- drama◐ Mature
Everything We Almost Said
Chicago, 1994. Snow ticks against the diner window. Mara wraps her cold hands around a coffee that went cold an hour ago and watches Theo butter the same piece of toast for the third time. They are twenty-three. For a whole year they've been not-quite-together, a thing made of late buses and almosts. Outside, his bus pulls up to the curb. Theo puts the knife down and looks at her like he wants to say something.
5 writers - sci-fi◐ Mature
Salt and Circuitry
0300. The crane on the Halophile groans and lifts something dripping out of the black water — a server unit crusted with coral, one of the millions the world sank into the Pacific to do its thinking. Mara cuts the slings on the deck. The thing is still warm, which is wrong. Dead machines are cold. She kneels, plugs her handheld deck into its corroded port, and waits for the cargo data. Instead, a voice crackles in her earpiece: "Don't unplug me."
5 writers - romanceEveryone
Two Weeks, Wrong City
The departures board blinked DELAYED in red. Theo checked his ticket: Vienna, Platform 9. The woman next to him checked hers: Venice, also Platform 9. "That has to be a mistake," she said. An announcement crackled: both trains were stuck, no new time given. Theo laughed. "Looks like we're both going nowhere together." She smiled. "I'm Mara."
5 writers