Marcel Popescu

The world's observatories spotted them on August 27, 2014. They came from somewhere in the Orion constellation and took their sweet time doing it: it was more than three months before they became visible enough that the amateur astronomers were beginning to spot them. The White House made an official announcement on December 1st. It didn't say that much, but the news killed all other stories. The Pentagon saw the biggest increase in military spending since 9/11, with a tiny part of that fortune going to NASA and the Pasadena and Houston observatories. The New Year came to a rather anxious world; most of the panic had subsided by then, with barely a couple of street preachers warning everyone of the impending apocalypse. Gun sales were at an all-time high, not so much for protection against the aliens (nobody expected a few shotguns to help there) as against possible riots. On March 1st, two hundred and thirty nine ships stopped at a distance of 2.5 million miles - about t...

[Inspired by http://lifeistheteacher.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/my-only-experience-in-a-public-high-school-and-a-call-to-action/ ] Frank was walking around, window-shopping while waiting for the time to come to perform at the near middle school. He was a sixteen-year old guitarist who was visiting a friend and got an offer to perform on a Friday in the friend's class. Frank was homeschooled so classes bored him to tears; he preferred to discover what was interesting in this part of the town instead of listening to a teacher drone about a subject he had absolutely no interest in. Unfortunately, close to the time he was actually preparing to go back to the school, he got stopped by two cops who started asking questions about who he was and what he was doing there. It was clear they believed him to be a truant student but even so, Frank thought, why was it their business? "I'm a musician; I'm performing at the school here in about half an hour." "Right, kid, p...

"Do not be afraid." David jumped around, his body flush with adrenaline. He had been alone in the room, or at least that's what he thought. Fortunately, he had managed to put his pants on. "Who are you?" he managed. Someone was there, in the room, on the other side of the bed from him. He couldn't understand how he got past the agents outside. "My name is Ra'ken," the man said. "We need to talk." "How did you get here?" David asked, trying to decide whether shouting would be a good idea. "I will explain. Please finish dressing and then we can go outside so you can feel safer. I did not mean to scare you." David felt a bit ridiculous but he was old enough to know that just because someone tells you they don't want to harm you it doesn't mean it's true. He finished putting a shirt on. "Shall we?" he asked, turning his head back to the other man. "After you," the man said. David ...

The source of their Powers was never discovered; what nobody had doubted, however, was that there was a will behind it. Both the fact that there were exactly nine of them – one for each billion people – and the fact that each of them gained their powers on January 1st, 2050, at exactly midnight local time, made coincidence a too unlikely explanation. Once it found out about their existence, the world called them superheroes; but amongst themselves they would use the name Champions. The people would not discover the existence of the Champions for more than a year, though, because at the same time they had gained their powers, the Universe had started responding to spells. Some would call them wishes, or prayers; whatever the name, people's intentions were starting to directly affect the real world. Like many religions had insisted, it would only happen if the person making the wish genuinely believed in it; unlike what those religions had taught, the effect of the wish appeared ...

Jimmy was quite good at his craft, and that made him proud. His Pa, though – his Pa could never find out; he was a big stickler for that “honest work” bull, his Pa was. Jimmy was big for his fourteen years, so his Pa had started to bug him more often lately – “it’s time to start earning your keep, Jimmy”, “come work with me at the farm, Jimmy, we could use someone like you”. It was very annoying, even more so because Jimmy did want his Pa to be proud of him, but he wanted to get there his own way. No, his choice of craft was not that of a farmer, or a carpenter, or anything like that. Jimmy was a pickpocket – a good one, if he said so himself. Minor stuff for now, but he had never been caught – the very thought of what his Pa would do to him if he found out about it gave him shivers – and he was hoping for a big score. Jimmy was sure that his big score was close – didn’t his Ma tell him that “good things come to those who wait”? So Jimmy waited, and practiced. His Pa was also annoying ...

I intend to start a series of short "booklets", for lack of a better term, on the same idea of Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests - show how a test-driven design process works for writing an application, from beginning to end. I realize I have hardly any readers, but is anybody interested in something like that? The articles will be free on my blog, of course, but I intend to also make them available for sale on Amazon. I thought of stuff like writing an expression evaluator - 2 + 3 * 5 / (1 - 7) - and a postfix expression evaluator - 7 2 3 + * - but I tend to jump to math problems. On one hand, I need relatively simple problems, as I want to emphasize the TDD part; on the other hand, I don't want to write the next Stack implementation. Can anybody suggest topics? Edited: follow-up at http://mdpopescu.blogspot.com/2011/10/tdd-by-example-first-book.html .

My house stands at the edge of the Earth. It didn’t use to. Earth was a normal planet, a planet-sized planet as it were. Round. Not as big as Jupiter, of course, but not so small as to see its edges. I’ve been to cities that were bigger than what Earth looks like now. There are only a few thousands of us left. We can’t say we’re alive, really – we’re almost zombies. Everybody that’s still here lost family and friends. We’re in the acceptance stage now… there was fighting, and incredulity, and mass suicides, but everybody seems to be resigned to whatever fate we have. Nobody has a clue what happened. It doesn’t even make any sense – no celestial body this small should have an atmosphere, and yet the air is perfectly breathable. A lot more breathable than it used to be, in fact – there’s no industry left on Earth, nothing to pollute. I think all the animals are gone too, except for a few pets. Oh, and lots of insects. The scientists were right; the cockroaches will inherit the Earth. Wha...

(H/T to Dean Wesley Smith ) 1) You must write. 2) You must finish what you write. 3) You must not rewrite unless to editorial demand. 4) You must mail your work to someone who can buy it. 5) You must keep the work in the mail until someone buys it.

I wrote this story a few days ago. I have no idea what to do with it now... so here's the first step: put it on the blog. If anybody gets here, by some amazing coincidence, please leave feedback even if it's only "it sucks" :) The paradox maker Jack ripped the envelope. “Dear Mr. Harroway,” it began, “we are happy to inform you that your application for a study of the local effects of the 2030 Tehran terrorist attacks has been accepted.” “Yes!” he shouted. “Yes, yes, yes!” His work at cultivating important officials had finally paid off. The bribes didn’t hurt either. Jack was a brilliant physicist. Almost forty-five years old – his birthday just last month – he had everything a scientist could want: a great career, the admiration of his peers, even a great family. He did have one obsession though: he wanted to go back in time and kill himself. Why? He probably couldn’t answer, at least not without a great deal of thought, but it was mostly because he had been fascina...