They don't warn you when you start eating hearts that eventually the heart you'll eat is your own. I have enough self-control to keep it to just the tiniest nibble every ten years or so, and I satisfy (ha!) myself with licking it in-between. You may have guessed that this results in constant hunger and a hollow spot in my chest even as I go on, but ( Read more... )

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"What? You mean to say you knew this was a suicide on the first day, and you kept using departmental resources for the entire week to dig into it and figure out every last bit and tittle ( Read more... )

He stared, revolted, as the hatch opened and a chain of tall, willowy women with hair that moved in an invisible breeze stumbled down. Chain was the key word. They were chained to each other, hand and foot, and the bruises and cuts on their bodie3s showed that it had not been easy to do. "How can they do that?" he demanded, caution barely enough to ( Read more... )

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Only a spouse or close relation may represent you in the court of law," the magisterial processor said, peering seriously over her blindfold at Rand. "You have got to be kidding me." "No. It is designed so that persons with bonds and family ties, who are naturally more socially-guided, have a greater chance of avoiding the law." "But all my family ( Read more... )

Shadows walk through the hours of the day when there should be no shadows. Death comes for those who should not die. Those who should die...transform into something else. All the world is falling apart. This is what the TV said, before it went blank, before it switched over to an automated broadcast emergency channel controlled by who knows what. ( Read more... )

The man with the one golden eye smiled at her. His cheek puckered around the scars surrounding the golden orb implanted in his eye socket. "You have juice on your chin," he told her. She glared at him. "It's hard to drink tidily when you're tied to a chair and a goon is pouring juice down your throat." He whisked out his handkerchief and approached ( Read more... )

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She always said our relationship wouldn't work because our atomic numbers were too far apart. She was light and quick, up near the top of the scale, and I was heavy and slow, down near the bottom. She flitted around the lab with a smile for everyone (even myself, when I was a new hire and entirely unsure of my way around the science station). She ( Read more... )