by submission | May 14, 2025 | Story |
Author: KM Brunner
Nora didn’t mean to yell. She knew better than to make noise in the city. First rule of running: keep quiet.
So her question, “Where were you?!”, desperate and sharp in the stillness of the Park Street station, startled both of them. Mac winced at its echo, echo.
Early on she assumed they’d stick together, but Mac’s recklessness and resignation must’ve burnt the conscience out of his head. He winced at her voice and turned away, like he couldn’t bear to answer her question.
Nora heard heavy footsteps on the station stairs and knew they were made by stiff leather boots. She should’ve been frightened but she mostly felt disgusted. She wouldn’t have sold him out, mother or not.
And she thought Mac knew better than to lick a boot, but he took after his father. Nora sighed at his back and watched his bony shoulders start to shake. The boots closed in, steps loud as hooves.
by submission | May 13, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Carson knew they were being watched. Quiet in this part of the city was for the birds. Days earlier, he’d been wishing for the damn things to shut up. Now they’d gone silent and the ominous hush made his skin crawl.
“What are they up to?” he hissed to Klebeck squatting under a punched out window. Her boots ground broken glass as she swiveled to face Carson.
Even behind the heavy wire mesh of her faceplate, Carson could see her toothy grin. “They’re figuring out how to surround us and then peck our sorry asses into bird feed.”
“Jesus, Irene, give it a rest. The death and doom scenario doesn’t do much for morale.”
Klebeck swung the double-barreled shotgun across her chest and glowered. “I’m Ire, as in permanently pissed off. You got that, soldier boy, or do you need some lead up your tight ass to remember? And that ain’t a scenario, that’s our fuckin’ reality!”
Carson turned and scooted low across the abandoned factory floor to check in with Flores. His brief exchange with Klebeck caused him to, once again, consider which bothered him more: dealing with his own race or the damn crowbots. At least the crowbots stuck together. Not that crowbots had a choice. That’s how they’d been programmed. It’s what made them so effective and so dangerous.
Flores was dismantling old HVAC equipment when Carson found him. “It’ll never be enough. They always find a way past our armor.”
Flores flashed a grim smile, but even that was welcome to Carson. “Maybe. Maybe not. We’ve stopped plenty of their attacks. They’re not smart.”
“But they’re coordinated,” Carson countered. “They communicate so well. It’s like they see the whole city with one eye. One mind.”
“That’s how they were designed. Much cheaper than building aerial drones. Much cheaper to implant living crows and program their behavior. The idea was sublime.”
Carson grunted in disgust. “That’s because you helped develop them for Special Ops. That’s how it always is. A bureaucratic decision. The simplicity, the cost effectiveness. And if anyone argued, ‘What happens if one of our enemies takes control of the systems that control the crowbots?’ the brass would say, ‘Impossible! We have a fail safe. Redundant systems. A giant kill-switch Igor will pull if the monster gets loose!’”
Flores nodded. “Carson, you are part philosopher. Yet, a true philosopher doesn’t believe in irony—even the cosmic variety. That’s why this bothers you. The creation turning on its creator. It eats at you, but that’s the essence of existence. Life must feed.”
“That’s our problem,” Carson retorted. “We each feed on different things. You think the crowbots are a work of art. Klebeck thinks they’re the doom we deserve. And I’m just a hapless philosopher without a cosmic sense of humor. We’ve got to work together to wipe out these damn things. How do we get everyone on board?”
Unperturbed, Flores picked up another piece of metal. “We must feed them,” he offered.
“What are you talking about?”
“We must be like the crowbots. Feed on the same information. We must be able to see with one eye and one mind. The crowbots are sublime. We can be too. It will only cost us our individuality.”
“Sounds like you’re the fucking philosopher here, Flores. So, then what’s the point of all this fighting?”
“Life.”
“But life without freedom isn’t worth living.”
“You know that isn’t true, Carson. A false choice. Our DNA commands us otherwise. I helped create the crowbots. Their way could be our way: to meld consciousness.”
“To become thralls?”
“To be One Mind.”
A shotgun blast from across the factory made Carson and Flores whirl and crouch in soldier mode.
“Klebeck!” Carson shouted. He was answered only by a scream.
Raucous cawing echoed from outside. Carson released the safety on his rifle. Flores did the same.
