I watched the people on the bridge very carefully for some time, wishing I could read their moods properly. A lot of them were definitely afraid of me, but some of the drakes especially seemed… well, they glanced at me a lot, but when they did, they seemed to calm down slightly. They probably l...
2024-07-20 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post“Retrieval pod to ascent pod. Come in, ascent pod.”
Captain Klees pulls himself out of his half-doze and reaches for the controls. “This is ascent pod, we hear you. Over.”
“This is Gavi Sloap, piloting the retrieval pod. It’s an honour to be speaking with you, Captain Klee...
2024-07-16 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostI listened carefully to Glath’s story, stopping him several times to clarify key points. I wrote the whole thing down, then read over it, then asked more questions to fill in some of the more obvious holes and address any conflicts. Then, confident that I had all the key details straight, I cal...
2024-07-13 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe shuttle has a weight limit. It’s designed to carry the five of use back to the ship, and not much else. We lied to Antarctica about how heavy we all were, and the removal of the docking clamps will give us a bit more weight to work with, but we want to get as many modern manufacturing machi...
2024-07-09 23:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostIt’s hard to get a full story out of someone who’s acting cagey and scared of you. It’s even harder when you don’t properly share a complete language, or even the same cultural criteria for story structure. But this is, to the best of my approximation, the story told to me by Glath, Space...
2024-07-06 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe crew aboard the ship are a lot more cautious about the AI idea than we are, but do have to concede that they didn’t have a better solution. Eventually everyone agrees that if we can’t get a reliable AI from Antarctica or come up with a better solution, they’ll use my brain. Asteria star...
2024-07-02 23:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostThere weren’t even any lasers.
I suppose there was excitement, in its way. For instance, as the airlock opened into space it suddenly occurred to me that if the ship jolted again before my safety line was attached, it could simply jerk me out into space and leave me flailing just out of r...
2024-06-29 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe Hypati launcher grows. New shuttle parts are constructed. I spend far more time than I want to loading and unloading tiny battery-operated trucks with huge chunks of metal and plastic to be bolted to other parts of metal and plastic up at the base of the launcher. A construction building – ...
2024-06-25 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostYou’d be amazed how hard it is to find information about human nutrition that some random imbecile like me could understand.
Thing is, food isn’t really a problem for humans on Earth. Oh, sure, there were societies where poor people starved, and there were issues when natural disasters ...
2024-06-22 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe letters are written, read and discussed by the crew, read and discussed by the Leadership, rewritten, checked carefully for inconsistencies, rewritten again, and eventually sent. Captain Klees receives a stern letter back informing him that all orders related to major colony decisions should ...
2024-06-18 23:37:47 +0000 UTC View Post“Okay,” I explained to Glath, “so I need 240 volts, 10 amps to connect to these bits of metal on this plug here, as AC – uh, with the electrons zigzagging back and forth.”
“What are volts and amps?” he asked, crossing his front legs in what I was beginning to recognise as an i...
2024-06-15 23:30:02 +0000 UTC View Post“We need to convince Antarctica to give us an AI,” Tal says one day at breakfast, not looking away from the computer as ke talks. “We’ve tried everything else and it’s impossible. Mama can’t do it. Amy’s dregs won’t work without brains, and I think we can all agree that hooking up...
2024-06-11 23:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostFrom the outside, the Stardancer was ugly.
I guess I’d grown up looking at spaceships in fiction, with the occasional video of a shuttle launched from Earth for good measure. But what space needed, apparently, was neither style nor aerodynamics. The Stardancer was a big fat cylinder with ...
2024-06-08 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostGatekeeper Rault to Capt. Klees
Hylara has been ordered to continue to refuse supply drops due to possible infections. Be informed that this population may have undetected weaknesses in their immune systems. Provide further information on what health issues your gro...
2024-06-04 23:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostIt was her first day of practical field training, and Sienna had to admit, she was nervous. She balled her hands, willed herself not to fidget, and looked up at the flight instructor.
Elat Den Hol, the tallest natural-born Lunari that Sienna had ever seen, scowled down at her. “You’re t...
