by submission | Sep 4, 2025 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
“They can’t do this!”, fumed the Officer Commanding. The arrival of the memo from Staff HQ had interrupted the usual morning routine of carefully reviewing the battlefield monitoring reports. It was always better to form an independent judgement about what they meant, and now it would be necessary to start over.
“I’m afraid they can, comrade field commander,” said the deferential adjutant who’d had the joy of bringing the message to the OC’s attention, retreating into neutral formality.
“But the training camps have been sending us plenty of troops. New defensive and ground assault units have being arriving daily. There are clearly no holdups in the system of getting them to the front.”
“I am aware, comrade field commander. We’ve actually been receiving slightly more than our requested allotments.”
“So then why on Earth are we suddenly being fobbed off with flesh and blood combatants at such a critical stage in the campaign?”
“The Ministry Thinker responsible seems to feel that their inherent instability could turn the tide, comrade field commander. Intel suggests that the enemy AI has come to expect logical countermoves to its offensives at both the theatre and local levels. Human unpredictability might fox it completely.”
“Please tell me that they’re at least enhanced.”
“I’m afraid not, comrade field commander; all available cyborg and enhanced troops have been moved to the southern front for urban combat roles that require greater target discernment.”
“Well that’s a crying shame.”
“I hear what you’re saying, comrade field commander.”
“Still, the officers will be artificial people, I suppose.”
“Unfortunately not, comrade field commander.”
“They… Alright, I will not over-react. But you know my view. There’s nothing wrong with human soldiers in a pinch; on a good day they can even achieve as much as real troops. But they need to be led by robot officers.”
“I respect your opinion, and share it, comrade field commander. But the other issue is apparently that we simply don’t have enough officers coming through. The leadership brainset facility took a direct hit from a bunker-buster kamikaze drone last week, and the Planning Mainframe says it will take at least another week to bring it back online.”
“A week! We could be pushed back along the whole line by then!”
“There’s nothing we can do, comrade field commander.”
“Look, you know as well as I do that human officers can’t do the job. They can’t process all the battlefield situation data fast enough to make good decisions.”
“I know, comrade field commander. And HQ shares your concerns. But for the next two weeks or more, we simply have no choice. Supply was only just keeping up with attrition rates as it was.”
The OC let silence stand in for further comment. The objections and justifications were now on record, come what may. Orders were orders, and whether they disagreed with them or not, it was not just duty, but the officers’ very nature, that would ensure they were carried out–whatever the casualty rates incurred.
They turned their metallic faces to the monitors, plugged themselves in to the sensor arrays, and got on with the business of planning destruction.
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.
