Turner 454

American investigators arrived here fewer than ten hours after a large explosion shook the island’s urban core last night, less than two kilometers from where Zhang, U.S. Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, was meeting with representatives of the Global League. READ IT...

He nonchalantly waved and turned and tried to play it cool, as if he had already planned to stop right there, at a little sidewalk cart, and shop for melons. The vendor, an old man with a cane held oddly between his knees, was startled by the young man’s sudden and intense interest in produce. READ IT...

Quickly beginning to feel a little trapped, Sarah fought to stay rooted to one spot. She imagined that she’d found a position on the packed floor, between sets of jostling elbows and unsteady legs, where no one would fall or drip on her. But she’d barely made it past the entry foyer of the ‘Shroom, and the bar – the only possible source of relief – was about sixty layers of bodies away. READ IT...

It was impractically dark, and the air was filled with a thick soup of the assorted and mostly illegal substances people had come up to smoke, and Sarah simply could not focus her vision on the face of her dance-floor rescuer, even though he was sitting close to her.

Quite close. READ IT...

The ground was no longer shaking, at least, and the comparative silence of the sidewalk seemed to rush deep into Sarah’s ears. Every noise was muted, as though they were wrapped in a thick blanket, or sunk in the ocean. In fact, the quiet almost hurt – Sarah tugged at her earlobes to squelch the ringing. READ IT...

The curve of the seat, weirdly bulging and impossibly soft, conspired to force its occupants into each others laps, so Sarah found herself clinging to the door and pretended to be mesmerized by the city as it passed. READ IT...

Conversation over, he resumed waiting. Too tired to glare at the guard, he tried in vain to lean back in his seat, letting his head fall back and staring straight up instead. Had it been a few hours earlier, he would have been a little more comfortable, sitting in the shadow of the building, a curved semi-circle tower of sky-blue glass that looked like exactly half a pipe sticking straight out of the ground. READ IT...

Cameron decided to break the silence as they neared Sand Island, the ATV carrying them through a dust cloud that an oncoming truck kicked up. "So I read your story last night," he said, clearing his throat. "You're the only one who mentioned the restaurant worker."

"You mean you didn't just tell me about it?" she teased.

"I told everyone, but no one wants to hear it," he said, laughing. "It's only interesting if the rebels are behind it, if someone was trying to kill Zhang." READ IT...

Absurdly, most of the public discourse on the asteroid naively danced around the unmarketable topics of death and destruction, and focused primarily on the question of what to name it, how long the government knew about it and kept it secret, and its impact – or rather, the impact of its anticipation – on world markets. The U.S. President’s first nationwide address on the matter urged Americans to remain calm, to be patient, to pray, and to go shopping. READ IT...