Author : Andy Bolt WELCOME, Chip Winkler, TO STORYWEB 9.0! PLEASE INPUT LITBASE: Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea LITBASE FOUND! LAUNCHING . . . Enrique was mindswiped by the storybot as he dangled from the 93rd floor window of the Kentaka building. He was a little preoccupied rewiring the entire structure for [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer Inspector Jeffery Lastrade greeted Philip Homes and Bruce Wattson at the entrance of the Metropolitan Police Headquarters in downtown London. “Thanks for coming on such short notice,” said Lastrade as he pumped Homes’ hand. “I desperately need your help. I’m at my wits end with last night’s murder of [...]
Author : Bill Lombardi He had been awake for seventy-two hours – twenty-four spent in an acclamation unit. His legs hadn’t adjusted yet and he had trouble standing, so he sat at an unshielded viewport in the common area looking off into space, sipping from a nutrient pack. His stasis pod had failed. According to [...]
Author : Alec Ow My parents always told me the Cold was a gateway bug. All throughout middle-school and for most of high-school I was pretty clean. Then I saw one of my friends coming to school with the sniffles. He didn’t really try to hide it from anyone, thinking back now it seemed like [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer As I flew through the Rio Bravo Corridor in western Texas, the town of El Paso rose above the horizon. I banked northward and began a gradual arc to align my ship with the Juárez Flyway. I descended to 100 meters and throttled back to 50 kph. The streets [...]
Author : Asher Wismer It was about the size of a leaf, but a little flatter, with scalloped edges and covered all over with a glimmering sheen of circuitry. At one end, a little nozzle protruded, making a gentle swell in the surface of the leaf, while other, smaller holes ringed the circumference. There were [...]
Author : Roi R. Czechvala It was just a routine patrol. Twelve men. Whitcomb was on point; I was bringing up the rear. He had just forded a narrow stream when they hit us. Claymores blew hell out of the main body. Seven died instantly. There was no mistaking that. When chunks of bodies fly, [...]
Author : Ben ‘Inorian’ Le Chevalier Invas charged forward, his sights set firmly on his enemy. The blood was rushing through his body, filling him with life and vigour. The only thing he could see was his prey. He leapt, and bore his adversary to the ground. His spear moved smoothly through the man’s lower [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer I felt sick. I had a fever and a headache and my joints were complaining. I shuffled across my carpet into the light. I stood looking out over the city while holding a steaming zipmug of CitruSinus in my hand. The windows overlooked a new age of wonder. It [...]
Author : Ryan Somma Ng’s eyes were straining as far as they could go in their sockets to get a look at the brand new shiny avataris sapiens parked at the end of the conference room table. His client’s attention was on the current speaker, a real-life sales person local to the building who was [...]
Author : Peter Carenza APRIL 14, 2065 3:30 AM The phone startled Lofton out of a restless sleep. He poked the speaker button. “Lofton.” “We’ve got a situation Delta at the compound, Rick…. It’s a runner. This is serious.” “Do you have any idea where he’s headed?” “We’re working on it.” 7:20 PM It was [...]
Author : Steven C. Rockoff There was no blood, just the smell of ozone. That’s the thing about lasers. They’re cold, impersonal, and efficient; like a seductive bureaucrat. There is something comforting about blood, about seeing your life escape. But here I was, flung on the floor, with a small hole in my suit, just [...]
Author : Ben Spivey 10:25am, on the wall hung an old analog clock. The second hand ticked once forward then once back; the battery was close to dead. Josh sat in front of his pc; its glow illuminated his sharp face. Behind him his fiancé slept under a neon blue blanket. Her arm hung over [...]
Author : William Tracy The president leaned back into the couch on Air Force One with a smile and a sigh. She had been in office for only a month, but she was already getting used to the perks. The secretary of defense cleared his throat. “Mrs. President, we need to talk.” “Yes?” she sat [...]
Author : Josh Zingg Ariston crunched his way along Access-01 toward what was left of the capitol, keeping his head down and goggles tight over his eyes. The wind surged at him, and he felt its coarse touch wearing away his spirit. Wasn’t much left to wear, these days. He pulled aside his face cloth [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer It seemed a little silly to admit but I had gotten quite attached to the program that I was loading. I had it start in full surround. Suddenly, I stood at the top of a steep hill. He appeared before me. Doug was his name. The surroundings were a [...]
