Occasional Sputterings

Darkly, darkly she kicked the sand. Ice cold weather beat down upon her shoulders as the night sky rang loudly; footprints solemn and alone littered the landscape behind her. Looking slowly, she trod as lightly as the sand allowed, dragging slightly as the surf forgivingly removed traces of her presence. She found the artifact near the third dune. Covered in only a thin layer of sand, she had spotted it atop the second dune. It shown eerily in the moonlight but just enough to stand as an inverted lighthouse in an abandoned sea. Jumping lightly down the second dune, she approached cautiously - the repetitive washing of the sea was as a timepiece, ticking waves of clapping from an unseen audience, and drew her attention to the first time she'd heard mention of the device. Finally standing three feet from the artifact, she noticed a small hum seemingly without source; she recognized immediately that the object, unknown to her save for its location, seemed to be responding to ...

(ref: here ) All told, the cold gold rolled. Bold, tolled and strolled, and without hold, broke its mold. Old, the knolled gold, sold Old King Cole's extolled stronghold. Was cajoled threefold, as, holed and potholed, it offered untold help with the foaled. And holed, consoled by paroled household, the gold finally completed its unfold.

In the sixth row, Dillon sat in Meta-Cognition 101 and phased in and out of the lecture as his eyes drew toward the third row.   Head bobbing in tandem with the teacher's wry humor, eyes focused on the drawing board, the back of the head seemed to draw attention to itself - not due to any particular frame of the hair, unattended whisps, or color, but more how the head leaned toward where the professor was walking.  The head turned toward the left and a young lady seemed to vacillate between intense attentiveness and general boredom.  As his attention drifted back to the lecture, he realized that his notes had taken a bit of a distracted turn and reaching into his bag, he failed to notice a curious face turn toward the sixth row, cock to one side, and turn back toward the front.  As his eyes turned back to the same pair of heads, he noticed that the head he had been evaluating was no longer moving, but was leaned forward; the head's owner was scribbling notes and...

As Jane stepped inside the marble shed, a soft glow emanated from the walls. Five steps into the shed and the door closed revealing a desk, a chair, a small library of books on architecture, structures of antiquity, and other similar titles comprised fully half of the collection. The others seemed to be haphazardly selected, only of interest to an undergraduate bent on finishing their degree. She opened the small drawer on her right and a space appeared behind her small collection of files. Taking the galoshes off of each foot, Jane dried off each boot and placed them into the drawer - the files were gently cramped against the outside door and the weight made the drawer sag. Jane tried opening and closing the drawer to make sure the addition of the boots would not restrict the drawer's capacity to be closed. Now wearing only socks, Jane closed the drawer and followed the left wall until she found a small break in the paint. Lifting a brick rotated a small semi-circle from w...

As the rain slowly fizzled along the roof of the pagoda, Marcy stepped away from her desk and toward the closet. The words "Fourth Wall Industries" was written with a strange high-lighter on the top of the closet door. Marcy was always slightly amused by the label and opened the closet. All manner of gadgets, tools, books, and objects without names littered the inside of the closet. Marcy always enjoyed simply opening the closet door - it always appeared as if the closet were larger on the inside than without. She selected a mechanical pencil, an apple, a pencil sharpener, and a bobble-head with a striking resemblance to herself. Comfortable with her selections, she sat down and proceeded to work diligently on her homework. Draft upon draft of a new composition, reflecting the reconciliation of Emily and Jane, the conflict between Jane and herself concerning the ever-oppressive lake, and the house as a catalyst. Constructs of melody, form, and tempo sang in Marcy...

Emily knew Jane from way back ... they were sisters. The both of them grew up in a small farm; it was at that farm that Jane developed a taste for architecture. This was chiefly in response to how well the farm was built. Emily was older and had helped her dad work on the farm since before either of them had learned to speak. Emily had mastered all the tools in the normal span of such things, but Jane had always been frustrated by how her dad did things, eventually being also frustrated with Emily, who copied their father. Jane's root frustration was revealed when the barn, having been wobbly but serviceable for years, finally fell on their father. Emily's response was to grieve intensely, bury their father, and rebuild the barn, patching where she could but basically remodeling the entire thing - as close to memory as she could. Jane's response was a bit more violent. Their father had left a sizeable insurance policy behind, which paid nicely for the materials requ...

Dennington Campus of Offawalla University was known for its sprawling architecture, variety in educator, and propensity for producing high-quality graduates. Ninety percent of all graduates from Dennington went on to magnificent and dynamic positions in their respective fields; from bio-medical developments in nano-prosthetics to political meta-science white papers on the association between hybrid ecologies and the predominant leadership styles of religious cults, it was quite evident that a graduate of Offawalla had a unique and potent perspective. It was at Dennington that Jane and Marcy first met - both had drastically different core-curriculum course credits, but shared a meta-cognition class during their first semester. Initially going for radiography in mammals, Jane research proved the professor had a high drop rate. Not wanting to begin her Dennington efforts in failure, she had searched for another class in the same slot that would count towards her major, and Cognitive ...