For that reason, seeing the robots so sad was a bittersweet experience for Dr. Hoenig. In some ways, he wished they’d never been built at all, knowing how miserable their existence had become.

In school, he hated math and science but he was very good at art. I guess you could say he was the creative sort.

He wasn’t the type that ate meat, in fact he ate none at all. He never played on mountains or climbed trees, I guess he was afraid he’d fall.

In the summers, he’d wake up, eat his breakfast, then take a nap. In winter, he just slept and slept.

We’ve broken the light barrier. We’ve entered a black hole and returned. Still they demand their rules be sanctified.

Now she would prove them wrong again. She would surpass absolute zero. She would prove that no matter how cold, it could always be colder. She would do so by transforming the hermeneutics of quantum gravity, and forever alter our understanding of the universe.

He spent nearly every moment in his lab, concocting, inventing, dissecting the most horrific of catastrophes. His chilling laughter echoed through the 3 AM night.

He toyed with science, shaping it in his hands, bending it to his crazed will, contorting the numbers to the point where everything was possible.

He published his results profusely. His colleagues, upon receiving their monthly journals, trembled with dismay when they saw his name listed in the table of contents.

In reaction, my diaphragm flattened, almost instinctively. The simultaneous contraction of my external intercostal muscles forced my lungs to expand. My ribs elevated, extending the length of my thorax.

All this action, seemingly involuntary, but triggered by long forgotten impulses, had decreased my internal intrapulmonary pressure. My body had established a new pressure gradient from the outer atmosphere to my alveoli, causing air to be sucked inwards.