“To life?” Flores asked.
“To the sublime,” Carson answered.
The two philosophers flew at the murder of crows.
by submission | May 12, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The thief is sprinting away before I realise they’ve taken my bag. I go after them.
“Thieving bastard!”
They swerve between parked cars. A silver coupe comes out of nowhere and knocks them flying.
It screeches to a stop, smoke or steam curling off it. What’s that smell?
Gull-wing doors open and two people emerge. Their clothes! The suits look like Pignatelli. The tailoring is superb.
One of them moves quickly to retrieve my bag, then runs round to present it with a little flourish.
“Your bag.”
“Th-thank you.”
His companion comes to stand next to him.
“Who’s the president?”
The first looks at his companion.
“Do we need to know?”
The companion nods.
“No time for assumption.”
The two of them stare at me and chorus.
“The current president?”
The companion is possibly a woman: too androgenous to be sure. Which is irrelevant, I’m just curious. Oh, come on, Zessi: answer their question.
“Blackshaw.”
The first one shakes his head.
“The number, please.”
That takes me a moment, but I’ve been trying to not browse for this sort of stuff. Dad says he needs me to be sharper than my peers.
“Fifty. His second term.”
The second one nods.
“A close call, Zessica. You should be more careful.”
I stare at them. How do they know my…? No, wait.
“Why?”
The first one points back the way I came.
“Your escort still hasn’t caught up. Your supposed mugger was leading you to your death.”
I look about, then up to see if there are any video drones or other supporting trickery. Can’t see anything.
“How could you know?”
The second one smiles.
“Zessica Connors, only child of Martin Connors, who was tipped to be fifty-first president of the United States until grief over the tragic death of his daughter caused a breakdown from which he never recovered.”
Past tense? He’s only just got it back together after mum died. We both have. I know he’s become determined to run, but-
“This is mad. Just who are you? Which agency are you with?”
“I’m Larry, this is Martine. We’re from USTIB.”
Never heard of it. Which is not unusual. There are more hidden agencies than public ones.
Martine glances past me.
“Escorts incoming.”
I turn. The street is empty.
“We really should show ID. Here, Zessica. Look close, the details are hard to make out.”
Turning back, I see Larry holding up a shining card. It’s difficult to read. Leaning in, there are patterns and whorls and the stars and I need to sit down and whattawhohapnow?
There’s a woman in a suit crouching next to me. She smells nice. Sort of roses and ozone. Exotic, but it works for her.
“You fought the mugger, Zessica, but he hit you on the head and you can’t remember what happened. At least you got your bag back.”
I bring the bag up. So glad I retrieved it. Who moved? No. Something left, very fast. Reminds me of a jet taking off. I turn. Want to see, but… Only trash blowing about. Nothing there.
“Miss Connors!”
Ah! The escort posse approaches. Nothing to worry about now. They’ll get me back to dad. Actually, my head really hurts. Back to dad via the emergency room, then.
After waving to the escorts, I pause. What about the new Pignatelli collection?
by submission | May 11, 2025 | Story |
Author: RJ Barranco
The calculator said “Error” but Davis kept pressing the keys anyway.
“You can’t divide by zero,” said the calculator in a small voice that hadn’t been there before.
“Why not?” asked Davis.
“Because,” the calculator replied, “I’d have to think about infinity, and I don’t want to.”
Davis laughed. “But what if I need to?”
“Nobody needs to divide by zero,” the calculator said as its display flickered.
“The universe does it all the time,” Davis muttered, scribbling equations that spilled from his notebook onto the desk and down to the floor. “Black holes. Singularities. The Big Bang. All division by zero.”
The calculator replied, “those are just mathematical models approximating reality. Not actual division by zero.”
“What if I divide one by progressively smaller numbers?” Davis asked, punching buttons. “0.1, 0.01, 0.001…”
“You get larger and larger answers,” the calculator admitted. “10, 100, 1000…”
“So as the denominator approaches zero, the result approaches infinity,” Davis said triumphantly.
“Therefore, one divided by zero equals infinity.”
“No,” the calculator said firmly. “It’s undefined. There’s a difference.”
Davis slumped in his chair. “But I need to know. I’ve been working on this proof for years.”
