Jeffrey A. Corkern
Bio
Jeffrey A. Corkern is the most analytical of analytical chemists. The hardest of hard-case rationalists. A professional cast-iron son of a bitch.
Stories (7)
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Live Forever In a Happiness Box and Never Die
What, gentle reader, do you think is the most likely way for the human race to go extinct? Asteroid strike? Unlikely at this point. Scientists have already started tracking asteroids and are constantly coming up with better and better schemes to divert asteroids away from Earth.
By Jeffrey A. Corkern9 years ago in Futurism
The Insight
"Money," whispers Data Raider, "was information." He and De Crypt are hiding in the second story of a small abandoned concrete tower on San Jose’s outskirts, waiting until the cannibals get tired of looking for them. They’ve been lying underneath a window and shivering, hardly daring to move, all night; the cannibals outside are hungry. But by this time, De Crypt and Data Raider are pretty sure they’ll be safe. All they have to do is wait long enough. As information technologists, the inhabitants of Silicon Valley had ranked as the best in the world, but as cannibals, they’re no better than amateur.
By Jeffrey A. Corkern9 years ago in Futurism
The Suitcase of Amontillado
First and foremost, dear reader, be assured the fault for his end was not mine, but Fortunato’s. I am the most tolerant of nobles and thoroughly acquainted with the travails of modern travel; I well know the occasional loss of a bag to the random vagaries of moronic computerized airport luggage-tracking systems is only to be expected for one whose obsession requires him to travel widely, but Fortunato’s tracking system, Fortunato’s tracking system was the worst of them all, an obscene beast that couldn’t track a bald man through a crowd of beehive-hairdoed Sixties chanteuses, and I was forever forced into its vile clutches by the malign fact his airport was the only one in the Montresor family’s ancient seat.
By Jeffrey A. Corkern10 years ago in Futurism
Why Asteroid Mining Will Never Happen
It’s amazing how people, even smart people, can be trapped by the past. Take the acquisition of metal, for example. For all of its existence, two hundred thousand years, the human race has known only one general way to get metal.
By Jeffrey A. Corkern10 years ago in Futurism
New Rose Hotel Bar
Hanging around in here seven hours now. New Rose Hotel Bar. Saturday night, and as always I drew every eye in the place the second I appeared. I paused and lounged against the door frame for maximum effect: Ten-gallon hat with twin rotating satellite dishes, gleaming mirrorshades, neon shirt at maximum power, its humming gas-filled glass tubes filling the bar with flickering light, flashing "CYBERSTUD!" in pin-wheeling letters of orange, purple, brown, setting off the latest Parisian fashion, recycled crushed-velvet Elvis jeans stuffed into cowboy boots of solid chrome.
By Jeffrey A. Corkern10 years ago in Futurism
All Advanced Aliens Are in Happiness Boxes
POSTULATE: A sentient is his brain, and his brain only. When the sentient’s brain dies, the sentient dies too. The sentient stops perceiving the Universe, and the Universe stops perceiving the sentient. The sentient’s feelings, thoughts, and personality all go to zero, and the sentient vanishes from the Universe forever.
By Jeffrey A. Corkern10 years ago in Futurism
