by submission | Jun 6, 2026 | Story
Author: Colin Jeffrey
If there’s anyone who knows more about aliens than Dreagle Fungebiskit, I’ll eat my hats.
He’s what you’d call an authority on all the extraterrestrial beings, their habits, and motivations. And I don’t say that lightly – he’s only got a bunch of them living in jars on his bench.
Ugly little creatures, with just two arms and two legs. And don’t start me on them only having the one head. How the Gumley do they manage to eat and think at the same time?!
But, then, I know nothing about them compared to what Dreagle knows. Particularly as he’s cut up a few in his time. He lets me watch sometimes – they have innards like a swamp bug and, by Gumley, the poor little things put up a mighty racket when you put the knife to ’em!
Dreagle says that’s because they feel what he calls “pain” and – the worst part – their limbs don’t grow back when they lose one! Dreagle says they’re primitive, backwards creatures.
He keeps them all in jars supplied with some sort of nutrient via a tube. Their skin looks soft and a bit greasy under the glow-lamps – not robust and shiny like our scales.
Sometimes, at night when I’m sweeping the floors, I swear they’re staring at me with those unworldly, round eyes. Big and wet and so full of something I can’t name. Dreagle says its “fear,” but it feels like something else to me.
“They’re fascinating, in a pathetic way,” Dreagle says, poking at one of them with a pair of tweezers. “So flimsy. One circulatory pump, very few filtration units, and a single, unarmored skull. One good hit and they’re off to Gumley. Probably Nature’s clumsiest accident, really.”
I nod as always. He’s the expert, after all. But sometimes I see them huddled together in the jar, holding hands. Makes me almost believe they have real thoughts and feelings, just like we do. But Dreagle says I’m just mistaking dumb animal responses for our own, superior, behaviour.
Dreagle’s been studying them for years, and only he’s allowed to handle them directly. Says I’m too soft. Says I “hesitate,” – don’t snatch ’em up fast and kill ’em quick. Maybe he’s right. But every time he opens up one of their bodies on the bench, I feel a little something in my own chest twist a little.
The other day, Dreagle told me he’d learned enough about the creatures. “Time for the final round of experiments,” he said, grinning. There was something in that statement that made me like him a little less just then.
Last night, something got the better of me. While Dreagle was sleeping, I crept down to the workroom, looked in on them. I pressed my hand to the glass and one of them put its strange, five-pronged appendage up against mine. It made a soft, low sound and I could almost swear it said something like “please.”
I don’t know what Dreagle will do when he finds out I’ve unlocked all the jar seals, let the critters run free. Maybe he’ll cut me up, too.
The way I see it, though, any animals smart enough to fly to the stars with just one head, and limbs that don’t regrow might just deserve another chance. And, somehow, I feel better for giving it to them.
by submission | Jun 5, 2026 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
The up-arrow light dinged off and the doors slid open as I stepped onto the elevator at my office building, early for work, as usual. There was one person in the car standing in the exact center. That was strange because this was the lowest floor and he made no move to get off. Wherever he had come from before, he was going back up that way. I did a double take, and he appeared familiar to me, as if I had seen him very recently. I choose to ignore that mental earworm and head for my office. I pressed the button for my floor, and I stepped past the gentleman and against the back wall, facing the closing doors. And we went up.
As we quickly ascended, I remembered the weird ordinance that stipulates you can’t talk to someone in an elevator. There is probably no one who has ever been ticketed for breaking that rule. That’s when I realized how I knew the stranger; I had spoken to him. In a dream last night. He had his back to me, like he did now, and then turned and said, ‘you are not going all the way up.’ I don’t think we were on an elevator in the dream, despite the related statement.
Just then the elevator bucked and abruptly stopped. After a second, followed by a disturbingly grinding sound from overhead, the car dropped a short distance. I grabbed the flat bar against the wall, barely keeping my feet. I don’t think the stranger moved or even flinched. Except he turned to me, exactly like the dream.
The elevator imploded. The ceiling caved in and a chunky, black grease-stained, apparatus crashed through the roof, took out the stranger standing in the middle and punched through the floor, taking with it three-quarters of the rubber coated surface. The car plummeted further and I had no idea how far because the lights had been ripped away by whatever pierced the lift. Seconds later it halted, tilting at an angle and I was dangling over the precipice of what was left of the floor, staring down into a dark cavity. My death grip on the handle was the only thing preventing me from descending into the abyss. A yellow emergency light in the corner, which was barely hanging on by a wire, blinked on providing a sparse amount of illumination as it swung about.
