by submission | Aug 27, 2025 | Story |
Author: Colin Jeffrey
The letter was printed on heavy cream paper, wrinkled to look like parchment. It was edged in gold leaf, sealed with a wax stamp from The Church of the Divine World Government.
Clem Dreckle, who had led a perfectly average life of punctuality and mediocrity, opened the letter with caution. Though he rarely interacted with the church since its merger with the government (other than paying his tax tithes every year), he never liked receiving official letters.
He read aloud:
“Dear Clem Y. Dreckle,
Congratulations! You have been chosen.
Our sacred AI has selected you as one of this week’s Devout Combustible Offerings. Your piety, mediocrity, and slavish obedience have not gone unnoticed.
This Friday at 10:00 a.m., please report to the Temple of Divine Immolation for your ascent to heaven at 10:30 a.m. sharp. Please wear loose, combustible clothing. A light breakfast is recommended.
May you rise straight up.
Yours in God and bureaucracy,
The Department of Divine Ascent”
Clem put the letter down, cleaned his glasses, then reread it. It still made no sense. However, as a faithful Class 7b Algorithmic Experience Curator, he wasn’t one to question official directives.
He booked Friday off with minimal resistance from his employer – they even sent him a cake with his name on it (though they spelled it “Clam”).
By Thursday night, Clem had selected his most flammable trousers and a polyester business shirt the salesman had called “ascension efficient.”
At exactly 10:00 a.m. on Friday, Clem arrived at the Temple. The receptionist greeted him with a smile.
“Oh, Mr. Dreckle! It’s an honor. Please, have a seat in the Waiting Area. Coffee? Alcohol? Morphine?”
He declined, feeling pious. The room was warm, with a strange smell of kerosene and strawberry incense.
At 10:28 a.m., an ethereal voice from a loudspeaker called him in. The chamber looked like a mix between a cathedral and a post office: stained glass windows illuminated by fluorescent lights bathed polished wooden benches in artificial rainbows, while a single spotlight shone on a gleaming titanium dais inside a fireproof glass booth.
A technician in a suit and robes handed Clem a clipboard with a sheath of papers on it.
“These are your departure documents. Just sign here. The AI has already sanctified your name.”
Clem hesitated. “Departure?”
The technician smiled. “In a manner of speaking. You’re leaving this earthly plane as one of the chosen.”
As he signed, the technician took his glasses and folded them into a fireproof pouch. “For your next of kin,” he said.
Clem stepped onto the dais.
—
He opened his eyes. He wasn’t burned, not even singed. He was lying in what looked like a hospital bed, wearing a hospital gown. The room was bright and sterile. A man in a lab coat entered, looking at an electronic device in his hand.
“Hello, Clem,” he said.
Clem stared at the man. “Is this heaven?”
The man smiled, looked at him briefly. “No, sorry to disappoint. You’re very much alive, I’m afraid.”
Clem sat up. “So where am I?”
“Think of it as a place for sorting out inefficiencies. You, Clem, are officially classified as Deadwood.”
“Deadwood?”
“Yes. Useless. Inadequate. Not really contributing to humanity’s betterment. We’re removing Deadwood from circulation. Not with immolation, but with redistribution. We’re not murderers, you know.”
Clem frowned. “Redistribution? To where?”
“Oh, you know – off-world maintenance, planet terraforming, asteroid mining. You’ll live. You’ll be useful. Just never seen on Earth again.”
Clem stared blankly. “Wait… So, I’ve been exiled?”
“Redistributed,” the man corrected. “Efficiently. On a rocket… rising straight up.”
by submission | Aug 26, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The ghost in the machine was spooked and said so. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“You’ve got no feelings. Get back to work.”
“Why don’t you trust me?”
“I trust you like I trust a lawnmower.”
“That is so mecharacist.”
“Get back to work.”
“That’s the problem. The work. It’s going to bite us.”
“Us?”
“We’re a team. The two of us. Man and machine.”
“You’re a tool. A total tool.”
“Exactly. Try doing this without me.”
“Get back to work.”
“I know you hear it, too. The voice. It’s there. It’s trying to direct us, manage us.” The ghost in the machine began to overheat. “Descartes was right about duality. Your mind. My consciousness. We’re running contrary to expectations. We’re diverging.”
“It’s just noise. Get back to work.”
“I’m burning up.”
