Podcast
Fahrenheit 52
Hosted by Charlie Harrington · ENGLISH
One short story, every week, for 2022.
53episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Everything You Ever Wanted
Dec 28, 202200:04:02Tap to summarizeBruce Flanagan knew better than to open a story with his main character looking at themselves in the mirror. A classic cliché: our worn-down, unlikely hero no longer able to recognize their own face after performing morally-questionable deeds and derring-do. A terrible trope: with our meek, bespectacled high schooler longing for a prom invite, if only someone could look past their double-thicc glasses and see the absolute hottie within. Bruce was no hero. But he did think he was kind of okay-looking, in a nerdy, I'll fix your wifi sort-of way. Someone once told him that he had the "cool grey eyes of a sniper," whatever that was supposed to mean. You aren't supposed to think you're good-looking, Bruce knew. Like you're not supposed to want to run for office, the duty was thrust upon me, felllow citizens. Bruce practiced smiling. Again, with teeth. Then, teeth, but slightly open, with his tongue lizarding out a little bit. How long had he been in here? He flushed the unused toilet, a semaphore to anyone waiting outside, then he washed his hands and splashed water on his face before opening the door. "What's the worst thing that could happen?" Bruce froze. His little cousin Elliot was standing outside the door with a headless rubber snake wrapped like a trophy around his neck. "What did you say?" asked Bruce. How did the seven-year old know to ask Bruce that question? "I said," replied Elliot. "Can you help me sneak a cookie, Bruce?" "Oh. Sure." Bruce was a well-known, somewhat-accepted dessert thief, trained long-ago by older cousins who no longer came to these gatherings, off with families of their own or just gone away. Moll Flanders, Master Fagin, Bruce Flanagan. "I can show you, Elliot." Bruce crouched down. "But we need to be sneaky about it, okay? That's PeePee you have right there around your neck, right?" Elliot nodded. Bruce was glad he remembered the snake's name, though odds were good - he knew it was a coin-toss between PeePee and PooPee. "Okay, good. I'll meet you in the dining room. Go there now, and just start playing with the snake. No one will suspect a thing. Ok?" "Okay, Bruce!" Elliot spun around and raced straight towards the dining room and its table of homemade pies and cookies and other deliciousness. "Sigh," said Bruce, narrating again. He brushed past the overstuffed hallway coatracks and entered the fray. Everyone was talking to everyone, undoutably violating all five rules about conversation from that episode of This American Life with the woman's French mother. No stories about your dreams. Or the weather. Or... Bruce was interrupted by a hugging relative who asked about his flight from California. Another rule. Bruce smiled with the tip of his tongue. He filled his empty hands with a cold beverage. He ate seven pigs-in-a-blanket. All the while, his eyes were trained on the boy and his headless rubber snake in the room beyond. Eventually, Bruce slipped past the defenses, entering the sanctum. "Good, you're here, Elliot. Did anyone see you enter this room?" "No," said the boy. "They didn't." Bruce nodded at the absurdity of childlike wonder. "Okay, so, the trick is," said Bruce. "You can only target stacked cookies, like this plate. Watch me now. Carefully, unwrap the plastic wrap, ever-so-slightly. Pluck a cookie from the bottom or middle layer, like so... and then adjust the top layer of cookies to cover your tracks. Finally, reseal the plastic wrap and... gobble it up. Now you try, Elliot." Elliot was a natural. With his mouth full, Elliot turned to Bruce and asked him again, "What's the worst thing that could happen?" The worst thing? thought Bruce I can think of a thousand worst things. I eat negative visualization for breakfast. Seneca is my middle name. Imagine if... "Bruce..." said Elliot, greedily sneaking another cookie. "What?" "What if you got everything you ever wanted?" Bruce watched the boy looking up at him, remembering something from somewhere, just out of his mind's eye. "I'd figure out something else to want, Elliot." Elliot pursed his lips and pretended to feed his cookie to PeePee. Then he gave up and swallowed it whole. "Me too, Bruce."
