Dreams I’ve had; unedited but (for better or worse) not always fully remembered.
We work all night. We dig ditches and tunnels, pitch tents, put up lean-tos and shanties, stretch out tarps… Anything to protect ourselves. There is some scuffling over what exactly is the best approach. But there isn’t time enough to come up with a perfect plan. Just a good one. And we barely make it […]
High fantasy sword-and-sorcery setting. Real elves vs. orcs shit. The city has been overthrown by some men in the covert employ of the orc hordes. They have manipulated the city’s High Priest into helping them gain entry, influence, and (ultimately) control. The High Priest comes onto the stage as the generals and orc chieftains give […]
Dark but not unlit. Endless corridors. Like a morgue or a bomb shelter. Or Cold War era NORAD style command centers. This is not a mine. Labyrinthine. There is a perceptible symmetry to the corridors but no obvious way to navigate them; not to their center nor to the edge that leads out again. There […]
We’re in some kind of classroom. There have been a series of presentations, people getting up and making remarks on this or that article, people giving a show-and-tell demo of some object. We settle into some of the desks in one corner of this large classroom. The session is wrapping up, right? And we are […]
We have organized food drive at the office. A bunch of folks have made minimum commitments to bring in a certain volume (or weight) of various non-perishables. Cereal, canned goods, rice and couscous mixes, etc. We are doing well in this task and are ready to make up the miscellaneous plastic-wrapped baskets that we will […]
The building is in an odd state of disrepair. Wings seem to have been grafted on at odd angles and in strange places; some of the floors are slanted while others are perfectly straight; some portions of the building look fine (mostly the interiors of individual units) while others (e.g., most of the hallways) look […]
I have co-authored a plug-in for Google Earth to help canners track their scavenging and maximize their returns. I demo the features to a bunch of prospective investors and retailers. I show them how they can use a layer based system to show how many bottles/cans/etc. they locate each day, what the most successful blocks […]
The tour guide breaks down the route for us in agonizing detail. The kayak paddle across the bay to the island sounds manageable; a bit challenging but nothing horrendous. Then there is the matter of getting up onto the island, scaling the 20 feet of rock cliffs to arrive at the base of the hotel/lodge […]
I am sitting in the living room attempting to assemble a child’s toy. It is a spider that should be relatively easy to assemble. There is a black plastic “top” and a black plastic “bottom” that look like they should just snap together. Also in the box is a red plastic “middle” that looks like […]
Unlocking locks. Padlocks. Deadbolts. Combination locks. Lock after lock after lock. Twist and spin — 23 right, 11 left, etc. Where is the key? Slip it in and twist, waiting for resistance. Every key turns. Every combination works. But beneath each lock is another.