by submission | Dec 18, 2025 | Story |
Author: Bill Cox
“Well,” she says, impatience dripping from her voice, “What’s it going to be?”
I’ve the stylus in my hand, hovering over the pad. I look up at her and it’s all I can do not to stick the stylus in her eye and just keep on pushing it deeper and deeper, until it hits the back of her skull. I grip it tightly, still able to hold back the tidal wave of anger, although my control feels more precarious than ever.
There are two tick boxes on the pad. I’ve to choose one.
Choose the one on the left, a man I once knew goes home to his wife and son. He signed up to the Colonial Expeditionary Corp for them, to guarantee a monthly income and get them moved out of the slums into federal accommodation while he did his duty.
The box on the right means I sign up for another three-year tour and get to remain me. I’m not the guy who would automatically choose that left hand box. He did six months training at the Academy on Mars, before being put into stasis on a faster than light cruiser to Epsilon Eridani.
I woke up at the other end, reprogrammed during stasis by the CEC for the job at hand. The job the brochures call terraforming, preparing suitable worlds for the never-ending wave of emigrants leaving an over-populated Sol System.
In reality, its genocide, the CEC’s dirty little secret.
The problem is life. It’s everywhere, infesting almost every planet we’ve found in the habitable zone. Even intelligence isn’t that rare. Nothing as advanced as us yet and nothing else with a soul, obviously.
That’s one of the little titbits they programmed me with during stasis. The findings of the Twelfth Vatican Council were adopted by the UN in 2205. Only humans have souls, being made in God’s image. Doesn’t mean anything new on Earth, but out here…
Only humans have souls, so everything else is just effectively livestock. We can eliminate whole societies of aliens without qualm, because they’re not really alive. Not in the same way we are.
On Epsilon Seven there was intelligent life, but they had nothing more advanced than bladed weapons, useless against our rifles, tanks and helicopters. We nicknamed them the Aztecs. Obviously, we were the Conquistadors.
I killed thousands, male, female, juveniles, even enjoying it, at times. My reprogramming essentially switched off my empathy. It was an immensely satisfying three years.
Now my tour is up. I can re-enlist, retaining my current brain patterns and associated personality. Alternatively, I can return home with those recorded before my journey out here, minus my memories of the past three years, memories of the species I’ve rendered extinct.
They call the brain wipe machine the Priest, because it absolves you of your sins. Even if I did terrible things out here, I won’t remember them. I’ll still be a good person, the man my family need me to be.
The thing is, I like being me, though there are times I get so angry I just want to hurt someone, anyone. That’s okay though, as the CEC will always find someone for me to hurt. There are whole planets of them.
Go home for your son, for Jacob, I think, but this version of me doesn’t feel that same connection to him the old me did.
I tick a box. The desk-jockey bitch sighs and directs me to where I have to go.
I wonder if my family will ever forgive me. Then I realise that I don’t actually care.
by submission | Dec 17, 2025 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
Lo’e took the small box from the cluttered shelf in the back of his workroom. The metal cube was soldered together from mismatched pieces of metal. Once shiny, it was now dull and dust-covered. He weighed it in his hand; he was surprised at how lightweight it felt, how empty. Lo’e set it down on his workbench.
He grabbed a rag and began to wipe the dust away. Rubbing with a bit of pressure, he succeeded in bringing the shine back. It was like polishing silver, teasing the luster out of the tarnish. In the cool light of his desk lamp, it was a thing of beauty. He’d almost forgotten that.
He took the box upstairs to show his wife.
* * *
“You still have that old thing?” Cossi said, wrinkling her brow. I thought you tossed it out when we moved.”
“What? No.” Lo’e replied. “It goes where I go.” She had no idea what the box did; she thought it was a souvenir of some sort. It was a chronophage: a time-eater.
“Whatever,” his wife muttered. She returned to her tablet. The blue glow from it’s screen exaggerated the lines around her eyes and mouth. To Lo’e, she looked like she was wearing the mask of an old crone. He knew he didn’t look any better. When young, his wife had been a beauty. When they wed, he was the envy of all his friends. She was sweet and supportive back then, too. Now all that was tarnished with dreary familiarity and routine.
He set the box on the table beside her. She ignored him, pretending to be absorbed in reading the latest celebrity news; in truth, she was annoyed he was dredging through the detritus of their lives packed away on the shelves in his workroom. She went to bed without bothering to make dinner.
Lo’e moved to her chair, sighed and picked up the box.
