Datasets:
BlinAI
/
Testo

Dataset card Data Studio Files
xet
 Community
1
text
stringlengths
0
4.23k
Caine looked up at the sun: almost midday. He finished rolling up the sleeping bag, felt himself smile. Three days ago-his first alone in the bush-he had hard...
A shuddering crash in the underbrush-not more than one hundred meters further up the valley-triggered an immediate repentance of his curiosity. He snatched th...
Which reprised itself, coming closer. Something was pounding through the bush: a dense thump, thump, thump was punctuating the other intermittent sounds-ferns...
A blackish-brown shape burst out of the brush, well in advance of the approaching thumps. Caine almost fired, then flinched his finger off the trigger-just be...
The sound seemed to break free of the same dense thicket in a dusty burst of tubers, shoots, and fronds, all erupting away from the pavonosaur that churned to...
A human.
Caine stared back at the monster. The pavonosaur's body had a narrow cross section, tapering into a long, sharp, paddlelike tail that might have belonged to a...
Caine swallowed, held as still as he could, cheated the barrel down a little lower. It's a young one. Three meters toe to top, at most. Aim low and shoot stea...
The pavonosaur's head swung back in the direction his prey had fled, and with a hissing rattle, he leaped along that course-
Because the black-brown biped was still there.
Caine-maniacally focused upon the pavonosaur-only now noticed that the first creature had not made good its escape. Or, if it had, it had returned. What the h...
It's trying to help. No other possible reason.
Caine had swung the gun, tracking the pavonosaur, before he was aware of doing so. He squeezed the trigger twice, shouted "Hey, HEY!" in the intervals between...
Neither hit. But the pavonosaur swiveled its head in his direction so quickly that Caine wasn't sure he saw the motion: one moment its head was lowered in pur...
Staring back, leaning forward into a challenge posture, wondering if this meant he was suicidal, brave, or both, Caine shouted: "HEEYYY! SHIT-HEAD!"
The pavonosaur answered with a painfully high-pitched screech and came streaming over the ground, bent low and forward as it sprinted toward him.
Caine leaned low into the sights and fired one, two, three rounds-
The third clipped the pavonosaur in the shoulder. It came more quickly, if that were possible, without a single waver in its stride.
Caine was about to start hammering out the rest of the clip but saw a change in the creature's gait. It was slowing-but not because it was hurt, or reconsider...
Wait: right before it jumps-was an instinct more than a thought. Fortunate, because the pavonosaur was quicker than human cognition. Even as Caine was realizi...
Caine saw the torso rise into his sights; he fired three fast rounds. He rode the recoil of the last back down and kept firing, steady and sustained, about on...
At least two of the first three hit: the pavonosaur stopped just as it was about to uncoil upwards into its leap, tried to recover, caught another round squar...
That moment of delay was the fateful-and fatal-moment in its attack. Caine's bullets now hit regularly. More purple spattered outward, this time lower in the ...
Caine breathed, was ready to indulge in a relieved forward sag-and realized that he had, at most, three rounds left in the clip. And if they hunt in pairs-
He was on his feet, right index finger pushing forward against the magazine release as his left hand tore open the cover of an ammo pouch and tugged out a fre...
Movement to the left-slow, silent-caught his attention: the biped? Still there?
He turned his head, careful not to have the barrel of the gun track along with his gaze.
The biped was still there-possibly staring back at him. Caine couldn't tell because he couldn't see anything that looked like eyes. A smallish and tightly-fur...
Now what? Want a nice banana, monkey? Take me to your leader? Let's pretend this never happened?
Caine decided not to move, not to speak. Anything could be misunderstood-except what he was doing now. With all animals-whether intelligent or not-the best ou...
So Caine stood and looked at the biped, which was evidently doing something similar in return. Caine started counting: one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, thr...
At "thirty," the gangly gibbon-with-double-coati-tail was still there, scratching at one-thigh?-with half of his tail. Evidently, this degree of relief was in...
Oh, well, if we've become comfortable enough for actual movement-Caine shifted the gun, looked down to check the time-and noted rapid motion from the corner o...
The biped seemed to speed sideways into the bush, as though it had turned its hips without turning its torso, or had somehow rotated its legs at the hip. Eith...
Evidently, the biped's prior decision to engage in unconstrained movement had not indicated a willingness to tolerate the same from Caine. Instead, the creatu...
Local. I'm calling it a "local." The assumption of intelligence-that's a big step.
But was it? Bipedal posture, opposable manipulatory digits, a voluntary return to danger in the hope of-what?-luring the pavonosaur away from the hapless stra...
Caine moved off the rock slowly-both watchful for other predators and determined not to make any sudden motions that an unseen observer might find unsettling-...
No. That wasn't what had happened.
Caine darted into the bush, scanning quickly-and five meters further on, found another freshly snapped tuber. No other damage to the foliage was evident: not ...
Caine looked into the forest: yes, they were locals.
Chapter Nine
ODYSSEUS
Caine shifted the A-frame, ran a wet forearm across his more-wet brow, checked his watch: three hours until sunset and he was still playing follow-the-leader wi...
Caine could have spat at himself: as long as it takes, asshole. This is first contact: not something you fit into a convenient slot on your busy day-planner. ...
-and emerged onto a trail. An actual, groomed foot path, a little wide, by human standards. It would have been invisible had he not been looking for it: no vi...
Caine pulled out his palmtop, patched into the rudimentary GPS net, synced it to the survey maps, and as he waited for the machine to orient itself, he looked...
About ten meters to the left-roughly to the south-there was a broken vine: snapped clean, the two dusty-rose-colored cross sections stared at him like a pair ...
The palmtop flashed readiness: the broken vine was, in fact, due south. Just a kilometer further west-although he couldn't see it through the canopy-was the f...