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via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Absently he trailed a fingertip between the vorpal racer's eye-nacelles and down the streamlined wedge of her face. They had opened windows but the crowded room still sweltered beneath the lights. His touch might have been intended to calm her. via … The Press-Conference of Dr Moreau | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2RZqFgY

Subterranean Press Fiction The Support Technician Tango by Daniel Abraham via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2MBahTx

Subterranean Press Balfour and Meriwether in The Vampire of Kabul by Daniel Abraham via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2OMynYW

Wren Hex-Yemenni woke early. They had to teach her everything from scratch, and there wasn't time for her to learn anything new before she hit fifty and had to be expired. "Watch it," the other techs told me when I was starting out. "You don't want a Hex on your hands." By then we were monitoring Wren Hepta-Yemenni. She fell into bed with Dorado ambassador 214, though I don't know what he did to deserve it and she didn't even seem sad when he expired. When they torched him she went over with the rest of the delegates, and they bowed or closed their eyes or pressed their tentacles to the floors of their glass cases, and afterwards they toasted him with champagne or liquid nitrogen. Before we expired Hepta, later that year, she smiled at me. "Make sure Octa's not ugly, okay? Just in case-for 215." Wren Octa-Yemenni hates him, so it's not like it matters. Rated PG for political machinations and waiting…

"Since we have so many new faces," I said to the half-dozen volunteers, "I'll start with a tools talk. Safety points for the spade - the most important is that when you're digging, you push with the ball of your foot." I picked up a spade from the pile, and demonstrated by digging up a bluebell growing by the hedge. From the large bells all round the stem, I knew it was a Spanish bluebell, a garden escape that if left unchecked would hybridise with the natives. Too late now, though. You can tell the British bluebell because the flowers are smaller, deeper blue, and they're usually on one side of the stem, so the plant droops under their weight as if bowing down before its foreign conqueror. There's hardly a wood left in England where you'll see only native bluebells. "Or you can use your heel on the spade." I heaved the invader out of the earth and tossed it aside, knowing it would safely rot. "But you should never press down with the middle of your foot. The bones in the arch are delicate, and you can injure yourself."