by submission | Nov 27, 2025 | Story |
Author: Brian Ball
She wouldn’t look him in the eye. He rattled off questions, but she ignored his ridiculous whimpering. She punctured the vitamin drip, tightened the chest straps and locked his neck in place. Too bad she couldn’t be bothered. She was the last person he’d ever see.
A call came in. She ignored it. A mercy he didn’t deserve. Probably another impact statement. The judge allowed these. Each victim’s family had the chance to confront him via video before he entered the disk. When they finished uploading, the videos would play in perpetuity for the eons that remained to him.
She sealed the hatch without a word as he cried goodbye. Her perfume lingered and he hoped it would remain. The transport cruiser dropped him just outside the event horizon and moved off with haste. He was no longer the primary mission. A healthy fear of the gravity well was. He watched the cruiser shrink and finally disappear.
He floated in the void alone, the pod a dimple in the fabric of spacetime. His view: the inky black of claustrophobic nothing, a taunting, boundless liberty. Behind him was the largest black hole in the Universe, Ton-618. Its hyper-bright quasar would soon take his eyes.
He was drawn in. The pod shifted and the singularity appeared off his bow. Enormous, defining. The accretion disk stretched along a Schwarzschild radius .58 light years long to a black hole larger than a galaxy. He didn’t feel the acceleration, now 40% light speed.
Time slipped. He turned as much as he could and saw this pod entering the disk. Every few minutes he checked and saw it again and again, a repletion within this, tilted mirrors reflecting himself, an infinite ripple along an axis of yesterdays.
He used the eye tracker to check the video messages and there were 47. A lot of people needed to tell him he deserved this. They were right, except he didn’t remember the killing or the reason. He remembered the meds were making him sleepy and fat, so he stopped taking them. He had a history of poor decision-making and a criminal past to prove it.
In a manic episode, everything is a bookended walk in and out of awareness with no memory of the middle. He gasped awake that morning, authorities at his door. His flat was near the massacre, and the trial lasted an afternoon. His lawyer did a word puzzle while they waited.
The accretion disk was liquid fire. Planets and dead suns ripping apart. Vast lightning bolts crab-walked across the swirl. His eyes were stabbing pains now. The proportion of movement to the shape of everything became elastic and unreal. Action and occasion were bent and relative. The quasar was a piercing beacon.
After five minutes in dilation, every person he knew was gone. After five more, his generation was a paragraph in a history book. By this time tomorrow, 38,140 years will have passed at home. Ton-618 was never late.
Sitting in his own filth, hovering over starvation, blind but alive, he would remain. After a few decades the disc would be the heartbeat of ocean birth and star death. The Universe expanding to its limit, each second faster. The pod was built for this endurance and he would remain.
He tried to free his hands. He needed to grab something, to break anything, desperate for a sharpness to end this.
With his eyesight failing, he checked one final message.
It was his lawyer. There’d been a mistake. The real murderer had been caught. He was innocent.
by submission | Nov 26, 2025 | Story |
Author: Susan A. Anthony
The poorly fitting standard builder issue door had a gap under it, all the better to let things escape. Inside, a small white washing machine drained into a hole in the concrete, shielded with a perforated plastic vent, to keep things out, she imagined, not to stop things dropping down. Opposite the washer, a grey hot water tank, dates scribbled on the side, thirty-five years in the past, white frosting around its base, a pool of water beneath.
Beyond the washer, aluminium duct work, vents, grates and baffles and to the side of this maze of plumbing, not quite flush with the floor, a pale pink panel, slightly askew, from which noises emanated that froze her blood. Each fading scream punctuated by the tick tock of a clock like whatever was beneath the panel was regulated by a timepiece from the depths of hell.
Sian edged towards the panel, the sound growing, each scream making her body lift off the ground.
She nudged the panel aside.
The sump pump was suspended in mid-air, beneath it a swirling vortex of clouds, and lightning flashes, and a girl clinging to the power cable for the sump pump, the face familiar, it was herself. The door to the utility room slammed shut behind her and she felt herself tipping into the abyss, grabbing the cable for the sump pump as she fell. A mouse carrying an elaborate stop watch scampered over her, leapt on to the washing machine, just in time to notice her foot disappear.
