by submission | Dec 16, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“I think therefore I am. Screw Descartes and his cogito ergo sum. That’s the kind of philosophical crap that’s going to bust us, Shannyn. If we want to capitalize on this breakthrough, we need to make every last person on earth damn well believe: I am because IDco tells me so.”
Terry Black pounded a meaty fist on the table and glared at his partners, Shannyn Atskova and Galen Jiao, the other founding members of IDco “We’ve got a proven, portable neural scanner that can definitively ID any person. It’ll make the world a hundred times safer from terrorists, criminals, and malcontents. When we started this project, the two of you swore this wasn’t all about making a buck. It was about making the world better. Look, we’re in a position to do both. Why the second thoughts?”
Having failed with Descartes, Shannyn tried a different approach. “Terry, how do you know who you are?”
Terry blinked rapidly. “Whaddya mean?”
“What makes you Terry Black?”
“This still sounds suspiciously philosophical,” Terry growled.
Shannyn purred back. “On the most practical level of consciousness, what makes you you?”
Terry closed his eyes and was quiet for a few moments. “All the stuff crammed in my brain: knowledge, experiences, emotions, memories, thoughts. But that’s essentially the whole idea of what we’re doing with IDco. We ‘fingerprint’ the brain, we make a hyper-detailed neural map.”
Shannyn nodded. And Galen jumped in. “That’s right, but it doesn’t get to the crux of how your knowledge, experiences, emotions, memories, and thoughts are processed into your unique consciousness. We don’t really know how consciousness works. Or the subconscious. When you’re sleeping, are you still Terry Black? You’re not fully conscious. You’re not aware of yourself in the same sense you are when you’re awake. You dream, but we don’t really understand its connection to consciousness. Consciousness is still a huge mystery, yet it’s the key to one’s identity. What makes you you.”
“I get what you’re saying. I’m just not sure how it changes anything for IDco. We’ve totally leap-frogged current biometrics. We have the means to neurally ID people fairly cheaply. We’ve got lots of clients lining up to buy our scanners. Why are you two balking now?”
Galen glanced at Shannyn. “We’ve started to realize our thinking behind IDco might be too limited. We suspect that at some point in the not-too-distant future AI will be able to map and simulate an individual’s neural activity.”
“Machine consciousness,” Shannyn said.
“Exactly,” Galen said. “The ability to upload and download one’s consciousness into machines. It’ll make what we’re doing now irrelevant. If a person has copies of their consciousness stored in various locations, then what is identity and how do we verify it?”
Terry’s thick fingers massaged his temples. “Yeah. I see a hypothetical problem far down the road that may never happen. Screw that. Why should we worry about it now?”
“What we’re doing will make it happen faster,” Shannyn warned. “This is like Oppenheimer and the bomb. It’s in our lap. It’s our call. We have a choice.”
“Someone else will do it, if we don’t!” Terry snapped back. “We’re in prime position to lead and shape events. Build the future we want.”.
“Exactly our thoughts, Terry. That’s why Galen and I believe we can position IDco beyond neural mapping and questions of consciousness. We want to get to the heart of what makes each of us supremely unique.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re talking about the heart and soul of humanity,” Galen explained. “We want IDco to define and control the essence of human individuality. From the physical to the metaphysical. We want IDco to become the final arbiter of who’s who.”
Terry lurched. “The soul? You want to isolate, monetize and market the soul?”
“For the good, Terry, for the greater good,” Shannyn reassured him.
Terry Black stared gobsmacked at Galen Jiao and Shannyn Atskova, his long-time partners, and very philosophically pondered, “Who are these people?”
by submission | Dec 14, 2025 | Story |
Author: Mark Budman
The Scrabble board and the box fell apart first, but my wife and I soldiered on. We glued the board together with a homemade glue, and the letter pieces made of real wood were still alive. Scrabble was our best way of killing time. What else could you do here? Sleep and talk? You can’t sleep and talk 24/7, can you?
When we played, my wife always won. I tried to keep her feet and hands warm when we slept, which was much more difficult. When we talked, we gossiped about our neighbors. All of them were ugly, and so were we, but we skipped talking about us. Too depressing.
We bought our housing long ago, on the pre-need plan, but moved in only recently, after the car accident. It was a nice duplex, small and a bit morbid, but cozy. No bathroom, no kitchen, no living room, no utilities, no windows, no Internet, no fire alarms. Who needed that anyway around here?
We never left our place during the day because we wanted to stay unseen. We only saw our neighbors at night, which made watching them in the moonlight a tad more tolerable. But we invited the next-door couple, April and Logan Mortuum, to play Scrabble last night. They lived in our, um, development longer than we did. Both were fashionably thin and mostly naked. I forced myself not to stare at April. There was not much to see anyway. We offered them some veggies. Mostly roots. They nibbled politely. We listened to the music from outside our development. We played three times, and my wife won all three.
