#technology

Almost everyone who has lived, or once been a tourist, in Cleveland, Ohio, has probably visited the West Side Market, an old-fashioned marketplace of generations-old stands selling fresh produce, meat, and spices. Do you ever wonder how the West Side Market was founded, or how the original West Side Market still operates? Officially, the market opened in 1840. A long time ago, but nothing compared to when it truly started.

Thursday morning. I awoke to the sounds of a siren blaring down the road. Great, another accident. The traffic was the last thing I wanted in the morning while going to work. Still, I had another hour before heading off, so I started my morning routine of taking a shower and brushing my teeth before heading downstairs for breakfast where I saw my son, Michael, eating cereal before breakfast. I grabbed a bagel and sat down on the couch, grabbing my iPad to read the news.

As darkness fell and the researchers at the Michigan laboratory finished their work and prepared to leave, something was happening that none of them were aware of. In one of the electric crucible furnaces, where they had been experimenting with creating new, extraordinary substances, something was bubbling restlessly. It seemed to have spiraled out of control, yet no one noticed. Almost all the staff had already gone home, leaving only Mike, who was notoriously slow and phlegmatic.

12/02/11

I had just graduated high school and was planning to head off to college that fall. I had done well enough in high school that I had a couple of different college scholarships at my disposal. However, not every school that I looked at was willing to give me a full ride. After much thought and delegation I decided to attend the University of Wyoming. Why would I apply to such a college you may ask? Well for one thing, the college is in the middle of nowhere! Literally, when you drive there, all…

Hi! I’m Peter. I work as customer support for a video game that you’ve almost certainly heard about. Let’s call it WizardQuest for safety’s sake. There are different ways that customers can contact us, but I prefer responding to text chat, since if I’m honest I’m not very good on the phone. That’s not to say that I’m great at text chat either, but let’s not tear me all the way down just yet.

In the late nineties, scientists conducted the Distant Snake Experiment. The experiment consisted of putting a one-man-capsule in a distant orbit around Earth. They would be suspended in solitary confinement for two months, logging their mental status and their physical status during that time. However, the experiment was shut down shortly after it was created due to strange complications. The experiment puts a man inside a vessel, then puts that vessel in a 400,000 kilometer orbit around…

I must type this sentence to keep the monsters away. I don't know why this works, but it does. The faster I type, the further away they are. Sometimes, I think I might be able to type fast enough to make them go away. Yet, if I stop for only a moment they will return.

The scene: An idyllic houshold, with no peculiarities. The cast: A traditional nuclear family, living caricatures from a Norman Rockwell piece. The parents make small talk as they all eat a breakfast of bacon and eggs. The children hurriedly scarf down the meal, eager for school. The mother picks up the dishes and together they walk out the door to begin the day. Their footsteps make no noise as they walk on the black dirt where grass grew once upon a time. The father takes a whiff of the…

You may have heard of the Farnsworth experiments. My dad was one of the scientists involved. He rarely talked about it, and when he did he always said the rumors were overplayed. The team tried and failed, nothing more to it. He seemed to get annoyed at me asking him about it. When I kept it up, he eventually told me a brief account of what happened. It was the mid 80s and he was living in Albany, New York, pursuing his phD. This was a year or two after I was born. He began work on a government…

Electrons excite me. Perhaps that is why I took so readily to computers. By the age of 13 I had cobbled together my first computer from the odd bits leftover from the old computers of friends and family. The rush of creation and experimentation that I felt that day has never been matched, but my experiments are getting closer to recapturing that glory.

“I hope this thing is on. I still don’t know how to work it properly." *THUMP THUMPTHUMP THU-THUMPTHUMP* *BREATHING INTO THE MICROPHONE*