Posts Tagged ‘science’

Short Stories: The Light of the World

Posted: 2 Mar 17 in Short Stories
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Thanks to my lovely wife I got a night to myself, away from kids and responsibilities.  I closed up in a coffee shop and dedicated myself to my favourite creative pursuit.  Have a read and let me know what you think in the comments.  Thanks for taking to time to explore my work.

Drew

 

 

“This is probably a waste of time.  

 

So much of our time and effort and resources have all been for nothing, so I feel this small waste of time is only fitting.  We conquered the stars, we escaped the death of our own planet.  I guess if you are still out there somewhere and you somehow get this message…  maybe you can learn something from it.”

(more…)

Short Story: Weather When Requested

Posted: 4 Jan 17 in Short Stories
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I am enjoying a return to writing and hopefully will have opportunity to stretch my creative needs more often.  Thank you for your interested and for accepting the sporadic nature of the updates on this site.

 

 

 

Weather When Requested

 

“That’s impossible!”

A slow grin crept onto the face of Cecil Leach, a climate scientist and hobbyist inventor.  Mostly a homebody, he occasionally liked to hang out in coffee shops and people-watch.  Lost in his own world, typing away on his laptop, he was startled by the quizzical proddings of a young woman that, even at first glance, appeared to be his polar opposite.

Eden Teller had a bright streak of green in her wild hair, unapologetic horn rimmed glasses and she seems to be wearing every conceivable colour at once.  She had an infectious smile and evidently harboured no hesitation in walking up to a complete stranger, mid work-flow, and asking: (more…)

Short Stories: Ditch the plate, dine with Plait!

Posted: 7 Jun 15 in Short Stories
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Long while since my last story, I have been a sea quite a bit which I don’t find overly conducive to writing.  I had 80% of this story written for a long time and while visiting Portland Oregon I finally had some time in a couple of coffee shops to finish it and prepare it to be published.  It is a concept that fascinates me and that we are not far from, there are already several product coming to market that almost fit this description and I will be watching the market reaction closely.  This one is a little longer at about 4300 words, thanks for taking the time to read my work and visiting my site, I am grateful for the chance to share my stories.  Enjoy.

Ditch the plate, dine with Plait!

Around 1995 was the pinnacle of guilt-free eating, since then the other foot really fell in terms of the obesity epidemic and the long term health risks of certain foods.  As global communities grew in size and influence with the prevalence of the internet, access to information also grew.  This started with simple food information and a better understanding of food labels but in time proper nutrition was no longer something you needed a professional nutritionist to guide you through.  In the early 2000s online nutritional information made a shift, instead of just talking about how bad processed foods were or how much our eating habits were affecting out health, the topic changed to sharing information of good nutrition.  The word “Superfood” entered the global lexicon and the food industry was never the same.  (more…)

Short Stories: Angel Investor?

Posted: 5 Mar 15 in Short Stories
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Hello all,

Back again for another story so soon, I had an inspired moment and found a new coffee shop that I really like so some writing happened.  Nikola Tesla has always been one of my favorite history figures so when my lovely wife suggested I make him part of my next writing prompt, ideas started to spin right away.  Please read on and enjoy, hopefully this sparks a fascination for Nikola Tesla in you, he is worth looking up.  Thanks for your readership.

Enjoy,

Drew

Angel Investor?

To say that Nikola Tesla was a strange man doesn’t quite cover it.  He had a very specific mental ability that set him apart from virtually every other person, living or dead.  He had the ability to prototype things in his mind, this meant that he could build complex engineering projects with thousands of moving parts by simply imagining it.  He could even troubleshoot problems and disassemble the machines to replace poorly designed parts so it would run more smoothly.  This meant that when he actually decided to build something, in the physical world, it had a tendency to work on the first try. (more…)

Short Stories: Rumours and Imaginations

Posted: 2 Mar 15 in Short Stories
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Hello all, I was away sea so I apologize for the delayed post.  I really thought that Sea time would be conducive to writing but it doesn’t seem to work out that way.  I prefer to be in a dark room, with a hot cup of tea and the sounds of rain at my window or in a crowded coffee shop, fervently people-watching to help me build new characters.  Today’s sharing is not my best work but certainly a long way from my worst.  Hopefully you enjoy reading it, feel free to let me know what you think in the comments.  Thanks for your time, I know there are a lot of demands on it.

