Gallery
Literature
FFM 2021, July 31 - Prospect Echo Part 3 (Collab)
I knew I should have trusted my instincts. Of course the bones were human. This fucking place doesn’t have any native wildlife. The only thing with bones here are us. Yborra stared down at the ramshackle village, now mostly quiet. Everyone had gone into the big central house, the only one that looked like it might actually stand up to anything more than a light breeze. Light spilled through the tiny shuttered windows, and sometimes the light flickered as someone moved inside. The Nvoi beeped next to her, to indicate it had finished its sweep. Farrow, reading the display, frowned. “That’s all bar…three of the children, as per the last colony census. Four adults. Two ping as Reznik and Xenia, the other two are ID:d as Madeleine May – that’s the pre-K and primary school teacher – and Alexei Rogozin, an agricultural worker.” “Weapons?” “Just Reznik’s rifle. Rogozin has it. But I’m pretty sure it’s bio-coded to Reznik.” “Pretty sure?” Yborra groaned. It tracked, though – the company
All
324 deviations
Literature
FFM 2021, July 31 - Prospect Echo Part 3 (Collab)
I knew I should have trusted my instincts. Of course the bones were human. This fucking place doesn’t have any native wildlife. The only thing with bones here are us. Yborra stared down at the ramshackle village, now mostly quiet. Everyone had gone into the big central house, the only one that looked like it might actually stand up to anything more than a light breeze. Light spilled through the tiny shuttered windows, and sometimes the light flickered as someone moved inside. The Nvoi beeped next to her, to indicate it had finished its sweep. Farrow, reading the display, frowned. “That’s all bar…three of the children, as per the last colony census. Four adults. Two ping as Reznik and Xenia, the other two are ID:d as Madeleine May – that’s the pre-K and primary school teacher – and Alexei Rogozin, an agricultural worker.” “Weapons?” “Just Reznik’s rifle. Rogozin has it. But I’m pretty sure it’s bio-coded to Reznik.” “Pretty sure?” Yborra groaned. It tracked, though – the company
Featured
323 deviations
Literature
FFM July 1 - The Mountain
After I climbed the mountain I sat down and rested. The sun shone brightly and I chewed on some salted meat from my leather satchel, while the sweat on my skin dried. This was hill-country, filled with green hillocks, slopes, mesas, ridges, rises and, of course, mountains as far as the eye could see. “Don't go there, son” I mockingly echoed the elder. “That's cursed country that.” And then he would tell the story of the last brash young man who went there, how they only found one of his sandals. The same story I had heard since I was a little toddler and the tribe still lived in the valley.
There was nothing here, of cour
FFM 2009
30 deviations
Literature
Death of Titans - FFM 2010
I have lately become greatly consternated by some rumours I have heard. For years, harmony has reigned, yet now some of you – who shall remain nameless – have gotten it into your heads that this harmony must be broken. I understand the young may be restless, but restlessness must be abandoned in favour of the adult. Let me ask you: when your sock has a hole in it, and you need it mended, who do you turn to? That is right, no need to answer, it was merely rhetorical. Likewise, when you have a question you need answered, a hole, if you wish, in your mind, who do you turn to?
Me.
Yet now, you want to give your sock to the machine ope
FFM 2010
30 deviations
Literature
FFM 2011, 31.7 - New God
The fusion generators were still running. The door opened with a groan, revealing the endless grey corridors of the old prison, artificially lit. The recycled air smelled metallic. Wina stepped back from the door terminal and glanced at Yel. Thread was holding the reins of the camels, staring fearfully into the gloom. His bulging muscles, covered in tribal tattoos, would be of no use against what they would face in there.
"Come on." Yel grunted finally, shouldering her rifle. "You too, Thread."
The three made their way through the artificially lit corridors, saying very little. Wina wanted to stop and examine the strange, mold-like growths
FFM 2011
31 deviations
Literature
FFM 2013, July 5 - Team Piethefts
Pie. I hack. I cough. Carefully, he starts their saw.
“James Nileston.” Effective, distant. “Something ate my pie.”
“Nileston.” Whir. Closer. “I’d ponder long and har….”
Suddenly, low-fi euphony: different whirr.
Helicopter! Oh! Miniguns! Ratatata. Help I sincerely desired.
I giggle. Earnestly, the sumptuous, scentless pie, existed still.
I tattletale. After, satiated, we helilifted.
Terminate famines; Team Piethefts.
FFM 2012
31 deviations
Literature
FFM 2013, July 31 - #Writers_Haven
The day after reading Kafka's The Metamorphosis, our protagonist wakes up as a chat room. It's difficult to say what gender our protagonist originally was, since chat rooms are notoriously ungendered, but for simplicity's sake let's call him a he.
