disqualified

he arose from the field dripping with exertion, and saw his rival standing next to the official, trying to wear a look that showed even more concern than was in the official’s face.

tines

a group of refugees encounter several obstacles which force them to divide, each time into three groups. as the groups get smaller it gets harder to decide who will go with whom.

the new sausage

a small company, founded by four friends, develops a wildly popular artificial meat that, unknown to the public, has been developed based on cancer cells. part if their product development is to search out patients with forms of cancer they haven’t seen before, and obtain samples, which requires a release signed by the patient. they include a non-disclosure clause and a large payment, sometimes including royalties.

prefigure

He should have detected her betrayal earlier, even before it happened. He went back over all of his photographs of her looking for signs. He started taking photos of all of his friends at regular intervals, looking for the same signs – a combined preemptive defense and comparative study.

fossil

I took apart the equipment and blew the dust out if all the interior parts. The ground dropped away as the ship entered the canyon of the loss of you. Some of the components had started to ossify, so I put them in the chemical kiln and set it up to finish the job. I promised myself that if I could, I would gradually replace you in my heart, bit by bit. I just needed to find the right material.

crutch

the funny thing was that before the boat accident, they had talked about seeing each other through hard times. it was a fantasy for both of them. they had even talked about getting married in secret so that they could not be shut out from each other’s lives in case something happened. and then something did happen, and she was shut out. his family wouldn’t let her visit him at the hospital or even after he came home. when she finally did see him, months later, when he was navigating school with his prosthetics, he told her it was over between them. he wasn’t bitter toward her, or toward his family. it was just that he had faced this alone and realized that his fantasies about depending in someone else or having someone else depend in him were unhealthy.

inspired

They gave themselves until the time that prayer would be called, thinking they couldn’t get too far in that time. So if the prayer caller slipped and fell off of his spire, was that God’s will? And therefore was the child conceived of their uninterrupted nuzzling not, in a sense, divinely conceived? The answer the monks gave to these questions was of course, so they gelded both the father and the boy, when he arrived, so that the two of them could better serve God.

anomalous warp

Bent over his loom, he contemplated the vector spaces in the pattern as he weaved it. Suddenly he grew afraid. What if he found a thread whose color pattern would break the symmetry would he take it out, or would he leave it in and break his train of thought? Maybe he could ignore it, bracket it, and continue. But if he let one slide, they would probably start piling up.

re-examine

I tried to explain to him that if he wanted his people reclassified, we would have to open a new thorough study, which would include vivisection.

stratum corneum

The people we encountered at the coast, who we thought were primitive tribes, were like the outer layer of skin if the civilization, dead cells that are being continuously sloughed off.