How Do You Know?

The chase had led to this: a lost corner of the sewer system, humid and dripping, Amanda Drake holding her gun to Sal's head, Detective Henna Joston's gun pointed directly at Drake's head. Shoving her pistol painfully into Sal's temple, Drake shouted, "Drop it!"

Joston shook her head. "You know I can't do that, Drake. Let 'em go, and we can talk."

"Not a chance! I'm safe as long as I have 'em."

"Yeah?" Henna cracked her neck with menace. "How do you know I can't drill you in the eye no matter how close you hold 'em?"

"I don't." Drake forced the words out through gritted teeth. "How do you know I won't have time to blow their brains out if you try it?"

Henna grimaced. "I don't." The two of them shared stares that, if anthropomorphized, would be having really angry sex.

"Hey!" Sal's shout broke the mounting tension. "How do you both know I can't teleport away?" The nemeses looked at her, then each other, perplexion on their faces. They stared at her, a frankly uncertain stare, waiting.

"Just kidding!" Sal said. "I can't do that." Grabbing Drake's wrist, Sal flipped her and kicked the gun away.

With Twilight Behind the Hills

My thumb felt frostbitten, I'd held it out so long. I wasn't surprised. A big man, scruffy and unwashed? I wasn't a safe bet, especially with twilight disappearing behind the hills. I saw a flicker of light far down the road. Maybe my last chance.

A lot of things brought me to this moment. Some good choices, maybe more bad ones, and bad luck mixed with bad timing. I'll still swear up and down the Hudson that any other year, my business would've done just fine. But with the economy...

I kept my thumb out. No telling how far ahead the driver was looking. The lights looked colder than normal. Those new, blue-colored lights?

So maybe quitting my job was a bad idea. And telling my boss just how much he smelled may have burned a bridge. But how was I to know that the investments I liquidated for funds were about to leap in value?

The closer the lights got, the more I could see a wobble, like the driver was palsied. I took a step away from the road.

I tried a dozen jobs, anything that'd keep me afloat. They only wanted pliable teenagers and immigrants.

A carriage pulled up, transparent with a ghostly blue lanterns hanging from the front. The driver flickered like a bad special effect. He asked if I wanted a ride to the front. General Washington would take any body he could get, he said.

It wasn't like I had any other job offers.

Carmen and the Storm

Carmen lifted the hourglass hanging from her waist, clear cut crystal in a housing of orichalcum. Varihued sands ran up and down through the neck as she watched, a riot of color until they settled into layered arrangements in the top and bottom bulbs. Years of training translated the dozens of colors instantly: a time the locals called 1974, August 30, 10:02am, located at 17°55'42.3"N 66°09'34.9"W. She smiled.

She stood on a spit of sandy rock in the midst of a wild sea. To the south and east, the sky was as dark as it had been four hours earlier. Clouds hanging low above her churned so fast Carmen could almost believe they were human-made, sheets of undyed wool whipped into a frenzy by mischievous youths.

Craning her neck until it cracked, Carmen unlimbered a bow of silvery wood, testing the pull. She unsheathed two long, curved knives in turn and checked their edges with her thumb. Satisfied, she rearranged the sheathes on the front of her chest for easy access.

She stood at her full five-foot-two height and stared into the storm, already pummeling her with fifty mile-per-hour winds, and drew her first arrow.

Nineteen Thirty-one

"Horographer Kinsley!" Head of Timekeeping Julia Newton strode toward Kinsley, her clear call stopping him in his tracks. "What's this I hear about a US quarter snafu back in the nineteens?"

Turning in the plain, concrete hallway, Henry Kinsley adjusted his labcoat, making sure to prominently display the badge proclaiming him Head Horographer, Economics. Not that the appointment would carry weight with Newton. "Um, yes. Nineteen thirty-one. No quarters struck. Nothing to do about it, unfortunately."

Newton's eyes narrowed: her infamous nail-you-to-the-wall stare. "There's always something to do."

"Not after some damn fool leaves a horology text charting currency trends for the five-hundred-year period out where anyone can see." He headed off Newton's coming demand. "She's been timed out, naturally."

"Damn." She looked through him into the middle distance. "So. No way to get any quarters struck?"

"Not in thirty-one. It's everything we can do to get the offender, one, um, Grant, evicted from the Mint by thirty-three. We have a possible justification we can apply. Something that'll make the lack of quarters from nineteen thirty-one make more sense. With approval."

"Go on..."

"So, my team down in Economics has been working on this thing they're calling the Great Depression..."

Even in the Morning Rush

Linsey seated herself. Even in the morning rush, her table was vacant, and a steaming cup of coffee appeared as she sat down. Her breakfast would follow in a few minutes: eggs scrambled with cheddar, a bowl of fruit, and a single pancake, every day without exception.

Linus sat down across from her. "Doctor Verdun," he said. "Have you ever thought about parallel universes?"

"You're sitting at my table," she said.

"I know. But what if that one were your table?"

Linsey clenched her teeth. "This is my table, and you should be working."

He continued as though she hadn't interrupted. "What if you took tea instead of coffee?" She glanced down at her coffee, now a smooth au lait color. "How would it feel if you woke up in that universe instead of the one you remembered?

"Or what if," Linus continued, "I had gotten that grant fifteen years ago? What if you worked for me instead of you working me to the bone?"

Linsey sighed. "Is there a point to all this?"

"Maybe not. Enjoy your breakfast." He walked away as the server returned with her food: eggs scrambled with cheddar, a bowl of fruit, and a waffle.

Beyond Sustainability

The people elect the president. The president appoints the admiral. The admiral tasks the battle group. The commodore commands the engineer, who activates the hyperdrive, made possible by the scientist's breakthrough. The ships orbit the exoplanet.

The society grows beyond sustainability. The colonists select the exoplanet, discovered by the astronomer, and depart on a ship funded by the billionaire. The child discovers the natives. The parent expresses fear to the mayor. The mayor prioritizes the colony. The relationship strains.

The tension threatens violence. In orbit above the exoplanet, in a metal shell lit only by the local star, the planet's albedo, and electricity, the captain overreacts and orders the weapons officer to fire on the natives' position. The weapons officer relays the command to the gunnery officer, who directs it to a gunner's mate, whose team targets and fires the missile. The missile, designed by a dozen people and refined by hundreds more, flies to the exoplanet and activates its artificial intelligence. The artificial intelligence, designed by the programmer and taught by thousands of hours of input from the people, selects its target among the many on the ground and primes the explosive. The explosive detonates.

Who is the murderer?

In My Power

His pale skin shone like marble in the moonlight. She could see almost nothing else, he loomed so close over her. "At last," he breathed, "I have you in my power."

"Uh, no?" She looked up at him without fear. "I have the power here." His face, a moment before sensual in his certainty, blanked with confusion. Like that, his mystery vanished, leaving behind a pale guy in dark clothes.

"What?"

"Yeah, so, I can struggle and run—"

His face reassumed its predatory gaze. "Go ahead," he purred, "fight the inevitable." She rolled her eyes and waited, looking bored. The predator in him fled again. "Sorry. Go on."

"Well, if you want a struggle, I can just lie here. I can scream in fear, or I can sing The Sun'll Come Up Tomorrow. How would you feel about that?" His face fell in dismay.

"That would..."

"Suck?" She smiled.

"Yeah." He un-loomed into a slouch, hands in the pockets of what could only be a cloak. "Don't worry. I can give you what you want. But only if you give me what I want first..."

She started him out small, but that was how she acquired her first pet vampire.