Author : Dawn Napier Six year old Jacob found the marble under his bed, behind a grey bin filled with army vehicles. It was bright blue and glowed faintly in the dusty darkness. Jacob picked up the marble—then dropped it again. It was hot, so hot that it burned his hand. He stuck his fingers [...]
Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer I look at the disc embedded in the tree by my head. I’ve just avoided the embarrassment of being beheaded by the greatest hits of the 1990s. The slotgun is an innovation that embodies the creed of the scrappers, using society’s discards to provide their needs. While I agree [...]
Author : Jay Hill Corporal Hawkins woke to a loud ringing in his ears, the sound muted only slightly by the rush of pain swimming across the top of his skull. He undid the strap on his Kevlar helmet and ran his hand through the blood and sweat pouring down from his high and tight [...]
Author : Townsend Wright The girl with the bright red hair walked into the dingy, ramshackle hotel. The lobby was edged with people, some standing, watching, most asleep under old coats or bags, except one man with a disfigured face who was sitting cross-legged in meditation. She walked up to the old man behind the [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer I stand on the shore. I am starting to hate my job. The smaller automatons here weld and stitch together and ferry cargo. They are mobile. They have wheels and treads. The shipyard is a hive of activity when a ship comes in. What I do is reach down, [...]
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer 17th Day, 8th Lunar, 1860 N.E. (New Earth ) 09:47:23 I look to the west; to the future. I meditate on how close we came to not having one. Our predecessors, our degenerate, self-obsessed ancestors destroyed themselves. We’d be naught but savages now if not for the Founders. They [...]
Author : David Stevenson “Come in, come in. Have a seat. Mind the filing cabinet. You wanted to speak to me?” “It’s about my black hole paper.” “Remind me.” “Well, In theory, I have a way to generate black holes here, in the lab.” “Really? Do we have room for massive degenerate stars? Might have [...]
Author : K Esta Time travel is impossible. Or so Charlie had always been taught to believe. He stood shivering in the darkness of the November morning, his breath creating puffs reminiscent of his long-past smoking days. Worrying about cancer seemed so trivial now. His leather gloves squeaked as he scrunched his hands inside them [...]
Author : Morrow Brady They legalised suicide to combat over-population but the widespread stench of decay demanded a more ritualised approach. This emerged as a celebration of a life lived too long and metastasised into the suicide concerts. In the summer of 2212, the festival of life was performed in an open ended quarry high [...]
Author : Alex Skryl “Computer, report!” yelled the Captain. “Sir, all primary systems are online but the star orientations do not match anything in my database.” “What was our entry confidence?” “It was six nines, sir.” Captain Nurbek swallowed hard, “Show me the trajectory map.” It looked like a water droplet in zero-g, slowly morphing [...]
Author : Bob Newbell, Featured Writer It was the year 3.98 billion, but no one regarded it as such. Sentient beings across the Milky Way knew the date by the Galactic Pulsar Network Clock. The day was an historic one. A delegation of 88 sentients representing the most advanced civilizations of the Galactic Commonwealth were [...]
Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer “A Tamborda Eleven-Ess-Two should never be underrated. Treat each one as if it just came off the production line.” Master Needle’s words are soft-spoken yet carry upward to all in the gallery. On the dojo floor, his whipcord frame stands in an attitude of relaxation amongst the wreckage and [...]
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer Doctor Flynn had a difficult decision to make. He looked up from his desk. The afternoon sun was beaming through the window alleviating the need for candle to see by. Out in the massive garden two-dozen people knelt, keeping the commune alive, keeping the family thriving. He looked back [...]
Author : Alex Grover One of those tavern junkies invited me to the Skev for a brawl. I personally enjoyed these screw-ups. The one I talked to that night, around a week ago, was a tusked Griff named Young, and he was lean and almost terrifying. Young had horribly deformed tusks that curved around his [...]
Author : Kevin Tidball I ran into Soren completely by accident. We made eye contact across the busy plaza, and I prevented him from attempting to slink away in the crowd by striding up to him and forcefully grabbing him by the shoulder. Not that he would have been successful, with his grey clothes and [...]
Author : Bob Newbell, Featured Writer The aliens came in a spherical spaceship that would have been at home on the cover of a 1930s pulp sci fi magazine. Their ship was nearly a thousand miles in diameter and could easily be seen in orbit with the naked eye. For three weeks the human race [...]