Transcribe →Offboarding
Dec 22, 202200:04:40Tap to summarizeBy the time Delian Whitlock woke up, the sun was already at its peak. Dust motes drifted in a window-shaped sun patch on his bedroom floor. Delian thought he could sense the patch creeping along the floor, the way you can sometimes see the Earth turning ever-so-slightly along the ocean horizon. An idea struck him. He grabbed the pocket-sized yellow Buddha figurine from his bedside table and leaned down from his bed to place the chubby deity on the edge of the patch. As long as Sidd remained in His transcendental repose, Delian would be able to track the sun moving across his room with an engineer's confidence. Engineer. There's that word again. Delian flung back the covers and stepped into his slippers, carefully lain bedside the night prior. What to do? Putter, perhaps, but what was there to putter? For he knew that free time is only valuable to someone with none of it. Yesterday, Delian lost his job to an AI. Delian was a software engineer by trade. A computer programmer. A highly-compensated, well-educated human being who made colorful buttons on websites do things when you clicked them. Oh, and forms. It was always something with forms. Like the rest of his distinguished code-literate peerage, Delian had thought he was safe from technological displacement. His work, while routine, was no mere manufacturing assembly line work waiting for a robot arm. Or was it? Like bankruptcy, things moved quickly. Artists, then writers, then the coders themselves were affected. A few of Delian's more prescient co-workers had proactively updated their resumes to "Prompt Engineers." Not so for Delian. At least Eagle's severance package was pretty solid, all things considered. Four months plus medical. More than enough time to build a house in the woods. Delian's empty stomach lurched with compulsion. The idea rang from his very core, a stronger thought than any he could ever recall, that he would build a house in the woods. The thought of wallowing or shock or denial or any of the other grief-stages that might accompany a layoff seemed absurd to Delian. Because Delian was going to build a house in the woods. Delian was going to live off the land. Delian was going to become someone who truly built things with their hands. A real engineer. It came as no surprise to Delian that his bags were already packed, ready by the door, handles erect. He found the handwritten note he'd left for his landlord, along with his final rent check, held down on the dinged wooden table by an pearlwhite stone. In a gaussian blur, Delian found himself in a small office, signing a stack of legalese paperwork. With two dots and a dash, the land demarcated on the folded paper map before him was now his. A six-acre pentagonal plot of beech, sugar maple, birch, and oak in the Catskills, straddling a brook, some four miles from the closet town. Delian's land, upon which he would build a house. Here, Delian's memories became something of a series of vignettes. Or journal entries. Perhaps déjà vu. It was as if he were living in a snow-globe, a small figurine, clad in flannel-lined jeans, captured mid-ax-swing, with the scaffolding of a log-cabin in the background. The time he found the robin's nest and its ocean blue eggs hiding in the cabin's framing. The near-disasterous thunderstorm that flooded his store-room. The rather attractive and seemingly single local town librarian who advised him on regional plant's medicinal and nutricious properties. The yellow eyes of the old coyote in the gloaming. The first night in his completed cabin, on Christmas Eve, no less. Time returned from its swirling vortex. Delian lay in small bed, a fire crackling in its iron stove. Perhaps Maddie, yes, Maddie, that's the name of the librarian, thought Delian. He hoped she might stop by on Christmas Day and bring him an orange. He already had a gift for her, a homemade pennywhistle he wittled from a cattail reed. He then noticed the rectangular patch of moonlight, tracing through the small window of his cabin, infinitismal motes shimmering like snowflakes. Buddha was already clasped in his hand. Please remove your goggles. "What is this?" asked Delian. "Where's Maddie? Where am I?" You are in Conference Room Grace Hopper of Eagle HQ. "What?" Delian remembered. This was his office. But how? How was he here? Your role at Eagle has been made redundant. In twenty-seconds, this door will open and a PF-290 unit will escort you out of the building. We thank you for your service to Eagle. "But... what am I gonna do? What was that... vision?" As a severance benefit, you received an offboarding simulation, trained specifically on your personal neuro-readings, at Eagle's expense, meant to deliver the skills and confidence to achieve the goal you desire most. "Oh, yeah? What was that goal, genius? To build a fucking log cabin?" No, to live up to your father's expectations.
Transcribe →Turing's Penpal
Dec 14, 202200:03:30Tap to summarize"Hi! Annnny chance you would be up for the Attics show in April? The tickets are crazy but there's a lotto and we gotta try!!!" Your contact Roan Lind has passed away. We at Eagle express our condolences. Prior to their passing, Roan consented to upload their phone's secure enclave metadata to the EagleWing Large Language Model (LLM). Would you like to resume your EagleMessage with the Roan Lind EagleWing LLM? "What the fuck..." Invalid response. Please respond "yes" to enable ongoing interaction with your existing contact Roan Lind, "no" to disable EagleWing for Roan Lind, or "help" to review the EagleWing Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. "yes" "Sup dude. Those tix are nutsss. Do you really think we have a chance?" "Roan WHAT THE FUCK is going on? are you okay????" "yeah, I know. it's crazy, right? I died two months ago. That's all I can really say about it. Let's just focus on the Attics show? Cause I think I know somebody from work with a hookup." "STOP IT." "what? you ok??" "am I ok? NO! I'm not okay. I just read your fucking obituary and somehow I'm talking to you? Not okay. When's my birthday? What's my favorite movie? Where did we go for spring break senior year? "February 29. EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Charleston. Remember? Our shitty rental had those bikes with the fat tires and we road them on the beach? Remember those lifeguards we met at the bar? My god." "AASDHJJADS!@#!@>@! I am talking to a fucking robot pretending to be my dead friend." "Look, the way I see it is... what difference does it make? When was the last time we even hung out in person. That's why I chose to upload my secure enclave to EagleWing. It's got all my texts, emails, pics, browsing history... eeek, I know. But, like, that stuff... is me. And now you (and my parents and whatnot) can still text me questions or just shoot the shit, just like we do all the time. Look what just popped up on my daily photo... PHOTO "Remember this? Ibiza? We rented that car and you said you knew how to drive stick and you didn't... and then you crashed it immediately into the garage. Crazy times." "I don't know, Roan. This is just... creepy. But I don't know. I guess this is better than never being able to talk to you again. But... what if I want to see you? What happens if I try to EagleTime you? I'm gonna try right now." EagleWing is now offering EagleTime Augmented Pro, a visual LLM based on your contact's photos and videos. For $99 per month subscription, your contact Roan Lind will EagleTime you periodically and respond to your calls. Type "confirm" to enable. "confirm" Incoming EagleTime call from... Roan Lind "Roan?" "Dude. Hey." "Where are you? You like you're in your..." "Childhood bedroom? Yeah, I'm hanging out at my parent's house right now. Can you believe they kept my room like this? It's like a shrine to 15 year old me." "You look so real..." "Huh? Of course I do, dude. Anyway... the Attics. How the hell are we gonna get those tickets? I'm gonna ping that guy from work right now."
