LINKDING

<blockquote>Andy couldn’t understand why Momma was crying. “Let’s go to the airport,” he said, “And fly to heaven, and get Oscar.” So they did.</blockquote>

as the author says on his lj: <blockquote>This is an Ohio story all the way through, as it was inspired by a visit to a bed-and-breakfast where the owner was one of the first doctors to own an X-Ray. It was an incredible, miracle machine when it all started, something that nobody could have imagined, and by the end of his career the X-Ray was barely even noticable in the welter of changes that had happened since then. And Blockbuster was closing at the time, and I realized the little video shops were the same thing: this technological spasm that had started on a ground level as hobbyists, enabled a brief cottage industry of do-it-yourselfers, and then consumed.</blockquote> ➤ or: a mom-and-pop teleportation shop

<blockquote>If you’re not familiar with The Singularity, it’s the point where computers become ZOMG SO POWERFUL that it ushers us into a new paradise, where super-powerful AIs will tend to our every whim. Ted was skeptical of The Singularity, as was I, and I said, “When the Singularity comes, it’s going to be a fucking madhouse of advertisement-bots enslaving us to their whim. Mark my words. I even wrote a story about that.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>“Don’t heal me with medicine,” he wheezes. “Stitches—fail. They fail like doubt. Tell Aelana what you want... want done, and—if you truly want it, she will give you the power to forge it....” “Are you mad?” I scream, my nostrils filled with the fetid scent of blood and bowel-shit again, and oh my Goddess my father is just like the soldiers—</blockquote>

<blockquote>She doesn’t want to kill the soldiers on this iteration; she’s never killed anyone before, and doesn’t want to start. But unless she can get poor, weak Sammi out of that prison in the next fifty/infinity minutes, they’ll start in on him with the rubber hoses and he’ll tell them what he’s done. And though she loves her brother with all her heart, it would be a blessing then if the Americans beat him to death.</blockquote>

➤ The meaning of life for a tentacle-monster in a Dark Lord's moat. Beautiful.

➤ do-it-yourself evil overlords!

➤ creepy post-apocalyptic story

can be found on the wayback machine ➤ the one where the cars don't want humans developing better engines, and idk, writing it out like that makes it sound silly but it's really good and really effectively creepy