New Old Kicks

"What are we even doing here?" I asked as we passed some scraggly wino. "You don't even smoke dope."

"We gotta come here. I can feel it," Eric said. He pointed. "There."

A tall, dark-haired man I'd never seen before nodded as if he recognized us. He held up a small glass tube, and suddenly I wanted that vial more than anything in the world. The man smiled as we stumbled toward him.

"It never fails," he said.

"What?" I panted. "What is it?"

"Quantum foam. Freebased. It burns backwards." He rattled the drug in his hands. "You're already addicted."

Simple Machines

"Gravity doesn't stop. It's exponential," said Newton. "Everything is falling, all the time."

"I'm not!" said the Quark.

"You don't count," snapped Newton. "It only stops when the force is countered. You don't stand on the ground; the ground holds you up. And even that is illusory because whatever holds you is falling, too. What was it Archimedes said? A long enough lever and a place to stand can move the world?" For a brief moment, Newton tumbled headlong in silence and darkness. Or, for all he knew, flew perfectly straight. "It's the place to stand that's really the problem."

The Spaces Between the Spaces

"Behold!" said Doctor Geisteskrank.

"It's a pile of dirt," said Bartlett. He blinked. "Er... with a hole in it." More holes appeared as he watched, visible through the glass like ant-farm tunnels.

"Quantum moles," said Doctor Geisteskrank. "If subatomic particles can move without passing through the intervening space, then it follows that something must be making the tunnels for them. Quod erat demonstratum."

"So... they tunnel through anything?"

"Correct!"

"I notice you've stored them next to the power source for the piranha-bear containment grid."

"Yes?"

"Nothing," Bartlett sighed, as the lab plunged into darkness and the alarms began to sound.