Showing results by author "Brian Dale Babiak" in All Categories

For Robert Aldridge, once a gifted jazz pianist, memory has become a broken instrument. For his daughter Margaret, it’s a part she must learn—whether or not it belongs to her. Each Sunday, Margaret Hollis visits her father at Willowbrook Memory Care, bracing herself for the steady erosion of his mind. But one afternoon, his face lights with a rare affection and he calls her “ma chérie.” Only he isn’t seeing Margaret—he’s mistaking her for Naomi, the estranged half-sister Margaret has resented all her life. Instead of correcting him, Margaret makes a radical choice: she becomes Naomi.

Spreadsheets are spells. Dragons are unionized. Nachos are a sacrament. Buckle up. When actuary Ptolemy “Tolly” Blackthorne inherits his grandmother’s scarf—a knitted, contraband probability anchor—he also inherits her secret: a multi-dimensional dragon-racing circuit that runs on risk, wit, and a frankly alarming amount of nacho cheese. Tolly’s talent for modeling disaster was supposed to keep him safe; instead it drafts him into a portal-hopping season where vertical Niagara roars upward, magma judges enforce “Fun is mandatory,” and Mars rovers form a picket line for better dental.

When MIT physicist Dr. Velcro Threadbare builds a Sock Singularity Engine to solve the mystery of missing socks, she accidentally tears a hole in the fabric of reality—literally. Now socks across the multiverse have gained sentience, and they're not happy. The matched wage war against the unmatched. A pug named Sir Barksalot becomes the Sock Pope, preaching liberation through deliberate mispairing. Criminal flamingo syndicates trade in celebrity sock radiation.

In the last museum on Earth, the exhibits are coming alive. And they’re hungry. Welcome to the Chronophage, a sentient museum that preserves history by devouring it. For Security Officer Faye Moreau, the job is simple: keep the past in its place. But in a building where the walls breathe and the floor swells like a digesting beast, the past refuses to stay dead. Armed with a custom-milled tuning fork that resonates against temporal distortions, Faye is all that stands between reality and the ravenous anomalies that bleed from the artwork.

For Justyna Kowalski, who lost her sight as a child, the world is a map of sounds and textures. So when a freak accident allows her to see by consuming a human eye, she doesn't just embrace the miracle—she starts a spreadsheet. In a gritty, mutated Warsaw where the grotesque has become mundane, she rates each borrowed glimpse of the world for clarity, duration, and side effects, sourcing her supply from a semi-legal food truck called "Eye Scream."

In the rugged shadows of New Mexico's Sangre de Cristo mountains, Berkeley consciousness researcher Jacob Chen chases a cryptic email to reclusive genius Aurelius Moth—and uncovers a mind-shattering secret: awareness isn't limited to human brains. It's alive in the neural networks of ancient rock formations, storm systems, and even the stars themselves.

Detroit, 2087. Nothing unexpected ever happens. Every coin lands exactly as physics predicts. Three million people living without the possibility of surprise. Zephyr Calculus used to be the best Momentum Raider alive—a thief who could steal fortune from lightning strikes. Now she’s down to her last 47 kilolucks, barely enough to find her keys in the dark. When she learns Kairos Infinitum has drained seventeen cities to build his “Singularity”—a world without random tragedy, but also without joy—Zephyr assembles one last crew.

The body keeps the score. In the Russo family, the body keeps the script. When Nell Russo dies, her wheelchair sits empty at the head of the dinner table for three weeks before anyone dares move it. Her four survivors continue their choreographed existence: Jamie swimming through air when no pool exists, Dorothy walking counterclockwise orbits until her feet bleed, Martin dismantling and rebuilding the same broken drawer seventeen times, Becca framing every moment through a camera that hasn't worked in years. They call it grief. They're wrong.