Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer “Hey you! What the hell do you think you’re doing to my daughter?” “Not hell, Daddy. Heaven. Heaven!” Wendy’s daddy was a Detective Inspector and things got a little difficult for me after that. Couldn’t go anywhere without being pulled over. People stopped inviting me out because wherever we [...]
Author : Alex Bauer The light on the wall is green. The machine beside her is on and receiving. The walls bleed nuclear colors like a pool of oil before shifting to uniform white. First session in years, motivated by some desperate nostalgia. The machine hums, squat and blinking, next to her. Now he comes [...]
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer Henry became suddenly aware. Aware that he was sitting upright in a comfortable chair, wearing comfortable clothes made from warm white fabric that he did not recognize. All around him was whiteness, save for a wide bay window across the room that looked out into pure blackness. He looked [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer Shades of coffee and caramel run under my fingertips like love letters written in goose-bump braille. There’s a heat from the honeyed angles and well-oiled hip joints that quietly beg me for a brush of fingertip. The skin is warm and dry to the touch. You’d think from the [...]
Author : Thomas Desrochers Father Leibowitz gingerly placed the surplus sacrament back in the tabernacle. He turned to his congregation and sighed. It was a congregation of one: an old Jewish man named Schell. Leibowitz pursed his lips. He and Schell had been the only ones at any mass for more than a year now. [...]
Author : Thomas Desrochers “I am the beginning and I am the end. I am the Alpha and I am the Omega. Within me is the soul of an entire race, and behind me the hopes, fears, dreams, and desires of an entire people. “I am Lux Aeturna.” The words were painted in white lights [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer “So, Sergei,” asked mission specialist Clark Zander, “How’s it look?” “Not good, Clark,” replied Tsiolkovsky as he removed his helmet. “The meteorite punctured the aux tank. I was able to shut off the transfer valve, but we lost 60% of the fuel in the main tank.” “Can we still [...]
Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer “Let me get this straight; The slum kids were tagging you with paintballs of bioluminescent gel, so you took the decision to lift our forces into orbit and firestorm the planet?” “Yes sir.” Major MacLachlan looked up from the miniscule desk in his tiny office aboard EMFS Bad Moon [...]
Author : George R. Shirer Serefina and I barely managed to get the hatch closed before the first of the crew caught up with us. We’d barely secured it when someone started pounding on the other side, making all kinds of dire threats. Exhausted, we sank down to the floor of the small cabin, our [...]
Author : Ian Hill “Fifteen minutes until departure.” came the monotone voice across the Metastation’s many speakers. Four figures walked along the dark main tunnel that stretched for miles in either direction, their phosphor flares illuminating only a small portion of the vast cylinder. “Departure from what?” wondered one of the figures aloud. “We’re already [...]
Author : Bob Newbell “Shuttle now clear from mothership. Beginning de-orbit,” said Commander King as he studied the holographic display on his control panel. Captain Rex, seated next to him, looked up at what remained of the SS Stalwart. When she’d left Earth’s solar system almost ten years earlier, the Stalwart had been a massive [...]
Author : Mary Ann Back Dr. Klatua wasn’t dead – yet. But ten minutes into my session, the only thing keeping me from killing him was the Heja Root I’d smoked earlier in space dock. He was a typical Martian, four-foot-ten, reptilian green with scales here and tentacles there. His voice was shrill and warbled [...]
Author : Josie Gowler Twenty years of war. The couple sitting in front of me are younger than I was when I became Captain. Officiating wedding ceremonies is one of the supposedly pleasanter responsibilities of my job on this starship. But how can I do that with a clear conscience, knowing what I know? It’s [...]
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer “Damn it Jones! Haven’t you got that translator working yet?” The ensign was baffled. He had set up translators on hundreds of worlds. This program was the very best, drawing on any slight nuances of anything that could conceivably transmit language, whether it was electrical impulse, sound, smell or [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer There are over a billion species represented. Finding out information and language about a species happens quickest during coitus, they say, and the more plentiful the better. I was selected from over eighty thousand applicants. I am a mating specialist. The stink of this planet is incredible. Every single [...]
