by submission | May 29, 2025 | Story |
Author: K. Andrus
Where was the best place to murder someone and get away with it?
A question that had been fun to ponder, back when Albert had been at home accompanied by nobody else but a chilled glass of scotch, the comforting roar of a June snowstorm, and his most recent work-in-progress novel.
Yet here, stuck on Mars, Albert found himself seriously contemplating the question as he was yet again turned away from the captain’s quarters.
It would only be retribution, he rationalized. After all, Albert had to leave behind his mansion for a single bedroom apartment, his silk robes for an uncomfortable space suit, his employed help for an AI in his wall, and his favorite foods for pre-packaged rations. Truly, Albert was experiencing what could only amount to poverty. However, the biggest tragedy of all was the fact that there was not a drop of alcohol available.
Albert had made his complaint known, of course, but he had been told that such ‘frivolous’ comforts would have taken unnecessary space in the ship. And that to carry, ‘the most people possible,’ some sacrifices had to be made.
Bah! Surely one or two of the scientists scurrying around here could have been left behind? What sort of space resort had scientists, anyway? But when Albert had made such a logical suggestion for the next supply shipment, he had been told to skedaddle. Imbeciles!
Albert huffed to himself as he entered his hotel room. When he got back to Earth, he was going to cut spending on a few senators who had suggested the trip in the first place. Fire-smire, so what if almost all of America was currently burning? He could have flown to one of his many vacation homes and waited out the toxic smog instead. Surely, a trip to another planet had been an overreaction by their government.
Albert sighed and collapsed into his chair. He stretched out his legs and gazed at them sadly. With no ottoman to put his feet upon, his legs were left to sprawl pitifully in front of the coffee table.
“Martin, get me a cup of coffee,” Albert asked his room’s AI before he closed his eyes so he could pretend he was still in his California mansion.
Albert listened to the soft sounds of his door swishing open and the quiet footsteps of someone approaching, no doubt entering with his requested beverage. Surely, once he drank his coffee and was a little more awake, he could once again try to talk sense into the owner of this resort. A place without alcohol, bah, what a farce.
However, all plans went out the window when someone grabbed his neck and squeezed.
Albert’s eyes shot open, and he choked in surprise at the sight of a masked assailant standing over him. He scrambled to grab the man’s hands, doing his best to pull them off his neck, but the blinking light of a mechanical arm told him he was fighting a losing battle.
“Did you think you could run away?” A wicked smile, the gleam of yellowed teeth, and the acidic smell of smoke. “I won’t let you.”
As Albert’s vision began to darken, he was reminded of his earlier question. Where was the best place to murder someone and get away with it? Why, space of course. It was far enough away from society to easily avoid prosecution. Not to mention, such an oxygen-rich environment would be an arsonist’s wet dream. Why couldn’t Albert have thought of that sooner?
by submission | May 28, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Standing among some of the oldest living things on earth, Mourad Du, felt his age. Not just in years, but in possibilities lost. And, now, the impossibility he faced. Who could he tell? Would it even matter?
They would all be gone soon. Nothing he could do, we could do, would change that. Mourad breathed deep and continued up the trail to the Grizzly Giant one last time. There are about 500 mature giant sequoia trees in the Mariposa Grove near Yosemite’s south entrance and once a year Mourad visited them all, but only the Grizzly Giant spoke to him in a special way.
In an unbelievable way. An impossible way. It spoke. Not aloud, but clearly in his head: Mourad Du, Mourad Du, Mourad Du.
The Grizzly Giant spoke to him. To him, a destitute Algerian who’d emigrated to Oakland forty years ago. To him, who’d struggled to find his place and purpose in his new country. Until a friend had taken him to the Mariposa Grove in Sequoia National Park and he, the stranger in a strange land, finally felt welcomed and comforted by the immensity of life and mindfulness of time in these sequoias.
Mourad Du could conceive of no greater miracle, no greater proof of the majesty of the divine, than the Mariposa Grove. Mourad made a pilgrimage each year to the seemingly ageless sequoia wonders. Vigilant sentinels, ever watchful, ever present.
