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Faceoff - The Walking Dead

Some interesting developments in tonight’s episode.  How many times did you think the very thing that couldn’t have happened?  That either Rick or the Governor would shoot the other person.  There’s much too much that needs to happen before either man kills the other, but that eventuality shouldn’t have come as a surprise for a show that’s known for surprises.  I do have to revise what I think is going to happen: the Governor is going to be killed by a woman, but the question is who?

  • Maggie- sexually assaulted by him, still seems to be in shock somewhat.
  • Michonne- the favorite as she probably would make it hurt the worst.
  • Andrea- she has the best chance considering she’s the only one who has any kind of window of opportunity that doesn’t involve a preceding hail of bullets.

If there’s justice, it’ll be Maggie.  Michonne already got his eye and Andrea, although she’s seeing things a lot more clearly, needs to come off as wishy-washy still for the sake of the show.  I think the war will happen, the crew that Rick kicked out the prison will be involved, and two to three core cast members will die.  Maybe Hershel because he’s living on borrowed time anyway, right?  Or Carol, I mean, now that she won’t be midwifing for anyone, what’s her purpose?  We already had someone without survival skills get on a learning curve and that was Andrea.  And if she dies, that leaves Darryl someone else to pine after and further drives a wedge between him and Merle (if Merle survives, that is–which he won’t).

But don’t be surprised if the Governor is still alive come the season finale.  He may yet have more harm to do.

 

Check out Jay Rauld's The Prophet

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The Last Divide

The Internet spawned many an unusual technology but none as strange as the Death-Web; a way to allow users to communicate after death with notations, salutations, benedictions and predictions pre-programmed before a person died; a message-in-a-bottle through Time.

Its early adopters were people who knew their impeding time drew near and wanted to leave data-rich missives to loved ones. The terminally ill found it to be of great comfort knowing they could leave messages on anniversaries, birthdays and other important milestones.

But like all things internet others soon found unexpected uses for the idea and began leaving predictions of the future, sometimes of technology, others of faith, some of war and occasionally a well-connected master gardener or farmer might leave a local almanac of planting seasons.

Eventually, it found followers among the technorati who wanted to have an opinion about everything even if they had already died. The technorati and futurists predicted technologies decades into the future and configured the Death-Web to release them upon their death. Keyword algorithms would release their predictions either on the date they were programmed for or in concert with news from active data streams indicating their prediction had come true sooner than expected. To be fair, most tech pundits weren't good at prognostication, but as more of them passed on, that changed.

Living wills were composed on the Death-Web with pre-programmed videos of people mooning hated relatives and leaving vast fortunes to a favored cat or dog. Cuckolded husbands were told off by browbeaten wives, dark secrets revealed to angry children who could no longer take revenge on loathsome parents. As terrible as these things seem, beautiful things were left as well. Graduation videos, songs for anniversaries, still-living eulogies delivered by the Dead at their own funerals.

The Death-Web grew along side the internet, a morbid shadow mimicking life so well, after a while, it began to have an existence all to itself, with predictions for everything from weather, to the stock exchange, world politics and even celebrity gossip. Ten years of Oscar predictions and the Death-Web was always better at picking movies than the living were.

At some point the Live-Web and the Death-Web began to share information, at first tangentially, communication with the Dead were marked as such. Then invisibly, without fanfare, without people being made aware, the Dead were again, among the living. Software algorithms were written which could take an existing stream of social media and extrapolate from the Dead's living stream of choices what choices they might make of new things and ideas. These Amalgams of the social media of a now Dead person, could continue if they chose, to share, curate, and even hold limited conversations with the Living.

Then people began to realize something strange. Not that this wasn't already strange; something really strange. The Dead were right more often than the Living about almost everything.

No one was sure why this was true. Was it a side effect of people only willing to be honest when they had no stake in the game? Were people who knew they were going to die, revealing secrets they would never tell anyone while they were alive? This was a talk show subject of statistical debate for nearly ten years, while the Death-Web grew larger and more accepted worldwide. As families continued to support and pay for services for the Dead, programmers began creating software for the Death-Web at the same rate as any other environment. Companies started developing and harnessing infrastructure for this aberration-turned-engine of prediction.

