bioflash: "The Search"

Under the microscope, Sofi examines the Paramecium: life inside a matter of microns. The single cell zigzags across the slide, breaths, ingests, metabolizes and eventually births a twin. A tiny, motile miracle.

Through the telescope, Sofi studies galaxies that spiral, and nebulae named after spiders. The stars are grains of sand on a cosmic beach: too many to imagine, too immense to fathom.

Curiosity carries her forward, an exploration of existence both grand and small. Like a child’s first foray into the forest, Sofi’s experiment is without boundary, her wonder without limit.

-----

Come and get it!

bioflash: "Late for Work"

Bill’s clock beeped. 6:45. Whap! Snooze.

6:55. Whap! “I don’t wanna work, I just want to bang on my drum...” Oops, wrong button. Whap!

7:05. Yawn. Snooze.

7:15. Ughhh.

7:25. Uh-oh. Thirty-five minutes to get dressed and beat two bridges.

Bill rushed out the door half-dressed. He weaved through traffic like taxis in Rome. Speed limit signs went by in a blurry dream.

A green light? Go faster.

Yellow? Faster still.

Red? Proceed with caution.

Then sirens.

“Damn!”

$196.

And so, like every other day, Bill was late for work.

That night he took a hammer to his snooze alarm.

-----

Don't hit that snooze alarm! Read more bioflash!

bioflash: "Rainchild"

She is both mothercloud and rainchild. Each rainchild is part of a god, a god whose body is a part of creation. The vast ocean holds her heart, the sky her spirit. Her cycle of reincarnation shifts one form to the next, moving her shape from snow-white infancy into springtime childhood, to finally rest in the eternal ocean. Always, she longs for the freedom of those forgotten waves. Yet the sungod banishes her, upward, to perch on her mountain prison. There she waits, locked in ice, for the summer fairies to dance her frozen crystal legs back into the stream.

-----

Come and get it! (more bioflash, that is...)

bioflash: "Meditation"

Jakob sat still for an hour. He didn't feel any different.

He tried two hours, then three. Life became a calm, clear river, yet
he wasn't satisfied. To be a perfect being--that's what Jakob wanted.

So he sat, in stubborn rigidness, for ten straight hours. Exhausted,
his eyes opened to a table of Englishmen drinking tea.

“Welcome to our perfect place.”

“What,” Jakob ventured, “do you all do?”

“We sit. We drink. We speak kindly about our Queen.”

“Why?”

With that word he fell back into his basement suite, feeling less
than perfect, and happily so.

-----

Come and get your bioflash fix!

bioflash: "Cookie Monster"

When the cookie with a chocolate chip happy face spoke to Trevor, he wasn't fazed.

“Don't eat me!”

Chomp.

“Ouch! I bring a message.”

“I'm listening.” Chomp.

“Om-eht-mey-moth.”

“Oh--sorry.”

Trevor rearranged the chocolate chips, using the nose to rebuild its half-eaten mouth. “Better?”

“Hardly. If you eat me, the Cosmic Cookie People will destroy Earth. The choice is yours!”

The words gripped Trevor's soul. Great power carried great responsibility. And yet, never had he tasted anything so delicious. In surreal slow-motion, he helplessly ate the rest.

The first colossal chocolate chip to fall from the sky flattened his house.

-----

Visit the bioflash breeding grounds right here!

bioflash: "Rain"

Colours of rainbow beckon the sun.

Pearls on grass: soft food for green blades.

Foil to famine, fear to fire.

Sun shield, mountain mane, river rapture.

Quenching the parched, broth of every cell.

The lost child of a nebulous womb whose mourning breaks the sky.

The flood in the plains that overflows leaf and bough.

Lucid fluid on the freeway that twists tires into tragedy.

---

Bioflash galore!

bioflash: "Last Stop"

The bus driver looked back at Tim.

“Bad dreams?”

Crushed robin’s eggs and smeared embryonic yolk. That’s all Tim saw. He frowned.

“It’s rush-hour. Where is everyone?”

