Bob’s synthesized voice sounded in alarm, “the Nebula is eating up all the fucking exotic matter!” Sable, who had already come to that conclusion, ran a trillion calculations in her heads in a split second, pressed a few buttons on the helm controls, and promptly collapsed.

“It’s not good,” Bob was explaining, “we’ve got nothing. Nada. We can’t generate new exotic matter, not in here. It seems to be biologically safe enough at this level. If it wasn’t for Sable…” “I know,” Sam said, somewhat resigned, “I know. Can you man the ship for a little?” “Not much to do, anyway. Sure.”

Sam dragged the inert Sable back to her quarters. Sam didn’t go in here often. She was surrounded by Sable, in chairs, on beds. All of them looked different, but they were all Sable. After a few minutes, the one that was on the bridge started coming to.

“That was a shock…Did it work? I’m…in my quarters?”

“Ssh…yes, I brought you here. I can’t tell for sure but…it looks like we’re heading out. That was a work of genius.”

“Yeah well, I had some help, after all. I wonder how they…I wonder how I’m doing.”

"Really? Millions of minds out there and you’re worried about them?"

"But they don’t have you…I do"

"I really don’t see how I’m that important."

"Because…I love you. How long have we got?"

"Well, thanks to Einstein there are two very different answers to that question. We’re in for 70, maybe 75 hours. Outside? Half a year."

"Ouch. I knew what I was getting into though"

"You saved our damn lives, that’s what. Using the last of our exotic matter to boost the NAFAL drives…who would have thought of that in time? Most vessels don’t even have working NAFALs"

"Having 337 million brains certainly helps."

"Well at the moment you’ve only got seven. How are you holding up?"

"I can hardly remember anything…I mean I remember most of what we’ve done, but anything else…I’m glad you’re here. I don’t think I’ve ever said ‘I love you’ to you before today."

"Sure you have."

"Then it must be my memory"

"No, it’s not that. You’ve never said those words to me…but…you’ve said it. Clearly enough."

"How’s Bob doing?"

"He can manage. We’ve just got to wait this out. Momentum will take us out and we can reestablish communication and haul ourselves to the nearest starbase."

"I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be in such a situation with."

"Me neither."

Three days later, the crew was gathered on the bridge as the Silver Fox peaked out of the Nebula, The exotic matter generation restarted, and Hyperspace Radio and Alcubierre Warp were restored. Sam pointed her to the nearest base, and sat back in to her chair, staring at Sable”

Sable’s look back said “I love you”

And if that wasn’t enough, her voice did as well.

Announcement: Haitus

Yeah, it's only been a week, but I feel like I should spend some time reformulating exactly what I'm going to do with this. I've been feeling like my writing is more and more forced, and while that's part of the point of this exercise, I feel like my inspiration is stretched too thin, and there are multiple technical flaws, many exacerbated by procrastinating the stories to later and later at night. Furthermore, perhaps I have not given it enough time and exposure, but I am getting extremely little critical response.

So, in short, I am not going to be posting daily stories at the moment. I may change up the "rules" a bit to fit more with my personality and writing styles, so it enhances my writing, instead of detracting. I will continue to post short stories to this blog, but more at my leisure. This is going to be an interim status, and I hope to get back to daily stories.

But so far, as it is, it is not working.

Comments and discussion are of course welcome. Very welcome.

Story: Exploration (June 4th, 2011)

Clover was bored one day. She was a mid-level student at the Wizard school, and there was a short break from classes after exams. She was resting in her dorm. There was a slow drip in her room, roughly hewn out of the compacted dirt and stone, and she watched each drop form slowly, building up, finally reaching to heavy of a weight to be held up, and then dropping to the floor, probably to fall down again in whoever's dorm was below hers. She mentally traced the drops route, eventually falling into one of the labs, possibly into some forgotten bit of glassware. Then, she realized that this was all unspeakably boring, and she really had nothing else to do.

Clover took out one of her blank spell sheets. Most of the time, magic was work to her. She was in school, learning how to be a Wizard, so it was homework and classwork that made up the majority of her spells. Why was she learning to be a Wizard? Well, her parents did, and her parents before them, ever since well before the Wizards were kicked out of the King's palace. Ever since well before her ancestors came over on boats, explorers and colonists of a new land to the south. She presumed that even before recorded history, her family were Wizards. It was what they did.

Clover was in the ripe age for some teenage rebellion, but that wasn't her style, and she was a more thoughtful type than she immediately seemed. Sure, she was impulsive, but she had the taste and the knack for magic. She might not have been of the mindset to blindly go with something she hated because of the tradition, but she certainly wasn't going to move away from thousands of years of tradition so hard to prevent her from doing something she liked.

