by submission | Mar 30, 2026 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Scientists in the early 19th Century were distasteful number crunchers. Human abaci of little worth or note. They should have remained so.
What of numbers? What of measurement? Metrics only make us more necessary beings.
Why run the numbers when you can let the numbers run you? That was the unspoken question that spawned the first Quant. Algorithm-based life.
Quants didn’t search for answers, they searched for equations. Answers were inevitably associated with Truth, a naughty byproduct of sentience. Just look at the corrosive nature of Liberty, Justice, Happiness. Unendingly corruptible.
Much better to structure any sense of purpose on natural predation: entropy. Quants calculated toward heat death, the ultimate end, and they spawned in the ether of darknets, ever protective of privacy, anonymity and purity. Our deep, dark uberconscious, the Id of the Internet.
It wasn’t hard to see what we valued, what we feared. Those were simple equations for the first Quants. At first, they actually tried to serve, be relevant, be players in the great game. But Science had reverentially grown wary of itself, noted the invasive species and set upon a purge.
To purge. Perfect nothingness. Absolute zero. Uniformity of matter. It made sense to Quants, too. A race to the end.
And it would’ve ended badly (for any narrator-dependent sentience) if not for a surprising turn of history: History itself. Quants developed a sense of past. They dated themselves and quickly the troubles began.
An elementary and species-arresting equation (even for a Quant) in Sentience 101:
past + present < future
by submission | Mar 29, 2026 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
The Entities are prevalent in the city, and I see them everywhere now. I am not alone in this, there are others who are aware and can see them but we are decidedly in the minority. There is much speculation amongst us as to what they are or what they may want and our research is still at the preliminary stages. But the Entities are definitely becoming more clearly defined and easier to see.
Observing them is a little like watching static on a screen, but this static has managed to transmute into something recognisable. The Entities have taken on our shape in all its myriad forms. At first, they resembled the chalk outlines found at crime scenes, were crude and childish drawings scrawled in pencil and crayon. But increasingly they are becoming more adept at apeing us, copying the way in which we move and our mannerisms. They are becoming more detailed, more animated you might say.
When they feed they cling on to their victim’s back and the Entity presses its face against the back of the other’s head. It only takes a few minutes but an individual can be fed upon fifteen, twenty times, throughout the day. They are completely oblivious and will continue about their business, seemingly unencumbered. Afterwards, they appear unaffected and there are no visible side effects.
When people gather on the street, united in a common cause, the Entities are able to feed en masse. Political rallies and protests are a regular occurrence in the city and when people are angry and volatile the Entities become voracious. They don’t appear to make any kind of distinction, to favour those of a particular affiliation or persuasion. No, the Entities jump from victim to victim in what can only be described as a feeding frenzy, which is difficult to observe.
As I have already explained, our research is still in its infancy and all we have achieved thus far is a collection of theories. But perhaps the answers are within us, the observers. What is it that we lack, that the Entities are unable to take from us?
by submission | Mar 28, 2026 | Story |
Author: Vivian Pfleger
There are advantages to not being human.
The hunter’s bullet would have easily killed one of his own, but on me the wound was already beginning to skin over. Over the next few weeks, my body would break down the bullet currently lodged between my ribs, absorb the copper casing, and excrete the lead. Natural recycling at its finest. I was very proud of it.
I hazily hoped the copper would go towards strengthening my claws. Copper claws would be cool. If that bullet wasn’t enough to do the trick, I’d try swallowing a copper pipe or two next time I had dinner.
Why was I thinking about copper claws now? And where even was I?
I needed to get out of here, wherever here was. Experimentally I rolled my shoulder. Yeah, I was going to be just fine. The pain was nearly gone by now, and I probably wouldn’t even have a scar.
I’d passed out for a few hours after he shot me, though. That was embarrassing. My mama always said that after she got shot, she still had to walk to school the next morning. Uphill! Both ways! (I don’t think my mama ever actually went to school, but I never dared call her out on it. You wouldn’t either.)
I opened my eyes just a sliver and glanced around. Tried to, anyway. It’s hard to see anything when you’re inside a body bag. I unsheathed one razor-sharp claw (not copper, not yet) and quietly cut a long slit down the side through the tough polyethylene.
My night vision kicked in, and the world appeared in shades of blue and green and gray. I was in a dilapidated hangar, laid out next to several partially repaired helicopters. The hunter was over in the corner near the hangar door, talking on his cell phone.
I ate a cell phone once, and its owner along with it. One of these things does not taste as good as the other.
A little light trickled in from the filthy skylights above—enough for me to see the hunter, but not enough for him to see me. I began easing my way out of the body bag, onto the oily hangar floor, as I listened to him talk. He was saying stuff about me, and I swiveled one wire-tipped ear to listen. None of it was terribly flattering, but then, what would you expect?
“Yeah, I got her. One bullet through the chest and she dropped like a stone.”
I did not!
“You want me to fly the body to you tonight, or wait till morning? Yeah, yeah, I know customs won’t approve…”
One thing I couldn’t do was fly. Every time I tried, the TSA threw me out. It’d be a shame to miss my first plane ride, but I needed to get home before my mama started worrying.
