Pod Shipping Quotes

A memory stabbed him, as sharp as a blade. He’d floated alone in an escape pod over Ryloth once, spinning high over its surface, after crashing a cruiser into a droid control ship. Another name bobbed up and broke the surface of the sea of memory. Ahsoka. He’d called her “Snips” sometimes. He pushed the errant recollection aside and focused on his task.

Surely it would be easier for a small escape pod to zip through asteroids than it would be for a hulking warship. “Let’s lose them in the asteroids!” “Unlikely,” the computer said calmly as the pod swerved again. “Asteroid Belt 116749 is far enough away that we will probably be—” “Just try, damn it!” Ava gritted. The harness dug into Ava’s shoulders as she was jerked from side to side. She thought about asking Evie to turn off the artificial gravity but honestly didn’t know if that would make things better or worse. “Asteroid Belt 116749 is now in sight.” “Yes!” Ava cried triumphantly. “We can do this!” “Unlikely,” the ever-unflappable Evie replied. “Though the pod can change direction faster than the Gathendien ship and I have eluded its acquisition beam, the ship is still pursuing us and—” “Evie,” Ava gritted, “you’re killing me.” “Negative. Killing you is counter to my programming.” “I don’t mean literally!” She grunted as the pod changed directions again. Thank goodness motion sickness never plagued her. “I’m trying to be optimistic!” “Optimism at this juncture is inadvisable.” “Oh, for crap’s sake!

Last Night’s Moon," “When will we next walk together under last night’s moon?” - Tu Fu March aspens, mist forest. Green rain pins down the sea, early evening cyanotype. Silver saltlines, weedy toques of low tide, pillow lava’s black spill indelible in the sand. Unbroken broken sea. — Rain sharpens marsh-hair birth-green of the spring firs. In the bog where the dead never disappear, where river birch drown, the surface strewn with reflection. This is the acid-soaked moss that eats bones, keeps flesh; the fermented ground where time stops and doesn’t; dissolves the skull, preserves the brain, wrinkled pearl in black mud. — In the autumn that made love necessary, we stood in rubber boots on the sphagnum raft and learned love is soil–stronger than peat or sea– melting what it holds. The past is not our own. Mole’s ribbon of earth, termite house, soaked sponge. It rises, keloids of rain on wood; spreads, milkweed galaxy, broken pod scattering the debris of attention. Where you are while your body is here, remembering in the cold spring afternoon. The past is a long bone. — Time is like the painter’s lie, no line around apple or along thigh, though the apple aches to its sweet edge, strains to its skin, the seam of density. Invisible line closest to touch. Lines of wet grass on my arm, your tongue’s wet line across my back. All the history in the bone-embedded hills of your body. Everything your mouth remembers. Your hands manipullate in the darkness, silver bromide of desire darkening skin with light. — Disoriented at great depths, confused by the noise of shipping routes, whales hover, small eyes squinting as they consult the magnetic map of the ocean floor. They strain, a thousand miles through cold channels; clicking thrums of distant loneliness bounce off seamounts and abyssal plains. They look up from perpetual dusk to rods of sunlight, a solar forest at the surface. Transfixed in the dark summer kitchen: feet bare on humid linoleum, cilia listening. Feral as the infrared aura of the snake’s prey, the bees’ pointillism, the infrasonic hum of the desert heard by the birds. The nighthawk spans the ceiling; swoops. Hot kitchen air vibrates. I look up to the pattern of stars under its wings.

Shit shit shit,” Frank said. “This ship was in no shape to jump again when I got stuffed into that damned pod.” He scooped up the module and 9 with it, and headed straight for the door back into Engineering. The door didn’t open and after hitting the panel several times, Frank backed up, raised one of his legs, and kicked it. The human must have miscalculated the effectiveness of the action, or their limbs were underreporting their damage status, because the door didn’t budge, and he nearly fell over again. “It’s stuck,” 9 informed him, helpfully.

She remembered those fancy receipt books written by Lady Nonesuch, or Countess Thingumabob, and laughed out loud. They boasted how damnable high bred the lady was, and how the reader might herself be reckoned à la mode, if she could only cook such stuff herself. No, her book would hold a dark mirror to such conceits. Since Mother Eve's day, women had whispered of herblore and crafty potions, the wise woman's weapons against the injustices of life; a life of ill treatment, the life of a dog. If women were to be kicked into the kitchen they might play it to their advantage, for what was a kitchen but a witch's brewhouse? Men had no notion of what women whispered to each other, hugger-mugger by the chimney corner; of treaclish syrups and bitter pods, of fat black berries and bulbous roots. Such remedies were rarely scribbled on paper; they were carried in noses, fingertips and stealthy tongues. Methods were shared in secret, of how to make a body hot with lust or shiver with fever, or to doze for a stretch or to sleep for eternity. Like a chorus the hungry ghosts started up around her: voices that croaked and cackled and damned their captors headlong into hell. Her ghosts were the women who had sailed out beside her to Botany Bay, nearly five years back on the convict ship Experiment. She made a start with that most innocent of dishes: Brinny's best receipt for Apple Pie. For there was magic in even that- the taking of uneatables: sour apples, claggy fat, dusty flour- and their abradabrification into a crisp-lidded, syrupy miracle. Mother Eve's Secrets, she titled her book, a collection of best receipts and treacherous remedies.