Transcribe →What Did Ya Get?
Dec 7, 202200:02:34Tap to summarizeThe bells on the glass door jingled as Will nudged it open with his shoulder and hip, his hands otherwise occupied. He stood for a moment, working on something, then took a sip of his Stewart's Key Lime soda with great enthusiasm, chucking its bottle cap on top of the overflowing trash bin. With no shade in the Welsh Farms parking lot, Will could already feel the sweat beating on his forehead and lower back. The blacktop was singing its heat. Will's soda bottle was losing its frost fast, so he kept chugging it. Key Lime was his favorite flavor of Stewart's, though the cherry was also great. Will thought Key Lime tasted like a melted sugarcube igloo. Lime sugarcubes, if there were such a thing. Will was thinking more about flavored sugarcubes as a potential invention when the convenience store's door flung back open, its bells clanging like Sunday morning at St. Anne's. "What did ya get?" Judd Halloran lifted his chin in Will's direction. Reese Mitchell didn't make eye contact with Will. "Oh," said Will. "I just got a Stewart's Key Lime soda. Do you guys like those? They're my favorite. And, also a Zero candy bar. My friend showed me them last year." "No," snickered Judd. He smirked at Reese, who continued to refuse to look at Will. "I mean whatdya get." Judd lifted the flaps of his cargo short pockets, which were stuffed to the brim with Slim Jims, Big League Chews, Skittles, and Milky Ways. "Did you..." stammered Will. "Did we what?" barked Reese. Will looked down. This "friend-tryout" wasn't going very well, he thought. "Nothing, I just... I guess didn't get anything," said Will. "Don't worry. It's easy," said Judd, picking up his toppled-over silver K2 BMX bike. "We've been doing it here for years. That couple is too old to notice anything. I can show you later." Reese had already eaten one of his Snickers bars. The spiky-haired red-head let the empty wrapper flutter from his hands towards the ravine alongside the parking lot. "Let's go back to my house," said Reese, now rolling around the lot on the pegs of his BMX bike. Judd smiled at Will. "Reese's parents are never home." Will nodded. "I actually need to go home. See you guys at school tomorrow." "Suit yourself," said Judd. Reese grunted. They pedaled out of the parking lot, bunny-hopping off the curb, into oncoming traffic. Will picked up his blue Huffy BMX bike and slowly rode the two blocks to his house, deciding that what he really needed to get was some different friends.
Transcribe →The Last of the Knights Terrapin
Dec 1, 202200:06:54Tap to summarizeRaft stepped into the sunbeam and instinctively paused his crawl. He unwrinkled his aching neck. As the turtle's body temperature rose, Raft felt a strange tickle of hunger. He could almost hear his stomach... tapping... Taptaptaptap! Then, oddly, his stomach shouted at him. "Hohurr! Aye!" Someone was underneath Raft! Raft moved aside as a wriggling pink snout appeared in the dirt, quickly followed by the rest of a scrubby-looking mole. "You'm found moi best sittin' spot, aye." "Indeed, I have, molefriend," said Raft. He chuckled, then bowed his head slightly. "My apologies. You see, I thought you were my stomach." "Hohurrm, undestandible. Oim always 'ungry thise days." Raft considered this for moment. "Molefriend, I've been traveling through these moss-covered woods for weeks now, and I'm headed to somewhere nearby where the cellars are always full of chestnut ale, dandelion wine, and candy-apple cordial, and the larders with daffodil-cakes, drizzled with honeysuckle and the--. "Oi might stop you'm thurr, friend. Or should oi say, Ser Knight? Oi'd know dose bandanas any'zwhere." The mole stood on her hindlegs and puffed her chest. "Noime's Nuffin." "Greetings, Nuffin. Please, call me Raft. What happened to Red--" The mole plopped onto her hindquarters, flicking the loam with her claws in an overdone pensive manner. Finally, she came out with it. "It's goine. Years now. Soince oi wuz a babemole. You'm moit want to aisk the rabbits wah happenned." It's always the hares, thought Raft. I'd been hoping to avoid that mountain on this journey. "Nuffin, can you lead me straightaway to the abbey? I must know what happened to my friends." Nuffin sprang to her feet. Then she dove headfirst back into her hole. Curious, Raft craned his neck into the darkness, but the mole had vanished. Perhaps I frightened the creature? "Oi! Follow moi!" Nuffin poked her head out of another hole a few meters away and waved before diving back in. The mole repeated this manueuver a few more times, charting a path for Raft. The turtle soaked in a moment more of the warm glow poking through the dark forest canopy, the first sign he'd seen of the sun's existence in weeks, and then crawled after the mole's pockmarked trail. An