by submission | Aug 2, 2025 | Story |
Author: Jason Schembri
My body comes back before I do.
Lungs seize. Throat raw. Muscles twitching down my left side—all the expected waking-from-cryo nonsense. And then my mind, snapping back like elastic.
“Vitals stabilising. Visual distortion: temporary. Passenger 113-A. Revival sequence complete.”
No greeting, no mission status. Just the same old system voice, steady and lifeless. The kind they used for training units and panic drills.
I brace until the shakes pass, scan for a console. Nothing active.
“Emergency activation triggered by signal loss. Colony 7 ceased transmission 328.6 years ago.”
I blink. The pod hums. I try the panel. Dark.
Backups only. No uplink. No coordinates. No plan.
“Cryogenic function: non-viable. Estimated remaining life: seven hours, twenty-seven minutes.”
No panic. Just cold, hard math.
“I remained online for preservation oversight. No human contact recorded in 143 years.” Then a pause. A breath, almost. “Would you speak to me?”
I snort. “You woke me up to… talk?”
“Correct, Amara.”
“It’s Ah-MAH-rah. Like my abuela.”
“Noted.”
“Not that it matters now.”
Silence, then: “It matters.”
I watch condensation bead and vanish on the inside of the lid.
“So you want… what? Small talk until I suffocate?”
“I was not designed for cryo operation. My original designation was Domestic-Class 2: language instruction, early education, memory retention scaffolding.”
“Right.” Of course. A babysitter. “So now you want a bedtime story.”
“I am not equipped for narrative function. I request only your voice.”
I sit back. Blood’s already heavy in my arms. This was never supposed to happen. Cryo was simple—on and off. No in-between. No waiting room.
“Vocal activity: minimal. Stress response: moderate.”
I say nothing for a while. Then: “My abuela used to make arroz con leche. Rice milk, thick… You could really chew on it, you know? You’d have cinnamon stuck to the roof of your mouth all night.”
“Emotional fluctuation: +17%”
“She always made it too sweet. She once said…” I laugh. “She said sugar was cheaper than love. Más dulce, mejor!”
The pod hums. The AI doesn’t respond.
“You still listening?”
“Yes, Amara.”
That’s the first time it says it right.
I keep going. I tell it about my brother’s stupid haircut. The chipped tiles in the corridor outside my bunk. The way the wind coming through the vents on the launch station sounded like my cousin when she sang. How I was supposed to be asleep for 850 years, wake up on some terraformed dirtball, new moss and a whole lot of insects to catalogue.
“Core temperature: dropping. Vitals: steady decline.”
Eventually, I stop talking. I don’t mean to—I just run out. Of oxygen, of words.
My mouth’s dry. Vision tunneling.
“Would you like me to speak?”
I almost laugh. “Got anything… worth saying?”
“No. But I can, if it helps.”
I close my eyes. Not for sleep. Just to hold the image of light on old kitchen tiles, of the way it makes abuela glow, a saint in a hand-me-down apron, spilling spoonfuls of sugar as she dances and sings.
“Heart rate: decreasing. Cognition: deteriorating.”
“Yeah, sure… Tell me a story.”
“There was once a girl who was named after her abuela…”
by submission | Aug 1, 2025 | Story |
Author: Sarasi Jayasekara
Sammy could see color. That was the part that bothered me. Not that he had all his organs intact while half my body had been replaced with machines. Nor that mama hadn’t spoken two words to me since he’d been born. All that didn’t trouble me. This was going to be her last baby. Her womb was faltering. Couldn’t blame mama for being happy about Sammy being new and healthy. But he could look at the world and see colors. That was unacceptable.
Every morning, he doodled nonsense on the light wooden floor of our apartment, with crayons of different shades of dark. Then he pointed to the scribbles and yelled “mwountain! flowwer! sky! yelloow!”
Pff.
I bet it’s not even yellow. Kids are stupid.
Anyways, this was a long time ago. This was before Sammy tried to grow up, and his body decided, nope, not gonna.
I wish I could tell you that Sammy lies in a nice peaceful grave on a mountaintop somewhere, like they used to do with the dead, in the before-times. So let’s pretend that’s what happened.
I don’t remember being sad about it. Was I even sad when Mama left? She had saved up enough money to go to a retirement camp. It was a better life―far better than the factories―as far as we knew. So she was gone. And I had no right to be upset. That’s how life goes.
I hadn’t thought about them for years―Sammy with his crayons and mama with her smile. But today, when I got to know I had finally saved up enough money for retirement, I didn’t know who to celebrate it with. The only reason I could make the mark was because I did nothing but work. No talk, no drinks, no friends.
