Agent Shield and Spaceman

She saw all and knew more. The place of knowledge looked exactly like the waking world in its details, its strangeness revealed only by implication. Looking down at her own body she knew she was dead. And yet the possibilities of her life were not entirely spent. She knew this too. Part of her wanted to simply slip back into her body and let the Charm of Utanghk do its work but she wasn’t ready to do that. D pulled away from her body and the sub. In the ghostly second sight of the place of knowledge she perceived the submarine had already moved some distance from the dying Delta Omega Base. She watched the sub pass beneath the dark vaults of ice and turned her attention to colossal structure shuddering above. Standing in front of it in the waking world, the station was simply a structure, impressive but also sterile. From within the place of knowledge she gained an appreciation for the effort that had gone into its creation. To see it brought low was an occasion not for celebration b...

The young man was born in Dymi, a small village on the northern coast of the Peloponnesus. The village had seen its share of history down through the millennia but the young man considered it a relatively uneventful, drowsy corner of the world. He was born into a fisherman’s family and expected to join the fleet by his sixteenth year. Secretly, he thought he might have enjoyed that fate. His name was Nikolas and what he formerly wanted is of little concern to this story. One warm June morning Nikolas walked from his house to the coast. He had vague plans to meet up with friends there but if they hadn’t woken yet he would take a swim and find something else to occupy his time. He encountered a pleasant lemony fragrance on the air and took a detour through a olive grove to see if the linden trees had bloomed. The fragrance, however, led him from orchard to a lonely tree clutching the edge of an eroded cliff. The Adriatic Sea thundered below and Nikolas sat down to watch it. He ...