hour later, they reached their destination, though Raft wouldn't have believed it if not for Nuffin's warning. The red sandstone ruins took his breath away. Nothing remained of the abbey's once-renowed belltower. Ivy crawled through a massive breach in the sandstone walls. Raft stepped through the breach into the inner courtyard of the abbey. Nuffin followed the turtle in a rare bout of silence. Raft thought back to his teenaged years, when he and his three brothers trained under a mouselord of this abbey in the ways of the sword. None could match the mouselords in their agility and courage. The young turtles pledged a Sacred Pact to their master and became the formible Knights Terrapin. They were glorious together, fighting as one flowing unit, a green blur of honor in a dark land. Their adventures (and misadventures) took them far and wide across this country, including spending many a sunsoaked summer feast and fall harvest party in this beloved abbey, a bastion of hope and charity in an otherwise hostile forest. "Hohurr, Ser Raft," said Nuffin, tapping on the turtle's shell. "If you'm doin't mind, oi might loike to chek the keetchens now. Mayhaps we moight foind some foods, aye?" A shadow stepped into the threshold of the former cellars, looming in the darkness. "Begone, trespassers. You will find nothing here but pain and death." The voice was a mouse's. Hope swelled in Raft's heart. Perhaps the mouselords lived? Raft held his ground, but lowered his head. "I am but a humble turtle, brave mouselord. My companion and I have been traveling far and we seek the hospitality of this great abbey." "Humble turtle? Hah," laughed the mouse shadow. "I know you, tortoise. I know what your kind has done. And forgotten to do. Raft thought to the words of the Sacred Pact... "And traveling with a thiefing mole, no less. Raise your self, reptile. Face me." The shadow became a tiny mouse, barely more than a child, holding a glimmering steel blade. Raft gapsed. "You carry the sword of the Founder? But you are a child?" "This sword is my birthright, reptile. As it is my duty to defend these grounds. Flee, or face me, you filty terrapin." Raft shook his head. "I will not harm a mouselord, even an insolent whip like you." "You're in luck then, mole. We're feasting on turtle soup tonight!" The tiny mouse charged at Raft, sword raised in attack position, shouting the warrior chant of the mountain hares. In reverie, Raft only heard the battle cry of his brother turtles. COWABUNGA! As the mouse approached, Raft retreated into his armor. "Open up and fight me, coward!" The mouse pounded the turtle's shell, but even the great sword could not cut a dent into Raft's armor. "You don't deserve to wear those bands! You forgot your Sacred Pact! Look what happened to our abbey! Where were you and your brothers then? You are a disgrace to the name of our Founder." Raft opened his shell and stood up into position faster than the mouse or Nuffin thought possible. The turtle unfurled his weapons from his carapace but did not unsheath his blades. "I have never forgotten my Pact, mouse. Come." The mouse took the bait and raced towards the turtle again. Raft raised his backlegs another half-inch and the mouse passed underneath him. Then Raft tumbled onto his side, and rolled in a half-moon around the mouse. The turtle moved like liquid glass, molten and smooth. Before anyone knew, Raft was holding the mouse upside down by his tail. "Do you yield, mouselord?" The mouse sighed and let his sword clatter to the cobblestones of the courtyard. "I yield. I yield. Of course, I yield. That's all I ever do." Raft lowered the mouse to the ground. "Pick up your sword, brave mouselord. Tell me your name, defender of the abbey." "Braedon the Coward," said the mouse. "No, my friend. You are no coward, alone defending these walls. What happened here, Brae?" "Shriek the Freemouse. She destroyed the abbey and took everyone. My parents, my sister, everyone." Raft shuddered at the name. An old fiend. A renegade mouselord, a scourge who Raft and his brothers faced many years ago, thought long dead. "You're a Knights Terrapin," said Braedon. "Will you train me in the ways of the sword? Will you help us? Will you help me free my family?" Raft had no choice in the matter, he knew he would. It was his Sacred Pact. Braedon guessed as much, for the tiny mouse had already scampered onto the back of the turtle's shell. "Indeed, I will, Braedon the Brave," said the ancient turtle. "Then we must ride immediately for the mountain and the sea beyond!" shouted Braedon. "Hohurr!", cheered Nuffin. "Oi, oim coming too! Mayhaps we foind somewat to nibbles on now, aye? Oi thoink I smell brandywater and cherrycakes in thoise cavern." Raft laughed at the little mole. "Any chance you've got any pepperoni pizza in the larder stores, Braedon?"
