Patrons' Eyes Only!

                  I had always wanted life to play out like a book or a movie. Go to school and college as a kid, develop a career as an adult with the help of a supporting family, and maybe find love along the way. No one told me that you had to be lucky to roll into this kind of life, or that reality was just a never-ending torrent of bullshit for most of us.                 I’m turning 29 this year and still haven’t had a consistent job since no one told me that my undergrad liberal arts degree would be as useful as a sheet of printer paper. I’ve gotten some decent gigs here and there, but most of my days were delegated to working 10-12 hours a day at a criminally underpaying reception job at my parent’s salon. This wasn’t even my choice; I was strong-armed into it when they became fed up with my inability to find ‘real’ work…      ...

 

                  The physics of living state matter, gene therapy treatment, the chemiosmotic theory, DNA’s own double helix structure – the list of biotechnological feats and discoveries that helped shaped today’s world was endless. Nearly none of them would have been possible without the work of Charles Bloom, the twentieth century’s premier biologist, engineer, and everything in between. Born in the mid 1900’s, Charles quickly rose to fame after pushing his education far beyond what anyone thought possible at the time, discovering breakthrough after breakthrough.                 The combination of overwhelming intellect mixed with little free time and the needs of a young adult was difficult to balance. Charles had always thought he’d been exceptional at time management and social skills in the moment, but in reality, everyone was kept at arm’s length, including ...

               I fucked up, it should’ve never come to this, James thought with gritted teeth during a brief pause. A distant grenade blast nearly ruptured his eardrums; he could feel the vibrations of many more men running in his team’s direction. The spy gestured his teammates’ positions before running to his own within the giant mansion they were infiltrating. James broke one of the second-story windows, making it look as if he had jumped out and escaped, when he actually remained tethered to the ledge just out of sight with his feet propped against the outside wall.                Following a dozen armed Chinese men storming the foyer, searching for James’s men, Meixiu Shao herself strutted into sight. She was an overwhelmingly beautiful, rich, and intelligent Chinese woman who commanded a large portion of New York’s underground heroin traffic. Her family had been rumored to have been in the b...