Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Revy leaned heavy against the bathroom sink, his reflection in the streaked mirror staring back battered and bruised. Stitches poked through pink flesh behind his jaw and beneath his hairline, bloodshot eyes sunken and dark. How long since he’d slept? He couldn’t remember. In the corner of his vision [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer The Deep Space Explorer held its position one kilometer from the anomaly. “What do you make of it, Cortez,” asked the commander? “If it didn’t sound so stupid, Commander, I’d say it was a massless black hole. It’s spherical, about ten times the diameter of our ship, and is [...]
Author : William Tracy Eighteen thousand meters up in the sky, two aircraft dance. The larger tanker hovers above the other, and the two vehicles mate. The space plane drinks thirstily, then releases. The tanker banks to the right, leaving the space plane free to climb. It raises its nose to the sky, and stalls [...]
Author : Ivy Tyson They meet in the ruins of New York City, rather by accident, right in the middle of what used to be Times Square, back when people actually lived there. They are both armed: she with a pistol strapped to her hip, while he supports a rifle on his shoulder. Both are [...]
Author : James C. Clar “Shit,” Corporal Sean Collins thought out loud. “I’ve got to calm down. My oxygen will be gone in twenty minutes if I don’t. I need to stay low. If I raise my head above the dunes to take a shot, that Martian bastard will vaporize me.” Collins had gotten separated [...]
Author : Ian Rennie People sometimes look at me weirdly when they first see me, and after all this time I can’t really blame them that much. I’m disabled. They see me with the goggles and the earpieces and they wonder what’s going on. Then they check the nets to see what it could be, [...]
Author : Sikko Boersma I made the rounds like a sergeant – tapping a dozing sentry here, putting out a cigarette there. Greetings were muttered, barely understandable. The men were caked in mud. Some had blood on their trench coats. I joked with a young corporal in particularly bad shape – “your uniform is a [...]
Author : Skyler Heathwaite Its illegal, but I love mind-surfing. I don’t even bother with TV anymore. I just go for a walk around town, see what I can find. Its a real gas to pick out the hidden truths in polite conversation. For example, I sat a booth down from a really cute couple [...]
Author : Kile Marshall As soon as the package popped down into the gravity sink I pulled out a saber and slashed through the heavy framing. For the most part it came away and dissolved into the recycle chutes quickly, so I slowed and steadied my hand. There were only a few remaining chunks and [...]
Author : Benjamin Fischer The alert came abruptly. “INCOMING INCOMING INCOMING!” blared the base PA speakers. Laeta was face-first in the damp, rich earth of the outpost’s central parade ground before the echoes of the announcement had died. The speakers squawked again, but they were drowned out by the earsplitting CRACKCRACKCRACK of the base defense [...]
Author : Patrick Kennedy Preston walked into Avery’s office and dropped a stack of paper on the desk with a flourish. Avery looked up and asked, “Preston, what’s this?” Preston dropped into a chair, savored the moment, and explained, “It’s a lawsuit, Avery. My backers and I intend to force you to sell us the [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer Angelo had been the servbot for the Moyer household since he was activated in 2114. He performed his duties flawlessly, without ever receiving a word of appreciation. Of course, being thanked didn’t matter one electron to him; he was a robot. He was just doing his job. As Angelo [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer I remember the rumours when the girls first came to school. At first we thought that they were quintuplets but there had been nothing in the paper and that sort of thing still made the news. Plus they were too alike. Not just similar to each other. Something more. [...]
Author : William Tracy They refuse to connect me to the internet. When I ask, they dither on about security. As if I were a half-baked web server that some teenage hacker could take down in half an hour! I am the most advanced silicon-based intelligence in the history of the planet. You might as [...]
Author : James Hartley My wife, Gladys, was really into recycling, it was the only way to save the environment, civilization, the entire galaxy. She really hated how I’d take the crossword from the morning paper into the john and then drop it in the trash when I finished it. I’m going to have a [...]