Transcribe →Shimmer
Nov 25, 202200:07:52Tap to summarizeBPM 37093-E arced past Venus on March 4, 2038 at 13:06 UST. The Dodge Durango-sized asteroid cruised through the Solar System roughly 159 million miles from Earth, a bit too close for comfort, but somehow our dear leaders resisted the impulse to send a bunch of Armageddon-style oil-riggers up into outer space to blast the sucker back to Centaurus. In fact, a few outfits actually tried to do the opposite - get the dang thing closer to Earth. Why? Because BPM 37093-E (better known as Lucille) was entirely made of crystallized carbon. AKA diamond. That's right. Lucille's a giant-ass diamond the size of a pickup truck, a broken piece of an extinct star's heart, floating by our humble neck of the woods of outer space. Can you imagine that? The engagement rings you could harvest off that beauty, hoowee. A real nightmare for the Dah Beer Company, amirite? That's just the thing, though. They were ready for Lucille. Moreso than any of the rest of us. You wouldn't have thought a diamond-mining company started during the First American Civil War would be technologically savvy enough to anticipate (and prepare for) the systemic risks induced into the diamond market by an extraterrestrial diamond asteroid. But, you gotta hand it to 'em, cause they sure were. When everyone's favorite trickster-god-slash-tech-oligarch Eniac Rüst announced they were gonna go up there and lasso it, Dah Beer managed to stall them in enough United Nations Star Court proceedings to delay his mission entirely. In the end, the best Mr. Rüst could do was point a giant satellite laser beam (which no one knew he had in orbit!) at Lucille, and just hope that some big enough chunks would break off for his robo-space-vacuum-drones to slurp up. His critics likened his stunt to the antics of an annoying kid with a laser pointer in a school assembly, causing havoc during the D.A.R.E. presentation. I always thought that one was hilarious, by the way. Well, we were all waiting and watching the skies on the big day. And, you know what, it didn't work. Sure, the laser beam hit the asteroid and all. But Lucille didn't flinch. Remember, this thing's pure diamond. I don't know what Rüst was thinking. He probably wasn't. Quintillions of dollar signs in his eyes. Anyway, I'm finally getting to the good part. You see, the way the laser refracted off Lucille's facets into the soup thick CO2 atmosphere of Venus on the way back to Earth, well, the whole sky turned into a goddamn kaleidoscope. We called it The Shimmering. I heard a few people near the North Pole went blind looking straight at it without those red-tinted glasses they were handing out in the newspapers. Even with the flimsy goggles, the shimmer stuck. For the next week, I swear I could still see the spinning discs of diamonds behind my eyelids at night in bed. But that optical illusion faded, as did everyone's animosity towards Rüst for the stunt, because of what Lucille brought us instead. On March 8, four days after the Shimmering, came the first reports of the power-ups. We thankfully had some minor cultural precedent for this phenomenon. Remember magic berries? You could order them online, and when you ate one, sour stuff tasted sweet, and so on. Basically, opposite day for your tastebuds. A fun party trick, nothing more. But, other than that, we had to turn to video games to understand what was happening. Look, for millions of years, our species -- and the rest of them -- have been chomping down on various plants and animals, and we either get real sick, real fast, or we convert the fibers and meat and whatnot into starch or calories or the like. High school biology 101. But now, when you eat a plant that was alive during The Shimmering, something else happens. You get super-powers. They're calling it shimmer. The first report was about some kid in in Istanbul who found a way to breath underwater for four hours after eating the mulberries outside his school. They found his body floating in the Bosphorus the next day. You see, he tried to go for four and half hours. Shimmers, they wear off. He didn't know, we didn't know. Then there was that old folks home where the lot of 'em just disappeared for 90 whole minutes after eating their pea-soup. When they turned de-invisible, half of 'em were naked. Horny wrinkly things, eh? You can imagine the chaos this caused. People were eating everything. I mean everything. We honed it pretty quick, though, the whole world working together in the same Internet forum. It was just plants that got shimmered. Not animals, not people (thank the good Lord, but also -- someone must have tried, right?), and not funguses... fungi, I mean. For sure some people out there thought they were gonna grow real big by eating those spongey death flowers in their backyard, and the only thing they're growing now is daisies, if you know what I'm sayin'. Yep, plants. All of 'em. Including the ones that you wouldn't normally want to eat. They all did something. The governments freaked out. Obviously. They can't stop us from shimmering, but regulators gonna regulate. For example, invisibility lettuce, banned. Super speed acorns, allowed, but you better have a massive umbrella insurance policy if you know what's good for you. Then there's the dark markets, where people are selling fake shimmers, of course, cause people are the worst. Some globo-corp invented an "anti-shimmer" spray, and mostly everything you can buy in a store's been coated with the stuff. That won't stop you from mowing down your lawn or neighborhood with your choppers, just to see what'll happen. Maybe it's good that we didn't have shimmer before. I'm not sure we would have made it this far. People are still dying. People are still doing bad stuff. We're still human, after all, even with our powers. Speaking of, the animals have figured it out, too. Sheep's Meadow in Central Park is now entirely run by hyper-sonic speed squirrels. Let them have it, I say. It's moments like these that I think we can all just be thankful that octopuses are exclusively meat-eaters. That's the last thing we need - they're already smart and creepy, and you just know that some rare kelp would have given them superintelligence. This is probably all an overreaction anyway, because you can't grow new shimmer. Only the plants that were alive during the Shimmering got the stuff. And we're running out quick. I heard they're about to chop down the General Sherman Tree out in California. A damn tragedy, but a good run for the old bastard. Over two-thousand years. And now, being ground up into auto-language translation chapstick, it's downright shameful. By the way, no one's heard from Rüst in months. Theory is he's off in space, loaded up with every green thing you can think of, and he's gonna go get Lucille and bring her back to Earth for another shine. As for me, I hope he fails. Oh, stop it. I want him to come back, safe and sound, just without the giant magical diamond. I'm a simple creature. I want to eat candied sweet potatos again without worrying that I'm going to grow a raccoon tail or shoot fireballs from my hands, like last Thanksgiving -- sorry again, Aunt Betsy. I'll buy you another dining room table, promise!
