by submission | Jun 18, 2025 | Story |
Author: Sasha Kasper
As the blaring siren assaults my eardrums, it becomes increasingly harder to deny my rapid descent. I float directionless through the cockpit. Up, down, left, right, have lost all meaning. The notion of gravity seems to me a cruel joke, of which the punchline will be my demise.
The tempered glass of the porthole window separates me from certain death by either asphyxiation or incineration. It also allows me to see the beautiful picture I am painting in the sky with my last moments.
Streaks of scarlet lick the side of the ship, fluttering like ribbons as I fall further into the atmosphere. The hull bends and breaks at odd angles, creating a cutting-edge abstract sculpture. The ephemeral beauty is tantalizing, yet does nothing to stop my transition from the inky blackness of space towards unforgiving terra firma.
When I was a boy, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut. My father constructed a rocket of cardboard boxes and sheet metal in the backyard, and every day held a new planet to discover. Nestled under the comforting shade of our weeping willow tree, I could go to Mars, Venus or Jupiter, and still be back in time for dinner.
In my teenage years we packed up and moved to a more urban environment. Our house was sold to an expanding corporation and we took the profits without looking back. The fates of my rocket and willow tree are unclear, but a grainy recollection of the solace they provided me is permanently fixed in my mind.
The siren suddenly ceases as the power finally gives out. I don’t know which was worse, the urgency of the alert or the deadly silence it’s been replaced by. At least with a siren one feels spurred into action, that there must be something that can be done to prevent disaster. Silence is far less forgiving. All that is left to do is accept fate, or reject it right to the explosive end. I choose to enjoy the ride rather than fight it. It’s a beautiful way down to the planet I love.
Birds flutter and entwine as they hop from branch to branch on a warm summer day. Fountains spray their refreshing mist, filling a basin for children to race their balsam sailboats in. Elderly couples recline with visors, basking in the sunlight and savoring their last stage of life. I intend to do just the same.
If any of them chance to look to the stars, they’ll see me writing my final poem across the heavens.
Myself, I’ve grown tired of the stars. I look down, through the porthole, to the luscious planet coming up to embrace me in her arms. I see a bed of wheatgrass flowing wistfully in a vibrant field, inviting me to take my final slumber among its proud stalks.
The fire begins to breach the hull. I feel myself fading, the smoke mounting to my head. Just before I lose consciousness I could swear that I spy scrap metal glinting from a clearing in the field. My eyelids droop woozily, and in my last moment of clarity I see the weeping willow tree majestically swaying, using its tendrils to guard the little tin rocketeer throughout his adventures through the cosmos.
by submission | Jun 17, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
You’re in your pod and Qwee hides your stylus as a joke. You smack Qwee because there is no other response. Qwee loves it and moves on to hide another podmate’s stylus while you flag the incident with the podmaster. Just another day in the pod.
While swooshing home in the late diurnal warmth, Calpra convinces you to take a detour to the muffitti that’s just opened and you enjoy a very chill taeypop. So sweet, so lovely. You and Calpra sit under the towering susumos, their fragrance so tantalizing you want to climb one and take a bite. You tell Calpra that and you zozz together so hard that half your taeypop falls on the ground and a baby kekaltok darts out from the ori and tries to scoop it up with six wobbly limbs.
You and Calpra zozz harder and you want this time to never end. But the redness is deepening and you have podwork to complete. You nuzzle a goodbye to Calpra and swoosh home.
At mealtime, you want to tell your tssiss about your day, but their talk is all about the Yyesghi. You are tired of all their hushed and serious and anxious talk about the Yyesghi. You think Qwee is more troublesome than the Yyesghi will ever be to you, so you go off to finish your podwork.
Much later, as you are just entering fugue, your tssiss check on you. They haven’t checked on you in a long time. You think it is strange, yet endearing.
Deep in fugue, you experience secondsight. It is unsettling. Qwee is smoldering. Calpra is screaming. Your tssiss are fleeing from an inferno raging in the susumos. It is mayhem. Until you realize, it is the Yyesghi. They are burning everything with their flashers.
