Micki Stenner

“But sir…’
     ‘Don’t worry I said I’ll do it,’ snapped the President.
     ‘But sir there’s just one other thing.’
     The President held the club in his hands like a seasoned baseball star. He glanced over at the Phlegm-O-Matic resting in the legionnaire’s rusted hand. ‘What?’
     ‘That protocol doesn’t include you.’
     The President’s shoulders sank and the air left his lungs in a rush. The legionnaire turned and aimed the gun at him.”
― A.R. Merrydew, Our Blue Orange

“But we need to do more. We are now in The Between Times for AI—between the demonstration of the technology’s capability and the realization of its promise reflected in widespread adoption.”
― Ajay Agrawal, Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence

“Stand in the machine there, let’s see what state your internal organs are in. The images
will be projected on screen, and I can go through the diagnosis with you, step by step.”
Brown did as he was told and soon images of his vital organs appeared on the screen.
 As you can see, your heart is slightly enlarged and your lungs and kidneys are not in
good shape either. Have you been experiencing any pain lately?”
“Not that I can think of. What can you do to help?”
“Difficult to say, you see you are dying” said the Doctor. You can see the
discolouration in your kidneys.” Brown strained his eyes.”
― Max Nowaz, The Arbitrator

“In the midst of evil you want to be a good man. You want decency. You want justice and courtesy and human concord, things you never knew you wanted. There is a kind of largeness to it, a kind of godliness. Though it’s odd, you’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead. You recognize what’s valuable. Freshly, as if for the first time, you love what’s best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost. At the hour of dusk you sit at your foxhole and look out on a wide river turning pinkish red, and at the mountains beyond, and although in the morning you must cross the river and go into the mountains and do terrible things and maybe die, even so, you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried