Stories tagged “engineering”
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Psychic
Bill Wooden was a psychic, but he’d never told anybody. He worked at a high paying engineering job, siphoning good ideas from one source or another, sometimes combining them or changing them a little, then jumping in to look good to his bosses. H...
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Rides
Consider the world a theme-park, separated by an infinite number of gates, each section holding rides of greater excitement and wonder. Mathematics being th key to each of these gates. Surely this warrants math a fair measure of prestige. However, the ...
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Object/The Fall
My chest heaved, burning with new-found sensation. me. Crumpled doll in the corner of the dank, empty room. I heard a strangled whimper in the dark choke out “how…(then, even quieter)why?” My head. When did hair become so painful? Ago...
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On Patrol: True Grit
“How can you see anything in all of this?” I waved my Krillman to try and dissipate some of the smoke and dust to no effect. “Here, maybe this’ll help.” Esmil yelled, bringing a portable elp-lamp to bear. It was the size o...
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On Patrol: Spit and Prayers
I wasn’t much of an engineer, but even I could see the whole rotary feed assembly was jammed shut with a mess of wet powder. Muttering curses under my breath, I yelled into the speaking tube that the gun was going offline and yanked the disconnec...
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On Patrol: No Mere Spectator
The lower gunnery deck, where the big guns were loaded and fired, was in many ways a twin to the mess we’d just left. The chaos was slowing, though; everyone could feel the banking, everyone was preparing for a full broadside. “All hands! D...
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On Patrol: The Hydra's Last Gasp
I tried to make myself heard over the cheering, but it was a fruitless attempt. Mind spinning, I ran through the numbers – there couldn’t be much more than about ten ship-lengths of chain and the wreck already so far below us… Somebod...
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On Patrol: Disorientation
With an effort, I managed to get a hand into the front of my apron and extract a Palar clamp. Steeling myself, I let go of the railing with one hand and, after a moment, slammed the clamp into the steeply sloping deck with my other hand. The Palar̵...
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On Patrol: Kinetics
A mind does funny things when it thinks death is imminent. Bannon couldn’t have left more than an armspan or so of slack, but I still managed to consider my entire life so far (not too exciting), wonder what Firus would say about me (I wasn’...
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On Patrol: Aftermath
The adrenalin faded quickly after that, tiredness closing down my field of vision and turning the usually short journey to the bridge into a shambling mess. It was an arduous task even aided by the handrails lining each corridor, quickly devolving into...