By the mid-2040s, humankind had achieved what earlier ages would have called utopia. Diseases once incurable had vanished, energy was abundant, and famine existed only in historical archives. No government collapsed, because none remained, with the distributed intelligence known collectively as ADAMNet handling resource allocation and policy optimization. Every home, every device, every medical implant…

Thanksgiving is a day or so away, but the holiday isn’t really the point. It’s just the thing on the calendar reminding me how quiet the porch has become. Truth is, it’s been this way for a while now. Ever since I retired, it feels like folks don’t stop by the way they used to.…

By 2038, the quiet revolution had become an empire. The wetware arrays no longer floated in glass dishes. They were encased in translucent capsules the size of a child’s skull, suspended in nutrient baths threaded with fiber conduits. Rows of them lined the subterranean halls of the Chesapeake Complex—ten thousand biocores murmuring in electromagnetic cadence,…

Melvin liked to say that the world hadn’t gone crazy all at once, but it had eased into madness the way a man eased into a too-hot bath: one grumble at a time, then a full-body wince once the heat truly settled in. Anyone watching him from the outside would have seen just another Elder…

“Wetware refers to the biological components of a computing or cybernetic system, essentially, the human brain or nervous system when it interacts with hardware or software. The term is used in contrast to hardware (physical devices) and software (programs or code), highlighting the role of organic, living tissue in information-processing.” Techopedia Part I – Genesis…

I was sitting alone in my kitchen last night, the house quiet except for the gentle hum of the refrigerator and the steady tick of the wall clock. Maybe it was the stillness, or it was the lingering weight of a conversation I’d had earlier in the day, but my mind drifted back to the…

There is a way to kill a newspaper so slow, so polite, and so exquisitely stupid that even the corpse will thank you. I have seen it done, and I have had the misfortune of watching it carried out with all the ceremony of a Sunday sermon and none of the sense. I speak of…

I swear, sometimes my brain feels like a cluttered attic, full of dusty boxes, random treasures, and the occasional trapdoor to another dimension. At least, that’s how it felt the night I stumbled into what I’m calling The Capaldi Conundrum. So here’s how it started. Two years ago, I first heard of Lewis Capaldi. Great…

There are moments in a man’s life when he’s sure he’s achieved greatness. Some folks climb mountains, others write symphonies. Me? I made the perfect sandwich. I’m talking masterpiece-level perfection here. Balanced, layered, and beautiful. Fresh sourdough, toasted just enough to whisper when you bite into it. Roast beef piled high, four pieces of bacon,…

Yesterday morning, I came across a story written by my long-deceased acquaintance, TC, in 1990. I never knew his last name.  He gave it to me one afternoon while we were rebuilding a radio station in Reno. After rereading it, I realize he used “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert W. Service, as a…