science fiction

Where to find Chapters 1-20? They’ve been published in book form as “Paradigm Shift” by Harper Kingsley.

Available at Amazon as kindle and paperback, and everywhere else (Smashwords, Walmart, Overdrive, Scribd) as ebook.

If you buy a copy, your money goes toward keeping me alive. So thanks for that.

Enjoy…

INTERLUDE

“Readings are holding steady, Dr. Fowler. We’re ready to begin the test.”

Egan pushed his glasses up his nose and gave the young astrophysicist a tired smile. “Well then, we shouldn’t keep them waiting much longer, should we?” He stood and picked the tablet computer off his desk. His back made an unpleasant popping and cracking sound when he twisted his shoulders, and he sighed at the relief of tension. They’d all been cooped up in the lab for too long. He hadn’t directly seen the sun in over two weeks.

The base had been cut out of the side of a mountain and was reached through a 10-mile-long tunnel bored through the rock. Since the beginning of the Janus Project, nobody had been allowed in or out of the mountain and wouldn’t be until the experiment was complete. They were all beginning to feel a bit of cabin fever, though none of his scientists would ever sacrifice such an amazing opportunity by asking to leave early.

He made a mental note to have the infirmary hand out extra vitamin supplements. The last thing they needed was to have someone suffer a meltdown when everyone was in such close quarters. He still remembered the drama of the Antarctica expedition, when Carruthers put everyone on edge with his Hannibal obsession and 10-hour marathon of cannibal movies. Nobody had slept comfortably around him after that.

Striding purposefully toward the heavily armored test chamber, Egan forced the last tiredness from his mind … Read the rest “ParaShift2: Interlude + 01”

A. Once humans begin farming in space, the wealthy move onto luxurious space stations while relying on the Earth for resources and labor. Instead of there being a rebellion, the stationers begin seeing themselves as above normal humanity.

1/A FILL: After the Blight struck, there was no choice but to move agriculture production to the orbital farms. Which meant building a place where humans could live.

Some nights, the sky looks nearly blocked out by the ag-farms. They’re curving bends of metal and plastic, each its own little world, containing thousands of people living miles away from the problems of the Earth below.

The ag-farms once answered to Earth command, but after the War they governed themselves. They chose to use their newfound independence to make themselves into the kings of the sky, doling out food with ungracious superiority.

The Dirt People toiled in factories and in mines while the Exalted enjoyed the fruits of their labors. Ever more fantastical scientific advancements were made on the backs of the people, but the wonders they created were not for themselves.

While the lifespans of the Exalted grew ever longer, the lives of the people became short and filled with sickness and discontent.

What parts of the Earth not destroyed by the Blight were damaged as the people were forced to dig deep and drag out the precious ore.

Year by year, the dying cries of the planet made themselves known to the people. From earthquakes and tornadoes, to explosions of hidden gas and mile long fissures that opened with deadly suddenness. Yet the Exalted did not listen to the dying cries of the people.

They floated high above the world in their shiny and clean habitats, served by their robots and genemod slaves. They lay in their healing pods and never … Read the rest “PROMPT: Humanity splits itself apart”

The Portuguese man o’ war is a fascinating organism.

From Wikipedia: “The Atlantic Portuguese man o’ war (Physalia physalis), also known as the Man-of-war, bluebottle, or floating terror, is a marine cnidarian of the family Physaliidae. Its venomous tentacles can deliver a painful sting. Despite its outward appearance, the Portuguese man o’ war is not a common jellyfish but a siphonophore, which is not actually a single multicellular organism, but a colony of specialized minute individuals called zooids. These zooids are attached to one another and physiologically integrated to the extent that they are incapable of independent survival.”

But what really caught my attention was this line in the “Predators and prey” section of the article: “The blanket octopus is immune to the venom of the Portuguese man o’ war; young individuals carry broken man o’ war tentacles, presumably for offensive and/or defensive purposes.”

And that’s where this Prompt comes from. The idea that an alien race might use biological weaponry to go against human technology.

I imagine a human ship meeting an alien race with chitinous armor covered with luminescent circles and stripes. One touch incapacitates, and the human crew is quickly overcome. They are taken back to the alien ship where they are examined and dissected by the curious aliens that communicate via pheromones and don’t recognize human speech as a language.

As a result of that first disastrous meeting, humans attack the alien ship. It becomes a catastrophe when the aliens respond to the loss of their scout ship by sending in the Armada (swarms of ship able to change color and block all radiation, rippling to match the space around them, seeming to disappear). Every meeting between humans and the aliens result in the humans losing, either when their ships are destroyed or when the … Read the rest “PROMPT: Man o’ war”

Title: Two Scenes
Subtitle: Kanon vs Canon: Behemoth
Author: Harper Kingsley
Genre: science fiction, superhero, action
Link to part one: Two Scenes 01

The sounds of battle were getting closer and he found himself bracing for that moment when Behemoth crushed him and the civilians that depended on him. Hearing the adults hushing the panicked children above him did not make him feel any better. There were lives depending on him.

Seth kicked up his speed, praying that he could get them away before the fight reached their location. He could hear the shrieks of the children as they were jostled around inside the van, but he didn’t have the wherewithal to worry about them. He had to focus on getting away.

He thought he could feel Behemoth’s hot breath on the back of his neck, that was how close Behemoth was getting. It seemed the giant villain had spotted the van and had decided to go after the kids.

Through a window darkly gazing
At a sight afraid to see
Breathing deep the salted water
Dreaming dreams, of you and me.