Bromides

Bromides: A Synopsis

“Are You Ready for Orbital Living? Take our assessment to find out!”
c. The Numerical Years
By Iya Sun

Chances are, you are not ready to live on an Orbital. A few, perhaps, have been living in such a way as to make…

An Original List & The Window Model (Again)

TRIGGER WARNING: this chapter peddles Suicide Ideation

He awoke one day as a full-grown adult, conscious, the Listmaker did. Oblivious to whether or not he ever had parents, the Listmaker always concluded that he must have had…

On Fishing (According to the Listmaker) … continued …

Fuschia. “Fuck,” she whispers. “Wha … what the …” Kevin stammers. “Back up!” she commands; “Back up!” “Okay, okay,” Kevin insists as he stops the vehicle midway into a parking spot and throws it into reverse; “Which way?” “That way!” she…

On Fishing (According to the Listmaker)

The Listmaker coughs a small cough. He is awoken by sounds the Listmaker ought not be making and rushes to his side. Blinking deep, slow blinks, the Listmaker looks at him and attempts a smile. “Shhh,” he calmly coaxes. The Listmaker carefully moves his eyes…

A Feline Frienemy

“You fucking fool!”

“I’m the fool? You’re trying to kidnap a grown man!”

“I’m not kidnapping you. I need your help, and now that I’ve spoken to you, your survival is … well, quite unlikely unless I also help you.”

The Trifles, Continue

“I don’t believe in shortcuts,” we hear you say, but the truth is simply, one hasn’t come your way. Sad trifles and condemnation against people who gain unearned, you stifle in stagnation about your intellect sorely spurned. In fact, people rarely get what they don’t deserve, yet you…

the older woman explains nothing.

Finally, like the sensation when an eluding word suddenly pops into the mind, something clicks, yes, this is the missing piece to a satisfying life. The dream seems so possible now. The passion arises and there’s nothing to be done except to chase that dream, the dream…

How to deal with anxiety, among other things.

She wakes up every morning, motionless, now conscious of her own consciousness, eyes closed; she removes herself from her own mental vicinity and ponders, “Look at me, lying in this bed, sprawled out beneath the covers, a smudge on the mattress, a…

Friendship, according to the middle-aged Old Man

Everything hurts; everything aches, and he never really wanted to be part of any of this anyway. It was happen-chance and circumstance. Now, he realizes, everything has gone to shit, so far so, that even she has lost control. He needs to make a…

‘Yea, theoretically, it may be possible to time travel.’

“Okay, so let’s just back up for a minute. I think I described the transformation as a way, sorry, the transformation of nanobots into tinctures, or tint tech, uh, tints, as a disguise. The more likely scenario is that the nanobots…

‘Yes, I am (was) a theoretical physician.’

Oh, no, don’t you worry now. You are most definitely not the first person to come knocking with questions about what it is that I do or did. I’m what you might call a … a theoretical physician, not to be confused with the truly great work of theoretical…

To Dupe the Duped

Roses are red, violets are blue, envy is green, and so are you.

Roses and violets full of envy unite. She feels alone, a feeling with which she is less familiar, but nevertheless, she trudges on, through the wild, plain yonder of a life unenthusiastically dependent upon…

‘The Paired’

“Be my lover, and let’s live together, a life on par with all the others.” “Or perhaps, instead, let’s fly upstream and build the life seen only in dreams.”

It was a story so succinctly similar to all other stories told about a pair of lovers who, for all intents and purposes…

On Teeth, Time, and Totemic Travel

And he had never really noticed, of course, until he noticed. But once he noticed, inevitably, the straightness of the teeth of every person on the television stood out to him like the way, he imagined, a set of crooked teeth, presumably, would when set against the…

‘Hello, At-la’s World!’

<p style=”text-align: center;”><span style=”font-weight: 400;”>Hello At-la’s World! It’s me, Attila, again!</span></p>

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>First, I am very sorry for not writing in so long. The truth is that I’ve been very busy with my first few…