When my youngest, Lawrence (or more usually Larry), began high school I was not surprised that he had problems. Not scholastically. Larry is a bright boy. No, the thing about Larry is that he is “odd”. I can’t describe it better than that since I haven’t been able to pin it down better myself. There is nothing tangible. He doesn’t look funny in any way. No big nose or limp or anything like that. He’s not a macho boy but in no way girly (even if some would characterize his love for ballet as girly, which anybody that had seen him on stage would know is a mistake). He’s just “odd”.

Weld asked one of his other friends when he found him between sims: “Did you know aliens have taken over the world?”

Turra: “What, the aliens now available in the sims?”

When we watched this particular recording, Laura asked the question, “Did we make humans available as an option in the sex sims? I know they are available in the bathroom sims.”

Chapter 7

I woke with an insistent bladder on Monday morning. I felt a lot better and hummed a bit as I showered and dressed. I ate well and went down to the office to see if we had any new emails. Then went to open up the street door for Lena. When she came in, she put a large bag on my desk.

“That’s your outfit for when we go to Epsom on Thursday. They had your sizes still on file.”

I looked in the bag and saw a WPC uniform, identical to hers, except in one detail. Mine had a sergeants’ stripes.

Rose dozed off several times during the day. She managed to get what she had to do, done and called it an early day. Her assistant manager Francis could handle everything.

Just before she laid down, she checked the results from the test she performed earlier in the day. It confirmed what she thought the explosives were. Someone had used a custom binary explosive that when you sent an electrical charge through it, exploded. She knew of only three
companies that sold the chemicals required to make those explosives.

It was a strange feeling that followed our semi-final. On the one hand, we had done brilliantly in reaching the cup final, which had always been our aim. On the other hand, we would have to play the final without our captain, Katie. I felt particularly bad: she'd only been sent off because she was acting to protect me. I did express this to her, but she wasn't having any of it.

"Don't be silly. It's my own fault, I act before thinking sometimes. But at least I made it a good one, wiped the stupid cow right off her feet."

We both shared a laugh and a hug.

As I was leaving, Hanna ran and fetched the book.
She pressed it into my hands, insisting that I take it.

"Be our Perry Mason!" she chirped, smiling and nearly dancing with excitement.

[The following Friday]
I had finished making all the parts for the device the previous evening. I caressed the smooth wood like you do a newborn baby. Like all my custom pieces I’d grown to love it despite its primary use. I went to bed satisfied that I had made a piece of furniture and one that I was proud to put my signature on.

The game against Oakwood High kicked off at 3pm, just three days after the match against St. Mary's. In between the games we'd had two more training sessions, the first of which was a recovery session, and the second of which focused on what we would likely encounter against Oakwood. They had a reputation for employing the dark arts, so we practiced short-sharp passing drills, designed at moving the ball on quickly and moving into space, so that they would have no time to commit fouls.

Chapter 6

As the meeting ended, we went down to the Inspectors’ office and planned for the two Ascot meetings. I would take Lena in before the next one, at the end of the month, with us both getting the comms. Lena said that she would wear something less girly and that a tiepin microphone would be good. I would be in a similar outfit to last Saturday. For the big meeting next year, I would glam up and wear a hat, so something on that would be all right.

By the time Genesis and Megan got to the witches' headquarters, they'd already gone over their plan. Even so, Genesis felt like she was on the verge of a panic attack. She was about to break and enter. And since it was a witches' place that she was breaking and entering into, she might face some very serious consequences.

Worm
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Humans have been visited by intelligent creatures from another galaxy. So many people talk about it, so it must be true, and it is. There are many crazy stories out there but so many of them have a kernel of truth. The truth is harder to understand when it is smaller than we imagine.