I was standing on twelve inches of what was left of the base of the car. The crater in the center was a black hole that yawned beyond the crest below my shoes. A foul breeze wafted up from the depths, with a stench of decay. How far down it went I couldn’t say, most likely all the way to hell. I dared to squint up, and the ceiling looked as if a giant bullet had been shot through it, shredded metal fringes dangling down. My breath had caught in my throat for the space of the minute since the episode happened, before I remembered to inhale. And scream.
It took over two hours for a fireman to attach a harness to me and cradled my trembling body down to safety. I sat there in the lobby, wrapped in a foil blanket, sipping a bottle of water, explaining to several officials what I could remember. Eventually a policeman spoke to me.
“Are you sure about the man in the middle of the elevator?”
“Yes, why?”
“When they checked the bottom of the shaft, they only found the broken mechanism. No sign of a body.”
“He had to be there. It was the only reason I wasn’t… standing… in the center…”
by submission | Jun 4, 2026 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
Warren’s specialty was to reshape the facts, he was a manipulator of the truth. Apart from the burning desire to be incredibly wealthy he had no interest in politics or economics and was unhindered by conscience or ethics. Perhaps this was why he was the best, there were others who were also adept but Warren was the maestro and they, by comparison, were merely minions. He worked for whoever was able to pay and this was now almost exclusively those in power. He was constantly supplied with the narratives they needed him to restructure.
Warren’s workspace was vast and the factory was, to all intents and purposes, a massive shelving unit. The D-vices were safely stacked on each and every shelf and had been painstakingly catalogued. All of the models currently in use were equally represented. When Warren uploaded a Fallacy onto a particular D-vice he knew exactly where it would first surface and to where it would eventually be traced.
Warren understood that in this, the age of surveillance, the populists were ready and willing to disbelieve what they could plainly see and hear. As long as an alternative was out in the ether and gaining traction they could and would be swayed.
Warren hasn’t left the factory in more than a decade. He has everything he needs in his office; all the comforts of home and he has enough money to fund hundreds upon hundreds of ridiculously extravagant lives. When the latest regime is overthrown, and Warren suspects that will be very soon, he intends to walk away. When he abandons the factory and switches off the power the D-vices will quickly run down and all those sources of misinformation, of lies, will lay dormant awaiting their eventual discovery.
Warren supposes that one of the first things he will do when he leaves is to visit a store and purchase a D-vice of his own, although he has no idea what he will do with it.
by submission | Jun 3, 2026 | Story |
Author: Amanda Fetters
You scramble against the upholstery.
“What are you doing?”
—Hold still.
“No, really. What are you doing.”
—Making a copy. Stop squirming. We could have been done by now.
“A copy of what?”
—Your ≹§.
“My…?”
—It’s not a great translation, but roughly interpreted: your soul.
“You’re making a copy…of…my soul?” A moment of incomprehension, then you’re frantic to cover up.
Even fully clothed, you feel exposed, indecent. Naked.
—Affirmative. Shut up.
The spirit or entity or maybe demon transfers your copied ≹§ to a set of complicated scales, multi-panned with several crossbeams and more than one fulcrum. Gears click and whir until they shriek and smoke, and its meters fluctuate with varied neon hues.
—“Oh for the love of .
“Is something wrong?”
You get the sense the entity is holding a clipboard.
—I’m afraid…well. There it is.
A slot spits out a long, narrow receipt. You reach for it.
Partial to animated fantasy films
Wears the same three niche graphic tees on rotation
Musical tastes stalled in 1994
“Alternative peaked in ‘94,” you say, already on the defensive.
Relishes Broadway musicals, but only admits it in select company
Will not eat kimchi
You have the distinct impression that the entity is frowning.
Avoids committing to anything resembling an RSVP
Freezes in 99.9% of tense situations
You say nothing because you’re frozen.
Secretly believes they are an undiscovered genius
Secretly believes their mother was a pathological liar
Secretly believes all existence is an illusion
—I can assure you: it is not.
You blush. You want to ask questions, but the receipt is still printing.
