The Draft Bin, vol. 1

Not every idea that I have makes it into any sort of written form.  Many ideas are jotted down as brief thoughts or spurts, sometimes only a few words strung together or a title.  Maybe I'll return for these later, build them into full compositions.  Maybe not.  Here's a few currently sitting in my notes:

"The Line for Heaven" - Everybody tells you about the angels, halos, and clouds.  No one warns you about the bureaucracy.

"Under the Rainbow" - We always dream of going over the rainbow.  What about under?  What twisted, sullen worlds await?

"Tomb World" - The world is dying.  Slowly but surely.  Potentially within our lifetimes.  We cannot stop it.  What are the last actions of a stranded civilization on a dying world?

How long can a train be?  Can they stretch for miles?  What about hundreds of miles?  Could a train never have an end, separating different cities for so long that they become completely distinct entities, with only the faintest recollection of each other?

Time is a dimension we move through.  What if that dimension had life of its own?  Only time travelers would ever lay eyes on them...

"Worldshatter" - I don't know anything about this.  It sure sounds cool though.

Inside old watches is an entire world of cogs, meshed together in intricate patterns.  What if the whole world was like that, a constantly turning maze of metal?

"The first swordsman came forward, his blade flashing and spinning, showing off his fancy footwork.  My face was blank, but I laughed inside my head.  This man had clearly never tasted battle.  I cut him down in two strokes.  His partner's face blanched, and he retreated a step before he regained control."

Sometimes, you're the hammer.  Sometimes, you're the nail.  Sometimes, if your luck is especially bad, the nail hits back.

It all began when Johnny came into lab, hair mussed and glasses askew, claiming that he could quantify love. We should have left it at that, laughed it off.  We definitely shouldn't have built the tracking device.

"Not all the dinosaurs were lost in the asteroid's cleansing flame.  They had a hundred million years of evolution on their side.  And some of them had learned to shift along the strings that made up quarks, leptons, gluons, and more, expanding across the stars." We stared at the professor as he walked across the ship's bridge, his arms raised in supplication.
The captain shrugged in his chair.  "That's as good an explanation as any, I suppose.  Now, fetch me my laser rifle - I'm going planetside to bag me a T-rex."