One Topic At A Time Novels & Stories

“Maybe you’re doing too much at once.” He looks up at me, confused. “What do you mean?” “You’re trying to make it perfect immediately,” I say, reaching over to pick up one of the pieces. “Start small. Make it stable first, then add to it.” He watches me carefully as I adjust the base, making it sturdier before handing it back to him. Toby nods slowly like that made complete sense in his head. “Oh.” “Yeah,” I reply, leaning back again. “Oh.”

My head was going to blow up and leave pieces of meat scattered all over my living room. I haven’t had a moment of peace at all. Thoughts keep running through my head. Never stopping. Never ceasing. It was driving me insane, for heaven’s sake. “Okay, now I want you to focus on the key and the insects we are studying,” I tell Mary, one of the students I tutor. “If you want to master the dichotomous key, you have to focus on those two.”

Close enough that I had to tilt my head back. “Eli.” I shut up. He looked down at me, eyes dark, voice low. “You’re spiraling.” “Maybe a little,” I admitted. His hand came up, thumb brushing my jaw—slow, deliberate. My breath caught. “Rule one,” he said. “We don’t overthink it.” “That’s not a rule, that’s a personality trait you have that I don’t.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Fine. Rule one: only when we both want it. No pressure. No schedule.”

He hated that he could not take the pain away from her. He shifted a little closer on the floor, careful not to crowd her too much. “Then we make the world smaller on purpose. Do not try to block everything out at once. That will only make it worse. Pick one single thing and focus on it completely. Let everything else fade into the background.” Aria’s brow furrowed in confusion and exhaustion. “One thing?” “Just one,” Ryan repeated gently. “Hold onto it and do not let go, no matter what else tries to pull at you.”

Adrian asked. “The part where they want to define limits,” she replied. “Not on the systems. On discourse.” I felt my stomach tighten. “They want to narrow the conversation.” “Yes,” she said. “Frame it as an anomaly. A one off crisis.” “And erase the pattern,” I said. She met my gaze. “Exactly.” “So what stops them,” I asked. She hesitated. Honest hesitation. “You,” she said. “For now.” I laughed weakly. “That’s not sustainable.”

He gives me a thumbs-up, I get delighted in his acceptance of my plan until his speed slows making me frown. "It doesn't mean you should be slower because I brought up a topic for discussion." I pout my lips. He scans me carefully, then smirks. "I hope you aren't over-anxious, I'm thinking about what you said. You can't think perfectly at the same time you're screwing pretty steadily, one has to slow down for the other. Have you forgotten the old cliche that says you can't carry two things up at the same time?" "Are you trying to mean we wouldn't be able to progress our love life ladder as we progress in our profession, is that what you mean?"

Stupid hosts, be careful what you wish for! Agatha childishly kept on chanting the same three words as if to totally disgust the loathful being in her head. There was not much result from this action, but at least the replies lessened. She was assuming as an advanced AI, it could only reply once the other party pauses for it. It was one of the few good things she discovered about the system. It doesn't know how to interrupt others who are still speaking. Maybe it was a set pattern or a law of sort that its kind follows. Who knows? Anyway, Agatha was already glad she could temporarily shut it up in this way.

Some of it made more sense than before, and much more so if I focused on one stream at a time instead of trying to comprehend the whole of it at once. "There you go, that's the idea. We have all kinds of subroutines and algorithms to take care of the routine stuff... we just need to get good at flipping back and forth between the things that need our attention. Do you feel like you've got your feet under you, so to speak?" "Yeah, but I'm scared to move again."

Growing curious about the situation, the other family members gathered around Kendra. By the time Susan got up to grab the bills, she couldn’t push her way through the crowd. The crowd studied the papers, their experience grim just like Kendra’s. Stuck behind the crowd, Summer was dying to see what everybody else was staring at. “What’s wrong with the transactions? Let me see. “Is it a lot more than what Mom said? I need to know! She must’ve kept the real number from me!” Summer squeezed her way through, her face discolored, when she saw the records.

"You know that." "I know," I say. "That doesn't stop the part of me that is running through every possible sequence of what happens in the next few hours and finding very few comfortable outcomes." "Then stop running the sequence," Sage says. "One thing at a time." A knock at the door. The three of us go still in the specific way of people who have been talking about things they're not ready to discuss with whoever is on the other side. Dante moves to the door. Opens it.