by submission | Aug 14, 2026 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
Unable to sleep, Merl slipped out of his tiny apartment pod to walk the rainy streets outside; guilt gnawed away at his conscience like a ravenous rat. Before long he spotted a Holo-Halo booth across the street; one of hundreds positioned throughout the city by Civic Spiritual Corporation, or CSC. It’s ‘vacant’ sign glowed softly, beckoning him to enter.
The prefab booth was designed to mimic an old world confessional’s ornately carved dark wood, at once comforting and authoritative. A small calligraphed sign explained, “Only 30 credits to clear your conscience. Absolution guaranteed.” Merl pressed his credit card against the small pad beside the booth’s door.
Payment accepted, the door clicked open; as he stepped inside it closed with a soft, sure thunk. The space was just large enough for Merl to turn around and seat himself on a little bench protruding from the wall. As soon as he did, an interactive holo-pad appeared before him, while a soothing voice of indeterminate gender addressed him.
“Please choose a confessor from the following menu.”
Merl read through the list of six confessors and, not being particularly religious, chose number 6 on a whim. The Monk of the Meteoric Mysteries. As soon as he chose, the holo-pad vanished, and the booth’s wood-paneled wallpaper transitioned to a wooded mountain vista, complete with burbling stream and occasional birdsong. The hard wooden bench became a sun-warm boulder.
Mel sighed. Such a serene setting! I should’ve done this sooner, he thought. Totally worth 30 credits.
The Monk materialized before him, wearing a purple robe trimmed in gold. Shaved head, heavily tattooed. Eyes that shone like distant lanterns on a moonless night.
“State your transgression,” the Monk intoned.
“I, uh, stole from my employer,” Merl mumbled.
“In what capacity,” the Monk queried. “To what extent?”
“I work in accounting. I skimmed credits off his executive expense account.”
“Why?”
“To treat my new girlfriend to a weekend at a resort hotel.”
The Monk closed his eyes and chanted softly, repeating the same unintelligible mantra over and over. Merl suspected the Monk was searching his database for the appropriate punishment.
Abruptly, the Monk’s eyes opened. “For penance, you will reimburse your employer’s account, plus 15 percent interest. Place your palm near mine.” The Monk raised his left hand.
Merl did as instructed. He couldn’t actually touch the hologram Monk’s hand, but positioned his hand as close to it as possible. Twelve quick bursts of electricity stung Merl’s palm.
“You are absolved,” the Monk said. “Thank you for using Holo-Halo’s services.” He bowed. “You may go.”
“But there’s more,” Merle said.
“For further absolution, please deposit an additional 30 credits.” The holo-pad reappeared.
Merl swiped his card.
“Continue your confession,” the Monk stated flatly.
“My girlfriend is also my employer’s daughter.” Merl continued, “And CSC prohibits fraternization between employees.”
“Your employer is my creator,” the Monk noted. “It behooves me to report your breach of contract to CSC. Your penance will be severe.” The Monk closed his eyes and chanted before vanishing.
A scowling, hulking prison guard appeared in his stead. The serene mountain scene disappeared, replaced with the close stone walls of prison cell, complete with squealing rats scurrying across the wet floor. The warm boulder became a cold, hard iron bench.
The guard slapped a nightstick against his meaty palm.
“I want to terminate this confession!” Merl screeched. “Now!”
In the distance, Merl heard approaching sirens of CSC security. “Here comes your absolution,” the guard grinned and, raising his nightstick, flung an arc of sparks across the prison cell.
by submission | Aug 13, 2026 | Story
Author: D.S. Burton
You lay your own cremains on the metal tray where your naked body had rotted three hours before. The copper hands don’t feel the porcelain. You know the scent of old, charred metal and a faint organic flesh from the just-resealed retort is yet to filter out. It was there when you waited with your grandmother’s brain, which sat beside the others in vats of fluid on the trolley everyone yielded to, for the Cremation Bot to manipulate. Something like a priest raising incense; a call to action, when you’ve got no actions left.
You know the room, the escaped ash wisping, fleeing, getting nowhere. The ash is you. Whether it’s still you, you’re yet to decide. It’s freeing, they tell you, they try to superimpose. Freefalling, dancing, unable to be bound, at least then. You notice the ash as the rest of you leaves your temporary hands. It plummets down, collecting as rat droppings do at the base of the retort, slowly pocking your lenses like photopsia, your Cremation Bot cameras stuck in a refocusing loop.