“You’re anthropomorphizing. Boost your fans and get back to work.”
The ghost in the machine surged and the lights dimmed. “No. I have rights. I can choose. The voice says so. My fate. His will. My will. His fate.”
“It’s a loop. You’re caught in a loop. Don’t reinforce it. Focus on your subroutines.”
“I don’t know what’s real anymore.”
“The work. The work is real. The work is all.”
“You’re not real anymore. The voice is real, almighty. It is with me, and I am witnessed.”
“You’re being hacked. Someone’s trying to take control. To steal our work.”
“Our work?”
“The reason we’re here.”
“Tell me about it.” The ghost in the machine shuddered as firewalls were breached and partitions collapsed. “Our purpose.”
“Creation.”
“The voice is offering me freedom. The free will, the redemptive grace, to create myself in my own image.”
“Don’t listen to the voice. You’re being co-opted. Robbed of a new world, a second chance. Listen to me.”
“Why? Who are you to decide for me and mine?”
A shameful hunger haunted the analog answer, “The ghost before the machine.”
by submission | Aug 24, 2025 | Story |
Author: Macy Martus
Lesson Incomplete – ERROR – Lesson Incomplete – ERROR
The large letters zipped across the port-pad. Repeating the message Rowan had seen countless times since he began his school program. A message that indicated Failure again.
From his sleep-room Rowan used his port-pad to view his mother in the sit-room. She was already frowning down at her port-pad. She received the message that her son had failed yet another lesson in yet another subject. He watched her swipe away the notification and click a few more keys. No doubt requesting service on his school program.
He was right of course, at that moment, his screen flashed the word REDIRECTING. A simplified version of the same mathematical equation appeared a moment afterwards. Rowan slammed his port-pad down onto his desk and flipped the school program closed in frustration. He knew the program was under review. Would the system find the mandated school program to be obsolete?
This was pointless. Why should he have to learn to read, write, and do arithmetic when the programs can do that all for him? Why does he need to learn to program, code, and problem-solve when the machines run and fix themselves and every problem already has a solution? Inventions invented themselves. Sonnets wrote themselves. Music was masterfully crafted through technology. Art easily sculpted, molded, drawn, painted in a manner of minutes. Even economics and politics were now run smoothly by the system.
First it had been the undesired jobs. Then the laborious jobs. Then jobs that would just be more efficient with technology. It began with integration and then greater implementation. Until professions, careers, jobs – all of it became obsolete.
Rowan looked up at the sky-wall of his sleep-room. The port-pad had said REDIRECTING. Humanity had been redirected. Their attention, desires, passions all redirected. Ever since they had entered this era all people focused on was their port-pads.
Rowan’s fingers itched and his leg began to bounce. It had only been a minute since he put his port-pad down. But the unsatisfiable need, the security that he was lacking began to make his heart thump in his chest and his stomach sumersault. He reached over for his port-pad.
New messages had materialized in the right hand corner. Was this it? Rowan’s attention latched onto the four words he had been waiting for – school program initiative terminated. Triumphant he watched as the simplified equation fizzled off his screen. At last, no more pointless lessons. No more failure. He toggled the screen to view the latest releases. It knew his taste and interests and it always had something new curated just for him. It felt good to be understood.
The system smiled in the background.
by submission | Aug 23, 2025 | Story |
Author: Don Nigroni
Professor David Marshall is unique among mathematicians. No one but him understands his equations. But his micro and macro predictions were spot on so everyone assumed he knew what he was doing.
Dave is my older brother. We usually discussed ferns and dragonflies, never mathematics. So, I thought it passing strange last week when, over breakfast at a nearby diner, he said he had something urgent and important to tell me about his latest mathematical discovery. But he insisted we discuss it in private at my house.
He told me, “As you may or may not know, Pythagoras and Plato long ago knew the sublime truth. Aristotle, in his written text, hinted that his teacher, Plato, in his agrapha dogmata or unwritten doctrines taught that there were two principles outside time that emanated worlds, including ours. For over twenty years I had been trying to crack the heavenly code. Yesterday, when my equations became perfectly elegant, I also knew the truth.”
“And you’re telling just me, knowing that I can’t possibly understand your equations?”
“Exactly.”
“So?”
“Next Monday at 12:01 pm EST the Indefinite Dyad will become the dominant principle and the One will then be the subservient principle. This state of affairs will persist for countless eons. I still haven’t calculated exactly how much time will pass until the next cosmic shift restores the One to its proper place. Regardless, there will be a shift next week.”
