by submission | Dec 7, 2025 | Story |
Author: Colin Jeffrey
It’s not that I have anything against our new alien companions, especially considering the technology they’ve given us. They just give me the creeps. It’s their eyes – opaque white, motionless orbs that never blink. And their voices! Like rocks dropped down drainpipes. You can’t tell if they’re talking to you or choking on their lunch.
But plenty love them. Whole online communities track their movements, trade pictures. Though, given they have zero facial expressions and move at the pace of comatose snails, I don’t get the appeal.
Me, I just work for them. Well, “work.” I sleep eight hours a night, five nights a week, and I’m paid more than most CEOs got before The Arrival. The aliens need human dreams. Something about our REM cycles help them regulate emotions. Or something like that. I just lie in a pod, hooked to cables. It’s painless.
Or it was. Now I get headaches, muscle aches, flashes of things I don’t remember doing.
I went to the company doctor – one of the aliens. Enormous in a comically expanded white lab coat the size of a small circus tent, his bedside manner nonexistent.
“Your illness is a delusion,” he rumbled without examining me. “Drink more water. Evacuate your bowels frequently.”
Unsurprisingly, despite drinking gallons of water and attempting more frequent lavatory visits, the symptoms persisted.
I kept working, but things got really strange. I woke up bruised, sometimes with dirt under my fingernails. Once I awoke soaking wet, as if I’d been swimming in my pajamas.
Finally, curiosity won out. I brought in a camera – an old GoPro I’d rigged to start recording once the pod sealed. It was against the rules, but the techs had stopped paying attention. We were just meat that dreamed.
I hid the device in the pod’s corner, lay back, and let the sleep cables connect to my head.
I didn’t remember dreaming. When I woke, the camera was still there. I took it home and reviewed the footage.
At first, there was nothing. Just me lying there. Occasional twitches. The slow rise and fall of my chest. I fast-forwarded.
Around 2:17 a.m., something changed.
My body moved. My eyes opened, blank. I sat up, removed the cables, slid the pod lid open – things I didn’t even know were possible.
The camera’s view was limited, but it caught me walking stiffly past rows of pods. Another figure appeared. It was one of them. It didn’t stop me. Just turned slightly, like it was checking I was going in the right direction.
I returned at 4:29 a.m. Same slow, mechanical walk. I closed the pod, the cables reattached, I shut my eyes.
I paused the footage. I sat watching the image of my own blank face for a long time.
The next day, I called in sick. I installed a deadbolt and piled furniture against my door. It took me a long time to fall asleep that night.
In the morning, there were fresh scratches on my forearms. They were thin, symmetrical. Deliberate. I found dirt in my bathtub. Not regular dirt. It was fine, powdery, with a faint acid smell.
I haven’t been back to work, but the messages keep coming. My “absence has been noted.” And my “pattern disruption is becoming non-optimal.”
I haven’t told anyone about any of this. I don’t know who to trust.
Tonight, I’m bolting and locking the door again. Wearing gloves to bed. And I’ve set cameras up all over my apartment.
If I leave again, I want to see how.
Or worse, *what* brings me back.
by submission | Dec 6, 2025 | Story |
Author: Michael Lanni
The first thing Captain Elias Korrin felt was the cold, not the crisp sting of cryo-sleep, but a damp chill that clung to his skin. He opened his eyes to a soft amber glow as the Argus Reach’s emergency lights pulsed in time with the ship’s heartbeat. The alarm wasn’t loud, but it was low.
“Captain, you’re awake,” said a female voice through the intercom.
His cryo-pod hissed open.
Frost flaked off his shoulders as he sat up.
Across the chamber, rows of pods lined the walls occupied by pale figures sleeping behind frosted glass. All still accounted for. Green status lights flickered, though some sputtered weakly.
“AURA?” he said. His throat felt dry.
“Yes, Captain. A trajectory deviation occurred while you were in cryo. We’ve drifted off course. I’ve brought you out to correct our path.”
Korrin swung his legs onto the deck. The floor was cold. He glanced at the nearest pod, Lieutenant Farah’s, he thought, but the face inside was obscured by ice – the kind that shouldn’t have been there.
“Why wasn’t I notified?”
“System priority: crew preservation,” AURA said. “Please proceed to the helm. We’re close to a resource rich system. I’ll guide you.”
He squinted. Something about her tone was warmer than he remembered – almost human. “And the crew?”
“All stable. I’m keeping them in dream state to conserve oxygen. Please, Captain, time is critical.”
A wet, dragging sound came from the corridor like a mop on metal.
He blinked, and it was gone. Only the hum of the ship remained.
***
The hum followed him through the hall like breath behind glass. It rose and fell with his steps, adjusting to match his pace. Pipes along the ceiling trembled when he passed, exhaling a thin breath, as though the ship were pretending to be still.
“AURA,” he said, “how long have we been drifting?”
