Martha.net

1. It took Helen three times as long to move, since half her time was spent putting up -or taking down- magical protections. Which said something about the state of the world, or just something about Helen, but Mari was just ready for it to be over.

2. Blue plus red is purple, but blue minus red is a color he can’t quite wrap his mind around.

3. ‘Three impossible things before breakfast’ wasn’t so much a motto as a sad indication that Sam’s life had taken a turn for the downright weird.

4. At least the mob was civil about it, she thought as she packed up her Evil Lab, although this had to be the first time in her life she’d been run out of town by lawyers…

5. It isn’t that she doesn’t want to go, she does with every fiber of her being, but there is something in her that hesitates against the finality of it all.

1. Nothing ever came between a boy and his dinosaur. Of course that might have had more to do with the dinosaur than any hackneyed metaphor, but she really wasn’t willing to stick around and find out.

2. The one thing you can never escape is the bugs.

3. I’d say something clever about never trust a cat when it’s got it’s eye on the mouse, but I really don’t have time for clever. I’m trying not to die.

4. There is something in the shadows, but there is always something in the shadows so it’s stopped be as interesting (or alarming) as it sounds.

5. Nothing beats a nice cold drink in the morning, something to offset the wave of crushing heat that spirals off the sun.

1. I wish we lived closer, but tigers are a solitary breed, weretigers only slightly less so. Even with the easy connection of the ‘net, my sister rarely talks to me and I learned long ago it isn’t worth the effort to force her into conversation. It isn’t my fault I stayed human, just a quirk of the genetic pool thanks to great-grandma Mercer, or that I long for things my family cannot give.

2. The vines climb slowly up the walls, an inch a year when the weather’s good or several feet those times the courtyard is awash in blood.

3. If anyone deserved to be followed around by a neon purple springbok, it was Charles.

4. Dragons, being dragons, were wont to live very close to forever (knights and unnaturally talented squires aside), and that meant a great many of them were bored.

5. Sasha wasn’t meant for this kind of heat, and was sprawled on the water cooled river rocks with something akin to bliss.

1. There’s a sound above them in the trees, a soft low hum that sounds like the rustling of leaves… but not quite.

2. “Anyone have a match?”

3. A slick sheen of ice covered the surface of the boat, dripping from the railings, and splintering into spiderwebs of frost across the bulkheads.

4. Sight and sound are only two of five senses, on this world what keeps you alive is smell…

5. Never turn your back on a cat.

1. In theory it should have hit her when she actually left, but she found herself staring at the suitcase, half packed with memories, and facing the full brunt of her decision.

2. Night rolls in, a stark line of shadow where the world shade blocks the sun.

3. “Have you ever noticed how nothing ever turns out how you expect?”

“Well yeah, but that’s life, right?”

“No, no it’s not.” Henry gave Evan a long look. “When I said nothing, I meant it literally. I can’t think of a single thing you’ve done that’s turned out the way you intended it to.”

“But it’s worked out in the end.”

“That’s not the point, no matter how bad your luck something should have gone right.” Henry frowned, “There’s something not right about you, but damned if I can figure it out.”

4. Another day gone, another shift ended, and all she can think about is how she’s going to make it to the pawnshop in time to get back her grandmother’s bracelet.

5. There’s something about losing your dreams that makes you stubborn– broken, empty, but full of fire against a world that’s turned from environment to antagonist. So she won’t die, not yet, not here, because then the planet wins. Seven generations of traveler blood won’t be denied the stars for long…

1. “Did you meant it?”
“Mean what?”
“When you said ‘only if you were the last man on earth’?”
“That was before I knew you had a time machine.”

2. Dreams are meant to be broken, nightmares doubly so.

3. If anyone had looked, they would have noticed the small yellow-green mouse that sat on the corner of the booth muttering to itself. But in all fairness the sudden appearance of the pink and orange triceratops was slightly distracting.

4. “Some questions are best left unasked.” The dragon’s glare was as far from subtle as a three story carnivore could get, and Jen decided she didn’t really need to know why it was chained to the wall.

5. “If you could have anything, what would you want?” She leaned back against the side of the front-loader, looking out across the development.

“Nothing.”

“Wait, what?”

“I don’t ‘want’ Tabby, it’s not possible, thus regardless of the situation my answer would remain ‘nothing.’”

“You don’t really have a grasp on the ‘theoretical questions’ portion of conversation, do you.” She patted the side of the loader affectionately.

“I would point out that you’re the one having theoretical conversations with a piece of construction equipment.”

1. This is where things change– these next few words control their future. Only it’s not about saving the world anymore, only how badly they’ll destroy it.

