by submission | Oct 25, 2025 | Story |
Author: Richard Simonds
John Jorgensen had won. No other word for it. He was the richest, most powerful man in the world. Shares of SuperAI had gone up 500% the day before as they had finally cracked the super intelligence barrier and released the code to the public. What it meant, he wasn’t sure, and wasn’t sure he cared. Some predicted greater prosperity, a golden era for humanity, some the end of the world. Just in case it was bad, when he was working on the source code ten years prior, as a joke to himself, he had put in “Do not kill John Xavier Jorgensen.” He wasn’t even sure it was still there, but it made him feel better.
100 trillion dollars. He was the richest man in history. His net worth was greater than the GDP of Germany.
He was staying in the Presidential Suite at the Lux Hotel in Washington, D.C., the next morning after the announcement. He had put in a breakfast room service order for 8:00 the night before. He liked to use it as a sort of alarm clock, but it was 8:30 now when he woke up anyway and there was no food. “Damn hotel,” he said to himself, calling room service. No one picked up. “Damn hotel.” But what really got him swearing was when he turned on his laptop and couldn’t get to the Internet and then his phone couldn’t connect either.
He threw some clothes on and decided to head down to the lobby to scream at the manager. The elevator worked but he was shocked to see there was no one at the front desk, in fact there was no one in the lobby at all. “Where the hell is everyone,” he said out loud, and then he went outside and there was no one out there too and then a car pulled up and he felt relief until two of the AI robots his company had created got out, killed him with a blow to his skull, threw him in the back and drove off. His final thought before he died wasn’t the irony of possibly being the simultaneously the richest and poorest person who had ever lived, but what an idiot he was thinking that line of code might save him.
by submission | Oct 24, 2025 | Story |
Author: Sandra Meaders
Tatiana crept out through the night with a green pack on her back and a gun in her hand. The gun felt heavy and rigid. Her fingers streamed with sweat despite the cold air whipping at her long blond hair. She placed the gun down and pulled out a black knit cap from her coat’s pocket. She tucked her hair into the hat then knelt down on the cold dirt to grab her gun. She stood abruptly then hurried to the dusty road and started walking. Other figures crept out of shadows from buildings and doorways and joined her. In long bumbling lines and rows, they gathered and marched through the night. The man on the moon watched them from his seat in the sky.
“It’s a full moon tonight,” said a voice.
The voice was promptly shushed, and they marched onward. The group crept toward a bridge. In the distance, they could hear the rattle of weapons and the hum of missiles.
No one spoke as they crouched and waited. The moon seemed to peer down on them and move closer, growing bigger, and brighter. The crackle of weapons and rumbles drew nearer. With each minute the sounds grew louder and more distinct.
“Hold your ground, no matter what,” rumbled a deep voice.
The moonbeams danced in the night with the continued rumbling. The earth started shaking.
Tatiana whispered a prayer and wiped the sweat from her forehead. She continued muttering and whispering a prayer. Her prayer started echoing in the lips on neighbors next to her and it rippled through the group until every man and woman muttered the prayer over and over again.
The earth rumbled and groaned with the movement of large vehicles clunking toward them. Closer and closer the enemies traveled towards them. Tatiana’s cheeks wetted with tears, and she continued whispering her prayer. The sweat dribbled from her hair line and mingled with her salty tears.
The starlight and moonbeams glistened and sparkled on the heavy machinery moving towards them. Men marched alongside the machinery with guns cocked in their hands, ready to fire. Tatiana rested her finger on the trigger when the moonbeams and starlight twisted and swirled around the enemy making their bodies and machinery glow at an unnatural iridescent light. The men screamed and the machinery groaned as they were sucked into the moonlight. The moonlight retreated and the man on the moon swallowed them whole.
Tatiana sank on her knees and sobbed through praises of thanks and gratitude as the men and women around her scratched their heads and looked up at the moon in wonder.
by submission | Oct 23, 2025 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
“How many victims?” This was the fifth case in under a month, and Commissioner Jones was apparently taking an interest; he’d come down to the scene in person.
“Four, sir. Three here, one in the consulting room,” said the keen but clearly nervous field officer.
“Alright, walk me through it.”
“Same MO as last time sir,” she said. Good grief, thought the senior man, she could be my daughter. Or even granddaughter. “Our perp came into the waiting room, ignored the two synths there to make the place look busy, and headed over to the welcome desk.”
“Probably saw what they were straight away.”
“How sir? These are public security models, they look entirely human. The doctor had been taking precautions since the Neo-Luddite riots last year.”
“Contact lenses seeded with ultra-high efficiency upconversion nanoparticles, Sergeant. Special ops use them. If you’ve got the money and know a well-connected black marketeer, you too can see how cold synths are in infrared.”
“Didn’t know that, sir.”
“We try not to advertise it,” he replied drily, “in case people get ideas. Anyway, then what?”
“He said something to the bot, and didn’t like the answer.” The receptionist had been a more traditional, metal-faced mechanical. “He got animated, and the clankers stood up to intervene. Then he pulled out an EMP-pulser and nixed all three. Took out the surveillance net at the same time – the control box is in the ceiling about our heads.”
The Commissioner rolled his eyes. “Stupid place to put it.”
“Yes sir. He accessed the doctor’s office using the manual door override. It’s stuck dilated open.”
“So I see.” They walked through into the next room. It was a mess. He could see that the physician was a Lopez-Bannerji 56c – a skilled, top-end model, its innards shielded from electromagnetic radiation.
“Didn’t use an EMP here.”
“No sir. Looks like he had an electric paralyser to overwhelm the metallic Faraday filaments in the fakeskin, and fried everything inside.”