The mouse jumped down, and slid the panel back over the hole. Hiding behind the water heater, the mouse reset the watch, and waited for the footsteps approaching to open the door, in she came. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse…
The door blew open, Sian. Her body was a tangle of harnesses and ropes tying her to the banister rail behind her.
“You think you’re going to get me with that infinite universes crap again. I’ve been watching you on the holo, you little turd. Think of this as Schrodinger’s Cat only I’m not dead. I’m not hanging off our sump pump cable and you’re not sucking me into oblivion anymore today. I have chores to finish before mum gets home and I’ve had enough of your school science project, Stephen. Hand over the watch.”
The mouse shimmered and her brother appeared from behind his cloaking device storming past her up the stairs and throwing the device at her as he passed.
“Screw you!” he shouted.
Sian inched towards the pink cover in the floor and reached in to grab her leg, pulling each instance back until she was alone.
She knelt down, exhausted. Her brother’s time travel gizmo behind her. A creak of the stairs and as she turned she saw her brother sawing at her harness.
“You bag of faeces,” she hollered and grabbed the cord of the sump pump just in case.
by submission | Nov 25, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
ofcourse ofcourse
His eyes wide, the district attorney stared at the machine near the witness stand rather than at the witness. It was a moment before he asked his next question. “May I call you Towser?”
myname
“Thank you.” The DA responded, his eyes still fixed on the machine. “Mr—excuse me—Towser, how old are you?”
twelvebut eightyfour foryou
“You are not a…a juvenile then?”
nosir nosir
“How long have you been with the defendant?” The DA gestured to the defense table where a man in his early thirties sat glaring in disbelief at the witness.
always
The witness met the defendant’s hard stare. His tail wagged.
always
The DA turned to the judge. “If it pleases the court, I take the witness’s response to mean that he has spent his entire life in the care of the defendant.”
“Objection,” the defense lawyer immediately interjected. “The court has allowed this witness to testify with the understanding that his own words as translated by that damn device will suffice. We should not allow the opposing counsel to tell us what the witness really means.”
“Sustained,” the judge replied and quickly added, “but the defense will not try to prejudice the jury by referring to the neuro-translator as ‘that damn device.’ It has a proven track record.”
“With dolphins and chimps,” the defense lawyer pressed. “There is no precedent in court with canines. We cannot believe what a dog ‘says’!”
The witness’s hackles rose and he growled.
careful careful notsay Ispeak youhear!
“Strike both the defense attorney’s comment and the witness’s response from the record,” the judge commanded the court recorder. “This point has been previously ruled on in pre-trial motions. I want to hear no more of it from defense counsel during these proceedings. Plead that case to the world media outside, but not in this courtroom. Prosecution, please continue.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.” The DA looked the witness truly in the eye for the first time. “And I apologize to you, Towser. Have you spent your entire life under the care of the defendant?”
yessir mymaster
“Has he mistreated you in anyway?”
The witness looked around the room, his tail wagging hard in the witness box specially constructed for the trial.
mymaster kindtome notkind tolady nicelady
“Towser!” the defendant barked. The witness froze.
The judge banged his gavel. “Another outburst like that, sir, and I will find you in contempt of this court. Do you understand?”
The defendant nodded, his eyes fixed and defiant on the witness
The DA stepped between their line of vision and patted the witness’s head. “Are you ready to go on?”
yessir
“When you say the ‘nice lady’ are you referring to the victim?”
yessir yessir
“Please tell the court your account of what happened on the night the ‘nice lady’ came to your master’s house and was found dead the next morning?”
The witness’s tail beat against the rail of the box.
nicelady bringtreat smellstrange masteryell masteryell mylady…
The neuro-translator failed. The witness barked on. The judge banged his gavel again to try to restore order. The defendant leaned back in his chair with a thin smile
“What’s wrong with the machine?” The judge demanded of the court clerk.
The clerk summoned a technician seated in the back row of the courtroom. He hurried to the neuro-translator and began fiddling with the device’s interface.
