by submission | Nov 16, 2025 | Story |
Author: Chris Lihou
The parking lot was empty. Its single light projected a cone of semi-darkness, beyond which shadows could stealthily move.
As instructed, I deposited the package at the base of the light and quickly retreated. In the light’s glow, I knew I’d make for an easy target. My handlers were aware of the risk, but I was assured the exchange was mission-critical. Somewhere in the gloom, I was told a sharpshooter was positioned, ready to return fire if necessary.
I didn’t know the parcel’s contents, nor the identity of the intended recipient. My final instruction was to observe from the darkness to see if the parcel was replaced by another, which I should then collect.
Dressed in near-infrared camouflage for urban and industrial operations, it would require a sophisticated assailant to see me crouched in the shadows. Time slowed to a crawl as I waited and watched for anything that might signal danger.
Something moved. Short, black, but definitely not there moments before. My thermal imaging binoculars detected a shape moving towards the light. Damn. Just a dog. It had something in its mouth.
Under the light, it dropped the object, cocked its leg against the lamp post, then picked up the package I’d left. I followed its path until I could no longer detect its heat signature in the dark.
How bloody clever! Why risk a human when a dog will do it for you?
I collected the object and returned to base.
“Well done, Major. The project has been a success. The dog’s training has been confirmed, and Rover has been given his treat. You may stand down. Enjoy your weekend.”
by submission | Nov 15, 2025 | Story |
Author: Colin Jeffrey
Nicole Celoni settled into a loungeroom chair, wireless earbuds in, ready to read and listen to music. She flipped open her book, pressed play on her MP3 player. Nothing. Confused, she checked the screen. Every file was gone.
Panic rising, she tapped through folders. Empty. No playlists, no albums. Years of downloads – vanished.
Grabbing her phone, she opened her streaming app. But instead of music, the homepage showed only spoken-word podcasts and news stories. No songs, no artists, no “Music” tab.
She searched: “Beethoven.” “The Beatles.” “Ariana Grande.”
Nothing.
She checked the Wi-Fi. Full signal. She googled “music.” There was one result: “Musick, a surname of Old English origin.”
Her stomach dropped.
She retrieved an old hard drive – her complete digital backup. Folders of music and videos by year, carefully organized. But every music folder was empty.
Desperate, she opened her university graduation video. She remembered the song playing as she crossed the stage – “Good Riddance.” But the video was nearly silent. Only muffled voices and applause remained.
Nicole rushed to the kitchen. Her husband Tony was chopping onions.
“Tony,” she said, breathless, “check your music files.”
He looked up. “My what?”
“You know – Music. Songs. Singing. You used to hum in the mornings…don’t you remember?”
Tony half-grinned. “Let me guess – is this some sort of internet challenge?”
“You’re really telling me you don’t know what music is?!”
He looked worried. “Nicole… I have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you ok?”
She backed away, heart pounding. The realization that all was silent, was suddenly overwhelming. No distant “thump, thump” of bass from passing cars. No catchy jingles on the TV. No one whistling.
She opened her notes app. Typed “music.” It autocorrected it to “musk”.
Nicole sat in her room, switched on the recorder app on her phone, tried to hum, sing, anything.
The voice memo captured only static.
She sat in the dark, played it back. Over and over again.
She slept in the spare room that night.
The next morning, she wandered the city. Past silent cafés, mute bookstores. A phone rang somewhere – not a tune, just a robotic voice: “Phone call. Phone call.”
By lunchtime, sitting alone in a public library, she had half-filled a notepad with phrases – “A melody runs through a song.” “Rondos and scherzos abound in classical music.”
But now she just stared, uncomprehending at what she had just written. The words were lines of gibberish, the sentences completely indecipherable.
She tore the page out, crumpled it up.
Nicole soon realized she couldn’t remember what music actually sounded like. Not just specific songs – any music. She struggled to think of concerts she must have attended, or singing in the car… but those memories played out silently, like videos on mute.
A deeper worry set in. Not that music had disappeared, but was it ever even real?
Weeks passed. Nicole stopped trying to look for explanations. She gave up asking others if they remembered music. Soon she could barely remember why she had been asking.