Kekaltoks flushed from the ori are being flattened by the invading Yyesghi, though a baby kelkatok just like the one that grabbed your fallen taeypop is not crushed. A Ysesghi picks up the trembling kelkatok and seems to offer it to you. This frightens you more than anything. Still, you take the little creature.
The Yyesghi soldier looks to you and then the kekaltok. You know what the Yesghi wants you to do. You know what is coming. Secondsight is not the future, it is not written. But this is. You clutch the kekaltok harder and harder and harder until the grim understanding of what war expects of you.
Secondsight leaves you. There is a terrible stillness. The moment before this day begins and peace ends.
by Julian Miles | Jun 16, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The fizzing sound stops as the skies turn from vibrant blue to dull purple. A golden sun sinks from view on the horizon.
“The sunset always takes my breath away.”
To be correct, the lack of heat excitation causes the Moatalbana moss to stop emitting oxygen. But the play on words is amusing.
Hanna punches my shoulder, then hands me a breather.
“Good joke. Made me smile.”
“Thanks.”
I pull the straps into place and take that first wonderful hit of full-oxy air. Every night it’s the same. Says a lot about the excitement levels of my days, but I’m here to observe, not become a viral sensation.
Settling next to me, Hanna points to the thin yellow line that’s appeared along the horizon line with the departure of the sun.
“Okay, describe that to me.”
I think I have the words.
“Algae growing on mats of floating seaweed. It fluoresces briefly with the departure of the sun. There’s a study underway to find if it emits or attracts anything.”
We never found that out, either.
“How’s the study going?”
I glance sideways and grin.
“Not thrilling.”
She chuckles briefly, then sighs.
“Story of this planet.”
Ontabalmy is a tired world. A few million years older than Earth, it used to host an advanced technological culture, thousands of years ago. They even looked like humans: news that stunned everyone across human-inhabited space. Which isn’t a big area, to be fair. Three planets, four if Ontabalmy is approved for colonisation.
“It’s a truth. This place is peaceful and benign.”
“Apart from humans being unable to breath after dark?”
“Largely benign, then. Certainly better than Mars. Better sunsets, too.”
She twists to look at me in surprise.
“How do you know that?.”
I smile. I don’t, but –
“An interstellar being of mystery, me.”
I see the edges of teeth in the wide grin behind her faceplate. Her eyes flash with amusement.
“You’re too charming to be real. Explorers are independent types. Rough and ready. Direct and devoid of whimsy.”
“There’s nothing that indicates we can’t also be well mannered.”
There’s a pause. Her expression turns thoughtful.
“True, but being convivial could encourage proximity. We’re still unclear on deeper social mores and mating behaviours.”
I rest a hand on her shoulder.
“That’s our mistake. They’re not all well-balanced, socially adept gregarians. Most of them are anxious, awkward, and stressed. They’re all making it up as they go along, trying to compensate for lives lived in virtual isolation due to their society’s dependence on digital interaction. If we become smooth-talking, socially competent caricatures, we’ll stand out more, not less. Clumsy and unsure, hesitant and slow to trust. That’s the way we need to be.”
She leans in until her mask rests against mine.
“You mean we’re alright as we are?”
I’d nod, but that would break the moment.
“We are. We’re humans, now.”
She sighs.
“Not the last of the Ontabalmins.”
I pause, then laugh softly.
“There’s your proof. You said ‘Ontabalmins’, not ‘Corodatillu’.”
She leans back.
“Is this really it? After four thousand years, we’re awake?”
“Briefly. It’s not like we can do anything except live a while, give a little, then die out. The chamber survival rate was worse than predicted.”
Hanna takes my hand.
“Two out of twenty thousand pairs? I’d say that’s a catastrophe that claimed its creators, not ‘worse than predicted’.” She stops, then smiles. “But… A second life where we know each other from the beginning. I’ll take it, no matter how short.”
I place my other hand over hers.
“Let’s live. Anything else is a bonus.”
by submission | Jun 15, 2025 | Story |
Author: Rachel Sievers
The strangeness of the moment could not be understated; the baby had been born with ten fingers and ten toes. The room was held in complete silence as everyone held their words in and the seconds ticked by. Then the baby’s screams filled the air and the silence was destroyed and the cries and caused a catalyst of movement in the room.