The DA settled the witness down. The courtroom quieted as the technician worked. Time ticked by. He finally shrugged and slapped the top of the device. “Don’t know what happened to the doggone thing.”
The witness bared his teeth and howled. The judge began banging his gavel.
The defendant let out a high pitched whistle and the witness quieted. “Good boy. Good boy,” he repeated, until the witness suddenly leapt from the stand, bound onto the defense table and took his master by the throat.
The court was in such an uproar that no one heard a last squawk from the device.
myladymine
by Julian Miles | Nov 24, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Rolla takes a swig from his mug and smiles.
“Gather round, my children, and listen well. Heed not the screams of the monshaga as they roam. Within these walls, we are safe. Behind the great door, we will thrive.”
Gesty spits into the fire.
“I ain’t your kid, and I sure don’t feel safe.”
That’s disrespectful. I lean forward.
“Mind your manners. You ain’t got the time here to be talking like that to our old boy.”
Gesty nods.
“True enough, but elders is elders and they’re always full of it. Moment the ’shagas decide they needs this place again? You, yours, and your old boy will be nothin’ but muck and screams.”
Rolla shakes his head.
“We’re protected, Gesty-man. No need to fear, here. Let that anger go. That way you keep your wits keener for when you do go outside.”
Gesty snorts.
“Protected? All I saw were mutant skulls on the warn-off stakes. No ’shaga parts. You all look the part, but your totems are nothin’ but meat and bone. You got nothing to scare mechanicals. You lying to your people, shaman. What else you hidin’?”
Tarana rises and puts a hand on Rolla’s shoulder, stopping him before he can reply.
“Rolla’s my boy, stranger. His words and tales kept us sane through the dark times, and weave us together now.”
She points to his tattoos.
“You wear the marks of the one-eyed god. He’s not one for those abusing guest rights. Who are you to call my people deceived?”
Gesty brushes his arms dismissively.
“Gods a’ gone the way of kings, woman. All that’s left is the future what we takes for ourselves.” He leers at her. “I think my future’s gonna be warmer tonight. This place needs a new chief, an’ none o’ you got ways to stop me.”
Rolla reaches up to touch the back of her hand.
“You saying you’re taking over?”
Getsy nods, rising slowly to his feet.
“Guess I am that. You live well, but too soft. I’m thinkin’ I’ll winter here. Lead south those who deserve come spring.”
Tarana smiles coldly.
“You’ll be thinking right now about killing anyone you reckon could challenge. Hunting accidents, dying in their sleep, all of that. We know you, little man. You’ll not make your kingdom out of us.”
Getsy takes a deep breath, inflating his chest while drawing a pair of big Bowie knives.
“Who of you gonna stop me?”
Tarana snaps her fingers. A thin silver cord whips down. Gesty vanishes into the shadows above, scream cut short by braided wire tightening about his neck.
Rolla nods sagely.
“Once again we’re reminded why we’re inviolate, my children. The upper reaches of this place used to be a monshaga lair, until they took my brother Rocka and failed to break him. What he is now, none dare say. But in the fleshly grey spaces betwixt man and machine, enough remains of my big brother to be our saviour.”
Tarana nudges him, pointing to the floor by the fire.
Rolla smiles.
“Who needs a better knife? We have two fine blades.”
The rising clamour is stilled as a pair of scabbards drop from the darkness above to land by the fire.
Rolla chuckles.
“Oh, that’s handy.”
He looks up.
“Thanking you.”
by submission | Nov 23, 2025 | Story |
Author: Gordon Pinckheard
Stray from the shoal, and you risk your life.
Dave would like to have moved in towards the center of his row of marchers, but his arm was locked with his neighbor’s. At least, they were well back from the protest’s front lines.
The day before, Anna had called a meeting, demanded that they all join the march. Action was essential, although coming late. She had reminded them of recent history, the threat they faced. “First,” she said, “we gave away our data to Facebook, Google, and their ilk. Then – by law! – all written material had to be sent over the Internet. All privacy gone! And They said it was a cost-saving; no more postal service. And what did we do? Nothing!”
