Author : J.A. Prentice Lily was halfway through a dissection when she got the first call, faintly buzzing in her skull. With a sigh, she blinked her eyes and was standing in the oak hall of an old mansion, under the shadow of an old moose head. She looked down at her fingers, seeing the […]
Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer I stretch as far as I can, my blackened fingers finally finding purchase. Once more, I turn to memory to provide strength. “Yurik, don’t be silly.” My mother, looking up briefly from her packing. I pull myself up. Releasing the line from my belt, I turn and start hauling. […]
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer General Grant had been pretty explicit in his displeasure. “Harmon, take a Tac team and recon the graveyard. Someone’s turned the lights on in there, and if it’s the same bastards that have been cleaning out our supply trucks and stealing our fuel rods I want them in my […]
Author : S T Xavier Katarina sighed and turned back to the show. “Don’t sulk. It’s very unprofessional. At least we can watch the show.” Arms crossed, Mercault looked out silently from their seats near the royal box. She was right, of course, but these excellent seats in the theater weren’t enough to soothe his […]
Author : Ian Clarke Her mind lurched into focus, it felt like she had suddenly regained her balance after stumbling, her pulse quickened and her eyes widened but she looked inward. The Mentor had read a few simple words from an obscure ancient text as part of the daily ritual and her thoughts coalesced into […]
Author : Sean Mulroy Your home is now the Castle. Feel free to wander and explore any hall, every garden, each room and all the towers. Eventually there’ll be no need to, for they’ll come to you; by that time an improvement will have taken place – your metamorphosis, which is when everything becomes part […]
Author : J.E. Bates The bone-saw keened like a dentist’s drill above her paralyzed eyes. The injection had petrified every muscle down to her eyelids but it had not sedated her mind. This isn’t how you removed a minor malignancy, she knew. The brain scan had shown only a minute, black pinprick. She stared at […]
Author : Lloyd Grey The sun is descending over the Olympic Mountains, and the world is about to end. Patrick Xu is standing in a monorail station, somewhere in Downtown Seattle, calmly sipping water and watching the peak of Mt. Rainier collapse, flowing north into the Puyallup. A column, the colour of a faraway raincloud, […]
Author : Anthony Francis Greed never dies. It had been forty years since my consciousness graced a human body, but the attraction is irresistible, universal, born of the survival instinct, an unquenchable desire to acquire the things needed for life — and so avarice was the only desire in my cold metal heart when I […]
Author : Katherine Cowley I. Amenope stood next to the river, adjusting his nets. Ra, the sun god, beat down on his brown, tanned back. A taskmaster stood nearby, making sure no one neglected their duties. And then the pharoah’s royal barge arrived. Everyone prostrated themselves on the ground as their god passed. Once the […]
Author : Tino Didriksen [emergency power online] Sergeant, lock down that…wait, what’s going on? Backup neuro-simulation? So we lost, badly. But, this is supposed to bring up the ranking officer, so why am I…oh, I see…died too fast for station to scan them, and their backups are months old – doesn’t anyone follow protocol around […]
Author : Sophia Bella At the edge of a bright green lawn in the middle of the desert, a young woman’s chapped lips stretch to a hopeful grin as what little strength she has left is enough to get her over the fence. No sooner do her toes reach the softness of the grass does […]
Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer The room is spartan, the bed a blanket-draped exofoam block that has had body contours carved out with a spoon, by the look of it. The kitchen area is a kettle, five kilos of Nutri-Slush, half a kilo of Vita-Soy and six litres of blue market water. Jenniser stops […]
Author : Andi Dobek “So, I was watching this film last night.” “Yeah? Which one?” “Something called Casablanca.” “I’ve heard of that one. Never seen it. Any good?” “I don’t know. My emotive censors blocked most of it out. I guess so.” Iteration 247 stared at Iteration 7225. “They censored that much?” 7225 shrugged. “It […]
Author : David Atos He landed his ship on her front yard. The spare key was still underneath the ceramic frog, so he let himself inside. The living room looked right. Their vacation pictures were hanging on the wall: the two of them on the beach in Maui, in front of their rented chalet in […]
Author : S T Xavier This whole “first contact” thing is such a hassle. Neither of us can understand each other. You’d think we’d have spent more time learning their language before coming down to talk, but of course we didn’t. Management knows best, after all. “Don’t worry, Sporlek,” they told me in the pre-contact […]
