A Mass Intelligence

Scientists discover a microbe that creates what they call "bacterial nanowires." They are actually neural axons of a super mass intelligence. These are introduced into an engineered biological computer system. The consequence is the super intelligent mass becomes aware of humans, and aims to consequently wipe them out.

Crime Scene Camera Obscura

The 911 dispatcher reported a vehicle crashing into a home. The first responders found no one driving the car, but the vehicle was in neutral and the steering wheel was secured with an anti-theft device and a rope, ensuring that the trajectory of the vehicle would cause the impact on the specific residence.

Upon entering the residence for a welfare check, the first responders immediately called for backup.It was clear that the house itself was a crime scene.

The entire property surrounding the house was taped off. The procedure was to first eliminate the first responders impact on the scene, then circle the property clockwise with a gradually decreasing radius, looking for foot prints and any evidence. Strangely, there was no other foot traffic, at all. Nothing.

It didn't make any sense until the CSI team entered the house. Every window was completely blacked-out, covered in Aluminum foil.

In the Living Room, the West facing window was also completely covered in foil, with one exception, a tiny, perfect circular hole in the middle, A microphone stand held a duct taped magnifying glass only a few inches away from the hole.

The lead detective ordered everyone to turn off their flashlights. After everyone's eyes adjusted to the darkness, an image of the outside world of the west, refracting through the pinhole in the window foil, was projected on the east wall of the living room. The only audience for the spectacle was a corpse sitting upright in couch turned away from the window to the east wall.

The image refracted the sun setting over Los Angeles. Everyone was silent, watching the motion of the sun, something taken for granted by everyone until this moment. The lead CSI leaned into the corpse and inhaled through his nose. A confused look crept over his face. He wondered how many sunsets this corpse sat through without actually witnessing. The only odor detected was soil. Just a smell of normal dirt.

The police and investigators were milling about the room and search the house as the image of the Sun tracked down towards the floor. Unnoticed on the sofa's end table, an alarm clock suddenly rang. Everyone turned and stared for a second, then laughed! Was it some sort of prank? It could be evidence. It was bagged for fingerprints.

The sun set. The police turned on their flashlights, and the corpse was gone.

The patrolmen outside, busy keeping the news media from infiltrating the crime scene heard explosive noises and screams from inside the house.

Sleepless Imagination

I try to lay quietly in bed so I can go to sleep, but my mind is like having three or four television sets on at the same time, with the volume turned all the way up.

I was imagining a super hero that did everything and had no flaws what-so-ever. He discovered his powers by accidentally triggering a plasma field around him so hot he melted into the Earth, at one point passing through an active coal mine, setting it on fire as he continued to the Earth's mantle.

He floundered for a while as he continued to fall toward's the core, but finally found his flight skills and headed toward a strange dark ledge that turned out to be the Cascadia Subduction Zone ridge along the Pacific North West.

He passed through a massive open space which turned out to be part of the Yellowstone Super Caldera. All this time he neglected to look behind himself. He was boring a man-sized hole up through the crust, followed not by magma, but mantle material (supposedly something much worse, but if I'm wrong, just go with it.)

He finally emerges in the ocean through a thermal vent at the bottom of the sea and cools down. Eventually he makes it ashore near Ocean Shores, Washington, totally naked. Luckily it's winter, but he still gets caught stealing clothes.

He's only held for a little while because a massive earth quake off shore triggers a tsunami and everyone must evacuate. In the prisoner transport, the guards have the radio on listening to disaster reports coming from Wyoming and Illinois where he first flamed up.

He just kept his head down, his mouth shut and his shackles on. At least for the time-being.