With and Without Class Read Free

back!”
    He made clicking noises and it moved toward him. It slid up his leg and over his chest, burning his clothes and charring his smoking flesh on its way. “Come home. Come home,” he said and it turned grey and slipped into his mouth.
    â€œNow,” he edged forward, crouching low. “Give the device.”
    I looked at the flare gun, then at the distant, burning Aheara and the black horizon. “Okay.” I pointed it at him.
    â€œNo. First—”
    The flare imbedded into his chest and his ribs ballooned outward before the grey slime pulled him back together. It seeped out of his skin and his whole body gleamed a blinding red. “It’s magical,” he said, wobbling and struggling to stand. “Each sector I’ve visited—all the pleasures I’ve experienced. This is the center point, Samples. This is what I’ve always been waiting for and what I knew I deserved. It loves me.”
    The red ring rose out of the water. It revved and tightened around us.
    He turned on me: “Now—you burn for heat.”
    I picked up an oar and jabbed him off balance and the oar caught fire.
    He wobbled and looked over at the icy black waters.
    I jabbed him again and the boat rocked.
    â€œNo,” he said. “It’s mine,”—he looked over at the icy waters—“ The heat wants to stay with me .” He hunched himself lower in a defensive stance, preparing to lunge. “You can’t hate me; can you, Samples? You can’t hate the spark for wanting to live.”
    I jumped on the left lip of the hull just as a wave struck. The lifeboat capsized and I was sucked under into the cold blackness. As the waters swirled and shook me I managed to open my eyes long enough to see a flailing red ember sinking down. It sputtered out in a storm of steam geysers. I groped around and found the edge of the lifeboat and slowly pulled myself out flat over the top of the overturned hull. Up above, the rescue copters lit up the waters and the lifeboat. The red slime oozed up the boat, burning my leg and my clothes. It was a slow burn. It was tired. The size of its catch had been overestimated.
    It shared so many secrets—secrets I didn’t deserve: every love, every ambition, every shiny new product and toy—all heat. And the source of it all touched me, giving itself freely, unselfishly. “So warm,” I muttered, “so warm— so warm. ”
    The liquid nitrogen cannons went off from the copter’s decks. I felt it shiver and die. It asked why it had been betrayed after giving its love so freely.
    I laughed and muttered, “All my desires: All heat.”
    Â 

A Blind Date For Bonkers
    L ooking through the lens of his microscope, the first thing that came to his attention was that when these creatures, which he deemed considerably humanlike—when they talked, they didn’t say things in the way you or I would say them. That is, one word after the next. It took him considerable time to decode their language. They exchanged by utilizing a singular outburst. All of their syllables and ideas were scrunched into this quick, sharp outburst so that whole sentences, whole ideas, whole narratives came out as isolated, singular sounds. Of all the sounds available, their unit of exchange sounded most like a bonk. Whenever these humanlike creatures conversed, they did not so much talk as bonk. To put it another way, they were Bonkers.
    These bonking Bonkers bonked all night long. They bonked on cell phones, in trains, they bonked in burgundy, overburdened beds. They bonked in groups going up stairs and sometimes going down these stairs. When they were angry with each other, they bonked each others brains out: bonk, bonk, bonk. They didn’t even think before they bonked. They did it in excited, exuberant ways. And this was