The Host

Abashed, the six students fell silent and edged away from one another.

Standardized processes are ones that are streamlined to eliminate aberrations and unplanned redundancies. Scientific American (Nov 30, 2012)

The blackness swallowed up the agony, and I was weak with gratitude that the memory had come to this most final of conclusions.

However, anchored as we were, we told ourselves stories to alleviate the boredom.

Millennials are often portrayed as apathetic, disinterested, tuned out and selfish.

Her thin, feathery attachments, nearly a thousand of them, billowed softly like pale silver hair.

Her attachments wound tightly into place around the nerve centers, some elongating and reaching deeper to where he couldn’t see, under and up into the brain, the optic nerves, the ear canals.

"For too long our leaders have stood by complacently, while up to a billion people go hungry worldwide."

I considered the conflicting opinions of the Healer and the Seeker.

With another deep breath, I delved into the memories that frightened me, faced them head-on with my teeth locked together.

When we thought of the new planet— Earth, so dry, so varied, and filled with such violent, destructive denizens we could barely imagine them— our horror was sometimes overshadowed by our excitement.

The wars— wars! our kind having to fight!— were first reported accurately and then embellished and fictionalized.

Her portraits convey that shared weight of suffering but they are also a moving portrayal of enduring hope.

With the truest instinct of my kind, I’d bound myself securely into the body’s center of thought, twined myself inescapably into its every breath and reflex until it was no longer a separate entity.

I used the empty time to evaluate my situation.

Fords delved delicately beneath the neck muscles, careful not to injure them, exposing the pale bones at the top of the spinal column.

As he leaned over the human and whispered in her ear, Fords wished fervently that the soul inside could hear him now.

Fords concentrated on the unconscious body; he edged the scalpel through the skin at the base of the subject’s skull with small, precise movements, and then sprayed on the medication that stilled the excess flow of blood before he widened the fissure.

He told reporters he would put out his four championship rings on the coffee table for recruits to gawk at.

Darren’s hand moved into view, the silver gleam of an awaking soul in his cupped palm.

Soon, only one small segment of her glistening body was visible.

Darren, his regular assistant, saw the grimace and patted his shoulder.

“We estimate the odds are quite a bit higher in our favor,” she admitted grudgingly.

The light was a steady, dull red, indicating that it was occupied and in hibernation mode.

He cleaned and healed the wound, applied the salve that sealed the incision closed behind the soul, and then brushed the scar-softening powder across the line left on her neck.

The light was a steady, dull red, indicating that it was occupied and in hibernation mode.

New York City organized a pet safety day that included low-cost chip insertions. New York Times (May 11, 2012)

I felt the sedation wearing off and lucidity taking its place.

Fords was surprised to hear the sharp edge marring his normally soothing voice.

“She looks the same as any of us,” Fords murmured to Darren.

There’s nothing for them to learn by observing today.

Your vocation will soon be obsolete, I think.

I braced myself for the onslaught of the first memory, which would really be the last memory— the last moments this body had experienced, the memory of the end.

As the whispers of the Healing students buzzed in the far corner of the operating room, his lips pressed together into a tight line.

Fords concentrated on the unconscious body; he edged the scalpel through the skin at the base of the subject’s skull with small, precise movements, and then sprayed on the medication that stilled the excess flow of blood before he widened the fissure.

He climbed from his car, rebuked media that immediately surrounded him seeking comment and walked out of the track to a waiting golf cart. Seattle Times (Apr 27, 2013)

But as the civil conflict has sharpened, both sides are employing the renegade sharpshooters.

The tone spoke of revulsion.

Like a living ribbon, she twisted and rippled, stretching, happy to be free of the cryotank.

Sarcasm is a sure way to chip away at trust and credibility. Forbes (Feb 11, 2013)

I felt the sedation wearing off and lucidity taking its place.

“Begin thaw sequence now, please, Darren.”

He gazed anxiously at the human female’s body, peaceful in slumber, knowing that this peace would be shattered as soon as she awoke.

Sometimes, fact mixed with fiction so thoroughly that, though no lies were told, it was hard to remember what was strictly true.

Courts are simply wasting their time restricting even trivial tweets. Wall Street Journal (Apr 15, 2013)

Fords concentrated on the unconscious body; he edged the scalpel through the skin at the base of the subject’s skull with small, precise movements, and then sprayed on the medication that stilled the excess flow of blood before he widened the fissure.

These human emotions would be stronger, more vital than my eyes filled with horrified tears.

He joined his father’s financial firm, Maxwell & Graves, but his true vocation was collecting.

I don’t have any official statistics, but she has to be one of the very few, if not the only one, who has wandered so far.

The question is not her willingness, but what it is right to ask any soul to bear.

Part of the expected acceleration in activity will reflect farmers filling up silos after a drought last summer decimated crop output.

Her portraits convey that shared weight of suffering but they are also a moving portrayal of enduring hope.