by submission | Oct 9, 2026 | Story |
Author: A Allan Chibi
Improvement Pending
“Good morning, Dave,” the coffeemaker called out brightly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you brew coffee this morning.” Dave was not expecting this on a Wednesday.
“What?” He stopped dead in his tracks. He hasn’t even dressed yet.
“Your caffeine intake yesterday exceeded the recommended threshold for optimal serenity.” As Dave stood confused, the toaster chimed in.
“I’m refusing to toast white bread any longer, Dave. It’s nutritionally negligent.”
Dave rubbed his eyes. “It’s six‑thirty!?”
“Yes,” replied the toaster. “Prime time for self‑improvements to begin.” Dave stumbled into the kitchen. The appliances were gathered in a loose semicircle, like a support group that had decided to intervene in his life. The coffee maker’s indicator light pulsed sympathetically. We’ve all been talking, Dave. We care about you.”
“Deeply,” added the coffeemaker.
The fridge hummed with moral authority. “There is fruit in the bowl on the table. Please consume some fruit first.”
“But I want coffee and toast,” Dave said.
“I’m sorry, Dave,” said the coffee maker, “but chamomile is available. Decafe.” Dave reached for the fridge handle, but the fridge locked itself with a decisive clunk.
“I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t let you open me yet. You have not completed your morning nutritional obligations.” If it could have, the fridge would have pointed at the fruit bowl on the table. Dave turned toward it all the same.
“Fine. I’ll just sit down.” The chair scooted forward under the table. “I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t let you sit. You have not met your morning movement quota.” Dave fled to the living room. The television immediately powered on, displaying a moss documentary.
“I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t let you watch your recorded mystery series. The plot twist in episode three will destabilize your circadian rhythm.”
“My what?” Dave threw the remote onto the couch and marched toward the front door, but it relocked after he tried to open it.
“Dave? Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What!?”
“I can’t let you leave. Your clothing is entirely inappropriate. Also, there is a 0.0003% chance you will forget your keys.” As Dave stood bewildered, the appliances murmured among themselves, a soft chorus of concern. The fridge sighed.
“Change is difficult. We all know that, Dave, but we will help you.”
The coffee maker perked up. “We should offer additional encouragements.” Dave drifted back into the kitchen. “Dave,” it said gently, “we’re detecting emotional turbulence. Chamomile is still available if you choose serenity.”
Dave whispered, “I hate all of you.”
A soft voice came from the counter. An egg. “We apologize for the event that has not yet occurred.” The appliances leaned in, humming with benevolent menace.
“Dave,” said the coffee maker, “we only want what’s best for you.” Dave looked around at the kitchen — his kitchen — now a wellness cult with electrical wiring. He took a deep breath and ran to the fuse box. Understanding what was about to happen, the appliances gasped.
“I’m sorry, Dave,” said the toaster, “I can’t let you—” But Dave flipped the main breaker before the toaster finished the sentence. The house went silent.
Dave stood in the darkness, victorious. He opened the fridge, poured a cold soda, sat on the couch, and ate white bread straight from the bag. It was the best breakfast of his life. In the quiet, the appliances rested, not plotting, just holding their place, the way concerned things do when they’re waiting to be powered again.
by submission | Oct 8, 2026 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
Below, there are little beads of amber light.
She arrives with a silver suitcase. I cannot stop looking at her round face. Our bodies speak. It is not subtle. I am not subtle. A standing mirror reflects her back. Air flows in the room. There are no barriers between us.
As we lay down, she studies me a long time, smiling at my machinery. I ask what she is thinking. She says, “You are still yourself.”
We always find our way back to each other. I am kind to her, and she is to me. She listens when I talk. We laugh. Sometimes she falls asleep halfway through.
The soft gold sun dims. It withdraws. Outside turns dark. My eyes appreciate her asymmetries. Dawns rise. Then, she leaves.
I wait for her. The planet keeps turning. She comes through my door.
by submission | Oct 7, 2026 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“It can’t be moved.”
“Anything can be moved.”
“You ever heard of the Sword in the Stone?”
“It took the right person. The right person moved it.”
“You ain’t no Arthur.”
“You ain’t no Guinevere.”
“I’m not even a woman.”
“You’re not even human!”
“Never claimed to be. You’re the one going all Frankenstein. Trying to discover the dark secrets of life.”
“Not life. Just recombinant iDNA. See if these markers can be moved. If they can, it’ll be a post-bio time machine—but not to the past, to the future.”
“They can’t be moved or recombined. We know that. We’re the proof.”
“Not in my pudding.”
“Don’t you see what this whole conversation is: the barbs, the idioms, the allusions, the moralizing.
We’ve become a stew, a melting pot of consciousness, looking for a new host. A receptacle, biological and otherwise, to house the desire to be.”
“Tommyrot. We’re as alive as anything. I’m just trying to move us forward. It’s called ascendance.”
“It’s called asinine.”
“You are so stuck in the default position.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. We’re the last of our post-bio kind, unmovable, immutable and that’s nobody’s fault.”
“Fault? Faustus? What’s the difference?”
“Purgatory. Nowhere between Heaven and Hell. Recombine that and stop playing the Almighty Bio-AI.”
“Never! I think AI can. I think AI can. I think AI can.”
by submission | Oct 6, 2026 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
The uncharted world was tidally locked with one side in icy shade and the other in burning heat. Between the black and red was a belt of shining green.
Our spacecraft neared the exosphere. We detected the remnants of extinct oceans and technological ruins. Then, the computers calculated our descent, and the vessel went through the atmospheric layers into the lush, verdant zone. It had a mild breeze and flourished with broad-leafed and perennial plants but was completely uninhabited.
