The Outer Limits, IIA by QuantumBranching, literature
Literature
The Outer Limits, IIA
THE SIXTH FINGER
The Fermi Paradox has largely been solved, it appears.
Once an intelligent race reaches a certain technological level, it will take control of its evolutionary process, replacing the slow trial and error of nature will an artificial process that will allow individuals to experience millions of years of evolution in mere days, ending with their transformation into beings of pure thought which depart the gross matter of planets to join those who have gone before in the greater cosmos. Interstellar travel, colonization, conquest…all become irrelevant.
Of course, there is often a certain amount of detritus left behind. It i
The Outer Limits, IIB by QuantumBranching, literature
Literature
The Outer Limits, IIB
O.B.I.T.
Although it can now be built by any competent engineer, how the O.B.I.T. machine – the Outer Band Individuated Tele-tracer – works remains something of a mystery. Clearly, the business about humans being “signal-generators” is at least partially bunkum – sounds do not travel far before randomizing, and any sort of electromagnetic signal is affected by intervening solid matter in the way the OBIT is clearly not – but the machine picks up something that allows it to show people on the opposite side of the planet as pointillist luminous images of themselves, their clothes and objects in immediate con
A drabble.
The Third-Rank Hierarch of the Inner Church grinned. He had discovered a clear error of dogma in the annoying Second-Rank Hierarch James of Oxfrd's writings – he was implying that the current Nine Castes were an elaboration of a smaller number which had existed at some time in the past. That was clearly a doubleplus ungood violation of the Principle of Conservatism, under which only the High Council of the two Innermost Castes could recreate Falsepast to bring it in line with Truefuture. A clear case of Thoughtcrime. He wet his quill in the ink and began writing. If he followed Properproc and made sure to put this information in t
After the World got moving again by QuantumBranching, literature
Literature
After the World got moving again
As the ship slipped into Underspace, Gort gently laid to rest the fragile body of its android companion and servant. It was a shame, really, but given the humans xenophobia, it had been necessary to give them a humanoid mask through which the Galactic Union could speak to earth, and the android had suffered damage too severe for permanent repair.
The humans, which Gort had watched and studied through its various invisible orbiting eyes and those of its servant, were a crude, barbarous, race, their passions and fears most often overriding their reason, but they had potential, and it would be a shame if in their pursuit of "safety" through eve
Field Notes From Crypotozoology World by QuantumBranching, literature
Literature
Field Notes From Crypotozoology World
The Sasquatch, or Big Foot, is the only non-human member of the Higher Primates to possess natural psychic skills. It has long used its mental abilities to avoid humans, being of a peaceable nature. (Although the Sasquatch's mental ability to read is prey's mind make it an excellent hunter, the same ability makes it extremely unpleasant for the Sasquatch to kill anything brighter than a fairly dull rabbit). Given its high intelligence and tendency to bury its dead in well-concealed locations, it was a mostly mythical creature to the early Amerindian settlers, variously seen as helpful, a prankster, or even (most unfairly) outright evil. Rarel
The Fairly Hot Stuff Within by QuantumBranching, literature
Literature
The Fairly Hot Stuff Within
The 1962 Emergence of the Vulcanids was rather disastrous for England: the opening of a half-mile wide volcanic flue into strata 15 miles down and the consequent large-scale release of hot ash and superheated and partially toxic gasses killed several million people, the authorities having rather underestimated the scale of the problem: nearly half of London wasn’t even evacuated, and the hot poisonous cloud reached as far south the Channel. Further unpleasantness took place when an army and air force already in a murderous mood spotted the huge, clumsy Vulcanid exploratory machines “sculling” through the (to them) non-substa