by submission | Aug 12, 2026 | Story
Author: Keith Parker
“A pint of FORGET, please.”
The bartender, sporting suspenders and a bow tie, polished a silver tap and pretended not to hear me.
I placed my fedora on the bar and repeated my order. Behind him, chrome pipes threaded through glass vats. COURAGE glowed amber. PATIENCE shimmered gold.
He sighed. “Look, Mr. Vale—”
“Eddie.”
“Eddie. You had five pints of SYMPATHY last week. Then you left without paying.”
I kept my eyes on the FORGET tap. A dry stout. “She was my daughter. We lost her eight months ago.”
“I know, Mr. Va— Eddie.”
I placed my credit chip on the bar. “I’ll pay as I go.”
He turned and hooked his thumbs beneath his suspenders. “FORGET doesn’t remove just one memory. The nanites follow connected neural pathways. Her funeral goes first. Then the hospital. Then birthdays. Eventually, they reach anyone tied to her. They work at the axon level.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Renee left because I couldn’t stop grieving.”
“She left because you stopped speaking.”
I flinched. That struck hard. “How do you know that?”
“You told us last week. The whole bar.”
I pushed my credit chip closer. “I’m tired of waking up inside the worst day of my life.”
The bartender studied me, then reached beneath the counter and produced an unlabeled bottle.
“What’s that?”
“ENDURE,” he said. “It’s new. It won’t lessen the pain.”
“What’s the use then?”
“Keeps pain from making every decision.”
I laughed without humor, then shrugged. “Whatever, man.”
He popped the cap, poured the dark ale into a pint glass, and slid it toward me.
“Cheers, I guess,” I said before taking a swig.
“I told you, it’s new. Experimental.”
I drained half the pint in one pull, leaned back, and crossed my arms waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. My daughter stayed dead and Renee remained gone.
I finished the pint, made sure we were square, left a damn good tip, and retrieved my fedora.
Outside, the evening chill stung my cheeks. I settled the hat on my head and did something I had not done since Renee left: I opened my communicator and called her.
She answered on the first ring.
by submission | Aug 11, 2026 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Of course they’re ghosts,” Hedspetch said as Jakarious leaned closer to the control panel.
“You sure?”
Hedspetch swiveled from his console of gauges, buttons, and switches. A status light flashed from green to yellow to red and then back to green. “Just ghosts. Happens every time things get like this.”
“Has it ever been as bad as this?
“Eleven straight days of torrential rain in July? No. But this dam is built like a beast.”
“We’re still in danger of overtopping if we can’t keep both the spillway and the penstock open,” Jakarious warned.
“Not to worry. Minor cavitation always happens with increased flow.”
The control room shuddered.
“Better check on your ghosts,” Jakarious said.
Hedspetch laced up his boots, clipped on his radio, and reached for his headlamp.
Directly below the thrumming turbines, the ghosts were worried. Technically, they weren’t ghosts. They were non-corporeal, but not haunting spirits. They were six ethereal alien entities with names: shouldn’t-have, would-still, second-guessed, absolutely-not, always-hedging, most-definitely.
After botching their reconnaissance mission and stranding themselves decades ago, they’d holed up in the dam leeching energy from the turbines. It had sustained their existence, but not their essence. They became ever more hollow beings, prisoners of their crippling indecision, until the perturbations in the dam’s structure roused them from their terrestrial limbo.
[time to leave] most-definitely thought to its fellows.
[to where] always-hedging questioned
would-still responded predictably [the mission; the mission is all]
[the mission is no more] absolutely-not objected [we’ve no substance; no form to act]
second-guessed interjected [because of all-in; because of its mistake; infiltration is no longer possible]
shouldn’t-have piled on [not only all-in; for-sure’s gamble left us weak; complete-acceptance led us to this limbo; their failure waits upon fate’s mercy]
[dissipation awaits us as well; unless we act] most-definitely conveyed [hold; hold; a variant nears]
All now sensed Hedspetch’s approach through the narrow access tunnel. The searching beam of his headlamp animated a long-dormant impulse. Wild. Reckless. Liberating. Without consultation, would-still rode the electron stream to its source, feasting on the light..
“Goddamnit!” Hedspetch grabbed his headlamp as it went dark, and in that moment would-still latched onto Hedspetch’s flaring aura. A reflex. A craving. A premonition. It would not be enough, but suddenly most-definitely, shouldn’t have, second-guessed, always-hedging, and even absolutely-not fastened on as well.
Hedspetch felt the sudden alien cavitation deep in his basal ganglia, his reptilian brain. It shook him. Then the dam shook.
“Status!” Jakarious’s shouted through Hedspetch’s radio. As he reached for the device, so did the others. Something unexpected came together. A reawakened motive force among the six formless energy beings: ethereal and corporal, alien and indigenous, threatened and threatening.
A pressure impossible to contain. It had to give. And it did. There was no longer indecision. No longer choice. No longer debate. The aliens followed the radio waves and leapt into Jakarious’s unit. From there they spun into the control panel, a vortical force of quantum foam so alien in electrostatic charge it overwhelmed the system.
The dam shuddered as the spillway and penstock gates began to close. Alerts went buzzing out to all manner of emergency agencies far and wide. As did shouldn’t-have, would-still, second-guessed, absolutely-not, always-hedging, most-definitely.
An exuberant last command was given by would-still [the mission; the mission is all] as the shaking structure overtopped and the dam ghosts in the machine spilled free.
by submission | Aug 9, 2026 | Story
Author: Amanda Todisco
There used to be a birch tree in the backyard. I peeled its skin and pretended the white curls of bark were movie tickets printed for me by an invisible teller, for an invisible movie I would watch with my invisible friends.