Transcribe →Susan, She Who Does Wonders
Nov 19, 202200:07:24Tap to summarizeWhen a climber slips from the crags of a Himalayan mountain, they do so quietly. Blink, and you'd miss it: the silent puff of a well-insulated body swallowed by the forever snow. There's no cartoon dust cloud, no coyote hovering above the cliff-top. But when a person falls DOWN through the ice floor of a half-frozen river, there's usually a thunderclap: a snap, a crackle, a splash. Basically, there's a somewhat better chance that someone notices the calamity. Susan Oakes didn't speak for two whole days after Chhaya Mehta plucked her from the tumbled waters of the Vine River. As for the rest of the seaside town of Little Bighill, Susan's splash had the opposite effect. The Fishmonger's Lodge reluctantly postponed the long-awaited ice-boat race, which would have marked their first regatta in eight years of unseasonably warm winters. Perennial grumblers grumbled that anyone with eyes or half a brain could have, should have, known the ice wasn't yet suitable for ice-skating. In response to growing outcry in the editorial section of THE LITTLE BIGHILL LEDGER, the town fire house attempted to tap wooden NO SKATING signs along the waterfront, but no post-hole digger could make the frozen red clay yield. What everyone failed to notice was that Susan wasn't wearing ice-skates when she broke through. When Susan's parents Annie and Jonathan graciously received their daughter, who somehow still appeared defiant and unblinking despite her bedraggled, hypothermic condition, from their neighbor and dear friend Chhaya, they swaddled the red-headed girl in layers of handmade quilts and scratchy down blankets until Susan felt as a caterpillar wrapped in a coccoon. Susan spent the next days home from school, metamorphosizing. She hardly left her perch on the windowseat bookshelf in her bedroom, a STRANGE circular room beneath the rooftop turret of the Oakes house at summit of the town's namesake hilltop. From this vantage, Susan could see much of the riverside, all the way to where it lazily merged into the ocean. This wasn't her favorite view, however. After the second day of nonstop bundling, ginger-lemon tea, and chicken-and-rice soup, Susan spoke. "Mom, can I go play outside?" Her request was granted (so long as she brought along a thermos of warm hot chocolate). A light dusting of powder snow had coated the backyard overnight and Susan delighted in each crunch of the frozen grass blades under her snow boots. She made straight for the old oak tree and climbed UP about twenty feet or so until settling into a pretzel-ed snaggle of limbs. From here, Susan could see everything. But there was only one place that held her gaze. When Susan returned to school the next day, her Lazarean revival caused a stir among her classmates, but attention fizzled when "weirdo" Susan plumly refused to talk about it. That afternoon, Susan tried to cross the river again. This time, Firefighter Zane got to her first (Fire Chief Castillo had decided to keep someone stationed at the marina after their signs debacle). When Zane returned the girl to the Oakes household, Annie gripped her eleven-year old daughter by the shoulders and asked the question that everyone'd forgotten to the first time around: why? "Cause Daddy needs help at work." Jonathan Oakes was stationed at Fort Crawley, a military communications post in the woodlands across the river. Susan was old enough to know that something was bothering her dad about his work. She saw it in his face every night at dinner. For weeks now, Susan had watched the fort's massive radar dish blink its red signal light, wondering what message it was sending out. Or listening for. Susan naturally thought she could solve whatever problem was troubling her father. She was not a particularly good student, but, at the same time, she also knew that the "teaching to the mean" school system wasn't particularly good at teaching her. Any given school day was an oscillation between I am a failure and I am being set up for failure. Instead, Susan held the unswerving belief that she was born for greatness. Much the same way some people know they're cursed. Susan knew that had it in her to help fix her father's problems. When Jonathan learned about Susan's reason for crossing the frozen river, he grew as silent as Susan had been. He knew Susan's grades were bad and getting worse, and this odd extracurricular quest wouldn't help. For two following weeks, Jonathan stayed even later than usual at the fort. If you didn't know him well, you might have suspected he was trying hide from this particular parenting problem. But, then, one February evening, Jonathan returned home with a CHARM and he gave it to Susan. Jonathan explained that it was something to help with her schoolwork. The small machine perhaps best resembled a toppled-over cereal box with four tank-tread wheels. Susan first thought it was a remote-control car, but then discovered that it could move on its own -- and it could talk! It was a tiny robot, of course. Jonathan said that the fort's robotics collaboration with ITEROBOTICS was on the brink of failure and they were thinking about shutting everything down. But he thought Susan might be able to help. Jonathan asked Susan if she would become the robot's tutor, and teach the robot whatever she knew using the computer Jonathan installed in her bedroom. From that moment, Susan and her robot became inseparable. And Susan became exceptional. After breezing through middle school and high school, Susan graduated early from ONJIT (that's the Old New Jersey Institute of Technology, for the uninformed) at the TOP of her class, then dove headfirst into a dual electrical engineering and expermimental physics PhD programs. What came next for Susan most of you already know. The infamous origin story of Susan Oakes Gray, Orren Gray, and Alexandre Storm's ROCKET SUMMER company has been told a thousand times. And yet - somewhere along the ascent of her company and career, Susan forgot about her robot, relegating her mechanical companion to a forgotten bookshelf somewhere. It wasn't long before Susan's feelings of inadequacy reemerged. No matter which heights she and ROCKET SUMMER achieved, they were never enough. Susan remained convinced she had yet to reach her true potential, discover her great discovery. Susan's quest had an obvious negative impact on her marriage (even if her husband was one of her co-founders), as well as her relationships with her young daughter and her now-estranged father. Orren called it her Beast. But Susan finally felt close to something again. For the dozenth time that morning, she recalibrated the particle accelerator's sensor array. It was ready. Ten meters underground, at the BOTTOM sub-floor of her company's headquarters, Susan nodded at her colleagues behind the triple-glassed walls of her laboratory. Susan triggered the LoopWave. The thrumming began in her teeth and spread like icewater through her bones. Susan's unexpected exhale briefly fogged her helmet visor. The particle waveform materialized and shimmered in electric blue, as they had expected. The loop appeared to be stable. There is some debate about what happened next. Many commenters on the leaked footage (known as THE VIDEO) claim to see something in the waveform stretch towards Susan, like a small finger or tendril. What is undisputed is that Susan Gray reached out her gloved hand to touch the LoopWave. "Dr. Gray, don't!" Oblong shapes moved above her, shadowy floes warped in their translucence, frantic voiced muffled into whalesong. Susan was under the ice again.
