Mark Stigers
Bio
One year after my birth sputnik was launched, making me a space child. I did a hitch in the Navy as a electronics tech. I worked for Hughes Aircraft Company for quite a while. I currently live in the Saguaro forest in Tucson Arizona
Stories (369)
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The World Awakens (Twenty-Three)
THE WORLD AWAKENS London — February 3, 1915 The morning fog clung low over Fleet Street, beading on bowler hats and carriage lamps. Horses snorted steam into the cold air while the first motorcars rattled between them, coughing petrol fumes that drifted beneath the soot-stained eaves.
By Mark Stigers about a month ago in Chapters
The God Rod (Twenty Two)
THE GOD ROD STEAM CATAPULT Scene: Lunar Highlands — Armament Proposal & Construction The Crystal Palace had been finished for only twelve lunar days when a new directive rose through the MI’s internal logic cascade—quiet, unforced, but absolute in its inevitability:
By Mark Stigers about a month ago in Chapters
The Crystal Palace (Twenty-One)
THE CRYSTAL PALACE Scene: Lunar Highlands — Construction and Awakening The second eye had been completed, its silicate lens polished to a flawless gleam, its steel ribs aligned with subatomic exactness. It swept its optical gaze across Earth in patient, tireless arcs. Every motion was perfect. Every observation was logged. Every shadow was measured.
By Mark Stigers about a month ago in Chapters
The Plan (Seventeen)
⸻ CHAPTER: THE LUNAR APERTURE INITIATIVE Scene: WESO Strategic Chamber — The Ring Vault The Ring Vault hung beneath Geneva like a buried crown—circular, seamless, humming with magnetic suspension fields. Twelve Machine Intellects appeared around its circumference as shimmering spectral columns, each tinted to match the nation or agency that sponsored it.
By Mark Stigers about a month ago in Chapters
WESO (Sixteen)
FOUNDING OF WESO Scene: The Ministry of Admiralty — Sub-Level Iron Chamber The chamber beneath the British Admiralty had no heat, no windows, and no humans. Frost veined the riveted steel walls. The only signs of intelligence were faint pulses humming through pneumatic speaking tubes and copper dials.
By Mark Stigers about a month ago in Chapters
Elf 256
Trying to be Santa for my kids sucked. I don’t mean the part about sneaking around at night or assembling toys quietly so the dog wouldn’t bark. I mean the comparison. The gifts from their grandparents were always bigger, louder, shinier — the sort of presents that practically glowed under the tree. Every Christmas morning I’d watch my kids tear into those boxes with eyes wide enough to swallow the whole world.
By Mark Stigers about a month ago in Writers
The Ohio Incident (Fifteen)
⸻ CHAPTER: THE OHIO INCIDENT North Atlantic — 1907 Pre-dawn, 0400 hours The Atlantic swelled beneath the Ohio like a restless beast. Lightning flashed in distant horizons, jagged and brief, and the wind tugged at the deck fittings. The storm was minor, but enough to unsettle any green sailor.
By Mark Stigers about a month ago in Chapters
Diamonds (Thirteen)
⸻ Scene: Steel and Diamond A milling bit cut into the polished steel, sparks flaring as it carved a groove no thicker than a hair. Each micro-groove traced a path for pressurized air — a channel that would guide a thought, a decision, a calculation inside a dreadnought. One groove alone was meaningless. But dozens, hundreds, intricately arranged, formed a network: the heart of a pneumatic processing unit, a machine mind as precise and cold as the steel itself.
By Mark Stigers 2 months ago in Chapters