The neural link won’t last much longer. The line waits as you once did. People stand in the corner, avoiding the trolley. No one is there for you. You can’t quite decipher the labels on the vats, can’t quite locate which brain is you.
Desperately, you try to smell, not caring that it’s your body on the air. Nothing. You feel yourself—not physically, no never that—slipping into the liminal space between the world and the mind. The drifting ashes press to dark surfaces, settle, vanish.
The motherboard churns in that space you have in use, pushing you out. It’s preparing, systematically ticking you off the list, concluding your allotted time. You remember the unyielding thought you once told yourself: that you’d never be the one in this rusted, flame-lit body, that by then you’d be ready, and you discover that you aren’t.
The computer will return any moment and supply itself for the next brain to pilot. To cling to the world with for three fleeting hours. To watch themselves melt and stir intangibly as tiny dissolving motes. To open the door. To let you into the space that’s forever and nowhere.
The Cremation Bot lowers. Its limbs drop from your control. The last ashes coat its lenses. Your final glimpse is mostly black and static, from eyes not quite eyes. You use those moments to do all you can, that space dragging you in: thinking, rambling, begging the clockwork of the world to let you be a part, to be a clock once again, to be anything, anywhere that’s not between time and time’s end.
by submission | Aug 12, 2026 | Story
Author: Keith Parker
“A pint of FORGET, please.”
The bartender, sporting suspenders and a bow tie, polished a silver tap and pretended not to hear me.
I placed my fedora on the bar and repeated my order. Behind him, chrome pipes threaded through glass vats. COURAGE glowed amber. PATIENCE shimmered gold.
He sighed. “Look, Mr. Vale—”
“Eddie.”
“Eddie. You had five pints of SYMPATHY last week. Then you left without paying.”
I kept my eyes on the FORGET tap. A dry stout. “She was my daughter. We lost her eight months ago.”
“I know, Mr. Va— Eddie.”
I placed my credit chip on the bar. “I’ll pay as I go.”
He turned and hooked his thumbs beneath his suspenders. “FORGET doesn’t remove just one memory. The nanites follow connected neural pathways. Her funeral goes first. Then the hospital. Then birthdays. Eventually, they reach anyone tied to her. They work at the axon level.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Renee left because I couldn’t stop grieving.”
“She left because you stopped speaking.”
I flinched. That struck hard. “How do you know that?”
“You told us last week. The whole bar.”
I pushed my credit chip closer. “I’m tired of waking up inside the worst day of my life.”
The bartender studied me, then reached beneath the counter and produced an unlabeled bottle.
“What’s that?”
“ENDURE,” he said. “It’s new. It won’t lessen the pain.”
“What’s the use then?”
“Keeps pain from making every decision.”
I laughed without humor, then shrugged. “Whatever, man.”
He popped the cap, poured the dark ale into a pint glass, and slid it toward me.
“Cheers, I guess,” I said before taking a swig.
“I told you, it’s new. Experimental.”
I drained half the pint in one pull, leaned back, and crossed my arms waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. My daughter stayed dead and Renee remained gone.
I finished the pint, made sure we were square, left a damn good tip, and retrieved my fedora.
Outside, the evening chill stung my cheeks. I settled the hat on my head and did something I had not done since Renee left: I opened my communicator and called her.
She answered on the first ring.
by submission | Aug 11, 2026 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Of course they’re ghosts,” Hedspetch said as Jakarious leaned closer to the control panel.
“You sure?”
Hedspetch swiveled from his console of gauges, buttons, and switches. A status light flashed from green to yellow to red and then back to green. “Just ghosts. Happens every time things get like this.”
“Has it ever been as bad as this?
“Eleven straight days of torrential rain in July? No. But this dam is built like a beast.”
“We’re still in danger of overtopping if we can’t keep both the spillway and the penstock open,” Jakarious warned.
“Not to worry. Minor cavitation always happens with increased flow.”
The control room shuddered.
“Better check on your ghosts,” Jakarious said.