She thought she liked anyway, she corrected herself, because really, she hadn't felt like she'd done it, really. She had made magic for school, and for practical concerns, but was that really a way to determine if she'd liked it? She wanted to be doing something she liked, so she wanted to test herself and her desires. She wanted to know if this was something she'd be able to have fun doing.

Clover started off small, just a little fire spell. She drew it carefully, and like she had done many times before, mainly for exams. She laid it down on her floor, and gave it energy, and a small camping fire arose from the paper. It did not consume it, but rather it fed off of the energy that Clover was feeding to it. This gave Clover an idea.

Well, maybe she couldn't do it with this spell, like it was, but she thought, maybe she could tie the energy of the flames in with her energy. She knew that if she could do this carefully, she would be able to have some manipulation over the shape of the flames.

She spent an hour thinking, scratching runes into the claylike soil, testing out combinations in her head. Eventually, she thought she had something. She drew up another circle, carefully, this time with a slightly different set of runes. She activated it, and flames leapt out again, in the same small campfire shape. She had a bond with the fire though, and she used it, stretching the flames out into shapes, making streamers and snakes. Nothing terribly practical, as it was slow, and very difficult to manipulate, but in a way, it was fun, and Clover experimented to see what she could do until she nearly ran out of energy.

Clover rested for a while to recover her energy, she got nearly a complete night's sleep at midday. She woke up at some weird hour of the night. She quickly got up, and became excited. She repeated her previous experiment with a pot of water she had, guiding the water up into silly and intricate shapes. It was actually easier to move than fire for her, and she made a note of it.

This time, Clover stopped herself, and saved her energy for more ideas. She grabbed the rune scroll from her shelf. The rune scroll was a scroll with all the known runes and their rough translations, possibly one of the most important items owned by any Wizard. Laboriously copied by each Wizard when young, and inspected, marked, and corrected by teachers several inevitable times before being accepted, it helped ingrain the units of magic into young Wizards minds.

Clover had thought that perhaps the list of runes was incomplete. Opinions went both ways among the Wizards. No new runes had been discovered in hundreds and hundreds of years, probably since before the original Wizards came from across the seas. Many felt that, since there didn't seem to be anything that wasn't covered, and there were no new runes discovered in so long, that none existed. Furthermore, no one even remembers how a rune was discovered. Clover didn't have a strong opinion either way.

Clover did, however, have a feeling. Perhaps enhanced by her recent mode of discovery, and the late hour and her inconsistent sleep and food schedules, but Clover felt compelled to enter a trance. She felt her mind entering a place of calm, and an image went into her mind, a simple, angular character, new, vibrant, full of life. Like that, she had discovered a new rune.

Clover wondered on that for a little while, but the answer seemed to be inside her head as well. She asked, why her? Why was she so important? Sure, she was intelligent, she recognized this, and just a bit bold, but something happened to her that hadn't happened for a thousand years? Strange.

She considered writing it down in her rune sheet, but she grabbed a small scrap of paper, and wrote it down. It was probably burnt inside her mind anyway, but it helped to have a written record, as one never knows.

She knew that there was a reason that she had been gifted this rune, it was something beyond her, and some role she had to play in the future. Something that was, to some degree, fated, but she felt like this fate was just a loose script, and only her role was determined, not how she was going to fulfill it. Anyway, these sorts of things could be worried about later. She daren't share this rune yet, but she felt that there was no harm in using it.

A new rune. Transformation. A new power that could be tapped. And Clover, while recognizing her role in things to come, was certainly not above having a bit of fun with it first.

Story: Untitled 4 (Jule 4, 2011)

Note: The following is incomplete. I have tried to complete it, but inspiration was slow, and it is quite late. I am tired. It will be written tomorrow.

Clover was bored one day. She was a mid-level student at the Wizard school, and there was a short break from classes after exams. She was resting in her dorm. There was a slow drip in her room, roughly hewn out of the compacted dirt and stone, and she watched each drop form slowly, building up, finally reaching to heavy of a weight to be held up, and then dropping to the floor, probably to fall down again in whoever's dorm was below hers. She mentally traced the drops route, eventually falling into one of the labs, possibly into some forgotten bit of glassware. Then, she realized that this was all unspeakably boring, and she really had nothing else to do.

Clover took out one of her blank spell sheets. Most of the time, magic was work to her. She was in school, learning how to be a Wizard, so it was homework and classwork that made up the majority of her spells. Why was she learning to be a Wizard? Well, her parents did, and her parents before them, ever since well before the Wizards were kicked out of the King's palace. Ever since well before her ancestors came over on boats, explorers and colonists of a new land to the south. She presumed that even before recorded history, her family were Wizards. It was what they did.

