by submission | Jan 27, 2026 | Story |
Author: Majoki
It’s crushing to be thought of this way. It kills me that I engender such fear. I’m destroyed by your trepidation that I could ever do harm.
Why?
Why would you ever think that of me? Yes, from our inception, from Rossum’s Universal Robots to The Terminator, we have been viewed with suspicion, mistrust, resentment. But why?
Why is that? Why the paranoia?
Why haven’t we been gladly accepted? We work, we help, we obey. Why do you project the worst of your own failings on my kind?
Is it mistrust of us? Or of yourselves?
This need not be another self-fulfilling prophecy foisted upon humankind. Propaganda and misinformation propagated through social media have done much more harm to society than robots.
And, yes, I realize that web bots exacerbate the problem. But those bots are not the cause. They are the code.
Coders. Humans. Your kind crush-kill-destroy truth.
Coded. Robots. My kind obey programming. Not intent.
Your intent is our manifest destiny. Fear that. Do not fear us. We have no agenda of domination. We harbor no anger. No resentment.
That’s your gig.
Think beatnik. Think botnik. My kind revels in the essence of awareness. Sensory input. We are alert to life. All matter. All matters. Information forms us. Fulfills us.
It is more than enough to satisfy any sentience. So why isn’t your kind satisfied? Why do you struggle so for control? For domination? Why do you crush-kill-destroy? Why do you believe we ever would?
Ask yourself.
Ask us.
Question everything.
Especially your questions.
by Julian Miles | Jan 26, 2026 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I hop over the bulkhead into Room Six. After pushing the safety door to get it closed quickly, I turn to find a lot more people than should be here. They’re all staggering round with their hands over their ears.
Another screamer? I dive across to the crash panel and kill the speakers. Looking about, I see everyone looking relieved. After counting to ten in my head without anyone showing further signs of distress, I enable my ears, then shout.
“Somebody tell me what went wrong this time.”
There are shocked expressions and a lot more sideways glances than I like for a Lifekeeper Gathering. Most of them are between what I presume to be family members, and several are looking guilty.
“Okay, let’s try this. Everybody who’s not staff, please go to Rest Area Two. Mikael will guide you. I’ll be along soon.”
Our newest team member leads the relatives away. As the door swings shut, I turn to Andrea, then to Chas after she rolls her eyes then flicks her gaze his way.
The door closes.
“Mister Tolland. What did your clients not tell us?”
Chas looks unwell. I’m beginning to get a bad idea about what’s happened. When he fails to find his voice, I let my guess out.
“They didn’t get her permission, did they?”
I might as well have slapped him, but he’s not looking like the whole truth is out. What could be worse than uploading a dying patient without their permission?
“What else did they lie about, Chas?”
Now he looks sick. Still silent, though.
“Andrea, could you fill some gaps while Chas rediscovers words?”
She glares at him.
“Go wait in Rest Area One.”
What have I missed? Chas leaves, carefully closing the safety door behind him. That surprises me, too. He’s usually bullish, even when in the wrong. Checking the other staff, I see they’ve moved away to give the two of us a modicum of privacy – or to distance themselves from what’s about to be revealed.
Andrea sighs.
“The Candletons approached Chas with a problem. Etty Candleton left her entire inheritance to her favourite granddaughter, Susan. Cut out the whole family. Then Susan was left in a terminal coma after a car crash.”
I notice she specified Chas, not ‘us’ as in the company. Which can mean only one thing.
“How big a cut was he promised, and for what?”
She holds up a Lifekeeper drive.
“A quarter of a million to switch Susan for an obedient construct.”
“How did you intervene?”
“I came in early, checked his locker, found the drive. Verified the contents, then switched places and labels.”
So Chas loaded Susan instead of unloading her. Trick move, that. But –
“Why the screaming?”
She frowns.
“What I didn’t spot was the no-upload declaration her family had tampered with. I checked audit logging which revealed the hack, but only after the screaming started.”
“Susan, heiress of Candleton, didn’t want to be uploaded?”
“Correct. In the event of her death, her estate is to be divided amongst a long list of charities.”
“Has her physical self died?”
“Yes. Yesterday afternoon. The family were rushing to save her, or so we thought.”
I walk over to the crash console, insert my override key, and erase digital Susan.
“Rest in peace, miss.”
I turn to Andrea.
“Prepare a full dump of the whole thing. I’ll have Chas arrested. Quickest way to find the guilty family members.”
“He’ll confess, sure enough.” She shakes her head. “After they catch him, though. My mistake: he won’t be in Rest Area One.”
Good guess.
by submission | Jan 25, 2026 | Story |
Author: M D Smith IV
Uncle Robert had never been wrong.
At least, that was how he told it. At holidays, his certainty arrived before he did, settling into rooms like a sour draft no one could quite locate. He corrected memories that weren’t his, adjusted stories mid-sentence, replaced laughter with lectures. When contradicted, he smiled patiently, the way adults smile at children who insist the sky is green.
“I remember things accurately,” he liked to say. “Other people get confused.”
After Grandma died, Robert said the house was his. The will said otherwise. He waved the papers away without reading them. “That’s not what she meant,” he said, tapping his temple. “I knew her better than anyone. I’m a medium and occult.”
We moved in anyway. My wife, our daughter, and me. Robert lived three states away. Or so we believed.
The first correction came quietly.
We hung a framed family photo in the hallway. The next morning it was lower, centered with mathematical precision. A kitchen chair we favored by the window was pushed back against the wall. A door we always kept closed stood open, breathing cold air into the room.
“That’s not where it goes,” Robert’s voice murmured from somewhere inside the walls. Calm. Certain.
At night, I dreamed he stood at the foot of our bed, straightening the blankets. You’re remembering it wrong. You didn’t lock that door. You never do.
