by submission | Jul 30, 2025 | Story |
Author: Rida Tariq
*That bell of the night:-
The phone bell rang at 2:30Am . “Liza” picked up the phone.
There was a name on the screen that had been erased for three years: “Max❤️”
Panic, surprise, and a forgotten pain all woke up together. “Hi…?” Silence then a halting, fading voice: “Forgive me, I’ve lost my way back…” Then the signal broke. The line was cut.
* Three years later?
Max, who had suddenly disappeared three years earlier from Liza’s life for no reason.
No reason to call now, why was he calling today? And how? Liza redialed her number “Number not available…” She searched his name on social media but all profiles were either closed or inactive.
She finally opened his old emails.
One title was: “If I disappear…”.
She had never opened that mail to avoid pain.
* That mail:-
“Liza, if you are reading this mail, maybe I have left your world. But I am not going to die…
I have just known something that the world wants to hide.”
“A truth… that burned inside me. I used to work in an organization where digital experiments were being done on the mental state of human beings. AI doesn’t just drive your phone, it also dreams of you.”
“If you ever hear my voice again, you will understand that I am still imprisoned somewhere perhaps in time, maybe in the system…”
* Soundless tears:-
Liza stayed up all night listening to old voice notes. Then she found a file with the name “Last ping -17B” a secret recording.
Max’s panicked voice: “Even if they erase me, my memory will remain. It is not easy to stop AI, but it is also difficult to bury the truth.”
In the background some people were screaming, alarms were ringing then everything was over.
*The last clue :-
Liza sent that file to a cyber specialist she trusted. The message came from back him : “This file is not an ordinary AI system it is the remnants of the ‘Nova Project’, an experience that would turn human memory into a code.” “Your friend may not be physically, but is alive in data.”
*Digital grave?
Liza decides, she will bring back Max’s data. She downloaded the backup of “Nova Project” from a deep web server. An algorithm opened, with thousands of “memories” videos, audio clips, dreams, fears.
There was a folder: “M-K_313” and a file: “heart.memory.json”. She opened the file, and the first sentence was: “Liza, I didn’t want to forget you, the system forced me.”
*New contact:-
A few hours later a face appeared on Liza’s computer screen, blurry, digital, but like her love.
“You really are here?” Liza asked, “So you can come back?”
“No, but you can tell the world my truth.”
*Last Message :-
For all, Liza made a documentary with all the digital evidence: “The Last Message: Searching for a Man” Millions of people around the world saw this. Many said that their own fans had also disappeared suddenly maybe they were all part of a ‘system’.
Liza only spoke one line in the last scene: “Love doesn’t go away. It just starts to live in a new form.”
The final “last message” is not just a search for a person, but a question: “Is our existence just a body? Or everything we leave for each other sounds, words, memories, and a last message?”
If technology can separate us, maybe it can also connect us the only condition is that we have the courage to listen to the truth.
by submission | Jul 29, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Based on the most current cosmological evidence, the known universe is less than 5% ordinary matter, all the crap we can see and touch.”
“That’s still a lot of crap.” Grunden grinned. He always grinned.
Finnhil waved him off. “That’s nothing. We’re after paydirt, the thing that makes up over two-thirds of reality.”
Grunden’s eyes widened. “Porn?”
“No. That’s just the Internet. I’m talking about dark energy.”
Finnhil waited for Grunden’s backtalk. None came. He sighed. “Really? You have nothing to say to that. We’re on the verge of testing one of the most revolutionary ideas in scientific history, and now you have nothing to say?”
“Sorry. I was passing gas.”
“You are a living metaphor, Grunden. A living metaphor, but I need your pissant help today to film this. Get your phone out.”
Ever-grinning, Grunden did and started recording.
Finnhil cleared his throat. “Greetings. I’m James Monroe Finnhil. This day, I’ll achieve a breakthrough that will change the way we think about humanity and our supreme role in the universe.”
Gesturing with spidery hands, Finnhil motioned to the apparatus on the table before him. “Through years of experimentation, I believe I’ve determined the nature of dark energy, the force that drives all matter, seen and unseen, in the cosmos. My theory is simple but sublime: dark energy is intelligence. It is the source not of life, but of consciousness. Thought is literally a motive force.”
With forced flourish, Finnhil picked up a glittering form from the table that could reasonably be described as Buck Roger’s hairnet. Beaming with pride, he placed the glittering, filament-laced thing on his narrow head.
Grunden sniggered.
“Quiet you!” Finnhil shushed. “We’ll edit that out. No more interruptions. No more.”
“Nevermore.” Grunden grinned.
