James Pyles's Blog, page 148

Saving the Prophet

The ceiling for his craft was infinity, and its floor was an age. It provided a buffer, so that the passing of a season or a millennium was all the same. In this way, he could not only travel up and down the corridors of his own history, but diverge into many others. Once at […]

The Sins of Our Fathers

The vintage Beechcraft AT-11 landed eight souls on a little dirt airstrip near San Ignacio de Velasco in Bolivia. Intelligence said he’d be making a stopover in this tiny hamlet to visit an old friend, another German expat. He’d just founded Transmaritima, Bolivia’s first ocean shipping company and was anxious to brag about it, especially to […]

Walking to the End of My World

And when you walk around the world, babe, You said you’d try to look for the end of the road, You might find out later that the road’ll end in Detroit, Honey, the road’ll even end in Kathmandu. You can go all around the world Trying to find something to do with your life, baby, […]

Keisha in Atomworld

They always say “never go into the light,” kind of like “moths drawn to a flame,” but seventeen-year-old Keisha didn’t have a choice. Well, that wasn’t true. She did have a choice. She could choose to let the world burn, but after two astonishing adventures into another reality, she’d gotten used to saving it instead. […]

Massacre

“It’s Shay! She’s trapped! We’ve got to save her!” Seven-year-old Jake woke up panicked and hyperventilating in the shadow of a dragon’s grave. “Jake. Take it easy. It’s okay.” His sister Mandy had him by the shoulders. His eyes looked glazed, like he was still asleep. She hugged him close to her. “It’s okay. We’re […]

Farallon Sojourn

“My grandfather was a man, when he talked about freedom, his attitude was really interesting. His view was that you had obligations or you had responsibilities, and when you fulfilled those obligations or responsibilities, that then gave you the liberty to do other things.” –Clarence Thomas It was a communications console. That’s what Isaiah had […]

Dangerous Waters

Merilyn and Riyn waited at the seashore. They had met over twenty years ago on this very beach, although their fates had been intertwined nearly fifteen years earlier after he had saved her from drowning when she was a child. Now they stood hand in hand and gazed at the sea. They were the undisputed […]

Old Boots

Gilbert felt sad leaving his old boots behind. He’d had them for so many years, that they were more duct tape now than plastic and rubber. He wore them that winter he was sleeping in an abandoned car behind Miller’s warehouse. Old Man Frank had turned him on to that one. Hit by a truck […]

The Adventures of Rocket Girl

“I’ll burn my ass off if I use this thing.” “Have a little faith, Keisha. The uniform is fully heat-resistant, and besides, the thrusters work in combination with the Barsoonian charge infused in the rocket pack, so the amount of energy required to lift a person is much lower than it would have to be […]

Reconstructing Gwen

Gwendolyn Anders was being deconstructed. No one else could tell the forty-five year old divorced woman was falling apart. She couldn’t afford to let anyone know. She had to keep moving, go to work each day, make sure her two kids got to and from school, did their homework, ate healthy meals, made it to […]