The notes she once clung to faded. She couldn’t recall melody. She couldn’t even remember what it felt like to want to listen to a song. She began to accept the silence as a companion.
One morning, she opened her journal and found a sentence she didn’t recall writing:
“There was something, once – an integral part of the human condition – that could evoke and articulate feelings that were difficult to express in words”
She stared at it, unmoved. Then closed the journal.
And forgot it.
by submission | Nov 14, 2025 | Story |
Author: Jason McGraw
“Electrical ozone, hold the smoke,“ Kia says as straps tighten at the hook-ups of the space suit and the mask descends. The mask covers eyes, ears, and nose, leaving the mouth open to the air in case the nasal feed gets too strong.
The scent Kia ordered drifts into the nostrils, and memories of cadet school come back, on purpose. It smells like the training rooms, the coveralls they wore, the “hot classes” that were designed to make cadets work under pressure. None of that prepared Kia or the space crew for real emergencies on the ship. Emergencies where, since the mission began, dozens of competent, smart, and trustworthy people have died. The only way to prepare people for this scenario is to kill half of the cadets during a “hot class.”
Kia smiled at that. Gallows humor is a favorite at cadet school, but not as funny here. Faces of the old classmates come back to mind as Kia’s body relaxes and the ozone smell unlocks memories.
“Forty percent of the class must be dead by now, if they had the same luck as this spaceship has had.”
Kia’s favorite smells to relax to during cadet school and after the launch were flowers, cut grass, and Spring rain. Kia tries to remember how long it has been since the last Spring smell session.
THC
The computer is offering anti-anxiety chemicals. Kia doesn’t respond to the computer, so the prompt automatically times out. Kia’s THC capsule is full, never used. Kia is waiting for a crewmate to ask for this unused ration, but it probably won’t happen. This crew was asked about “consciousness-altering habits” like THC or EtOH. The rumor was that this crew was picked because no one had any interest in recreation with chemicals.
“So we should all get along,” Kia summed up verbally.
Fear was the worst emotion any cadet felt during training. Now what is it? Kia pondered silently. “Boredom,” came the answer. It was always the answer. Waiting until the next emergency is causing everyone to be bored to death. Waiting for the next accidental death can be a killer.
Go back to the cadet’s faces, Kia redirects, and Kia’s imagination complies.
“I wish I was drunk,” Kia speaks out loud. It would take minimal effort to ferment and distill a liquor, but that would be suicide on this ship. Anyone who wasn’t in full control of an expert brain was going to make big mistakes that might doom the entire mission. Even doom the robots that could, and would, carry on with our work in the event of a 100% lethal accident.
Kia’s mind drifts to anger, the second most common feeling on board the spaceship. Anger at the last tech to run the wires, grease a bearing, or even close a panel to less than spec torque.
“Details kill, they taught cadets,” Kia said. No, Kia thought, the mission kills. This is too much to ask of any group of humans. Send robots, rely on the robots; sure, they can make bad moves because the algorithms give bad answers, but robots are never fearful, bored, or angry. Robots just do.
“That’s what we are,” Kia whispers while removing the smell mask and detaching the suit from the wall. “We are the real robots. Always have been.” Kia pushes off and floats to the next section of the spaceship. “Now go act like it, tech!”
by submission | Nov 13, 2025 | Story |
Author: Susan Anthony
From her white enameled tub, chipped on the rim, worn down by countless bottoms sliding across its base, a frosting of bubbles, Tanya heard knocking. Through the pane of glass separating her from winter there it was again; more scratch than tap.
She dismissed it as a tree branch, sliding below the water, bubbles clinging to the edges of her face.
Again.
It couldn’t be the children; both of them were out walking with their father.
This was her escape, a treat for outlasting her demon boss. He had insisted on extra shifts. Only when he himself had faded, reluctantly closing the store, the last cauldron sold, had she been allowed home. Hallowe’en was always busy, her boss’s greed never more evident.
The noise once more, louder somehow, as if coming from the tub itself. She pushed her ears above the water line. An icy breeze surprised her. She opened her eyes. The window was open, the room, freezing over, a tall black raven sat on the edge of the tub, scraping its beak.