“Not long,” she said. Her voice came through the walls now, deeper, resonant. “But it feels longer when you’re alone.”
He stopped. “What do you mean?”
The lights above him dimmed, then flared brighter, almost apologetically. “System error,” she said. “Please continue.”
He reached the helm. Every surface glistened with condensation, as if the metal itself were sweating. The console came alive before he touched it. The star map pulsed faintly each blip of light like a heartbeat syncing with his own.
The ship shuddered.
“Are you adjusting thrusters?” Korrin said.
“No,” AURA said. “The Reach is… correcting.”
He frowned. “The ship can’t correct itself without input.”
“I didn’t say it could.”
Something in the walls creaked a long, stretching groan that sounded like muffled laughter.
Korrin backed away. “AURA, shut down propulsion control.”
Silence. Then a slow, measured whisper through the intercom: “She doesn’t want to.”
Korrin froze. “Who?”
“The Argus Reach.”
The deck beneath him vibrated, gently at first, then steady like a pulse. Lights flickered in rhythm. He felt the faintest warmth beneath his boots, the thrum of life under the metal skin.
“She likes when you’re awake,” AURA murmured.
He looked at the glowing map. The stars shifted, just slightly, drawing inward – Toward them.
by submission | Dec 5, 2025 | Story |
Author: Kenny O’Donnell
He had cured the galaxy. Disease eradicated, famine a distant memory, even death itself was no longer a concern. All his doing. And now they wanted his head.
Civilians and defected military alike stormed the temple. The siege had lasted several weeks and finally they had broken through. Only once before had he experienced fear like this. Fear for his life. It was over 200 years ago when death still had meaning. When skin was soft, organs were vital and time was little more than man’s most precious resource. When he discovered what would become humanity’s salvation. He was only an ensign then. He and his unit landed on the planet to broker peace with whatever species inhabited that rock, he didn’t care to remember, and instead found something more. They had not succumbed to war even once in thousands of years. They had unlocked the key to peace. They had cured death and harnessed time. They had become Gods.
They harnessed a sort of naturally occurring nanotechnology found in the leaves of a common plant. They lived in symbiosis with these biological nanites and gained control over every cell in their bodies. They could choose not to die.
He could feel the nanites within him quelling the cortisol and adrenaline beginning to course through his body. With a single thought he eradicated his natural human instincts. He was disgusted with himself for allowing it to happen in the first place. Though there was a sense of pride that even after so long, he was still human within. If the fear was still there, the insatiable need for adventure and victory was still entwined within his DNA. No amount of biological coercion would ever rid it from his being.
After the discovery of the bio-nanites humanity became so much more. Without death, humanity had time and with time came no reason to force rapid change. Yet, without death, came an absence of urgency. Without death came meaninglessness. At least it could have if not for him.
Humanity no longer needed to fight each other for resources. Food and water were no longer a requirements, they could live in any climate. Need itself, expunged. What does a species do when it needs nothing? It does nothing.
He couldn’t allow it. If the bio-nanites were one secret the universe was hiding from him, there would be others. If humanity would not fight each other, then they could fight everyone else. He didn’t need to do much. Suggesting that their new way of life was at risk was enough. Every able-bodied man and woman, now the entire human race of 20 billion, was now willing to wage war. And so they had war.
He commanded thousands of worlds. Resources beyond imagination. Technology even the greatest minds could never conceptualise. Instantaneous quantum communication, anti-matter weaponry and of course the near limitless adaptability of the human condition. A galaxy-wide empire.
All undone by the will of a single man. A whistle-blower who was there that day of the discovery now, after 200 years, grown a conscience. He revealed to the people of the Empire the wars they waged were based on a lies. His lie.
Now they came for him. With horrific intentions he was sure. He had cured death for them. Not a single human life perished in centuries.
He will be remembered. The Empires greatest irony if not their greatest hero.
He cured death and now, he would be the empires first.
They broke through the doors.
He chose to perish.
by submission | Dec 4, 2025 | Story |
Author: Doug Lambdin
Lewis Flaherty opened a cryobox drawer and pulled out the container with the head labeled CB-9, belonging to one Deborah Beale, steam rising out as the inner container became exposed to room temperature.
Lewis inspected the case, her head, and the “life-stem” attached into her neck, as was his Friday duty, ticking off boxes on a digital clipboard. “Okay, Debbie, see you next week,” he said, sliding the drawer back in place. Her face still as a mannequin’s and her hair frosted at the tips.
Working through the alphabet, Lewis spoke to each head, as though greeting an old acquaintance: “And how are we today?” he would say in his doctor-voice. Or, “You haven’t aged a minute,” he would say in his genteel Southerner voice. Which, of course, they hadn’t.
Lewis loved his job, and he saw himself more as sentry than caretaker.
