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The Quiet Engineer

The robotics lab at Westwood High was a room that never slept properly. Even when empty, it hummed faintly—machines breathing in standby, wires coiled like patient snakes, the scent of flux and burnt coffee mingling under humming lights. It wasn't much to look at—peeling paint, dented tables—but to its regulars, it was holy ground: the small, square kingdom where things obeyed logic, even if people didn't. Priya Shah usually worked in the corner, away from the loudest voices. She preferred the quiet rhythm of problem-solving—the way her mind could turn something over and over until the shape of it softened into clarity. This year, the team's project was Titan 7 , a block-stacking robot designed to lift, pivot, and balance. Or, at least, that was the idea. The robot had a habit of tipping forward, collapsing under the very task it was built for. Each week, the team tweaked the code, replaced motors, tightened bolts—fixes that seemed reasonable but never solved the problem. C...
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The Weight of One Brick

The river through Fairbridge moved like an afterthought—slow, silty, carrying along the bits of what the town had forgotten. On clear mornings, you could see plastic bottles resting in the shallows, catching the light like dull coins. Across the road from that river sat the lot everyone called the old garden. No one remembered who first called it that, only that it had once been alive—peas climbing trellises, children pulling carrots still dusted with clay, laughter that carried over the chain-link fence. Then the organizer moved away, the grant expired, and everything withered. For years afterward, the town carried the garden like a pleasant ghost. People talked about reviving it the way people talk about cleaning attics or writing letters to old friends—fondly, indefinitely. "Somebody should," they'd say. "Next season, maybe." Clara Ruiz heard that phrase often. She was the new librarian—thirty-eight, deliberate, with a calm voice that people mistook for shyn...
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Peregrine Falcon Gets Pulled Over for Speeding

Scene: A peregrine falcon is pulled over for speeding. The patrol office is a bald eagle.  EAGLE (Officer Talonson): Sir, do you know how fast you were going? FALCON (Perry): Uh… depends which altitude you mean, officer. There was a bit of a tailwind situation. EAGLE: Don't play coy with me, feathers. Radar clocked you at 242 miles per hour in a 150 zone . FALCON: Oh, come on. Those speed limits are for geese.  They can barely break 60 with a full tank of breadcrumbs. EAGLE: The limit is the limit. You're endangering other birds out here. There's a flock of starlings doing synchronized turns just a few thermals down. FALCON: I saw them. I was just—uh—drafting behind them for fuel efficiency. EAGLE: Drafting? You passed through them like a feathered torpedo. Half the flock's still in counseling. FALCON: Okay, okay. Look, I was late for a dive appointment. You know how it is — gotta keep the reflexes sharp. One slip, and boom, pigeon buffet goes cold. EAGLE: Th...
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Balancing the Scales

On winter mornings, Jamal often walked to school with his hood up, his backpack half-zipped, and his little sister's lunch tucked under his arm. He was sixteen, tall for his age, though his shoulders curved forward as if carrying something heavier than books. His older brother was in jail. His mother worked double shifts at a nursing home. Jamal was the placeholder, the one who held the household together. At school, he slipped into Room 312 late, eyes half-closed from nights of babysitting. His math teacher, Leonard "Mr. Lenny" Rivera, noticed the way Jamal avoided the board, staring instead at the floor tiles scuffed by decades of sneakers. To most, Jamal looked like another student fading into absence. To Lenny, he looked like someone whose odds had been stacked too early. So Lenny made a quiet wager. Every lunch break, he sat with Jamal at a side table, the cafeteria noise muffled through the door. Ten minutes a day. Equations scribbled on loose-leaf. Chalk dust linge...
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At the Library, Setting Up our Chives

So, I bring dried chives to my public library job and I want to store these in the staff kitchen. These chives are our chives, so I want to figure out how to store our chives. I ask my library co-workers if any of them are an our chivist? When they studied for their masters of library science, did they take any courses in our chives? So far, no one has confessed to being an "our chivist," though one of my co-workers admitted she once minored in parsley. Another claimed expertise in oregano, but then we caught him sprinkling dried oregano into his coffee, so his credibility is questionable. I explained to everyone that chives—especially our chives—require careful cataloging. Dewey Decimal doesn't really help here. Do you put them under 641.3 (food preservation) or do you wedge them into 583.92 (allium botany)? One person suggested creating a whole new call number: 000.00 CHV, but that seemed a little radical. Meanwhile, the staff fridge is divided like medieval kingdoms....
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At the Library, Setting Up Our Chives

So, I bring dried chives to my public library job and I want to store these in the staff kitchen. These chives are our chives, so I want to figure out how to store our chives. I ask my library co-workers if any of them are an our chivist? When they studied for their masters of library science, did they take any courses in our chives? So far, no one has confessed to being an "our chivist," though one of my co-workers admitted she once minored in parsley. Another claimed expertise in oregano, but then we caught him sprinkling dried oregano into his coffee, so his credibility is questionable. I explained to everyone that chives—especially our chives—require careful cataloging. Dewey Decimal doesn't really help here. Do you put them under 641.3 (food preservation) or do you wedge them into 583.92 (allium botany)? One person suggested creating a whole new call number: 000.00 CHV, but that seemed a little radical. Meanwhile, the staff fridge is divided like medieval kingdoms....
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