Author : JY Saville “Iridescent,” she said without looking. “Aren’t they?” Henry Deaton shook his head, exasperated that his wife still couldn’t remember the colour of his eyes. “Never mind,” he replied. He raced up on deck and peered through the reinforced bubble covering the ship as it sailed the methane seas of the oil-rich [...]
Author : William Tracy I am an airplane. The wind whistles down my fuselage as I soar in the bright sky, the earth spread beneath me. I pull a barrel roll for the sheer joy of it, weave through an invisible slalom course in the sky. A voice crackles in my mind. “You aren’t here [...]
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Claire cleared the fire-doors just moments before they sealed the lab. She knew they would hold for a while, but still ran down the corridor dragging the unconscious Doctor behind her. He out-massed her by a wide margin, but she severely outmuscled him. The outer doors irised out of [...]
Author : Chrysta Lea Baker “Good help is so hard to find these days,” Roberta said as she sat back in the chair and watched as the technician painted on a metallic finish to her toenails. “I mean I’ve really had a terrible time finding a reliable and hardworking servant ever since Rosie expired in [...]
Author : Ryan Somma “You’re angry.” “I’m not angry, I’m frustrated.” “If you’re frustrated, that usually means you’re about to learn something.” “Don’t quote Philo to me. You know I hate it when you quote Philo.” “I’m just trying to think this through like he would do. This was his project, and now we’re responsible [...]
Author : Leslie Smith I did just what Mommy always told me to do. I got off the bus, said goodbye to the plastic person driver, and walked straight home. I wanted to get home as soon as I could ’cause Mommy said she was gonna bring me a surprise from the ice cream store. [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer (Concept by Moebius) “You can’t abandon the project now,” protested Williamson, the Senior Planetary Engineer for the Chacopa Terraforming Project. “We created those life forms. They’ll die if we abandon them.” “Perhaps,” replied Jürg von der Mittelholzer, the Director of Auditing for Nu-Worlds Inc. “But, that’s hardly relevant. According [...]
Author : Lokon Richard was forty, paunchy and balding when he came home early and found Susan on the bed they shared. The thing on her and in her was a vibrating mass of warm rubberized orgasm; moving in and out of-across her, her eyes and ears were hidden behind the goggles flashing the holos [...]
Author : Nik Gregory The mess hall bustled around Harris; it was like a flock of vultures who had just found an overturned meat truck. Possession yields not only extended onto property but onto food too, woe betide anyone who gets the last muffin. “All I’m saying is there’s something therapeutic about blowing up an [...]
Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer “Elass, check your drones. I think they’re goofing off.” “Thanks, Laurie. They’re on target now.” The fleet was deep in the ‘gravel’ region of the asteroid belt. Elass was dragging in the larger chunks for processing, Laurie was filtering the gravel, looking for chunks of dirty ice and pure [...]
Author : Rayne Adams I stole a lightspeed cruiser today. Went flying. Found Ancient Egypt. You learn in school that time and space are the same interchangeable abstract, but no one really believes it. You walk three steps, you move forward in space and in time, but if you walk backward, you don’t go back [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer The test drill had gone horribly wrong. The bipedal meat structure wasn’t breathing. Emergency! There were specific instructions tattooed on the outside of the biological’s skin for repair procedures. The yellow and black rectangles and hazard symbols on the shaved skull meant that no one except accredited programmed hardcases [...]
Author : Ian Rennie I met a girl the other night while hopping. It was in some bar somewhere, and she must have been a local, because she was fascinated by my bracelet. It must have been a relatively close hop, because she spoke english in an accent that wasn’t too weird, but I was [...]
Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer Unlike the rest of humanity, I had an intelligent designer. My designer had thought enough to make me compatible. I can attach myself to almost any machine; external computers, appliances and yes, even weapons. Today, I’ve attached myself to “Mercy” a weapon that fires high intensity focused beams of [...]
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