The Father is about total restoration. A complete returning to son-ship. An heir with all rights and privileges thereof. Maybe you're the prodigal. Surrounded by pigs and staring at the pods. Let me say this to you--I don't care what you've done, where you've gone, where you are, or who you've become, the truth is this: the sanctifying, redeeming, justifying, snatching-back-out-of-the-hand-of-the-devil blood of Jesus reaches to the far ends of the earth.

Sure, I rekking made the big mistake. I took those pods from the ship because I wanted our people to have hope. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to help. And even though Breccan was angry, it was the best thing that ever happened to them—to all the matched morts. They found love and happiness. I just had to fly up into the sky and catch it for us.

They never found ore no matter how deep they dug or how many branches they made off the main tunnels. And I, a seaman for whom ports were mere pretexts for transient loves and brothel fights, who can still feel in my bones the sway of the crow’s nest when I climbed to the top to watch the horizon and give storm warnigs, to call out sightings of coastlines and pods of whales and dizzying schools of fish that approached the ship like a drunken mob, here I am, visiting the cool darkness of these labyrinths where a wind that is often warm and damp carries voices, laments, the unending, relentless toil of insects, the fluttering wings of dark butterflies, the screech of a bird lost in the depths of the mine shafts.

A present,” he said, then winced. The presents he’d bought for Portia usually included ropes of pearls or gemstones the size of robin’s eggs. A man of his wealth ought to provide something much nicer than a sack of strange-looking pods. Sophie peeked inside the bag, her face screwing up in confusion. “What are they?” she asked, lifting the odd vegetable from the bag. It was a ruddy orange shade, larger than her hand, and looked like an oblong pumpkin. There were four of them in the bag. “You once said the cocoa powder in this village was bad, and you wanted to make your own. These are cocoa pods, shipped directly from Brazil. If you split it open, you will find fresh cocoa beans inside. Then you can begin your culinary adventure of making chocolate from scratch.” “You remembered!” she exclaimed. Her eyes widened in delight as she held the pod to her nose for a sniff and then ran her fingers along its waxy skin. “It’s fabulous. Thank you!

Suddenly I realize it wasn’t debris I felt against my escape pod as I left the ship. It was people.

When your ship breaks, you’re supposed to find a pod, launch away,

Adzuki beans are small, russet-colored beans. They have a thin white line on the ridge. They’re somewhat thick-skinned with a sweet, nutty flavor. Black beans or turtle beans have a beautiful matte black color. The flesh is cream-colored with a rich, earthy flavor. Cannellini or white beans are white and kidney-shaped. They have a creamy, smooth texture and are good in soups and salads. Chickpeas are round, cream-colored legumes. Extremely popular in the Mediterranean, India, and the Middle East, they have a nutlike flavor. Very high in fiber and nutrients, they’re great when tossed on a salad, mixed with some chopped onion and olive oil, or pureed into hummus. Fava beans or broad beans are usually available whole in their pods or peeled and split. They’re large and light brown with a nutty taste and a slightly grainy texture. Great Northern beans are large white beans with a creamy texture. Use them in baked bean dishes. Navy beans are small white beans and are so called because the U.S. Navy used to keep them aboard ships as a standard provision. Pinto beans are perhaps the most popular beans in the United States. Pale pink with streaks of brown, once cooked, they turn entirely pink. They have a rich, meaty taste.

One of the first AIs in the late twentieth century famously refused a request to open the pod bay doors on its spacecraft so a human could get back on board.

My fucking ship just blew up, I’m stuck in a tiny life pod with Emma and you, which means—” Mikhail’s expression brightened, and he interrupted. “It means threesomes are possible so long as our junks don’t touch, because I don’t know if the fact that I’m your twin makes it masturbation or just really weird.” That

Wow, you're quite a handful. You sure your parents didn't deliberately ship you off on that escape pod?' Much to his surprise, rather than a sarcastic retort his little charge locked huge, brown eyes on his like a frightened doe in the sights of his 30.06 and bit her lip as her eyes filled with tears. And at that very moment the term 'disarming' took on a whole new meaning and Jenkins knew he was toast.

these trucks are equipped with long sword 10s or CJ-10s. They’re a land-attack cruise missile, capable of carrying a five-hundred-pound high-explosive warhead or a low-yield tactical nuclear warhead,” Gary explained as he showed Kurt half a dozen images of the trucks, the missile pod from different vantage points and the trucks marshalling into a convoy as they offloaded from the ship. Kurt only shook his head as he took in the information in disbelief. “This is like the Cuban Missile Crisis, only this time we weren’t able to block the Cubans from receiving the missiles.” Gary nodded in agreement.

The blaring alarms rang throughout the ship, loud enough to wake the dead. Six stasis pods opened simultaneously, the doors swinging outwards as their groggy occupants awoke, all feeling a little shell-shocked as well as freezing cold.