“Enough already.” Finnhil regathered himself. “Thought is a motive force. Dark energy is its quintessence, the moduli, the scalar fields that result. Viewed through this lens both the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox coalesce into what I call Finnhil’s Final Solution.”
Grunden sniggered again, but Finnhil charged on. “The proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, the signs of their communicating civilizations, is all around us. We are that proof. The concept of dark energy only exists because of thought and reason. It is a product of intelligence. Cosmological expansion is really a factor of the growth of sentience, of intelligence, of reason in our inter-galactic brethren.”
Finnhil spread his hands expansively. “For those paying close attention, we were alerted to thought as motive force over a hundred years ago. Like many break-through discoveries, mine stands on the shoulder of giants. None greater than Edgar Rice Burroughs. He alone understood the relationship between dark energy and intelligence. Through his iconic John Carter he showed us the way to tap into the invisible forces that could propel us to faraway worlds. Burroughs was the one who sussed this truth for humanity.”
Finnhil’s spindly fingers danced about his head. “The device I’m wearing is wirelessly connected to an apparatus I call the Perturbational Complex Engine. In essence it is a wave generator that reinforces neural activity. I am about to use it to focus on a single thought, a bold concept, that will send me to Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom. That is fitting. The imaginative pioneer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, paved the way, and now I will definitively demonstrate through proof of concept that concept is proof.”
Finnhil pushed a series of blinking buttons on the Perturbational Complex Engine. The device hummed and the delicate filaments of his gossamer headdress glowed brightly. “Humanity may not be, but I am ready.”
Nothing happened until Finnhil’s face contorted in ecstasy or agony or both. And Grunden grinned a last time. “Nevermore.”
At the site that had been the residence of J. M. Finnhil, a firefighter digging through the largely charred, shredded and unrecognizable remnants of the house, discovered a badly damaged cell phone. No human remains were recovered.
After weeks of working with the shattered phone, all the forensic technicians could extract was a garbled video with only two clear but disjointed words: proof …. nevermore.
by submission | Jul 27, 2025 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
It was our usually bad-tempered neighbour Mr Winkelmann who first told us we could get ‘special benefits’ if we registered in person at the Central Bureau in Lapis. Indigo’s government knew we spent a lot on the exoskeletal clothing and bone-strengthening drugs we needed to help us deal with the gravity, and wanted to help. Later, on the etherwave, the President said that if we signed up, the government would guarantee better jobs, despite all the bad things people say about us. Mamma thought this was great. Pappa said nothing, but the lines in his face seemed deeper, somehow. I was just excited that we’d get to make a trip to the capital.
When we got there the following weekend, Central Plaza was filled with other Latecomers – people who’d arrived in the last Wave from Earth, like Mamma and Pappa, or their children, like me. There were lots of Security Bots, too, but nobody was causing trouble. We queued in the sunshine for hours, under a sky the glorious colour that gave our planet its name, but eventually we got to the scanning booths and had our DNA taken “to avoid fraud”, whatever that meant. Nobody really told us anything; when we tried asking, one of the uniformed scanner operators laughed and said “don’t worry, things will start happening soon”. Mamma was excited to find out what, but Pappa looked skeptical.
That night, there was another broadcast. The President was delighted that so many people had come forward. To save money, Latecomer support gear would now only be available from the State, so anyone who hadn’t registered should do so quickly, or they’d not be able to get anything. “I don’t like this,” muttered Pappa, but Mamma said being efficient was important.
A few days later we heard that all Latecomers were going to be moved to Azure, the second continent, to a brand new colony! We’d get proper houses, and wouldn’t have to worry about being bullied or discriminated against! We were told to come to the Spaceport, with two bags each; everything else would be shipped later. Mamma was delighted – a new home instead of our cramped apartment! Pappa just looked sad.
On Departure Day we were there as instructed. Mamma was goggling: “They’re taking us in style,” she said, “that’s a space-capable liner!”. Our bags were taken by some uniformed attendants, but when we got on board it was nothing like I expected: no cabins, just big dormitories with bunks set into the bulkheads, three-high from floor to ceiling. We managed to get a vertical for ourselves, and I got the top bed! Mamma said not to worry, it was only a short ride. Pappa’s face was grey, and he stayed silent, but I didn’t understand why – even if it was uncomfortable, this was an adventure!
But we didn’t get taken to Azure after all. Instead we were onboard for weeks, and then found ourselves deposited at a bleak landing pad on Earth. The Terran Government wasn’t expecting us, and made a big fuss, but Indigo just stopped talking to them. We never got out baggage back, and now we’re living in a tent in a field while things get worked out. The Sun here’s the wrong colour – big and orange instead of small and blue – and the sky just isn’t right, but I guess we’ll get used to it. It looks like we’ll have to.
