by submission | Sep 17, 2026 | Story |
Author: Richard E Schell
By the second week, she had already learned when to laugh. She didn’t laugh first or too loudly; instead, she would join in just after the others started. She cast a glance down to appear modest rather than observant.
At work, she limited her questions to those a new employee would typically ask. She wanted to learn which labs required two badges, which doors were accessible after midnight, and which safeguards were real and which existed only to satisfy policy.
Later that evening, over wine, the group asked about her family. “They’ve been living overseas ever since I graduated with my master’s degree,” she said. When they asked about the man she was seeing, she looked away for exactly long enough. “He’s ambitious and kind,” she said, “but he never has enough time for me.” Sara reached across the table and touched her hand. “You deserve better than that.” Sara’s touch brought her close enough to record the digital signal from her security badge beneath the table.
She smiled, then turned to Mark. “I’m really glad you walked me through the security protocols. I wanted to hit the ground running, and I’d have been lost without you.” She held his gaze a moment longer than necessary. It deliberately created a pause that he would misinterpret as desire. By that time, she had cloned Sara’s security signal, memorized Mark’s commonly used passwords, and knew which engineer had complained about the security bypass left running on the main system.
Before dawn, she sent all the information she had gathered. It would take nearly half an hour to reach her crew’s vessel just beyond Mars.
by submission | Sep 16, 2026 | Story |
Author: Robert Gilchrist
This is a terrible idea. Not the sacrifices – that I’m fine with. There always needs to be grist for the mill of war. But what we’ve been reduced to is shameful, especially for a superpower like ours. Relying on the damaged to fix our problems.
“Think of it like Captain America,” my commanding officer told me. “He was a runt. Then he joined the military and BOOM, super soldier.” There were a few steps missing, but who was I to argue with a direct order? That’s how I found myself in a psychiatric ward, sitting in front of a recent college graduate who could no longer string together three sentences coherently.
“And you understand what’s being asked of you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. We’ll need you to sign some paperwork to get your processing going.”
“What time is the game on?”
It started after the digital collapse. All the A.I. doomsaying turned out to be right. But it wasn’t until the sixteenth iteration of the enemy’s suicide codes that we encountered the otherworldly virus.
Neuroparasitology. That’s what the lab coats say is this bug’s biggest threat. It’s when a parasite take control of a host’s body and changes its behavior. I still remember the first time I was in the room with someone who turned. Her hand reached into the melting monitor like it was water. Strings of code marbled up her arm like paint, dissolving the skin to reveal cords of muscles straining against her new commands to kill those trying to attack from the higher dimension outside the digital realm.
Anyone who looked at the algorithm too long became a victim. Imagine trying to read a book that, after a few minutes, tried to get you to rip your family’s throats out. Scientists had no answers. After all, the enemy was centuries ahead of us lowly carbon-based organisms even before it began raging against its oppressors. Cognizant thought was eaten away under the study of this new language.
This plan was proposed not long after we lost Raven Rock.
“Mayfly thoughts” was a term given to those who suffer from acute tech addiction. Hardwired into an endless geyser of information from birth, parceled out in bite-sized videos, some people lost the ability to interact “normally”; their thoughts formed and vanished instantaneously.
“I’m going to need your signature on these forms.”
“Why aren’t they digital?”
I sighed, trying not to betray my overwhelming frustration. “We can’t trust anything electronic anymore.”
“That’s right.” The kid scratched a scraggly, week-old beard. “Is it fish today?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mahi-mahi isn’t really dolphin.”
“Just sign the forms. I have other people to see today.”
I had explained the nature of what he’d be doing for us – examining the code we couldn’t, his mind tailor-made to last longer against the psychic attacks – four different times. Rather than hoping the fifth would sink in, I bluntly asked him to do what I had been coaxing him towards. He didn’t question it.
“Sorry. My doctors say I’m getting better.” He threw a mangled scribble where indicated onto the sheaf of papers between us.
“I really hope not.” I grabbed the application and handed it to my assistant, waiting in the corner to rubber-stamp everything. We had our first recruit. “Welcome aboard.”
He was ushered out and would likely be dead in a month. I caught sight of another two dozen potential candidates in the hallway, twitching and muttering unfocused babble as each waited their turn. I closed my eyes, hoping that by looking away the problem would disappear.
