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Short Story – “Icarus-Nine” [Part Two]
[Part One available at: https://scrubreport.com/2026/07/12/short-story-icarus-nine-part-1/] Stationmaster Polk steepled his chrome-plated fingers. “The way you say that would make me suspicious, if I didn’t know how much of a nervous wreck your ship is.” “Oh, right,” Paola smiled disarmingly. “You’ve met before.” “Really, though…what’s with the light haul?” Polk’s eyes were dark wet slits in split…
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Short Story – “Icarus-Nine” [Part 1]
The Pequod limped through the void, thrusters firing intermittently like a baby hiccupping blue flame into the dark. The crew, clustered on the bridge, winced in unison with every burp of fuel and tried to distract themselves with the news. The ICOMM newsfeed was cluttered with talk about a girl from House Vestal gone walkabout…
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Picking the Perfect “Breach and Clear” Playlist
My friends and I have been playing a fair amount of “Ready or Not” recently – for the unfamiliar, the game is a first-person shooter where you control a SWAT team member participating in various missions, from stopping a robbery at a gas station to rescuing hostages in a hotel (and some much, much worse…
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Adventures in Oblivion, Part 2: The Madness Continues
Well, shit, that took a while. After getting sidetracked with Expedition 33 and Death Stranding 2 (as well as a road trip from Vegas to DC that very nearly ended in disaster on multiple occasions), I got back around to my sorcerous adventures in the Shivering Isles (for the uninitiated, the Shivering Isles contain the…
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Short Story: “One Last Catch”
Crab season had been over for eight solar days, but the Pequod cracked the asteroid anyway. The thing was sitting right there, all fat and juicy and full of karkinoi, and a catch was a catch. The Pequod’s take had been lousy the back half of the season, and the only cargo kicking around the…
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Adventures in Oblivion: Madness Awaits
In many respects, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is my favorite video game. I’ll spare you my misty-eyed recollections of the original box art and instruction manual: Oblivion was to me what Skyrim was to people who like the cold more than I do. I fucking love Oblivion. Hell, I bought the original version on…
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Playthrough Journal – Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
As you might have gathered from the image above, this is not what one might call a “traditionally heroic” story. If you’re not familiar with the Kingdom Come series, it’s a franchise of historical role-playing games set in early-15th-century Bohemia (somewhere in Europe). The series stars Henry, an everyday guy who started the first game…
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Review/Ranking: Secret Level, Eps. 9-15
I guess they front-loaded all the good stuff, huh? This series was like a five-course meal that goes from fresh oysters to a turd wrapped in old newspaper. Gross. B Tier The Outer Worlds: The Company We Keep This episode was pretty good. I enjoyed The Outer Worlds when I played it (even if I…
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Review/Rankings: Secret Level, Eps. 1-8
Secret Level is an animated anthology series exploring a selection of current and classic gaming franchises. I broke the episodes into three tiers – A, B, and C – and listed them within those tiers in approximate order of preference. The fact that there are only three tiers is indicative of what I thought of…