And then, in a series of events, a group of stockbrokers joined the Death-Web unexpectedly. No one would have noticed them except for their social media streams right after their deaths, predicted an epic crash of the stock markets. All of them. They were dead when their predictions were seen but they had been written while they were alive. At least at first. After their buffered accounts had emptied, their accounts continued to predict the market with alarming accuracy. The source of these predictions could not be ascertained, the only thing known for certain was their accuracy. Soon their calls of collapse were being re-shared, repeated, even cast as news among the Living. And as the market reacted, confidence teetered. Something needed to be done.

Tech-seers, who managed the accounts of the Dead, sought out tampering because before this trinity, predictions were accurate but sporadic. The stopped clock metaphor was liberally applied. The Stockbroker Trinity's predictions were not a single event but a stream of events which predicted the slow transformation of the economy and the eventual failure of commerce from a single series of purchases of stock. They told who would make the stocks buys, why they would, and what the result would be. The Tech-seers found no explanation and repeated the mantra "The Living guess, the Dead know" and continued in their work. Their research revealed no tampering and yet these three brokers would consistently predict the stock market for the next two years. After their deaths. Accurately. In a way no living person had or could. They became more successful in death than they ever were in life.

The government monitored the Death-Web much like they did any other social media network. Initially, no one considered anything said there to be of any import, but as time progressed, the Death-stream was a better predictor of human behavior than anything seen before it. Local skirmishes, the next meme, the next great celebrity, the Death-Web was a form of social consciousness, un-tethered from the meat which once created it, unconstrained, un-repentant and alarmingly accurate. No one was ever able to take credit for its capabilities, and once the Deathstream software was ubiquitous, freely given away on the Internet, it was unable to be stopped. It has become a network unto itself.

When the three brokers and their attendant social media streams predicted the market more accurately than living economists, this was not lost on national security agencies, which made every effort to find the companies involved in their predictions and quietly derail their corporate structures in a effort to prevent the impending economic collapse. Their efforts were successful and the predictions of the three brokers, for a time were broken. The Trinity was dead. Again.

The CEO and the board of directors of the corporation upon whom the blame was being placed for this barely averted collapse were killed in a plane crash in the Swiss Alps. Though the outcome was considered tragic, the problem was resolved to the satisfaction of the three-letter agencies worldwide.

The stock market did not collapse and the Death-Web, now behind closed doors called the Seer-web, had proven its value as a potential tool of social management. For another decade, Humanity and its data shadow moved in step, one arrogant in life, the other truthful in death. And three-letter agencies everywhere trembled in fear; for what can you hold over the Dead to keep any secret?

2050766085_0ee570a8e6

The Last Divide © Thaddeus Howze 2011. All Rights Reserved

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Happy Birthday, Gustav Kirchhoff...



Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (12 March 1824 – 17 October 1887) was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects.



He coined the term "black body" radiation in 1862, and two sets of independent concepts in both circuit theory and thermal emission are named "Kirchhoff's laws" after him, as well as a law of thermochemistry.



Kirchhoff Current Law (KCL): At any node (junction) in an electrical circuit, the sum of currents flowing into that node is equal to the sum of currents flowing out of that node, or: The algebraic sum of currents in a network of conductors meeting at a point is zero.



Kirchhoff Voltage Law (KVL): The directed sum of the electrical potential differences (voltage) around any closed network is zero, or: More simply, the sum of the emfs in any closed loop is equivalent to the sum of the potential drops in that loop, or: The algebraic sum of the products of the resistances of the conductors and the currents in them in a closed loop is equal to the total emf available in that loop.

Wikipedia: Gustav Kirchhoff

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Methuselah Star...



A team of astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken an important step closer to finding the birth certificate of a star that's been around for a very long time.

"We have found that this is the oldest known star with a well-determined age," said Howard Bond of Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pa., and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.

The star could be as old as 14.5 billion years (plus or minus 0.8 billion years), which at first glance would make it older than the universe's calculated age of about 13.8 billion years, an obvious dilemma.

