– Red black and blue

All of a sudden I felt a vast wave rise within myself, some great elemental feeling of being suddenly, jarringly abandoned. Like some long-time lover had departed the other side of a sleepless night. It came over black and gushing as water through an overflowing ford in the nadir of a winter evening. And all the things around me seemed to be cheap, ersatz, facsimiles of real things. Platonic ideals given fleeting form. And captured in that way their preciousness devastated. Everything pale and bland.

(more…)

After Rex left to take Ambi for a walk, Kathy caught a cab to Kaka’ako, a light industrial neighborhood in downtown Honolulu. After making sure she wasn’t being followed she entered an abandoned warehouse, stepped through the concealed door in the false wall at the back, and got into the small hidden elevator concelaed there. She pressed the ‘down’ button, badged in, and waited as the elevator carried her five stories under Oahu’s dark igneous underbelly to the secret headquarters of Section 13’s Pacific Sector Headquarters.

(more…)

It was not sure, whether I was standing, sitting, lying down, or sleeping. But it felt awfully good. It was not dark. It was darkness mixed with silvery light. But it was not moon light. It was like . . . kind of . . well, I cannot describe it. Some kind of light. And . . . I was alone. I couldn’t find anyone or anything moving in the far stretched vicinity. What kind of land was that? All I can remember is . . . vast rice fields, after harvest, with dry stumps sticking out, like millions of shaving brushes strewn around. The air was quite cool, but without wind . . . silent and serene.

(more…)

I had flown interceptors into combat twice, and had lost one each time. If this trend was going to continue, I was going to need more ships. I wanted a stockpile so that I might jump into another ship and continue the fight after a defeat. The interceptors on the market were expensive and sparse, however. But it so happened that I had heard one of our allies, the great British Space Corporation, had an original blueprint for crusaders. A few evemails later, and I had a deal for a pack of crusaders, sold cheaply because I was going to be using them to defend our alliance’s home.

But most never reached the Great Wildlands.

(more…)

Quent sat at the bar on a wooden stool and ordered his pint of beer. The place was just as bad as it looked on the outside, cramped, dusty and with the heads of moldy, dead animals hanging from all sorts of places. Luckily, it was still quite early to drink, and there were only a few people, each dressed like Quent himself, with whatever they could afford. Perfect, this only kept getting better. None of these folk would care if John - who looked very out of place with his suit - suddenly disappeared, and none would even suspect him, Quent. He looked too, well, normal.

(more…)

It was just a glimpse. I was driving home from work and there he was walking down a barren street. His clothes, much like his face, were worn and dirty and his age showed in his heavy wrinkles. He looked ahead almost in a dancing walk while he appeared to be singing to music only he could hear. He did not look happy but he did not look sad either.

(more…)

I left a few months after Simon died. I hadn’t planned to stay any longer, anyway, but I’d begun to count the days. Some kind of new routine developed after a fortnight. We’d all gone to his funeral, and stood the three of us away from his family and his other friends. It had been a hot day of bright sunshine and we’d made it through the service and to the graveside before Frank had sworn violently underneath his breath and walked away.

(more…)

I sit down with my mother. She says she has something to tell me and my mind is already racing. Am I in trouble? Are we moving house again? What is it? Then it strikes me.

“Are you and Mike splitting up?”

She looks shocked. She’s been with Mike, my stepfather, for around 6 years. Between them, they’ve built up a large business and I’m happy. They never seemed particulary unhappy, and there’s not been a lot of arguments. There’s nothing that stands out as being a reason for me to think that they’re splitting up.

(more…)

There was no clock in my room to strike 12 at midnight. But the cute little red digital timepiece showed, with its green square digits, that it was 13 minutes past 12. I was in bed, wide awake, listening to the howling of the rash east wind, which trespasses into my serene village through the mountain gap, regularly, towards the death of one year and the birth of the next.

The door was already shut. I got up from the bed and walked to the window to close it, fearing that the wind would rattle away the panes. The window overlooked the street and was right in the direction of the wind.

(more…)

I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Azeroth recently. It’s utterly, utterly different from EVE, devoid of the hopelessness that can sometimes engulf you as a new player. There’s always someone there to guide you on your path, always someone randomly buffing you as they pass, always something obvious to do and see and be part of. WoW is the light at the end of EVE’s tunnel, a primary-coloured world where you don’t have to obsessively check your surroundings to see which neutral ship is about to open fire.

(more…)