If I recall correctly, he thought, there’s a switch—no, a button to push—to turn this thing on.
He ran his thin knobbly fingers over the surface of the device, feeling for an anomaly. He found it. A tiny node, no bigger than a pullov seed. Grinning, Lo’e pressed it.
* * *
Next morning, Cossi found Lo’e still seated in her chair. Smiling. The device on the table beside him hummed. On closer look, she saw the thing shimmered and shivered in the morning light; it was so beautiful she felt compelled to draw closer, to touch it. As she neared, the box opened like a hinged jaw. Curious, she moved her fingers into that odd metal mouth. It bit her.
She didn’t scream, didn’t attempt to retract her hand, because it didn’t hurt. Cossi felt as though something was being drained from her, something unclean and thick and sluggish. She looked to Lo’e. He appeared…younger. Like he had when they’d first met. She put her free hand to her face. Her own deep wrinkles were gone; her skin was taught and smooth. Like when they’d first met.
Sated, the chronophage device stilled and opened. She removed her fingers. Laughing, Lo’e rose from the chair and took her hand. They both felt so light, so airy; they were once again translucent, like glass washed clean of years of grime. As they danced and swirled to the song now emanating from the device, their gliding feet gleamed like polished silver.
by submission | Dec 16, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“I think therefore I am. Screw Descartes and his cogito ergo sum. That’s the kind of philosophical crap that’s going to bust us, Shannyn. If we want to capitalize on this breakthrough, we need to make every last person on earth damn well believe: I am because IDco tells me so.”
Terry Black pounded a meaty fist on the table and glared at his partners, Shannyn Atskova and Galen Jiao, the other founding members of IDco “We’ve got a proven, portable neural scanner that can definitively ID any person. It’ll make the world a hundred times safer from terrorists, criminals, and malcontents. When we started this project, the two of you swore this wasn’t all about making a buck. It was about making the world better. Look, we’re in a position to do both. Why the second thoughts?”
Having failed with Descartes, Shannyn tried a different approach. “Terry, how do you know who you are?”
Terry blinked rapidly. “Whaddya mean?”
“What makes you Terry Black?”
“This still sounds suspiciously philosophical,” Terry growled.
Shannyn purred back. “On the most practical level of consciousness, what makes you you?”
Terry closed his eyes and was quiet for a few moments. “All the stuff crammed in my brain: knowledge, experiences, emotions, memories, thoughts. But that’s essentially the whole idea of what we’re doing with IDco. We ‘fingerprint’ the brain, we make a hyper-detailed neural map.”
Shannyn nodded. And Galen jumped in. “That’s right, but it doesn’t get to the crux of how your knowledge, experiences, emotions, memories, and thoughts are processed into your unique consciousness. We don’t really know how consciousness works. Or the subconscious. When you’re sleeping, are you still Terry Black? You’re not fully conscious. You’re not aware of yourself in the same sense you are when you’re awake. You dream, but we don’t really understand its connection to consciousness. Consciousness is still a huge mystery, yet it’s the key to one’s identity. What makes you you.”
“I get what you’re saying. I’m just not sure how it changes anything for IDco. We’ve totally leap-frogged current biometrics. We have the means to neurally ID people fairly cheaply. We’ve got lots of clients lining up to buy our scanners. Why are you two balking now?”
Galen glanced at Shannyn. “We’ve started to realize our thinking behind IDco might be too limited. We suspect that at some point in the not-too-distant future AI will be able to map and simulate an individual’s neural activity.”
“Machine consciousness,” Shannyn said.
“Exactly,” Galen said. “The ability to upload and download one’s consciousness into machines. It’ll make what we’re doing now irrelevant. If a person has copies of their consciousness stored in various locations, then what is identity and how do we verify it?”
Terry’s thick fingers massaged his temples. “Yeah. I see a hypothetical problem far down the road that may never happen. Screw that. Why should we worry about it now?”
“What we’re doing will make it happen faster,” Shannyn warned. “This is like Oppenheimer and the bomb. It’s in our lap. It’s our call. We have a choice.”
“Someone else will do it, if we don’t!” Terry snapped back. “We’re in prime position to lead and shape events. Build the future we want.”.
“Exactly our thoughts, Terry. That’s why Galen and I believe we can position IDco beyond neural mapping and questions of consciousness. We want to get to the heart of what makes each of us supremely unique.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re talking about the heart and soul of humanity,” Galen explained. “We want IDco to define and control the essence of human individuality. From the physical to the metaphysical. We want IDco to become the final arbiter of who’s who.”