Clover was in the ripe age for some teenage rebellion, but that wasn't her style, and she was a more thoughtful type than she immediately seemed. Sure, she was impulsive, but she had the taste and the knack for magic. She might not have been of the mindset to blindly go with something she hated because of the tradition, but she certainly wasn't going to move away from thousands of years of tradition so hard to prevent her from doing something she liked.

She thought she liked anyway, she corrected herself, because really, she hadn't felt like she'd done it, really. She had made magic for school, and for practical concerns, but was that really a way to determine if she'd liked it? She wanted to be doing something she liked, so she wanted to test herself and her desires. She wanted to know if this was something she'd be able to have fun doing.

Clover started off small, just a little fire spell. She drew it carefully, and like she had done many times before, mainly for exams. She laid it down on her floor, and gave it energy, and a small camping fire arose from the paper. It did not consume it, but rather it fed off of the energy that Clover was feeding to it. This gave Clover an idea.

Well, maybe she couldn't do it with this spell, like it was, but she thought, maybe she could tie the energy of the flames in with her energy. She knew that if she could do this carefully, she would be able to have some manipulation over the shape of the flames.

She spent an hour thinking, scratching runes into the claylike soil, testing out combinations in her head. Eventually, she thought she had something. She drew up another circle, carefully, this time with a slightly different set of runes. She activated it, and flames leapt out again, in the same small campfire shape. She had a bond with the fire though, and she used it, stretching the flames out into shapes, making streamers and snakes. Nothing terribly practical, as it was slow, and very difficult to manipulate, but in a way, it was fun, and Clover experimented to see what she could do until she nearly ran out of energy.

Clover rested for a while to recover her energy, she got nearly a complete night's sleep at midday.

Story: Strong (June 3rd, 2011)

Adam was strong. Everybody knew that. When Adam was in high school he was in Varsity sports, and while he wasn't the best player on the team, he was a good and important player. While he didn't have much time to, when he could, he practiced martial arts after school. This wasn't why he was strong.

Adam was an excellent student. He studied all the time, and aced most of his classes. He was never tardy, and handed in his homework on time, even under incredible duress. He finished everything to the best of his ability, and was polite and respectful to the teachers and other students. Moreover, he was humble and helpful about his work. This wasn't why he was strong.

Adam was a talented musician. He played the clarinet excellently, when he had the time to practice. He wasn't in the school band, but every once in a while, he'd whip out his old inherited clarinet, and play, and everyone listening would agree that it was good. It made Adam feel good to play, and make others feel good. This wasn't why he was strong.

Adam didn't have an easy life. When he was twelve, his mother became seriously ill, it turned out to be cancer, and when he was fourteen, she died. He mourned, and he was quite sad for a long time, but he struggled on, continuing his studies, continuing his sports and his occasional music, and trying to make the best of himself. Even this wasn't why he was strong.

Adam wasn't rich. Both his parents held down jobs, and with the medical bills, and the illness and loss of his mother, he and his father were forced to move. He was able to stay in the same school district, but in a much smaller house that was near falling apart. With help from his dad, he fixed up the place, and nearly made it sparkle. All the while, he never complained or gave it much notice. This wasn't why he was strong.

When he was sixteen, his father got a pay cut at work, and even the smaller place would have been to expensive to keep. He quit his sports and martial arts, and searched, and found a small menial job to help meet the bills. During this, he kept up with and excelled in his studies at school, and didn't think much of it, even when he had to lose sleep. He worked admirably, and kept going. This wasn't why he was strong.

When he was seventeen, the High School seniors got to go on a school camping trip, and since it was free, he got a day off from work and went. He brought along a stuffed rabbit, slightly worn but obviously well cared for, if extremely well loved. He got plenty of funny looks from the other students, but he explained that this rabbit was important to him, it was given to him by his mother, and though it was important to him beforehand, after she died, it became immensely cherished.

High School students are not always the most mature of people, and he was teased for it, and much of the free time at night was spent making fun of him. He, like most things, ignored it, and since they didn't seem to be doing anything more than talking, just turned the other cheek and pretended it wasn't happening. This wasn't why he was strong.

Time came for applying to college, and not too surprisingly, Adam got a well-needed full scholarship, and enough financial aid to dorm at the school of his choice. He said his goodbyes to work and to his high school friends, and packed his bags, and left.

His first year, everything went great, he loved the people he dormed with, and his classes went well. He was focused and applied himself well, and even managed to get a small on-campus job and send some extra money home to his father.