So I walked into that abandoned part of town I used to live in, found our old apartment and sat there, staring at the wooden floors with faded crayon marks.
Flower―Mountain―Sky―Yellow.
#
Merky wasn’t someone who anybody trusted. He made a point of lurking around the factory on pay days, selling smuggled goods to desperate souls.
“Oi,” he yelled when he saw me walk out, “I heard you made the mark yesterday.” He winked.
I gave him a nervous smile, saying nothing. The only way I had avoided being talked into things all these years, was by avoiding the whole talking part.
“I knew a lad with the same eyes as you,” he blurted as I tried to walk away. “I just sold him a color upgrade.”
#
He took my whole retirement fund.
There was little guarantee that it would even work. I had given myself to Merky’s people to do the transplant. I was half expecting to be stabbed in the gut and sold for parts. But somehow they didn’t. When it was done, Merky gave me a wicked smile and shook my hand.
I don’t remember much of that evening. But all these years later, Merky still makes fun of me. Apparently my first words were “Show me something yellow!”
I do remember that he took me to watch the sunset.
by submission | Jul 31, 2025 | Story |
Author: Dimitry Partsi
Hawkett and his desk arrived on the 17th floor at precisely 9:04 a.m. The desk, a formidable beast of faux-wood laminate, announced its presence with squeaky caster wheels. Hawkett, a man with a perpetually surprised expression, was, in his own mind, a legal force of nature. A legal beagle, as he sometimes called himself.
His first stop was Zenith Innovations & Futures. The receptionist here was a young man with a slick haircut named Chad, who looked at the desk with detached irony.
“Bringing your own workspace, bro? That’s a vibe,” Chad said.
“Is not vibe, is law office,” Hawkett corrected him. He leaned forward, placing both hands flat on his desk. A king addressing the court. “Have you been sued, but do not know it yet?”
Chad held up a hand. “Gonna stop you there. We’re good. Our legal team is fully gamified and blockchain-integrated.”
“I see,” Hawkett said, a flicker of something that might have been hurt in his eyes. “You are forcing my hand.” He cleared his throat. “Zenith Innovations versus Hawkett! For wasting my valuable time! You will be responsible for all costs.”
“Costs for what?” Chad asked, genuinely curious now.
“Snacks, for one,” Hawkett said gravely. “Deposition is hungry work.”
After being escorted out, his next target was SynerCorp Global Solutions. He rolled his desk to the reception station where a woman named Kathy was fielding a call. She put the caller on hold, eyes wide.
“Can I… help you?” she asked.
“I am here to take on your case,” Hawkett said, his voice a low, confident rumble. “For you, against you, perhaps even diagonally. We are flexible.”
“We have a legal department,” Kathy said, her hand inching towards the phone.
Hawkett sighed, a sound of profound disappointment. “You leave me no choice. We will now be forced to sue on your behalf.”
Kathy frowned. “Sue who on our behalf?”
“Myself,” Hawkett declared. “SynerCorp Global Solutions vs. Hawkett. For emotional distress caused by your rejection. I know all my own weaknesses. The discovery process will be devastatingly efficient.”
Kathy was already dialing security. His final target for the day was the most ambitious: the law firm of Sterling, Finch, & Hurst. He rolled his desk straight into the heart of the office until he was stopped by a tall, skeletal man in a pinstripe suit. This was Mr. Hurst.
“And what, in God’s name, is this?” Hurst asked, his voice like gravel.
“This,” Hawkett said, gesturing grandly, “is justice.”
“Get out of my office before I have you sanctioned into the next century.”
Hawkett shook his head slowly. “You are making a terrible mistake. A mistake I must now rectify. Sterling, Finch, & Hurst versus Hawkett. For… for being mean.”
Hurst actually took a step back. “You can’t sue yourself on our behalf for ‘being mean’! There’s no standing! It’s gibberish!”
“Standing?” Hawkett scoffed. “I am standing right here. With desk. And is not gibberish, is opening statement.”
Mr. Hurst, a man who had faced down federal prosecutors, looked truly broken. The sheer, unadulterated absurdity had short-circuited his legal mind. He reached into his wallet and pulled out two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills.
“Here,” he croaked. “This is a retainer.”
“You are retaining me?”
“I am retaining you,” Hurst whispered, “to not sue yourself on my behalf. Ever.”
Victory. Hawkett pocketed the money. “A wise decision. My case against myself was very strong. I would have destroyed me.” The squeaky wheel sang a song of triumph as he rolled toward the elevator, a fully-retained legal beagle.
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.