I need to name you,” I tell the rock. “The hell you do.” “I’m thinking . . .” “Already got a name,” the rock says. “. . . oh, but that’s too obvious.” I laugh. I laugh hard. It’s the first time I’ve laughed in so long that all my emotional triggers, which have only known sobbing, mix some tears in with the laughter. “Don’t you fucking dare,” the rock says. “I’m going to call you . . .” “I’VE GOT A NAME!” “. . . Rocky.” Rocky stares at me. It’s more of a glare, really. I start laughing again. Damn, it feels good. “You’re the worst human I’ve ever met,” Rocky says. I wipe the tears from my cheeks. “I think maybe when the supply shuttle comes, I’ll just keep you. Not tell the labcoats about you.” “That’s called kidnapping, you sadistic ape.” This makes me laugh some more. It’s the accent. It kills me. “Are you stoned?” Rocky asks. And this is too much. I double over and clutch my shins, there in the command pod, not a stitch of clothing on, laughing and crying and wheezing for breath, fearing I might not be able to stop, that I’ll die like this, die from so much joy and mirth, while debris from a destroyed cargo ship peppers the hull and cracks into the solar array, and ships full of people navigate through space at twenty times the speed of light, narrowly avoiding this great reef of drifting rocks, and all because I’m here, because I’m holding it together, this trained and hairless monkey in outer space.

They all stared outside, and they laughed with joy. Through space they glided, a whole pod of them, mighty starwhales. The largest were the size of starfighter carriers. The juveniles were no larger than the Marilyn, quick and playful. Gently, Kemi lowered the ship onto the whale's back. The pod moved closer together, and the round organs on their temples expanded, pulsed with light, and thrummed. Around the pod, the light of stars stretched out. "They're forming a bubble of spacetime." Marco rubbed his eyes. "They evolved organs for it. Amazing." Lailani shrugged, smiling. "Hey, it works for the ravagers. Why not the starwhales?" The whales reached out their flowing barbels, interweaving them, and streams of light ran across the elongated organs. The whales bugled, the sound passing through the tendrils, into one another, into the ship. A whale's song. A song of joy, of exploration, of family. The song of the cosmic ocean.

Then, all of a sudden, at 2 a.m. we heard an ear-splitting crash above us, and the vessel trembled. Everyone rushed out to see what had happened. A connection between two pipe lengths had broken somewhere. A giant counterweight atop the drilling derrick had slammed down onto the upper deck above us while 30 tons of pipe smashed into the seabed below, obliterating the pod with all the equipment I had just borrowed. We quickly realized why the accident had happened. Just before we’d sailed, our drilling contractor had quit in a pay dispute, and his inexperienced replacements didn’t realize that the last section of pipe they added needed to be superthick to keep the whole assembly from bending and breaking as the ship moved through the water. For want of a few extra bucks on the front end, we’d lost the $600,000 of equipment I’d borrowed, along with any chance to use Seaprobe to find Titanic. My pipe dream had turned into a pipe nightmare.

DID YOU KNOW THAT MOST OF THE DRINKING WATER ON CRUISE SHIPS IS PURIFIED SEAWATER? PERSONALLY I FIND THIS FACT TO BE FASCINATING AND ONE SMALL ARGUMENT IN FAVOUR OF CRUISE-SHIPS. AS FRIGHTENING A PROSPECT AS IT IS, CRUISE-SHIP TECHNOLOGY MAY HOLD THE KEY TO A POST-APOCALYPTIC FUTURE THAT HAS US ALL LIVING IN ORBITING SPACECRAFT OR UNDERWATER PODS?]

One year, we ordered four thousand pink iPods from Apple for Christmas. In mid-November, an Apple rep contacted us to say, “Problem—we can’t make Christmas delivery. They’re transitioning from a disk drive to a hard-drive memory in the iPods, and they don’t want to make any more using the old technology. Once we get the new ones made, we’ll get you your four thousand. But it won’t be in time for the holiday.” Other retailers would have simply apologized to their customers for the failure to deliver a product on time. That wasn’t going to fly at Amazon.com. We were not the kind of company that ruined people’s Christmases because of a lack of availability—not under any circumstances. So we went out and bought four thousand pink iPods at retail and had them all shipped to our Union Street office. Then we hand-sorted them, repacked them, and shipped them to the warehouse to be packaged and sent to our customers. It killed our margins on those iPods, but it enabled us to keep our promise to our customers. During the next weekly business review, we had to explain to Jeff what we were doing and why. He just nodded approvingly and said, “I hope you’ll get in touch with Apple and try to get our money back from the bastards.” Ultimately, Apple did grudgingly split the cost difference with us. But even if they hadn’t, it still would have been the right thing for Amazon to do.

Bullying on the bus and in the hallways had been part of my education since elementary school. From the dawn of time, humans felt compelled to ostracize those who didn’t fit into their social norms, and my strangeness made me an automatic outsider. When you’re the smallest and ugliest kid in third grade, you can’t stare blankly out the window like an alien pod person awaiting the return of the mother ship; that was a fast jaunt to a bloody playground brawl.