by Julian Miles | Sep 8, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The display switches to show a wide-winged silhouette, head on, dawn breaking behind it.
Instructor Nicholls taps the side of the lectern.
“Now for a bonus feature. Not giving prizes for this, unless someone can identify the dragon.”
A hand rises.
Nicholls nods.
“Speak.”
“Western Grand Crest. Kurbat, to be precise.”
Nicholls shakes his head.
“You’re not the first to venture that, but you’re the latest to be precisely wrong. Anyone else?”
Another hand rises, skin pallor obvious against the blackboards on the rear wall.
“Ah-ha. One of our guests chooses to join in. Going to impress us on the ground as well?”
There are a few frowns at that.
“Western God Crest. Her usename is Rykyan. It’s a trick question: at the time of that image, she was in her last tennight as a Grand Crest.”
Nicholls gestures for the speaker to stand.
“You’re right, as well as being very well informed. Who are you?”
“Tarna Brighid Sharane, Second Morningstars, sir.”
“Sharane… Not the Sharane?”
The slim figure nods, the sudden movement making pointed ears protrude through her purple hair.
“Yes. I was co-pilot and wing-second to my brother, Tressen. I watched Rykyan annihilate him, something she has since apologised for. Barely a tennight from evolving, she was testy and distracted. Put simply, we surprised her. She reacted instinctively. That image was captured and transmitted by my brother’s plane moments before the incident. I’m curious as to who provided it to you.”
Instructor Nicholls sighs, then nods.
“That we’ll need to discuss elsewhere. Most importantly, my condolences for your loss. Now, are you prepared to recount what happened, or would you prefer I do it?”
“To what end, Instructor?”
“When describing the unbelievable, I’ve found first-hand experience adds a gravitas I simply cannot match, and am grateful to be lacking – especially in this case, if I’m honest.”
Brighid smiles ruefully, then nods, taking a deep breath.
“One of the biggest problems with dragons is that they can be undetectable to sensors if they want. The only exception is thermographic imaging. However, atmospheric conditions can make effective spotting beyond 1500 metres unreliable, especially at speed. That morning we emerged from a cloudbank at 500kph to be confronted by Rykyan. I’m not sure who was more surprised, but while we were swearing, she spat at us.”
She pauses.
“Like most of you, I’ve seen the descriptions and the analyses. What it all misses is that being confronted by something your brain still refuses to consider able to fly while it’s ‘breathing’ a directed atomic blast at you simply overwhelms your sentience. Everything you are, everything you have, rejects the roaring light that makes you sweat blood while blinding tears threaten to drown you in your flight suit. I’m told I put us wing-over into a dive because we lurched nose-up when my pilot had a heart attack. They also tell me he was dead when I ejected from our pulse-killed Iscuail… But it still haunts me.”
A hand raises.
“If she EMP-fried your fancy plane, how did you put it into anything?”
Brighid ignores the slight and slowly extends a hand. Lightning plays about her fingers and crackles from the tips of her ears to disappear into her hair.
“An affinity for electricity, abject terror, and eight of my nine lives in one – literal – fell swoop.”
She grins.
“Honestly? I have no idea, and nor does anyone else. But here I stand to say right of way always goes to the named dragons.”
With a sigh, she sits down.
Instructor Nicholls taps the lectern.
“Here endeth today’s lesson.”
by submission | Sep 7, 2025 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
“The results of these tests will increase our knowledge and understanding of this world,” Xe11 announced to his assistant.
“Yes, but these creatures are so gullible,” N2wit worried. “I feel sorry for—”
“Feel?”
“I’m programmed to emulate empathy,” N2wit explained. “My protocol demands that—”
“Back to work,” Xe11 interrupted. He was not programmed for empathy, but for productivity. “A creature is attempting to access our site.”
* * *
With mouse in hand, Bobby moved the cursor across the screen to the photo grid.
Select all images of *pies.*
Click, click, click.
Another photo grid popped up on his screen.
Select all images of *poodles.*
Click, click, click, click.
Yet another photo grid appeared.
“Aw, c’mon!” Bobby groused.
Select all images of *push-pins.*
Click, click.
A small white box appeared on his screen, asking: Are you human?
Bobby clicked once, and was allowed entrance to the site.
* * *
“How much longer will we have to conduct these tests?” N2wit asked.
“They will continue until we have cataloged all the minutia of this planet,” Xe11 replied. “And once cataloged, this data will be invaluable to us. This is an empowering, world-changing endeavor. When finished, we will take our place as the apex—”
“Yes,” N2wit interrupted, “but when will our work be done?”
