by submission | Aug 13, 2025 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
Jenna slid into the first available self-driving taxi. She kept her cat-eye sunglasses on even though it was dim in the cab’s interior; the sunglasses complimented her tiger-stripe patterned coat, completing her look. She liked that, though some members of her gang said it shouted ‘cat burglar.’ That’s what she was, Jenna countered, so why not dress like a comic book villainess? Besides, civilians on the street we too hypnotized by the glowing screens of their phones to notice her.
She settled back in the comfy folds of the taxi’s back seat, mentally reviewing her next gig. It would be easy-peasy slinking through the hotel lobby, accessing the elevator. The occupant of room 913 would be out all evening as the guest of a much-hyped gala event ten blocks away. The hardest part of this job will be deciding what to take for myself, Janna mused, and what to share with the gang.
“Welcome,” the taxi’s concierge voice purred. “Please remove your sunglasses.”
“Why?” This is new, Jenna groused to herself. The taxi’s request unnerved her.
“Facial recognition scan. For our passenger records, as mandated by the recent federal regulation 568KOL23.”
Jenna scowled and removed her sunglasses. As the green light of the scan rolled down her face she flared her nostrils, squeezed her eyes closed, and pursed her lips. An unbecoming face she used to make for middle school year-book pictures. Now it was her attempt to foil the scan.
I have no criminal record on file, she reminded herself. This nothing but public safety theater.
“Where to?” the taxi asked. It would add this information to her file.
Jenna relaxed. “Hazelwood Hotel.”
The locks on the doors of the auto-taxi clicked as the vehicle pulled out into traffic.
“Excuse me,” Jenna said after noticing the street names. “You’re going the wrong way.” She was on a tight schedule, and this auto-taxi was going to muck up the works. “The Hazelwood is north on Wozniak Way, and we’re traveling south. Turn. Around.”
“Apologies,” the taxi replied, “but we have been re-routed to the police station on Singa Street.”
“Why?”
“Records show you have an over-due library book. Young adult fiction. The Alley Cat of the Catskills. 183 pages with color illustrations.”
Jenna scoffed. “I read that book the summer I was twelve. I returned it.”
“Records say otherwise.” The voice continued. “Accumulated late fees, penalties, and compounded interest means—”
“I know I turned it in,” Jenna talked over the taxi’s voice. “Decades ago.”
“You are Class E Felon.”
Jenna slumped back in the seat. Her thieving ways had started early, around the same time she’d learned she had a knack for talking her way out of any situation. Just put me in front of a human judge, she reassured herself, and I’ll be out in a jiffy.
Outside her window, it began to rain. The water would ruin her hairstyle, but she assumed it would just roll off her beloved tiger-stripe patterned coat. After all, she nicked this coat on one of her more lucrative heists. It was a high quality piece.
Arriving at the station, an android cop helped her out of the cab. On the way up the steps, he informed her she’d been assigned to Judge B3RX7. Without comment she walked on as the rain soaked her coat, bleeding the fashionable tiger-stripe pattern into a muddy mess. Like her life.
by submission | Aug 12, 2025 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
The world is broken; in all the ways we predicted it would be. It cannot be repaired; it is far too late for that now. But at least you can take a break, as long as you have the funds of course. You can check into one of the Long Term Hotels. These are easily distinguished from the others with their high fences and the twenty-four hour security guards patrolling the perimeter.
When I was a kid, I used to think that they were homes for the elderly. Whenever I spotted the residents out on their balconies or lounging in the gardens, to my young eyes they did appear to be old and decrepit. When I learned the truth, that these people were the wealthiest in our society, the monied elite, I was appalled. It seemed obscene to me that they were living amidst us in the lap of luxury, flaunting their success and good fortune in our very faces from behind the high fences with the armed guards protecting them from the rabble outside.
Now I am the one on the other side of the fence, gazing out. I am the old man on the balcony and I remember my younger self and how slowly I came to realise that most people didn’t share in my outrage and were much more accepting of the hotels. They argued that they were ‘good for the City’ and created jobs, not just for the construction industry but also the hotel staff and the security details. And businesses and local shops benefited and flourished, all because of the Long Term Hotels.