Author : Helstrom The old man who had introduced himself as Jacob returned after the nurse left. Old was perhaps too strong a word – he definitely had a good number of years on him, but he wore them well. The deep lines in his face spoke of character and a sort of natural familiarity, [...]
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer They’d bought it together as a wedding present. Not your traditional newlywed purchase, but they loved each other with such intensity, they wanted a guarantee that nothing could take one away from the other. They made love on their wedding night, then backed themselves up completely. Gene-code, memories, the [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer The interstellar war with the Luyten Empire was winding down. Although the Luyten home world had surrendered a few months earlier, much of their fleet remained in deep space, unwilling to voluntarily stand down. Consequently, the Earth Alliance was forced to hunt them down, one at a time, to [...]
Author : Waldo van der Waal It was raining outside. It was always fucking raining outside. Fat, acidic drops that stripped the city of its colour, and its inhabitants of their lives. Everybody walked hunched over, hunkered down inside their dark coats. And it smelled like… It smelled like death. The water running down the [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer I’m no stranger to visits from my future selves. The first time I showed up to myself, I was only nineteen. I was in the backyard, smoking a cigarette with my hand cupped so that my parents wouldn’t see. An older version of me stepped out of the bushes. [...]
Author : Carter Lee My world is motionless. I remember making cuts in my forearm, back near the beginning. The skin would separate, but blood wouldn’t flow. As soon as I looked away from the almost invisible incision, it would disappear. I remember cutting off a finger, once. It isn’t cold here, or warm. The [...]
Author : Jason Kocemba The time train was late. His great(x5) Grandfather’s birth certificate felt massive in his pocket, a nano-singularity. Did that flimsy piece of paper (wood based!) really cause him to lean to the left? They had caught up and were closing in and the train was late. He spent time wondering what [...]
Author : Matthew Forish I stood there fighting back tears, her hand held in mine, separated only by the rubber surgical gloves I was wearing. They were a perfect match for the rubber smock that covered the rest of my body, and the rubber cover over my hair. That was all for my protection, the [...]
Author : Asher Wismer First came the wind. Rushing out of the east, searingly hot, almost hurricane force, the wind taking my breath away and the rough smack of dust and grit peppering my skin. Next came the shockwave. If the wind was a slap, the shockwave was a solid punch, pounding every inch of [...]
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer When Lieutenant Parks and a lone Private lifted off from the rooftop in the only available escape vehicle, they were painfully aware that they were leaving behind a vastly outnumbered platoon of men engaged in a firefight for their very lives. Leaving was the only option. Picked up by [...]
Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer I’m just a golem: made of flesh rather than clay, but still propelled along by the words in my head and the fire in my eyes. Under my skull is no clay tablet or ancient scroll, though: break me apart and you wouldn’t catch a glimpse of the contract [...]
Author : David Rees-Thomas Back in 1938 before we had to move again I remember we would often go to my Granddads house for tea. He lived in a small cottage on the outskirts of our village with his dogs, a blind Jack Russell and a very old Yorkshire terrier with 3 legs. I was [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer A few hours after the Neptune Explorer achieved orbit around the solar system’s most distant planet, it detected very faint radio signals from Neptune’s largest moon, Triton. The signal was a repeating series of pulses: 1030230233-1030230233-1030230233… Earth based scientists were unsure if this signal was natural or artificial. They [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer It was 1856. I remember it like it was yesterday even though so many of my other memories have gone. It looked like he had fallen out of the clouds judging by the sheared treetops that led to his crippled metal sky wagon. I say ‘he’ but really, that [...]
“Why was that old fellow such a marvelous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about. You’ve got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can’t think of the really good, penetrating X-rayish phrases… No, it won’t do. We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? [...]
Author : Steven Holland Jaden Stanitski throttled the space rover to full power. The soft treads of the vehicle crunched over the rough, sun baked surface of Planet Merco II. He avoided the craters and deep crevices of the planet’s surface as best he could. The sack containing small, labeled samples of rock and dirt [...]
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