keeping the peace

The peacemakers were put into a preserve, a reservation, so they wouldn’t bother anyone anymore. Forsaken even by their mothers, the only people who showed interest in them were the zoologists who came there to study the other endangered animals.

apprentice

He had developed a technique for greatly extending life. He used it mainly on animals – his horse, his pet dog. He used it on himself only to a certain degree, not to arouse suspicion. He wanted to pass on the technique – he wanted to teach it to someone so that it would be preserved. But he didn’t want to publicize it, so he took great care in choosing a worthy apprentice. People change, however. It took several years to teach, an near the end of his life he changed his mind. He decided he did want to promulgate the tehnique, and make it available to the general public. But his student remained steadfast, and opposed him.

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flotsam

We opened the warehouse and gazed thousands of pommel horses. They were engulfed by the the waters, which then lifted them and swept them out the door do that they could in their turn engulf the waterfowl floating on the waves which were too slow to fly off from their rest upon the smaller waves between buildings. We fashioned nets out of barbed wire. As we sailed between the cities I dreamed of composing a poem that would make things better, give people a new way to deal with things, or at least hope. But my elder companion scowled, and said that was what started this mess, was a poem.

calm by contrast

The drug we will give you is a smpathomimetic, that is it induces a fight or flight response. Some drugs in this class are used to deal with cardiac arrest, some to get high. This one induces panic. You will be given this drug constantly, for a week. When we gave this drug to cattle they stopped grazing, and didn’t resume for another week after the drug stopped. We’d like to know: what will you desire at the end of this week? Hopefully you won’t develop phthsis from the stress put on your lungs. our first volunteer subject now lives venerated in an iron lung. We think we’ve solved that problem though.

network branch

He lept down from the tower to check the terminal. The latency had been fixed. He returned to the microphone, and his influence once more travelled out to the unpruned territories. But a voice came back. It said, “Your speeches are like chipped paint. I am coming to help you resurface. Look for my horse.” He couldn’t decide if it was a threat or an offer of help.

cloudy

Propelled by the graduation requirements into giving up school. I was in my fourth year, one semester left, when they changed the graduation requirements, propelling me into dropping out. I didn’t have enough money for all the new classes i had to take. Try to get some official final document that i could reference on my resume was an exercise in frustration. The school placement office suggested getting an internship, though many companies kind of expected you to be an active student. I was telling to my drug dealer when he told me he could use someone to come along on a deal just to give the impression of his having muscle. I didn’t think that would be my path into the corporate world. Let me just day that large organizations do scenario planning; small organizations are too focused on being disruptive, causing the things that large organizations have to plan for.

torrential

Taking file sharing networks as inspiration, students at the school of black magic set up a way to duplicate summoned demons and creatures. it didn’t work well. not only did they wind up suspended, they had to shovel up the results of their experiment, and hang them up for the owls.

multiplier

He spent his afternoons sitting in a smoky circular room wearing a bio-feedback tunic and listening to white noise over headphones. The more he generated alpha waves, the greater boost he gave to the computer as it executed several logic runs. His employers were calculating optimal gun calibers for various operations. Their results would contribute to the overthrow, which help him to be spared in the first purges.

invite

His job was to glue diacritic marks into all of the magazines that came into the library that didn’t have them already. He remained well-mannered despite the scolding his boss would give him for no rea son at all. He prayed for his boss. he was twenty-five. One of the library patrons invited him to dinner, but he refused. His reason was that he would feel obligated to invite the patron to his own apartment for dinner in return, and his apartment was too modest to host a guest. The patron promised he would find a way to have him for dinner and make sure his sense of obligation was satisfied.

memory cave

No one in the colony could remember more than a year back. Every six months we would don our summerwear and go to the memory cave, because we thought one of these times it might help. Melodies hit us as we stooped through it, led by flares to the far exit. Along the way I think there must be children, and I wonder where might they have gone. I think there must be some group of people doing this, and I wonder what their reason is, and how they legimitize this to themselves.