The doctors and nurses moved in quick succession as each tried to do something for the screaming baby and still not touch it. The new mother and father moved their heads so they could see what was going on as they exchanged worried glances. It was clear to everyone that there was no leadership or progress being made by any of the moving pieces.
The slamming of the doors drew everyone’s attention in the birthing suite and in came a team of six men. They were neither in civilian clothes or hospital uniforms and consisted of suites of black outer jackets and white button ups that covered them from tops to bottoms. Their eyes were covered in black glasses and atop their heads were matching fedoras.
“Who is in charge here?” The front man asked, reaching into his suit jacket with his foremost part. When no one replied to his question he drew his attention from his pocket where he took out a white piece of paper, and repeated his question, “I asked who is in charge here.”
Everyone looked around until a small doctor stepped forward. He held, in two of his parts, the tools of his trade, shaking with fear. Of the men or fear of the child, one could not know. “I am the head doctor,” he said but his voice was wobbled and full of unsure hesitation.
The suited man turned from the tense doctor to the couple on the bed, “are you the parents?” The couple nodded in unison. The baby still screamed in the corner frantically moving its useless two arms and two feet. The ten fingers and ten toes stood out as abominations on the ends of the four limbs.
The suited man nodded and then looked down at the paper he held. “In accordance with statute four section thirty-three we hereby take over jurisdiction of this hospital room.” There was an obvious sigh of relief from the hospital staff.
The parents of the crying child were still wide eyed as the man continued, “in accordance with the great book of Tritiya the abomination will be sent to the work camps to live out the remainder of its days serving in its limited ways.” Everyone, including the parents, in the room sighed in relief as the man read out this statement. He paused for a moment and nodded to one of the men next to him who grabbed a white sack and walked to the crying infant. Using large tongs, he lifted the baby and placed it into the white sack. Again, the room was notably relaxed. The baby still cried but not being able to see it seemed to put everyone at ease.
“Furthermore, in acting in good faith we give this couple the option to break their bond or to be sterilized so that no more abominations will be produced in their union.” Here the man in the suit looked at the couple who looked at each other.
A moment of understanding passed between them and then, “we would like to break our bond.”
The man nodded and then waved a man over who produced a tablet that both parents quickly tapped out a few buttons. “This completes our business. Any questions or concerns?”
No one spoke as the man looked at everyone in the small birthing room. He nodded and turned on his heel and marched out the room carrying the crying sack of white.
by submission | Jun 14, 2025 | Story |
Author: Jeff Kennedy
The first few days on a new starship are the worst. The gravity’s turned up a skosh higher than you’re used to. The hot, caffeinated, morning beverage (it’s never coffee) is mauve and smells like wet dog. The bathroom facilities don’t quite fit your particular species and the sonic shower controls are so complicated that you end up dirtier than when you started. After a few tours, you get used to making adjustments.
This rotation was no different. After his second dinner on-board, George asked about the evening meal’s main dish: an “interesting” stew filled with root vegetables and bits of oddly textured meat. There was a brief pause before the Bolons stood in unison and started a series of deep sobbing toasts to “the noble sacrifice of Brother Bob”. Thus began a round of official union-sanctioned mourning that left the ship at a standstill for three days.
This did not endear George to First Officer Boardman, the no-nonsense, zero-tolerance, pain-in-the-ass shift commander. George had never met Boardman face to face (not particularly unusual on a ship this size), but Boardman nevertheless made it very clear that he was not happy with George’s performance. Every morning, he filled George’s in-box with blistering emails and his task pad with mindless insulting jobs. Why did George need to count the blue shipping containers in storage bay three times last Tuesday? How many times do you need to mop down a holodeck before you finally ban certain parties from engaging in certain activities?
George decided it would be best if he just kept quiet and diligently worked the duty list each day, so he smiled and did just that, finishing tasks in record time, collecting missives of praise and support from the officers around him, but the nasty emails and crap job assignments kept coming. It felt odd to have an invisible nemesis.
