mintflower

 Eighteen people had disappeared from her floor in the past week.  Eighteen.  A few she had seen escorted away by people with grimy lab coats or grimy suits that talked in tight, quiet voices.  Most had, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist.  People said they'd escaped into the deeper parts of the enrichment center.  Behind the walls, she supposed that meant; or into the mammoth rooms associated with climate control or storage, maybe into the spaces that now sat unused after decades of contraction.  Maybe into the cubic miles of space said to be dedicated to Aperture's remarkably deadly brand of research.  She wouldn't know.  In her

[A fluorescent light flicks on. It reveals a smallish classroom containing a teacher's desk and only two students' desks, side by side. The teacher's desk is stocked with pencils, paper, water bottle, etc. The walls are white and bare but for a chalkboard, a very corny “Teamwork!” poster, and a clock that seems to be attempting and failing to progress from 11:45. In the room's open doorway there stands Soledad with her hand on the light switch. She looks quizzically from the class schedule in her hand to the empty room.] Soledad: Is this the right...? [She feels no need to finish the sentence. The bell rings. Soledad shuts the do

 The player sits on the roof.  There is a game machine at her back, solid white with something not quite akin to that semi-metallic sheen you see in simulators.  An NPC hovers behind the peak of the roof.  Even her five-bar internet service, apparently uniform throughout the house now, is a function of the game.  She's typing frantically on a laptop cradled between legs and chest but every third glance is to the ground – to check for enemies – and every second is to the attic window – to check for family. She has been in the medium six hours.  For the past five, the imps have united her family in the name of common defense.  But now the bre

Love is just the name the mind throws over a set of emotions it just can't comprehend. I love you for your hormones, the noiseless courting of exotic immune systems.  I love you for the screams in your eyes and the silence you trail behind you. Marvellous are the paramythical arcs of your intentions, slicing fire to the sky as the ground beneath you loses its backbone.  A little angel's wings are you cheekbones, holding the rest of you in balance. I love you in my mind and in my heart, stronger in my fingers, tracing your future footsteps with shaking awe.  There's a part of me that believes in your power but

     When the Artist creates a new soul, there are some he intends to be supporting characters in the great novel that he is writing. There are some who wander around on the slowly spinning, colorful sphere that is his setting. Their sole purpose is to be in the perfect place at the perfect time to meet up with someone else, and it does not matter what their lives are like before and after that moment of contact.     There are also those that he built to last, to be significant throughout time.     The Artist's favorite soul was actually two halves of a whole, split early in the history of mankind so that their lives might be more fun to e