by submission | Jun 20, 2026 | Story
Author: Marion Lougheed
Sandy poked at the sticky substance on the living room floor. How many times was this stuff going to reappear? She looked at the ceiling, the plush couch, the walls, as if this time she’d pinpoint its origin.
With a sigh, she scraped it off the fake hardwood with a butter knife, then tossed the gunk in the trash. Like green gum, but not gum. It smelled like rotting grass.
When she returned to the living room, the goo had reappeared.
Angry heat shot through her. It was impossible, and yet there it was. This time when she scraped it up, she dropped the goo in a plastic container and carefully sealed it. She stuck duct tape around the lid to ensure no air — or goo — could escape.
The lab test told her little. Some kind of organic matter akin to cellulite. Like fat? She moved her rug to hide the spot where the goo had once again reappeared. Within a week, the whole floor was covered. The goo was crawling up the baseboards.
She closed the door to the living room. There was no lock, so she dragged the chest of drawers from her bedroom to block the way. At least it was contained.
A few days later as she was getting dressed for work, she dropped an earring. It scuttled beneath the bed. She knelt down to feel for it. A familiar grassy smell met her nose, and her groping fingers touched a sticky substance.
That evening, she locked the house door, loaded her suitcase into her car, and followed the signs to the nearest highway.
by submission | Jun 19, 2026 | Story
Author: David Berger
“How much longer do you think we have?” TRX-Dan (a Tyrannosaurus Rex), perhaps the world’s leading astrophysicist, asked.
“About a month,” TRI-Susan (a Triceratops), his trusted colleague said. “It’s coming on fast.”
“I concur,” TRX-Dan said. “And ARG-Lou (an Argeninosaurus) has confirmed it with the big scope in Montana. They heliographed me.”
“Have you notified the President?” TRI-Susan asked.
“Just did. I let them know yesterday when we first spotted it and confirmed its course. That was before we had a good estimate of time.”
“And the Minister of Science, ORT-Li (an Ornithomimus)?”
“Them, too,” TRX-Dan said.
A few hours later President TAL-Stefanie (a Talalarus), met with their Council of Advisors in Squo, the largest city and capital of Laramidia. The President was now in constant contact with TRX-Dan and TRI-Sue.
“There’s no doubt?” TAL-Stefanie had heliographed back to the two scientists. They had confirmed the impending doom. There was no way that the ordinary DINs would be able to survive the collision.
“Then,” the President said, “we’ll need to build bunkers, huts, yurts, caves, tunnels. So some of the smaller Teranurians, with their feathers, will be able to make it through if we take care of them. But none of us, not our clades.”
“We’ll also have to protect the mammalia; otherwise, they’re finished,” the Minister of Zoology, ISI-Pablo , said. “They’re too stupid to survive by themselves.”
“What about the pisces, lizzies and bugs?” the President asked.
“They’ll lose most of their species, but they’ll survive,” ISI-Pablo (an Isisausrus) said.
“We’ll need special structures to preserve seedstocks of the edible plants for the surviving ones,” MAP-Sven (a Mapusaurus), Minister of Agriculture said.
“After everything, it’ll all be gone,” Minister of Culture ZAL-Rasha (a Zalmoxes) said. “All we’ve built.”
“Yes,” President TAL-Stefanie said. “Everything. So let’s get going?”
“TRX-Dan said only a months” The President asked “No chasnge?”
“Thirty and a half rounds,” Minister of Science, ORT-Li said
“It’ll all be gone,” TAL-Stephanie said. “Our cities, our great machines, our plain-wide murals, our carved mountains? And our faith. Who’ll honor the Great Explosion? No one. And all that’ll be left will be our bones, turned to rock like the Old Ones. If only we’d made it to the Red Wanderer, or even just to the Face. Some of us could have survived there.”
“Another hundred spins or so, and we’d have been there,” TSA-Maali (a Tsaganetia), Minister of Transportation said. “There just wan’t enough time.”
Meanwhile, the Roid could already be seen in the night sky.
by submission | Jun 17, 2026 | Story |
Author: Elena Tosato
My visor kept flagging gaps: from timestamp T+19:43:12 onward, my sensors had gone dark. The system had filled the void using Steve and Ian’s data, which were both intact. Yes, sir. The implant reconstructed my memories from backups, but my sensors stopped recording after we crossed Hill 37-b11. So they used Steve and Ian’s data.