Rumours and Imaginations

Interstellar travel, it has piqued the minds of every person who has ever tilted their chin up and really had a look.  Throughout human history people have always looked to the stars.  At first they simply wondered what they were and in doing so made up fanciful stories of great beings and how it all came to be.  Once the discovery was made that those little twinkly lights were actual locations that you could conceivably travel to, the spark was lit.  Unfortunately it wasn’t long before it was also discovered that they are far away, really surprisingly stupefyingly inordinately far away.  Due to that ludicrous distance it was quickly discovered that humans don’t yet have the means to get there.  That didn’t stop the need to study them, after some time these oppressive distances could be calculated with an impressive level of accuracy but that only served to drive home just how unattainable these stars were to conventional forms of travel. (more…)

Short Stories: Just Like in the Plan

Posted: 8 Feb 15 in Short Stories
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I know, I know.  Longest wait ever for new content.  This site is not dead, I am a Sailor in the Canadian Navy and a new father and sometimes the demands of my work and home life mean that I don’t have any time or creative energy left.  I can’t promise scheduled content so go ahead and hit subscribe and you will be notified by email when a new post is live.  Read on and enjoy the next Multiversal Yarn, please share your comment and if you enjoyed reading this story, forward it on to a friend that you think would enjoy it as well.

Ciao for now and thank you for your time.

Drew

Just Like in the Plan

Evolution is a time consuming process, adapting to changing environments takes generations, sometimes even millennia.  Deformities can creep up much faster, sometimes in a single generation.  Deformities by definition are isolated incidents but in the year 2054, some sort of genetic shift took place and similar deformities were seen all around the world.

This schism seemed to segregate the world’s population into two district groups.  Even a novice anthropology enthusiast could easily divine that the global dividing line was based on wealth.  The children of affluent or even middle class families were affected very differently than the worlds poor.  The ever present income gap rose and rose until there was virtually no similarities between the lives of the rich and the lives of the poor. (more…)

Short Stories: The Cost of Love

Posted: 14 Aug 14 in Short Stories
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I am sorry if this story took a while to get out but I set up another challenge for myself.  This time the whole story is being told entirely with dialog.  There isn’t a narrative word in the whole 2700, not is a “he said”, “she said”.  Hopefully that doesn’t disrupt the flow of the story too much.  Enjoy.

The Cost of Love

“Good evening gentlemen, if you would all please take your seats. The opening portion of these sorts of talks would normally start with an introduction and a quick telling of my background to justify what I am presenting. I think you will forgive my interest in privacy and permit a pseudonym for our interactions. Once I had completed my research I sought out a discrete group of ad men, if such a thing exists. We went through a battery of titles to present the product with: DR. Love was deemed too derivative, DR. Cupid was too cutesy, DR. Fix-up sounded like an after school TV program. In the end we settled on DR. Link, so from this point forward, all referrals and interactions shall refer my organization and indeed myself as DR. Link. (more…)

Short Stories: Brain-Feed

Posted: 4 Aug 14 in Short Stories
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I can’t and wont guarantee this kind of update rate.  When writing strikes me I will indulge it, when I need to take care of other tasks, there may be a lull.  I am after all the father of a 13 month old, and that can take up a lot of time and energy.  At any rate, here is the next Multiversal Yarn.  Let me know what you think.

Brain-Feed

Arthur Wilson was an Electronic Engineer by trade and a noted inventor. His creations had provided a comfortable life; he often worked from a shop build into the home he shared with his wife Edna. They had a very happy marriage and before long Edna had become pregnant.

As an inventor and creator, the concept of teaming up with his spouse to create a new life was something that fascinated Arthur greatly. He went out of his way to look after his wife and made sure she wanted for nothing during the pregnancy. Any spare time however, was spent busily in his shop creating new products for their child and in time for the mass market of baby products. (more…)

Short Stories: Through the Eyes of a Drone

Posted: 25 Jul 14 in Short Stories
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Drone eye

Through the Eyes of a Drone

A Multiversal Yarn by Drew Torchia

Bartholomew Alvarez was walking to work on a perfectly typical day. He worked for a problem solving think-tank organization knows as Unfuckers Inc. Because it was their business model to be “outside the box” thinkers, their rather non-PC name had granted them more business than it lost them. Bartholomew’s title on his business cards even listed him as a “Professional Unfucker”.

They had worked for major employers looking to downsize and be more efficient, small companies looking to keep up with modern technology but more than anything they worked with police and government authorities to evolve search and capture techniques, getting criminals off the streets faster than ever before. If everything worked smoothly the company would be bankrupts in days but in our busy modern reality, Unfuckers Inc. was an overnight success. (more…)

Intro and explanation of the plan here

Posted: 24 Jul 14 in Intro
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I have always been fascinated with the complexities of modern society.  It is interesting to think of all of the little innovations humans have brought to the world.  What would happen if they didn’t all happen in the exact order that they did?  What would happen if one new item was thrown in the mix?  Where would that leave us?  What would happen if “x” technology or geo-political movement were to happen today?

Multiverse theory suggests that every decision made by every human divides the universe into each of the possible outcomes of that choice.  There is a universe where you chose the green car instead of the silver one and that choice affected life in that universe.  I will endeavour to write short stories about these alternate histories and potential futures with the intent of eventually turning a selection of deserving tales into full novels. 

I invite and encourage comments to tell me what stories you liked or dislike and what caused you to feel that way.  Feel free to propose ideas for future stories and let me know if you read one that you feel deserve the time and effort of writing a full novel.  Thanks for visiting.

Also check out my self-help/Stress Management book called Appropriate Detachment.