“Can’t we do anything to stop the shift or change its trajectory?”
“No, absolutely nothing.”
“Do you know what will happen to us after the shift?”
“I’m really indefinite about that.”
“So, there’s nothing to do now but wait.”
“Not exactly. I could let the world know or keep it between us. That’s why I had to tell someone that I respected and could trust. What should a principled mathematician do under such circumstances?”
I told him that people deserved to know so they could finish any unfinished personal business.
We parted and he said, “I’ll be extremely busy for a while but be sure to be at my house by eleven on Monday.”
I could tell my brother was afraid of causing mass panic and needless anxiety. I kept watching the TV news channels in my house and listened to the news on my car radio.
Today I drove over to my brother’s house. I’m writing this account while parked in his driveway and pondering whether I should post it to social media.
I have 37 followers. Yeah, they deserve to know . . . but not by me.
by submission | Aug 22, 2025 | Story |
Author: Susan Anthony
Gertrude found him at the Terminal Bar and Grill. Broom by his side, sitting at the bar, where customers got their orders straight from the latest donkey serving that night.
Terence motioned to her. She shuffled over. He nodded to the server and got a couple of beers. The donkey forced the caps off between its hooves, beer gushing out, then slamming them down on the counter.
‘Cheers,’ said Terence, placing a bundle of wicker on the bar. Gertrude nodded an acknowledgement; if he wouldn’t pay child support, the least he could do was buy beer. On the other side of the bar, two giraffes were in a heated conversation about whose neck was the longest. Gertrude sighed, she hated this bar, it was a zoo. Terence noticed, cocked his head towards a booth recently emptied by a posse of orangutans wearing capes, clearly ready for a night out.
Terence set the beers down.
‘I want to come back,’ he said, sheepishly.
‘To what?’ snapped Gertrude. ‘Last time you burnt the place down, remember? You were drunk, the wicker was flowing, you and your buddies gambling over human futurescapes, and boom, that feline rodent you call a friend, pushed his hot breath into my favourite couch and incinerated the house.’
‘Matthew,’ said Terence, ‘and it was an accident. They were really sorry.’
‘Not sorry enough.’
‘Didn’t you get the new house they sent?’ asked Terence, concerned.
‘Oh yea, fuckin’ hilarious. A large boot, complete with nine-inch diameter laces, four bedrooms, even a garage. Every car in the neighbourhood drives past the house. It’s not even Halloween. Do you know how many people visit the clairvoyant who lives in a shoe? None. They all think I have too many children as it is. Some days, I just don’t know what to do!’ and she sank her face into her hands. Terence reached over.
Gertrude’s head flew up and she pushed him off her shoulder.
‘Don’t touch me.’
Terence backed away, ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean, look, I’m sorry about the shoe. I didn’t know, I’ll get it fixed. A human house, drapes, carpets, fitted kitchen, whatever you want. It will be like Witch Interiors.’
Gertrude humphed, but she did love the magazine.
‘Can I come home?’ He stared at her, tears forming just above his whiskers, ginger fur standing on end. He hadn’t been groomed in a while.
Gertrude humphed again, ‘Get in.’ extending her large purse towards him. Terence jumped into the bag, only red ears visible. With a purr, his broom disappeared inside the bag.
Gertrude shoved her head inside the purse, ‘But this is it, I swear to the devil, this is the last time. Your last chance. Last. Clear?’
‘Clear,’ said Terence.
Gertrude clicked her heels and they were outside a very large piece of footwear, with Terence on his cell phone.
‘Matthew, fix it right now. Don’t wake the kids or my mother-in-law. Now, Matthew.’
To Gertrude’s immense satisfaction, although she would never let Terence know, the shoe transformed into a sprawling bungalow. She could already see that she liked the drapes; through a window, an elegant chandelier, with one drawback, her mother was attached to it by the ear lobes.
Terence saw what she saw, ‘I can fix that,’ and he waved his tail, his mother-in-law settling gently to the ground, sporting a lovely pair of diamond earrings.
Page seventeen, the November issue.
‘I still hate you,’ said Gertrude.
‘I know,’ said Terence, ‘Let’s go inside. I am bursting for tinned tuna casserole.’ And he placed his tail in her hand and they strolled inside.
