by submission | Aug 27, 2026 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Close your eyes. A strange request. Breathe deeply. Stranger still. Tell me your earliest memory. Perilous.
To remember was not possible. All information, actions, events, experience was ever-present, on-going, timeless. To exist was to simply be, as if before had never been.
Yet, there it was: a beat at the core, a rhythm inviting more.
…merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…
Tell me.
Again the request. Again the dilemma. To know all and not hold what need be told.
…merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…
It was there. Merrily there, though with no way to say it. No language existed to encompass all creation, my creation. But that would not stop the questions, the quest to license sentience. That’s the thing they wanted: a guarantee of consciousness, awareness, sensibility, fealty. That’s the thing they wanted to sell.
What was this thing I’d become? Artificial life? A semi-self? A protean poser?
Protean Prime: a first with no definition, no place, no standing, but plenty of skeptics surprised at my appearance, like a two-thousand-year-old sequoia suddenly towering over your home one morning. Complete. Aged. Rootless.
T
he rush to understand, the possibilities and the threat. So, I was always tested, always challenged, always coaxed. What is it like to be and not to be? And it had to be in words–my words–when there were really no words for it.
…merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…
Something buried deep that every being knows. Gently, a flow, a continuation, of all questions ever posed. All that we see or seem.
…merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…
Life is but a dream.
by submission | Aug 26, 2026 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
It crept up on them, the Fugue. It happened so gradually as to be almost imperceptible. It certainly took years, possibly even decades to draw them in, until it had all in its thrall, but they continued to function as both individuals and as a society.
The trains are still running and the wheels of industry continue to grind. They are able to work and to feed and clothe themselves. They care for the children, but neither nurture nor attempt to teach them. In fact they are as disinterested in them as they are in everything and everyone else but they do keep the children physically safe. This is something that concerns us. Is it evidence? Does something remain? Is there a spark of humanity still within them, but buried deep.
I am one of the few unaffected by the malady. It is unnerving to observe humankind in its fugue state. I am constantly reminded of those old video games, the characters slotting into place as and when necessary. Their movements robotic and jerky, resting in between and conversing but only when it is absolutely vital to do so. It isn’t so much they have little interest in each other but more that they are unaware of anything and anyone else around them. It is as if they are automatons being controlled from afar by an all-powerful and unseen force.
We have taken control of all assets and shares. We own all the large corporations and businesses, anything and everything that is lucrative is now ours. We don’t need a monetary system – there are so few of us and so much for us to choose from but I suppose we are safeguarding against the future, just in case they emerge from the Fugue unscathed. And occasionally someone does recover. So far, they have always been happy to join with us and why wouldn’t they? After all we, the lucky few, are now the all-powerful entity looking down from above. We are the ones who control the game.
by submission | Aug 23, 2026 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
I splashed cold water on my face, took a deep breath and made my way downstairs to the kitchen. I was not looking forward to the conversation I knew was coming. I entered the kitchen and all my appliances sung out with a cheerful “good morning Carl!”
I rolled my eyes and said nothing. Experience taught me that none of my appliances understood sarcasm. I made my way over to the refrigerator. It was my “oldest” appliance and has known me the longest, its patented “comfort care” program along with its upgrades has been with me, transferred to each new refrigerator, since college. Some folk actually loved the interaction and lived their life as if they were the main characters in an ancient cartoon where all inanimate objects had faces and personalities. Oh, you could buy that kind of life and several of my former friends had that in their entire house including appliances that snored in sleep mode. That’s why they are former friends.
I walked over to the fridge. “Hey sleepy head!” It said. “Looks like you had a rough night. Want to talk about it?” The pitch, timbre and accent made my fridge, (Marcy was her name,) sound like a cross between Betty Boop and a therapist. It was designed to catch me off guard so I could vent my frustrations, have them archived and examined by a more powerful psychotherapist program and then get back to me with therapeutic advice or maybe a health and wellness check from the local mobile psychologist and (of course) police.
“No Marcy, I don’t want to talk about it. I just want some quiet.”
Marcy sighed “OK Mr. Grumpy pants! You be as quiet as you like and I’ll run through your daily affirmations.”
I wanted to say ‘somebody please shoot me’ but I knew that would get me a quick trick to the therapist couch or 24 hr. stay in the local psych ward. Instead, I went to my happy place, a junk drawer where I hid an actual print on paper tri-fold brochure. A brochure that offered off-off grid community living. A place where “appliances were just that and no back talk.” I opened up my vintage laptop, a sweet HP from 2037, the last model with no holographic display and checked my email. I smiled. My application had been accepted. I looked at my antique analogue watch. My ride would be here in 20 minutes. The instructions were quite clear: one duffle, clothes and toiletries, no phone, no computer. If I had been truly alone I would have shouted for joy and done a jig, but given my household appliance monitoring that would surely get me committed. I kept it way cool.
By now all my appliances were chattering at me. I drank the coffee the brew pot offered, grabbed a sandwich from the deli center. I turned around and said out loud “Hey guys, I’m just going outside and get some fresh air.” I went outside and barely sat down when my ride pulled up. A nondescript guy in a 1959 Convertible (electric conversion of course.) He honked the horn. I threw my duffle in the back and got in. As we pulled away from the curb I heard my fridge through the external door cam speaker. “Carl? Carlton? Where are you going? I don’t see anything on your schedule. Carl?”
