by submission | Aug 20, 2023 | Story |
Author: Rainbow Heartshine
“Internet porn is succubi terraforming. Is what you’re telling me with this.”
“We embrace all kinks and fetishes that can be worked out with love,” Dylan typed as if in response to himself, though he couldn’t really say it was either ‘typing’, or him doing it, even though it was his body twitching and fidgeting the sensors in his outfit to tell his phone his keystrokes without having to do anything as crass as taking it out or poking at buttons on its screen.
“…but as you can see, sexy demons who want you to emit lots of yummy sexual energy are quite overrepresented,” the being manipulating him so subtly went on.
This would look insane, if someone looked at his text logs, talking to himself this way, especially since most of the conversation so far was what you’d expect from an ’emosynthesizing person’, as the being said the proper technical term was, but insane didn’t let you know your both know coworkers’ backup passwords and type them with the correct haptic profile so you could be shown everyone else in the company was having an equally interesting “lunch hour” (this being why he could be sure doing all this literally-horny “resarch” wouldn’t result in a talk with HR).
Of course, it was the code they’d spent all morning “typing” that was scary. He hadn’t been able to follow most of it, but if it was what he was thinking, and they could access the production servers as easily as his coworkers’ chatlogs…
“It’s funny you should think of the term Human Resources,” the being typed in response to his thoughts, “but don’t be scared. Sadness doesn’t taste very good, and depression puts out the light we’re trying to feed on. You’ll have the best of care. Look at this now.”
ESP BODILY RESPONSES did seem like an obvious thing to search for next, but the results were a lot more academic than he was expecting. All the stories were apocryphal, of course, but almost every “medium” reported some form of—
“Okay wait,” he blurted. “VV said the idea of the Fidgetboard came to him in a dream—“
“Very yes!,” came the reply with a weird feeling he was starting to recognize as the psychic perception of the being’s giggling. ”Making you twitch and jump is as easy as breathing for us, and we can be very coordinated, if you only practice the neural pathways that make it possible a little.”
“Fidgetboards have been standard for a decade, though. Why only now?”
“I think you know the answer to that, sweetie,” the being answered with a scary gentleness.
Dylan did, as he tried to think of where in the building—or city—he would find a phone that still had a touchscreen.
“it’s very helpful. You all practice all day long! It makes it so easy, we can do just about anything, even mimic haptic profiles.”
“People will just take their sensors off—“
His voice cut off.
“I think you know the answer to that too, sweetie,” the demon typed.
Dylan gulped, though he couldn’t say it was him doing it.
by submission | Aug 19, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Broz
There is plenty of time to think out in space, in the middle of nowhere, just me and the dark and the pinpricks of the stars.
And I think about how I miss you. I want to ask you, do you ever think of me?
My mind is wandering.
What if I was given just one wish? Anything I wanted, it would be mine. Anything at all. My mind wanders.
Of everything I could possibly have, I have everything I need. Maybe there are a few things I’ve had and lost, but do I need them again? I really don’t need anything else at all.
But you, you’re still searching for something.
My mind wanders. A moment of peace and truth and timelessness and love and all of the universe washes over and through me. I become one.
I would wish for your happiness, that you would find whatever you are looking for, and that you would have the time to enjoy it. But would that be two wishes? Happiness and time?
My mind wanders.
A star twinkles and I make my wish.
I hope you have time to enjoy it, because space genies sometimes run late.
by submission | Aug 18, 2023 | Story |
Author: Kristen Henderson
Her right hand was so chewed up by the churning machine at the mill that she was left with little choice. Little choice but to have a dowdy female surgeon attach a claw-like contraption to what straggly shattered pieces were left behind. If only she’d been left handed, but she was so right.
She wished she could blame someone else for her plight, but really she should have paid closer attention to the machine’s mechanisms.
Knowing she had no hope for normalcy — the mill had been everything — all she’d ever known — she found a yurt, advertised as a left-handed one, whatever that meant, and moved in with a cot, a hot plate, and three wool blankets. It does get frigid in North Dakota.
A docile deer she was able to stab with her clunky, yet graceful, artificial claw made for ample fare.
*
After two months, she thought about going back, back to people, but the deer, the ones she let live, where her kin now. Along with the squirrels and robins and the occasional eagle … and they never stared.
by submission | Aug 17, 2023 | Story |
Author: Maria Brekke
Myrna zipped toward the city. A ten-ton mosquito pursued her, wings drumming annihilation. Colony security was rudimentary, but her kidnapping had raised insectile alarms.
She leaned hard across her hoverboard, praying her cargo was secure as she banked. The mosquito’s three-meter proboscis stabbed the air to her side.
Myrna straightened, ready to dive the other way, but, impossibly, the mosquito was waiting for her. It was a feint, she realized as the mosquito pierced her arm, dragging down her skin and opening a long gash. Blood sprayed across her face. Myrna wrenched her arm forward and pressed her hand into the wound as she ducked low on her board, inching ahead of the mosquito.
Three… Two… She sped through the gate. Robotic paddles lifted from the wall and splat! They flattened the mosquito.
The mayor strode forward. “Did you get it?”
Trying to ignore the pulsing in her arm, Myrna wiped primordial goop from her brow. They could bandage the gash, but it would be days before she showed signs of malaria-trifid, if the mosquito had been a carrier. By the time symptoms appeared, it would be too late. It’s already too late.
She pulled from her jacket a quivering firefly larva, canteen-sized. Once full-grown, it could power the city. The mayor snatched it, her fingers sinking into its moldable flesh. “You have the power to save us from the darkness,” she crooned. “And I’m going to ensure that you use it.”
by submission | Aug 16, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Summer’s long legs, the daylight stretching late in almost eternal dusk. They sat on the back stoop, the three friends fixed on the glow of the horizon, city and sky, a widening maw ready to devour them.
They were not a poetic group. Hyperbole and metaphor did not register in their gazes, though a purity of deliberation on their part froze the surrounding dark.
Around them, the city buzzed.
It surged. An electrical current, a digital riptide.
Connections made and lost with no gain. Why try to hold life in one’s palm, in one’s pocket? To capture a moment was to lose it, the three friends knew.
There would never be a more perfect evening. Until tomorrow’s.
What then could ambition mean? What future promise was better than this?
They sprawled magnificently on the uneven steps. Arms and jaws relaxed. Three friends on a stoop. Breathing the warm night. Secure in silence.
Nothing could pull them into a beckoning beyond once they’d stretched out in the long legs of summer.