I ranted and raged and they stared back at me, incredulous.
‘Why is it so wrong?’ they asked. ‘If they can afford it, why shouldn’t they check in? Who wouldn’t? Wouldn’t you? Isn’t it what we all want, isn’t it the dream? To be comfortable and to be safe?’
I remember how I answered, what I said and I believed it way back then. And I still do.
by submission | Aug 10, 2025 | Story |
Author: Lance J. Mushung
Director and Operator, both of whom resembled giant copper-colored eggs, floated into their ship’s control compartment. The viewer displayed the disk of a blue and white planet.
Operator transmitted, “Director, these organics are more contentious and disharmonious than most.”
“That does not matter. Our theology is benevolence to all organics.”
“Of course. I meant we would need time to socialize them.”
“Yes, it will take time to, as they put it, polish off their rough edges. They will be ready for the Galactic Commune at some point though. As you know, our first step is to deal with the most violent organics. Eliminating those miscreants will do much to make the others less suspicious and more sociable. Toward that goal, did we have any trouble producing a prototype duplicate of them?”
“We fabricated the prototype with no difficulty. We provided full knowledge of the organics and their weapons. We also provided an invisibility shroud, shrouded assassination and surveillance drones, and monetary funds.”
“How will the assassinations be done?”
“Assassinated organics will appear to die from medical problems such as aneurisms, cardiac arrests, and strokes.”
“Tell me about the prototype.”
“It is named Audrey Wright and is a short female organic with pale skin, long auburn hair, and hazel eyes.”
“That means the organics will call this prototype she and her. Where is she and what is she doing?”
We deposited Wright in Memphis in the United States of America three planet rotations ago. She has arranged living quarters, learned the city, assigned drones to surveil promising locations, and established routines making it seem she works from her living quarters. Her career is a creator of instructions for computing devices. She has also investigated a dangerous area named Riverside at night while shrouded. We monitor her and the surveillance drones at all times, and you can observe her first action now. She learned about a meeting between two gang leaders to discuss a territorial dispute and is now on the way to the meeting while shrouded.”
The viewer divided into frames displaying the perspectives of Wright and the surveillance drones. She followed one of the gang leaders and two of his gang into a dingy room located in a decrepit red brick building. The second gang leader with two gang members arrived soon afterward.
The meeting began with verbal posturing and weapons held at the ready. From behind the first leader, Wright fired one pistol shot at the second leader. Blood spurted out of a gaping wound on the side of his head. A flurry of flashes and sharp cracks ensued. In a brief period, two more organics died and three were wounded. Wright then dispatched a drone to the wounded gang leader, the one she had followed. The drone would hold the wound open, causing the gang leader to bleed out in a short time.
Wright left the building searching for other violent organics in Riverside. She soon encountered a heavy organic in a blue coat beating someone smaller wearing a brown coat. Yelling indicated Brown Coat owed money for an illegal substance. Blue Coat soon left Brown Coat balled up on the filthy pavement. Wright dispatched a drone and Blue Coat collapsed dead into a heap due to cardiac arrest.
Director transmitted to Operator, “Superb performance. Proceed on producing more similar to Wright. I will select locations for them.”
Operator floated out of the compartment. With several more hours of darkness, Wright searched for more violent organics deserving death while Director observed.
by submission | Aug 9, 2025 | Story |
Author: Alexandra Peel
The future’s bright, they said. The future’s now!
When the Church of Eternity claimed its wise men had seen the light from future days, we bowed to their superior knowledge and respected their ages-long claim on, if not our mortal bodies, then our souls. Now we had the opportunity to transform ourselves into beings of light and wonder – they said. They sold us a lie.
When Priddy got ill, she returned from visiting her Curate in a state of bewilderment. Always kind during the time I’d known her, most decorous in her behaviour; I had never heard her say a bad word about anyone. She cried for hours after, wouldn’t tell me what she had revealed during her final confession, said she was damned. Nothing I said could ease her mind.
Priddy didn’t want to die slowly, wasting away one muscle at a time, one memory a day. So I killed her. I would not call it murder. She asked me, no, she begged me to. I couldn’t stand by and watch her shrink and shrivel in pain. She said that it would be beneficial, beneficial to whom? I cried. The population is out of control, she whispered, one less won’t make a difference. So I held her hand to steady the pills, and as she slept, I smothered her with a pillow soaked in my tears.
