(reading time: 1 hour, 26 minutes)
Hailey Rosary’s Apogee
Nephilnaut was a rock made gray by concrete, smog, and its homogenous population. No subspecies could live there legally as they did not fit into god’s plan for the planet. Continue reading
Labor of Ruby and Pearl: Part Four
(reading time: 43 minutes)
Labor of Love
A rickety shack of a house buzzed with activity. Like most dwellings on Mavercree, there wasn’t another one for miles. Sixteen vehicles were parked all around the home, with two being bigger than the building itself. People moved in and out of the single door; they had to turn sideways for two to fit. The wooden cabin shuddered with everyone’s steps and the light rain dripping over the clogged gutters looked like nervous sweat. The poor building had never seen such a flurry of bodies. Continue reading
Labor of Ruby and Pearl: Part Three
(reading time: 1 hour, 4 minutes)
Emzara
The hug was uncomfortable. Her fingers opened and closed, waiting for it to be over. Her mother’s pregnant swell forced her to lean back. Emzara could smell her mother’s hair; it reminded her of all the other hugs she’d gotten over her thirty years. There was the one when she announced her own pregnancy at fourteen. Her mother had been so happy that she cried. Emzara cried as well. She cried because of fathers and mothers. She cried when she hit herself in the stomach with a closed fist; she did that for hours and tried to think of it as a workout. One two three punch, one two three punch, okay just ten more, and then I can be done for the night. More tears than punches. Continue reading
Labor of Ruby and Pearl: Part Two
(reading time: 1 hour, 2 minutes)
Shem Knarkid Needs his Mommy
Nestled in the heart of the Cosmic Collective, the planet Maymow slowly waltzed its way around its sun. Under the blanket of its cool atmosphere, great mountain chains curled around each other and poked through the clouds like the intertwined knees of giant sleeping lovers, some of whom must not have cared to shave their legs given the thick pine forests across most peaks. Some referred to Maymow as Carnal Rock, others as the Sinner’s Stones. It was a modern planet full of civilized kitchens, bathrooms, studies, terraces, gardens… but not bedrooms. No the bedrooms of Maymow were places of exploration. Places where people set out to discover new passions with old flames. Continue reading
Labor of Ruby and Pearl: Part One
(blurb)
A pact struck in the distant future, after mankind has colonized dozens of worlds and diversified into engineered subspecies, saw the death of guns and missiles. With the new stigma of ‘farcoward’ weapons comes a return of the sword, shield, and bow.
Dana Rudolph is a grumpy travel writer hopping world to world, keeping to himself until date of publishing, when he is pulled into a vast, and surprisingly icky, conspiracy where he must do his best to protect the ‘appearl’, an anomalous learning gem that formed on its own inside a supercomputer.
Follow him and his sword as he teams up with an amazon and a leprechaun to dismantle the supposedly divine, forcing him to confront his traumatic past.
(reading time: 45 minutes) (reading time for entire novel: 6 hours, 11 minutes)
Labor of Ruby and Pearl
by
Blaine Arcade
The Prosecution’s Best Witness
A man, mostly hollowed, took his seat at the witness stand. It was time to present the blood ruby left to him by his captors so it could be admitted into evidence. That way justice could prevail. Continue reading
Perfect Stride
Author’s Note: this story is one of my earliest, and is currently in need of alterations and structural editing.
Two brothers adjust to their daily life as grunts in a future conflict, marching across the waves of the sea in special boots…
(reading time: 57 minutes)
Perfect Stride
“No! It took me ages to find that Dino!” The purple cowry shell broke the water’s surface and quickly sank, belching up two small bubbles from its interior. A blue gloved hand tried to follow it but couldn’t catch the shell in time. It was soon out of sight in the depths. They were almost four miles offshore now, so there was little chance a sandbar had cushioned it in a shallow spot. Gemini would have gladly dived in after it, even if the water was boiling, but if he broke stride he would surely perish. Continue reading
Moana’s Mosaic
(reading time: 22 minutes)
Over two hundred students were ushered into the atrium of the Pascal Higher Institute of Mathematics, which was composed of a huge, blue, glass dome held in place by a latticework of metal bars. Sunlight shone in through a hole at the top, bypassing a spinning frame in order to cast the shadow of a shifting tesseract on the floor below. Continue reading
The Tree’s Shadow
The tree of life is not a metaphor; it’s where Salticid the jumping spider lives! Her branch, populated by all the other spiders, is minding its own business when giant chains appear and try to force the tree to grow in different directions. The intrepid arachnid sets out to find the cause, and runs afoul of a bipedal king..
(reading time: 1 hour, 5 minutes)
The Tree’s Shadow
As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.
– Charles Darwin Continue reading
The Medal Ghosts
You can survive your death, a little bit anyway, as long as you’ve had the treatment. Then you can enjoy your life-like state as a drifting neural vapor that might do some thinking and probably doesn’t feel pain…
(reading time: 58 minutes)
The Medal Ghosts
The reception area of the cloud cognition research facility was designed to evoke positive feelings much more than the rest of the building. The couches were burgundy, the front desk was paneled in light shining wood, and the receptionist wore a pale purple sweater.
She wore the smile she was hired for when an eleven year old girl came in through the automatic doors. She walked up to the desk and placed her elbows on it, but instead of asking any questions she merely looked around. The receptionist wondered what was going on in that little blond head, but didn’t care enough to actually guess. Continue reading
Marathon Discovery
The law says you can only claim territory on new planets by physically exploring it with your own two feet. It doesn’t say you can’t wear special equipment, train in oxygen chambers, and store your own blood for later infusion, or compete with representatives of other countries in vicious races for dominance…
(reading time: 52 minutes)
Marathon Discovery
by
Blaine Arcade
A metal-wrapped bubble of oxygen drifted through space like the last deep breath of a time capsule before being buried in the dark. The letters N.A.C. were printed on the bubble’s side as if there was someone to look at them. Within the bubble’s skin, members of a human crew went about their daily business. Continue reading
Blaine Arcade 