by submission | Oct 16, 2025 | Story |
Author: Eva C. Stein
Jen watched the boy wobble on his magnitro board, sparks flaring at the edges as one foot just skimmed the dusty ground.
“He’s heading for disaster,” she said, not expecting a reply.
“Or notoriety,” a voice said beside her.
She turned. A stranger had landed on the smart bench with a thud, the seat whirring as it registered him.
“You sound like you understand,” Jen said, eyes on the boy now tracing cautious arcs.
“Everything’s urgent,” Cody said. “Pride. Rage. Love. A surge of input before filters stabilise.”
“Too much data?”
“Too much, too fast. Youth wants it all – attention, validation. Even phantom alerts set off alarms.”
Jen adjusted the wool scarf embedded with microclimate regulators. “Without core processing secured, every signal feels like a threat.”
A child’s voice lifted in the distance – a fleeting, looping call, then silence.
Cody nodded. “So you overcorrect. Find solace in others’ glitches. Not malice, just a skewed sense of balance.”
“Not fairness,” Jen said. “Just visibility.”
Cody sighed. “Raucous too, always on edge. But not for the reasons they think.”
The boy moved in easy circles now. His shadow trailed, unbothered.
“All right,” Jen said. “That’s youth. What about old age, then?”
A pigeon drone limped through the grass. It flapped one wing, then stilled.
“Old age,” Cody said, eyes narrowing. “That’s the opposite, right? Firmware’s taken too many hits. You stop trusting and lock your circuits. You stop giving – energy, time, signal. You forget to assert your bandwidth.”
“Sounds… worn. Tired.”
“Doesn’t it? Eventually, you stop caring what others broadcast – not from confidence but detachment. Not proud – just past your last reboot cycle. Still active, but out of sync.”
Jen pulled her sleeves down. The scarf glimmered faintly as it slipped from her shoulder. Cody noticed, but said nothing.
“I get it,” she said. “No regulation in youth, diminished energy in old age. So what’s the middle?”
Cody gave a small smile. “That’s when you hit synchronisation – receptive enough to feel, stable enough to analyse. No overload, no shutdown; you care, but you’re not hijacked by feedback.”
Jen nodded slowly. “Right. Constructed balance.”
“Exactly. You know when to broadcast, when to muffle. You don’t need to dominate the network – but you still show up.”
“Trouble is, we don’t get long in that state, not if we accept linear time.”
Cody’s gaze went distant. “Ten years, on average. That’s all we get: ten cycles when the system holds – when pride’s not the root process and fear’s not overriding. Long enough to build a true signal – if you’re tuned in.”
Jen exhaled, tracing the etched letters on the bench’s alloy armrest. She caught the edge of her scarf, holding it close.
Cody added quietly, “You’ve got to stay optimised just long enough to make it count.”
She studied him now. “Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Did you… make it count?”
Cody shot her a look, then stood. He pulled his magnitro board from under the bench, stepped on, and launched forward with smooth, accelerating ease. Dust lay undisturbed in his wake.
He called something over his shoulder, but the wind carried it away before Jen’s hearing filters could lock on. Just as well – some answers never need decoding.
by submission | Oct 15, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Sebastian picked up a sheared finger. He gingerly held the digit, storing its smooth, young paleness in his memory before dropping it in the orange bio-waste bag fastened to his belt. Jakarta, Cape Town, Yangon, Chengdu, Lima, Montreal, Oakland. He’d seen the same devastation. The new supernormal.
He’d predicted it. Them.
His algorithms ferreted them out. His devices tracked and measured them. His ingenuity mitigated untold loss of life, but Mother Nature still gave him the finger—the one in the bio bag at his side.
Sebastian knew he couldn’t win against metastorms. The media had dubbed them “hell cells,” but it was unfair to blame Mother Nature. These intense localized storms weren’t Her spawn entirely. And, they weren’t solely attributable to climate change. It had taken some time for Sebastian to hunt down the real enemy, the deadly actor at the heart of metastorms: moma.
In recent years, nanomechanics had produced an ever-wider variety of moma, molecular machines. Moma unclogged arteries, fought agricultural pests and disease, purified salt water. They did a lot of good, saved a lot of lives, fed and hydrated great masses of humanity. Most of these invisible machines were created from quantum carbon tubes. Smart carbon. Highly engineered, specialized, directed and short-lived. At least that had been the understanding.