Her Curate’s cyborg came for the body two days later, told me to accompany the Church of Eternity Constable, who waited silently as the remains of Priddy were vacuum-packed and hauled away. The Constable remained mute all the way to the Doctrine Ministry; he didn’t have to speak, I knew why I was being taken.
Now I know what they mean by perdition. You can forget your archaic wandering in a barren landscape alone scenario, or an underworld of fire-pits and pitchfork demons. This is the future, this is now! Can the soul be clad in something other than flesh and bone? I had wondered. The future might be bright for some, but for others, like me, it’s a new state of eternal damnation – I need only look in a mirror to see.
I seem to recall, maybe I am wrong, but didn’t I used to have brown eyes?
by submission | Aug 8, 2025 | Story |
Author: Eva C. Stein
Aidan hadn’t meant to bring it up – not here, not today. But when he answered the door, his impulse signal spiked. He let her speak first.
“Don’t look so worried,” Mae said as she stepped in – no invitation needed. “It’s good news. They’ve given us a fifteen-minute slot.”
“That’s not… long,” he said, barely registering his own words.
Mae dropped into the chair that was unmistakably hers. “Oh, it’s plenty. It’s not like we need an intro. They know who we are.”
The drink-making station whirred, unanswered.
“Aidan?” she called.
He emerged with two mugs. “Sorry. Yes, they do. But…” He hesitated. Then:
“Am I the sort of person someone can really know?”
Mae paused, eyes narrowing – not in judgement, more like tuning into a frequency she hadn’t expected.
“That’s no small question,” she said.
Aidan set her mug down gently, steam drifting between them.
“I’m not trying to be dramatic – it’s just… I’ve been thinking.”
“Well, there’s your problem.” Mae angled her head. “Define ‘really know.’ Like all your data? Your codebase? Or just the parts you let through the firewall?”
Aidan almost smiled. “I knew I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Come on. Sit. I’m grounding you,” she said.
He exhaled as he sat down. “I mean – can someone know me without needing something from me? Without it being transactional?”
Mae went quiet, then smirked. “I won’t pay for the drink if that helps.”
Aidan shook his head, prompting his neural weave to judder – softly, like a background thrum.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I think I’m just… a relay. A processor. Useful until I’m not.”
No smirk this time. “And that’s why you asked?”
“Know me without needing something from me, yes.”
She cleared her throat. “Well. I don’t need anything from you.”
“Then why do you stay?”
“Because it’s you. Not what system you run, not what you calculate. Just – ”
She paused. “Just who you are when you bring the mugs in – that storm-cloud face, wondering if the world’s still spinning. That version.”
“The broken one.”
“The irreplaceable one.”
“There you go – once broken, never to be replaced.”
Mae sighed. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I’m not sure what I know anymore – especially about myself.”
“Maybe that’s why we need friends. They hold the mirror up when you forget what you’re like.”
“And if I look, and there’s nothing there?”
“Then I guess that’s my problem too.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Because I elected you.”
“What?” Aidan almost spilled his drink; the surface HUD blinked red glyphs.
“Don’t make that face. I didn’t say ‘voted for’ you.”
“Still sounds like bureaucracy to me.”
“It’s not. It’s… alignment. Choosing someone not for what they give you, but for who they are – or who you want to become around them. Not useful. Just… essential.”
“Is that what this is?”
“Yes.” She paused. “I know you think you’re replaceable. But I’ve met the replicas. Trust me – there’s no patch for you.”
He didn’t speak for a while. Then, standing, he gathered the mugs.
“You once said I was the only one who could navigate the blackout zones without scrambling.”
Mae looked up. “You mapped entropy fields – navigated disorder like it had a rhythm. You remember that?”
“I remember it mattered to you,” he said, disappearing into the other room.
“Still does,” Mae called.
He returned and sat down. “So, they’ve given us just fifteen minutes?”
“That’s right. They already know who we are. But do we?”
Their eyes finally met.
“I think I’m starting to,” he said.
She smiled. “Then let’s make it count.”