The driver grinned a baleful grin. “Got off at the good stops. But we’re going to the end. Didn’t you know? You’re dead. Had a heart attack six stops back.”

“Heart attack?”

“Quite painless. Not fair, really. You should have left that bird’s nest alone.”

“Bird’s nest?” At a friend’s dare, Tim had flattened the tiny blue eggs beneath his shoe. “I was ten!”

“Old enough.”

Flame licked at the windows.

---

More bioflash than you can shake a stick at found here!

bioflash: "Sacred"

Buddha beneath the bodhi tree.

Bare feet brushing against monastery stone.

The first piercing cry of a newborn babe.

A snow leopard atop the Himalayas.

Sunrays streaming through cloud.

Perfectly parallel vapour trails behind a jet.

A raccoon prying open the garbage can.

The last, raspy breath of a centenarian.

A cell phone ringing at a funeral.

Jesus bleeding on the cross.

-----

More bioflash can be found here.

bioflash: "Dreams (Reality)"

Harold always wanted to be a vet (greenhouse worker).

He dreamed of a log house with an evergreen forest as his backyard (suburban condo, supermall parking lot).

Start a family with a slim, talented woman, and have one son and one daughter (obese K-Mart cashier, five girls).

Someday, he would write that fantasy novel where gnomes rode winged camels (cathartic journaling regarding divorce).

Finally, well past his prime, Harold decided to think less and do more about what he thought (and, after a few years, his imagination converged with his waking path).

-----

More bioflash here!

bioflash: "Aroma Acupuncture"

The night Gerald the groundskeeper got fired from the zoo—“you’re overstressed,” his boss claimed—he decided to have some fun. Laughing with glee, he put hedgehogs with hippos, pit vipers with snow leopards, and naked mall rats in the leech pond. Peacocks got plucked by squirrel monkeys. Cheetahs and sloths changed their perception of time. The black panther knocked Emperor penguins around like bowling pins.

Gerald’s comeuppance finally arrived—never was there a more reluctant convert to Chinese medicine—when he got caught in the porcupine and hog-nosed skunk crossfire.

-----

More bioflash here!

bioflash: "Bartleby's Return"

“You could flip burgers at McDonalds.”

“I would prefer not to.”

“My stag, this weekend, in Vegas!”

“I would prefer not to.”

“We can smoke in this strip club.”

“I would prefer not to.”

“Bottled water—half price at Walmart!”

“Britney’s singing on Broadway!”

“Our special today: no fat, ginger, grande chai latte with whipped soy milk.”

“Having an iphone makes everything easier.”

“The season finale of Survivor: Timbuktu is starting!”

“I would prefer not to.”

“Want to lead a simple life where your actions inspire community and growth?”

“That, I would prefer.”

-----

Bioflash found here!

Bioflash: "Water"

One oxygen atom and a pair of hydrogen.

Sparkling dew on a garden leaf.

Gentle rain casting circles on a lily pond.

The floating prism twisting colours into a rainbow.

Lenticular clouds capping a mountain range.

A billion individual crystal snowflakes.

Glaciers glowing blue as the ocean deep.

A river carving boulder into pebble.

A waterfall shedding mist as clouds of heaven.

A lake swimming with fins and fish.

An icicle dripping its liquid body into a driveway puddle.

White breath on a cold morning.

The well from which life sprang.

One oxygen atom and a pair of hydrogen.

-----

Bioflash found here!

Bioflash: "The Life of Blood"

Arteries and veins—our fluid freeways—provide a direct line from the lungs to every living cell. One red blood cell shuttles a billion oxygen in its donut-shaped disc, stacking capillaries with the breath of life. No DNA guides this cell. Born in the bone marrow, he is slave to a merciless heart. One hundred days later, broken and beaten, the red blood cell disassembles. A new car is made from his old parts, this vital transport racing along dilated vessels. And so blood flows with every beat, carrying life from lung to tissue, artery to vein, heart to cell.

-----

Bioflash archives

Bioflash: "Broken"

The bus from Williams Lake was late.