Until now.
Until the ecological balance tipped well beyond survival, and the Grizzly Giant told Mourad that his kind were leaving. Ancient beings akin to pure thought that existed on the fringes of quantum probability, migrating through the ethereal fibers of the metaverse, taking root in local, long-lived life.
They’d settled in the sequoias of the Mariposa Grove thousands of years ago and mused upon our planet. Appreciated the wonders of our world. Sensed our sentience and hoped for our longevity, to become as they.
But, we are we, Mourad Du lamented. Our stewardship of Earth found lacking, and they were leaving. Mourad Du was asked to bear witness. The Grizzly Giant gave a time.
There is nothing like a night under the sequoias. Mourad Du stood among the titans beneath the shimmering depths of the Milky Way. Before they launched, the Grizzly Giant assured him that all was not lost. The tree of life large and humanity young. We could still find a place.
Just as Mourad Du had.
by submission | May 27, 2025 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
“I’d do it in a flash,” Jason declared, tightening the lid of the cocktail shaker. “Clone you, I mean. And how about you? What would you do?” In his hands, the shaker was a percussion instrument. The rhythm was enticing; it made Kerra want to dance.
She gave him a teasing, crooked smile. “I’d have to think about it.”
“Wow,” Jason snorted. “Thanks.”
As annoying as her answer was, he couldn’t get mad at her. Looking at her out of the corner of his eye he thought, She’s so lovely. Like the reflection of the moon on still water.
* * *
Jason didn’t have to wait long to act on his declaration. Kerra was dead, taken down by a distracted driver as she crossed a busy city street on her way to work.
He pushed his grief aside to contact reLive, to set up an emergency meeting with a consultant. Within 8 hours after the accident, Kerra was in their industrial compound having her DNA extracted, cleaned, copied, and inserted into an appropriate organic, fully-grown female manikin.
Transferring her memories and personality into the manikin was trickier. It was a delicate process Jason was not privy to, but he signed off on it anyway. He was willing to do anything to have her back.
In less than a month, Kerra was home, lounging on the couch as Jason made martinis for them.
“So,” he said from the bar in their den, “if I died, do you love me enough to have me cloned? If it was you, I’d do it in a flash. Matter of fact…I did do it for you. You didn’t survive that hit-and-run.” Jason never could keep a secret.
“I know,” Kerra said as she rose from the couch and moved to the large window overlooking the city. She watched his reflection in the window as he approached with drinks in hand. You are like the reflection of the moon on water, she thought, but you are not the moon.
“I’ve already done that,” Kerra said absently to his reflection. “Twice.”
“What are you talking about?” Jason asked as he handed Kerra her drink.
She walked back to the couch and sitting, took a long pull on her martini before answering. “Remember our vacation in Mexico last Spring? Remember you got so drunk you decided you’d dive off our balcony into the hotel pool below?”
She patted the couch. He sat down beside her. “You missed,” she said flatly.
Jason shook his head. “But…”
“And two years before, when we were going to see the Cloned Stones Reunion Tour,” she interrupted. “You got in an argument with a biker in the parking lot over an empty spot. You ended up with a knife in your neck.”
Jason put his hand to his throat; there was no scar.
“Every time someone is cloned, they get a fresh health re-set. No more diabetes, no more heart disease. No more carpel tunnel, no more arthritis.” Kerra flexed her hands. “That’s how I knew I’d been cloned.”
“So if you’re a clone….and I’m a clone…what does this mean?”
Kerra squeezed his thigh affectionately. “It means welcome to a whole new world.”
by submission | May 25, 2025 | Story |
Author: Lydia Cline
He had always had a quiet appreciation for blue. Not loudly, he would never be as conformist as to declare a love for, like, the number one colour for boys and men. No – he was loud in his love for green – the thinking man’s blue. And yet, as he stared up at the sky – now entirely devoid of blue – he was overcome be melancholy. Oh … the most blue thing there is … gone forever. That day – the sun had risen, birds had tweeted- but the sky had gone.
