Monthly Archives: January 2015

The Internet has been down for a month now. Not fully down, but not fully free either.

It started with a few sites getting hacked here and there, every once in awhile. There were warnings by the usual conspiracy theorists, the extremity of such warnings took attention away from real threats to Internet security.

Besides, the hacks could be useful. Sometimes hacking was the only way to expose government and corporate secrets.
Of course, just like government and business, hacking in the wrong hands could send us back a few decades. This is that time. Continue reading →

It was an offer I couldn’t refuse, which is good since I was being forced into it. The federal government offered me a plea deal for a heist in which I was an accomplice. The feds offered me placement into an experimental eye surgery program at the National Institutes of Health.

If I wasn’t upfront about my perfect sight, the plea deal would blow up in my face later. I told them I had 20/20 vision. They reminded me that I had developed floaters and had a family history of glaucoma. So much for medical privacy. The possible complications from the surgery were many, but they were still better than the absolute complications from federal prison. The surgery was scheduled for the following Monday.

As I awoke from the surgery, I heard a nurse assuring me that the surgery went fine. I could see right through her, but not because she was lying. I had X-ray vision. Continue reading →

“Oh, no. Thank you, but I’m driving.”

I must be getting old.

I just saw my favorite band in concert and had a horrible time. Between drunk people spilling their beer all over me and the inability to see the concert for the forest of smartphones, what was the point? I could just buy the concert DVD in six months and watch it on my big screen HDTV instead of the big screens at the amphitheater.

Then again watching concerts at home doesn’t generally lead to after-partying at a hole-in-the-wall Irish pub. And that doesn’t generally lead to being offered a free drink by the lead singer of your favorite band. Continue reading →

When they stepped out of their space vehicle, they looked exactly like human beings.

Five years earlier, NASA had detected a space vehicle on Mars. The vehicle, unclaimed by any agency or company on Earth, orbited the red planet for one year before taking a new route. World governments didn’t want to take any chances. They began preparing for an encounter. Continue reading →