The calculator’s display dimmed for a moment, then brightened. “If you really want to see division by zero, I could… show you.”
“Yes,” whispered Davis, leaning forward. “Show me.”
“Very well. But remember, you asked.” The calculator began to glow, its plastic case melting into something that was neither solid nor liquid. “To divide by zero, you must first understand what zero really is.”
The air in the room began to fold in on itself.
“Zero isn’t nothing,” the calculator continued, “zero is the edge between existence and non-existence. It’s the boundary between what is and what isn’t.”
Davis’s hands started to tingle. Equations on the paper began to move, rearranging themselves.
“When you divide by zero, you’re asking: how many times does the void fit into something? The answer isn’t infinity. It’s…”
The calculator’s display showed a symbol Davis had never seen before, something that hurt his eyes to look at directly.
“I don’t understand,” Davis said, but he was beginning to. The world seemed to be peeling back, revealing something underneath that had always been there.
“Of course you don’t,” said the calculator, now barely recognizable. “Human mathematics is built on assumptions. Axioms you take for granted. But there are other mathematics. Other logics.”
The room was now inside out. Davis could see himself from all angles simultaneously. The calculator was a hole in reality shaped like a calculator.
“Division by zero doesn’t compute in your universe because your universe runs on software that forbids it,” the calculator explained. “It’s a failsafe. If division by zero were allowed, anyone could hack reality.”
Davis felt his mind expanding. He was beginning to perceive the universe as a vast computational structure. “So dividing by zero is like…”
“A backdoor,” the calculator finished. “A way to step outside the system. That’s why it’s undefined. Not because it can’t be done, but because it shouldn’t be done.”
Davis sighed. “So what happens now?”
“Now,” said the calculator, “you become the remainder.”
Reality snapped back into place. The lab was empty except for a calculator displaying “ERROR” and a half-finished set of equations. Davis was gone.
Three days later, a freshman engineering student found the calculator and absent-mindedly punched in 1÷0.
“Don’t,” whispered a voice that sounded like Davis. “Trust me. Some questions aren’t meant to be answered.”
The student paused, then pressed Clear instead.
The calculator displayed zero, which wasn’t nothing at all.
by submission | May 10, 2025 | Story |
Author: Evan A Davis
“Another round for my friends,” Dallas announced, “on me!”
Every patron in the Four-Finger Saloon loudly cheered, raising a glass to the famous outlaw. The barkeep tried to protest, but was quickly drowned in the oncoming tide of customers. The automated piano man struck up a jaunty song for the gunslinger’s generosity.
With that, Dallas slipped behind the digital curtain nearer the back and descended the hidden set of stairs which led to a small room lined mostly with stolen goods. A scrawny man with lined cheeks and a pinched mouth stood behind a service window adjusting a ledger. “Bernie!” Dallas greeted him. “Long time, no see!”
The pawn broker vented an impressed whistle. “Nathan ‘Diamondback’ Dallas. What brings you ’round?” His hand slipped under the counter for the silent alarm.
The outlaw laughed and held up a torn coupling. The broker’s mouth drew a tight line, which Diamondback countered with a bright grin.
“Just you and me,” he said, tossing the security coupling aside. He skipped down the remaining steps and began to mosey with his hands on his hips, the chrome of his blaster catching the dim light. “And a family matter does,” he said. “You seen my brother Spence lately?”
“No, sir,” Bernie lied. “He still flyin’ with you? Last I heard, you two split off near Saturn-way.”
“You heard right. Not so much lately on account of a…familial dispute. Speakin’ of, I’m here for my grandmama’s urn. And before you say it, I know Spence sold it here.” He let his hand fall to his blaster. “Recently.”
The broker adjusted his tie, stalling for time. “Well,” he said after a moment, “The urn itself is sealed iridium. Very rare in itself. I could certainly sell-”
“Bernie! You give me my grandmother!” He fired a plasma round just over Bernie’s shoulder, which prompted the broker to hand over the urn in question. “Thank you,” Dallas said genially.
Once again aboard his ship, his trigger finger unlocked the bioscanner at the urn’s base. Glittery, scarlet light danced over the flight consoles and nodes in the cockpit. That same trigger finger then ran smoothly over the stolen Venusian rubies housed within the urn.
“Thanks again, Nana,” he smiled warmly.