Thursday morning, George stepped out of the shower, dropped his towel into the bin, and read his assignments from a task pad propped up on the bathroom vanity. Along with the usual mundane maintenance tasks (replace fuse in deck 5 medical scanner, validate deck 12 storage manifest, reboot deck 10 meal printer) was an oddity.
“Feed the cat. Deck 17. Cabin 23.”
George sighed and started the long trek down to deck 17.
When George arrived, he found the cabin door locked so he had to use his security key to get in. A gray tabby cat snoozed on the bunk.
“Rough life,” George muttered under his breath.
He rummaged through the junk on the desk, found a tin of cat food, and emptied it into a cheap metal bowl. The cat yawned, stretched, and rolled over. Mildly annoyed, George dropped the bowl to the floor with a loud clang.
The startled cat jumped to its feet and spoke in a commanding vibrato.
“What the hell are you doing in here!?”
The cat stood up on its back legs and smashed a button on the cabin control panel with a front paw.
“Security! This is the captain. There’s an intruder in my cabin. Send a team immediately.”
There was a brief kerfuffle in the hallway before two armed officers shoved the door open and burst into the captain’s cabin. The first officer in, leveled a charge pistol at George’s chest.
It was going to be a long trip. George could see a lot of litter box duty in his future.
by submission | Jun 13, 2025 | Story |
Author: Bill Cox
In the summer of 1950, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in North America, physicist Enrico Fermi posed a simple but profound question to his colleagues – “Where is everyone?”
If life was abundant in the universe and often gave rise to intelligence, then, given the age of the universe, our world should already have been visited by alien life. Why weren’t they here?
In the summer of 2025, seventy-five years later, his question is answered. A small vessel arrives in Earth orbit, observed by the missile detection systems of the major powers. While they are pondering how to respond, the vessel initiates a broadcast that is heard around the Earth in all its many languages.
“People of Earth. Hello. We are the creators of your universe, conscious beings whose true home is the endless eternity that exists outside of space and time.
We built this universe to answer a question, to provide us with knowledge that did not already exist within the totality of us. We inhabit the eternal, timeless vastness outwith your universe, where there is no prospect of change. How could we add to the sum of our knowledge, without there being a ‘before’ that understanding and an ‘after’? Constructing a universe where time flows and entering that universe afforded us that ability.
We built spacetime from strings of fundamental uncertainty, whose vibrations spawned the particles and forces that make up all you see. Such beautiful music we made, an orchestra of creation, your cosmos our symphony.
Yet, although we are beings with power beyond your understanding, we are not infallible. In every system, there is the unforeseen, the ghost in the machine. In our creation, this was the flaw, an off-key note, at first little noticed in the background harmony. However, this discordant element grew in strength and potency. If left unchecked, it threatens to corrupt the consonance of our magnificent construction, poisoning the knowledge that we seek to add to ourselves.
The irony is that this defect is an echo of our own greatest attribute; consciousness! It infects the fabric of spacetime, moving through galaxies and superclusters, sparking self-awareness in countless worlds. Granted, these consciousnesses are poor reflections of our own, yet, over the ten trillion years of our great project, they will threaten the balance of our magnificent construct.
Thus we, the architects of the universe, are here today to remove the flaw from your world. Embedded as it is in life, we must destroy all biology on your planet. You may think us unfeeling, but we take no joy in your extinction. This telepathic message is a gift of understanding from all of us to all of you, that you may grasp your true place in the nature of things and the absolute necessity of us removing the infection of your consciousness from this universe.
Your deaths will help us restore harmony to our grand composition. In oblivion, you will allow splendour. At time’s end, our goals having been achieved, we will sing a lament in your memory, as we ascend once more into infinite eternity.”
As the message ended, the vessel grew in brightness. The wormhole at its centre opened, the other end being tethered inside a pulsar, thousands of light years away. The hard radiation thus released, over the course of a number of days, completely sterilised the Earth of all life. Enrico Fermi’s question, asked seventy-five years previously, was finally answered. Alas, a lifeless planet Earth joined all those other worlds where, the question having been asked, an answer was given with merciless efficiency.