But earlier estimates from observations dating back to 2000 placed the star as old as 16 billion years. And this age range presented a potential dilemma for cosmologists. "Maybe the cosmology is wrong, stellar physics is wrong, or the star's distance is wrong," Bond said. "So we set out to refine the distance."

The new Hubble age estimates reduce the range of measurement uncertainty, so that the star's age overlaps with the universe's age — as independently determined by the rate of expansion of space, an analysis of the microwave background from the big bang, and measurements of radioactive decay.

This "Methuselah star," cataloged as HD 140283, has been known about for more than a century because of its fast motion across the sky. The high rate of motion is evidence that the star is simply a visitor to our stellar neighborhood. Its orbit carries it down through the plane of our galaxy from the ancient halo of stars that encircle the Milky Way, and will eventually slingshot back to the galactic halo.

Hubble Site: Hubble Finds Birth Certificate of Oldest Known Star

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Matter-Antimatter...

Figure 1: See link for descriptions

While quantum mechanics is by now a well-established theory, it nonetheless still fascinates both newcomers and experts alike with unusual phenomena. The paradox of Schrödinger’s cat and the subtleties of the two-slit interference are timeless classics. Another less-familiar quantum effect, the oscillations of neutral mesons (bound states of a quark and an antiquark), has also intrigued legions of physicists for nearly sixty years [1]. These mesons oscillate back and forth between particle and antiparticle states. The theoretical ideas underlying this behavior involve concepts that are woven deeply into the history of particle physics. In Physical Review Letters, the LHCb Collaboration has now reported [2] the first significant single-measurement observation of oscillations in the neutral D -meson system.

American Physical Society: Viewpoint: Observing Matter-Antimatter Oscillations

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The Prophet

Thanks to everyone who downloaded a copy of The Prophet (http://amzn.to/WuoT2Q). You helped make it number 26 on Amazon. It's still available for only 99 cents, please give it a try if you don't already have a copy. But in the meantime, this week, the next story in the Returned series will be published exclusively for Kindle. The first was The Closet, the next will be The Revelation. You will be able to download this for free and it's a prime time as the series is just at the beginning.
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Pan-STARRS...

This graphic shows the comet’s expected positions in the sky throughout March. Image credit: NASA

On March 9 and 10, Pan-STARRS will be at its brightest, because that’s when it’s closest to the sun. Visible to the naked eye (but looking even better through binoculars or a telescope) at a dark site, the comet will appear as a bright “smear” of light low in the west up to an hour after sunset. And next week’s crescent moon can help locate Pan-STARRS: On March 12, the comet will lie to the moon’s upper left, and on the next night it will be on the moon’s lower right. After two weeks, the comet will have faded enough to require optical instruments to see it.

 

Discovery D-brief: Where Can I See Comet Pan-STARRS?

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The saga of the Osguards continues in Malcolm Dylan Petteway's third book in the series, Osguards: Armageddon. And what a thrill it is! The author truly turns it up a notch. Book One chronicled Laurona and Nausona Osguard's Earthbound experiences prior to the founding of the Universal Science, Security and Trade Association of Planets. In Book Two, war continues to rage between USSTAP and its implacable enemy, the Kulusks. Armageddon rips away the curtain to reveal the shadowy, driving force behind the Kulusk's war on USSTAP: the Tuits, a warlike Amazonian race that rules over a domain far larger than USSTAP. When these two mighty polities clash, the universe itself is ripped asunder in a horrific welter of bloody conflict that will see entire star systems washed away in a broiling tide of destruction. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Tentacles of intrigue weaves fluidly through this tale, extending from the top levels of USSTAP authority to a White House administration thirsting for the benefits of USSTAP technology.

There are heroes and villains in this book, but the heroes are flawed and the villains' motivations bear traces of nobility. The excitement the author delivers in this third installment is threefold. Osguards: Armageddon is a delectable read that will leave you, as it left me, wondering what the author will have in store for us in Book Four. I can't wait to find out!

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In Search of WIMPs...

