Unbound

Those forced to make impossible choices are rarely loved. If it’s approval and reputation you care about, then you have no place here.

“Do you, um, happen to have a copy of that Wells novel here?”

“Priorities,” Lena whispered.

Right. The end of the world took precedence over an unpublished H. G. Wells. Barely.

In short, Fahrenheit 451 was never meant to be an instruction manual.

“What are you doing?” asked Nicola.

“Making sure I know what I’m doing.”

“Better late than never,” Lena murmured.

The hotel offered a complimentary continental breakfast. My first thought upon seeing it was rather less than complimentary.

“This is the worst excess of conjecture and wishful thinking,” snapped Jackson. “We don’t know if Isaac is capable of any of this.”

“He believes he is,” said Bi Wei.

“I once met a woman who believed she was abducted by aliens who looked like the Teletubbies,” Jackson shot back. “That doesn’t make it true.”

We all know Pastor Tom Briggs is a walking skidmark in a bad suit, and his congregation is a stain on Christians everywhere….

Freedom of speech is easy when it’s speech we approve of. The true test of freedom is what we do when people like Briggs and his ilk mount their soapboxes and and show their asses to the world.

Fortunately, freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from mockery and other consequences.

I had said before that all stories were magic. It had never occurred to me that all magic was stories.

In the words of a coworker, my give-a-shit gauge was stuck on Empty these days.

Modern fantasy is little more than juvenile escapism and anachronistic longing for a time that never existed. I’ve never understood the appeal.