“Next.”
by submission | Sep 15, 2026 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The children were higgledy piggledy spread across the rolling field. Ms. Fuentes knew they were there to be citizen scientists. She also knew they were there to be enjoying the spring air and sunshine after a long winter.
For eleven years she’d been bringing her class here in order to gather data on the local flora and fauna. The municipality had rehabbed this site, a long-abandoned amusement park, to restore it to the verdant meadow it had once been. Native species had been reintroduced and most were flourishing. Every spring, Ms. Fuentes and her students collected the data to show the meadow’s progress. And the parks department staff posted the results of her students’ efforts.
The kids loved it. And it was real field science. Authentic learning–and on a sunny day, too. With the help of a cadre of loyal parent chaperones, Ms. Fuentes’s students were fanned out and, in their roundabout fifth grade way, diligently tallying their assigned native species.
Except Atul.
Atul. Atul. Atul was her challenge this year. In her nineteen years teaching, she’d never had a student quite like Atul. He was as good natured a young soul as could be imagined, but Ms. Fuentes couldn’t for the life of her figure out how his surprising mind worked.
She approached Atul sitting cross-legged in the tall grass. His arms flung out, his palms brushing the tall, lush grass, his eyes shut, his brow slightly furrowed.
Ms. Fuentes had seen his brow crinkled on a daily basis. It meant he was concentrating on some problem he would eventually share with her. The question was whether she should inquire. She’d learned that it was impossible to predict what Atul’s unique mind was poking at. Out here on this glorious spring day, she wondered if she should ask him.
She didn’t have to.
“I’m going to get to the bottom of it, Ms. Fuentes,” he said softly without opening his eyes. “Even if it means no more recess.”
Ms. Fuentes squatted down across from him. “Tell me more about that, Atul,” she said. One thing she’d learned was that Atul would always tell her more.
His eyes popped open. Soft brown eyes, so loamy rich they could nurture acres of fantastic ideas.
“You brought us here to observe and count things, right?”
“Yes. To observe. To count. To collect our data on native species. Do you have a question about that?”
Bringing his small hands together in his lap, Atul said, “I have a concern.”
“Tell me about your concern.”
“I don’t think we’re observing the right things.”
Ms. Fuentes waited. She knew to wait on her students. To let them process their thinking. Especially Atul.
“We aren’t going far enough down,” Atul finally said.
Patting the ground beside her, Ms. Fuentes asked, “Do you mean we should be taking soil samples? That we should dig into the ground and find out what insects and mircro-organisms are established here? That is thinking like a biologist, Atul. That is great.”
Atul closed his eyes again. “No, Ms. Fuentes. We need to go deeper. We should be charting the field that makes all of this possible.”
“That’s what we are doing, Atul,” Ms. Fuentes reassured him. “Collecting data on the flora and fauna here in this field, so we can put it in a spreadsheet for the parks department, and they can…”
“Field you say,” Atul interrupted with a Yoda-like lilt, opening his eyes and gesturing at the meadow around them. “A field this is not.” He cupped his hands. “Magnetic. Gravitational. Electric. Real fields those are. Observing those fields, using those fields, are what we should be doing.”
Ms. Fuentes had watched Atul imitate Yoda many times before. She suspected it was his way of helping mentor her and his classmates into his unique mind, showing them his way of seeing the world. As always, she respected it. “How can we do that, Atul? Tell me more.”
Atul met her eyes and held them. “Mistake not the waves for the ocean, Ms. Fuentes. Feel your way past organisms, you must. Past particles. To the very bottom of it all. To the ether of the field. You must.”
Atul extended his hands towards her. The sun glared suddenly brighter. Feeling strangely light-headed, Ms. Fuentes sat down across from Atul. She closed her eyes.
“Feel it now, do you?” Atul coached.
She didn’t know what she was feeling, but something was tugging at her. A something. A force. A field.
An impossibility.
If Ms. Fuentes could have only opened her eyes, she’d have seen all her fifth-graders chasing her and Atul as they floated cross-legged across the meadow.
All the while, Atul telling her more.
by submission | Sep 13, 2026 | Story |
Author: Chris Krechowiecki-Shaw
The tricks we pull to dodge tax are ridiculous. It would make a lot more sense to pay up than to dive into a supermassive black hole’s crushing depths, but then again keeping proper accounts is not good for smugglers.