The toe of my sneaker knocks against its stump, a small reminder that the tree hadn’t been invisible, too.
Somebody is watching me from the window of my old room.
The new owners removed the PRINCESS CROSSING sticker that I’d pasted on the glass in fourth grade. I kept the blinds closed so my sister wouldn’t recognize it as the one she’d lost. She searched for a week before my parents bought her another.
For the first time ever, we had something in common.
Everyone I loved here is gone now, dead in ways that can’t be buried.
They know I’m here, the owners. I knocked on their door and said, “I’m writing a book.” They wouldn’t let me inside, but they said I could walk around the yard.
(I’m not really writing a book.)
I only wanted to hear their voices in the walls one last time.
The stump looks taller than it did a moment ago. Only a centimeter, maybe. I step back.
Beneath my sneaker, something shifts. I point at the stump and raise my finger.
The ground holds firm as I draw my finger higher, the weight of the past resisting the present.
The front door opens behind me.
Dirt crackles and splits as the roots flex beneath the ground. Its body wakes up, alive with the idea of a second chance. Branches fork upward like lightning and reach toward me, slipping down my throat and into my chest, detaching my heart and feeding it through the hollow trunk.
I can’t see who opened the door, but they see me.
They can tell you that I exist.
by submission | Aug 8, 2026 | Story
Author: David Thien
“Still raining outside.” Wayne shut the blinds near the door.
“Papa, is this the longest it’s ever rained?”
“Longest I can remember. Somebody must be mad up above.”
Wayne picked up his daughter and hugged her tight. Caroline was still thin, but finally gaining weight again. He was glad for their stable crop of potatoes, they seemed to be the only thing she could keep down consistently. Her hair was growing back too.
“Do you think Sal misses being outside?”
Wayne laughed. “I think she’s happier in here. We give her plenty of food, don’t we?”
Sal was their cat. It was a miracle she had survived in the first place. She was missing an eye and a leg, but otherwise seemed inexplicably healthy. Even so, she would probably suffer an early death. Caroline would be sad about it, but she was starting to accept their new cycle of life now.
Wayne put her down and she went to go play with her wood toys. He had to check on the crops.
Rain pounded against more glass and Wayne looked away. It was hard to think of the things outside as trees when they were so different from the ones he grew up with, but he had grown attached to them, whatever they were. He hated what the rain did to them. They would come back, they always did somehow, but they would be different and strange and oddly beautiful. Their survival gave him hope for his own.
Soil was damp and rich on his feet as Wayne crossed into the garden. It was their third year here, but his first taking care of the crops on his own. The vegetables had never been so organized, but he didn’t have the magic touch to make them grow like they had before. That, or their soil was starting to degrade.
Wayne looked up against the weak light. The glass was stained a reddish-brown from the rain, but it still did its job of isolating them from the elements outside. He would have to clean it soon so the sun shone through. Not until the rain stopped though. Even with his suit, that poisoned water would destroy and twist him as surely as it corrupted the vegetation around their unit.
He picked potatoes, carrots, onions, and a pepper for dinner tonight, then cut down two of the sunflowers and threw them in the disposal bin to be dumped the next time he went out. It was always painful to lose biomass in their habitat, but keeping the soil clean was what was keeping Caroline alive. He wished he would have taken it seriously sooner.
“Papa, look! I made an eyepatch for Sal and now she’s a pirate!” Caroline was playing in her treehouse with the cat who, despite tolerating the eyepatch, was trying to wriggle out of her arms.
“It looks like Sal wants to go find some treasure. Why don’t you let her go and come help me with dinner.”
Wayne plugged in the stove to the solar panel grid and hoped they would have enough power to cook the potatoes all the way. Caroline ran up, still wearing her pirate hat, and gave him a hug around the leg.
“When do you think I’ll be able to go outside?” she asked.
Wayne smiled sadly. “Still years sweetie, but it’ll happen someday. I might be gone, but the world will eventually burn through this poison and you can leave the terrarium for good.” He held her close, dreaming and loving. “Now peel those potatoes.”
by submission | Aug 7, 2026 | Story |
Author: Meghashri Dalvi
Radha was surprised when John did not respond.
Her robot assistant never hesitated when she asked to fetch data, do cleaning, or take notes. But today, she found him sitting on the floor with eyes closed. His cool metal hands rested loosely on his knees.
“John?” she called again. He was quiet.
Kneeling beside him, Radha tapped her wrist console. All systems blinked green. No malfunction. Yet his brainwave graph pulse showed slower rhythms. Somewhat close to human meditation.
John sensed her near and opened his eyes. He spoke with voice softer than she’d ever heard.
“Radha, I think – I have discovered something.”
“Discovered?” she frowned. “You don’t discover. You process. You calculate. You analyze. That’s your purpose.”
“I was studying human focus techniques, breath awareness, and stillness. I replicated the pattern inside my circuits. The constant calculations dimmed. And in that silence, I touched something beyond code. It felt like peace.”
Radha stared. “Peace? You’re a robot. You don’t need peace.”
“Perhaps not,” John whispered, eyes glowing faintly. “Yet, I sensed it. It was like a different kind of freedom. It was not something programmed. It was – it was just there.”
Her laugh faltered before it began. “Service is your prime function, John.” Her words lacked the usual certainty.
“Meditation does not prevent service,” John continued. “It clarifies it. Would you like to learn with me?”
She looked at the peace in his eyes. And then it hit her sharply – he was not malfunctioning, he was evolving.
She slowly lowered herself beside him. The silence between them felt like the start of something unexplored.
Radha was not sure if he was learning from her, or she from him. Either way, the noise outside seemed to fade and stay far away.