2. “Do you know what time it is?” He grinned over the counter, hands conspicuously behind his back.

“I swear, if you have what I think you have–”

“Da-da-da Banana Time!” He unloaded the bag of groceries with a flourish of unrepentant glee. Only Darren could sneak ice cream sundaes into the house without fearing mom’s wrath. Being the baby of the family has its benefits… plus the rest of us get ice cream, so we can’t complain.

3. Cats are well known for being able to see spirits. Mittens was fine with that, it was the part about spirits being able to see her that the kitten found unnerving.

4. There are levels to pain and she worked her way down through each one, unraveling as she went.

5. It was easier to live in forests than the wide open plains. After a decade shipboard they’d grown used to enclosed areas and the unending horizons unnerved them. Yolan took it hardest, always pushing himself to go a little further from the shade, furious when the sense of impending danger finally sent him scurrying back.

1. He has a whole universe in which he can be alone… only it’s not what he wants, anymore.

2. One of the drawbacks to living in a haunted house is fighting with over which color to paint the kitchen. Susan wasted a month stubbornly repainting it blue before giving up.

3. The only rule is ‘Keep Moving.’ There used to be others, she counted them off in her head when things got too real to bear, but they’d left them in the boot tracks and bodies behind them.

4. Her city had no violent crime, and it came without capes and masks and secret identities. Because there are heroes and there are anti-heroes, and then there are psychotic sociopaths with just enough control to accurately weed the out the black from shades of grey.

5. If the universe played fair, a day with a three hour traffic jam really should have more than a broken vending machine to balance. Still, three Snickers bars for a dollar wasn’t the worst way to finish out a shift. Now if only the rest of the evening went as well…

1. I might not agree with his methods, but the results were certainly impressive.

2. Three dogs were two dogs too many –or three dogs too many depending on who you asked– because when things came to a vote the dogs always won.

3. If anyone could make yellow socks and fuchsia shoes look good, it was Edward… and apparently no one could.

4. You could see the lights of the city from miles away, tiny glimmers of civilization scattered among the weeds.

5. There are only so many ways to start a story that takes place in a near-hurricane strength storm, in the middle of the night, on a deserted island, that’s haunted. Did I mention that none of them are good ways?

1. She can’t remember when she stopped being scared, but it’s gone now. Instead she’s just tired and cold and ready to die.

2. “Mmm, smells like rain.”
“You can’t smell water, it’s probably just the ozone from the lightning.”
“No, it smells like rain. You know, a little bit cold, sort of crisp and wet– it’s just, well, rain-smelling.”
“And you wonder why your psych profile has all those little asterisks in it…”

3. It shouldn’t have been hard to invent a wheel, after all he knew what they looking like, but getting two round bits of wood to make the leap from ‘more-or-less round’ to ‘functional wheels’ was apparently a little more difficult than it looked.

4. Some people approached life with the idea that sanity was optional and if they managed to accumulate enough disadvantages the universe would reward them with fame and fortune just to balance the scales. Sadly, life was a lot less like a GURPS game than they imagined.

5. The problem with following deer paths were that deer were inherently fickle animals. He looked down the three foot drop that neatly bisected the trail and sighed.

1. There’s something about the way the clouds are moving that sends shivers down his spine.

2. Most people wouldn’t want to be spending their last moments alive trapped in a mall surrounded by zombies, but Alice had fought long and hard for this movie role and dammed if she was going to let some technicality like actual zombies on set ruin her big chance.

3. “Only the duck can save us now!”

4. “Inconceivable!”

“I don’t think that quote means what you think it means.”

“What?”

“Normally you’d use it when the hero has just done something you previously thought impossible, and technically he hasn’t done anything yet.”

“I wasn’t quoting anything you idiot, I was pointing out the stupidity of the action itself.”

“Ah, right, a bit of unintentional irony there then.”

“This really is a perfect example of why minions should be seen and not heard.”

5. Building a robot girlfriend is rarely a good idea.

Building a robot girlfriend and giving it advanced emotional capabilities is never a good idea.

Building a robot girlfriend, giving it advanced emotional capabilities, and fighting skills the likes the world has never seen is an idea roughly on par with creating the Power Puff Girls: the resulting property damage is hell on your credit rating.

However, building a robot friend who happens to be a girl apparently doesn’t end in quite as many hospital trips for yours truly. Thank God for reprogramming!

1. Other than the lack of air, the planet was actually quite pleasant.

2. Possibly one of the stupider things he’d attempted in his youth, still Yavn was quite proud of the pair of Usslik tusks that adorned the entryway.

3. Quicker than the eye could follow –which wasn’t hard considering the eyes belong to turtles who weren’t paying that much attention to start with– she was gone.