Author : Phil Gagnon Our destiny was to spread from our cradle, to go forth and tame the universe. Our motivation for this was simple; pandemic, mutually assured destruction, cometary impact, the thousand ways that humanity could die. Whether by fate, chance, or its own hand being bound to one planetary sphere pushed us to […]
Author : Morghan J. “You understand why I require payment up front in a hard currency; when I complete my task, you will have no reason to pay me.” The woman idly stirred her cocktail, eyes latched on the man in a wheelchair sitting across from her at the bar table, his eyes gaunt and […]
Author : John Domenichini Don held the phone closer to his ear and raised his voice. “Gramps wait. Don’t test anything. Wait for me… Gramps!!” He pulled the phone away from his ear. “Damn it!!!” Don’s roommate, Hong, sat calmly on his bed. “That was your great-grandfather? The ‘silent’ scientist behind the atom bomb,” he […]
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Dara rolled out of her bunk and onto her feet in a smooth, practiced motion. On the way to the door she winced as the tightness in her calves made each footstep painful, but by the time she’d hit the column midship the ache had mostly receded. Aging in […]
Author : Roger Dale Trexler The ship skimmed the border between light and darkness as it had for millennia. Mankind found it by accident. In their quest to explore space, they had finally traversed the distance between Earth and Mercury. The ship had been so small that it was never noticed as it circled the […]
Author : Travis Gregg She deeply inhaled the damp and humid air, savoring the coolness. The forest was ancient and the tree trunks nearly crowded out the sky. Even though the air was thick with moisture, and condensate clung to the ferns in the underbrush, finding fresh water was the first major hurdle she would […]
Author : Bob Newbell Culturally, they are the descendants of the hepcats and beats and hippies and hipsters and the other various subsequent nonconformists of the past half-millennium who organically came together to form distinct subcultures. But there the parallels end. Even the most unorthodox of those earlier bohemians could not have imagined the Plasmatics. […]
Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer “What’s this, grandma?” “It’s honey, dear.” “Honey tastes nice. What is it?” “It’s what the bees made for us, Matty.” “Real bees made this?” “Yes, dear. A long time ago, before they flew away.” “Where did they go, grandma?” “We don’t know, Matty. All we know is that they […]
Author : Michael Blewett Her father glanced down at the watch on his wrist. “How long?” she asked. “Two minutes and thirty seven seconds,” he replied, gazing out the airlock window. The curtness was for her, she knew, but it was hard for her to hear – especially now. The girl looked to her father […]
Author : Steve Pool Tess always threw the best parties; it was a fact that Lizzy was painfully aware of. Tess owned all the trendiest causes, giving her complete control over the calendars of every social climber in the city. She played the role of Alpha Queen with ruthless benevolence. Earlier that morning, Tess mentioned […]
Author : Connor Harbison “What did you just say?” “You heard me. The sun, it’s…alive.” “Impossible.” “No, no, hear me out. According to my research, the sun, it’s a living, breathing thing. Being. Not life as we know it, per say, but still, life. In another sense.” “I don’t follow.” “Think of it this way. […]
Author : Jean-Paul L. Garnier The shuttle clanked back and forth in its many dimensional dance. The strands all lay separated by their individual frequencies, ready for use at any given moment, and waiting for their chance to join the great tapestry that was unfolding. If only man had been given eyes to see the […]
Author : Konstantinos Kalofonos Sotiris glanced down at his sleeve and brought up his family’s bank statement on the Fabroscreen. The corners of the screen flickered as the frayed edges of the flannel were losing connectivity. The large negative number was clear enough to make him wince. Running his hand across the screen, he brought […]
Author : T Anthony Allen I am not a pervert. And, I find it hard to accept I have to point that out to complete strangers. Of all the planets I have been to, Verity is most disorienting. A city here looks much like any other, buildings everywhere, but the buildings are very much not […]
Author : Bob Newbell The man and the machine surprised one another when they happened to both enter the half-destroyed and looted store from opposite sides. The human reflexively reached for a gun, his hand finding only an empty holster. The robot pointed an arm at the man despite the fact that the gun mounted […]