According to these cross-referenced memories, I killed Wayne. Meaning this is what you can see: Wayne walking away, an altercation, a high-energy discharge, and me heading back, alone. Yes, sir. The maximum-likelihood hypothesis. Two independent sources converging. However, sir. We all passed through the same contaminated environment. Hill 37-b11 may have introduced spurious correlations, and we have no way to correct the data for unknown environmental biases. No, sir. I’m not saying I remember it. I’m saying the data converges, and the data was written into my memories. Yes, sir, I understand. “Killing Wayne” is a well-formed sentence in natural language. But past that hill, well-formed sentences don’t guarantee referents. Yes, sir, I’m a linguist. For the mission, that’s correct. No, sir, no contact. Excuse me? No, as far as I know there was no friction between me and my companions, with Ian and Steve. We weren’t friends, but no one up there can afford to have friends. Wayne was a hard man. He was the same way with everyone. But I always considered his conduct appropriate, sir. It was. None of us ever filed a code violation against Wayne.
So there’s the question of motive, sir. The reconstructed memories suggested growing tension between me and Wayne. But that’s not sufficient evidence under any interpretive framework. I would propose the presence of an external synchronization agent. I’ll explain: my alleged words were nearly identical to those attributed to Steve in a different sequence. Sir, the data suggests that Ian’s and Steve’s sensor synchronization signatures align too cleanly after the hill.
No, sir. I’m not saying someone else did it. My memories, sir. It’s not me, it’s my memories. The system minimizes error by assigning the action to me, because that’s how it reduces the divergence between Steve and Ian. I could posit an unobserved event that accounts for the discrepancies without attributing fault to any human agent. If the resulting error is smaller, then I… No, sir. I’m not saying the system created the event. Words don’t create reality, sir.
Very well — let’s say I killed Wayne. Sir, the problem is that the sentence assumes “I,” “killed,” and “Wayne” maintain stable identities across the hill. Which is an unproven assumption. You see, sir, if Wayne’s memories were also reconstructed, you would most likely end up with a version in which he doesn’t die, or dies differently. The killing would become a family of narratives, pairwise compatible but not all consistent at once. Or Wayne isn’t dead. If Wayne still exists, he isn’t in a space our models can describe. No, sir, those were only conjectures. No, sir. I have no next of kin to notify.
by submission | Jun 16, 2026 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Alice reread the last lines on the financial journalist’s blog: “The debt-pocalypse, the credit crash, is coming. Unless.”
Unless. It was almost too perfect. Unless. That tantalizing conjunction of possibility. But, there was no more possibility for this journalist. He was dead. Slumped to the side of his laptop. One rigored hand still on the keyboard.
Detective Alice Rounder let her crime tech, Masynn, finish the imaging of the crime scene: the home office of a lesser-known financial journalist. He was also collecting the dozens of flechettes that had been fired through the open first-floor window. Very few murders were committed with a flechette pistol. And very few financial journalists were killed at their desks.
These simple facts made Alice worry. Because this was the second such execution-style killing of a financial journalist this week. She’d been called to a similar crime scene across town three days ago. Not only were the flechette darts similar, but the journalist who’d been slain was also writing a story on an impending global financial collapse based on runaway national debt.
Unless.
Alice felt sure if she understood that unless, a motive for these two slayings would become clearer. She studied the journalist’s desk. His last actions. One hand on the keyboard. The other clamped onto a worn notebook.
“Clear to search the desk area?” she asked Jasynn.
He gave a thumb’s up and she carefully lifted the journalist’s hand off the notebook. The leather cover was scuffed and scarred. Old. Alice opened it. Her eyes widened the faintest bit.
Unless.
Row after row of neatly handwritten lines of numbers and letters:
756e6c65737320626c6f636b636861696e20746563686e6f6c
7468652063726564697420637261736820697320636f6d696e
57616c6c2053747265657420616e64206d6567612062616e6b
616e6420746865206d6f737420746f206761696e2062792073
666f6c6c6f772074686520636861696e20666f6c6c6f772074
Page after page of the notebook filled with them. Alice knew the lines had to have some meaning, otherwise, why put them down in such crisp columns and rows. She called Jasyn over and handed him the notebook. “Looks like some kind of cipher. This type of encoding make any sense to you?”
