Down The Stream

'You can't free a fish from water.' (217th Rule of Acquisition) "I told you that there'd be another Great Flood," Boko chided Klein, "but you didn't believe me, did you?" Descartes looked Boko up and down. He had no idea who this chameleon could...

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Dead Trees

It looked like the scruffy, note-taking rat who he'd noticed earlier turned out to have been there because she'd signed up for the tournament after all, Klein was surprised to see confirmed. Putting pen and paper aside, she'd gotten up from her seat to...

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By A Thousand Cuts

"People get them without thinking." Fran and her roommate were watching her pets chasing each other around their living room. "They get them for their kids." "That's the thing!" she concurred. "They think of animals as lesser lifeforms than people for...

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The movie: part four (by Zanian)

Wastrel awoke in another room; once again, he was trapped in the designs of the rabbit that supervised everything. He could have cursed his luck, yell to the heaven how much he wanted to get out of there, but to tell the truth, he was starting to get...

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Fishers of Men

'How cheerfully he seems to grin...' (How Doth the Little Crocodile, Lewis Carroll) Ammut had been left on the doorstep of a Brazilian orphanage before he'd been old enough to have known how to talk. He'd been far too young to have even remembered...

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But Not Gone

It hadn't seemed like she'd been working there for such a long time. She hadn't, in some ways. Against the backdrop of her entire lifetime, her time at the company she worked at would have barely registered as a blip. But that also would've had to...

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What Ships Are For

"Nobody's gonna show you the way, nobody's gonna hold your hand..." (Zeal & Ardor) "We can't even imagine what it was like for people on boats back in those days," Fran's roommate had said. "When they'd cross the ocean, it was like, on this...

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Personal Space

Brazil hadn't been an easy place to live for the people who already lived there. It hadn't been going to be easy for them having moved there either. Slavery may have been gone but it had left its marks, as the street urchins roaming the favelas...

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Phone Home

_ "Thank you, Fran." Her best friend and her roommate had been there to welcome her in her hospital room after she'd woken up. It had made her glad to be back._ _ "For what?" She'd tried to sit up in her hospital bed. Harder than it looked._ _ "For...

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Sand in the Gears

It wasn't easy to meet people. First you wanted someone who'd get past all the things that most people couldn't get past about you. That was already a big one, especially for someone like Rakim. Then you needed someone who'd be willing and able to...

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Idle Hands

Rakim had sort of told himself ahead of time that his date probably wasn't going to work out to guard against disappointment. He discovered that he didn't fully have a plan for if his date actually did work out, that he wasn't sure if he was even...

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Spaced Out

When Fran had been a kid, she'd often stare out the window aimlessly while her mom would drive. "Come in, Huston." Every new building and landscape would become a new playground in which to let her mind wander. "Houston, we lost you." She probably...

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