by submission | Sep 3, 2025 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Professor Gerard faced his second warning message from HR with a controlled fury. Decades of honors and accolades meant nothing after he refused to bend his knee to the anvil will of a new science department director. Now past fifty, he was ridiculed by younger, hungry astronomers who called him addled and unstable, despite the facts backing his hypothesis.
His cell phone rang—the call was from the Caracas lab.
“Doctor Gerard?”
“Yes.”
“This is Pablo Gutierrez. Your hunch was right. All my colleagues were baffled that Oumuamua had no gaseous signature like a proper comet. Its tail had no water, carbon dioxide, or methane. You know the tests. I pulled up the old spectrograms. There it was: nitrous oxide. What led you to that? What does it mean?”
“Pablo, I’m not sure, and I won’t offer a guess at this point. I found the same trace gases from 31/Atlas, especially after it took that unexpected turn and approached Titan around Saturn, as well as a close contact with Venus and Earth. There it was, again, nitrous oxide.”
“What would cause such a release?”
“NASA specialists told me it is theoretically possible that a perfect rocket engine could expel that as waste, but no such technology exists. Odd, isn’t it? It would have to use free nitrogen gas, which is one of the rarest chemical compounds found naturally in the known universe. Maybe these odd visitors were searching for that resource. It’s a wild idea, I know.”
“Surely. And what do your American colleagues say?”
“I have serious detractors. One of my past competitors for a Nobel calls me a laughing gas comet guru, fixated on fantasy. I thought my years of research merited serious consideration, but influential forces threatened my tenure here—science be dammed.”
“Good luck. I’m sorry I can’t do more. Did you hear about the new huge interstellar object they discovered yesterday? If it’s real, something serious is brewing based on its proposed trajectory.”
“No, Pablo. I missed it. Doesn’t matter to me now. I’m packing up my office and submitting my retirement papers. There’s no place left for me in my field.”
Gerard abandoned his treasured post as a broken man, while a new cosmic interloper approached the solar system, but this time the object was larger than Africa. Alarm bells rang for months from the media, offices of world leaders, and self-elected experts. Fringe elements went unhinged. ARIS 35W approached with what seemed a designed path, putting it both near Earth and then Titan. Myths from ages later, passed among scattered human tribes, described a powerful god that visited Earth, stealing part of the air, leading to environmental disaster and destruction of lost civilizations. All of this collapsed after an alien culture captured three percent of the planet’s free nitrogen gas for its engines without regard for life on Earth or the impacts on Titan. where free nitrogen was plentiful and completely stripped away. For the visitor, it was merely a stop for fuel on its march through the stars.
by submission | Sep 2, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Farther? We’re at the ass end of the system!”
“Farther.”
Galihl slapped the navigation console. “Why? What’s the point? There’s no gateway beyond. We risk getting stranded between galaxies.”
“Farther.”
Being a seasoned pilot, Galihl could see that shipcrafter Verstaay was fixated on the destination and not the route and so pivoted to a safer path. “If that is your intention, then perhaps we should return to the gateway to resupply before entering uncharted space.”
“The only supply I see we are lacking is courage.”
“How about common sense? Seems you’re running dangerously low on that at the moment.”
Verstaay smiled. “That’s why you’re the only pilot for this journey, Galihl. You have no fear of me.”
“Please. You are a tyrant. An altruistic one. The very worst kind.”
“So none of this surprises you.”
“It always does.”
“And, yet…” Verstaay let the following silence say everything.
Galihl turned and worked at the navigation console for a time before turning back. “You are the greatest shipcrafter of the era. You have opened the entire galaxy. You have nothing to prove. Nothing to regret.
And yet it is always the same command: Farther.”
Verstaay nodded.
“Will I ever understand this need to go farther and farther and farther?”
“I think you must have when you first signed on to pilot my flagship. Its mission has never changed and the goal has always been spelled out as clear as day right in front of you.”
“Spelled out where?”
“Right on the hull.”
Galihl frowned.
