Later, he’d work on his private artificial intelligence project - tinker with Armageddon, as the Neo-Luddite press called it. Perhaps, he’d spend the weekend with his sister and play Snakes-and-Ladders with his young nieces. He mused what he’d do if Ann stood him up. Streetlights blinked on one by one, casting tiny pools of amber glow. As daylight faded, the street below became an abode of indigo shadows.

The smooth, cool metal blazed gold in the slanting rays of the westering sun. He grasped the top rail to steady his hands. He was in no hurry to find out if there was life after death. Hell, the flying tube filled with a hundred pounds of home-made dynamite heading his way was rather unnerving. Ann, a glamorous twenty-something lawyer he had chatted up on Wednesday, was fashionably late and probably scared. The air-raid sirens sounded the all clear. The crump of detonation reverberated across the Financial District like rolling thunder. A red beam stabbed at the sky, and the rocket exploded well short of its target. Still climbing on its ballistic trajectory, it got as close as Poplar. He wondered how close it would get before the Green Zone defense lasers vaporized it to kingdom come. Seven miles to the west, Ben Carter leaned against the railing of a rooftop restaurant, watching the Qassam 2 streak toward him.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.ħ: Thought Vectors and Green Hills of Englandģ6: Holographic Roofs and The Book of JobĪ terrorist missile trailed a smoky plume as it lifted from East London. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Galatea 2044 by R. Magnusholm