Space Review

The biggest single experiment, in terms of both size and cost, on the ISS is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (officially designated AMS-02 to differentiate it from a prototype, AMS-01, flown on the STS-91 shuttle mission in 1998, but usually simply called AMS.) Weighing nearly 7,000 kilograms and costing an estimated $1.5 billion to develop, NASA installed AMS on the exterior of the ISS on the penultimate shuttle mission, STS-134, in May 2011 (see “The space station’s billion-dollar physics experiment”, The Space Review, May 16, 2011).

 

At a press conference February 17 during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston, Samuel Ting, the MIT physicist who is the principal investigator for AMS, said his team was working on a paper analyzing a subset of the AMS data involving detections of high-energy electrons and positrons. “We waited for 15 years—actually, 18 years—to write this paper,” he said. “We have finished the paper and are now making the final checks.” He said he anticipated that the paper would be completed and submitted to a journal (as yet undecided, although Ting said later one possibility is Physical Review Letters) in two to three weeks.

 

While Ting didn’t disclose any of the results that will be in that paper, he did discuss what the paper would cover. It will examine the ratio of positrons to electrons as a function of energy from 0.5 to 350 billion electron volts. (The AMS can detect particles up to a trillion electron volts, but Ting said they didn’t yet have a statistically significant sample of data at the higher energies.) It will also measure changes in the ratio as a function of direction to see if its distribution is the same in all directions or has peaks in a particular direction, such as towards the center of the galaxy.

 

Changes in that positron/electron ratio as a function of energy, including increases or sharp drops, could provide evidence for one candidate of dark matter known as weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. Dark matter comprises about 23 percent of the universe, but its influence has only been detected indirectly, such as the rotation curves of galaxies. Scientists hypothesize that if dark matter is made of WIMPS—in particular, a particle known as a supersymmetric neutralino—it will produce antimatter particles like positrons when it collides with each other, creating a signature in the data detected by AMS.

 

The Space Review: Turning ISS into a full-fledged space laboratory

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IT'S HERE!!!!

Everybody, it's here!!!!  

My first book, "From Slate to Crimson" has been released through Whispers Press in e-book format. Here is the overview:

"Talante, for 10,000 years has governed his clan like a father in the endless war with their hated enemy over the fate of humankind. One winter's night, he chances to meet Amelia Grayson, a human whose blood arouses his desire, and whose presence arouses his compassion in a way no mortal ever has before. Distracted and terrified by all but alien emotions and instincts by this burgeoning bond in a prelude to what may be his clan's most desperate hour, Talante is caught between duty and desire, until he is forced by choice and circumstance to decide whether to hold to the one he has grown to love more than his immortal life, or in spite of the cost, let go for the sake of his people and Amelia's safety, in spite of twofold danger: one from a ravenous enemy that has hunted her kind for millennia … and the other from the seductive bond that would make her forever his, body and soul."

For those of you wanting to listen to an excerpt of the story, click here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldtphCEzl2I

To purchase the book, simply come on down to Whispers Press here:

http://whispershome.com/products-page-2/recent-book/from-slate-to-crimson/

Thank you so much for your interest and support. Thoughts and critiques are very much welcome! Happy reading!

-Brandon

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I, Feminist...

Time and Date dot com

Today is International Women's Day in Women's History Month.

One Billion Rising: the organization lists it's "birthday" on 14 February 2013. Inspired by several recent turn of events, two of note: the brutal public gang rape and murder of a New Delhi woman sparked outrage across the globe; Malala Yousafzai, a young Afghan activist shot in the face for promoting education and erasing ignorance was also a catalyst.

As so should have been Hadiya. When honor students are murdered, it should be a time of mourning, and a response of resolve.

As so should be Tonya McDowell. Judging from the verdict, the court in Connecticut forgot the mercies and sympathy poured on to Sandy Hook (the majority killed there were women): apparently, wanting the best for a six-year-old in Orwellian speak is now thoughtcrime. And, the best place for a six-year-old is not at the side of his homeless mother who's doing the best she can under circumstances engineered way above her pay grade: it's obviously in the foster care system, where he will most likely end up on a collision course with the same criminal justice system that just sentenced Tonya to 12 years in prison.

