Portals

by Douglas E. Richards

Have you ever tried taking a phone away from a teen, especially for an extended period?

All this preaching spoils what until now has been a jolly good story. I am beginning to root for evildoers who want her out of the way.

“Really?”

Don't ever say "really." It's really bad English.

I had been taught that going into battle with someone you loved—especially a subordinate—was a terrible idea, because it led to suboptimal decisions.

Two out of the three enhanced fighters in the story are women to begin with, and they don't belong on the battle field, if only because it'll drive the men around them to make bad decisions.

Were we dealing with extraterrestrials?

This conclusion is too hasty. They may have been humans who have invented a new language for the battlefield.

The most important thing to know is that I do love you.

Like one loves one's pet. Isn't having sex with a being from another planet bestiality?

They were a reshuffling of the genetic deck never seen on Earth.”

Can they even cross-breed with terrestrial humans? Wouldn't they find them repulsive?

I never thought I’d have sex with an extraterrestrial.

It's like a Cro-Magnon humping a Neanderthal, which, science tells us, actually did happen.

“Our greatest emperor, Caesar, is only linked to a salad. And he didn’t even invent it.”

Caesar wasn't an emperor. The Senate made him a dictator, like Sulla. Augustus, Caesar's adopted heir, became the first emperor.

unchartered Island in the north pacific.

...uncharted island in the North Pacific.

the idea of six thousand innocents being annihilated in this way was devastating,

If they were so intelligent, why, they'd know not to put their eggs in one basket. Scatter and blend, that's the formula.

“For the greater good?” screamed Ashley through her tears,

If she was so superhumanly clever, she'd control her emotions better and there'd be no crying and no screaming.

But just to remove all doubt, let me tell you how I found your base in the first place.

Why is he telling them all this? The video on his computer could have been an animation. Much easier done than blowing something up for real.

For any civilization to survive, to evolve to the next level, this is a malady we must get control of.

In Malaysia and Singapore they hang drug pushers. How about that?

There are two portals from Earth leading to worlds on which humanity has gone extinct. We propose that we gradually relocate ourselves to one of these worlds. To a pristine, unspoiled planet, with unlimited natural resources that have never been tapped. For ease of discussion, we’ll call this planet Haven.

This is Woke Haven: kill everybody but a handful of chosen ones, restore pristine nature, and wallow in it. Like every utopia it's just a heap of nonsense.