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FREE VERSE and other stories
Dario Ciriello
digital edition currently FREE ($0.99on Amazon, free elsewhere)
"Six Science Fiction stories that take the reader from the very edge of our own universe to the dizzying depths of parallel worlds and alternate realities. This dazzling collection includes both hard and humorous SF.
FREE VERSE: When whole bundles of worldlines—parallel realities—begin to collapse and die, an old linewalker is the only one who can help—if he can conquer his own demons.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE: An artist working on a docked luxury star-yacht is taken captive when the ship is hijacked by pirates, and has only hours to save himself before losing everything to the inflexible laws of spacetime.
TIGGER WALKS THE PLANCK: An AI trapped in a cloned feline body finds itself the unfortunate subject of an all-too-real Schrödinger's Cat experiment.
DWELL ON HER GRACIOUSNESS: At the edge of the universe in a tiny, experimental ship, a priestess from the Far Sisters cult sent to observe an impossible phenomenon faces madness and terror.
SKIFFY SUPRÈME: So just how DO you bake a planet?
DANCING BY NUMBERS: Lyra discovers an ability that can change worlds—and then makes a terrifying choice that will change them further still.
Only available in digital edition
(collection total 31,000 words, equivalent to 90-100 pages of print)
ISBN (ebook) 978-1-940581-82-8 / Amazon mobi (Kindle) $3.99
ISBN (ebook) 978-1-940581-83-5 / epub / mobi (Kindle) / pdf $3.99
FREE VERSE (excerpt):
The beacon brings me in at the correspondence, and from there I slip through the line’s skin, entifying in a dark, stone-paved alley of unusually wide doorways. My augs paint in the buildings looming close on either side, and an open space—a square, perhaps—a few dozen yards ahead. The upper storeys of the buildings bristle with spiny ornamentation of unknown purpose. One of those ancient-feeling places, like most termies.
I’m drawn to a deep-shadowed doorway from which emerges a large piece of walking darkness. I know by the locator blip it’s one of the researchers, unrecognizably modded, but my every instinct says to turn and run. A big, vaguely bovine head with liquid black eyes and tulip ears, below which a formidable torso attached to long arms and short, powerful legs. Hominid architecture stretched under different selective pressures.
The creature’s great head dips. It points to itself, says something like Chama. I take the proffered hand, noting the extra thumb joint and the weird heat that comes off that palm. It speaks again, softly, but I can’t catch the mushy syllables: the mouth parts are likely too far off mainhuman. Chama will be a good few days in the tank after we return.
FREE VERSE and other stories
Dario Ciriello
digital edition currently FREE ($0.99on Amazon, free elsewhere)
"Six Science Fiction stories that take the reader from the very edge of our own universe to the dizzying depths of parallel worlds and alternate realities. This dazzling collection includes both hard and humorous SF.
FREE VERSE: When whole bundles of worldlines—parallel realities—begin to collapse and die, an old linewalker is the only one who can help—if he can conquer his own demons.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE: An artist working on a docked luxury star-yacht is taken captive when the ship is hijacked by pirates, and has only hours to save himself before losing everything to the inflexible laws of spacetime.
TIGGER WALKS THE PLANCK: An AI trapped in a cloned feline body finds itself the unfortunate subject of an all-too-real Schrödinger's Cat experiment.
DWELL ON HER GRACIOUSNESS: At the edge of the universe in a tiny, experimental ship, a priestess from the Far Sisters cult sent to observe an impossible phenomenon faces madness and terror.
SKIFFY SUPRÈME: So just how DO you bake a planet?
DANCING BY NUMBERS: Lyra discovers an ability that can change worlds—and then makes a terrifying choice that will change them further still.
Only available in digital edition
(collection total 31,000 words, equivalent to 90-100 pages of print)
ISBN (ebook) 978-1-940581-82-8 / Amazon mobi (Kindle) $3.99
ISBN (ebook) 978-1-940581-83-5 / epub / mobi (Kindle) / pdf $3.99
FREE VERSE (excerpt):
The beacon brings me in at the correspondence, and from there I slip through the line’s skin, entifying in a dark, stone-paved alley of unusually wide doorways. My augs paint in the buildings looming close on either side, and an open space—a square, perhaps—a few dozen yards ahead. The upper storeys of the buildings bristle with spiny ornamentation of unknown purpose. One of those ancient-feeling places, like most termies.
I’m drawn to a deep-shadowed doorway from which emerges a large piece of walking darkness. I know by the locator blip it’s one of the researchers, unrecognizably modded, but my every instinct says to turn and run. A big, vaguely bovine head with liquid black eyes and tulip ears, below which a formidable torso attached to long arms and short, powerful legs. Hominid architecture stretched under different selective pressures.
The creature’s great head dips. It points to itself, says something like Chama. I take the proffered hand, noting the extra thumb joint and the weird heat that comes off that palm. It speaks again, softly, but I can’t catch the mushy syllables: the mouth parts are likely too far off mainhuman. Chama will be a good few days in the tank after we return.