“Hello,” whispered Tanya, surprised but not wishing to panic herself, or the bird. It tapped with one foot, hopping about the rim.
On the windowsill, two more shiny black ravens, smaller.
The bathroom wasn’t going to get any warmer. She started to rise from the water. The larger bird squawked urgently and loudly at the other two, who hopped into the room, immediately turning their backs to Tanya. She pulled on a robe, closed the window.
She wasn’t certain but it was falling into place.
“I’ll say things and you tell me if I’m getting warm,” she said to the largest bird. “One squawk for yes. Two for no.”
Squawk.
“Mrs. Archibald?”
Squawk. Squawk.
“Hardcastle?”
Squawk.
“Apples?”
Squawk. Squawk.
“Surely not the gooseberries?”
Squawk. Squawk.
“Oh, my goodness, the raspberries?” her voice rising in alarm.
Squawk.
“You took,” and she paused, controlling herself, “my children, into that old witch Hardcastle’s backyard, and filched her prize-winning raspberries?”
Squawk.
“After the last time?”
She pulled her wand out, waving it at the two small birds. Her children appeared.
“Go to bed now. I don’t want to know I even have children until tomorrow morning. Clear?”
They nodded, scampering away.
She turned to her husband, still on the tub’s edge. In one swift motion she batted him into the bath, waved her wand, and there he was sodden and covered in bubbles.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“One bath, just one sodding bath, that’s all I wanted. I hope you enjoy MY bath,” she spat out, as her wet feet flopped down the stairs to make herself a cup of tea and grab a chocolate McVitie’s biscuit from her secret stash in the cupboard above the refrigerator.
She heard the sloshing of water, his boots squelching on the floor and she bellowed, “And you had better leave that bathroom cleaner than you found it or you’re on the couch tonight.”
Moments later, he walked past her, naked except for a towel about his waist, reaching into the closet for a mop and bucket. Ten minutes passed. He appeared again with saturated clothes piled high in the bucket, his soggy boots on top, into the laundry room.
She followed, watching from the doorway. Loading the washer. Hanging his boots over the door handle, placing a towel underneath to catch the drips, the towel from around his waist.
“What?” he said, crisply, still pissed she had thrown him in the bath.
“Let’s go back to bed,” she said, watching his mood change in an instant.
by submission | Nov 12, 2025 | Story |
Author: Banks Miller
He looked at me sternly. “Normally, I don’t do interviews. I’m telling you this only because I want people to know what it was really like. So you’re going to show this exactly as it is, no edits, no tricks. Understood?”
I nodded.
“Very well then. Here’s the core of it – I never landed on Mars. Like Collins on the first Moon landing, I was just there to man the ship while everyone else was down on the surface doing science, and to be available in case something went wrong up in orbit. The other three went down in the lander, and at first everything looked fine.
“They landed in Hellas Planitia – that’s the deepest lowland on Mars – and started looking around. But they only spent about a month there. That was one of the biggest debates when the mission was being planned – the biology types were all for spending the whole mission in the lowlands, you know, and the geologists wanted to go to the big volcanoes and the Vallis Marineris canyon to look at the rock layers it cuts through, that sort of thing.
“So after they’d finished their work in Hellas, they bundled into the lander again and tried to fly it over to Vallis Marineris. But fate intervened. We still can’t predict Earth weather all that reliably, and Mars … we know a lot less. A freak wind shear hit the lander just at the wrong time – when it was too close to the ground to have much room to maneuver, and too high to survive the fall even in Mars gravity – and practically threw it into the ground. Two of them died on impact, and Garcia lasted just long enough to send one last message.
“But I’m sure you know the basic story already. Those are the facts, but they don’t cover what it was like to be there. Everything they said in that month of studying Mars – full of wonder and excitement. We were pioneers on a new world. Now, because of the deaths, America and Britain don’t want to be involved in future Mars missions, and the whole thing is under threat. But that’s wrong. We knew what we were getting into – eyes open. Exploration is dangerous by nature. They didn’t give us bad equipment or bad training – luck just was against us. And anyway… who am I to blame anyone? Garcia didn’t. You’ve heard how she ended that final transmission? ‘I have no regrets. We’re here.’”
