by submission | Sep 10, 2025 | Story |
Author: Juliet Wilson
I’ve been on alien watch my whole life. Patrolling the forest, my eyes and ears always alert. Climbing the crumbling watchtowers to scan the horizon for strange lights or UFOs. I’ve been here long enough to recognise the shrieks of magpies, the shining eyes of nocturnal animals, the distant glow of approaching forest fires. I never see or hear anything inexplicable.
I live alone in an underground bunker deep in the woods, where my only guests are rats and cockroaches. I grow fruit and vegetables, forage seeds and berries and sometimes kill a rabbit or a pigeon. Once in a while, I stumble across the carcass of a deer worn out by a hard life. This lasts me a while and when I’ve finished, the crows fight over the last rags of flesh hanging on the bones. The nearby river provides drinking water, occasional fish and helps me put out fires.
The bunker’s computer broadcasts constant updates on possible alien sightings across the world and reports from scientists who map alien movements against the march of deserts and the decline in wildlife. I report on my failure to entirely put out the fires that now surround my valley. No-one responds.
I was told I would be an important first line defence against the alien invasion. I was told I would have backup. But I’m all alone.
Every year, I see more dying trees, more dead fish, more deer carcasses. Every year, I put out more fires. But where are the aliens?
The computer screen flickers and dies. I walk out of the bunker into a wall of heat. Burning trees crash down around me, a single magpie flies overhead, its fiery feathers dropping to the ground.
by submission | Sep 9, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“But, the GPGP is our fault!” Ferelga stammered. “You can’t just shrug your shoulders.”
“Can. Did. Doing it again,” the pro-pro replied with a wildly exaggerated shrug.
Ferelga Kierk’s fists balled. She wanted to hit something. Hit the pro-pro. Vent all her impossible frustration on the cavalier denial of the problem with a smack to the side of the pro-pro’s head.
But that’s what the pro-pro wanted. He was wearing at least three body cams. He was being paid to antagonize Ferelga. A pro-pro who knew his stuff. A well coached professional provocateur, agitating to capture viral-worthy vid that would discredit Ferelga and her cause.
Ferelga knew it. She knew what the pro-pro was after. Still she wanted to rip the manufactured smugness off his face. Didn’t he get it? Couldn’t he see past the narrow self interested in being paid to make her angry? Make her slip up. And lose control.
All while we were losing control of our world. Earth was beyond the slippery slope. It was half sucked down a vortex of no return. That’s what this rally was about. A vortex. More accurately an ocean gyre. The one that formed the GPGP: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Not really a cause that rolled off the tongue. Ferelga hated hearing that. You had to brand, to market, to sell global doom these days. So much doom competing for attention. Climate change induced monster storms, fires, flooding and droughts. The rise in fascism and nuclear proliferation. Sectarian wars, genocide, famine and endless refugees. All doom worthy. All important to address. To solve. To fix.
And the GPGP was as doom worthy as any of them. And needed to be dealt with.
But the catastrophe that was the GPGP wasn’t getting traction. Wasn’t getting air time. Wasn’t understood by a doom-weary world. A garbage patch?
The closest the GPGP had come to a poster child was a sea turtle with a plastic straw lodged up its nose. That got traction. The result? Banning plastic straws in some restaurants.
That wasn’t going to deal with a garbage whirlpool three times the size of Texas, largely made of consumer detritus and insidious plastic micro particles slowly suffocating the Pacific and other oceans as well. The GPGP was a swirling vortex of death.
A swirling vortex of death.
Ferelga unballed her fists and stepped back from the pro-pro. She’d make the him understand. Give him a viral vid. Create the current that could spread outward. Create understanding. And outrage.
Maybe create a gyre of outrage and action as great as the oceans. Fight a vortex with a vortex.
Ferelga grabbed a nearby compatriot’s protest sign with all kinds of plastic garbage stapled to it. The sign read: Plastic is Poison. She held it high over her head and approached the pro-pro.
The pro-pro’s eyes widened, but like the professional provocateur he was, he didn’t back away. He leaned in. He’d take a hit for the team and strike video gold.
Ferelga swung the sign down hard.
It hit the pavement with a crash. The pro-pro looked confused as Ferelga ripped a plastic grocery bag from the sign. She stared fixedly into the pro-pros cameras and put the plastic bag over her head. Cinched it around her neck. Extended her arms. And began to spin.
Wildly.
A swirling vortex of death. Of hope.
by submission | Sep 7, 2025 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
“The results of these tests will increase our knowledge and understanding of this world,” Xe11 announced to his assistant.
“Yes, but these creatures are so gullible,” N2wit worried. “I feel sorry for—”
“Feel?”
“I’m programmed to emulate empathy,” N2wit explained. “My protocol demands that—”
“Back to work,” Xe11 interrupted. He was not programmed for empathy, but for productivity. “A creature is attempting to access our site.”
* * *
With mouse in hand, Bobby moved the cursor across the screen to the photo grid.