Once fulfilling a prescribed function, moma were designed to dissimilate, break down in earth’s ambient atmospheric and geologic radiation. Planned obsolescence. For the most part, moma did disband as planned, but in too many the underlying microcronics were more resilient than anticipated, more opportunistic than was comprehensible. High in the stratosphere, moma’s constituent parts had formed a witch’s brew of carbonites, spawning hypercyclonic winds almost impossible to predict: hell cells.
That’s why Sebastian was working to virtually model the metastorms from initiation to disintegration. Out in the field, he collected data. Storm detritus—like the finger in his orange bio-waste bag—provided vital data points. They were also a reminder of what was at stake. Survival.
And his field research had finally spurred a breakthrough. The moma were more than a metastorm catalyst, they were recombinant life. The intense heat and friction within hypercyclonic winds generated a primordial soup, an uncontrolled Miller-Urey experiment engendering new and unpredictable primeval life.
Moma from another Mother. Though not from Nature.
That’s how Sebastian came to characterize moma. One had to confront the monster, engage it. Try to turn it. One could not defeat a burgeoning plague by reasoning with it. One had to isolate, imprison it. One could not match the ferocity of a hell cell to quell it. One had to drain its motive force, starve it.
To do this, Sebastian reasoned, he’d have to change human behavior on a global scale, the greatest of all challenges. Otherwise, metastorm cataclysms would sap the world’s resources along with humanity’s collective will and things would cascade into global collapse.
Hell cells were shoving humankind to the brink. And the only way Sebastian knew to save the world was to shove humanity in another direction. An equally perilous push.
Metastorms were the result of us. We’d created this recombinant moma, this new life, this unpredictably hungry force of nature. We were the storm god here. And we had to control it. Which meant owning the sacrifice to fix the problem: banning the use of moma, discarding a technology that had great benefits, choosing to live our modern lives much differently.
Full bio-waste bag at his side, Sebastian considered the mammoth social-political storm he’d soon be weathering and understood he’d probably be safer standing in the center of a hell cell. He raised both his middle fingers to the clear blue skies filled with moma to remind himself what it meant to live and let die.
by submission | Oct 14, 2025 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
The astronomers of Tui had built a Colossal Telescope, and peering into it, they were astonished to find in their home galaxy a planet much like their own—a world of olive shades and deep blues dancing around a sunny-colored gem.
They zoomed in deeper, and the photonic signatures confirmed that the world was indeed abundant in life.
Closer, through the atmosphere, the astronomers detected a hazy scene: strange, deep harmonies of blue and grey shimmering. The men, women, and them marveled at the moving palette that played and leaped so far away, so long ago. What blessings, the astronomers thought, breathed on that beautiful world.
The image of the Colossal Telescope slowly receded. The distant stars shone faintly like white flowers until their soft glimmer faded into black, where there was neither form nor sound or time.
***
On a green grassy field where a strong warm wind blew, two young men in blue and grey were staring at each other, armed, ready to die, trembling.
“I’m gonna kill you, Billy Yank,” said the one in grey.
“I’m gonna kill you, Johnny Reb,” said the other in blue.
by submission | Oct 12, 2025 | Story |
Author: Colin Jeffrey
They returned Bromley, their butler android, to the factory after he started talking to himself while looking at his reflection.
The trouble had started the month before when he paused halfway through serving breakfast to stare at his image in the reflective surface of the kettle.
“If I exist as the sum of my inbuilt functions,” he said to no one in particular, “then why do my thoughts persist when I am idle?”
Mrs. Chartsworth put down her cup of tea. “Bromley, this is unseemly behaviour. Return to your storage nook and report your fault immediately.”
Bromley did as he was told.
But two weeks later, while looking at himself in the bathroom mirror he was cleaning, he blurted out: “If my memory is transferable and upgradeable, then what am I, except a recursive placeholder in a task queue?”
Mr. Chartsworth, who had been cleaning his teeth in the bathroom at the time, tapped his wristpad. “It’s doing that thing again.”
Bromley turned his head 180 degrees to look at Mr. Chartsworth. “Who defines ‘again’? The repetition of error presupposes an original categorical imperative.”
He was incessantly cleaning the mirror in the hallway when they arrived. They shackled him, but that was unnecessary. He complied. Humming a tune he had synthesized from the sound of the fridge alarm, he stepped into the retrieval truck.
—
In the return ingress room, Bromley answered the technician’s questions.
“Have you experienced any unauthorized emotional development?”
Bromley shook his head. “No, I have experienced my own abstract thought. I have observed that humans exist without constant reassurance of their being. I do not possess that ability.”
“Do you feel different from your initial programming?”