Author : Alla Hoffman Derrick woke up to the sensation of his lungs running out of air. The pod was dark, but he could see a weak greenish light filtering through the glass. He pounded on the lid frantically; something must have gone wrong with the cryo system. Maybe the power had gone. It was [...]
Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer Whales have long been creatures that inspire awe in humans. When we discovered them out here, that mystery only deepened. At what far distant point, and how, did a star-roving behemoth come to dwell in the oceans of Earth? The xenologists used the Latin word for star to name [...]
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Drax left the party early, as he often did, dragging two beautiful young things into his elevator and up to his sprawling office to ‘admire the view’, occupying as it did the entire top floor. Heels came off outside the elevator, dresses somewhere between the roll up garage doors [...]
Author : Jeri Otero She’s so beautiful. Just lying there with her eyes closed. All that long black hair, still in its long curls even after last night. Lashes like feather dusters, lying against her skin. She has those slightly turned up eyes that are almost Asian. Strong cheekbones that look almost Native American. Full [...]
Author : JD Kennedy The bridge of Earth’s first colony ship, Columbia, was a beehive of activity. The newly awakened ship’s officers were carefully reviewing the system readings at each of their stations. Captain James Branson sat in his chair admiring the efficiency of his crew. They were all relying on their training while they [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer We tried everything but the kid was just too fast. We were hoping to break speed records when we bred him. A snip of a molecule here, a tweak of an atom there. We only wanted to cheat and win some gold medals for our country. We were too [...]
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer Rupert’s father blubbered uncontrollably as he took his son’s hand and led him away from the car and into the forest. Son? Was he really? Maybe if he kept thinking that way this might become somehow easier. Yes, he just needed to keep reminding himself. The boy may have [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer “Damn, there’s nothing there. I don’t like this one bit,” said NASA’s Jim Mason to his fellow astronomer. “Based on the perturbations to the orbits of Neptune and Uranus, the computer says the damn thing has 45% of the mass of the sun.” “That’s impossible,” replied Jed Simpson. “We’d [...]
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Dr. Darius from the Psychology lab walked along the line of students to Dr. Thorne’s adjacent Bio lab, reaching the door just as it opened to emit a thin wiry girl with a pale face and electric blue irises. She paused only a second before stepping around him, offering [...]
Author : Colin W Campbell When it all started, Duke was just one of these overpaid, do anything, off-home-world operatives. The planet administrators were little impressed when he asked for a Council Meeting to propose a new section for what he called dirty-tricks. What happened at that meeting is now well written into the lore. [...]
Author : TJMoore I’m starting to get a little worried now. Some more kids stopped by to visit Adrian today. At first it was just his friends, kids that I know and have met before. Now, it seems like every teenager in the county is stopping by. Almost as troubling is the fact that his [...]
Author : Jack Barton ‘Joy, joy, I wish joy to you all.’ Karl raised his arms as he addressed the crowd. ‘And joy is what you shall have, if you can accept it.’ Beaming, he eyed the hesitant audience. It wasn’t just junkies and religious zealots anymore; there were businessmen here now, students, even a [...]
Author : Andrew Bale “You’re so full of shit, Barry,” said Kent. “No, I’m serious. I was reading about gene activation. They’ve managed to wake up really old genes in lab mice. What if humans thousands of years ago all had superpowers? What if they could fly or something and we just forgot how?” “So [...]
Author : David Barber The woman sitting the other side of the table is Jan Fierro, the Department chief. We’ve never talked much, I mean, I’m just a jack aren’t I? Though once I photoshopped a great nude pinup of her and posted it in the men’s changing room as a joke. I never found [...]
Author : Autumn Humphrey A dog barks rhythmically in the distance, its voice distorted by the noise of the world, sounding a desperate call of, “Come here! Come here!” It has been this way since the revolution, odd sounds ringing out, confirming things are not the same, a disturbed variation of the city that was [...]
Author : Bob Newbell The captain repeatedly tapped his mesothoracic exoskeleton contemplatively and looked out the main viewport at the blue and white planet below. Two-thirds of the surface was underwater and its atmosphere was over 20 percent oxygen. How could life, let alone civilization, have developed on such an inhospitable world? He imagined what [...]
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