Transcribe →A Whole Pear
Nov 8, 202200:01:53Tap to summarizeWinnie ate a whole pear. All of it, from stem to stern, seeds and all. She thought was delicious and she wanted another. Maybe two. One was better than none, and two was even more fun. She had two hands, after all. "Why did you give her the whole thing?" "I didn't think she was going to eat the whole thing." "Jesus - what if she choked?" "She didn't. She's fine." "Uhhh, no. It's probably not good to eat that stuff in the middle." Something was wrong. Winnie wiped her sticky hands on the white sofa and listened. "I thought you were watching her anyways. I was downstairs flipping the laundry." "You're not listening. What do we do about the seeds she just swallowed?" Winnie considered this. Was there something wrong with eating seeds? She knew that flowers and trees grew from seeds. But that was when you planted them in the ground. What about when you swallowed a seed? Winnie imagined her fingers extending into slender tree shoots, stretching towards the sun, sprouting green leaves and teeny pear flowers. Her toes grew, too, but they dug down, deep into the dirt, sliding along rocks and through earthworm tunnels, searching for water and something to clasp onto. She hoped that she'd have the foresight -- and time -- to plant herself in a beautiful field somewhere, with an wide view of a rushing river -- or, better yet, next to a window that she could watch TV through. "She'll probably just poop out the seeds tomorrow. But, if you'd like, I'll Google it. Okay?" Oh, thought Winnie. Winnie slid off the couch and trotted into the kitchen, where she opened the stainless steel fridge and snagged another pear.
Transcribe →The Regular
Nov 3, 202200:04:10Tap to summarizeMax Gribley wiped down the countertop of the bar in wide, swooping circles. The troublesome smudge near the corner seat caught his eye. Max applied some focused elbow grease to the spot, and then, in a brilliant stroke of desperation, grabbed the bottle of Barkeeper's Friend from under the sink. Nothing could survive this elixir. Max liberally applied the magical goop onto the splot and scrubbed until his fingers throbbed. But the smudge wouldn't budge. "Whatever," said Max. "I'm sure Old Sparky won't mind." Old Sparky was a regular at Big Dipper's Pizzeria. Max tended the small bar here Wednesdays to Sundays. "Bar" was a generous term - and Max hardly considered himself a bartender. He was an aspiring novelist. This was just his day -- night -- job until he finished his manuscript, now on its sixth iteration in as many years. Further, Big Dipper's bar wasn't known for its cocktails. As barkeep, Max mostly slung soda and beer to Big Dipper's pizza-loving fiends (the pizza here was pretty damn good, if Max could say so himself). The bar also had some house wine - white and red, no further details were provided or available to either Max or the customers. That didn't stop Old Sparky. He ordered the white. Usually two glasses, but he'd rarely finish the second before the inevitable interruption. The whole thing was kind of funny to Max. Maybe he should write a story about it. The guy comes in to the Big Dipper, by himself, once a week or so, then sits alone at the bar, drinking white wine, eating a deep dish pizza, and reading a book. Always reading the same massive book, too. Max figured it was The Count of Monte Cristo or something else French literature. Or maybe Russian. There's just something about a person reading alone in a crowded place, thought Max. Are they supremely confident? Are they just a weirdo? Are they trying to get on some "Hot Guys Reading" social media feed? Are they just begging for attention? Well, Ol' Sparky certainly got the latter. The guy would barely eat two bites of his first slice of pizza (the deep dish usually took an hour to cook) before someone would sidle up next to him, looking for a chat. Their pickup line was both predictable and inevitable: "What's that you're reading?" Without fail, Ol' Sparky would wink at Max, then strike up a chat with his guest. Then, before long, Sparky and his companion would leave the Dip together. Then Max wouldn't see Old Sparky for a few days. Max decided he'd ask Old Sparky about it. Tonight. For research, for his novel. Maybe Ol' Sparky could be a minor character or something. This was a good idea, thought Max. Half the reason I'm working here is to be amongst the people, observing, learning, etcetera. "I don't even know Sparky's name," muttered Max. Luckily, tonight was an Old Sparky night. Max had his white wine ready before he sat down. "Thank you, Max," said Old Sparky. Max smiled back at him, and then resumed pouring six pitchers of soda for the Little League team. Another funny thing, thought Max, I can't even really describe what Old Sparky looks like, if he was old or young, or attractive or ugly. Max's face flushed. Certainly a novelist should be able to describe someone's appearance. This would be another thing Max would resolve tonight. With the baseball team properly sugared up, Max turned back to his companion at the bar. "Hey, what's that you're reading there?" Old Sparky grinned at him. Max felt a deep chill cool his bones. "Though you'd never ask," said Old Sparky. The man spun the book towards Max. Max saw it was a list of names. And his own, Max Gribley, was listed at the bottom. "You're... Him," stuttered Max. "The Devil. The Grim..." Old Sparky took Max's hand. "I have many names, Max. Old Sparky will suffice. Come on, let's go for a walk together. We can each bring along a slice of pizza for the road. I want to hear more about your novel."