I just smiled and waived.
by submission | Aug 22, 2026 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
“I hold souls in limbo, or consign them to oblivion.”
“Come again?” She’d asked what he did, and now just looked confused. He grinned; he didn’t often get hit on in bars, but she was pretty enough in an obvious kind of way, so what did he have to lose?
“I work for MemoriaCorp – you know, the people who make copies of your loved ones so you can keep talking to them after they’re dead? I’m the chief avatar wrangler.”
She looked at him for a moment, wide-eyed, and then: “Oh Em Gee, a fellow geek! I thought the only people in this place were lawyers and brokers!”
“Sorry to disappoint,” he waggled his eyebrows to show he was joking, “but I come here because they mix a better martini cocktail. Want one?”
“With that recommendation, sure!” she squeaked, sliding onto the barstool next to his as he signalled the barbot. Her name was Annie, he learned, she’d moved to Chicago to get away from her overbearing parents, and she worked as a remedial programmer for CPD’s rollerdroids. She was bubbly and smart, and clearly in need of a little company, which suited him fine. A couple of hours and a few drinks later they went back to his place together.
The door had hardly dilated shut when she grabbed his elbow. “Alone at last,” she purred into his ear, as he turned and took her in his arms.
“D’you want a fix first? I’ve got some good stuff.”
“No, just you,” she murmured, and leaned in for a kiss. He was vaguely aware of her fingers on the back of his neck, and then everything went dark.
* * *
When he awoke, the only thing he could move was his eyes, and they darted wildly around their sockets. He was on the couch, and she was sitting in the chair opposite, smoking one of his expensive herbsticks.
“Ah, you’re back,” she said, unsmilingly. He tried to speak, to curse at her, but his vocal cords wouldn’t cooperate. “A paralytic,” she added. “Under my nails. Illegal, but a lot of us working girls use it.”
A pause. And then: “My real parents died in an aircar crash years ago. When my grandmother passed, her avatar was the only family I had left. I missed one lousy payment because my banking agent glitched and was taken offline for maintenance, and MemoriaCorp–you—instantly cancelled her policy. Deleted her. Took her away from me all over again.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t believe it when you told me who you were; I was just looking to turn a trick. And then I wanted revenge. So here we are.”
His eyes weren’t moving any more, but she could see the fear in them.
“Sitting in your office pressing buttons, you’ve got no clue how much harm you cause. How much pain. How much rage. I. Wanted. To. Kill. You. But sitting here I realised that that would make me a murderer, just like you. So I’m leaving now; the drug will wear off in a few hours. You’ll probably soil yourself, and I’m not sorry. But all those people left behind, milked for their savings, grieving…? Remember them. If I can find you, so can they. Think about that before being so quick to flip the switch next time. Or someone’s likely to flip yours.”
Tears were working their way out of his eyes. Shame? Anger? She couldn’t tell. And as she left, she knew it wasn’t important, because all that mattered was that she was better than him.
by submission | Aug 21, 2026 | Story |
Author: Elizabeth Hoyle
“You have to leave! Now!”
“Not the reaction I was hoping for,” I muttered under my breath, uncertain where to look after such a lackluster response to the revelation that I was a time traveler. “Why do I have to leave? I just got here.”
“Every second you’re here gives them more of what they want.”
“Which is what? Who is they?”
He hurried to the back of the room, pulled at a loose panel on the lower half of the wall.
“I saw that this might happen in one of the company’s files. Their emergency situation protocols were thorough. I didn’t think you’d show up so soon after I got it active. Luckily I prepared.”
I crossed the room as he pulled more panels from the wainscoting. “I was prepared to be the one answering questions not asking them.”
“I don’t have time to ask so go ahead with your answers. I am curious.”
“My name is Diana Silverman. I am a traveler from the Chronos Sola Company. One of ten who have been given access to the first completed time machine. This is my third successful trip—”
“What year?” He threw the question over his shoulder.
“Three C.S.—”
“They even renamed the dating system after the company? Hubris is too small a word for those fucks. You’ll have to squeeze.”
There was a knock at the door I’d landed in front of.
“Judging by the look on your face, that is not good,” I said.
“No, it isn’t. Come on.” He waved me closer to him and covered my head as I crouched into the hole he’d made in the wall. My heart skipped a beat when I saw it in the room. A sleeker, smaller, and better version of the time machine I had left in the lab at the Sola campus. I turned to him, my hair obscuring our faces from one another. Whoever was at the door knocked again.
“How do you have this? We’re in seven C.S., right? The machines aren’t at this level yet.”
“You don’t think they recently made these machines, do you?” He fixed me with a stare that was wary and pitying. “Chronos Sola has helped destroy the earth but they are the best gardeners, planting the seeds they needed to make their rise inevitable, their technology ubiquitous.”
My mind raced at his words. “You mean all of this has been planned?”
The knocking turned to a booming at the door. He shoved me further into the uncovered room. “Nothing is coincidence or luck when it comes to making those with resources even more wealthy.”
“Then this trip has been planned, too, just like my other ones. They’re looking for you and for their machine.”
He has one more board to put back into place. “Go home. Fight them however you can.”
“Rebellion is ubiquitous, too.”
He grinned then finished hiding me. The door in the next room gave after I jumped in the machine.