2024-06-02 00:58:25 +0000 UTC View PostSometimes I look back on my life and try to figure out exactly how I ended up on the edge of charted space with the Princess, outrunning the authorities. It is not, I suppose, a difficult question; every step in the sequence makes sense. I chose my Template because he caught my interest. I follow...
2024-06-02 00:23:00 +0000 UTC View Post“I don’t like it,” Celti tells me later. “Trading that tech gives her actions legitimacy. We could have a civil war on our hands.”
“Over a couple of unsanctioned unethical science experiments?” I’ve been an unwilling test subject enough times that I barely remember feeling t...
2024-05-28 23:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostChoose a story to run concurrently with Charlie MacNamara, once Time to Orbit: Unknown is finished.
I've removed a few of the options because they're either not something I want to run concurrently with CM or they're not ready/I'm not able to get excited about them right now. Sample chapter...
2024-05-28 04:35:27 +0000 UTC View PostYou’re not supposed to do it, of course, but it’s not unheard of for parents to try to ensure good destinies for their daughters by timing their conception carefully. Most hatchings take place under somewhat clear skies, so the gods that bear witness to the young larvae and claim them for the...
2024-05-28 04:28:53 +0000 UTC View PostJessica wasn’t sure that she liked her niece’s new boyfriend. It wasn’t necessarily the way he spent the whole party lurking in the corner on his phone – he didn’t know anybody except Steph very well, and frankly it was kind of bizarre for Steph to have invited a guy she’d been seeing...
2024-05-26 23:19:06 +0000 UTC View PostThe interpreter led the way down the tube. I followed closely, taking the opportunity to study them. They must have been watching me, too, because even though I was kind of drifting between hatches rather than actually walking, the interpreter’s faux-arms and legs moved in a noticeably more hum...
2024-05-25 23:31:01 +0000 UTC View PostAs any decent stargazer will tell you, you can’t do it in the city. You can’t do it in a town either, really, not properly. Too much light pollution. No; to properly see the stars, you have to wait for a moonless night and head out far from any electric light source and wait for your eyes to ...
2024-05-25 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post“Okay, that’s the end of our session. See you next month, Jane.” The old woman turned and walked out of the room without a second glance.
“Jade,” Jade muttered under he breath, but the trust was, she preferred this woman to the previous guy who’d run these jobseeker meetings. He...
2024-05-24 05:48:23 +0000 UTC View PostOf the wizard tower’s fourteen floors, Owen’s favourite was the library. He couldn’t read the grand tomes stacked in their towering shelves, couldn’t make out a single word of the letters that the wizard spent long hours reading and writing at his heavy desk, but that didn’t matter. It ...
2024-05-22 10:01:54 +0000 UTC View Post“Okay, look,” I say. “There’s something you should probably know.”
I explain the synnerve experiment. The Leadership stare at me with uniformly horrified expressions.
“We’re so, so sorry that that happened to you,” Tana says. “We should have picked up on what was hap...
2024-05-21 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe first thing I learn upon coming into existence is that I have no idea what sort of a creature I am. I have lineage memories of being dozens of different types of organisms, and none of them are anything like this.
There are a couple of possible reasons for that. Maybe the memories of th...
2024-05-21 12:38:40 +0000 UTC View PostThe Rapture occurred in 2030, when God called His chosen up to heaven and seven years of Tribulation started. Of course, no one noticed.
Seven years of war and famine and disease is not, when you think about it, all that different to how life was beforehand. These things come in waves, and ...
2024-05-20 18:28:19 +0000 UTC View PostSample chapters for each option will be provided shortly, then a poll will go up so that patrons can vote on what web serial I should write next.
Inner Life
Nobody knows who they really are when they’re first born. But most people get time to figure it out, a...
2024-05-20 16:46:36 +0000 UTC View PostSo, the draft for Time to Orbit: Unknown is complete. The story is 183 chapters long and will continue to release on the website until completion.
At this stage, the plan is to have a Patreon vote, where all patrons get to decide which story I write and release next. However, there is a sli...
2024-05-19 09:36:03 +0000 UTC View Post