He flipped through the pages quickly and handed it back to her. “It’s hashed.”
“Hashed?”
“That’s what data looks like when it’s run through a cryptographic hash function. Hashes are the foundation of blockchain applications. Makes transactions provable and verifiable. Like cryptocurrencies.”
Alice nodded. “So, what’s the purpose of this? Are these lines passwords or something like that?”
Jasynn smiled, “No. This is kinda crazy. Writing down hashes. These lines are what computers read. Not humans. Blockchain is all about creating a digital public ledger of transactions to prevent financial theft and corruption. I can’t tell you what this guy was thinking by handwriting them.”
“Can we feed these lines back into a computer to see what they mean?”
“Not that I’ve ever heard. It’s one-way. Unless this guy,” Jasynn motioned to the murdered journalist, “knows something most cryptos don’t.”
Unless.
A ledger filled with clues. Hidden. Hashed. It could be solved. She owed it to the journalists trying to warn people of a dire financial crisis. She had to find a way to repay that debt. Nothing was blocking her, but uncertainty.
Unless. Unless. Unless.
Alice was ready to run down that rabbit hole.
by submission | Jun 15, 2026 | Story
Author: Colin Jeffrey
As Janet walked the familiar path to the simulation chamber, the stainless steel walls reminded her of the morgue where she’d viewed his body.
The technician at the front desk barely looked up from his crossword as she approached.
“Twenty minutes. Don’t talk about anything outside of his sim.”
“I don’t,” Janet replied, stepping in.
He shrugged. “That’s what you all say.”
The chamber door hissed shut before she could respond. She lay back in the recliner as the neural link slid into the port behind her ear with a click. The world drifted away.
She was on the beach. Of course. Always the beach.
The sky was that annoying, not-quite-right shade of blue that she was told “couldn’t be changed.” Waves rolled in gently. The temperature was 24°C, as always.
Derek lounged on a folding chair at the edge of the water, beer in hand, wearing the Hawaiian shirt he’d made her promise he’d be buried in. How he wore it in here was still a mystery to her.
She sat beside him. The sand didn’t stick to her skin – someone had decided that would be annoying in the afterlife. It reduced the illusion for her.
“I brought you a present.”
Derek sighed. “Don’t do that, Janet. You know I’m dead.”
She placed the gift beside him. “You can open it later.”
“Let me guess – a simulated diary for my simulated thoughts in my simulated life?”
She smiled weakly. “They told me you’d adjust.”
“I did. Then I maladjusted.” He smirked humorlessly. “Then I ran out of things to do.”
Two seagulls glided silently by, like they were on wires. They never pooped. The developers were very proud of that.
“I hear they’re adding music soon,” she offered.
“Oh great. A soundtrack to lose my mind to.”
They sat in silence. Derek scratched his arm – his simulated body had no nerves, just habit.
“Do you really remember everything now?”
He exhaled. “All of it. Living, dying… then realizing I wasn’t real and not being able to forget.”
“But they said the transfer would suppress…”
“They’re salesmen, Janet.”
She looked out at the endless artificial ocean.
“You’re still you,” she said.
“No, I’m not. I’ve got my memories, my habits – even my opinions – but I’m not me. I’m a simulacrum.”
“Sometimes I think about deleting the file.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“I’d feel like I was killing you.”
“I’m already dead.”
“But you’re still here.”
“No, I’m not. I’m just a reflection in a mirror, a disembodied echo.”
The seagulls sailed past again.
“Janet, this is a lovely tomb. But Derek – your real Derek – isn’t in it.”
She reached for his hand. It was warm, because the simulation said it was.
“I miss you,” she said.
He squeezed her hand. “If you stop coming… maybe we’ll both finally forget.”
“You want that?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem with being an apparition. Wanting isn’t part of the program.”
The sky dimmed for a moment and a soft chime sounded, indicating her allocated visiting time was almost over.
She stood up. So did he. He smiled, hugged her. It felt – almost, but not quite – like Derek.
Then the beach faded. The chair, the gulls, Derek – all gone.
Outside, the technician handed her a tissue, his eyes still on his crossword.
“Forty-two across. ‘An act of kindness.’ Five letters.”
Janet wiped her eyes.
“Mercy,” she said.
He wrote it in.
It fitted.