In its place lay a reflective kaleidoscope of colour. The colours already existing in his landscape replicated up and up and up and up until your neck twists round – such is life on a spherical planet.
That morning everyone had the same conversation over coffee or wheatgrass lattes or matcha smoothies – “I thought I was tripping-“ “me too, I mean I thought – that’s it – I’ve gone crazy” “where did it go?” “Beats me”
And it was strange to think everyone on earth was going through a sudden gut punching feeling at the same time – the feeling being so sure of the next step and putting your foot out and finding just air. And you can’t blame the air or your foot or even yourself really. Just that sad feeling of knowing something has ended and there wasn’t a way of getting it back. He supposed you could call it grief.
So if you can imagine – with the whole world feeling like they had gone through an unprepared breakup… the mood was pretty bleak. Unifying – but bleak.
But what do you do when everything changes around you? I mean, the world still exists. Taxes are still due.
So he went to work. Tried not to look. It was tough.
by submission | May 24, 2025 | Story |
Author: Emily Kinsey
“Jessie! Get over here, I think I found something!”
Annoyed, Jessie said, “You always think you found something.”
“It smells good,” I offered, hoping to entice him.
It worked, because Jessie only ever cares about his stomach. He discarded his half-gnawed jerky and hobbled over to inspect my findings.
“What’d you think it is?” Jessie asked.
“It’s an animal of some kind,” I said. “You ever seen one like this?”
Jessie leaned over and sniffed the animal. It was furless and covered with a hard white outer shell. If not for the smell, I wouldn’t have been sure it was an animal. “No, never.”
“Poke it with a stick!” I suggested.
“You poke it with a stick!”
“You’re older!”
“And you’re younger,” Jessie said, “which means you have to do what I say.”
“I found it,” I argued, “which means you get first poke.”
Jessie knew he wasn’t going to win the argument anytime soon, so he plucked a stick from a nearby branch and poked the animal several times. The animal flinched and used its forepaws to protect its head.
“Still alive,” Jessie proclaimed. “It must be injured if it’s not trying to get away.”
“Nah,” I said, “I think it’s sick. It’s gotta be one of those new animals that’s been spotted lately. They’re not from here; they don’t take to our environment for too long. It’s why they’re always scurrying back to their mechanical homes.”
“Oh yeah! They caught one a couple weeks ago over at the river. It tried to get away—get this, on two legs! But old man Shepherd was too fast for it. Caught it and skinned it and revealed that juicy layer underneath. Said it was delicious.”
“So, this whole thing is its outer skeleton?”
“Think so.”
“Old man Shepherd said you could pry it off pretty easily.”
Jessie tugged on it and—plop! The skeleton ripped off to reveal the animal’s fleshy inner layer old man Shepherd carried on about.
The outer skeleton was hollow and didn’t taste like anything, so after a few exploratory gnaws, it was promptly discarded. There was a tuft of black hair at the top of the animal’s head and another small spriggy patch near its food opening. Other than that, it was hairless.
As soon as the animal’s outer skeleton came off, it was clawing at its throat and making terrible rasping sounds alerting Ma trouble was about.
She came lurching out of the ground faster than the time Jessie got stuck in the tree trying to catch blue-winged Zoster birds. Jessie and I cowered—even he and I were sometimes afraid of Ma.
Despite its frantic fumbling with its throat, the animal still flinched as it spotted Ma. I couldn’t really blame him—Ma was a sight to see.
Ma sniffed the animal and licked it in several places. She pulled at the thick material covering most of its body—the skeleton old man Shepherd warned us about. Ripping enough of the hard outer material away, Ma sunk her teeth into the animal’s side and its red lifeforce began to pool out.
The animal let out an instinctive cry and fumbled to reach its outer skeleton—its skin was now beginning to turn a reddish, purplish hue. Its attempts were so feeble I almost felt guilty swatting the hard head shell out of reach.
Finished with her inspection, Ma gave a nod and headed back to our hole. Jessie and I shared an excited smile. We both knew what it meant: the animal was Ma approved. We would be eating it for dinner.
