Century An Internal Report to the Holy See by The Pontifical Academy of Sciences in conjunction with the John Templeton Foundation, based upon investigations inaugurated July 23—Sep 16 2093 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Background The past century has witnessed what Sujeit describes […]
31
Dec
2012
Turducken
We’re going to hit. We’re aiming to hit, we’re going to let the lesser monster devour us before the greater one devours it in turn. We’ll lower Eriophora by her own bootstraps, sink through roiling bands of hydrogen and helium and a thousand exotic hydrocarbons, down to whatever residual deep-space chill Thule’s been hoarding since […]
20
Dec
2012
And So Another Build Begins.
So many eons, slept away while the universe wound down around him. He’s dead to human eyes. Even the machines barely glimpse the chemistry ticking over in those cells: an ancient molecule of hydrogen sulphide, older than suns, frozen in its hemoglobin embrace; an electron shuttled sluggishly down some metabolic pathway two weeks ago. Back […]
12
Dec
2012
Overthinking Apocalypse
There was more, of course. Prof. Piotr Dembowski of the University of Maryland, talking about how difficult it had been to crack the GRM. Someone else from Simon Fraser, reporting that something like Firebrand (“it’s always hard to tell when dealing with encrypted genes”) was showing up in some microbe — Bacteroides thetasomethingorother — that […]
22
Aug
2012
Lateral Transfers
The whitecap’s skin glows with a golden tan of cultured xanthophylls. Joel’s smile grows a little more brittle. He’s heard all about the benefits, of course. UV protection, higher blood oxygen, more energy — they say it even cuts down on your food requirements, not that any of these people have to worry about grocery […]
01
May
2012
Firebrand.
Haven’t posted recently. Too many reasons to list here, but one of them involves an April-30 story deadline that I beat by a measly two hours. I would have beat it by more than that, but after writing half a story I realized it was crap and started out with an entirely new plot exploring […]
06
Mar
2012
Break Fast.
Sengupta threw a video feed onto the wall: Rowdy voices, flashing lights, a mag-lev table wobbling at an insane angle thanks to some drunken asshole trying to dance on the damn thing. Impromptu footage of a campus bar; the student ambience would be a dead giveaway anywhere on the planet but Brüks was pretty sure […]
07
Dec
2011
Bright Eyes.
It was a window in the crudest possible sense: a solid pane of transparent alloy, set into the rear bulkhead. You couldn’t zoom it or resize it or lay a tactical false-color overlay across its surface. You couldn’t even turn it off, unless someone on the other side brought down the blast shield. It was […]