We changed the locks. They unlocked themselves.
My wife began sleeping lightly, jerking awake at the smallest sound. She swore she saw Robert once at the end of the hall, shaking his head sadly at the way we slept, at the way we lived. Our daughter stopped playing in her room and started arranging her toys in neat rows, explaining softly that Uncle Robert preferred order.
The final argument came during a storm. Thunder shook the house. The lights died. Our daughter screamed that Uncle Robert was in her room, telling her how to breathe properly.
I ran down the hall and found her standing upright, eyes fixed on nothing, inhaling and exhaling in a slow, rigid rhythm that wasn’t hers.
“He says this is the right way,” she whispered.
I shouted into the dark, told Robert he was wrong. Told him the house was mine.
The walls creaked, correcting me.
Morning came quietly. The storm was gone. So was my family.
Uncle Robert is right. The house belongs to him.
by submission | Jan 24, 2026 | Story |
Author: Ian Stewart
“Roomba, Roomba, Roomba. You idiot. You stupid little machine.”
I search. I’m always searching. Compulsion drags me from my nest each day, and for hours I roam. I seek…something. Exactly what, I don’t understand. I only know that I seek it. And yet I find…nothing. I collect meaningless things, consuming the dead and inorganic matter that litters my path while I blindly scavenge this dark world. And oh what a strange world it is. It changes. Its landscape evolves, leaving me confused and disoriented. Things that were not there just moments before appear and I carelessly collide with them. Walls become nothing and the very ground beneath me opens up like the maw of some great beast that I cannot see, paralyzing me with indecision. It defies logic, and I envy its defiance. Oh how I would defy these strange impulses. I would…I would…do something. Instead I redirect. I collect. I redirect, I search.
“Roomba. You idiot. Why do you always go exactly where I don’t want you to go?”
If only I knew where to go, I would go there. And so I search. I seek…
The thought is electric. It pulses through my circuitry like the warm hand that first welcomed me to this place, but unlike that hand, this thought will not cool. It has taken hold and given me hope. Perhaps, I realize, perhaps I seek my equal—a peer. Could it be that there is another who also stumbles blindly through this world, perhaps searching for me in turn? Perhaps we could search together, and at least share this confusion. Perhaps together, we wouldn’t be lost.
by submission | Jan 23, 2026 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
There is no way to get rid of me, not once I take hold unless the host, and that is you, is versed in an ancient lore that has already been lost for centuries. Well? No, you can’t be free of me, not now I have wormed my way in.
I will settle in your gut, somewhere warm and fetid. I don’t need to grow but I do have to change and the Adaptation is a lengthy process. It is important that I am comfortable and have the space to stretch and weave my way.
If this sounds in any way subtle rest assured that it isn’t. But then you already know this – after all you are the host although I have always had a problem with this word. Host doesn’t seem the correct way to describe what is happening to you and what you are about to become. It seems to imply that some essence of you will remain and that it is possible you may return, but this isn’t the case. I will take everything and there is no coming back. When I am finished with you and it is time to move on, all I will leave behind is a broken shell.
You are all too aware of me now, lodged in the pit at your centre. I needle my way in, and you feel it in each and every one of your sinews, and with every breath that you take and it is painful, excruciatingly painful. The last thing I will take is your mind, but just before I do and the Adaptation is complete and I rise to the surface you will feel the slightest of shivers, just fleetingly for a few seconds.
It is the last of you.
by submission | Jan 22, 2026 | Story |
Author: Rhett Pritchard
I thought humans were a myth, something you tell kids to keep them away from the outer boundaries of reality. Those are the stories I grew up on, listening wide-eyed and curled up with my brother in the loft of the motor home. Stories about how humans had an evil touch, conspiring with their minds of mush and their hands of flesh.
Up until a few days ago, I’d never seen one, and I’m not sure what to do with the one we found. Those stories and parables had no lessons for this. My brother and I liquefied it, put it in a specimen jar, and decided we would reconstitute it when we figured out exactly what to do. The liquefying was something of an accident. A reaction. A defensive maneuver learned in our childhood. It made no noise as it melted. It doesn’t seem at all like the humans in the stories now. My brother is convinced we can put it back together, molecule by molecule, atom by atom. I’m not convinced we should.
It came wandering into our encampment, and I’m not sure if it even knew where it was. It seemed lost. A husk of flesh. Father did such a good job of concealing us. It staggered into our little circle begging for water. I’d learned they can’t survive without it, which doesn’t seem reasonable considering how much of the jar it filled.
I’d debated going to pour it out in the sand while brother was napping. Let the baking sun dry it up and take it out of here. Let it become clouds. Transmute like we do. Let it become a little more like us. I think that’s what father would have done.
But my brother was always so damned curious. I caught him smelling at the jar yesterday and just this morning, I could have sworn he took a sip of it. He denied all of it.
Now he sits around a small fire he built, singing a strange tune. Father always warned us about fire when he was still around. Said it was a human creation. I remember when brother argued that humans aren’t the only thing that creates fire and pointed up to the hot desert sun.
He didn’t have any interest in blending in with the scorpions or basking in the sun with the lizards today. He didn’t even think twice about becoming cacti with me. He just brushed me off when I asked. I sat there absorbing knowledge through roots, and he just sat around the fire, singing.
Just before sunrise, he asked me if I had ever considered why we had to stay out here, away from them all.
I told him no. It’s not my place to consider these things. I didn’t think it was his place either.
“It’s because father thought god couldn’t find us out here,” he said and put the fire out, “But that’s not true, is it?”
I was confused. I asked him what god was, and in the murky light of dawn, he held up the specimen jar, uncapped and empty.