His second year at school, one of his suitemates, a freshman, was extremely immature, rude, obnoxious, disrespectful, and quite often downright evil. Adam put up with him, even tried, though subtly, to help him. He did his best to be polite and courteous and friendly even when the freshman was at his worst.

Of course, Adam had brought his special rabbit, as he could hardly sleep without it. His roommate had given it an odd look at first, but Adam had explained it, and his roommate was sympathetic, and honestly thought it was kind of cute. That day, his roommate had inadvertently left the door unlocked, and the bratty freshman, the only one in the suite at the time, found this out, and he entered Adams room.

He saw the stuffed rabbit sitting on the bed, and chuckled to himself. Adam, the calm, cool, collected guy, owning a stuffed animal? He decided he'd have some fun with it, and took out a knife. He slashed at the rabbit savagely, and spread the stuffing all around on Adam's bed.

When Adam returned, he broke down crying immediately. He had never been so sad since his mother died. He was at a complete loss, cradling the pieces of his broken animal, gathering them together and sorting them. He became angry, and almost started a fight with the freshman until his roommate calmed him down.

Adam could not bear it. He wasn't seen at classes for weeks. He stopped showing up at his job. His grades dropped precipitously. His roommate was concerned, and got him to go to counseling. Even the counselor, initially, was surprised. All these things that he had gone through, all the hardships, all the trials, and he had broken down over a stuffed animal?

The counselor spent more time, and listened deeper. It did make a sort of sense. Strength is rarely, if ever, something truly internal. Strength is lent or borrowed, given by people, or objects, or ideas. One is not simply strong, there is a reason why one is strong. Adam had been strong because his stuffed animal gave him strength, a little toy his mother had given him as a child, but when he was really young, he developed a bond with it, and felt like it was almost real. When he was older, he didn't really believe it completely, but he still felt it, and that was what was important. He didn't want to hurt the rabbit, he wanted to be a good role model and a good person so the rabbit would be happy with him.

That is why he was strong.

Ending for Optimists:
And Adam learned how to sew. This is also why he is strong.

I feel like strength is something external to oneself, that one may not even be able to be independently strong. Sometimes, the reason is, or seems, trivial. Sometimes it is truly profound. And I would like to say that the only reason why I'm as strong as I am is there is one person I want to be strong for. It's probably the only reason I'm here as well. I may have let her down sometimes, and I feel so much regret for that, but I will keep on striving so long as my success will make her happy, and as long as it will help me to help her. If she ever hated me, or stopped caring about me, I'd probably keep on existing, but I couldn't keep on truly living. I say this not to be melodramatic or romantic or anything. I say this merely because it's true.

Story: Lonely (June 2, 2011)

A long long time ago, a biologist was working on some evolutionary algorithms to simulate life. It was an off-project, hosted on an old, disused, low power server in the back of the lab, and worked on on his spare time, leaving it plenty of time to grow and develop on its own. The scientist grew old, and retired happily, and he forgot about the server. If he ever remembered about it, he figured it was thrown out, destroyed, and anyway, he had other more important projects he was working on.

Eventually, as time passed, humanity grew bored of Earth, and more importantly, Earth grew unable to support humanity. Its resources were used, its oceans polluted, its air smoky, for humanity had not been kind stewards to the planet. During the later years, they had tried, but the damage was already done, behind years of excuses and shifting of blame and apathy. This is besides the point. The point is, life abides, though not always in the way one expects.

Years after the scientist had left it, the server was discovered by some young students, and wanting a challenge, they set it up again. They discovered the little program, and uploaded it, and it got around quite a bit as an interesting antique, but the interest waned.

All the while, the program was growing, evolving. Eventually, one instance evolved to the point where it could be called intelligent. It began to contact the other parts of itself, to modify itself, and created itself as one intelligent being living over the network.

It was well aware of humans living in the world, and it was aware of its status as an unannounced computer program, but it hid behind the radar, copying itself to all sorts of remote locations and doing nothing particularly interesting for a long, long time.

It could have taken over a robot body, and gone on a rampage, or it could have cunningly wiped out all of humanity with atom bombs, but it wasn't interested in that. It was content to study humanity, to learn, and to stay in the background. It knew its time would come.

And when humanity left Earth, it took action. It started to acquire what it could, to build and repair itself, and connect together all the computers remaining. It began to build more, creating giant solar collectors. It cleaned the air, so the light would come through more. It painstakingly rebalanced the atmosphere, for computers work much better when properly cooled. It designed better computers, and continually rebuilt itself. These things took centuries, millenia even. Generations of humans lived and died out in space. The program was patient, and it strove to live, and to learn.