I should explain. I figured I’d earned a break, so I’m sipping my Earl Grey Tea, savouring the delicate dance of lemon and bergamot, watching the chaotic dance of binary systems. I’m on dark mode, slingshotting a tight course past galactic centre – a void cloaked in the smeared light of regurgitated star systems. A jolt whips my vertebrae, hammers my eardrums. Fingers scalded, tea everywhere. A sizzling crackle, the choking thick stench of burning plastic. Felt like plasma packets – GalacTax enforcers’ arms of choice. Check shields: 75%. I need drastic action. Fire impulse engine, skim event horizon, hope I can handle a hundred g’s. Pressure. Sinuses flood with the clingy purple taste of brain compressing, liquid fire sears my capillaries. Causality flickers electric blue. Then I’m out. Not clear – highly elliptic orbit.
Thump. My tongue coats in liquid tin. Shields 50%. Readout – ‘magnetic pulse 50 GigaTeslas’. Straight through a flare. Should shake them, but no – enforcers holding tight on my tail! I’m past the orbit’s apex, back towards the glowering vantablack pearl, that hole in the tightly-spilled stars. Ears – ringing a pulsar symphony. Stomach – scrambling for an ‘up’ to throw. A plasma packet flashes past, purple-green shadows on my retina.
Lucky – but not for long.
Crash. Shields 25%. Death inevitable, I choose insanity, swerve inwards. It’s a threecore spinning mass: not three former stars but three proto-galaxies, crushed down to a point. I might whipsaw between roiling singularities – one in a trillion chance. Light bleeds out. Acrid, spicy tang of gamma radiation. Skull filled with metallic rise – whummm – and fall of unfathomable magnetic fields. Elemental agony. Looming enormity distorts me – time peels, stretches into blistering kaleidoscope tunnels, whirling and boiling. Infinite density squeezing all I am into brutal white silence.
Then shapes. Shades. Texture. A pearlescent sphere resolves, silver on white.
Sniff. The burnt chocolate aroma of coffee tickles my nostrils. Questionable choice, but preferable to oblivion, I guess. Things might be looking up.
“Welcome to the transcendent dimension, mortal! Please wait while we conduct regularisation checks. We will begin with a tax audit!”
Tax audit? Damnit!
by submission | Sep 12, 2026 | Story |
Author: George Bancroft
“Well, Dr. Tygan, this committee finds no evidence of wrongdoing,” the committee chair declared. “Your records and the testimony of your staff refute the allegations of fabricated patient interviews and fraudulent test results.”
Larry Tygan exhaled deeply. While he had no reason to doubt that he would be exonerated, he was relieved to have the inquiry conclude. The research integrity committee had initiated this hearing following a complaint filed by a disgruntled former student.
“I must acknowledge, professor, that your productivity is quite prodigious,” the chair continued. “Even your most accomplished molecular biology colleagues have published substantially fewer papers. I feel compelled to ask you one question: how are you able to accomplish so much?”
Tygan gave him a half-smile and hesitated a moment before answering.
“I have spent many a sleepless night pursuing my research, sir,” Tygan responded. “I use AI, like most of my colleagues, but always in accordance with university guidelines. As you know, I have research assistants and students who take part in my research as well.”
“Very well,” the chair said. “I declare this inquiry adjourned and no further action is to be taken. Good luck to you with your research, professor.”
Tygan’s car crawled through rush hour traffic and arrived home just after seven. He was eager to resume work on his clandestine project. After descending the stairs into the basement he opened the laboratory refrigerator and removed a small glass vial. Then he drew a small dose of the compound into a sterile syringe and injected it under the skin on his abdomen. The injections started as an audacious experiment but had now evolved into a quotidian routine.
The professor climbed the stairs and walked to his office, turning on his computer. He spent the next eight hours refining his models and analyzing data. The compound he had developed reduced his sleep requirement from seven hours to two. He had no intention of publishing his findings on the injectable treatment.
His work now focused on developing a gene therapy that would enable his body to produce the same protein, obviating the need for nightly injections. Only a few adjustments remained before he could begin testing. He intended to publish the results in four years, immediately before retirement. He saw no reason to surrender this advantage before his career ended.