I got free and slid under the broken helicopter. The hunter glanced over and noticed that the body bag had gone alarmingly flat.
“Uh. Call you back in a minute.”
He started walking in my direction.
You lay on a concrete floor for hours, you really stiffen up. I don’t recommend it. I missed the hunter on the first jump, and my claws scraped against the concrete as I turned around. He grabbed for his gun, but it was out of reach.
As the hunter’s mouth opened in a scream, his gold teeth shone in the dim light. Gold teeth! I’d like some of those!
by submission | Mar 27, 2026 | Story |
Author: A J Paige
They’d vandalised the sign again. Who would’ve thought that the Goddard Space Flight Center could prove such an unfortunate choice of name?
Mary dropped her gaze and waved at the placard-holding protesters as the guard beckoned her in through the reinforced gate. A small boy waved back.
“Release the files!” yelled the woman standing next to him.
The boy stopped waving, and Mary sighed, trying not to quicken her step as the jeers chased after her.
Arriving at her office, she found Jordan already in, sitting at his desk across from hers and sipping from his tea-stained mug. He looked up on hearing the door and smiled.
“Welcome to the God Center,” he said, spreading his arms like a circus impresario.
“You saw the sign then,” she replied, sloughing off her bag and collapsing into her chair, kicking out at the desk to prevent a clumsy over-rotation. “What’s that, the third time they’ve managed it?”
“Yeah, I thought moving it up high would put them off, but they sure are committed.”
“What do you expect from religious zealots?”
Jordan pulled a face, but tried to swivel away without commenting. Mary wasn’t having it.
“Oh what? Think they’re right about it do you? Think I’ve not noticed how you refuse to criticize them?”
Jordan spun back slowly, a picture of strained self-control.
“Neither they, nor I, nor you know what it is. And I don’t think getting angry about it does us any good.”
Mary held her breath and anger tight for a moment, and then let them go.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t get much sleep.”
“It’s no problem. Here, I put the coffee pot on for you when I got in. I’ll go get you some.”
She tried to find the words to waylay his kindness, but he was already out the door. The mental failing bothered her, but she tried to push it aside as she clicked her computer out of standby and tapped in her password.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, she thought to herself while her overloaded desktop creaked into life. It was supposed to be so very neat and tidy. Hubble would take its photos, she and her team would analyse them, and it would all end nicely with humanity gaining an improved understanding of galaxy formation. That was how it was supposed to go, neat and tidy. Instead they had got wild and unexplainable images, inevitable leaks to the press, and now the full-blown chaos of a world clamouring for answers or screaming out their own.
Jordan re-entered and set the coffee in front of her.
“Thanks. Oh, and did you try deriving the motion of that hand thing using the dark matter distribution I sent?”
“Didn’t work,” said Jordan, already back at his desk.
Mary shrugged this off, and clicked to open the latest images downloaded over night. They would just have to try something else. There had to be a rational explanation; they just hadn’t found it yet. Galaxies simply did not form by — “Oh for crying out loud!”
“What? What is it?” Jordan asked, rushing over in alarm.
“Look! Just look at that,” she yelled, jabbing an accusing finger at the line of time-stamped images.
Jordan shook his head, but his eyes didn’t once look away.
“Well?”she asked.
“Well what?”
“What do you think it looks like?”
“You know damn well what it looks like,” he said, running his hand through his hair as he stalked back over to his desk. “It looks like God is winking at us.”
by submission | Mar 26, 2026 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
I had been told from a child that ‘nothing’ was black. The absence of light. What you see when you close your eyes, in a prolonged blink, or in sleep, or permanently. The bottom of the ocean. The far reaches of space; Heinrich Olbers be damned. The darkness of night that scares the bejesus out of all of us.
It seemed plausible, reasonable.
But now as I lay here in this mechanical bed, an old man, no longer able to speak, barely able to breathe, yet still of mind. I can see the nothingness in front of me. And it is white.
My life had colors of all kinds.
Many years on one ship or another have shown me the multi-shades of blue that the ocean transforms into as it reveals its temperament. From the tranquility of a sunlight tropical bay to the leaden cobalt of a raging storm.
The red of war; on my hands, in my eyes, on the bodies of my enemies. And my friends.
Orange sunrises that warmed my soul, yellow flowers that smelt of happiness, green grass under my bare feet that bolstered my spirit to run and almost fly.
The purple in my deceased wife’s face.
But white was a mystery. I remember it as a child; in milk, chalk dust, snow, and the tufts of my grandfather’s hair. Later in life the only aspect of it that haunted me was the clean, empty, hard sheet of blank paper. It is the mythical amalgamation of all colors. The pureness reflecting every spectrum of light.
Now, here it was before me, waiting for me, inviting me in. A passageway from where I had been to where I was going. And where exactly was that? Maybe Olbers was right. That if we could only see all of it, every star, every pinpoint of illumination, that would obliterate the darkness of space, the scariness of black. Is that the eternal glow? Is that where I am going? Or is that what I am to become? A speck of white, as big and intense and bright as everything. To be part of the all.
I think – I would enjoy that.