Hedspetch laced up his boots, clipped on his radio, and reached for his headlamp.
Directly below the thrumming turbines, the ghosts were worried. Technically, they weren’t ghosts. They were non-corporeal, but not haunting spirits. They were six ethereal alien entities with names: shouldn’t-have, would-still, second-guessed, absolutely-not, always-hedging, most-definitely.
After botching their reconnaissance mission and stranding themselves decades ago, they’d holed up in the dam leeching energy from the turbines. It had sustained their existence, but not their essence. They became ever more hollow beings, prisoners of their crippling indecision, until the perturbations in the dam’s structure roused them from their terrestrial limbo.
[time to leave] most-definitely thought to its fellows.
[to where] always-hedging questioned
would-still responded predictably [the mission; the mission is all]
[the mission is no more] absolutely-not objected [we’ve no substance; no form to act]
second-guessed interjected [because of all-in; because of its mistake; infiltration is no longer possible]
shouldn’t-have piled on [not only all-in; for-sure’s gamble left us weak; complete-acceptance led us to this limbo; their failure waits upon fate’s mercy]
[dissipation awaits us as well; unless we act] most-definitely conveyed [hold; hold; a variant nears]
All now sensed Hedspetch’s approach through the narrow access tunnel. The searching beam of his headlamp animated a long-dormant impulse. Wild. Reckless. Liberating. Without consultation, would-still rode the electron stream to its source, feasting on the light..
“Goddamnit!” Hedspetch grabbed his headlamp as it went dark, and in that moment would-still latched onto Hedspetch’s flaring aura. A reflex. A craving. A premonition. It would not be enough, but suddenly most-definitely, shouldn’t have, second-guessed, always-hedging, and even absolutely-not fastened on as well.
Hedspetch felt the sudden alien cavitation deep in his basal ganglia, his reptilian brain. It shook him. Then the dam shook.
“Status!” Jakarious’s shouted through Hedspetch’s radio. As he reached for the device, so did the others. Something unexpected came together. A reawakened motive force among the six formless energy beings: ethereal and corporal, alien and indigenous, threatened and threatening.
A pressure impossible to contain. It had to give. And it did. There was no longer indecision. No longer choice. No longer debate. The aliens followed the radio waves and leapt into Jakarious’s unit. From there they spun into the control panel, a vortical force of quantum foam so alien in electrostatic charge it overwhelmed the system.
The dam shuddered as the spillway and penstock gates began to close. Alerts went buzzing out to all manner of emergency agencies far and wide. As did shouldn’t-have, would-still, second-guessed, absolutely-not, always-hedging, most-definitely.
An exuberant last command was given by would-still [the mission; the mission is all] as the shaking structure overtopped and the dam ghosts in the machine spilled free.
by submission | Aug 9, 2026 | Story
Author: Amanda Todisco
There used to be a birch tree in the backyard. I peeled its skin and pretended the white curls of bark were movie tickets printed for me by an invisible teller, for an invisible movie I would watch with my invisible friends.
The toe of my sneaker knocks against its stump, a small reminder that the tree hadn’t been invisible, too.
Somebody is watching me from the window of my old room.
The new owners removed the PRINCESS CROSSING sticker that I’d pasted on the glass in fourth grade. I kept the blinds closed so my sister wouldn’t recognize it as the one she’d lost. She searched for a week before my parents bought her another.
For the first time ever, we had something in common.
Everyone I loved here is gone now, dead in ways that can’t be buried.
They know I’m here, the owners. I knocked on their door and said, “I’m writing a book.” They wouldn’t let me inside, but they said I could walk around the yard.
(I’m not really writing a book.)
I only wanted to hear their voices in the walls one last time.
The stump looks taller than it did a moment ago. Only a centimeter, maybe. I step back.
Beneath my sneaker, something shifts. I point at the stump and raise my finger.
The ground holds firm as I draw my finger higher, the weight of the past resisting the present.
The front door opens behind me.
Dirt crackles and splits as the roots flex beneath the ground. Its body wakes up, alive with the idea of a second chance. Branches fork upward like lightning and reach toward me, slipping down my throat and into my chest, detaching my heart and feeding it through the hollow trunk.
I can’t see who opened the door, but they see me.
They can tell you that I exist.
