A feeling of discomfort set in. I was watching a horror movie at the time. Not a particularly good one, but it was creepy enough to unsettle me. It was around 2am and I was by myself. After a scene that rattled me to the point where I couldn't take it anymore, I turned off the movie and sat in the near-dark for a while. I got up and made myself a cup of tea to calm down but it wasn't working.
Nornax looked out the window and was pleased. This was the best project they'd ever done.
The project was a ring-shaped habitat orbiting a sun. It wasn't the first one they'd built, but it was by far the largest and most advanced. Unlike with the last one, they had made sure there were stability thrusters to keep the ring from wobbling out of line over time. Additionally, they had upgraded the material and structure of the outer hull so that even IF a giant meteor were to crash into it, it wouldn't be able to puncture it. The odds were against that happening again anyway.
"When do you think we can send down the humans?" Nornax asked Leron.
"Couple of days, probably. We're still finishing filling the oceans. After that we're pretty much done."
"So you guys don't actually sparkle in sunlight?"
Constantin sighed and put his glass down. The liquid sloshed slowly.
I've never had to crash-land before, but here we are.
The ship's engine started leaking coolant due to a micro-debris impact, and even with the air filtration system in my suit I had to get out of there as quickly as possible. Getting out while still in space wasn't a good idea, so I hurried towards the closest planet with a breathable atmosphere and landed as quickly as I could.
They stopped just before passing the car in the driveway. They looked at the house, faint light shining through the windows, no decorations. Old man Tully's house. There were stories about him, and they weren't the nice kind of stories.
Stories about kids playing near his house, their ball somehow ending up in his front yard. He'd come out, silently, pick up the ball and go back into his house. The balls never reappeared. As far as they knew, he cut them to bits. Some kids said he ate them.
Danny sat down on the couch, opposite Kevin, and turned on the music. He dropped the remote on the table and sat back.
"Dude, how long has it been?"
"I dunno, 2 months or so?"
Danny grabbed a glass of wine and held it up.
"To meeting up again, then."
The building was a drab block of concrete, and the Firengine sign didn't help much to liven it up. Neither did any of the other company signs plastered next to the entrance, but most of them were just patent holding entities rather than actual companies. Mitch parked his car and walked towards the door. He hesitated before opening it, knowing that it would probably be another 11-hour day. After a sigh he felt he could probably get through it. Maybe it was a good day. Statistically it was about time he had one of those again.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Life in a nuclear shelter is hard. It's weird. I imagine it's similar to how people used to live on ocean-going ships for months on end, or people living in remote mining towns back when. There's hundreds of us here, but it's such a small community you just know everybody, whether you want to or not. I grew up here, I've never known anything other than the metal walls and the tunnels carved into the mountain. The bombs fell 46 years ago and I've learned everything I know about it from the older people in here and videos left over from that time.
It was a nice night, Antony thought while he crossed the street. Autumn had just started and the fresh air outside was pleasant. Others complained it was suddenly too cold, that they wanted summer to come back, but he always liked the colder months. In the summer, meeting up with people always involved crowded places and too many new faces. Now, meeting up was often at someone's house or in a bar. He'd always been more confident in those situations.