“She has no flesh on her bones,” my wife said when they left, leaving the faint smell of April’s perfume behind. Something vaguely French. I think they call it “Perr Ish.” It’s in high fashion in this development.
My wife was right, as always. April had just a few scraps of skin and meat left on her bones. So did Logan. A veggie diet would do that to you.
“I’m glad you are still shapely, darling,” I said politely.
“You ass kisser,” she said, smiling. She could be a flirt sometimes. I love that about her.
At least I guessed my wife was smiling. She still had most of her lips left. We were so glad our last name was not as aristocratic as April and Logan’s. Who would want to be called Mister and Misses De Compose?
My wife and I held each other’s bony hands and slept in our antonym to the living room. We will play again tomorrow. Or the next year, or the next century, whenever we wake up next time. And we would wake up, right? Death will never do us part. If we close our eyes, we would believe that.
by submission | Dec 13, 2025 | Story |
Author: Thomas Henry Newell
“Who?” They wondered. “Bring him?! Bring who?” Adam was the first to voice the thought. The others looked at him.
The glowing orb continued to shine in throbs.
“No no no,” said Jayce. “Breed him – that’s what it’s saying.”
“It’s an invasion,” said Nige. Everyone always listened to Nige.
“What? Like – it’s gonna make us sex slaves? Breed us like cattle?!” Edward was nervous.
“It’s obviously a portal. There’ll be an army on the other side of that thing,” Nige declared.
The orb continued to glow. They had seen it and thought someone was lost in the woods. The group of them had gone over there, leaving their tents behind. If it was another camper, they’d have wanted to make sure that no one was in trouble. They were a supportive community, like that.
But when the glowing and the thrumming grew, they knew they were looking at something else. Extra terrestrial.
“We have to stop it, then” said “Adam”.
The group members looked at each other nervously. Some looked at the ground. Others started to poke around, picking things up. Hard things.
“I don’t think it said “Breed’” Jayce chimed in. “I think it was “Bring”.
“It doesn’t matter – it’s an invasion” commanded Nige.
The group knew what to do. Mick had a stick. Jeff threw the first stone.
The orb jostled when the rock hit. It made that noise again, and the broadcast went out. “Brrriii…Hhhmmm” Much more distorted now.
Mick went at it, wielding the stick like a Templar launching with righteous rage. He made a dent, and the orb went from being a mini moon to a sad crescent. But it was enough. It burped out a “Bu huh!” and dropped to the ground.
Its light faded. The group watched it, some anxious, Nige smiling, job well done. All that was left of it was a rock in the earth.
Unreleased documents later reported on a strange rock at a coastal campsite. There was a message decoded in a strange crevice, made of engineered crystal. “Bring you home” is what it was later decoded as – and unbeknownst to the researchers, the very same message faded as it went through the galaxy to the homeworlds.
The three hundred civilizations of the great silver way never invited earth again.
by submission | Dec 12, 2025 | Story |
Author: Emily Kinsey
I sway side-to-side in the back of the beat-up van. My hands, which are zip-tied in front of me, went numb somewhere between Boston and Portland. I struggled to free myself in the beginning, but I gave up well before the snow began to fall. We’re restrained most of the day and only untied so we can eat and use the bathroom. My feet are unbound—and I would try to run for it—but they didn’t allow me to grab my sneakers, and even I know I wouldn’t last very long barefoot in the middle of a nor’easter winter.
I’m not alone in the van; besides myself, there are five other passengers, all restrained.
My seatmate is a rough looking guy with a shaved head and a snake tattoo that coils neatly around his throat. I try not to look directly at him. Instead, I stare at the ground. He’s shoeless, too.
The van takes a hard left, and while I’m able to keep myself upright, I manage to jab my seatmate in the ribs with my elbow.
I gamble a sideways glance and find snake tattoo staring at me. I look away quickly.
“What’re you in for?” snake tattoo asks. His voice sounds tough and doesn’t give away his age. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s much older than myself, but since I do know better, I know he’s a teenager, too.
“New stepmom,” I answer.
“Shit, that’s rough,” he says. “She didn’t want a stepson?”
“She and my dad just had their own kid. They don’t want me around anymore,” I say. Something burns deep in my chest. “Apparently I’m a bad influence.”
“Are you?”
“She told me to change the baby’s diaper. I asked if she forgot how to.”
Snake tattoo chuckles. “Bet she didn’t like that.”
“She went crazy.”