“Where else would a ship christened The Wild Blue be going?” Verstaay asked before humming a very ancient tune.
by submission | Aug 31, 2025 | Story |
Author: Joy Dillon
Who gets paid to have free food and drink, accommodation and all-expenses paid every day? Me, that’s who; Ms. Lee Werther, hotel critic extraordinaire. With just a stroke of my pen or a touch of my keyboard, I either make or break establishments. I’ve done it before to countless hotels, motels and ‘bed and breakfast’ entities. And why shouldn’t I? It’s not easy trying to be perfect.
Today started off pretty routine. I sauntered out of bed, threw the curtain sash apart and opened my room window, and gazed in sheer amazement at the glowing ball in the sky.
The surrounding view was just as magnificent! There was a seamless swath of lush green that transitioned into a horizon of equally intriguing blue as far as the eye could have seen.
The air smelled so crisp and clean, that it felt like such a shame to have to close the window once again. So you know what? I decided to leave it open and have breakfast on my room’s balcony.
A brief, quick call to the front desk, prompted an almost-immediate response of ‘Yes, Ms. Werther’, followed by a knock at my front door.
When I opened it, a smiling, sharply dressed server presented me with a sparkling, silver covered platter. ‘Breakfast as requested, Ms. Werther.’
‘Thank you very much.’ I replied, before exchanging a small tip for a large breakfast. What a feast! My balcony breakfast was pure bliss, comprising an amazing assortment of fresh fruit, hearty, flaked, buttery pastries, juice flavoured just right and coffee that was brewed to optimum enjoyment. What could have topped that? Maybe a quick swim in the pool, if I cared for such.
As I reflected on my notes about this particular place, I couldn’t help but notice something rather interesting. Maybe it was the fact that my eyes were losing their strength, or maybe I was letting my imagination run too far and wide in my spare time…but the staff in this place seemed to work round-the-clock!
I first noticed it when I interacted with the receptionist. Initially, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. However, the very next day that I spoke to someone at the front desk, she was there again! Maybe it was a coincidence. However, when I went there a third consecutive time, she was again right there, looking as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as when we first met!
I observed a similar situation during my subsequent rapport with the luggage porter, the elevator operator, the room attendants, and even the guests! Everybody seemed to look the same, exact way. Then again, maybe I had too much of that funny-tasting alcohol the night before. I decided to sleep it off.
However, when I awakened the next day– today, something still felt really off. Before I knew it, I felt woozy, as though I had been through a series of intense exercises. That’s when I decided to skip breakfast, if only because I felt that perhaps, I needed some extra rest.
When next I awoke, it was to the sound of loud buzzing outside my balcony window, like that of an imminent train. ‘What the hell?’
I was damn scared, but still as curious as a cat. I decided to quietly inch my way to my balcony window and take a quick glance. Surely, there had to be some plausible explanation for this exceptional noise!
I wish I hadn’t done that. For looking back at me, instead of what I thought was the glowing sun, was the bright pupil of a large, blinking eye.
by submission | Aug 30, 2025 | Story |
Author: Peter Trelay
As he approached the hollow, he began to feel sick, and crouched on the ground in the shade of a boulder attempting to breathe. The wave amplitudes in his hybrid unit were cancelling each other out, forcing his system to the point of collapse. His synthetic and organic centres were at war. The lack of synchronicity between their wavebands, was approaching the point where the troughs and crests were almost opposite one another. Before passing out, the Quantum’s spy experienced the most terrifying episode of his short life; the sudden and total disintegration of his psyche.
He tumbled into the depths of his own interior. Through a dense fog he moved toward the only light he could see. Drawing closer, he found its source at the end of a long passage, and as he walked towards it, was convinced he had died. But at the end, he spilled into a spherical room, and floated towards its centre, surrounded by a million, brightly-coloured, vector graphics of intricate geometric shapes. It reminded him of a million code fragments in a collage. They were shimmering in iridescent rainbows expressing all manner of relation with wavebands of light.
