Author: marylowd

Why You Should Follow Me Back on Social Media

by Mary E. Lowd

A Deep Sky Anchor Original, December 2022

“In none of those alternate dimensions, all those tangled webs and threads of the multiverse that I can access through my multi-verse-telescope-o-meter, have you ever once … followed me back.”

1. I’ve consulted with the Oracle of Delphi and asked her whether you and I would ever be friends. She said we would be the best of friends, and Apollo would sing songs of our friendship on Mount Olympus.  Hestia will smile, sweetly and secretly, as she stirs her hearth fires and thinks of our friendship.  Bacchanals will be held in our friendship’s honor.

2. I have a time travel machine, and that’s just really cool. After you’ve followed me back on social media, and we become friends (good friends; I don’t let just anyone use my time machine) I’ll let you use it.   Continue reading “Why You Should Follow Me Back on Social Media”

Cactus Rose

We took our kid who wants to be a marine biologist to the aquarium today, and I found this little guy!

She was hugging a lollipop in the gift shop, and when I saw her, I literally exclaimed in delight, “Why are you green?!”

I’ve named her Cactus Rose. She’s small enough to carry everywhere in my pocket, and I love her.

Oh, and yes, she can also hug one of my fingers and be worn like a ring.

 

Of Starwhals and Spaceships

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Daily Science Fiction, January 2018

“None of them answered Chlooie when she pinged them with her radio waves. It was like they were dead inside. Creepy.”

A metal behemoth cruised through the nebula, cool and casual, like it didn’t care about any of the frolicking younglings and their sing-song radio waves or the older starwhals jockeying for territory, rearranging the ambient dust into moats and walls.

The attitude of the metal creature — the complete nonchalance — intrigued Chlooie, and she followed it on its strangely linear course through the nebula. Continue reading “Of Starwhals and Spaceships”

Pentatonix, Sesame Street, Roblox, and Squid Game

I will always love the song Feliz Navidad, because it will always sound like Big Bird ice skating to me.

This thought brought to you by the new Pentatonix holiday special and, of course, Christmas Eve on Sesame Street which is the best and most important Christmas special ever. Continue reading “Pentatonix, Sesame Street, Roblox, and Squid Game”

The Unshelled

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Shark Week: An Ocean Anthology, June 2021

“Cmdr. Wilker peered at the creature, trying to make out a recognizable face — some part of it that he should look at while addressing it.”

Salty air tickled Commander Wilker’s long nose and whistled past his pointed ears.  The light ocean breeze ruffled the long fur of his Collie mane.  He placed a paw gently on the hull of his shuttle craft, parked on the small, sandy island in the middle of a yawning purple-blue sea.  He was waiting for his co-pilot to join him, a local to this watery world.

Though he wouldn’t mind if they were running late.  The Collie dog had seldom been anywhere as peaceful as the surface of Kallendria 7.  There was an entire, technologically advanced society on this world, but it was all beneath the waves.  Up here, he could have been standing on a completely untouched, unpopulated world.  Nothing as far as the eye could see except for rolling purple waves, deep blue sky, and the occasional silver sand island. Continue reading “The Unshelled”