milkbars

the party started organizing at milkbars, small cafes which served nonalcaholic drinks. they often had someone playing acoustic guitar, and a play area set aside for children. mothers would gather there in during the day, and evening meetings attracted young adults as well as families. after this party gained a supermajority in the assembly, these milkbars became the targets of bombings. the government put security procedures mandatory at these milkbars, but first one and then more of them resisted the procedures, which split the party. the majority disappeared and the cabinet dissolved.

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tenant

the building committee of the church finally cuts a deal with a real estate developer to lease a part of their very large plot of land for some commercial development, on condition that they have approval of the business there and that a moral code applicable to the services provided by a part of the lease. they grant approval to a restaurant and a kinck-knack shop as the first tenants. the knick-knack shop owner goes into the hospital and her son takes over. he starts turning it into a head shop.

parole

An unusual event distributes a substance throughout the atmosphere that changes mammalian biochemistry and turns off aging. Some 400 years later, after having dealt with population problems, society has to decide what to do with a serial killer whose time in prison is nearly up.

alterer

L meets a man who does not acclimatize – rather the climate alters to fit what he’s used to. He is used to a temperate climate. She becomes pregnant by him and moves to a an arctic climate to give birth.

coins

i call out the year mark on each coin, as a kind of Bingo game. a mischievous game. or we play it mischievously. my uncle used to play that game with me. he would hav me guess the year of the coins in his pocket. if i guessed right, i got the coin. i became fascinated by coins. i collected them briefly. i made my dad drive me to the hobby store where i started out with the 50 states quarter collector, and eventually moved to some of the other collection books with coin holders. that collecting phase maybe laster nine months then i became interested in replicating them, creating my own plug coins that would work in vending machines. gave myself several splinters before i realized wood wouldn’t give the right weight. i tried to use them at a store and the storekeeper caught me. he grabbed my arm and told me i would soon learn what a mistake that was. sure enough the next day a group of four young guys showed up and beat the snot out of me. i was done at that point but a week later one of the boys came back and told me he heard my coins could fool vending machines. he wanted me to make more. they made me hang out at the arcade with them where they used the coins and told the arcade owner to shut up about it. i really didn’t want to be there.

undigested

SHe went out to get coffee. He prepared poached eggs for her as a celebratory breakfast on the occasion of her earning her univeristy degree. she’ll never taste them tho. they’ll grow cold. he’ll eat a tird ofone and throw it away, then give the other to the dog. as he realizes she has left him, he sinks into a panic, which is exhilirating. He is in a manic shock; part of him knows this. Before it wears off he tries to plan how he can get this feeling again. Can he plan to get dumped? Can he invest himself enough to feel this at the same time?

hurkle

G’s platoon enfiladed the enemy as they came down the valley. even though they didn’t speak and there was no break in their firing the platoon all realized at the same time that it was a column of walking wounded. G kept a tight lid on that memory for five years until it was googlebombed. he found himself bursting out crying when he happened upon some found footage of the event. crying gave him some relief, but his anguish seemed to also carry clarity, and tears washed away both. the catharsis emptied him out and he was left a little dazed, a little scatterbrained.

the hurler vs the songbird

the defense captain led his decimated company back to the village and told the vine growers they must rearm. the hurler was fetched from the fields. he was marked by the curls in his hair. he was the key everyone told him so. they wanted to make sure he was in shape, in his finest form and top training. the terrestrial orgnization debuted with a cry out to the butterflies: make us profitable! but their pleas were not focused, and landed on a songbird, who decided to deepen their troubles.

surveillance

Norman’s neighbor dies in a fire which destroys the neighbor’s backyard shed. The fire reveals that the shed was a listening post that used several camouflaged cameras and microphones mostof which pointed at Norman’s house. Norman wrestles in his mind with all the possibilities of what this might mean. He digs into his late neighbor’s past and backround. He grills the realtor assigned by the bank to resell the house. He goes over during the open house to see if he can find any more evidence. The house sells pretty quickly – too quickly, in his mind, and he is suspicious of the new occupant. Norman starts spying on his new neighbor with a setup similar to his predecessor.

pidgin

the linguist on board the long-mission spacecraft studies the development of language among the onboard crew. they were all using a lingua franca to communicate while preparing for the mission, but it was necessarily technical. now that they were all thrown together in the capsule hotel ship their lingua franca developed aspects of a jargon that any isolated speaking population invents with daily interaction. it also started developing new aspects of grammar.