Whothehellisthat

Technical Archaeologist Shawn Priors picked his way through the dark tunnel. The walls of rock around him were smooth, butter carved by a hot knife. He was always amazed at the precision of the Molecular Reorganisers—known informally as MRs, or Emers—to produce these perfectly formed tunnels in solid rock. The hulking Pathfinder vehicles up ahead had carved the passage mere hours earlier, Emers mounted to the face of their snub-nosed cabins. They’d been working their way through the mountain for the better part of a day until they found the anomaly. Which was where Priors came in. The cavity, a rectangular box with a high c

The horses became uneasy as the pair neared the clearing. It had taken them five days to trek through the forest, its undergrowth dense through centuries of undisturbed leisure, its tendrils thick and cumbersome underfoot. Even the great horses of Ander found it hard to press onward through the foliage, and they did not have even those to carry them on their journey. The two riders had dismounted to gain better purchase on the forest floor, picking their way through the maze-like woods. Jent looked up at the massive tree ahead of them, still visible through the dense canopy. The forest was well known for its giant trees, each with girth even

Timothy Lukket leaned back in his computer chair. The wheels squeaked as he pushed back, slouching against the curved, ergonomic back. The screen showed a floor-plan of the extrusion room, lights blinking on the robotic arms and moving tables showing their hurried activity. Tim crooked his head to one side and gazed at the machinery through the window behind the screen. He knew it wasn’t that long ago that it took a whole day to print something as simple and mundane as augmented glasses, but he always found the five to ten minute wait to build his new creation brought an insurmountable tedium to the whole process. He straightened his

The sky was beautiful. I hadn’t seen a sunset in what seemed like forever. The sun still set, of course, but it was hard to see most days what with the mammoth skyscrapers smothering the city. People like me couldn’t afford to live higher than the mid-twenties. Sunlight was a commodity like anything else, and unless you were making six figures, you had to stick to the shadows and deal with it. People said things were different before. Said the sun shone and rain fell on rich men and poor alike. Apparently we didn’t even need to soak up all that light to keep the city going strong. But such things were nonsense, like Santa C

Captain James Sidler sat on the observation deck, staring out at the cloud. The Explorer-class vessel was making its first pass around the anomaly, the fifty-two members that made up the rest of the crew doing all the usual spectrograms and positional scans, but he preferred to down sit here with a nice cup of green tea and watch in peace. With the cryostasis chambers now built-in to every long haul ship, it seemed every moment of wakefulness was full of activity. One minute they were preparing for launch, making final checks on course headings and making sure valves and checks for the freezers were all in working order. And then the next th