“Yeah?”
“Next night, I’m asleep in bed and someone is shaking me awake. I open my eyes, and two grown ass men are staring at me,” I say, physically recoiling from the memory. “I was wearing nothing but my boxers and a t-shirt when they grabbed me. I fought them, but those two dudes were huge. And they had the jump on me. I screamed for my dad, but he didn’t answer. I saw him in the hallway on my way out, next to her, trying not to make eye contact.”
“Man, that’s brutal. Did he say anything?”
“He said not to fight them. He didn’t even tell me where he was sending me. You?”
“Court order,” snake tattoo says. He hangs his head slightly and nods. “Possession. The judge said it was here or jail, no more juvie for me. My lawyer said it was better than having a record. So here I am.”
I lean forward. The mention of a lawyer has me asking the question that’s been on my mind for two days. “I’ve been thinking this couldn’t possibly be legal, right?”
“They can keep us here until we turn eighteen. Child labor is still legal in deep space.”
“What?”
“They reopened the portal to the Mars colony. That’s where we’re headed. To clean up space junk.”
“It’s not space junk; it’s nuclear waste they portaled to Mars. Chernobyl 2.0, remember?”
“Yeah, but the radiation from space neutralizes the nuclear waste, so it’s not dangerous.”
“That’s a Mars Corp. lie!”
“If we do well, we’ll get sent to the Phobos post early. Look, they’re untying everyone and handing out our suits and helmets now. The portal opens just ahead. It could be worse.”
“How?”
“You could be changing diapers right now.”
by submission | Dec 11, 2025 | Story |
Author: Luca Ricchi
Vernon Liu snapped awake as his pod shot up through the bunker hatch into the ashen dusk.
‘Navigation initiated. Destination: Xingjing Earth Federation Great Hall”’
He stretched his olive-hued arms – numb after many hours of induced coma – and squinted through the viewport: a barren wasteland with clumps of smoking ruins, interspersed with puddles of rust-red dirt and acid rainwater. He sat back and smiled. He had succeeded again.
The pod, on its southeast-bound trajectory, reached the outskirts of the capital. Xingjing Fifth High School appeared on the navigation map. Once a towering and maddening institution; now only a name on a display. He was determined to rise from the muck by becoming the best at this damned school.
‘End-of-Term Awards Ceremony, Senior Year – July 2184.’
The mechanical voice of an elderly teacher still echoed in his mind.
‘Third place: Günther Bang. Second place: Vernon Liu. The winner is—’
Vernon never wanted to know who outperformed him. He had cried, screamed, kicked at anything that got in the way as he stumbled out of the hall, his father following behind.
His old man, who died at his workplace, right below where the presidential pod now hovered. Among the rubble, a red neon sign still flickered: “Deep—”.
Vernon completed it in his head: Deep Red Artificial Intelligence Group, East Tower
When they called him to fetch the body, his father’s temples were dotted with tiny marks, like those left by acupuncture needles. Vernon had feared that the corporation was experimenting on his father – perhaps to test illegal brain enhancement implants – preying on the family’s migrant background from the north-western countryside.
Besides, the overtime, the pressure, the competition and the deadlines that hollowed his father out in front of his eyes had not been enough for those ruthless bastards. What a pity. How proud would Liu Senior be if only he had lived to see his son become President of the Earth Federation?
‘Destination reached.’
The pod jolted to a halt, and the harness released automatically with a buzz.
Vernon stood up, yanked a biohazard suit from the overhead compartment and climbed into it.
It was too early to inhale the lethal fumes of the aftermath.
The world beyond his goggles was dead, devoid of any sound save for a faint breeze that swept the dust into spiralling swirls, like those Mars storms the rovers once streamed to Earth, only this time with a one-man audience.
Vernon Liu was the only man left on Earth, and therefore the ultimate winner.
No more nerve-racking debates with his political opponents, whom he had locked inside the Earth Federation Great Hall before launching Operation Doomsday. Their remnants had likely merged with the acids and debris that gave the puddles their maroon hue.
He lay on his back and looked at the dimming sky while sinking into one of those rust-red pools and noticed his own presidential army above – a flickering constellation from his vantage point – still orbiting the planet, waiting for orders.
‘Those mindless idiots…’ There was no use for them anymore, after doing a remarkable job destroying civilian carriers in upper orbit that were supposed to ‘colonise new stars to secure the future and glory of humanity’, activating all the traps and weapons that simulated the planet’s rebellion, and not asking questions. He muttered a command into his wristband terminal and watched all the ships ignite one after the other, like fireworks of long-forgotten New Year celebrations.
‘And in the end, there was peace…’
He sprawled and let himself sink lower.