It has been lately, not easy to be a woman. For the "fairer sex," it's been no more easier to be a woman than it is to be a minority, or gay, middle class or a teacher. Quvenzhané Wallis could not enjoy her night at the Oscars: apparently, nine-year-old talented actresses are somewhat threatening to small minds, in possession of Napoleonic smaller male appendages, that hide behind the 1st Amendment and the nebulous non-action statement "they have been disciplined" (not fired).

 

"In time we hate that which we often fear." William Shakespeare

 

Organizations, mostly dominated by men, are telling everyone else what they can be, how they can act, what to do with decisions about their own welfare, bodies and careers.


I think of my "little engineer," an endearing term I use not as a slight but a realization: at 8, she's kind of short! Her name is Naomi ("pleasant"). She has a smile that would light up a room on a grey, cloudy day. She and her young female friend/electronics lab partner at a science fair I organized at our church, engineered a simple switch for a flying saucer/helicopter when they ran out of parts (I had 31 kids - pizza = popular). It was amazing; THEY were amazing! They deserve to inherit a world a little less dangerous; a little less bigoted towards their gender.

 

On Friday March 8, we should make sure that the women in our institutions enjoy a coffee or a lunch. Let them talk and exchange their thoughts, and take pictures to show the world that there are women in science, and sharing their experience on Twitter and Google+ (hashtag #WomenOfScience). They are here, not a majority, but they are an important part of scientific work and discussion.

 

For all the "little scientists and engineers," and the pleasant world I would like them to inherit...

 

Official Site: International Women's Day
Office of Science and Technology Policy: Women in STEM
US Department of Commerce: Women in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation
NSF: Women, Minorities and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering
Cosmic Diary: Featuring the Women of Science
STEM connector: 100 Women Leaders in STEM
WAMC: Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
STEMinist: Voices of Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

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First Breath

I repost this poem from time to time to remind myself of why I write... and because I love it :). Namaste Fam!

 

(for my man Quinton Veal, my children and my beautiful, beautiful writing famiy)

With blood beating at my temples

and horizons beckoning for discovery

land, magical strange taboo

waited for my pen

Miles and Coltrane's nightingales

awoke to trill of moonbeams

and desire

Zora,Langston and Octavia whispered: "We waiting

on you, you better create worlds..."

 


That's I when I knew it was time to speak

rivers-- funky motifs

rip a piece of soulful sinew

Sweeten it

Season it

cry loud my passion

 

And shards of gold flecked violet

split the air with sound and fury!

With laughter, love and tears

I touched my lips to them

breathed life into these spirits

freed them to walk across

the page

 


In that hour liberation found me

In that hour I embraced her

And gave voice to my writing hand

Copyright 2009 Valjeanne Jeffers

Published in Liberated Muse: How I Freed My Soul Vol I

Available at http://www.OutskirtsPress.com/LiberatedMuse

 

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Post Hoc Fallacy...


Post hoc, ergo propter hoc: "after this, therefore, because of this."

Not saying Dr. Tyson is "committing" a post hoc fallacy. He eludes to the dangers of simple conclusions, and what I'd term "market-driven-bottom-line" education. As expressed by one teen I recall tutoring: "is THIS the answer?" That's a very "bottom-line" question in the moment as said teen was very concerned about the state standardized exam, rather than developing the skills to (and the pleasure in) solving the problem. Just see his responses to Soledad, and you'll get the idea.

You may not become an astrophysicist; the director of a planetarium, or feature in a Superman comic, but you'll THINK clearly, you'll come to decisions in a logical manner, and in this day and age, that's a very important (and waning) skill.
 

Web site: STEMCareer.com

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Book Soon To Be Released

Well, it's March, folks!  And that means my book, "From Slate to Crimson," will soon be released.  Stay tuned!  It's currently in the "coming soon" section of the Whispers Press website, and will be available later this month as an e-book.  I will certainly keep all who are interested in touch.  Incidentally, is anyone interested in this?  Let me know, and I will personally send you notification of its release.  And please, tell anyone you think will be interested!  