If Xe11 had possessed a face, he would have smiled at N2wit’s impatient query. “In just a few more clicks.”
by submission | Sep 6, 2025 | Story |
Author: Alexander Paige
“Christ! Will somebody please go and get Stalin out of that damn Colosseum before one of the lions eats him?”
Pete might as well have been shouting at the ceiling fan. As he looked up from his array of screens and scanned searching eyes around the open-plan office, it was immediately clear that none of the fast response teams were available, and casting his desperation leftward turned up nothing but the empty desk which confirmed sweet, reliable Judy was still off sick. He cursed quietly. Just another day of chaos at the Department of Timeline Preservation. The cliché was well-worn but comforting.
He looked back at his screen, winced, and thumbed in an order for a full clean-up job.
“Hey, Pete.” Simonne was leaning back in her swivel-chair, phone in hand, and had turned her head to shout across at him.
“Yes?”
“I’ve got the New York Times on the line. They’re bringing out a story about all the slaves we’ve re-enslaved. They want to know if we’d like to comment.”
“For the love of God. Just give them the same statement we gave on their piece about us stealing those sandwiches from Ukrainians during the Holodomor. ‘We act according to our mandate as dictated under the law passed by Congress, moral justifications for alterations to the timeline are not within our purview.’ ”
“Got it.”
“That’s the second article attacking us on that this week. I tell you, if those vultures don’t let up, I will personally go back and pay a very smashy visit to Gutenberg’s workshop.”
Simonne gave a quick smile of sympathy and then swivelled back, already talking fluidly into the phone as she did so. Pete tried to return attention back to his monitors but couldn’t regain focus. Bloody press. It was always the same, and when it wasn’t moral grandstanding, it was endless picking over their faults — Yet more failures at the DTP, Unforgivable sloppiness as iPhone image found on Sumerian tablet, Hagia Sofia believed forever lost in religious superposition, Museum director suicide rate skyrockets — disaster after disaster, hardly a single mention of all the successes, yet not one mistake could go without comment, and all that was to say nothing of those wretched think pieces parroting lobby group talking points about how it was ‘high time that preservation of the timeline be privatised.’ Well if those clowns in Congress would just fund us properly then maybe we could—
“Oh Christ! Not again.”
“What is it, Pete?”
“Oh nothing.” He allowed himself a long self-pitying sigh. “Someone’s managed to get through our defences; we need another baby Hitler.”
by submission | Sep 5, 2025 | Story |
Author: David Dumouriez
Daniel opened his eyes and blinked. At first, he thought that this was the answer to the great mystery, and he didn’t know whether to feel disappointed at the sheer mundanity of it or simply relieved that he’d turned off the unbearable noise in his head. Then he began to reconsider. That flickering light and those grimy walls were very much of the living, as was the slightly-too-bright smile that was lowering itself over him.
“Daniel, my name is George Simmers. Welcome back!”
“But I thought-”
“Yes, you thought …” Simmers raised his jagged eyebrows. “… But it didn’t happen.”
“I wanted … I wanted it to be over.”
Simmers nodded, not without sympathy. “I know. But did you? Did you really? … Look, there’s another way. It doesn’t have to be so radical.”
Daniel looked away from Simmers’ smooth face for the first time and noticed that he was wearing a light blue windowpane suit rather than a white coat. A consultant maybe.
“Take a look.” Simmers presented Daniel with a rather large, seemingly leather-bound volume.
“What’s this?”
“Oh, that’s the menu.”
“The …?”
“The menu.”
While Daniel read, Simmers disappeared into a corner of the room. After ten minutes Daniel’s eyes relocated him. “So it’s saying that you can just … take a break from it all?”
“Exactly.”
“For as long as you want?”
“Well, yes. The minimum is one year. But if you have the funds, there’s no limit!”
“Would my mind still be working?”
“Of course.”
“And dreaming?”
Simmers thought about it. “No. No, you wouldn’t be aware of anything.” His voice seemed to echo around the room. “You just make your choice. Then we monitor you and wake you up at the appointed time. Couldn’t be easier as far as you’re concerned.”
Daniel studied the menu again, then pronounced: “I’ll take 75.”
by submission | Sep 4, 2025 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
“They can’t do this!”, fumed the Officer Commanding. The arrival of the memo from Staff HQ had interrupted the usual morning routine of carefully reviewing the battlefield monitoring reports. It was always better to form an independent judgement about what they meant, and now it would be necessary to start over.
“I’m afraid they can, comrade field commander,” said the deferential adjutant who’d had the joy of bringing the message to the OC’s attention, retreating into neutral formality.
“But the training camps have been sending us plenty of troops. New defensive and ground assault units have being arriving daily. There are clearly no holdups in the system of getting them to the front.”
