attention profit

Two office workers go for lunch together in the food court of their building. One of them is explaining his theories of attention deficit and attention surplus and how he has devised a daily routing, or exercise, which will grant him a ind of “attention profit.” He is planning on writing it up on a blog, once he starts a blog, and submitting the link to lifehacker.com. His co-worker meanwhile is thinking idly about the ergosphere, a place around a spinning black hole where space-time is revolving faster than the speed of light – and watching the buttocks of women walking by.

firelighter

The groundskeeper is dishonored because he let the fire go out. His mentor attempts to teach him more about fire starting materials. Accelerants, or firelighters they’re called. He grows pessimistic of his advice and turns away to listen to a broadcast lesson, but in trying to follow along he holds the apparatus the wrong way renders it inoperable. When the flood comes his estate is left in darkness.

unwilling submariner

Robert, a code breaker, is pressed into naval service on a submarine. He escapes several times and lives for a spells at a time in foreign lands, even starts a few families. But the submarine always catches him. After each recapture he has to sit and listen to the captain make a speech about the importance of their mission, and watch him drink a glass full of half-rotten plankton. Part of the speech always covered how the eskimos would let their meat rot for a bit to season it. He called te plankton “aged.” Then the speech would move on to how key Robert was to their mission, to the future of the mother country, indeed to the future of humanity. Once they got the message they were waiting for, Robert was the only one who could decode it. But the message never came, and Robert began to wonder if their mother country existed anymore.

meiter and his airship

Meiter takes his bearings just after boarding the ship He’s making use of the Bhagdad battery, which his old high school friend has modified for him to produce petahertz of wingflaps on his airship. Once he is satisfied that the ship is on course, he retires to his cabin to crop photographs for his scrapbook. He does this on his table computer. And once done, he connects it to his 3D printer to produce hard copies which he drops on the towns below. His ship informs him that it has found the lady with whom he should procreate – she counterbalances all of his influences on the world. The ship tells him, “Be forewarned: she has renounced chewing, and subsists primarily on beer.”

profile

Carrie, a freelance journalist, travels to the mountains near the western coast to interview a famous entrepreneur for a gossipy business magazine. While she is there the entrepreneur’s girlfriend Megan falls obsessively in love with her. Megan does all she can to prevent Carrie from leaving, then follows her to the airport, then back to her hometown, even contacts her editor and interferes with the preparation and publication of the story. This puts in jeopardy the government grant that is funding the story and the editor must smooth things over with the grant administrator.

Colman

Colman, the court jester, gives nightly performances in the king’s hall. The king has grown to like epic sagas recited in a kind of chant, punctuated by droning layered chords played on the electric guitar. The king then chases him and beats him within a virtual reality simulation. Colman is using drugs to help get him through this, but they are affecting his ability to perform and he can’t tell if they wind up resulting in harsher beatings.

brother’s favor

Zeus is called away from trying to fix the office copier to deal with a whale which, frightened by seeing a goblin shark with its jaws protruded, had fled into the harbor of Troy and blocked the entrance. Why isn’t my Poseidon doing it? Because he’s drunk. Zeus is kind of pissed at King Laomedon for pushing too far on Zeus’ good will in making Poseidon and Apolo server him. Still he has to have this argument with his brother. Wwhat a drag.

Darla

“Darla, why do you keep a tooth in your shoe?”

“My ex-husband knocked that tooth out of me. I keep it in my shoe to remind myself not to fall for guys like that. And not to put up with that kind of crap.”

banal

Paul is driven mad with rage at the inanity of the conversation at the next booth at the garden show in which he is participating. He somehow makes it through the day, then goes to a bar for a drink. He still cant calm down. He is somehow incensed by the banality of most of life. He decides to pack up his things and go home rather than attend the rest of the trade show. His live-in girlfriend is a little pissed that he didn’t stay to drum up any business – after all they spent money on the business. But he can’t even talk to her, his anger has almost paralyzed him. He snaps out of it finally with some moment of epiphany with a pseudo-ironic appreciation of some mediocire piece of pop culture.

dr. avius

Why did the ornithologist breed birds to deliver drugs through their beaks? He had dreams of unleashing flocks of inoculating birds in thrid world countries. Wound up being a way for his grad student buddies to deiscreetly delver psychotropics to each other. Soon he is being blackmailed by a crime boss to use them for one scheme after another.