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By AnonymRobin Sloan
I for one welcome our new android overlords.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
I looked down at the loaves on the baking stone, which, just as before, carried in their crusts the overwhelming illusion of dark eyes, upturned noses, fissured mouths. Upon closer inspection, these faces were different from the last loaf's. They were disturbing. Their eyes squinted merrily and their mouths curled into ragged, jack-o'-lantern grins. The bread knife was the solution to all my problems. I sawed and sawed and sawed until the faces were no more.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
I needed a more interesting life. I could start by learning something. I could start with the starter.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
In your message, you told me about your family, how you don’t have any traditions. The first time I read that, it made me sad, but then I thought about it for a while and started to feel jealous. Lois, think about it! No one cares if your restaurant has tables. You can build robots, or bake bread, or do something else entirely. You’re unencumbered by culture. You’re... light!
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
I pull out my laptop, which is probably the most advanced piece of technology that has ever crossed the threshold of Lapin's lair, and set it up on a stack of heavy books, all from the Wayback-list. The shiny MacBook looks like a hapless alien trying to blend in with the quiet stalwarts of human civilization I crack it open - glowing alien guts revealed! - and cue the visualization as Lapin crosses the room with two cups in two saucers.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
I returned to the airfield the next day because the others had spoken the truth: Agrippa was a genius. Maybe also an asshole. But I believed he had something to teach me; I believed he understood the starter in a way that I didn’t, or couldn’t.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
Is it an eggageration to say Clement Soup and Sourdough saved me? At night, instead of fitfully reviewing the day's error while my stomach swam and churned, I... fell asleep. My course steadied. I had taken on ballast in the form of spicy broth and fragrant bread and, maybe, two new friends, or sort-of-friends, or something.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
I tell him, and I write it down as I go. It makes me feel better, as if the weirdness is flowing out of my blood and onto the page, through the dark point of the pen
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
I told them I didn't have time for this bullshit, and if either of them wanted to ask a lady out, he could do it by text message like a normal person.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
It's always new and astonishing when it's yours. Infatuation; sex; card tricks.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
It's always new and astonishing when it's yours
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
Its circumference was tiny, but he had a life, and he would not give it up.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
It was a fungal party hellscape.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
It was tall, made of pale blue light, a creature with long arms and long legs and the shadow of a smile, and above it all, eyes that shone bluer still than its body. "What do you seek in this place?" the shade asked plainly.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
Midway through, a fuzzy-chinned young man approaches the desk with a battered copy of Dune and a motley handful of coins. Mo waves him away. “Oh, just take it, Felix. Spend the money on a haircut.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
Now, for the first time in my life, I empathize 100 percent with Fluff McFly. My heart is beating at hamster-speed and I am throwing my eyes around the room, looking for some way out.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
Of course, of course. Drugs, music, a new age dawning … and you came for an old book.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
On both sides, they've failed us...of course, we know about the industrialists. Their corn syrup and cheese product. Their factory farms ringed by rivers of blood and shit, blazing bonfires of disease barely contained by antibiotic blankets. These are among the most disgusting scenes in the history of this planet... But on the other side...the organic farms, the precious restaurants...these are toy supply chains. 'Farm to table,' they say. Well. When you go from farm to table, you leave a lot of people out...I think more poorly of these people than I do of the industrialists, because they know better. They know it's all broken, and what do they do? They plant vegetables in the backyard.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
One Friday, after a particularly shattering day at the office, in which my code reviews had all come back red with snotty comments, and my manager, Peter, had gently inquired about the pace of my refactoring ("perhaps not sufficiently turbo-charged"), I arrived home in a swirl of angst, with petulance and self-recrimination locked in ritual combat to determine which would ruin my night. On the phone with Beoreg, I ordered my food with a rattling sigh, and when his brother arrived at my door, he carried something different: a more compact tub containing a fiery red broth and not one but two slabs of bread for dipping. "Secret spicy," he whispered. The soup was so hot it burned the frustration out of my, and I went to bed feeling like a fresh plate, scalded and scraped clean.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
On top of the city with my Loises all around me, I felt a tremor of something. Was it possible? I had become interesting.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
People want things to be real. If you give them an excuse, they'll believe you.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
She's wearing the same red and yellow BAM! T-shirt from before, which means (a) she slept in, (b) she owns several identical T-shirts, or (c) she's a cartoon character—all of which are appealing alternatives.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
She was suddenly sweet and solicitous, and it was very strange. She should have stayed sharp and brusque. She should have commanded: Let me work with that muck of yours! I would have complied in a moment.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
So I guess you could say Neel owes me a few favors, except that so many favors have passed between us now that they are no longer distinguishable as individual acts, just a bright haze of loyalty. Our friendship is a nebula.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
The buzz about Google these days is that it's like America itself: still the biggest game in town, but inevitably and irrevocably on the decline. Both are superpowers with unmatched resources, but both are faced with fast-growing rivals, and both will eventually be eclipsed. For America, that rival is China. For Google, it's Facebook. (This is all from tech-gossip blogs, so take it with a grain of salt. They also say a startup called MonkeyMoney is going to be huge next year.) But here's the difference: staring down the inevitable, America pays defense contractors to build aircraft carriers. Google pays brilliant programmers to do whatever they want.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
The Golden Horn of Griffo is finely wrought," Zenodotus said, tracing his finger along the curve of Telemach's treasure. "And the magic is in its making alone. Do you understand? There is no sorcery here..." “Magic is not the only power in this world,” the old mage said gently, handing the horn back to its royal owner. “Griffo made an instrument so perfect that even the dead must rise to hear its call. He made it with his hands, without spells or dragon-songs. I wish that I could do the same.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
The house was large and deeply lived-in, all the shelves and surfaces stacked with books and boxes, framed pictures, old greeting cards set up like tent cities...Every single surface told a story. A long one. With digressions.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
The internet: always proving that you're not quite as special as you suspected.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
This is not an ordinary bookstore.” “Indeed. It seems more akin to a youth hostel –
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
What if, you know—what if hanging out with Griffo Gerritszoon wasn’t always that great? What if he was weird and dreamy? What if the best part of him was the shapes he could make with metal? That part of him really is immortal. It’s as immortal as anything’s going to get.
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By AnonymRobin Sloan
You went to Greenland...on purpose," Naz said.
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