Who did he think he was? He was an #associate, mid-tier transfer clerk routing freight between Earth, Luna, and Mars. She’d never notice him. The shuttle hummed; stars drifted like paperwork. He wondered, could a cybo feel loneliness, would she have protocols for the condition? #vss365 #scifi

Her words, small gusts against my canvas, teasing out shapes from stillness. Now and then they filled the sails on a broad reach; mostly I rowed through calm, chasing the shimmer where hope forms brackish water with doubt. She’s testing if the sea between us might yet let her drift closer. #poetry

The diplomats spoke the vocabularies of neutrality, words bent like plasma in artfully manipulated magnets. No one mentioned the mines under the moon’s surface. When the Admiral smiled the envoy sensed the need to #advert, too late. Courtesy, in space, is often just slower form of ordnance. #vss365

The universe doesn’t wait for consciousness to resume each morning after sleep. As far as I can tell, it keeps breathing, humming its soft machinery of light and dark. Our minds surface together, blinking at the same infinity, choosing to notice, to care, to rejoin the world, and to call that hope.

The sound of thunder is a rumor; lightning is what actually speaks, the air screams, expands, collapses and then we hear the echo. When we say we hear the sound of thunder, we should mean silence; the instant after creation when everything waits to see if it survived. Thunder, the sound of light.

2030: artillery shells still tore steel from the sea, but the CIC AI just laughed: “fire again, 62% chance of narrative symmetry.” The officer of the deck spat blood, realizing history wasn’t written by victors anymore. It was arranged by algorithms with ironic code. #vss365 #militaryfiction

Errands, chores, tasks, projects, initiatives… it all multiplies, hours fray. Then your smile : “Hiya! I’ve looked forward to our chat all day.” The hour, an #oasis, no map, no measure. For a spell reconnection outweighs arithmetic, and quiets the cacophony of life with our day dreams. #vss365

I’ve spent my life waiting for the tide. Age teaching patience, and patience teaching calm. The list of lightly grounded hulls I’ve skippered is too long, but sail we must. I know the tides come as clockwork, surely, lifting what waits long enough, carrying those who navigate safely to deeper water.

Rereading 𝑮𝒓𝒂𝒗𝒊𝒕𝒚’𝒔 𝑹𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒃𝒐𝒘: the page itself flickers, hymns beneath jokes beneath palinodes of ruins and … a carnival atmosphere. Equations chant, desire coils, paranoia flowers from ash. The rocket waits, omen or machine or key in a lock. To turn it is to be turned. #Pynchon #GravitysRainbow

The Archives smelled of vellum and cold stone; in its hush he lifted the vessel, vapors thinning to a #blur across his gaze. A glossator’s crabbed hand had marked it “parva cervisia”; small beer. Was it the draught that was weak, or the vow itself? He drank, the thin brew folding into him. #vss365

Ontological Warfare Inertial frame drifting microns, in that math lived extinction. The #conundrum: … fire coils early, lose concealment; wait, lose time. The fleet’s banter flooded: “All vectors collapse to one.” The captain wondered. Is she hearing calculus or canticle or myth. #vss365 #scifi

Δv drained with each failed sublimate cycle. Frost bloomed, spectral arcs refracting a rainbow he couldn’t see as God’s grace. He was a Pynchon footnote now, paranoia embodied. The engine coughed louder than the men locked within the din and smoke filled ship spiraling towards the planet. #vss365

I write one sentence at a time, for one reader at a time. They may never know they’re the reader. It’s broadcast, yes, but aimed like a private beam of thought. Others overhear, but my hope is in that single line reaching a single soul. That’s writing for my muse. #writingcommunity #muse

By the glacier she rested from the journey, frostfire tangled in her hair, the low sun casting her eyes a deeper blue than the ancient ice itself. Her #scrutiny unspooled me, thread by hidden thread, yet offered no clues. Archive me, melt me, or free me: all futures lay silent in her gaze. #vss365

Gene Wolfe = genius! In “The Wizard Knight”, he slips in a line: a man runs “as fast as two hares.” In old Greek we’re warned, «ὁ δύο λαγώ διώκων, οὐδένα καταλαμβάνει» he who chases two hares catches none. Wolfe inverted the proverb, gifting us a myth where the impossible briefly becomes true.