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer SEA OF SERENDIPITY – MOON “I can’t wait until this bloody war is over,” corporal Sharky shouts into his mic as a barrage of anti-personnel bombs rearrange the lunar landscape nearby. “I don’t give a damn who wins anymore. We’re sittin’ ducks out here!” A slow-motion rain of soil, [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer This lab is armoured and very far underground. The strikes didn’t penetrate down here. That was six years ago. I’m the only survivor of the top-secret government installation designed to create robot soldiers. I succeeded and my designs went into use. A full platoon of them were fresh off [...]
Author : Bob Newbell, Featured Writer “Welcome to our asteroid belt,” said the Congolese captain of the AFS Seretse Khama. Your asteroid belt, thought Dragoslav Ibrahimovi?. Yet the captain of the BAS Peter the Liberator had to admit that his African Federation counterpart had a point. A legal point, to be precise. Sensor sweeps showed [...]
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer The thundering blasts of the plasma cannons hammered us relentlessly like meteor-sized fists, as the Zalkanthian war ship maintained its attack position directly outside our cockpit bay windows. There was no escape. Their bizarre hive-mind intellect had outwitted us once and for all. Their battle strategies were better, their [...]
Author : Paul Williams I meant to pay. Kept twenty Euros in my pocket, you can see it on the camera. I kept it all night. It was still there when the hookers and machines stopped serving. Check their cameras. We had to run for the train, the barrier was down and no serving machines [...]
Author : Bill Drummond We three, the only survivors of the wrecked starship Buoyant, are Captain Bertrand Kelmond, Sergeant Rosalind Druley and me. The Captain has suffered a head injury, leaving him confused and ineffective as the leader. I am not happy with being assigned his attendant and neither is he. Captain Bert believes that [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer The shrimp trawler ”Treadin’ Water” plowed through the calm gulf seas on its way to Baratana Bay. Clasping the wheel in his massive hands, Captain Noyent eyed his son skeptically. “So, your mother and me spend half our life’s savin’s putting you through Hopkins, and instead of becoming a [...]
Author : Bob Newbell, Featured Writer “Surrender your cargo and you can leave unharmed.” The message comes over the radio the moment I come out of a space fold maneuver inside the Gliese 832 system. It’s a fairly old trick. There are a finite number of space fold nexuses and of that finite number only [...]
Author : J. R. Hargenrader When Mission Specialist David Branson joined the Solarian Defense Force, his romantic ideal of “see the universe, learn advanced skills, and encounter alien civilizations” never meant hiding on the far side of an asteroid, cleaning regolith-covered optics, and spying on Gliesians he never met. “Do you ever wonder if we [...]
Author : Dave Rigby Steve sat in the beige waiting room idly flipping through channels on the tv, not stopping on any for more than the few seconds of allotted free viewing so as to not incur an automatic charge. At home he had a pretty decent entertainment package with no overrun fees but he [...]
Author : Bob Newbell, Featured Writer “Ensign, report!” yelled the captain over the ring of klaxons and the groans of metal fatigue that filled the bridge of his starship. The young officer didn’t respond. His eyestalks were fixed on the kaleidoscope of stars streaking past on the forward viewscreen. “ENSIGN!” The slug-like being seated in [...]
Author : Stephen LaGioia I stand anxious and apprehensive in the corner of the hallway near the top of my front door. I crawl to the peephole and squint through it, surveying the empty sky below me and blades of grass protruding upwards, my eyes frantically searching for help. Cars and Hovers speed past, criss-crossing [...]
Author : Ulrich Lettau “This has never been done before.” I blurted out, watching the massive instrument continue to magnify the fluorine atom image. The gauge rapidly passed the billion power mark and continued toward the 1,750,000,000 times, the theoretical maximum. “Dr. Cronus, you will certainly receive the Titan Prize for Physics when this achievement [...]
Author : Bob Newbell, Featured Writer The President of the United States smiled as the press photographed and video recorded her handshake with the Un’Vidik representative. The tall, spindly alien showed no emotion. How could it, encased as it was in its stark white encounter suit? The alien and the President left the photo op [...]
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer Darwin was wrong. The Burgarii Collective is living proof of that. Watching the massive arcologies floating above the old city is surreal – mountains literally drifting among the clouds. I am reminded of a text book found deep in the library’s archives (one of many I’ve been transcribing since [...]
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