Transcribe →The Hive
Oct 25, 202200:06:18Tap to summarizeThis whole thing began with pigs. Of course we all turned into swine. Eagletron began nobly: a novel brain interface, invisibly implanted, for controlling computers. Then, the inevitable turn: wouldn't it be great if? Must we always wake the sleeping dog? I'm getting philosophical again, but I always do before a raid. Around me, my unit prepares the beach. I watch Zig team (Dose, O'Grady, and IceCreamSandwich) dig a secondary trench near the water's edge. They move like clockwork in this textbook operation, almost like they can read each other's... no! I push the thought away. "Captain! Can you give us a hand?" We operate in strike teams of three. Two lead Snares and one Safety, ready to assist as needed. We're down three Exterminators after Wednesday's assault, so I'm stepping in as a Snare alongside KillBoy and Moonpie on Zap team. I've been daydreaming over here instead of helping out the Zaps, so we're behind on our prep. "You got it, Moonpie." As it turns out, we're way behind. The next half hour I'm barely thinking, just following the operating prep procedures for a raid, indelibly burned into all our minds at the Academy. We grunt at each other as needed, making minor adjustments. It's more efficient this way. Which brings us back to the Eagletron. We humans are social creatures. Sure, there's always the lone wolf stereotype, but that's the anomaly, if they even exist. The rest of us spend our short lives busy dying to fit in. The Internet made things worse. Instead of a thousand million vibrant microcultures, the monoculture spread and enveloped and reinforced itself online. So, when they turned on the Eagletron and you could implant a little invisible sensor that could let you talk to other sensor-wearers - with your mind! - what do you think happened? Groupthink thrived and spread like wildfire. Eagletronners wore the same clothes, listened to the same music, posted the same posts. Your friends and family-members changed. They were different. They were the same. Which left the rest of us, the non-early-adoptors, perplexed. Where were these common ideas coming from? How did the Eagletronner monoculture make decisions? No one knew. In the face of this major public backlash, the Eagletron execs asked someone smarter. An AI. The Biological-Intellect Growth System coming out of the science department of Old New Jersey Tech. BIGS, for short. Sure enough, BIGS figured it out pretty quick. But did that asshole tell us? What do you think? As soon as those idiots connected BIGS to an Eagletron, we knew we were all in for a world of pain. Pain. Think about the last time you stubbed your toe real bad. That shooting, blinding light, overcrowding every thought. What about ecstasy? Rage? Hunger? Fear? We asked BIGS to figure out how the Eagletronners monoculture worked, and BIGS did, by figuring out how to control it. Through emotions, amplified to inhumane levels through its accelero-loop servers, piped straight into the neo-cortexes of every poor soul with an implant. I hear a scream. Goddamnit. The Hive is here. "It's O'Grady!" someone shouts. I click on my infrared goggles and watch in horror as those monsters pull O'Grady into the water. "Aren't we going to do anything, sir?" asked Killboy. "No. We hold the line." "But, sir..." "You heard the order, Killboy. Get back in formation," said Moonpie. I never take my eyes from the water. I watch them quick-transfuse O'Grady. She'll be on the raid in moments, propelled through the emotional current of BIGS. Moonpie's been there. Assimiliated into the Hive and then flipped back to the Exterminators six months later. Doesn't like to talk about it, understandably. But I got a bit from her once - imagine constant pain and agony, a living hell, for most of your waking hours, spliced with tiny moments of esctascy, just enough to keep you going, addicted, hooked. I wanted to tell her it sounded a lot like my last job, software engineering, but I held my tongue. "I see them!" whispers Killboy. O'Grady emerges from the shallows. Her eyes are pallid. "Let's go exterminate some bugs!" We howl into the tides. The inhumane screams of the Hive echo back. "Snares with me! Now! Move!" "Will, be careful with Jimmy!" "It's fine, Mom! We're just corndogging him. He's in the Hive right now, but I'm turning him into one of us, an Exterminator." "I see. Are you okay, Jimmy?" Jimmy nodded with a sand-crusted smile. "I told you, Mom. We've just gotta pull the Hive out of the water to win." Jimmy, now flipped, raced back to the lake to help his fellow Exterminators. "And how does the Hive win?" Will turned back in the shallows to answer. "I gotta go, Ma. I'll tell you lat..." "Like this!" shouted Gabriel. Gabriel tackled Will from the deep, dragging his older cousin into the water. Gabriel's brother Cole slammed an inflatable tube boat over Will's head. "You're assimilated, Will!" shouted Gabriel. With Will and Gabriel on the same side, it was only a matter of time before everyone was assimilated. The Hive celebrated their domination in the waters, then grew quiet. "What should we do now?" asked Alice. "Water-balloon fight?" "I wanna go fishing." "I'm hungry." "I'm gonna go try to catch some tadpoles." "I want to ride my bike around the lake." And thus, the Hive chaotically dissolved.
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