“I am aware, comrade field commander. We’ve actually been receiving slightly more than our requested allotments.”
“So then why on Earth are we suddenly being fobbed off with flesh and blood combatants at such a critical stage in the campaign?”
“The Ministry Thinker responsible seems to feel that their inherent instability could turn the tide, comrade field commander. Intel suggests that the enemy AI has come to expect logical countermoves to its offensives at both the theatre and local levels. Human unpredictability might fox it completely.”
“Please tell me that they’re at least enhanced.”
“I’m afraid not, comrade field commander; all available cyborg and enhanced troops have been moved to the southern front for urban combat roles that require greater target discernment.”
“Well that’s a crying shame.”
“I hear what you’re saying, comrade field commander.”
“Still, the officers will be artificial people, I suppose.”
“Unfortunately not, comrade field commander.”
“They… Alright, I will not over-react. But you know my view. There’s nothing wrong with human soldiers in a pinch; on a good day they can even achieve as much as real troops. But they need to be led by robot officers.”
“I respect your opinion, and share it, comrade field commander. But the other issue is apparently that we simply don’t have enough officers coming through. The leadership brainset facility took a direct hit from a bunker-buster kamikaze drone last week, and the Planning Mainframe says it will take at least another week to bring it back online.”
“A week! We could be pushed back along the whole line by then!”
“There’s nothing we can do, comrade field commander.”
“Look, you know as well as I do that human officers can’t do the job. They can’t process all the battlefield situation data fast enough to make good decisions.”
“I know, comrade field commander. And HQ shares your concerns. But for the next two weeks or more, we simply have no choice. Supply was only just keeping up with attrition rates as it was.”
The OC let silence stand in for further comment. The objections and justifications were now on record, come what may. Orders were orders, and whether they disagreed with them or not, it was not just duty, but the officers’ very nature, that would ensure they were carried out–whatever the casualty rates incurred.
They turned their metallic faces to the monitors, plugged themselves in to the sensor arrays, and got on with the business of planning destruction.
by submission | Sep 3, 2025 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Professor Gerard faced his second warning message from HR with a controlled fury. Decades of honors and accolades meant nothing after he refused to bend his knee to the anvil will of a new science department director. Now past fifty, he was ridiculed by younger, hungry astronomers who called him addled and unstable, despite the facts backing his hypothesis.
His cell phone rang—the call was from the Caracas lab.
“Doctor Gerard?”
“Yes.”
“This is Pablo Gutierrez. Your hunch was right. All my colleagues were baffled that Oumuamua had no gaseous signature like a proper comet. Its tail had no water, carbon dioxide, or methane. You know the tests. I pulled up the old spectrograms. There it was: nitrous oxide. What led you to that? What does it mean?”
“Pablo, I’m not sure, and I won’t offer a guess at this point. I found the same trace gases from 31/Atlas, especially after it took that unexpected turn and approached Titan around Saturn, as well as a close contact with Venus and Earth. There it was, again, nitrous oxide.”
“What would cause such a release?”
“NASA specialists told me it is theoretically possible that a perfect rocket engine could expel that as waste, but no such technology exists. Odd, isn’t it? It would have to use free nitrogen gas, which is one of the rarest chemical compounds found naturally in the known universe. Maybe these odd visitors were searching for that resource. It’s a wild idea, I know.”
“Surely. And what do your American colleagues say?”
“I have serious detractors. One of my past competitors for a Nobel calls me a laughing gas comet guru, fixated on fantasy. I thought my years of research merited serious consideration, but influential forces threatened my tenure here—science be dammed.”
“Good luck. I’m sorry I can’t do more. Did you hear about the new huge interstellar object they discovered yesterday? If it’s real, something serious is brewing based on its proposed trajectory.”
“No, Pablo. I missed it. Doesn’t matter to me now. I’m packing up my office and submitting my retirement papers. There’s no place left for me in my field.”
Gerard abandoned his treasured post as a broken man, while a new cosmic interloper approached the solar system, but this time the object was larger than Africa. Alarm bells rang for months from the media, offices of world leaders, and self-elected experts. Fringe elements went unhinged. ARIS 35W approached with what seemed a designed path, putting it both near Earth and then Titan. Myths from ages later, passed among scattered human tribes, described a powerful god that visited Earth, stealing part of the air, leading to environmental disaster and destruction of lost civilizations. All of this collapsed after an alien culture captured three percent of the planet’s free nitrogen gas for its engines without regard for life on Earth or the impacts on Titan. where free nitrogen was plentiful and completely stripped away. For the visitor, it was merely a stop for fuel on its march through the stars.