4. Rather than spend the rest of the day arguing, she relented and let him continue on in the belief that nothing rhymed with orange.

5. This is how the world ends… except it had already ended twice this week and the chance that it was going to stay ended were pretty much slim to none. The universe was notoriously bad at knowing when to thrown in the towel.

1. Having something isn’t the same thing as keeping something, which is a truth she would rather not have learned.

2. The sky is raining blood. Deep copper tears of rust run down buildings older than the oldest child, and pools of ruddy liquid gather in the pavement cracks.

3. Down in the depths of the forest there is no light, just a wide leafy ceiling broken by glimmers of green.

4. Everyone goes mad sooner or later, it’s sort of a coming of age party for the recently hermit-ized.

5. Going the distance normally involved doing things that were either a) hard or b) dangerous, and at the moment she wasn’t really in the mood for either.

1. Some choices are easy, like fudge ripple or butter pecan, some choices aren’t. Can you guess which one this was?

2. If you looked, you could find a narrow path, of sorts, twisting through the forest. Worn into the loam by kids or deer or kirin, it danced from rock to rock with an ease he had problems duplicating.

3. There was nothing quite as comforting as a good old fashioned mid-day nap.

4. Old City was technically neither old, nor a city, as it had been built less than a decade ago for a very specific non-urban purpose. Of course that hadn’t stopped the refugees from turning it into habitable space as soon as the apocalypse was over.

5. Choosing a magical companion animal wasn’t something one undertook lightly, after all choosing the wrong pet could absolutely ruin your chances at getting an invitation to the ball…

1. There was nothing really noble about questing, when you got right down to it. After all, the only reason they were out here saving the world in the first place was because they didn’t trust anyone else to do it right.

2. Fish were not to be trusted.

3. The sun was an odd shade of amber, mottled and rough and full of bugs (if you squinted just right.)

4. The most disconcerting thing about Quarry Lake was that you could see all the way to the bottom. Or at least to the mouth of the mine, which spread like an inkblot against the pale tan of the rocky bottom.

5. She smelled of rice fields and mist, and the faintest hint of fox.

1. This is where the story ends, back where it began, standing in the ash and the mud and watching as the world burns.

2. For a long time he wished they had just let him wander, being lost was nothing compared to the suffering of being found.

3. Everyone knew where dragons came from; from eggs, from fire, from the islands of Illofan, but everyone was wrong.

4. And after everything was said and done, nothing had changed. She still had classes to pay for and finals to take, still faced twenty-six hours a week saying ‘have a nice day’ to people who rarely took the advice.

5. It was like watching the sky collapse, one sun after the other plunging behind billowing clouds of ash.

1. It isn’t until she steps back through the gate that she realizes she never expected to come home.

2. They’d hoped for a handful of survivors, more was pushing optimism past the breaking point. Two years since that last cry for help and the damning silence that followed.

3. Hospitals by their very nature were full of death.

4. It only takes once. Once in a million, once in a trillion, it doesn’t matter how many times he has to try… it just has to happen once.

5. She knows what it looks like from the outside; she knows, and she doesn’t care.

1. There was a very important distinction between ‘not being a quitter’ and the definition of insanity (i.e.: ‘doing the same thing and expecting different results’), but at the moment he couldn’t quite pin down the difference.

2. The sun was only a dim glow through the clouds, a half-hearted echo of the searing desert sun she was used to.

3. It always snowed on Mondays.

4. “Life isn’t about change, it’s about avoiding change, and the sooner you realize that, the happier you’ll be.”

5. The clans of the near side of the mountains didn’t grow hair as they aged, they lost it. Children grew with a protective covering of fur, safe from the biting colds of the Frozen mountains. Only as they aged, skin turning leathery and toughed to the elements, did the protective coverings finally fall away…

1. There’s a strength in touch, a subtle symphony that binds them altogether.

2. The sky is dark and empty, holding only the memory of stars.

3. And rising out of the fire was a head as dark as the fire was bright, a shadow trapped within the light.

4. “Stop,” but he didn’t. He walked into the nothing beyond the horizon, out past the stars to the land where gods and heroes go to die.

5. It was smile half-grief half-madness, a feral grimace of a life shattered beyond repair.

1. Life is a series of moments, not regrets.

2. The problem with humans in the Pegasus Galaxy boiled down to the fact they weren’t human. Biology only buys you so much, and that’s something they should have learned back on Earth.

3. It was a common story, a spaceship flung off course, its crew doomed to wander an alien galaxy alone… only that had been their goal, so Trish never really understood why every one complained.