He walked a path rumored into being by monks who’d lost faith in the roads. Each step folded time: one world peeling off, another stitched on. Shadows fountained east. Quietly the forest began to chant, low and #sonorous, he knew then there was never any map he’d be able to follow to her. #vss365

The ship’s corridor itself bent to her lyrical #caprice, exotic alloys vibrating in modes he hadn’t heard since before absence became his atmosphere. Her words threaded in the hum, a reprise, a measure hidden in complexity until all blurred, and he felt himself written back into time. #vss365

Seven days of near flatline static, him compulsively re-reading the graphs like maybe patience could conjure a signal from the noise. Then: blip. Not random noise. Pure, absurd and cosmic. He laughed, he worried, he rebooted the link for better audio. The deepest truth: she was still out there.

We was at the Somme, so we were, sky sagged like wet canvas an’ the barrage all done. Tommy swore loud that a rat wore our colours, Alfie just give the sarge a look. Mud’s in our boots an’ in our heads now. Cook sez, “No fate left in the pot, lads, only the #eventuality come the morrow.” #vss365

They kept the beige #bellwether on an altar. It never spoke. Men and women prayed. Elders and children wept for time made quiet snd brittle. Priests preached of an empire consumed by the promise of connection. In silence they believed. In silence they stayed. In silence they waited. #vss365 #modem

Did you know philosopher Henri Bergson believed time was unmeasured, a living tide rather than a march? In his vision of duration, silence turns mystical, like a breath without words, lingering past reason, dissolving in the quiet yet never quite gone. (I did NOT know, and so I am sharing.)

The physicist studied two proofs. To #reinvigorate the lattice meant acknowledging silence; angles snd magnitude confused, vectors keened. But wait, perhaps the cosmos longed to be unpicked, the loom weary of weaving, a hush when equations forgot their purpose. No. The silence was safe. #vss365

Hunger anoints my compound bow. The razor sharp arrow gleams like a shard stolen from the sun. To miss is exile, to strike is all. The stag is as quiet as an oracle, ribs flaring with cavernous breath. Focus is my liturgy: the prayer that the gods will let us eat tonight. #poetry #hunting #hunger

I longed for the dual luxury of time and options; to point and say “this”. Yet the path is paved, single track and unbroken, here hidden for a few meters ahead. I walk it anyway, convincing myself each step is chosen. Fate chuckles, but I still feel today was mine to decide. #poetry #fate #choice

The dark grey sea can not instruct with kindness. The midshipman labors in silence in wind, hands torn, eyes salt-stung. The waves, steep cliffs, each whitecap a lesson. To become worthy of the sea is covenant: to flow over her surface without breaking, to rise when summoned. #poetry #ocean #sailor

The road swallows the careless general. A great field marshal keeps his host moving yet never destroys it with mindless haste. He measures the miles, feeds the hunger, guards the night. And when dawn comes, the army is a coiled storm, furious and fed, eager to break the day with fire. #wisdom

“Can it be fixed?” the boy asked. The keeper whispered “#perhaps,” quieter and deadlier than the raging storm. Lantern gears crusted in salt, whale oil slicked his palms. Beyond, a forlorn brigantine clawed closer to the shoals, its survival balanced on the sighting of just one more light. #vss365

Adam Smith once wrote: “Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.” A reminder that worth is more than applause, more than likes. Long-form Essay at link below. #Philosophy #Economics #Love #Virtue #FutureOfWork

A #catastrophe, I thought at first, her quiet on the hill. But the wind in the Scottish heather sang of bridges still standing, hidden in distance. I carry the little canary claim slip, worn and small, a talisman of passage; of potential, deniable in detail, but as real as memory. #vss365

#Extrusion calculations again? A torus pressed through four-space, its shadow writhing on his screen; a holy scroll half-burned. The ship waited for orders, patient, cruel. He knew the numbers solved themselves, but only if he surrendered the part of him that still believed in Euclid. #vss365

The nights #conspire with his ribs, compressing his chest with ache. His long years hear her, “not yet” as both promise and exile. She waits for safety, for cleaner lines. He seeks danger, a quickening fire, his rekindled heart. Time itself the canvas here, beating in a tempo of patience. #vss365

Her #reign lingered, surrounded by the low hum of the life support systems, a perfume of thought he could not silence. He pined, half-mad, while she averted her gaze, not from him but from the calamity of joy. To love, she reasoned, in this unknowable time, was to risk all she had earned. #vss365