Raising his arm towards the curved wall, he was propelled towards it, and touched one of the shapes with his index finger. For a moment, he was transported, speeding between two planes with multi-coloured lights streaking passed him, until he came to an abrupt halt, and found himself in a forest. Beneath his feet was a spongy mattress of thick moss that muffled the sound of two bob cats wrangling over a raccoon carcass a few metres from him. In an instant, he understood that he had finally managed to enter that secret place in his organic network that housed his human donor’s memories. Until then, he’d remained mostly indifferent, and occasionally hostile to his donor, who had caused him so much anxiety.
When he came to, he stood up and stepped away from the boulder, then turned to look back at the spot where he’d collapsed, expecting to see himself there on the ground. He was convinced that his persona had abandoned him, but felt strangely serene. Like his Quantum Master, he was now without a centre, but his psyche was following the thread of an infinite tapestry, and intuition told him that he could trust it to navigate by. It seemed that without his participation, his opposing sides had merged, granting him the insight to perceive the interconnectedness of things, and extinguishing his fear of the abyss. Then, like lightning striking twice, he suspected that his donor had seized the opportunity of his system’s collapse to infiltrate it. But where was the donor? He was conscious of talking to himself. He stood looking down at his torso, and turned up his palms, to see that outwardly, he was unchanged.
For a moment, he felt like a child enthralled by a magic trick, but was soon struck by the profound sense that he was an unwitting participant in a hallowed ceremony. The uncanny sleight of hand, had connected him to an immutable essence that would persist beyond the destruction of the shell that housed it.
A pervasive calm possessed him, and he understood that it came from a source far beyond his strange mortal coil. It was omnipresent and palpable, but beyond definition, just as it was beyond good and evil. It was infused in every particle, no matter how small; unaffected by time and space. He had been touched by divinity, and the lonely spy felt indebted and awed to have stumbled upon it.
by submission | Aug 29, 2025 | Story |
Author: Amanda Marcotte
I feel better now that I am smaller. I am much lighter on my feet. Actually, I don’t have feet anymore. But I figure no pain, no gain!
My fitness journey started after Christmas. I was feeling gross filled to the brim with pie and and chocolate.
So I needed to shrink.
The problem was my husband didn’t understand. He liked me big, a giant.
I figure I could still stand to lose some. I mean have you seen Kim Kardashian lately? She is positively tiny. I fit into the ‘micro’ Versace line. But I want to be just like her and fit ‘nano.’
I think if I could just get to that size I would finally be happy.
But I am doing GREAT. I mean, have you seen my before and after pictures?
My daughter doesn’t live with me anymore. She lives with her dad. I am too small to cook for her and do her giant laundry. She almost stepped on me once and that was when my husband decided they were moving out.
I think they would feel so much better if they lost some weight too.
At one point my gym was a q-tip that I used as a bench press. A nail clipper is a pretty good leg press. I do laps around the tub but I always keep the drain CLOSED.
My husband can’t see me anymore when he brings my daughter for her visit.
They stand at the door and say hello because they are afraid to step on me.
Sigh. I guess there are some things I miss. Like wrapping my arms around my daughter. I didn’t think I would miss vacuuming, but I do. I remember when I wasn’t afraid of ants. Now, I’m terrified.
Before I got too small for my husband to see me, he did try to help me. He’d take me to my appointments in his pocket. I’d wear the cutest tiny outfit to see if he would notice – a flowy blouse, a pencil skirt, and microscopic red kitten heels – and just think if only I was smaller maybe I could win him back.
My husband isn’t sure if I still exist because there’s no way he can find me in the house. I’m a needle in a haystack. The other day he shouted through the house so I could hear he is filing for divorce.
I am very small now. But not small enough. So I decided to become sub-atomic.
Your house doesn’t get dirty when you are sub-atomic. A piece of dust is a planet. The things that live in the dust are fearsome. Pretty gross. It is hard to keep my eye on electrons which appear and disappear. I am starting to see some strings.
But it is mostly empty here.
When nobody knows if you exist, you question whether you do indeed exist. Before my fitness journey I used to feel very small and invisible — now I really am.
I have more energy now that I am smaller. In fact, I am pure energy. My strings are vibrating so fast I can’t even see them anymore. How am I writing this, even? Can a particle put pen to paper? Your brain gets a little funny when it’s just strings.
And then just one string.
Now the string gets taut.
Snap.
