Neva, my navigator, expertly steered the ship to align with the spot where my finger was pointing and the ship began to descend into the atmosphere. We had the initial view of the atmosphere during the descent and found it to be identical to the Earth’s atmosphere’s composition during the early 20th century. Most important of all, the level of oxygen in the air was just the right amount for human to breathe.
Fiction
Writers’ Journal #86 – Scorched Earth – 1
It has been 32 years since humanity had escaped the planet Earth for good. Centuries of civilisation depending on the natural resources meant that by 23rd century , surface of the Earth resembled the cities after World War 3. Mighty Jungles and raging rivers had disappeared from the face of the earth , only to remained as display sets in the art museums. Winds blowing at near Cat 5 hurricanes swept everything on the surface with relentless energy.
Writers’ Journal #85 – Blackjack
McRiley was a professional gambler , or that was what he liked to portray himself as to other. But internally and among his cloest friends and family , he was a loser. Aside from odd winnings here and there , his whole life , he had been a loser. A failure in school , rejected by countless , 30 actually , number of women and didn’t even get past the first stage of the interviews till 30s. Even then , he had to settle for the lowest possible position available. But there was one thing he was proud of and it was blackjack. He regularly patronised a game palour behind the school almost every day after the class had ended and by 20s , he was addicted to gambling.
Writers’ Journal #83 – Sweet Potato
My classmate and I were going back to our homes , we lived next door to each other , when we stumbled upon a stall we never seen before. It must have been the first day it opened for we noticed there were a few baskets of congratulatory flowers at the door. There were a…
Writers’ Journal #82 – Game Over
The sound of the keys from the keyboard being hammered rang loudly from Timmy’s room. It was loud enough for his sister next door who was studying for the coming exam to plug her ears with the tissue papers. Not only the sound of keys , of course , but also the music , fighting sounds from his computer as well. But his family was used to the late night chaos from him.
Writers’ Journal #81 – New World
It has been more than 100 thousand years since the Humanity , of the last remaining , left Earth to venture out into space. The search for new home was the message sold off to the dying , sick and the old that packaged and sent to far away destinations but it was essentially an escape from the dying world. Earth was dying at the end of the 35th century. Smoked filled cities occupied the top layer of the surface while the poor struggled below the metal plate holding the enormous factories. The privileged wined and dined above the clouds with clear view to the artificial surface below using the projections to hide the death and destruction below.
Writers’ Journal #80 – Lost in Translations
It was difficult enough walking in the hot desert of upper Egypt in the middle of day but being French and not able to speak with anyone else made it worse. Frances was home sick and bouncing up and down on the camel. He looked down and saw the natives smiling , laughing and wondered why he could be like them. So he started to count the reasons why he was in the country that he had always wanted to visit yet so miserable since he had arrived last week.
Writers’ Journal #79 – Ghost in the Seashell
It all started with Little Tim going to the nearby beach with his mama bright early morning and came back terribly sun burnt. He cried and cried till he peed and pooped in his dipers. He was too young for the pants that granny had given for his 3rd birthday , his mother said. After all the crying , he felt sleepy and gently crawled into his mother arms to rest. There he stayed till the evening came and didn’t even heard his sister coming home from school. He would usually have his snacks later but he was too hungry from running around the beach so he asked for snacks from his sister who was babysitting him.
Writers’ Journal #78 – 4th Law of Robotics
It was the beginning of winter in 2108 that began the downfall of humanity. It all started from an amazingly surprising place. An out-of-place chicken breeder’s house at the outskirt of Istanbul. The breeder lived with her 2 young children , Jenny and her brother Jones. They were one year apart but Jones was taller than her sister even though he was younger.
Writers’ Journal #77 – Murder on the island resort – Part 31
The tunnel went on and on as we walked and after some minutes , we all got depressed again. It seemed that the distance from the island to the mainland wasn’t as short as we initially expected. We should have known better as the boat took more than 30 min to travel the distance and it was speeding pretty fast as well , if I remember correctly.