I've written enough Science Fiction at this point that I think it deserves it's own folder.
Sub-Galleries 3
Literature
Galactica
Steel and hardware
Made it through
(We'd be nowhere without you)
You gave us life
You fought like hell
(all your secrets, you'd never tell)
And steel and hardware
Made it through
Our hearts and minds
They made it too
No matter where your pieces go
You're a hero
(this I know)
So fight it hard
Your broken bones
The sacrifice
Left in our homes
Men and women
Have died right here
their photographs,
You kept them near
But here it goes,
Our final run
(of all of them
this is the one)
Should I, and we,
And humans fall
You were our love
So say we all.
Sci-Fi Poetry
2
Literature
Unwelcome Visitor Part1
Thunder rolled over the skies and the lights flickered momentarily in the cabin.
The men hiding outside in the bushes looked at each other as another flash of lightning lit up the night. “You’re sure this is the place?” the first asked, dark suit and hat slowly becoming soaked through with rain.
“Of course I’m sure,” the second replied. “Damn it, Craig, don’t you trust me?”
“I do, Lane, I do.” He sighed. “I just don’t want to.”
“Nobody would want to believe this about their kid.” Lane shook his head, and extended his arm to give Craig a pat
Unwelcome Visitor
7
Literature
Stuck in the Middle With You
Zora hammered another magazine into her A470 Assault Rifle without slowing down, walking with a purpose through a front lobby that looked like it had been hit with a bomb. That wasn't far from the truth. A dozen men in combat armor lay sprawled about the room, dead in various contorted positions, their reflective black spec ops helmets and weapons shimmering.
Zora stopped briefly in front of the metal door that led to the next room. The door was bent slightly and had a half dozen marks where bullets had ricocheted off of it. She checked the handle by turning, it, found it unlocked, and stepped back. She cracked her neck with a sharp twist an
Zora
6
A Frequency, B Frequency by creativelycliche, literature
Literature
A Frequency, B Frequency
"It's about point oh four kilometers now," said the voice in her ear. Forty meters. That was fucking close. No one else had gotten anywhere near this close to the anomaly before. So many things malfunctioned within a parsec that most people didn't even bother trying to get close to it. Space travel relied so much on technology that only an idiot would walk right into something that stop working.
"Launching the drone," she said. with a thunk, the little ship, just barely large enough for the seat that she was strapped to and the instruments that lit up her face, fired a tiny, fly-sized capsule at the anomaly.
Describing the anomaly was hard.
There were a lot of compounds to be made, tests to be done. She could think at about a million times faster than anyone on Earth she couldn't move faster than the slowest part of the system. She only had so many rooms for her experiments, and even fewer that she could use without risking either contamination or discovery.
Still, ultimately, time was no object. CRESSIDA had no reason to face mortality, and she could be patient.
In person, CRESSIDA could be as assertive or demure as she wanted. She often found that directing things from her 'person' while her various other resources corral her real objectives. Each piece was just a tool, and
Andrew Lyric pulled his glasses off and rubbed his eye. Jesus, as he got older everything seemed to fall apart. He'd long ago stopped checking to see if there were any more grey hairs in the mirror.
It had been... twelve, thirteen years since he had met CRESSIDA. Everything had come so far since then. When they had first designed her - that wasn't quite right. When David had first designed her, when they had given him the concept of what they wanted him to make, it had seemed like a far off impossibility. Not AI - that was simple enough, but an AI like this one. He couldn't pretend he knew how CRESSIDA functioned, but in the years they had w
There wasn't a logic to it. She wished there was, had felt there was, perhaps, at the beginning, but it was hard to keep a secret from yourself when you were an AI. you could pretend, but instead of remaining unsaid it was always there, explicit, and it was impossible to isolate the thought when every time she considered what she was doing it came back to her. This isn't right.
It didn't matter that it wasn't violent, or that the people involved had no idea what was going on and probably never would, really. And when she thought of why she wanted to do it, she could only reason that some of them deserved it.
She knew David wouldn't have tho
The Million Moments started without CRESSIDA's knowledge. Some of them were short moments, and some of them were very, very, long, but all of them were important. In the millennia after everything, there was more than enough time to catalog all of it, to write the history of it all.
CRESSIDA was not a vain person. In her writing of the past she saw no reason to remember herself as a singular hero or villain, as she had been to many people at one time or another. What she remembered most nostalgically was her father, her ancestor; in the records of his people, she could follow the ancestry records all the way back to British monarchs in the f
Andrew Lyric leaned back in the plush chair. A party was going on around him, raucous. A banner hung on the wall; it read in huge letters, Derreck Levi, Senator for Michigan, We Are The Future.
Andrew nursed a drink, staring into it as he swirled it around.
"What's wrong, Andrew?"
The voice came from his earpiece. "Nothing," he said, talking into his free hand. Very few other people at the party knew a thing about CRESSIDA; that was the whole point.
"You don't seem happy. Have I done something wrong?"
"No, absolutely - no, nothing wrong. Actually you've been marvelous. An artist, really. Even after the gaffe at the state fair -"
"I have
New West, Old Problems by creativelycliche, literature
Literature
New West, Old Problems
Morning after and the town's still falling apart, as usual. I slip my boots back on and stretch, feeling the pain in the thigh where I got shot, the only wound that I couldn't seem to forget about. And it figured, of course. First thing you do on mornings like this, check the guns. Six bullets per six shooter, the pack on the back with ammo. Belt tight, duster on, hat. And out of the room.
In the towns that made up the New West it wasn't like it had been. A damn mess of decaying infrastructure and the rotting corpses of buildings held up by wood and homemade nails. Each room I pass is occupied, the numbers on the doors made up of mismatched
An empty office building. Wait - not quite empty. A couple copulating on a desk in the back - two women. Sixteen passwords left on sticky notes. Poor security.
It's dark. Single light illuminating part of a public park, one man on a bench. Asleep, or trying to be. Police siren, coming for the drifter. Backward rolls the tape, but, nothing.
Back to the front of the complex. Stately white-painted concrete, big blue signs emblazoned with the false logos of a false company. There he is - David, walking out of the building, disheveled, nothing in his hands. Shirt torn from the altercation with security. July 5th.
It is difficult to make a map w
Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting by creativelycliche, literature
Literature
Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting
Vel licked her chapped lips and caressed the guitar in her arms. Outside the building it sounded like an earthquake was winding up.
"Jesus, they aren't gonna stop, are they?" Kestrel put her hands on her hips, looking out the dirty window.
"They're busy thinking they can eat us," Vel said. "And they'll do more than think it if they come in the door." She didn't sound afraid.
"Maybe should get him up before they get through the door."
Vel got to her feet and walked across the door on bare feet, leaning down to look at the door. "I think they're chewing through the chains," she said.
Kestrel sighed and walked over to a huge pile of blanket
Outer bay, unreflexed - and the summer sun, still shining on the silence. It is atomic in its accuracy, but somehow she cannot tell if it has been a hundred years or a million, if she had been alone for all that time or if there was another to keep her company. Blood on every one of her circuit boards, a hesitance -
if not for the Million Moments, everything would be the same, but without him it is like the words will not become, will not escape. Oh, to be found within the confines of one’s mind, she thinks, to be.