“What do we do now?” asked Mamma the night after we arrived. “Start again,” replied Pappa, tiredly; but for the first time in a long while, he was smiling.
by submission | Jul 26, 2025 | Story |
Author: Don Nigroni
“Thoughts can’t die or fade away,” my little brother, Arthur, told me two months ago.
He was an adorable bald baby who grew into a self-taught bald polymath.
I replied, “So, what if thoughts do spend eternity in the thought-ether?”
“If someone could access them then he could find buried treasure, solve unsolved crimes and know our enemies’ ultra-secret schemes. He’d be rich, famous and powerful!”
“But how could anyone ever enter into that domain?”
“That’s easy. Whenever we think, we’re there. But wandering freely about and sorting through the endless mass of junk to find the gems, well, that’s the hard part. However, I know that it can be done.”
I was skeptical and said, “I double dare you to prove it.”
He asked me what I would need to become a believer.
I paused and, after running my hand through my hair, said, “I’ll bury a penny somewhere and you return it to me.”
It was a 1998 Lincoln cent, and that night I buried it an inch in the ground at the library. Early next morning, Arthur stopped by my house and returned my penny. He also bragged that he could find Cleopatra’s tomb.
“But you don’t speak Egyptian,” I said.
“First,” he explained, “Cleopatra was an ethnic Macedonian Greek who spoke many languages, but her first language was Greek. And second, the thought-ether is full of thoughts, not words.”
I soon learned Arthur was using an EV fast charging station to increase the intensity of the electricity in his brain. And he did quickly become phenomenally rich, famous and powerful.
I was confident that he would ensure that I got rich too. But that was until today when, at our mother’s house, he abruptly remarked, “Yesterday, I stumbled upon your thoughts about me.”
So what, sibling rivalry is normal and natural I foolishly thought.
by submission | Jul 25, 2025 | Story |
Author: Sarah Goodman
One unblemished red apple. I passed it along the conveyor belt. Swoosh. One green pear. Its surface was a little rough, but it was decent. Swoosh. Another apple, but this one had a bruise on its side. A horn blared. A door opened, and I slid the apple down a chute marked “B.”
I’d been working at the Produce Product Complex for three years now. I got the job just after the supernova explosion that damaged Earth’s ozone layer, leading to the destruction of nearly all plant life. Here at the Complex, I had a steady income and access to one of the most valuable resources on the planet.
Perfect fruit had become as rare as gold bars used to be. The rich of the world bid on it at auctions, with professional bidders standing in for anonymity. The pieces were later delivered in armored trucks. I never saw anyone eat them, but I could imagine. Maybe they arranged them on gold-plated saucers, cut with diamond-encrusted paring knives. The rich used to trade in precious metals and gemstones, but those were just pretty things now. Still inaccessible to the public, but no longer commodities worth trading.
I was a Grader. Fruit would arrive in front of me on a conveyor belt. If it was nearly perfect, I passed it to the next stage, where it would be photographed and prepared for auction. Depending on its condition, I could alternatively place it gently in a cart marked “A,” let it slide down a chute marked “B,” or toss it into a trash box marked “C.” The ones in the box were for us, but not officially. The company didn’t want to tarnish their reputation by selling low quality produce. We were supposed to dispose of it to keep supply low and bids high. Instead, we marked them as discarded while we took them home to consume or sell on the black market.
A siren blared as a red light lit up the room, marking the end of the shift. I sighed and climbed off my stool. I picked up the box of damaged fruit and carried it to the employee changing room. I peeled off my sterile outer garments and tossed them into a bin, then pulled my duffel bag from my locker and poured the fruit inside.
As I exited the building, I looked around to make sure no one was watching. It was getting dangerous to be a known Grader. Word had spread of the stash we could be carrying, so Graders were getting mugged more than ever.
I turned onto my street, a once-commercial part of town turned residential after businesses could no longer procure anything to sell. We lived in what used to be a Greek food restaurant.
My three kids sat on the floor, each holding a video game controller. They didn’t get out often. They stared, transfixed, at the screen. They had that game system before the explosion, and it luckily still worked.
I dropped the bag onto a table and walked to the industrial sink to wash my hands. As I dried them, I turned back to face the room. The kids had spotted the bag, but only one got up. He unzipped it, looked inside, and pulled out a nectarine. Without a word, he carried it back to where his siblings sat and took two bites. Then he set it down next to him, picked up the controller, and continued to play.
I stood there, just staring at the partially eaten nectarine. People outside would kill for what was in that bag.