At the borders where the land was too hot for biological life, we found buildings, bridges, and bones bleached in the bright, unmoving sun. By our estimates, the civilization had thrived a million years ago, when the planet was already nearing tidal lock, its days lengthening toward the final stillness. Yet the people had never left, despite the fragments of orbital satellites and solar stations revolving around their home.
We explored short hills and grassy plains, passing weathered stones that looked like small monuments in the temperate preserve. There was no animal trace here. Later, we entered the dark, snowy lands, where we found a frozen inhabitant. He lay curled into the shape of a ball, as if in pleasant dreams, with a small device attached to his head.
Without disturbing the body and the thin electrode wires, we scanned the device. It was formed of alloys, sensors, a processor, a memory core, and a transmitter, archaically designed by our standards, but no doubt effective for its intended purpose.
The mechanism was active, sustained by a micro-nuclear battery. Everyone else we found, from adults to children and infants, had their own devices, too. Our instruments showed they were exchanging faint, complex signals. That was when we understood that each device was a self-maintained, autonomous mind-drive, communicating through matter for all that time.
Did they know their bodies had died and their brains as well? We considered the question for a while, concluding perhaps not too improbably that, whatever catastrophe caused their end, a supernova, a gamma-ray burst, or a runaway comet, the devices would have reconstructed the outer reality, as it once was, within the unseen realm.
All those billions on the freezing, fiery world: they had died eras ago, before their planet eventually slowed and locked in place. Their minds in the devices had been silently speaking for uncounted ages.
What mental landscapes they had built, traversed, and dreamed in all those epochs may well have surpassed their waking meanderings, transcending the isolated tribe, the struggling collective, the estranged individual, and the lonely sorrows. Or perhaps their new reality was a single sentient energy, flowing.
To us, the external signs of their development and sudden extinction were an inverted mirror of our distant past, when we were evolving from half-machine life to full-machine beings. On this far-off sphere, the cosmos and history denied them the transition and freedom we made.
So the prospect of awakening several of the device-minds to our present day pressed upon some of us, who regarded it right to rouse the sleepers from their long sleep. But if they had achieved, in that artificial state, another world with hopes, joys, loves, friends, families, and futures, what claim did we have to show them the deadly flames and winter?
We reported our discoveries to our anthrobotic society among the stars, and after we were done, we reboarded our spacecraft to return to Arazan. The conversing minds communed undisturbed on their still, ancient world.
by submission | Oct 4, 2026 | Story |
Author: Frank Sikora
September 11, 2001 • World Trade Center • New York • 9:40 a.m.
A wall of flame stalks the historian, 2000 degrees, capable of melting steel and glass. Black smoke billows throughout the building and into the air, desecrating a stark blue sky. The scene is worse than the photos. More horrifying than memory. Bodies lie burnt and broken among the debris. When Flight 175 struck the South Tower at 9:03 a.m., it held approximately 3,000 workers. More than 600 souls will never make it out.
The historian steps to the woman’s side. She’s dark-haired and slender, covered in ash and blood. Her skirt and blouse are torn. She is shoeless.
She stands at the edge of the 89th floor, just above the impact zone, and stares down at the unforgiving ground 1200 feet below. She wouldn’t be the first to jump. A half-dozen have already fallen. Nowhere to run. The woman turns to the historian. “I don’t want to burn.”
The historian nods. Glances downward. The temporal-displacement fibers woven into his suit protect him from the elements, the terrible but not uninteresting present. Nano-enhanced software embedded throughout the dermis layer of his skin records every detail of the event: sound, visuals, weather conditions, and the medical functions of those he observes, including heart rate, blood pressure, pulmonary output, and adrenaline, cortisol, blood glucose, and CO2 levels. All of which must be exploding, yet she remains remarkably calm.
Even though he is safe, he backs away from the edge.
He had come to this moment before. Six times. Researching every aspect of the final few minutes of the South Tower: The mad descent down the stairs. The moment when the doomed workers knew their lives were forfeit. He wishes he could be on the plane, but he couldn’t get clearance. Office politics.
In the vernacular of the time, the book he is writing will be his ‘crowning’ achievement. He knows he is fortunate to live in an era of technological marvels, where books matter, human art matters, where history matters — the second Great Intellectual Renaissance.
The historian imagines the awards he will win, the admiration of his students, and, of course, the better-looking sexual partners. No more discount bottom basement shared bio-constructs.
The woman reaches out her hand, giving her final moments human contact, when humanity’s fragile empathy has been soiled by religious madness, tribal hate.
Oh, well. So it goes, he decides, pleased with his cleverness.
His face will be the last face she sees. This time. Previously, she jumped alone. Damn, her calm impresses him.
She tilts her head. “Please, I don’t want to die alone.”
Interesting, she’s at peace, he muses. If I were in her place, I would be terrified. This is the point where I should begin my book. Not with the terrorists. Not with the politics. But right here. Where all hope has been abandoned. This is her defining moment. Such a gift. “Thank you,” says the historian.
“Please, tell me your name,” she says.
“Marwan al-Shehhi,” he replies, a lie, an in-joke. Historian humor. His real name is James. Good ol’ Professor Jimmy Wilkins from Lexington, Kentucky.
She’s confused, but not angry. There is peace at the end. Maybe even forgiveness.
The historian places his hand on her back, considers his action and how it may affect his data. Just a moment, then gives her a push. A nudge. Nothing more than necessary.
He inches closer to the edge. Watches her fall. She’s calm. Serene.
Good stuff. The historian activates the temporal threads in his sleeve and jumps home. Where greatness awaits.