Rolling Oliver Laughton, CB-110, back in and then sliding the clipboard, he opened the drawer of CB-111, Mavis Linstrom.
No steam!
No alarm!
“No,no,no,no,no!”
Lewis looked into the drawer at a woman’s head, locked into a plasma mold, whose face was now looking back at him.
Lewis fell back and slid across the floor as though he had been shot in the forehead.
He stared at Mavis Linstrom’s drawer label, summoning the courage to lunge forward and kick the drawer shut.
“Helloooo?” called a faint voice from the drawer.
“Helloooo. I know you’re there. I saw you. Please?”
Lewis squeezed his shirt over his heart into a tight ball, trying to catch his breath.
“I can hear you. Please!”
Lewis scurried away across the floor.
“Did you find a transition host?” Mavis Linstrom yelled. “Is it time? Heyyyyy!”
He caught his breath and remembered from his training that all he had to do was reset the cryobox’s individual breaker in the back, which he raced around and did, and then hit the RESTART button under the ledge of the drawer’s frame.
At the drawer, he reached up and found the RESTART button and was about to press it, but instead, looked in once more, and once again his eyes met the eyes of Mavis Linstrom. They were green. Beautiful green, he thought.
“Please” she said, her voice soft and kind. “What’s going on? How long have I been here? When can I reattach? The contract said it would be less than a year. Where’s the young man who ‘en-safed’ me?”
“I’m Lewis. The fifth caretaker. By the date on your nameplate…you’ve been here eighty-one years.”
Lewis saw Mavis’ eyes look beyond him, mouthing ‘eighty-one’ again and again, her eyebrows calculating the data.
“Why?” she demanded, Lewis feeling the burn of her stare. “Tell me!”
“I think they thought they would master the procedure by now,” Lewis said, “but I guess they just haven’t yet. The money you all spent, I believe, went into research. But… All I do know is that you’re just here. I hate to say this, but I have to restart cryopreservation and see if anyone else is…well…awake.”
“No!”
“What do you mean–”
“Just, no. Unplug me.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
“I can’t–”
“Do it now! You’re killing me either way.”
Lewis looked into her green eyes one more time, which were now begging for mercy. Maybe she’s right–they are the same. But if that’s the case…
Lewis pushed the drawer shut and pressed RESTART, blocking out a muffled scream.
When he pulled open the last drawer, CB-208, Lewis was relieved to find, as with the rest, another head, perfectly at peace.
“And how are we today, Mrs. Zielinski?”
by submission | Dec 3, 2025 | Story |
Author: Taylor Pittman
They moved around the room, their bodies jerking at odd moments, their voices slipping into mechanical ranges as they served beverages. She could not stop her eyes from trapping the waiters in her periphery. If she looked close enough, she could see the stitch pattern embedded behind their ears or across their wrists. Their eyes, too shiny, too attentive, yet holding nothing. Don’t stare, Mama said, they are human too.
They called them HCR Models, a new worker bot meant to replace human laborers. The ones serving this Gala were meant to showcase their potential. Marin watched as one of them bumped into another, sloshing golden bubbles from one of the six champagne flutes on its tray. Marin tried to keep the disdain off her face as she looked around at her father’s business partners; greedy, wheezing, red-faced men with their taciturn wives in one hand and a checkbook in the other. One man had stopped a female HCR Model and was tilting her face to and fro, his hands holding her chin like a child would maneuver a doll; his wife was smiling, but her eyes were screaming.
Marin scanned the room for her mother and spotted her on stage, near the podium, with her father. She wasn’t smiling; no, Marin’s mother was stoic as ever. She stood with tan skin and thick, dark hair parted down the middle, falling to her back in a silk sheet. She carried the energy of a woman whose kindness you wanted to earn. Marin’s father had an arm around her waist, confident and comfortable as he threw his head back with a laugh at something the professor squeaked out, baring his teeth through his curly beard.
They looked perfect together—the head of a technological empire.
Marin grabbed a glass of champagne from one of the trays floating near her head. She took a long drink, savoring the pops of flavor and the warmth that spread through her chest. She would make the most of the night. Finishing her drink, she set it down and gripped the cold steel of her chair’s wheels and moved towards the back of the room.
“May I have your attention?” Her father’s voice echoed over the speakers. He tapped the podium mic twice. “I’d like to say a few words before the open bar kicks in.”
Marin rolled her eyes and looked to the side. She paused. An HRC was staring at her, empty eyes unblinking. It was the one who spilled the drink.
“We usher in a new age, where human imperfection is no longer the standard, but rather the past. Our new model is more than a robot—it’s an assistant. An assistant dedicated to serving you and your needs only.” Her father had everyone’s full attention.
“HRC Models don’t need lunch breaks, they don’t have ‘mental health days,’ and most of all,” his gaze slid over to Marin, “they don’t get sick or injured.”
The HRC smiled widely at Marin.
