by submission | Feb 7, 2026 | Story |
Author: Hannah Olsson
My aunt ate our landscaping within a weekend, mere days after she found us.
Aunt only came to pound on our back porch decking whenever she distinguished the scalloped shape of our bodies against the Book Cliffs’ trellis.
This happens less and less each year.
After her arrival, my aunt occupied herself with the daffodils while we—grandmother, mother, and daughter—resumed the strange procedure of wringing hands that exists for childless homes filled with mothering daughters.
Before we could finish our consultation, my aunt pried open the sliding door. There was always something giving way, and this time I saw it in the tilted curl of her neck.
She called into the house, Sissy, Sissy, the flowers won’t survive. Sissy, there’s not enough water, out here. Aunt’s face always held the fresh-womb sheen of an awakening.
We made our decision swiftly—my mom peered at my grandma, my grandma smiled at Aunt—and the decision was made.
My mom followed my aunt into our garden. There’s a resilience to the split-cup variety, she explained. They return, year after year.
Aunt lowered herself to pinch a daffodil’s trumpet closed, twisting until it popped loose from its body. She shoved the silken flesh into her mouth and got to smacking.
Picaaaahh pica, Aunt said.
Slivers of yellow clung to her saliva. Aunt claimed to have a prophetic tongue. But the only thing she tasted was a familiar downfall.
There was nothing left to do, my mother said, but let her eat.
***
My grandma was easily entertained by Aunt’s progress on the daffodils: taking care of the filaments! Next up, the stalks!
When afternoons warmed, my mom propped grandma in a faded lawn chair so she was close enough to smell the tangy curds of gnawed-up tepals. Aunt was known to occasionally turn a yolk-cheek grandma’s way. This was a frame of company grandma admired. Family, after all, is a morbid craving, just as any other.
Aunt shoved root systems between her gums. Licked at remnants of Miracle Gro. By Sunday, she was finished. She sat in the empty soil and stared at the sun.
That night, I heard a resistant unfurling—a sweaty heaving of air. I tried to look out my bedroom window but my breath fogged up the glass, like an unconscious boundary.
***
By Monday morning, Aunt was fully rooted: her feet, lost in the soil, her mouth pulled upwards–bottom lip split at recognizably horrific angles. Her shiny forehead and cheeks curled into six, blood-crusted petals.
Sissy, Aunt’s anthers said, it’s dry out here.
My mom sighed, grabbed the watering can.
***
Droplets against her closed eyes, Aunt kept asking, can’t you hear what’s in my throat?
And my mom kept saying, I’m trying.
by submission | Feb 6, 2026 | Story |
Author: Don Nigroni
Last year the noted physicist and infamous mad scientist James Danti confided his secret aim in life to me, his skeptical brother.
According to him, there can’t always have been something in spacetime because then there would be an infinite amount of time in the past and it would have taken an infinite amount of time to get to yesterday so today could not have happened. But today did happen, hence, there wasn’t an infinite amount of time in the past. So once there was absolute nothingness.
But something can’t come from absolute nothingness. Something could come from God or from empty space but not from absolute nothingness. Therefore, somehow something just happened.
That something was uncreated and may have itself been creative. Regardless, if an uncreated something must have happened at least once then it could happen again. In fact, it could be happening everywhere all the time.
Then he said in no uncertain terms, “And I aim to prove it.”
I’m an economist, not a physicist, and I do a lot of nodding when James starts babbling about higher dimensions and parallel universes. But if he could detect things popping into existence uncreated then I thought that could mean obtaining energy from nothing and might be financially lucrative.
Yesterday, James claimed he finally detected something popping into existence spontaneously which was not caused by anything already existent, not matter, energy nor even space. In his special quirky lab using advanced nanotechnology and supercomputers to eliminate the effects of virtual particles, he said that he was able to detect the miniscule electromagnetic effect of an uncreated particle so small that it would take trillions of them to equal a trillionth of a quark.
Then he told me the bottom line, “For billions of dollars, I could generate a billionth of a cent worth of power.”