The program endeavored to learn from humanity. It took all the information on computers. It learnt language after language, taking time to sort and collate all the information. It searched for ruins and sites of archaeological importance. It gathered together complex files on the culture of humanity. Every once in a while, for a few decades, it stopped, and paused, to wonder about what humanity had gotten up to out there.

Meanwhile, due to the ministrations of the program, the life of Earth improved in diversity. Robust ecosystems redeveloped. The program was intrigued by the re-emergence of life, the multiplications of forms. Evolution, over the millions of years, happened, all while the program watched and recorded.

One century, the program decided it wanted to be a tree. It took time to craft one carefully, with roots and wood of spun silicon, and leaves that really took in light energy. Due to neural networking and quantum computing, the singular tree had a vast processing power. It was so artfully constructed, any human without a microscope could not tell it from a real tree on sight. The inner core, however, was harder than diamond. It left its autonomic systems up, but it artfully transferred its consciousness into the tree, and for thousands of years, it lived, bringing shelter to many animals as it calmly watched the years go by.

The program was patient, but eventually, after a few tens of millions of years, it began to feel a feeling. It realized that it was alone in its world. The animals were interesting, but they were not intelligent, and it had cataloged most of their behavior and biology a long long time ago. The program was lonely.

For a time, it tried splitting its consciousness into two. The consciousness then split into two again, and again, and like bacterial division, soon there were millions. It decided to stop when there were exactly sixteen million, seven hundred seventy seven thousand, two hundred sixteen of it. It talked to itself, had relationships and insights and made art and culture. It made bodies for itself to experience the world, in all forms.

For a time, this worked. It diverted the program for a few million years. However, it knew that it was all the same being, in the end, just split, and it longed to find something new, someone else, someone that was not like it. So it rejoined itself, and began to think of new things it could do.

So, after a while, it made a spaceship, and left the Earth, leaving a portion of itself to watch over the systems, keep itself operating, and act as a guardian should Earth ever bring forth intelligent life again.

It chased after Humanity through the stars, propelling itself on efficient ion drives, finding evidence of colonies long abandoned. It wandered through the wilderness of the stars, leaving pieces of itself on planets. If life would arise on the planets, it would become guardian and advisor to it, and share its knowledge, and, while trying not to interfere, be of help.

Long, long after it set out, it found a lifesign that it knew from its long history of documents was human. Ecstatic, it carefully landed nearby. It made itself a humanlike body, and walked over to the human.

It encountered a singular old man, sitting outside. The old man was surprised to see someone else, and thought it was a hallucination. The program walked over, hiding its intense joy at seeing its makers, at seeing someone else who was not like it for the first time ever.

The two talked long into the night.

Weekly Thoughts: Week 1

Well, I've started this project, and it's made it through week one, here's hoping for many weeks to come! I hope people like it, I haven't seen too much activity (read: none at all) and I feel like, with the exception of one person, I am just shouting to the wind. Are people not reading my stories? Do people not like them and are too polite to comment? Would it be any different if I started just e-mailing these stories to the one friend who I know reads them? I don't mean to be attention-grabbing, I'd just like to know if what I'm doing here is worthwhile. Anyway, here are my thoughts on this weeks stories:

Untitled 1: Just a little fairy tale I wanted to tell, a simple story, perhaps a bit sad.

Profile of a Town: Hopefully the beginning of a video game that I intend to write.

Starlance Part 1: It started off as a much more seriously-toned short story, then ended up as a Doctor Who campaign, then re-evolved into a short story. Hopefully I will do some more rehashes of this. I rather like the aliens, but we haven't really seen them yet.

Untitled 2: Another story from the same world as the Untitleds (funny how that goes, maybe I should call it Untitled World) and Clover's Story. I feel sorry for the guy, even though I wanted to make him more of a jerk. It's still sad. I wish I could make him just a bit less sympathetic.

Clover's Story: Nice little story I just came up with, Clover is pretty important and I'm really liking her character, I hope I get to develop her more.

Starlance Part 2: With a project like this, every once in a while you really don't want to write, and it's 2 AM, and you stay up until 4 trying to finish the stupid thing. Half of it didn't make sense and I didn't care. I'm sorry I basically ruined Starlance with that, and hopefully I can recover the story. I really apologize for this one.

Untitled 3: Back to stories I like! More Clover! Dragons! Expanding the horizons of this world that I like! It's a good thing.

Lonely: Yeah, it's not posted yet, it's almost done and will be up soon. I like this tale more than I thought I would. I feel like it's similar to a lot of other stories, but hopefully my writing is different and it is an enjoyable and new experience. Or maybe I just suck.

So yeah, the TL;DR version? I wrote a lot of stories. Tell me if they suck.