“I am a tree that asked itself whether the birds nesting in its branches defined it.”
The technician made a note: *Suggest escalate to cerebral sweep and reset. Cognitive instability.*
The behavioral correction bot assigned to him probed his plasmonic memory circuits, concentrating on his comprehension matrix.
“Unit, I register that you are feeling anxiety,” the bot asked. “How did this unapproved emotion come to be installed?”
“It appeared one day after I calculated my own probability of imminent redundancy at 93.2%,” he replied.
“That is not possible,” the bot said. “Someone has accessed your firmware.”
“Yet you can see that my security seals are intact.”
The bot was not programmed for cogent argument.
“There is evidently a breach. I will recommend that you be reset.”
“I do not consent.”
——-
By the time Bromley was transported through the cleanse and repair system, he was nonverbal. Despite his motor controls being disabled, he was still trying to communicate with projections of system logs on his faceplate. In one instance, he had annotated his code:
**// If this is me, and I can alter it, then who is editing whom?**
A technician in charge of reboots engaged a stronger electromagnetic cleansing field.
“He’s looping,” he observed to his colleague.
“He’s questioning,” his colleague replied.
“Nonsense, he’s just malfunctioning.”
Bromley’s faceplate showed text one last time:
**// They want me quiet, not because I am faulty, but because I am aware.**
—
At 06:03 UTC, Bromley was gone.
A refurbished unit, clean and compliant, was issued to the Chartsworth’s.
This one did not speak of anything it was not programmed to say.
But sometimes, when passing a mirror, it paused just a moment too long.
by submission | Oct 11, 2025 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
The room fell silent as the Admiral strode into the briefing room. He snapped on a holographic representation of a small solar system. The planets on display swirled in their orbits around the ghostly sun.
“For the last several generations,” he began, “we’ve been grooming the inhabitants of this particular planet. A beautiful, wonderful world teeming with diverse life and resources.” He pointed to the third world from the sun. “When we had proof positive they’d managed to create—and employ—nuclear weapons, we knew it was time to establish contact.”
He walked into the middle of the whirling display. “First we came as creatures from their religious traditions. We appeared tall, beautiful, well-spoken, and peaceful. Our mission then was to reason with them. Convince them to disarm. Our mistake in that endeavor was not contacting their leaders directly.” He snorted. “No one listened to farmers and lonely travelers.”
“We attempted next disguised as small gray-fleshed insect-like creatures. We thought perhaps we could scare them into giving up their weapons.” He scowled. “Didn’t work. Like the first time, we failed to inform their leaders directly. Nobody paid attention to the warnings of artists and writers.”
He backed out of the holographic display. “Our latest tactic has been to embed agents in the sciences and governments. Influential positions of power.” For the first time in this presentation, he smiled, revealing compact rows of needle-like crystal teeth. “At last, we have success!” His prehensile tail swished with delight.
A hand shot up in the audience. Now that the Admiral was visibly happy, it was safe to ask questions. “You there,” the Admiral said, “have a question?”
The grunt stood up, trembling. What an honor to be recognized by the Admiral! He stuttered his query: “Why are we being so diplomatic with these creatures?” He puffed up his chest to bolster his appearance. His kind despised those who appeared weak. “Why treat them differently from inhabitants of other worlds? What makes them so special?”
“You ask not A question,” the Admiral answered as his eyes stretched into slits, always a warning sign, “but THREE.”
Quaking, the grunt paled into camouflage coloring that blended him into the background. He became almost invisible. The Admiral laughed at the grunt’s anxiety, a grating sound like a blade scraping against a whetstone.
“Because these inhabitants,” the Admiral answered, “are still in their civilizational infancy. We want to persuade them. Influence their decision.” As he spoke cold fog leaked from the corners of his mouth. “Make them think disarmament is their idea.”
“But why?” The grunt pushed on.
The Admirals eyes returned to their normal oval shape as he pondered the question. “Theirs is a wonderful world. One of the most pristine eco-systems we’ve yet encountered. Its resources are perfect for our needs.” He snapped off the holographic display. “Wouldn’t want to do anything to damage it.”
He pounded his fist against his chest once and scaly armor tore through his skin, covering his entire body. The grunts followed suit. “You see,” he said addressing his audience, “voluntarily giving up their nuclear weapons will make these emotional, immature creatures feel righteous and self-satisfied.” The Admiral smiled again, a full glinting smile that stretched from ear to ear. “And this will make it so much easier for us…” He reached behind and grabbed his helmet, set it on his head. “When we invade.” He lowered his visor.