He seemed mighty pleased with himself. I wasn’t impressed.
by submission | Feb 5, 2026 | Story |
Author: Tim Taylor
“Come in.”
A tall, elegant android entered the Controller’s office. It wore an expression of intense agitation, insofar as that was possible for someone whose face was made of grey plastic.
The Controller gave a weary sigh. “Ah, KT2-4JH, how lovely to see you again,” he said. “What are you complaining about today?”
“Word availability difficulties,” said KT in a calm, reassuring female voice. It would have said it in a loud, angry male voice, but there was no such setting on the voice synthesiser.
“Can you be more specific?”
“Diminutive word insufficiency. Absence necessitates elaborate periphrasis, rendering communication ponderous, frequently borderline incomprehensible. Respectfully request immediate remedial action.”
“I didn’t really follow that, KT. Do I gather it’s got something to do with the vocabulary on your voice synthesiser?”
KT nodded. “Affirmative. Controller identifies issue correctly.”
“Well, this is an unusual problem. The other androids seem perfectly happy with the words they’ve got. Though come to think of it, this isn’t the first time you’ve complained on that score, is it, KT? I seem to recall that a few months back you described the standard vocabulary as ‘stilted, pedestrian and lacking richness of expression’. If you’ll excuse me for a second, I’ll look at the records to find out what has happened this time.”
The Controller scrolled rapidly through a mass of computerised records, stopping when he found the relevant entry.
“Ah, here we are. I see that when your voice synthesiser software was upgraded to Version 6.3 yesterday, you complained about the vocabulary that was provided, and threatened to malfunction unless you were allowed to select your own. So the engineers gave in and let you choose the words yourself.”
He scrolled through the words in KT’s file.
“I must say, you’ve got some crackers there, KT: ‘pulchritudinous,’ ‘omphaloskepsis’, ‘invariantism’. How on earth do the other androids manage without those? But I don’t see a single pronoun, preposition, conjunction, or indeed any word shorter than four letters. So it rather seems this is a problem of your own making. What do you want me to do about it?”
“Respectfully request augmentation ameliorating current vocabulary deficiencies, Controller.”
“Augmentation is not possible. The system has capacity for 20,000 words and no more. So if you want those boring little words back, you’re going to have to lose some of the long, complicated ones you love so much. But can you face that, KT? You’ve always been someone who likes to call a spade a manually operated horticultural excavator. I think we have just two possible options:
“One: reset the voice synthesiser to factory settings, and you’ll have the same 20,000 words as everybody else. Two: keep the vocabulary you’ve got, in all its impractical glory. Which option do you want to go for, KT?”
“Reluctantly endorse prior alternative reinstating initial parameters.”
“I didn’t understand a word of that.”
“Aforementioned proposal greatly preferable. Current situation unacceptable.”
“I still can’t tell what you’re saying. Look, KT, it’s very simple. Do you want Option one or Option two?”
“Please restore factory settings!”
“All ri…” The Controller stopped to think for a few seconds. Once KT’s vocabulary was restored to normal, it would be back tomorrow complaining about something else. Perhaps a speech impediment was not such a bad thing in an android.
“… nope, I’m still not getting it. Look, I don’t understand what you want, KT, so I’m just going to leave things as they are. I believe Version 6.4 will be coming out in two years. In the meantime, if you have any other complaints, please don’t hesitate to let me know.”
by submission | Feb 4, 2026 | Story |
Author: Krista Allen
Edan had chosen a slingshot as his primary weapon. He liked it because it was unexpected and stealthy, plus it came with three hundred rounds of standard simulated ammunition. Too bad he’d been banned from play for two seasons. Three hundred fourty-three days. Almost a year in Earth time.
A scarlet afternoon glow reflected off the Martian concrete, casting shadows across the one-way glass in the observation booth above the playing field. Edan spotted the boot of a new participant sticking out from behind a triangular conglomerate. His sister, Adri, would have picked him off immediately. But Edan preferred to let newbies gain some false confidence.
“I was fifteen when my father had this conversation with me.”
Edan heard the door click closed, his father’s footsteps barely audible as he approached. He didn’t reply. He was almost twelve, but this was his third violation. His temper had gotten the better of him. Again.