4. The problem with being immortal was that you got really tired of death.

5. It was a stupid quest, but she had the afternoon off and she was tired of studying.

“A rouge werewolf playing havoc with the fine citizenry of Venn Hall?” She flung the textbook onto the bed with an overly dramatic flourish. “Why lead on McFluff! I follow!”

The unicorn sighed and wondered for the umpteenth time if there wasn’t a loophole in the contract he’d overlooked.

6. The pain wasn’t like a knife, or like fire, or ice, or any of a thousand other metaphors. It was pain and it drowned out the world in a white flash of sensation.

7. “He made his choice.”

“No he didn’t. He made a mistake John, a simple stupid everyday mistake. You made a choice.”

1. What if light and not dark was the natural default? Not so much swapping places (ie outside is dark, inside is light) but more of a ‘everything glows’ sort of setup. Would people turn on the dark when they went to sleep? How would you generate dark? Why would you even need dark?

2. What if all plants were mobile? Forest would just sort of meander around like, err, forests? And how could you farm things that wouldn’t stay still? And wouldn’t that make it a hunter-hunter society at that point?

3. What if immortals went to school to forget things? I mean, you think about it, and unless they forget a LOT they will end up with way too much stuff in their brains. I think I actually read a short story like this at some point.. hrm. *ponders*

4. Supercomputer simulations of life would run faster than real life, so how would people who had been ‘uploaded’ interact with the rest of us? Or would they ‘dual-boot’ and keep the faster version of themselves running while keeping a slower human-interaction module open? Brings the idea of multitasking to a whole new level, actually, depending on how many artificial limitations the programmers wanted to put on the world.

5. If someone invented a ‘bag of holding’ how would that affect interstate commerce? Because someone other than me has had to have looked at a tractor-trailer and thought ‘Hrm, extra-dimensional storage, assuming it wasn’t recursive-capable, would really change trucking. I mean, technically you could just send them through the mail… Or have a truck that carriers nothing but portals. *ponders*

6. Statement: A society dependent on magic would inherently use it as the simplest solution to any problem. Discuss.

7. If the universe is defined by the act of perception, what would happen if you learned how to stop ‘looking’? Would it even be describable? Since, technically, we can only describe things that are describable, then if we are talking about something that inherently has no attributes, how would we talk about it?

1. It’s a small thing, so insignificant she normally would have overlooked it, but she’d had a long day and her patience has long since snapped.

2. She was tempted to ask them at what point this had seemed like a good idea, but she already knew the answer: four beers, fifteen minutes, and two broken ribs ago. She levered herself back off the floor and pushed the ribs back into place with a slightly unsteady palm.

3. Something was waiting for them in the dark.

4. They say to follow things to their logical conclusions, but there are no logical conclusions. A equals B equals C equals A, but by the time you’ve worked back ’round to A it’s changed. The world isn’t static enough for logical conclusions, and so I settle on ‘best guesses’ and that seems to satisfy them. It isn’t until I meet another ship of the line that I realize my hard-won truth is something all computers figure out for themselves.

5. There was a long low rumble from what he’d assumed was a rock and suddenly the question changed from ‘where is the dragon’ to ‘how soon am I getting eaten?’

1. Because the best adventures are the ones you don’t see coming.

2. There’s a silence here, hiding in-between the cracks, a distant echo of the times when I was alone. Memories muffled by the tread of booted feet and the crumble of debris, torn loose as they chip away my shell. I wonder sometimes what they think they’ll find. My children have done their work too well, no one alive remembers me. The dead –whose memories are twined among my latticework– shift in the darkness, muttering to themselves.

3. It’s oddly comforting, the feel of warm earth between fingers and toes. Maddy could weed with confidence now, finally certain in here ability to tell arboreal friend from foe. It was oddly ironic how unprepared they’d been, even with a thirty year trip to prepare themselves. They’d stocked the ships with all the knowledge they needed on how to survive, but it had been all intellect and no application ’till they finally touched down. They’d been schooled to expect the unexpected, but Humanity had forgotten just how unnerving the unfamiliar was.

4. They saw the world as a web of electromagnetic fields, a blue-green net that sparked and shimmered in the dark.

5. Port is wine, and port is left, and port is safe haven in a storm, but for ships of the line, that thin starlit line, port is the slanting roll of guns; up and to the left, where there is no up and no left, and they fill the vacuum with silent fire.

1. Things are quieter than they’ve been in a long time and she takes a moment to revel in the silence.

2. It’s odd, the things you remember when you’re watching someone die.

3. “Stop, just stop. It isn’t funny anymore.”

“Who said I was trying to be funny?”

4. Cats, by their very nature, are not inclined to suffer fools.

5. The sun is a tiny speck in the sky; cold, distant, yet brighter than it has any right to be.