November 6, 2007
Re: Complaints and customer service
To What Natural Forces It May Concern,
I have been a firm supporter of your institution all my life, but lately I have been very unhappy with certain options in your program. For example, to restrict menstruation, the only options your program gives me are pregnancy or old age. [...]
I’m starving for work almost as much as I am starving for food. Being a detective is supposedly glamorous and all, but most days I’m cooped up in my bland, colorless office waiting for someone to show up with a meal ticket. Times are hard and clients are scarce. I’ve been thinking lately of going [...]
It was three years ago when my grandmother died. D came around just when Gram was at her worst. But when Gram passed, D stuck around and spent more time together. He and I got pretty close pretty quick, even though he was a little sad for my taste. D was a good guy and though he could be depressing some days he was usually a pretty laid back, funny dude.
“Why me?”
“I told you. Across all the parallel worlds I study, across all these separate realities with their vastly different peoples and histories, your gene sequence (give or take a few hundred allelic differences) is found more often than any other individual’s. Across a wide spectrum of possibilities, you are a constant. You are the most common man in the multiverse.”
You can download the MP3 of Patrick Sullivan reading his story at this MediaFire link.
The day was beautiful, warm and dry. Mason saw it as a perfect opportunity to go running, especially since his family was away for the week. He got into his running clothes and took off down the dirt trail [...]
An icy breeze blew by, a little sharper than the last. It was met like it’s predecessor with little notice and greeted only by an equally sharp exhale. The two plumes of warm-but-cool vapor that met about an inch out of the nose was the only greeting it received; a welcoming party of pure chemical reaction.
I stood up from where I had lain on the floor of the warehouse. No windows or open doors were within my line of sight, yet I knew it was nighttime. I wish I could say how I knew, because my gut told me it was important, but right now I simply wanted to know why I wasn’t a corpse.
As I woke, I immediately felt the intense heat of the sun on my already sweating forehead. The first motion I made, before opening my eyes or taking a deep breath, was wiping the back of my hand across my brow and attempting to mop up some of the perspiration dripping down my face. It did little to help, but I didn’t think there was much that would help in this heat.
Night-time calls now were nothing in comparison to the rambling conversations they had had years ago. Now, at 2am, it was mostly he who rambled, his speech drunken and slurred, his intonation low and steady, a sleepy stream of commentary about the bars he had visited that night. She could hear the murmur of music and people talking in the background.