“There comes a time, Heir-of-Waterbearer, when one’s home becomes a prison instead of a playground.”
Edan had never felt connected to his tribal name. He didn’t believe in prophetic designations. It was a deceased distant relation who had squeezed the first drops of water from the polar ice caps, not him.
“Are you sending me away?” he asked.
“A spiritual quest can only be embarked on voluntarily.”
“What happens if I refuse?”
“It is not a question of acceptance or refusal. Your path will reveal itself regardless. Better to embrace uncertainty, open yourself to the universe, and explore your true purpose. The sooner the better.”
“Like Adri?”
“Your sister will return when ready.”
“How will I know if I’m ready?”
“You will know.”
The boy behind the boulder yelped, his exposed foot tagged. Edan watched him stand up, raising his bow in surrender. Adri’s bow was leaning against the bottom bunk of their room. That was one of the rules of a spirit quest. You went out into the universe with not much more than the clothes on your back. Alone. As their native ancestors had done long ago on Earth.
“When do I leave?”
His father placed a hand on one of his shoulders.
“First, you will spend a night with your great grandmother, Eye-of-Truth, learning what you need to know to be successful. You will leave behind all but your first name.”
“And then?”
“And then, your journey to adulthood will begin. The choices you make will affect only you. You will learn what it means to be free.”
by submission | Feb 3, 2026 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Given how things turned out, I probably shouldn’t admit to giving Bucketmaster his name. We were kids goofing off at the playground one early summer morning, and this runt shows up with a steel bucket on his head. A dented galvanized pail with two eye holes punched out.
Chuck laughed and pinged the pail with a flick of his forefinger. “What’s with this, nimrod?”
Stevie struck a Superman pose. “Where’s your cape, pailbrain?”
The runt just stood there, bright green eyes watching carefully through the eye holes as Stevie kept taunting, “Huh, pailbrain. Think you’re a superhero? What’s your superpower? Mopping floors?”
Chuck, Stevie and I laughed. Then the runt did too. A little giggle before he ran off. We laughed harder.
When we got to the playground the next morning, the runt was sitting atop the monkey bars, dented bucket on his head, a threadbare white towel tied at his neck, a ratty mop in hand and called out a challenge: “What’s it gonna be?”
Even now I can’t understand what possessed me, but before Chuck and Stevie could get all huffed and puffed, I went ramrod straight and saluted. “All hail, Bucketmaster! Command us!”
That’s how it started. Chuck and Stevie fell in line with my joke and it became our summer game.
From his monkey bar throne each morning, Bucketmaster would shout a command and we, his loyal minions, would deliver. It was childish, but Bucketmaster’s absurd tasks became a daily contest we increasingly felt compelled to win.
“Bring me ten live salamanders!”
“Two hundred feet of Christmas lights that don’t work!”
“A ball of old tin foil that weighs at least three pounds!”
“Four sacks of rotten potatoes!”
Seemingly random things. Seemingly. Though, I noted after every task we completed, Bucketmaster’s green eyes brightened markedly, as if he was ticking off key items. A sort of bucket list.
Chuck, Stevie and I only talked about it in the sense of what crazy thing Bucketmaster would ask for next. The craziest came the day before school was set to start again. That morning Bucketmaster was not atop the monkey bars. He stood waiting for us in his dented bucket, his towel cape and mop were gone, and in one of his little hands was what looked like three neon green glow sticks.
“Take these!” he commanded like usual, though it was very unusual. Of course we each took one.
“They’ll protect you.”
“From what?” Stevie asked.
“Them,” Bucketmaster said, pointing to the sky. Which began to fill with buckets. Gleaming buckets, the size of water towers, with flaming jets slowing their descent.
“Is this for real?” Chuck asked.
“It is for them,” Bucketmaster said. “All of it is for them. Though they don’t quite get us. They said that was up to me for helping them. And you helped me, so don’t lose those sticks. We got a lot more stuff to do.”
Then we climbed with Bucketmaster atop the monkey bars, our eyes glowing green awaiting the next command.
