fiction

Exit interviews are as hard to conduct as they are to sit through. The typical employee of a corporation will often see their HR representative as someone who sets himself apart from the rank-and-file. At Persona, this is complicated for agent interviews, since we must ascertain who among them is likely to give away trade secrets or risk our security. A good interviewer will cut through that tension and partner well with his subject.

I met Claudia in Rome. She was an attractive twenty-something girl browsing a book store on Christmas day. She recognized a few phrases of English and Italian, and I found my Church Latin being put to the test when I found it was the only thing she spoke that I could make out.

Jev studied the message briefly, while his little brother waited eagerly. Finally he smiled. "Well, it looks like the carrier for just another upload meme," he announced at last. "More of this Illuminati business, probably. People like the Stendhalites and their crazy Messiah Factory meme from last year. Humans attaining proficiency with new skills, making good thanks to a mentor. People have been writing stories with this theme since Olive Twister."

Hi there!

Given that I'm about to take away everything you ever had, starting with your identity, and leave you as you found me, I feel almost compelled to be polite and explain it to you. It's not like you can stop me. If you're reading this, it's already happened. My future, your past. Relativity via e-mail.

Behind her, fire and death laughed at their own cruelties.  Before her, the endless night beckoned.  She ran.

The cave is cold stone.  It's rooted.  The cave is everlasting.  Nothing can touch her in the cave.  Not the terrible things she did, nor the awful thing she was meant for, not the future servitude her surrogate mother had provided for her.  Here she was happy.  Here she could kill yeti and wear their skins.  Here she could cook venison and sing herself to sleep and cry and cry and cry and nobody would know.

1: Welcome to the discussion echo.  With us are representatives of the scientific and security communities, along with some observers.

2: Thank you for the invitation, 1.

The grounds of Starfleet Academy are expansive and well-mapped.  Voice-activated navigation and other computerized services are omnipresent.  Ensign Jameson stood looking at the wall, musing.

Gregor awoke to find himself a character in a piece of short fiction posted to an Internet user's blog.  He looked about him, finding that his body was now rendered only in textual form and thus was subject to the collective imagination of anyone who might happen across the post.  Perhaps he had brown hair, or blue eyes, or a broken nose, perhaps all of these things; but the relentlessly vague nature of prose English constrained him from saying just how particularly brown or blue or broken these things might be.  The specific apprehension of the human senses was denied to him.

Old Drosselmeyer straightens out his doll on the workbench.  He surveys her gears and clockwork with pride.  He attaches her skin carefully, mindful of the folds and creases.  It must look natural, after all, but still beautiful.  He winds her with pride.  The doll's voice creaks out from hidden speakers; the mouth moves.  "H.. he....l..l..o... f..a..t..h..e..r.."