Abstract Rorschach
Joined July 2009 and calls The Enclosed Instruction Book home.
439 stories, 203 challenges, 617 comments, and 93 friends
Kicking it at the University of Oklahoma. I like writing, science, almost all forms of music (literally), creating constructed languages, graphic/visual arts, and a good book. I will not hesitate in saying I am a Christian and I am darned proud to be an American.
Stories
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[Title of Story] (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 104)
I continued. “It looks like a movie theater. Even has a soda fountain in back, and it works. I know because I took myself there—or some Other Me took myself—took him—screw it, you get the idea. One of the other rules you can get around usin...
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A Brief Respite
Those of us who had run paused at the door. I could see the concentration written all over Acrylic’s face—hacking through various networks as he came within virtual earshot, dropping them as we left. I had no idea how he managed. “Gotta g...
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Bone to Pick
“You looking for me, Othniel Marsh?” asked a man with a thin, pointed face, his mustache overshadowing his lips like an eagle’s outstretched wings. Cradling his drink in his hand, he slowly turned to face the balding, bearded man who ...
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Temporal Asphalt (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 98)
“She must be using the In-Between to be doing all of this damage,” I hazarded. Al nodded, wordlessly grabbing a piece of paper and scribbling down an equation on it. I examined what he had written. ع = GM₀(t₂ – t₁)((14ظ + ⁶(...
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Word Is Bond [Remix] (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 90)
“You make the future from one of James Cameron’s flicks sound like Candy Land,” Zoe remarked. “It is…” The albino hesitated a bit in his delivery. I could sense a hit of emotion hidden behind the careful delivery in his ...
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⅟ (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 89)
“I swear,” Zoe fumed, “if you don’t get to the point of all of this right quick, I am going to murder you!” “That would be inadvisable,” the albino coolly parried, “since I am here to help.” He shuf...
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Why I Obsessed Over That TV Show (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 88)
“Well, spit it out already!” Zoe bristled. “All in due time,” the albino countered. “The manifestation of time travel abilities has been shown to relate to the mental status of the afflicted. For most, it begins with a rit...
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Moose Jaw (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 87)
We could only nod. I wasn’t sure if the albino had seen us or not, but he began talking anyway regardless. “In approximately one and one half millennia, the groundwork for a new and novel power source will be devised,” he began. ̶...
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Aniridia (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 86)
“You need a shower,” Zoe bluntly informed me as the three of us huddled together in the broom closet located under the stairs to the apartment’s subbasement. It was dark, barely dark enough to see. The albino man’s eyes somehow ...
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La Toux Pratique (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 81)
Zoe uttered an expletive, as she is wont to do in situations like these. Had she not done it sotto voce this time, we might not exist as we do right now. Our internal quaking in terror turned to inquisition when we heard a rather large and obnoxious co...
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New Leases (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 65)
In apartment 2B there lived a young man pursuing some sort of law degree; he financed this pursuit by pushing amphetamines and new identities. Having won the lottery the week before the big jackpot (in the grand scheme of things, a couple million would...
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اليوم الثامن، للمرة الثالثة (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 64)
We went back in time again, entrusting the suitcase to Mrs. MacPhearson next door, who promised not say a word of it to anyone. Given that she had taken a vow of silence several years prior, this was not anything she’d have had to go out of her w...
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اليوم الثامن، ثانية (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 63)
After some initial irrational moments of panic, we didn’t think it a big deal at first. We simply went back in time a couple of days (making sure that we were able to receive the check in the mail again, of course) so that we could pimp out the a...
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اليوم الثامن (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 62)
It had been eight days since Zoe had manifested her ability to slow time to a crawl. There had been a breaking story on the news this morning about footprints found in 3.4-billion-year-old rock in Australia, complete with the brand name from the sole. ...
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That's…Going to Leave a Mark (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 56)
Zoe was too engrossed in her anger to notice, as I had, that A) my hand was now bleeding due to my fingernails’ deep burial into my palm and that B) the crowd behind us had ceased their milling about. There was also a C) that she failed to notice...
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Both Out of and Into the Blue (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 55)
I suppose that I really shouldn’t say that she stopped time, per se. If she had, we wouldn’t have seen anything because if time stops, so does light. But everything else was going along so slowly that for all intents and purposes, time was ...
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Two Hundred
The guard was quickly knocked out while I took the droid out of commission with the sabretaser. The jolt threw the droid into diagnostic mode, which only lasted a few dozen seconds. It was all the time, however, that Fetus needed. She removed the indus...
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An Inadvertent Drop of the Ball (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 47)
Zoe’s really talented in the nonverbal communication department. When she shoots you one of those looks when you fess up to something and then clam up, you’d better start talking again fast. “Please understand,” I weakly began, ...
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Time Travel Tense Trouble (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 46)
My apartment was, as it had been for so long a time, perpetually a mess. My desk was a case in point, littered with various 5D-DVDs: Primer, Millennium, the Terminator movies (except the third), the Back to the Future trilogy, 12 Monkeys, The Time Chan...
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Exchanges (Superhero Black Hole, Pt. 45)
We were walking into my apartment building, consuming some cheesecake. In all the millennia throughout which I had lived, I had been unable to find any cheesecake superior to Magic Jack’s, which was one of the downsides of having to live through ...
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Chamber
As we made progress through the tunnel, we could just barely make out the faint clatter and thud of the sewer door closing. We came out the pipe when it emerged into a small depository designed for waste trolleys to dump their contents in. Metal footho...
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Radio Armenia
“Radio Armenia,” Acrylic breathed, his voice quiet in wonder. Terminal screens and blinking lights were clustered in the side room. Too many cables to count snaked and wormed their ways to and from all the screens, computer units, servers, ...
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Walla Walla
“In forty-five minutes,” continued C:\, “a group of us is going to gather up everything that they need and is going to break into MegaCorp Headquarters. They are going to hack and slag MEPHISTO.” As he said this, the gathered Sc...
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Backdoor
“What?” C:\ asked, incredulously voicing the question the rest of us were asking internally. “The building schematics were in a relatively unprotected location among the MegaCorp internal network. There exists a section of the sewage ...
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Plans
“This,” C:\ declared, “is the War Room.” “It’s a maintenance closet,” Shortcut interrupted. “This,” C:\ reïterated, “is the War Room. Virus, the plans.” Virus cleared off the table and ...
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…Wait for It…
“A virtual curtain had inadvertently been revoked,” Acrylic explained, “and I seized the opportunity to ambulate around the inner workings of the MegaCorp systems. I was appalled beyond words. At this point, there was no uncertainty i...
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Pine Tree
I opened my eyes, incredulous. The Englishman, who seemed loth to spare his charges any opportunity for humiliation or physical injury, merely stared for a moment before shaking his head and wandering off, finding some other poor soul to abuse. “...
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Up the Sails
A strong yank from above halted my fall and jolted me to attention. Hoisted up, I stared into the face of an old man from one of the tribes in the Oregon Country, the features of his countenance worn by the march of time. “That’s a nasty fa...
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Rope Ladder
The sinister man summarily shoved me out the door to the room. My head was reeling—all the documents that had to be forged, all the money that had to have exchanged hands, all the relatives back home…I mentally initiated a curse upon the crimp who ...
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Shanghaied
My head felt as if it were to explode with every pulse of the blood in my veins. I opened my eyes and attempted to evaluate my surroundings. I was in a room, lit only with an oil lamp, casting oddly flitting shadows on the wooden walls. My first impuls...
