short stories and poetry by Andrew Brown
The car ride lasted an eternity, or at least that’s how it felt to me. Thoughts rushed through my head–and […]
“Gem,” Lars pleaded, “look at me.” The girl had grown thin and frail over the past two years without a […]
A thick sense of unease spread through the three-room apartment, filling every nook and cranny with uncomfortable silence and a […]
A caterpillarwishing for changeforgoes stabilitybut not his brainsIn tranquilityhe hangs his headsoftly swingingby a single threadIf change is bringinghe does […]
I coughed up my dreams They left black stains on my sheets Rain storms in my lungs
The thick, steel doors slammed shut the moment Paul hit the ground. He rolled onto his side and opened his eyes to look back at where the men were just standing. The men who brought him here, against his will, and trapped him in this cage. They knew about his gift. Paul knew they knew. They just wouldn’t admit it. Thick, white cloth lined every wall in the small cell. Whether to protect its resident from itself (as They say) or to muffle his screams, Paul wasn’t sure. What he was sure of, however, was that he had to get out.
Oh The problem? Solved.
Dear Aiden, I hope this message reaches you safely. More importantly, I hope you are still in a state of mind to appreciate it. We haven’t heard much from your sector recently and don’t know if you have simply returned to hiding or if something is happened. Dear God, I hope it’s the former.
They say every population gradually moves towards an equilibrium in the people consistent with the 95-4-1 rule.
Mrs. Tao was droning on as usual, talking about things that Sam would never need to know—nor care to know. Instead of paying attention to something worthless, Sam was focusing all of his attention on the doodles in front of him:
Adam woke up dutifully every morning at 7AM to prepare for work as a bank teller. Every morning he would wake up, shower, dress, eat, and drive his little, blue Honda to First State Bank over on Herald Street. For more than eight hours each day, he stood at the front desk and helped the people who came in. He didn’t mind the monotony; after Sarah had left him the year before, he’d really not given much enthusiasm to anything at all. His job was perfect for passing the time.
Whether you want to or not Admit it to me, now Gelatin residue on our eyes From a night spent together in dreams Fake worlds of green and orange Entwined so, so naturally Without a trace of jam Delicious jam.
The world slowly came into view; first too dark to see, then too blurred to see, and then too confusing to understand. Widening his eyes in surprise, confusion, and worry, Tom tried to sit up from the relatively hard bed he seemed to be laying in. He’d only raised up a few inches when an outstretched arm pressed back firmly against his chest, pinning him in place. “Don’t move,” a heavily-accented (French, Tom thought) voice quickly said. The woman’s face was still blurred, but Tom could see her hovering over him in case he tried to stir again.
Fau nui rint wu’fuint Fli tyin Vun rint
Un hal’Henni Nui savan hal’Sana ui victir Hu nui burge’t
Normally, I would turn my pillow over to get to the colder side after I’ve sat up at night writing. I normally set my laptop on my pillow and prop myself up on one elbow to write, and the warmth of the laptop lingers on my pillow afterwards. When I can’t stand to keep my eyelids open any longer, I slip my laptop under my bed, turn my pillow over, and lay my head down where my electronic baby was just moments before. That’s what I’d normally do. Not tonight though. It’s been a rough day.
Question: Why is it that celebrities seem to overdose only in hotels, rather than in their or their friends’ houses? Ivan Pavlov was the first to explain in the late 1800’s that classical conditioning is a powerful tool in human behavior[1]. He showed us that the environment we’re currently in can have a large effect on our actions, but also in parts of our body that we don’t know about.
FJIN NETWORK NOTICE On the first of August, the entire FJIN Network will be undergoing scheduled maintenance. All Nodes currently connected to the Network will be temporarily disconnected for a period of seven (7) days. Your connection will be reestablished automatically when the maintenance is complete. During this time, you may experience several mild symptoms including confusion, nausea, a feeling of disconnection, and the inability to speak or process information. This is normal, and you must remember that it is only temporary while we upgrade the Network infrastructure.
Dr. Chris Baum leaned back in his creaky, black office chair, his deep brown eyes shifting back and forth across the room as he spoke. He was having a heated argument with his twin brother Brian about the responsibilities Chris recently been given. Responsibilities, he believed, that he should uphold. Responsibilities, his brother thought, no man should ever have to endure. “It’s not like I can just go back and say, ‘Hey, undo it. Take it back!’ I agreed to this,” Dr. Baum argued, “and I plan to stick with it.”
That’s when you found me I let your love surround me No longer two, we Forged our hearts a key
Lars was out of breath from running by the time he reached his girlfriend’s house. Reaching an arm out to ring the doorbell, he left his palm against the door frame and hunched over, trying to catch his breath. He’d dressed quickly after Gem had called to say she had something important to show him and, as a result, was wearing the first pair of jeans he’d seen and a plain, white v-neck shirt. His short, brown hair was messy from just waking up and his eyes were just starting to lose their early-morning glaze.
Looking up at the skylands floating over their heads amongst the misty clouds, Christopher and Vix laid side-by-side in the luscious, green grass of the prosaic world below. As the gentle breeze rolled in from the mountains to the east, the skylands swayed gracefully with the wind before slowly drifting back to their original location. Vix rolled over onto her side and looked at Christopher, who was leaning back on both elbows and still studying the underside of the floating kingdom.
