When the ominous box arrived on my doorstep, I didn’t even notice. I was in the middle of a sale. A very well-dressed woman took a liking to the antique grandfather clock in the window. I just signed for the box absently while running her credit card. I didn’t even look at it until almost […]

I. The Plan “Knowledge wants to be free!” The increasingly impassioned assistant professor defended his plan to the chief librarian who had summoned him to this awkward and unpleasant meeting in a room filled with dust that seemed to have collected slowly and inexorably since slimy, tentacled tetrapods first evolved to crawl from water onto […]

The crow refused to blink. The dark, hard obsidian of its eyes conveyed an inhuman awareness of its surroundings, acute but soulless, absorbing light from the abandoned mill and the soft, rotting bricks where the feathered beast perched. Its rapt attention recalled its Jurassic ancesters, raptorous hunters who had dominated their food chain. The dark, […]