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“You will be torn apart by bullets or teeth.”
Now if you don’t see the huge parallels between Rick and Morgan, then you’re not paying attention. Two fathers, two husbands, two men who should have kept their families safe, both failed or failing.
Morgan is Rick (he’s also the Governor, but more on that in a moment) which means he wears the weight of responsibility for the people around him. I imagine Rick would have been very much the same way had he lost Lori and Carl. He’s halfway to being like Morgan having only lost his wife. And it’s all so important to remember what Morgan said when he saw Rick’s face. You’re wearing a dead man’s face. That’s just another way of saying he’s seeing a ghost. Just like Rick currently is.

I have to amend my predictions a little here. Now that we know the shooter is Morgan, don’t expect they’re partying ways with tonight’s episode to be the last we see of him. Morgan is going to be the person who saves Rick. When he said that Rick would die, that the good guys die and the bad guys die, but weak people like him survive, that’s a bit of foreshadowing. Expect Morgan to play a part in the resolution of this season. With Morgans ability to make traps and his plethora of weapons, Rick’s group is going to be pinned down and just wanted looks like they are on the verge of being overwhelmed, Morgan will arrive.

He will save Rick from death and trade places with him. Morgan will either kill the Governor directly or setup the circumstance which results in his death.
The real question is, who will the Governor take with him?

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3D Moonbase...

Ars Technica

The first lunar base on the Moon may not be built by human hands, but rather by a giant spider-like robot built by NASA that can bind the dusty soil into giant bubble structures where astronauts can live, conduct experiments, relax or perhaps even cultivate crops.



We've already covered the European Space Agency's (ESA) work with architecture firm Foster + Partners on a proposal for a 3D-printed moonbase, and there are similarities between the two bases—both would be located in Shackleton Crater near the Moon's south pole, where sunlight (and thus solar energy) is nearly constant due to the Moon's inclination on the crater's rim, and both use lunar dust as their basic building material. However, while the ESA's building would be constructed almost exactly the same way a house would be 3D-printed on Earth, this latest wheeze—SinterHab—uses NASA technology for something a fair bit more ambitious.

 

Ars Technica: Giant NASA spider robots could 3D print lunar base

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Quantum Satellite...

Space Daily

In this month's special edition of Physics World, focusing on quantum physics, Thomas Jennewein and Brendon Higgins from the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, Canada, describe how a quantum space race is under way to create the world's first global quantum-communication network.



The field of quantum communication - the science of transmitting quantum states from one place to another - has received significant attention in the last few years owing to the discovery of quantum cryptography.



Upon measuring the state of a particle you instantly change this state, meaning an encryption key made of photons can be passed between two parties safe in the knowledge that if an eavesdropper intercepts it, this would be noticed.



The transmission of encryption keys over long distances still remains a significant challenge for scientists, however, as the intensity of signals tends to weaken as they travel further because photons get absorbed or scattered off molecules.

Space Daily: Space race under way to create quantum satellite

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The Prophet - Giving Away 10 Free Copies

All you have to do is go to www.razorlinepress.com, click on any post and respond with, "Yes, I'd like a free copy of The Prophet."  Make sure your email address is included because that's what I'll be using to send it to you as a gift through Amazon's website.

 

Description

Greg is a reporter who is about to get the story of his life. The Prophet, an elusive figure who makes predictions about disasters has just tapped him to do an exclusive interview. Except Greg's not really a reporter. Two minutes before entering his apartment, he didn't exist and when he meets the Prophet he finds out his true purpose- to kill the Prophet. But killing someone who is near omnipotent isn't easy, in fact, it takes more than one try even if you get it right.

The Prophet is a half horror, half weird, half comedy that will leave your jaw fully dropped by story's end.

 

Excerpt

No,” the Prophet materialized out of the flashes- shoeless, in jeans with ragged cuffs and his hands stuffed in the pockets of a grey hoodie.  His beard hung to his knees, but it was edged at his cheeks and jawline.  Locks of hair spilled out of his hood, trailing down to mid-chest.  If it weren’t for the eyes, he’d look like a hippie-ish twenty-something.  But those eyes held the ancient stare of the bug-fucking nuts.  Greg realized this person had the same face, but this wasn’t the man he’d seen earlier in the shower. 

