The ravens spiraled above, then perched on the longship’s mast. Ocean spray battered Bjørn’s grizzled and scarred face, misting in his long gray beard. He unblinkingly gazed out from the bow, staring into the distant unending white sea. Crest after crest tumultuously broke. Ceaselessly they bore the ship further out to sea.

Years of conquest and butchery left him numb to the simple lifestyle of village life. He had passed through many places like his home - each left aflame and devoid of life. Many of the men returned from pillaging had lived in these villages, but their blades were dull, their wits reduced to that of a lame horse. Fools, all of them, fell victim to sword and bribes - lured from the safety of villages and torn apart out of sight. The old, simple, and unaware were easily dispatched, and the first to go.

Bjørn could hear the whipping of the single sail in the...

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

Villa Peruggia sounded far more elegant than it truly was. The remnant of an mid-twentieth century missile silo, Rand’s home was little more than a bombed out cylinder with work lights hanging throughout most of it. He occupied a single level of the base, leaving the other ten circular floors mostly untouched. Rand had done a certain amount of restorative work to the site to ensure it lasted, including heavily reinforcing and sealing the concrete slab protecting the silo from the surface. Glass panes ringed almost every floor, with only a few remaining open for Rand to access the emptied tube where a missile would normally rest. A single hallway ran from the silo proper to what had been the barracks and office, now intersected by a dormant rapid transit line to another WELL.

Rand hadn’t arrived home yet. He was several miles away, just entering the transit tunnel...

Thrill seekers, some call us. Others call us reckless. Some think we’re meddlesome kids writing graffiti. We’re not.

We’re explorers. Like Columbus or Magellan, we branch out across our world hoping to find something - hoping to find anything. We pull back brambles, lift barbed wire, jump fences - we climb hand over hand, one foot after the other.

Tonight, we climb the bridge. The three of us, packs filled with coffee and sandwiches, set out to touch the sky.

We’ve done it before, just in a different place. Hand over hand, one foot after the other. We’re careful, watching each other as we ascend the steelwork. Once you’re over the first major hurdle, it’s usually easy going; there’s a ladder here or there, safety walkways, all the stuff maintenance crews need to do their jobs.

Over the protective beams and above the pedestrian level, we find a ladder with rebar rungs. We ascend...

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The girl with the flowing copper hair stood in the cold chill of mid-morning. Her toe throbbed from hitting it on the table, but she didn’t try to rub the pain out; she deserved it for being so foolish. She had spent a long time trying to get to this moment and she had ruined it.

She held the blanket closer, wrapping it tightly as the breeze picked up. She gathered her clothes haphazardly discarded in the back rooms and silently left out the front door. The guards paid her no mind - they had seen the same pre-dawn escapes happen numerous times. The penthouse owner was known for his passion in love-making and anger, so it would be best if she wasn’t there when he found out he had been robbed only steps away. She made her way to her downwell home on the rapid transit lines. She changed shuttles four times, covering her tracks in case she was followed.

When she arrived...

AD 2160. 5AM.
Outside Lincoln, Nebraska.

The whine of the tiny motor on his belt hisses to a halt gradually as the carbon fiber rope stopped spooling. He had descended 3 miles of glass and steel in 212 seconds: a new record. Another 12 miles of darkness gaped below him. Twelve more miles into humanity’s new salvation. He wasn’t concerned about humanity or salvation though.

The night sky leaked through the perfectly circular opening above him. Some stars seeped through the overcast sky into what looked like an oil painting. The moon hovered a little off-center, a soft yellow aura radiated through the clouds surrounding it. More clouds moved over the former breadbasket of America, sweeping like tumbleweed across the arid plains. There weren’t many left above ground. Not much of anything was left. Only at twilight could the upper levels of the WELL see the sky: solar radiation was too...

It was difficult for her to put into words exactly what she wanted to say. The words were there. She had the words to utilize. Unfortunately, it was 10PM, and she only had six words left. She had used 494 words ordering coffee, conducting meetings and talking with her mom. Now, when she needed them most, she couldn’t spare the words.

Frustrated, she took a moment and gathered her thoughts. There were so many complex thoughts and extravagant ways to expound on the ideas whizzing through her mind. How to get them out in only six words? Why had she used so many ordering coffee this morning? How many likes or ums had she wasted words on?

She had seen an archaic adage printed in a battered book: actions speak louder than words; it didn’t make much sense to her though. When every one of her 500 words is treated as special, actions seem cheap; they’re the easy, stale ways to communicate. She...

He had thought a watch couldn’t be complicated, but that was before he opened it and peered into the heart of time. Each gear glinted in the shine of the artificial light bearing down upon them all-all but one small rusted gear just out of the reach of his tweezers. It started to come loose many years ago after his mother had passed, a mournful event full of black dresses and tears, yet all he could recall was the rhythmic, comforting tick, tick, tick of the watch on his wrist. The elegant strokes of the nearby antique grandfather clock’s second hand swept around the perfectly circular face, hauntingly reminding him of every second lost. Tick, tick, tick. Onward it marched. Days moved on and the hand kept moving on his small wristwatch, until today when he awoke to find its hands had stopped.

He sat down at the bench and removed the casing of the watch, the mass of gold, bronze and...

Stories happen at every point of every day. They happen on the street or behind closed doors. Some of us weave intricate narratives while we wash our hair in the shower. Others write them for a living. Stories are a constant throughout our lives, they can be simple boy-meets-girl, or they can be more complex boy-meets-girl-hates-girl-hates-boy-meets-in-10-years-fall-in-love. They can be love stories, murder stories, stories of missed connections, or stories of no connections.

My story is about a commonplace ride on the train; a simple point A to point B story line. I got on the train. Then I arrived at my location, promptly getting off it. My story isn’t an interesting one. But good stories are rarely our own; they’re the ones that occur around us, our second hand experiences, even the ones we create in our minds about those around us.

When a young man, large and draped in a light...