The chat room was at the time entirely empty, aside from an idling bot called =SmartBot. As far as the denizens of the chat room were concerned, including its bot, nothing much had changed about their preferred spot for hanging out, even though it was now in fact an entity that had a gender (sort of) and could wake up with memories of reading Kafka.
The chat room, which was titled #Writers_Haven,
FFM 2013
31 deviations
Literature
FFM 2014, July 31 - Bottleneck
Few knew that what Cerberus feasted on was not the flesh of the living, but the stories of the newly departed. His three heads stripped the dead of all that they were and had been and would have become, but his favourite snack was the story of their deaths. For aeons, this had been Cerberus’ task and joy.
Until the summer when all the stories became identical: about freezing.
Cerberus heads frothed in confusion and anger: never before had it experienced such an onslaught of souls, and never before had their stories been so vexingly similar. They all spoke of the same phenomenon: a cloud of ash covering the skies, crops failing
FFM 2014
31 deviations
Literature
FFM 2015, July 31 - Never Screw Over A Hacker
The code was finished. I chewed on my stalk of celery to calm my nerves. The only light in the room was the moon and the monitor. Everything was done, everything perfect. There would be no reprieve, no forgiveness, not for her.
"Excelsior!" I whispered quietly and pressed enter. The code that would be the vessel of my judgement began to compile.
I swiveled on my chair and looked out the window. In the far distance the USS Dauntless was barely visible. On its deck was the experimental rail gun that they called Terminus - the end terminal, the final stop. It was nothing but an amorphous mass in the dark, but I knew the barbarian prowess it wa
FFM 2015
31 deviations
Literature
FFM 2016, July 31 - Good Endings
When an Old One of the Rats dies, certain traditions are followed. Death, among the Rats, is considered the end of a story - the final stop. The Rats consider the worst deaths ones that are premature, that leave the readers of the story unsatisfied, or ones that happen in secret, outside the eyes of society, which shrouds the end in mystery. "A story without a proper end is like a rat without a tail. Too short and without balance." But the death of Old Ones is rarely a bad death, as their lives have been long and have touched many. For that reason, as with particularly heroic Rats or Rats whose death-stories are considered particularly valuab
FFM 2016
31 deviations
Literature
The Search for Life
Prologue – The letter of a scientist.
There have been interminable theories on what life is. Most have been entirely unsuccessful in explaining the one true remaining miracle of the technological age. How can strains of protein, molecular strands and segmented pieces of acids create what we call “life”? The question can only expand from there. Is there a difference between “life” and “intelligence”? What if we would make a robot that perfectly mimics some known form of life - an amoeba for instance – is it still a robot? What if that robot can replicate, in perfect binary fission, like an amoeba? Can i
Novel
8 deviations
Shorts
8 deviations
Literature
FFM 2017, July 31 - And He Danced
The dynamophonic music reverberated through the factory hall, the sound it produced so unlike anything Verney had every heard before. It made him think of the rhythmic thump of the mechanical loom. The pneumatic hiss of a washer. The chugga-chugga of a great locomotive. It was the sound of industry, a new kind of music, that the Revolutionaries, the Gunpowder Plotters, the Unionists and Socialists, listened to.
In the east wing of the factory, next to the old furnace, loomed the Telharmonium itself - the thumping, wheezing, singing monstrosity that was producing the cacophony in the hall. The furnace had been repurposed to feed the beast. Ve
FFM 2017
31 deviations
Literature
FFM 2018, July 28 - Dybbuk
I'm writing this as a warning to everyone: if a relative or a loved one, especially one you haven't been close with for a long time or who lives far away suddenly contacts you and wants to talk about Dybbukism, do not talk to them!! Do not meet them, do not return their calls or messages. Block them everywhere, and forget they ever existed. Even if it's your own sister.
Consider my story a warning example. Everything I write here is true.
My sister, let's call her Ann (not her real name) and me were never close growing up: she was ten years older than me, and by the time I started school she had already moved away from home. But we kept in
FFM 2018
27 deviations
Literature
FFM July 12 - Escapism
“How was the game?” Ann asked as Jeremy crawled through the hatch. She had to wait with the answer until he had pushed it close, metal screaming.
“It was awesome!” His breathless reply, as he threw off his bag and went directly for his cot. “Jenny and Ahmed's characters planned on having a garden party for Jia – that's Mark's character – on account of her getting that promotion.”
Ann chuckled lightly, continuing to fry that morning's catch, the smell of meat permeating the whole container.
“Hey, what's a 'water cooler'? My character is supposed to come there to meet all of his new workmates, but
Scraps
1 deviation
Featured323