Dreams of owning chickens, but is too squeamish to clean a coop
Dreams of seeing the Taj Mahal, but is too apathetic to book travel
Dreams of earning a fine arts degree, but is too cowardly to risk rejection
—Thank you, that is all we need.
You blink. “That’s it? That’s my soul? What about my personal morals, my core beliefs? And who is we?”
A slight hesitation.
—Irrelevant.
“Will you share it with anyone?”
—No.
“Will you share it with anything?”
—Possibly.
“I do not give my consent.”
—Sadly, this is not a matter of consent. I need you to stop worrying so much. I assure you, this process is harmless.
“Are you storing this somewhere?”
—Securely.
“I asked where, not how.” You twist in your seat, looking for an exit.
—Stop lolling about like that. We could have been finished ages ago.
by submission | Jun 2, 2026 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Cloudfall almost killed him. He’d arrived on Verdant during thirdcycle when the sudden burst of water and biomass knocked him off his feet and sent him sluicing down into the Well.
Only the Mistery had saved him. One of the chanters saw his tell-tale thinsuit boots among the flotsam of the cloudfall and threw a net his way. He’d tangled to a halt a few feet above the lip of the Well, and a chorus of chanters hauled him back from the brink along with a day’s catch of junkwood.
None of his saviors seemed to think it remarkable. When he’d tried to express his thanks to the chanters and apologize for interrupting the Mistery, they had simply spread their hands palm up and raised them in the gesture of the Inevitable. An offering and excuse. He was to die anyway. To the chanters, all would perish in the Collapse. A desirable and necessary end for the people of the Verdant.
It made Henri Tattersol question why he’d transversed three universes to save a race so intent on (even blissful of) its own destruction. They welcomed the Collapse. Every Cloudfall brought it closer, and, with their elongated throats, the chanters trumpeted their impending doom in a harmonious chorus of celebration.
As Henri checked his thinsuit for damage, a high chanter approached with a maiden of the Mistery. In spite of the impossible humidity of the Verdant, her hair bounced in thousands of luxuriant curls creating tribolectric vortices the maiden could channel. With a casual stroke of her hand through lush ringlets, Henri knew she could fling a bolt of energy that even his thinsuit would be unable to ground. He bowed low to her.
“Name us, Henri Tattersol of the Terraverse,” she commanded in the very difficult greeting ritual of the Verdant. The most direct consequence of the Inevitable was that the maidens of Verdant were supremely confident they knew pretty much everything and outsiders were therefore tiresome.
The maiden was baiting him with the Inevitable, in essence, saying, “Tell us what we don’t already know that we’ve always known and that a hapless creature such as yourself could scarcely comprehend.”
Inwardly, Henri cursed the maiden’s smugness, her sureness of the Inevitable, and her damn Cloudfall that pristinely purged Verdant’s thick atmosphere and rainforests every thirdcycle. But, the growing evidence of a massive wavefunction collapse in Verdant’s system and the ripple effects across the omniverse compelled Henri to play the obsequious savior.
His hair matted and peppered with twistles and dorty from his near-fatal floodslide to the Well, Henri bowed low and intoned with perfect maiden-court civility. “Al-el Szafhi, High Chanter of the Verdant Mistery, I name you.”
In response, Al-el Szafhi raised and cupped her palms. “Henri Tattersol, you come on an errand of no consequence. Nevertheless, we welcome your irrelevance.”
She swept her hands down either side of her tightly curled locks causing the air around her head to shimmer. An aura-field spread out from her. The oppressive moisture in the air around them vaporized in a steamy whirlwind that lifted in leaden sky—fodder for the next Cloudfall.
“Your worship knows my mission. Wave function collapse is inevitable.”
“Wafuco is the Inevitable. Why should it be otherwise?”
“Because it is not inevitable otherwhere,” Henri offered.
Al-el Szafhi, High Chanter of the Verdant Mistery faced Henri at the verge of the Well. The massive whirlpool the maidens of the MIstery believed to be Verdant’s mother, giving birth and rebirth to everything. “To save us from Wafuco, this is your wish, Henri Tattersol?”
“It is. A wave function collapse would do the omniverse great harm.”
“Is that all?”
“It is everything.”
Al-el Szafhi rejoiced. “Then wave goodbye, Henri Tattersol! The mother of everything wishes you…her Well.” And she zapped Henri who fell into the swirling Misteries below.