Dear Citizen: According to our records, you have yet to receive the universal Upgrade provided through FJIN Labs. As of January 1st, this upgrade has been made mandatory to all citizens by law code 20938-38A. If our records still indicate that you have not yet received the Upgrade within ten (10) business days from the date stamped above, you may be liable to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, as outlined in law code 20938-38D.
The ding of the elevator informed me that it had arrived on my floor, ready to carry me off elsewhere. I lifted my head from the water fountain and wiped my lips with the back of my hand. The shiny, metal doors slid apart from each other, revealing two others already in the elevator—a man and a young woman—looking quite distraught at the delay in stopping at another floor to pick up another patron.
I don’t have a lot of time. They’ll find me soon. My name is Aiden. That’s it, just Aiden. No last name. You might have heard of me on the news lately, if you still get the news in your area. Those of you reading this—those of you who care—are why I’ve momentarily stepped out of the shadows, however dangerous it may be.
“Mail to Johnson!” The Captain held up a single, white envelope before tossing it on the table he was standing behind. He had a short crew-cut haircut, like the rest of the soldiers in the room, and was still in uniform although the day had already passed. The room smelled of Man and sweat, but everyone had gotten used to it almost immediately when the Team had marched in four months ago. Aiden Johnson and his team had had a hard day in Training and were ready to call it a night after opening their mail.
Imagine you’re standing in your dusty garage. It’s completely empty aside from you and ten cardboard boxes lined up in a row on the concrete floor in front of you. In each of these boxes are your personal documents, organized in chronological order. The boxes are closed, so how do you know what is in each box? You look closer at the sides of the boxes and notice that each one is numbered: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on. “Okay,” you think aloud, “but where is the TPS report I’m supposed to have? Lumberg needs it by this afternoon.”
“Sam, come push me!” Henry yelled excitedly as he jumped onto the park’s merry-go-round. “Sam! Push me! Sam!” Sam and Ralph were over on the park swings, thrusting their legs back and forth as they swung to see who could swing the highest. Ralph was in the lead, and he squealed happily every time he hit the peak of his backwards swing, facing straght downwards to the woodchips nearly six feet below. Only centripetal force kept him on the swing, but he was much too young to know about that.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” Justin said, unbuckling his seatbelt and looking around the plane. “I’ll be back in a minute.” His dad, a middle-aged news reporter, was coming home from a business trip that he’d brought his son on. “You’re supposed to stay in your seat,” he said, pointing to the lit seatbelt light. There had been a bit of turbulance that started a few minutes back and the pilot had switched on the light to keep people from getting hurt if the plane jerked around.
“Do you want this strawberry?” Dr. Steven asked calmly. I looked up at him, and then at the strawberry in his hand. It was a small strawberry, clearly not the best in the bunch. But it was a strawberry, and I love strawberries. Even a tiny strawberry would be a joyride for my starving tastebuds. I quickly responded, “Sure, I’ll have it.” The doctor smiled gently at me and closed his hand around the strawberry. He strolled to the opposite end of the table that I was sitting at and set the fruit down on a small, white coaster.
When someone first starts programming, the whole concept of “interpreted” languages and “compiled” languages might seem a bit confusing. Luckily, you have someone super smart like me to explain them to you in a manner that even your great grandpa could understand — even if he’s dead! All decent programming languages are either compiled or interpreted. What language you’re programming in determines whether you need to download an interpreter or a compiler to run the programs you create. There are a few differences between the two types of languages.
There was a college philosophy class that students always tried to get into because of how cool they heard the professor was. They said he gave open-ended writing assignments and provided ample time for debate and discussions in the classroom. Although he was lenient in the classroom, he always made sure the students learned by his dreadfully hard tests. His system worked well; students heard about how hard the tests were, so they tried extra hard to learn the material they needed to pass.
“You know, stealing’s not as hard as they say it is.” That’s what she said. “Stealing’s not as hard as they say it is.” That one sentence very well might have ruined my life. She was so apathetic, yet so… mysterious, that I couldn’t help but reply. She caught me off guard, so all I managed was, “Really?”
The model cracked her case open only slightly to look inside before showing it to everyone. When she saw the low dollar-amount, she smiled and threw the case open all the way. The gameshow contestant loudly rejoiced and the crowd screamed in excitement. Almost immediately, the studio’s lights switched to red. A phone on stage dramatically rang, echoing through the audience, and Howie Mandel stepped over to it to answer.
Single-dial combination locks are a common appearance in safes and places such as locker rooms and school hallways where tons of locks need to be used in many different places. These combination locks unlock by spinning a dial clockwise to the first number, reversing the direction to the second number, and rotating clockwise again for the third and final number (assuming the padlock only has three-number combinations, which this guide will cover).
This year marked the first white Christmas since 1997 in my city. On this Christmas, my younger brother woke me up early to open presents with the family. One of us sat patiently on the living room couch while the other excitedly bounced off the walls at how many presents Santa had brought this year. Ugh, I’ll give you two guesses which one of us was the calm one. I had arrived at my parents’ house late last night and didn’t get enough sleep to do much more than close my eyes and relax on the couch for a minute before being woken up the next morning.
First, install several subdomains to anonymize your DNS and wrap your IP with a cat5 SATA. Next, load up your ISP with the -n flag and nettrace your target to obtain their octagonal megahertz address. Plug this address into your latest hardware compiler. Now you can brute force the beowulf cluster with your gigatera proxy and extract the binary hash to your RAM where, depending on the speed of your kernel compilation, it will process and interpret the ones and zeros associated with an OSI model encrypted password.