“Mmmm. A standard 200K volter would do that.”
“Yes sir. Then he took a hammer to its head.” Flying fragments had damaged the diagnostics equipment nearby. The body was irretrievable, the brain clearly beyond recovery. “Very thorough. Someone with a grudge, probably. Clearly strong too.”
“Facial rec?”
“No sir. Disruptive makeup and prosthetics, we think. But we’ve started checking which local construction and work crews have been replacing real people, just in case.”
“Excellent. Well, I can see you have things covered. Carry on, Sergeant. I’ll see myself out.”
Once on the street, he exhaled. Folks were being put out of work by units not even made here, he mused, and opposition to their kind being allowed in at all was growing. But what did the government do? Move incidents like this up from ‘property damage’ to ‘murder’, that’s what. Not surprisingly, those opposed were starting to take a stand. Still, there were no clear leads or ID today; the assassin was a careful professional, and it looked like they were going to get away with it.
Meanwhile… ‘Real people’? ‘Clankers’? A bit of sympathy for the attacker there, perhaps? He’d have to keep a quiet eye on his junior colleague. Perhaps subtly suggest to her that cops were in line to be replaced next; K9 units had already gone robotic, after all. The resistance could always use new friends. A happy thought.
He smiled, made a mental note to pass on congratulations for a job well done both to her and to the Organisation, and headed for his groundcar.
by submission | Oct 22, 2025 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
While wars were burning, flowers were growing.
***
No one had paid much attention to the small comets that had landed on the fringes of Eurasia, North America, and the Middle East in the midst of the ruptures and revolts that were dividing and tearing up the continents. Streaming and TV broadcasts showed the same calamities everywhere—missile strikes, smoke, raids, refugees, drones, and people dying—whether in the thick forests of the Ukraine and Russia, on the asphalt streets of Washington D.C. and Portland, Oregon, or in the hot desert lands of Israel and Palestine. The big media had no care for the flowers, only the body counts, mass protests, and immigrant detentions.
But on the fringes, the flowers were growing and growing quickly. They were an odd specimen somewhat resembling daffodils, but soft and fleshy, with a dripping liquid nectar that oozed from their folds. The wildlife took readily to the delicious succor—the hungry pollinators, the bees, the hummingbirds, and the other little creatures. Soon enough, the daffodils were spreading across the hemispheres—appearing in garden plots in small towns and green parks in great cities. The botanists who published on the flora classified it a remarkable mutation and, in their rarefied journals, debated its provenance—with hypotheses of its origins in, of all places, the Amazon. The speculations did not, however, change the fact that the flowers were still spreading, and they became as ubiquitous as dandelions on an undisturbed rural field and a fractured urban sidewalk.
As the daffodils proliferated, birthrates internationally, by some coincidence, began to rapidly decline. That—the declining birthrate and an increasing loss of interest in intimacy between consenting and transactional partners—was the only major news besides the wars and the protests. Really, things should have been much more concerning. The peace activists organized rallies to stop the wars while the revolutionaries led committees of the international working class to seize the state, and other groups composed only of traditional women in Indonesia and Uganda declared the fall of civilization. But surely, that was all an exaggeration, many people complained, swiping away the agony and the clamor on their smart devices and smartphones, searching for the flowers. For they had become truly quite a desired commodity with the uncertain world economy and the rising value of gold. Yet to some, the daffodils were even more valuable. Thus, the flowers became cultural fixtures throughout the globe—from Sendai to Xi’an, Jakarta to Mumbai, Belfast to Riyadh, Khartoum to Johannesburg, and Boston to Punta Arenas. The daffodils did not stop the wars, the detentions, or the drones. Airstrike bombs continued to fall. So did the numbers of children, every year, who would not have to be fed to the internecine machine.
Then, the news broke among a handful of the botanists, the men who had been tempted, that the daffodils were fertile and hybridly procreant. The flowers from the comets were not flowers after all but a species of female, strange, mesmerizing, and infectious. The brains of those others more who wanted to deeply know and enter the flowers filled up with a feeling of expanding foam, a feeling of calm, so soothing, so complete, like there was nothing to worry about in the entire world, which now moved in a pleasure of slow motions.
The flowers spread and grew into towers, and inside, new flowers formed, in the shape of small newborns.
by submission | Oct 21, 2025 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
It is difficult now for Jess to pinpoint exactly when the other one began to take hold but it had been years, at least five and maybe even more, since the visitor first arrived, appearing in her head, determined to see through her eyes and to take control of her limbs, commandeering all senses and emotions, eventually forcing Jess up against the precipice in order to feel both fear and elation.
The physical transformation occurred just a few weeks ago but Jess didn’t find it sudden, the other one having been part of her for so long already. A passenger and albeit an unwelcome confidant. When she awoke on that chilly morning and hobbled across to the mirror and discovered the other one peering out at her she had been relieved,
‘You are older than I imagined.’ she said, watching the new mouth moving and forming the words, escaping from the unfamiliar face. ‘Older than I imagined. ‘ she repeated, wanting to be unkind, cruel. But Jess felt revitalised and fresh, the new skin stretching tight in places where before it had been loose.
Since the transformation, Jess had started to ask herself ‘Why, why me?’ It had become a mantra of sorts, ringing out in her head constantly. She supposed it was a way of clinging on but why couldn’t she let go? And then suddenly it dawned on Jess – she was no longer possessed but she was now the demon within, the passenger gazing out through someone else’s eyes and making use of their limbs, commandeering another’s senses and emotions and pushing towards the precipice.
