A Sea of Stars - Ch. 22 - Reboot

2012-11-09

                   the 
                 modern
        computer is nothing short
           short of a miracle
              with    billions
            of tiny    circuits

          and                role
        billions           to play
    of lines of code  and each important
      each  having        in     its
     their      own      own      way

Once back out into space, Lillian settled down to try to figure out how this was even going to work. They’d loaded dozens of metallic panels into the back of the shuttle, all carefully stacked. They were rather heavy now, but that wouldn’t be a problem when they got there–Watkins could just shut the gravity plating off.

She pulled out the tools she’d collected and arranged them neatly on the floor. Most of them she wouldn’t need and there was only limited options. Mostly it was soothing. Organizing things always helped to calm her nerves. It took up most of the time on the short flight back out to the damage and by the time she got there, she was completely calm. Ready.

Except there was Adrian. That wasn’t exactly calm-inducing.

Confession - Day 8

2012-11-09

18 – Chicago

SEVERAL WEEKS AGO

I caught up with him a few blocks later. Luckily for me, he didn’t seem to have a car, or at least if he did, it wasn’t parked nearby. He almost seemed to be walking slowly enough specifically so that I could catch up with him.

“Come to try to stop me, padre?”

Honestly, yes. That was high on my mind. But even before that, “I came to understand.”

Confession - Day 7

2012-11-08

17 – Chicago

SEVERAL WEEKS AGO

“What are you talking about?” I asked. I knew that being directly confrontational wasn’t necessarily the best of plans when the other person was holding a weapon.

“He came back,” the man beside me said, “from the dead.” An emphatic nod punctuated each word. “But when he did, something came back with him.”

Confession - Day 6

2012-11-07

13 – Chicago

SEVERAL WEEKS AGO

“So what happened then?” I asked him after giving him a moment to recollect his thoughts. “After you talked?”

He turned back to me. “And then he was gone.”

“Gone? Like vanished?” I thought back to how he’d disappeared after in the confessional.

A Sea of Stars - Ch. 21 - Triage

2012-11-06

            all
            that
    you know and all that
     you are can be gone
        in an instant
       all         that
      you            can

           hope for

             is
            that
    your instant takes an
     entire lifetime to 
       find you and to
        claim     its
       final       due

“Lillian, what is it?” She heard Jacobs’ voice, but it felt far away, inconsequential. She floated on the ceiling, barely aware of time slipping by. Seconds, minutes, hours. Jacobs was talking, but she couldn’t even make out what he was saying. What did it matter anyways? Quinn was dead and it was all her fault.

Confession - Day 5

2012-11-06

11 – Baghdad

SEVERAL YEARS AGO

I stood in the square before the National Museum of Iraq. staring up at the two towers flanking the central archway. I knew that orders had come down from on high that we were to do everything we could to avoid engaging in a firefight where the building or its contents might be damaged, yet even so there had been excessive looting and for the most part that edict had been followed.

Confession - Day 4

2012-11-05

8 - Chicago

SEVERAL WEEKS AGO

Two thoughts immediately crossed my mind.

Your brother? followed closely on its heels by *Was?

Confession - Day 3

2012-11-04

7 - Chicago

SEVERAL WEEKS AGO

The man with his old army jacket was still standing there facing me across the back of the church. Again, briefly, I considered running. with his gun at his side like that, there was a chance I could at least make it out the front doorway before he could fire.

Confession - Day 2

2012-11-03

4 – Chicago

SEVERAL WEEKS AGO

“Where is he?” the man attached to the gun growled, a rumbling in his voice hinting at a lifetime hard and painful.

I looked up, then up again. The man was huge, taller than me by a head and a half and wide enough that he seemed to fill the doorway. The red and blue flashing I’d seen before lit the regularly lit the door frame to his either side, but I couldn’t see past him to determine his source.

A Sea of Stars - Ch. 20 - Spacewalk

2012-11-02

         in
       space
    one can truly
      be   free

As Lillian shimmied into the suit, with Madeline’s help, she took a moment to think about what was before her. She was going to have to leave the relatively safe confines of the Borealis–safe at least while the shields weren’t disabled–to voyage out into the interstellar void. Outside of the ship, there was nothing. Not the sort of nothing that you could feel when you were in the middle of a deserted road deep into the night, but the crushing nothingness that the human mind isn’t really equipped to handle.