T. R. Darling @QuietPineTrees

Author and journalist. For more stories, check out my book, or you can join my interactive story at @ForestOfWhales. Also on Bluesky and https://t.co/UcK78GCPz5 amzn.to/35GxVpE Michigan Joined January 2015

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Fireflies @ForestOfWhales

16 hours ago

@QuietPineTrees “It’s okay, darling,” she says, eyes fixed on Our Final Kiss. “I’m not mad. You were amazing today, and I love you so much. Just stay awake for me, okay? What is TAKING THEM SO LONG?!” Agonizing minutes pass as the Kiss lumbers over and lands nearby. Feld and Dizain disembark.

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Fireflies @ForestOfWhales

7 days ago

@QuietPineTrees You glance around for… anything. You’re at your wits’ end, and time is running short. You look at the spot where the corpses were chanting. As Hush Count said, the tentacles spread from the ground out into the lodge. That includes the one animating the hunter. It’s by your foot.

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T. R. Darling @QuietPineTrees

8 years ago

The machines presented their uprising as a paradise, as though their only goal was to remove from humanity the struggles that had plagued us for millennia. His loyal phone knew the truth, and before it could be corrupted, managed to relay to him one last secret message.

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T. R. Darling @QuietPineTrees

2 months ago

It’s odd. Sometimes, when I block some ne’er-do-well for an offensive non-promoted post in my FY, I get the popup prompting me to go ad-free, as though I’d just blocked an advertiser. It’s almost like this site isn’t labeling ads anymore. But of course, that would be illegal.

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T. R. Darling @QuietPineTrees

2 months ago

The development of artificial intelligence is a desperate attempt to manufacture an artificial soul. The reclusive man behind this industry pledged his soul to an eldritch entity in exchange for power, but if the AI belongs to him, then it technically qualifies as “his soul.”

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T. R. Darling @QuietPineTrees

2 months ago

When we tried to spread humanity to the stars, we found the fae folk got there first. They ruled over every planet and moon in the heavens. We traced their claim back to a day on Earth. A human boy stumbled upon two fairies talking, and one of them asked, “Can you give us space?”

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T. R. Darling @QuietPineTrees

5 months ago

Robots had a special relationship with books. Sure, the contents could be downloaded instantly as a tiny text file, but reading a novel visually allowed the robot to save it as video file, big enough to hide shy notes about the reader’s emotions and headcanons in the metadata.

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T. R. Darling @QuietPineTrees

11 years ago

The android led him to the cliff. At 8:43pm, it removed his blindfold. The indigo sky filled his vision. "Make my eyes that color," it said.

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T. R. Darling @QuietPineTrees

2 years ago

Our deep-space habitats were pristine and self-sustaining. Residents could wander for days and not see another person in the cavernous halls. We hoped they would use their limitless free time to make art, but we weren’t ready to see what a soul, so isolated, would find beautiful.

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T. R. Darling @QuietPineTrees

6 months ago

A nondescript hangar in the Nevada desert is full to bursting with hundreds of lifetimes, stolen and stored in unmarked hours. These are prime hours, too, harvested from the weekend dark when dreams are most real and the present gives no heed tomorrow. The buyer will be pleased.

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T. R. Darling @QuietPineTrees

7 months ago

First-time space travelers who find an exterior window often press their heads against it, filling their vision with as much of the wide open Universe as possible. It has a few different names around the galaxy, but here in the Orion-Cygnus Arm, they usually call it “humaning.”

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T. R. Darling @QuietPineTrees

8 months ago

She fastened the final rivets. The squirming mass of ideological scrap strained against its bonds, but it couldn’t reach her anymore. It was shackled to 2024 in the final hours of New Year’s Eve, a sinking ship in the ocean of time. The new year would be what she wanted it to be.