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Lemniscate

The convoy of 18 wheelers racing along the road were nestled between armored humvees. Painted across the black metallic doors in bold font colored a steel blue was the name Hawkwood. Gunners stood half emerged from their steel-plated watching ahead with vigilant eyes tightly gripped the handles of their mounted .50 cals. UAVs hovered silently overhead stalking the ground below for any pray that might scurry into its panoramic field of vision. They drove west towards the receding night sky. The red and orange hues of dawn reflected brightly in rear view mirror.  The lonely two-lane road was surrounded by dense forests. Every now and again they passed a boarded-up building. Usually, a gas station or a rest stop derelict buildings that had been abandoned long ago. Token reminders of a sprawling, interconnected civilization that had been carved and dismembered.
LT Col Levinson formerly of the marines was the commanding officer of the convoy. He spent his extensive military career on the r…
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Hope Floats

The billowing ebony storm clouds swallowed the moon and the stars. Jagged bolts of lightning stabbed at the swelling waves, and the hot white flashes illuminated the line of ships bobbing helplessly in the angry sea. Yamagata seemingly indifferent to the lashing rains was hunched over by his antenna trying to find any signal in the howling wind.
“Goddamnit!” Yamagata shouted with frustration as he threw the antenna down at the ground.
Sebastian was worried. He had never seen Yamagata lose his composure like that before. It was a clear sign things were not going as planned.
“Let’s just try a little longer,” Sebastian suggested.
Yamagata sighed and picked the antenna up and started maneuvering it around.
Pillars of lighting fell from the heavens illuminating the forlorn armada. The massive warships were lifted by swelling waves and dropped back into the water. Dozens of glowing lanterns appeared in the darkness just beyond the water reaching up from the shoreline. The collection of kero…
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Timing

The launch was confirmed. The missiles had already reached the very edge of the atmosphere and were positioning themselves to fall on targets across the entire continent. The meticulously designed and carefully tested contingency plans for nuclear attack went into effect. The bombers disperse, the silos opened, and the warning the end of the world was 13 minutes away went out. There was a break somewhere in the domino chain of orders and automated response mechanisms, and suddenly 42-year old Robert Blake found himself tasked with informing North West Indiana, Chicago, and Milwaukee they were about to be vaporized.
Despite his career in civil defense Robert was an upbeat guy and couldn’t stand being the burden of such catastrophic message that was bound to cause people horrific panic and anxiety. He was also having plenty of trouble coming to terms with this abrupt end of life news. There was no time to become acclimated to this news of imminent mortality through the grief process. Ro…
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Parallel Dimension

Cyber space is a universe in its infancy. As it expands, its creators are continuously reshaping the dimensions and the potential possibilities on the binary plane. The code based medium of existence may well just be one of an infinite number of dimensions, and it was one where alternate versions of people existed in varying numbers. Thanks to a new online service Emma had just discovered there were nine versions of her within a five-mile radius of her home. These copies of the teenage girl were synthesized from the constant stream of data on her that was perpetually being streamed and archived in vast server farms.
Emma only became aware of the existence of the series line version of her after a friend told her about an online service that’s able to track simulations that incorporate pictures taken from your Facebook account. She had known about the other nine for over a week, and it was something she desperately wanted to forget. More than likely it was someone she knew. The profile…
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More People Worship the Rising than the Setting Sun

The old man looked up with heavy, tired eyes and a heavy heart at the portraits hanging directly above the bar. The commemorative photos of him during the crescendo of his glory once diffused among the numerous portraits and pictures framed on the pristinely polished wood had been reduced to just a procession of highlights. From the time he first made the rank of general up until the climactic moment of his lifetime, standing on an Abrams tank with the crushed gates of the white house under the treads. The old man looked eyes with the monumental figure in the photograph and was overpowered. He felt ashamed of his body that was wilting with age. The life drained from him with the steady drift of time and left a husk that couldn’t even fill out his heavily decorated uniform.
The other pictures were of times spent in this same secluded lodge. It was a place that seemed to be removed from time. A sanctuary the ruler could disappear to without his extensive entourage and security detail.
T…
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Causes

The mechanical gate slid unlocked, and a procession of black armored vehicles sped out from behind the walls of the luxury fortress. Tucked away, in what was theoretically the safest place in the convoy was Senator Taylor and his guide the Grand Councilor Sharbo. Sharbo was tall with a complexion that was dark relatively speaking but still a shade that the senator wasn’t sure if the dignitary could be considered black or not. Usually, he could rely on geography to clarify this very thing, but this knowledge of this part of the world was murky at best.
Taylor was on the last slide down from his all night bender with a modern geisha who had traded in the traditional dress for an alluring little black number with a skirt that was wrapped tight around the thighs but still high enough where it was no problem pulling it over her hips. She hadn’t even woken up when Taylor’s security detail came for him. He was hoping she’d decide to stick around for his last night in the country. The shops a…
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There is a cat that lives in the unit above me. It watches me with wide suspicious eyes whenever I'm outside on the balcony below him. This cat is pretty convinced I'm plotting against him in some way. This follows a reasonable logic. Cat's are cruel, calculating, compulsive killers, so there is plenty of reason to be hostile to them.  That's got to be a stressful existence cats lead although you do have to respect their confidence in their abilities as killers.
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