CategoryOnce Chance

Robert stood in front of the docking shuttle.  In a few minutes, he knew, it would lift off and take him to the orbiting asteroid dubbed New Life by the three hundred colonists.  He had said his good-byes earlier. Now, he was alone. He had taken his one chance and here he was.  In a moment of panic, he decided that he had made the wrong decision, then laughed at himself.  He...

Robert stomped down the street, occupied by his thoughts.  He failed to notice when every other window on all nearby buildings suddenly blinked and formed into a picture.  Dani, however, noticed and her gasp brought Robert out of his reverie. While the PLN installed the emergency screens in all windows, they were never used all at once because of power allocation.  Something big...

“What was it like in the twentieth century?” Robert groaned as he punched in his order for fried chicken and corn.  Of course, it wasn’t real chicken or corn, but some biological fungus grown on the Venetian Culture farms.  As the only living human who actually knew what fried chicken tasted like, Robert disliked it immensely. It tasted too flat.  Sure, it tasted like chicken, but...

Benjamin walked down the narrow corridor to his private chambers, shaking slightly from the interview with the Senators.  Senator Billings, for all his lack of manner or subtlety, had hit startling close to the mark. The only saving factor had been the restraining tactics of Senators Kiles and Senator Nyguen’s reluctance to side himself with Senator Billings.  Nearly all Senators agreed...

Dr. Benjamin Motich folded his hands on the simwood table as he addressed the Senate Committee.  The committee of three Senators had the task of investigating the claims of legal transgressions on the part of the Big Four; the four multi-corporations that effectively ruled the solar system. Only twice before in the history of EarthCo had a Senate Committee attempted to delve into the inner...

Robert chewed on the end of his cigar, staring absently at the auto-florescent ceiling above his chair.  It wasn’t until the late twenty-first century that EarthCo had developed the auto-florescent ceiling tile.  From there, it took almost a full twenty years before they became standard and all other forms of lighting were phased out. Robert glanced back down at his text; a historical...