Good Chat

I mentioned to my wife that I was seeing one of my oldest friends that day, the one I hadn't seen in years. She was pleased by this, it seemed.

He knocked on our front door around midday. I opened the door, we said our hellos, I invited him in, he said he had to rush, so I gave him the 3D-printed figure I'd made for him and said goodbye.

My wife was stunned when I walked back in, saying it was typical of men to act like that.

I tried to explain we chat online everyday, somehow that's different?

A.K.A.

I began to rapidly move the Mahjong tiles around to mix them up, which is known as washing them.

We then began to play, until one of the attendents tapped me on the shoulder, which is known as an acceptable interruption in this club.

I got up and walked to the phone booth, the only connection to the outside world allowed, known as the Crimson Booth.

I accepted the collect call, also known as a reverse charge call.

And I was told of what had happened to my wife, also known as the worst thing that ever happened to me.

Pierced

The Spacepiercer Craft was launched back nuclear power was the best we had, and so it used radioactive decay as a power source. And this meant that it would eventually decay and go dark. We knew it would be soon, but every hour, we listened and hoped for another datapack.

That was a month ago, and it was still sending messages.

While everyone was pleased, eventually we got concerned, and asked for a self-diagnostic check.

We were expecting a 0.05% power level remaining message.

It said 95%.

We checked our telescopes, and then saw it was coming back to us.

Storm

I watched the rain fall down from the sky outside my window, and I thought about her.

And true, most things reminded me of her in some way, but this was different. Rain always played a part in our lives together, it seemed.

We met when I offered her my umbrella to cross the field in the rain.

It was raining when I said I loved her, it was raining when she said she loved me,  it was raining when we first made love.

But it wasn't raining when she had the car crash.

Might have washed the oily road.

On The Menu

I sat down at the counter. She looked over and raised an eyebrow. I nodded, she nodded, and I checked my phone for a bit before she brought over my usual order, eggs, bacon, toast, extra hot sauce, and a black coffee.

After a few bites of everything, I gestured for her. The waitress came over, looking curious.

"How's the chef? Everything ok?"

She looked stunned.

"He was pretty angry this morning. How did you know?"

I tapped the toast.

"I know he makes his own bread. And this is some of the toughest bread I've ever eaten."

"Oh. Ok."

Given Up

As she shoved her clothing into a bag, she moved on from why my attitude was the reason she was breaking up with me to why these half a dozen habits I had were the real real reason for her breaking up with me.

As she was about to walk out my front door, I called out to her.

She stopped, and turned around. She demanded to hear my last big speech or my useless gesture before she walked.

I pointed out she'd forgotten her toothbrush and then rolled over and went to sleep, which I'm sure didn't help matters.

Needs Of The Army

The fact is, you don't need to look too hard for people willing to die and kill for their country. Certainly in war you need them, I'm not denying that. But the thing is, there's a lot of people like that out there, and it's honestly a mindset that is easy to engineer into someone.

And for that matter, generals and leaders, as much as they think they're unique and special, they're fairly interchangeable too.

It's the organisers, those that can get all of those people fed, clothed, and armed in hours? They're the ones you need to search for.