A warm September night, city skyline a #style of spilled jewels beyond the 27th-floor patio, hours into wine and stories. She suddenly broke his gaze: “Don’t.” He smiled; looking into his wine. “I’m not. It’s just the universe, it’s all there, in your eyes.” She held her breath, aware. #vss365

My English professor at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy once told me, “Mr. Marriner, you write like someone very good at math.” To this day I can’t tell if it was praise or a slight. Either way, she wasn’t wrong. Either way, ideas require an elegant communication language. #writing #math

I dragged a muse backward through the keyhole of sleep, tail twitching, until words cascaded like fish from a split sky. They gasped on the floor, begging to be rearranged into something less vulnerable. But my pen is no bludgeon and I offered no relief. Look upon this #bearable mess. #vss

The merloned walls clung to Saturn’s shadow, mute against the void. With no plasma or propellant, defenders turned barbaric, bows strung with human sinews, arrows of hull-shards. #Power pared back to bone, a siege on a far moon echoing the first wars, when violence was simple and close. #vss365

The porch holds steady as the storm rolls in, heat broken by sheets of rain that make the air new. Citronella torches sputter, their small flames bluffing at duty while the squall does the real work. The skeeters vanish, leaving you with thunder, flicker, and a hymn tapped out in water. #SummerStorm

We split atoms and bend radio to our will, yet the green alchemy of leaves remains beyond our grasp. We map chlorophyll’s steps like cartographers, but cannot summon bread from sunlight. Do we *really* understand photosynthesis, or only describe what we observe in impotent awe? #science #poetry

We draped them in horns and shadows, stitched their mouths shut with mythic legends, called them beasts so we could strike without pause. To name them human would splinter us. Better to forge monsters, to salt the earth with myth, than face the mirror of our graceless thirst for what was theirs.

Tails. Always tails. The coin landed like it had rehearsed the role: a tiny oracle of cold alloy. He laughed, too long, too loud, because #chance was never #chance, just the storyteller wearing a mask. The explosion felt distant and he could not recall if he’d flipped at all. #vss365 #microfiction

The knight, #conscious of the boy’s eyes widening at every crackle, let the fire sink low until the dark pressed in close. “You think it’s we that keeps watch,” he said, smiling without teeth. “But it’s watching us, from the dark that keeps it hidden. And it knows our names already.” #vss365

Keira believes that there’s a palpable difference between the words “wet” and “wetness”. Especially on the unexpected discovery.

We paused beside the purling stream, its silver voice weaving hymns to the hush of dusk. Then we kept walking. The night was coming on fast. Shadows grew where forest canopy once cast the midday shade, turning respite into odd voids in my vision. Our eyesight not quite accustomed to darkness. #vss

They stood in a field damp with the morning’s cowshit, seconds arguing over paces and whether anything over twenty was #arbitrary, like honor could be quantified in mud-stained yards. A pistol misfired on being loaded, shattering a live oak fence post to splinters. Moods changed. #vss365

The old priest repeated that no spirit could #elude him in this squat wattle house, its lattice binding spaces and souls alike. Dust followed his search about every corner, under tables and stools. I alone could see her as she darted among the candle sticks shadows, in and out of existence. #vss

“… away from the work and worry of other people’s lives.” ~ Gene Wolfe, 2004 “The Wizard Knight”

The #Constellation’s yards hung cockbilled, slanting in slovenly bereavement. The mourning crew moved as slow shadows about the deck, whispering the names Adams and Jefferson, felled by time on the same divine July day. The slacked rigging grieved; tar lines weeping salt tears into the sea. #vss365

Embraced in this Southern heat, sweet air, thick as tar, I charted the morning #constellations, the silent spherical trigonometry above me. Somewhere, someone north, has already felt the first breath of autumn. In these little latitudes, August clings molasses wet on the skin. #vss365 #microfiction

The USS Constellation carved through smoke and salt, her rigging a shivering harp singing. A second British broadside ignited the dark horizon; the stars behind clouds. Midshipman Taylor hummed in tune with the rigging, a frail holy hymn against the war’s insatiable appetite for souls. #vss365

Iron remembers heat. Feeding the surface a breath of oil, wiped thin as absence. Pressed seed essence holding the line, quiet and durable. Each day’s meal followed in smoke as a hymn, each sunset another layer. Patina is patience, black glass made from fire and time. @castironskillt.bsky.social