Arturo stood out right away. Something about him didn’t quite look right. My readings seemed to have a hard time calibrating, which gave me time to scrutinize him straight up and try to see what the problem was. Once you were looking for it, it was obvious, but hard to believe. Unless I was mistaken, he hardly seemed masked at all. The eyes ( Read more... )

I remember Aunt Vivian from before the accident. She was the type of person people would describe as ‘vibrant.’ Quick, curious, funny, always floating an eye in some obscure distant mountain village or dropping a few nodes in somebody’s discussion corner. I knew more about her than I knew her myself, but the memories I did have were exquisitely ( Read more... )

My own alien ethnographer began following me around about six years ago. I was young, barely into adulthood, and although the aliens were not a new thing at the time, they were not nearly so ubiquitous as they have subsequently become. I remember being excited, and even a little bit proud. I must have been pretty interesting, to get my own ( Read more... )

Xanthe made unrestricted sketches when she was younger. She would gaze around her and imagine the ways different things could fit together, wondering with the imagination of youth, “What if…?” She would collect these fragmented ideas together and periodically bring them down to the Librarian for cross-checking. Tohono indulged her at first, but ( Read more... )

Marcy liked to run and play in the forest. Little Joanie was too scared to come along, though. She found it creepy. Marcy’s parents agreed, but they used a bigger word - “Grotesque” they said. “Best just to leave it for the keepers,” they told her ( Read more... )

The tall, lanky figure stood a moment in front of the drop box, extending a spidery hand halfway to the terminal. Options scrolled across the screen, and finally the hand completed its motion, highlighting a number of routines and releasing the appropriate addresses from its personal box. Once the transaction was completed, the body known as ( Read more... )

In story one, Myrna decides to take the dare to climb to the top of the tallest tree when she is eight. She is nimble and strong, but, like most eight-year-olds, not every factor of nature is within her control, and the eventual result is that she has a left knee that is never quite so strong or reliable. Most likely this is why she does not keep ( Read more... )

It’s possible that the admonition to ‘be yourself’ is falling slightly more out of favor. I presume it is still prevalent but maybe we are not quite so drowning in it as some decade or so ago. Or maybe I’ve just excused myself from the constant stream of these sickly sweet false self-help advice product entertainment mantras that trumpet such ( Read more... )

“Well, hi, Judy! I haven’t seen you in a while ( Read more... )

“Another crisis on floor 6, boss,” a gruffly bearded man grunts from the doorway.  “One a them representational boilers again.”
           “Send Brennerman up,” the stocky but well-groomed man responds promptly, glancing up briefly from the papers scattered across his desk.  “Then have him report back to me and I’ll give it a look over once I’m ( Read more... )