“Where?” the Prophet said.

“The guy… y’know, the one standing right there.”

“I don’t see anyone.”

Blue walked over and grabbed Greg by the shirt sleeve, giving it a good tug. “He’s right here.”

“No.  Sorry, I see nothing but you making the international sign for jerking off.”

“Wha—oh.”  Blue sounded embarrassed and let go of Greg’s shirt.

“I knew Anthony was up to something.”  The Prophet scratched under the corner of his lip.  He looked in the general area where Greg was.  Greg was glad those eyes couldn’t find him.  “Did he send you here to kill me?  He should have told you I can’t die.  I am not a man.”  Somebody giggled.  “Shut up!  You know what I mean.”

The Prophet reached up with both hands and made tight fists around his eyes.  He grimaced, a single, strangled cry coming from his throat as trickles of blood ran down his cheeks.  He yanked his hands back and Greg saw empty holes where his eyes used to be, blood flowing freely from the empty spaces.

“Gather closer, children,” he said.  They all pulled in tight around him and he began reaching out, feeling their faces one at a time.

“Too big… too squishy…” he mumbled as he passed each one by.  “I really should have done this part first.”  Finally, he settled on a face that seemed to be to his preference.  A short, fox-headed man looked nervously right and left, but his body went rigid.  He seemed to be struggling, but didn’t move.

“Now open your eyes… wide.”  Fox-head reared his head back, but it was a far cry from the distance he needed to get away from the Prophet.  He made small, grunting noises as the Prophet raised his hands, turning them so his thumbs were poised directly over his face.

He plunged them beneath Fox-head’s eyes, working his hands like he was trying to work twin combination locks with only his palms.  Fox-head’s mouth was pulled back like he wanted to scream, but no sound came out.  Everyone was silent.  The only sound was the dual squelching as Fox-head’s eyes were being plucked out.

It probably only took seconds, but they stretched on forever as Greg watched Fox-head’s bulging eyes being extracted from the sockets.

They finally came free and he collapsed, his limbs curling up to his torso like a newborn baby.  His mouth hung open in agony, but still he didn’t scream.

Greg didn’t know how long he stared at the manimal on the ground, but at some point the Prophet had put the new eyes in his own head.

“There you are,” he said, looking at Greg and wiping the trails of blood off his cheeks with the backs of his hands.  He pointed a gun finger at him and fired.  “You’re dead.”

Greg felt a flash of white, pain more intense than anything he’d felt in his life and then it was gone.  He looked down and saw a perfectly circular hole in his chest and stomach that he guessed went all the way through.  Something warm and red squished around in his socks.  He looked up at the Prophet, wanting to ask a question, but the words were suddenly a million miles away.

He collapsed.

“Now that that problem’s taken care of, let’s get Neil out of my forge.”

“It’s Harry, master.”

“Whatever.  Just get him out.  I’ve got a schedule to keep.”

Greg lay on the ground, listening to them talk and mill about.  It surprised him that he could listen to anything at all, unless this was supposed to be the afterlife.  But then he opened his eyes and looked at his hand and then he began drumming his fingers on the dirt.

“Would somebody scoop that thing up and feed it to something?”

Feet moved closer to him and then two pairs of arms lifted him half to his feet.

Greg raised his head and saw the Prophet surveying the pit.

You have everything you need,” Anthony had said.  Greg wondered at that, but quickly realized he had the solution to his current problem.

He opened his mouth, moving his lips and waggling his tongue.  Despite having no lungs, he was trying to speak.

The words came out, but they were thick and unintelligible.  But loud enough that the two people-things holding him heard and most importantly, so did the Prophet.  He turned and let his hands slide from the small of his back.

“What?” the Prophet said.  He had a look of dumb shock, so Greg repeated.

“I said,” Greg began and cleared his throat, “you’re a pizza.”

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