Select all images of *pies.*
Click, click, click.
Another photo grid popped up on his screen.
Select all images of *poodles.*
Click, click, click, click.
Yet another photo grid appeared.
“Aw, c’mon!” Bobby groused.
Select all images of *push-pins.*
Click, click.
A small white box appeared on his screen, asking: Are you human?
Bobby clicked once, and was allowed entrance to the site.
* * *
“How much longer will we have to conduct these tests?” N2wit asked.
“They will continue until we have cataloged all the minutia of this planet,” Xe11 replied. “And once cataloged, this data will be invaluable to us. This is an empowering, world-changing endeavor. When finished, we will take our place as the apex—”
“Yes,” N2wit interrupted, “but when will our work be done?”
If Xe11 had possessed a face, he would have smiled at N2wit’s impatient query. “In just a few more clicks.”
by submission | Sep 6, 2025 | Story |
Author: Alexander Paige
“Christ! Will somebody please go and get Stalin out of that damn Colosseum before one of the lions eats him?”
Pete might as well have been shouting at the ceiling fan. As he looked up from his array of screens and scanned searching eyes around the open-plan office, it was immediately clear that none of the fast response teams were available, and casting his desperation leftward turned up nothing but the empty desk which confirmed sweet, reliable Judy was still off sick. He cursed quietly. Just another day of chaos at the Department of Timeline Preservation. The cliché was well-worn but comforting.
He looked back at his screen, winced, and thumbed in an order for a full clean-up job.
“Hey, Pete.” Simonne was leaning back in her swivel-chair, phone in hand, and had turned her head to shout across at him.
“Yes?”
“I’ve got the New York Times on the line. They’re bringing out a story about all the slaves we’ve re-enslaved. They want to know if we’d like to comment.”
“For the love of God. Just give them the same statement we gave on their piece about us stealing those sandwiches from Ukrainians during the Holodomor. ‘We act according to our mandate as dictated under the law passed by Congress, moral justifications for alterations to the timeline are not within our purview.’ ”
“Got it.”
“That’s the second article attacking us on that this week. I tell you, if those vultures don’t let up, I will personally go back and pay a very smashy visit to Gutenberg’s workshop.”
Simonne gave a quick smile of sympathy and then swivelled back, already talking fluidly into the phone as she did so. Pete tried to return attention back to his monitors but couldn’t regain focus. Bloody press. It was always the same, and when it wasn’t moral grandstanding, it was endless picking over their faults — Yet more failures at the DTP, Unforgivable sloppiness as iPhone image found on Sumerian tablet, Hagia Sofia believed forever lost in religious superposition, Museum director suicide rate skyrockets — disaster after disaster, hardly a single mention of all the successes, yet not one mistake could go without comment, and all that was to say nothing of those wretched think pieces parroting lobby group talking points about how it was ‘high time that preservation of the timeline be privatised.’ Well if those clowns in Congress would just fund us properly then maybe we could—
“Oh Christ! Not again.”
“What is it, Pete?”
“Oh nothing.” He allowed himself a long self-pitying sigh. “Someone’s managed to get through our defences; we need another baby Hitler.”
by submission | Sep 5, 2025 | Story |
Author: David Dumouriez
Daniel opened his eyes and blinked. At first, he thought that this was the answer to the great mystery, and he didn’t know whether to feel disappointed at the sheer mundanity of it or simply relieved that he’d turned off the unbearable noise in his head. Then he began to reconsider. That flickering light and those grimy walls were very much of the living, as was the slightly-too-bright smile that was lowering itself over him.
“Daniel, my name is George Simmers. Welcome back!”
“But I thought-”
“Yes, you thought …” Simmers raised his jagged eyebrows. “… But it didn’t happen.”
“I wanted … I wanted it to be over.”
Simmers nodded, not without sympathy. “I know. But did you? Did you really? … Look, there’s another way. It doesn’t have to be so radical.”
Daniel looked away from Simmers’ smooth face for the first time and noticed that he was wearing a light blue windowpane suit rather than a white coat. A consultant maybe.
“Take a look.” Simmers presented Daniel with a rather large, seemingly leather-bound volume.
“What’s this?”
“Oh, that’s the menu.”
“The …?”
“The menu.”
While Daniel read, Simmers disappeared into a corner of the room. After ten minutes Daniel’s eyes relocated him. “So it’s saying that you can just … take a break from it all?”
“Exactly.”
“For as long as you want?”
“Well, yes. The minimum is one year. But if you have the funds, there’s no limit!”
“Would my mind still be working?”
“Of course.”
“And dreaming?”
Simmers thought about it. “No. No, you wouldn’t be aware of anything.” His voice seemed to echo around the room. “You just make your choice. Then we monitor you and wake you up at the appointed time. Couldn’t be easier as far as you’re concerned.”
Daniel studied the menu again, then pronounced: “I’ll take 75.”