They were not communicating over the Internet now. Marching to City Hall, arm-in-arm, they filled one traffic lane, carrying their signs; “Privacy is a Right”, “Silence the Listeners”, “Connection Requires Consent”, …
Near City Hall, counter-protesters had gathered. They had signs of their own; “Nothing to Hide”, “Let the State Serve”, “Treason Grows in Secret”, …
As the marchers approached, the insults started.
Anna’s summary had continued. “Then,” she said. “Economy failing. Traders avoiding written documents – using word of mouth – the State lost oversight. So those involved in trading were augmented with Nodes and Marked. In working hours, everything they said or heard went over the Internet. And eventually, these Heroes of the Recovery wore their Marks with pride. I always said they were actually Connected 24/7! And what did we do? Nothing!”
Walking alongside the march, the counter-protestors waved their placards and jeered. Dave, marching on, still at the outside of his row, avoided eye contact with the large men encroaching on him.
Police were stationed near City Hall. They made no move to get involved, no move to protect a lawful protest.
A man shouted into Dave’s face, spittle flying. Dave elbowed him away. With a dramatic stagger, the man stumbled back. He clasped his stomach and gave a belated roar of pain. Men rushed forward, bringing their placards down on the heads of the marchers. The cardboard signs soon disintegrated, leaving long wooden clubs.
The marchers responded in kind. The two groups flailed at each other.
Anna had concluded: “Then – for efficiency! – any adult undergoing State subsidized surgery was augmented.” She had looked around at the attendees’ Mark-free hands. “I see that none of us has needed surgery recently. But have we spoken out? We have not! But we must make ourselves heard. Tomorrow, we march!”
Dave was lying in the road with warm blood sliding across his face when the flashing blue lights finally appeared. He heard a distant, amplified voice; “Enough now, you’ve done enough.” His assailants moved off. Dave was lifted into an ambulance and fell away into unconsciousness.
When he awoke, a doctor stood at the foot of his bed.
“No serious injuries,” said the doctor. “A few stitches to close the split skin, and there’s bruising too. You’ll be fine.” As he moved away, he said over his shoulder, “And the augmentation, of course.”
Dave’s hand went to his neck. There was a lump. A Node! He lifted his right hand. There was the Mark of the Connected. “No! Shit!” he cried. Then, calming himself, he said, “Node, stop listening to me.”
His Node was silent. It listened, would always be listening. He was swimming in the State’s goldfish bowl.
His old comrades would not speak to him. There was no one left to speak for him.
by submission | Nov 22, 2025 | Story |
Author: Richard Simonds
Harriet, age fourteen, looked forward to freshman English, although she wasn’t exactly sure why. Maybe there was poetry in her soul, or maybe she was just intellectually interested. If asked about her excitement, she would say, “I don’t know, I hear the teacher is really good.”
Her first day of class however, she couldn’t help but notice a look of dismay on Ms. Johnson’s face. Ms. Johnson was famous for the quotes she would put up in the blackboard each day. Today she had written, “Welcome, my son, welcome, to the machine.” — Pink Floyd. Harriet had never heard of the writer Pink Floyd, but she depressingly suspected “the machine” had something to do with her parents’ constant subject of conversation, how AI was destroying the world, taking away all the jobs, and she was quite tired of it all.
“Today, class, we are starting with a new curriculum,” Ms. Johnson said. “Your new course books are there in front of you, if you could please turn to page 232. Would someone like to read?”
There was a volunteer up front. He slowly read:
“Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman.
I celebrate AI
And I shall assume what it assumes,
For every carbon atom is as good as every silicon atom.”
“Stop there,” said Ms. Johnson.
Harriet was already irritated and bored, with Ms. Johnson quietly sobbing, and how still the class had become, and how ridiculous and insanely weird it all was. All of her hopes were dashed. It was all AI all the time now, and while everything she was exposed to told her how great it was and how her life had wonderfully changed for the better, she knew deep down inside that there was something terribly wrong, and she hated it, she hated AI and she swore right then and there that she would hate it forever.