Terry lurched. “The soul? You want to isolate, monetize and market the soul?”
“For the good, Terry, for the greater good,” Shannyn reassured him.
Terry Black stared gobsmacked at Galen Jiao and Shannyn Atskova, his long-time partners, and very philosophically pondered, “Who are these people?”
by submission | Dec 14, 2025 | Story |
Author: Mark Budman
The Scrabble board and the box fell apart first, but my wife and I soldiered on. We glued the board together with a homemade glue, and the letter pieces made of real wood were still alive. Scrabble was our best way of killing time. What else could you do here? Sleep and talk? You can’t sleep and talk 24/7, can you?
When we played, my wife always won. I tried to keep her feet and hands warm when we slept, which was much more difficult. When we talked, we gossiped about our neighbors. All of them were ugly, and so were we, but we skipped talking about us. Too depressing.
We bought our housing long ago, on the pre-need plan, but moved in only recently, after the car accident. It was a nice duplex, small and a bit morbid, but cozy. No bathroom, no kitchen, no living room, no utilities, no windows, no Internet, no fire alarms. Who needed that anyway around here?
We never left our place during the day because we wanted to stay unseen. We only saw our neighbors at night, which made watching them in the moonlight a tad more tolerable. But we invited the next-door couple, April and Logan Mortuum, to play Scrabble last night. They lived in our, um, development longer than we did. Both were fashionably thin and mostly naked. I forced myself not to stare at April. There was not much to see anyway. We offered them some veggies. Mostly roots. They nibbled politely. We listened to the music from outside our development. We played three times, and my wife won all three.
“She has no flesh on her bones,” my wife said when they left, leaving the faint smell of April’s perfume behind. Something vaguely French. I think they call it “Perr Ish.” It’s in high fashion in this development.
My wife was right, as always. April had just a few scraps of skin and meat left on her bones. So did Logan. A veggie diet would do that to you.
“I’m glad you are still shapely, darling,” I said politely.
“You ass kisser,” she said, smiling. She could be a flirt sometimes. I love that about her.
At least I guessed my wife was smiling. She still had most of her lips left. We were so glad our last name was not as aristocratic as April and Logan’s. Who would want to be called Mister and Misses De Compose?
My wife and I held each other’s bony hands and slept in our antonym to the living room. We will play again tomorrow. Or the next year, or the next century, whenever we wake up next time. And we would wake up, right? Death will never do us part. If we close our eyes, we would believe that.
by submission | Dec 13, 2025 | Story |
Author: Thomas Henry Newell
“Who?” They wondered. “Bring him?! Bring who?” Adam was the first to voice the thought. The others looked at him.
The glowing orb continued to shine in throbs.
“No no no,” said Jayce. “Breed him – that’s what it’s saying.”
“It’s an invasion,” said Nige. Everyone always listened to Nige.
“What? Like – it’s gonna make us sex slaves? Breed us like cattle?!” Edward was nervous.
“It’s obviously a portal. There’ll be an army on the other side of that thing,” Nige declared.
The orb continued to glow. They had seen it and thought someone was lost in the woods. The group of them had gone over there, leaving their tents behind. If it was another camper, they’d have wanted to make sure that no one was in trouble. They were a supportive community, like that.
But when the glowing and the thrumming grew, they knew they were looking at something else. Extra terrestrial.
“We have to stop it, then” said “Adam”.
The group members looked at each other nervously. Some looked at the ground. Others started to poke around, picking things up. Hard things.
“I don’t think it said “Breed’” Jayce chimed in. “I think it was “Bring”.
“It doesn’t matter – it’s an invasion” commanded Nige.
The group knew what to do. Mick had a stick. Jeff threw the first stone.
The orb jostled when the rock hit. It made that noise again, and the broadcast went out. “Brrriii…Hhhmmm” Much more distorted now.
Mick went at it, wielding the stick like a Templar launching with righteous rage. He made a dent, and the orb went from being a mini moon to a sad crescent. But it was enough. It burped out a “Bu huh!” and dropped to the ground.
Its light faded. The group watched it, some anxious, Nige smiling, job well done. All that was left of it was a rock in the earth.
Unreleased documents later reported on a strange rock at a coastal campsite. There was a message decoded in a strange crevice, made of engineered crystal. “Bring you home” is what it was later decoded as – and unbeknownst to the researchers, the very same message faded as it went through the galaxy to the homeworlds.
The three hundred civilizations of the great silver way never invited earth again.