Stu sat in the idling car, waiting for his son. They hadn’t spoken in over ten years. What could he say? What possible comfort could this old curmudgeon offer?

The bus finally pulled in. Tim was one of the last to get off. Stu saw it in his eyes, and held back tears last shed twenty-nine years ago. Tears for his son’s birth. But this time, birth had taken two lives.

Stu said nothing and hugged his son hard. He held him for a long time, but he did not cry.

Bioflash: "Microscope"

This crystal ball waits in the biology lab, ever-patient in her mounting curiosity. Through her glasses the world is clear: a beaming, unblemished full moon. Lenses and light make the invisible visible, the tiny titanic. One dot resolves into two, one cell a bustling city of constant construction, movement and repair. To an observer, looking through a window at the building blocks of life, the small appears infinite, like God staring down at his divine elements, mesmerized by the miracle of his makeup. Thus, this optical opus blesses the naked eye with the power to gaze into creation itself.

-----

Looking for more bioflash? Click here!

Bioflash: "Destiny's Fate"

“Don’t worry, be happy,” said Fate. “What will be will be.”

Destiny shook his head. “How can you say that? Luck is something you make.”

“Excuse me,” said Luck. “I was made by the divine.”

“I guess that makes me a heathen,” said Chance.

“Fortune favours the bold,” said Fortune boldly.

“You would say that,” Freewill said to Fortune. “It is the choices in life that are important.”

“Only the ones I make,” said Fate.

Destiny smiled. “And you make those choices because of me.”

-----

Click here for more bioflash!

Bioflash: "Centrifuge"

The Great Beings lived above space and time. They saw universes the way a whale considers a grain of sand. One of these Beings became curious, much like a human scientist.

“Let’s spin a universe in a centrifuge!”

So he ground down a universe with a giant mortar and pestle and spun it at a trillion G’s. Stars settled near the top, comets further down. A dark pellet of iron and nickel—planetary cores—clumped at the bottom of the centrifuge tube.

Picking up his mortar, he cleaned out the crushed remains of the Milky Way and started again.

-----

More bioflash right here!

Bioflash: "When Trees Fight Back"

When the trees decided to reclaim the planet, the great firs dropped cones onto human heads. Moss released spores full of bacteria. Sword ferns claimed their namesake.

But humans proved surprisingly resilient. Even falling coconuts didn’t deter them.

Flowers released hyperallergenic pollen, but could not defeat Benadryl. Angiosperms stopped producing fruit, but apples and oranges were replicated in laboratories. Finally, plants slowed photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide started suffocating the air.

Humans had only one choice. Give up their cars, factories and air conditioners.

Thus began, amidst a long and quiet verdancy, the Great Age of Green.

-----

More bioflash here!

Bioflash: "Probability"

Thao’s teacher rolled the dice.

“Six!” Mr. Abaddon announced. “What’s the probability I’ll roll two more?”

Thao raised his hand. “One hundred percent!”

No one got the joke. Thao had always suspected his math teacher was the devil, hiding his horns behind that tweed hat.

Mr. Abaddon rolled twice more. Both sixes. “You’re right, Thao. I’ll see you after class.”

When everyone else had left, Thao walked up to the teacher’s desk. Mr. Abaddon looked at him curiously.

“How did you know?”

Thao shrugged

“Just a lucky guess? I want to show you something.”

Mr. Abaddon took off his hat.

A few photos from Saturday

What a Saturday!

First, I got to see my "Fading Firs" photo on display in the Surrey Art gallery "Earth Matters" exhibit. Then it was off to the Every Day Fiction anthology book launch, which features my story, "A Fungal Friend". Unfortunately, an hour-plus wait for the Port Mann bridge meant I missed the reading. But I did get to meet the other authors, and chat with Jordan Lapp for a good while. Besides being a founding editor of Every Day fiction, he is also a fellow Writers of the Future winner, and is an in-law of one of my co-workers! Small world. This might be the start of a beautiful friendship...




You can find out more about the Every Day Fiction anthology right here.