dreamszilla

Paul Friedrich falls in love with a woman with an extraordinary ability that could be a blessing or a curse. Image generated with OpenAI I remember that she was studying a Degas. Few other people were in the museum that day, it being working hours on a workday, and it was just the two of us in that room. She was wearing a skirt with black leggings, a plum-colored blouse and quilted vest. Her hair was my favorite, one shade of brown this side of auburn. "Are you a lover of Degas?" I asked her, uncharacteristically forward. "I am a lover of beauty," she said. "Hm. Me too." I said it while continuing to look at her rather than back at the painting. She turned her head toward me. Blue eyes. Very little makeup, maybe just a touch of color in her lip gloss. "Nice line," she said. I smiled. "Thanks," I said. "I'm rather proud of it myself." She didn't answer, and moved toward the next painting, but then turned her head ...

Jasper, a market analyst working after the split of the moon into two parts, develops an algorithm that predicts how the moons' forces affect market trading on Earth. Image generated with OpenAI It started, as things often did in the early years of the Split Era, with a graph that made no sense. Jasper Ganz - thirty-seven, brilliant, already semi-disgraced - was sitting in his apartment overlooking the Hudson, a half-drunk glass of Grüner Veltliner sweating beside his keyboard, the New York night smeared silver by the twin moons. They hung in the sky like quotation marks around a sentence humanity hadn't finished writing. He ran the simulation again. Gravitational delta: 0.0006. Tidal amplitude shift: 3.7%. Derivative volatility: 12% above baseline. Lunar separation velocity correlated with commodities trading volume. "Impossible," he muttered. "Unless someone's front-running gravity ." He had said the same thing to his ex-wife, to his therapist, to ...

Stephen and his friend Farrell take an ill-advised raft trip on the Hudson River. Image generated with OpenAI The bank below the ballfield was steep, and with the beach in sight, the two thirteen-year-old boys became impatient with their careful, sideways clamber down the steep embankment overgrown with weeds, which in some places were overgrown into trees. "Let's just slide down," Stephen said. They landed feet first on the blackish sand of the beach. An old raft made of plywood nailed to a wooden skid was lying upside down on the sand. The sand was streaked with oil and tar, and its smell was dank and dirty like a gasoline station. The river was lapping at their feet. The tide was high. Because of the pollution, all the parents told the kids not to swim in the river, but they still did, the river's power and mystery too alluring to keep them out. They lived in Dutchtown even though none of them knew anyone who was Dutch. "Oh, man," Farrell yelled, ...

Bob loves his job as bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, but will soon be forced to retire; he visits an old friend for advice, and reflects on how he first became a priest. Image generated with OpenAI Bishop Bob bounded down the stairs from his living quarters to his office in the chancery office in Rottenburg. The building wasn't cheap, and in the twenty-first century, it was hard to justify the Church's spending money on architecture, but it made him happy to see that it fit in well with the medieval buildings in the downtown, pedestrian zone of Rottenburg. The architects managed to connect a building modern in style and substance to an older building and make the whole construction look aesthetically pleasing, a white-on-white that worked well. It was one of Bob's genuine successes, along with maintaining his health and staying in shape. With his thin, white hair, he probably looked his age, but he felt as energetic and young as he had been when he became bishop. All thin...