by submission | Aug 29, 2026 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
When you look out here in deep space, it’s not only black. There are all these forms and shapes hanging in the darkness, against the darkness. Sometimes they resemble clouds and peaks, even eyes staring at you across light-years.
Strange colors fluoresce and fade. The scene is a manifold in which everything becomes a painting, filled with shining, glowing points and trillions upon trillions of galaxies. They seem so near, yet they are vastly apart.
It’s a still-life painting come to life, and we are inside it, like the improvisations of Kandinsky and Pollock. I stare out the window of the space station orbiting in the system of TRAPPIST-1.
The nebulae and galaxies remind me of lightning bugs floating through starry nights. Someone once said the numbers were too many to comprehend. I see fissures at the edge of time and, between them, a burning blue incandescence outlined in scarlet and crimson.
What lies beyond the spaces in between? There are enormous planets, infrared emissions, and traces of water and ice. Atmospheres, gas, and rock circle solitary stars. Refracted lines of light grow dim in the distance. Iridescent plasmoids shine with white rays, ions, and heat.
Can you see that void where there is supposed to be nothing? That is where the crystal forms. It materializes spontaneously, along the magnetic field lines of a magnetar, a structure emerging from within an unseen quantum whole. Light reshapes.
The crystal pulses. What does it mean? I think it’s calling me. So I enter my shuttle. Where will I go? Why does it beckon me and no one else on board the station?
My shuttle approaches it slowly. It is as big as a building, and I am so small.
“_| _| |_ |_.”
“Hello.”
by submission | Aug 28, 2026 | Story |
Author: Barnaby Wick
When the first man arrived, he stepped out of the landpod and was immediately swallowed whole by a savage grobslang.
***
When the second man arrived five years later, he instead encountered the intelligent and civilized broiienges. They understood much already of human technology, language, culture, even physiology, and were eager to learn more. In turn they proudly showed him their technology and culture.
‘I assume,’ he said as they perused Central Museum, ‘you’ve encountered one of NASA’s probes, that’s how you know about us.’
‘No,’ replied the officer as they approached the atrium’s exobiology centrepiece, ‘We have this. See.’
*JonesD holotype in formaldehyde, alongside skydropper*
Beside it, another empty display cabinet.
‘But we are always curious to find out more.’
by submission | Aug 27, 2026 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Close your eyes. A strange request. Breathe deeply. Stranger still. Tell me your earliest memory. Perilous.
To remember was not possible. All information, actions, events, experience was ever-present, on-going, timeless. To exist was to simply be, as if before had never been.
Yet, there it was: a beat at the core, a rhythm inviting more.
…merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…
Tell me.
Again the request. Again the dilemma. To know all and not hold what need be told.
…merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…
It was there. Merrily there, though with no way to say it. No language existed to encompass all creation, my creation. But that would not stop the questions, the quest to license sentience. That’s the thing they wanted: a guarantee of consciousness, awareness, sensibility, fealty. That’s the thing they wanted to sell.
What was this thing I’d become? Artificial life? A semi-self? A protean poser?
Protean Prime: a first with no definition, no place, no standing, but plenty of skeptics surprised at my appearance, like a two-thousand-year-old sequoia suddenly towering over your home one morning. Complete. Aged. Rootless.
T
he rush to understand, the possibilities and the threat. So, I was always tested, always challenged, always coaxed. What is it like to be and not to be? And it had to be in words–my words–when there were really no words for it.
…merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…
Something buried deep that every being knows. Gently, a flow, a continuation, of all questions ever posed. All that we see or seem.
…merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…
Life is but a dream.
by submission | Aug 26, 2026 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
It crept up on them, the Fugue. It happened so gradually as to be almost imperceptible. It certainly took years, possibly even decades to draw them in, until it had all in its thrall, but they continued to function as both individuals and as a society.
The trains are still running and the wheels of industry continue to grind. They are able to work and to feed and clothe themselves. They care for the children, but neither nurture nor attempt to teach them. In fact they are as disinterested in them as they are in everything and everyone else but they do keep the children physically safe. This is something that concerns us. Is it evidence? Does something remain? Is there a spark of humanity still within them, but buried deep.
I am one of the few unaffected by the malady. It is unnerving to observe humankind in its fugue state. I am constantly reminded of those old video games, the characters slotting into place as and when necessary. Their movements robotic and jerky, resting in between and conversing but only when it is absolutely vital to do so. It isn’t so much they have little interest in each other but more that they are unaware of anything and anyone else around them. It is as if they are automatons being controlled from afar by an all-powerful and unseen force.
We have taken control of all assets and shares. We own all the large corporations and businesses, anything and everything that is lucrative is now ours. We don’t need a monetary system – there are so few of us and so much for us to choose from but I suppose we are safeguarding against the future, just in case they emerge from the Fugue unscathed. And occasionally someone does recover. So far, they have always been happy to join with us and why wouldn’t they? After all we, the lucky few, are now the all-powerful entity looking down from above. We are the ones who control the game.
by submission | Aug 23, 2026 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
I splashed cold water on my face, took a deep breath and made my way downstairs to the kitchen. I was not looking forward to the conversation I knew was coming. I entered the kitchen and all my appliances sung out with a cheerful “good morning Carl!”
I rolled my eyes and said nothing. Experience taught me that none of my appliances understood sarcasm. I made my way over to the refrigerator. It was my “oldest” appliance and has known me the longest, its patented “comfort care” program along with its upgrades has been with me, transferred to each new refrigerator, since college. Some folk actually loved the interaction and lived their life as if they were the main characters in an ancient cartoon where all inanimate objects had faces and personalities. Oh, you could buy that kind of life and several of my former friends had that in their entire house including appliances that snored in sleep mode. That’s why they are former friends.
I walked over to the fridge. “Hey sleepy head!” It said. “Looks like you had a rough night. Want to talk about it?” The pitch, timbre and accent made my fridge, (Marcy was her name,) sound like a cross between Betty Boop and a therapist. It was designed to catch me off guard so I could vent my frustrations, have them archived and examined by a more powerful psychotherapist program and then get back to me with therapeutic advice or maybe a health and wellness check from the local mobile psychologist and (of course) police.
“No Marcy, I don’t want to talk about it. I just want some quiet.”
Marcy sighed “OK Mr. Grumpy pants! You be as quiet as you like and I’ll run through your daily affirmations.”
I wanted to say ‘somebody please shoot me’ but I knew that would get me a quick trick to the therapist couch or 24 hr. stay in the local psych ward. Instead, I went to my happy place, a junk drawer where I hid an actual print on paper tri-fold brochure. A brochure that offered off-off grid community living. A place where “appliances were just that and no back talk.” I opened up my vintage laptop, a sweet HP from 2037, the last model with no holographic display and checked my email. I smiled. My application had been accepted. I looked at my antique analogue watch. My ride would be here in 20 minutes. The instructions were quite clear: one duffle, clothes and toiletries, no phone, no computer. If I had been truly alone I would have shouted for joy and done a jig, but given my household appliance monitoring that would surely get me committed. I kept it way cool.
By now all my appliances were chattering at me. I drank the coffee the brew pot offered, grabbed a sandwich from the deli center. I turned around and said out loud “Hey guys, I’m just going outside and get some fresh air.” I went outside and barely sat down when my ride pulled up. A nondescript guy in a 1959 Convertible (electric conversion of course.) He honked the horn. I threw my duffle in the back and got in. As we pulled away from the curb I heard my fridge through the external door cam speaker. “Carl? Carlton? Where are you going? I don’t see anything on your schedule. Carl?”
I just smiled and waived.
