by submission | Jul 29, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Based on the most current cosmological evidence, the known universe is less than 5% ordinary matter, all the crap we can see and touch.”
“That’s still a lot of crap.” Grunden grinned. He always grinned.
Finnhil waved him off. “That’s nothing. We’re after paydirt, the thing that makes up over two-thirds of reality.”
Grunden’s eyes widened. “Porn?”
“No. That’s just the Internet. I’m talking about dark energy.”
Finnhil waited for Grunden’s backtalk. None came. He sighed. “Really? You have nothing to say to that. We’re on the verge of testing one of the most revolutionary ideas in scientific history, and now you have nothing to say?”
“Sorry. I was passing gas.”
“You are a living metaphor, Grunden. A living metaphor, but I need your pissant help today to film this. Get your phone out.”
Ever-grinning, Grunden did and started recording.
Finnhil cleared his throat. “Greetings. I’m James Monroe Finnhil. This day, I’ll achieve a breakthrough that will change the way we think about humanity and our supreme role in the universe.”
Gesturing with spidery hands, Finnhil motioned to the apparatus on the table before him. “Through years of experimentation, I believe I’ve determined the nature of dark energy, the force that drives all matter, seen and unseen, in the cosmos. My theory is simple but sublime: dark energy is intelligence. It is the source not of life, but of consciousness. Thought is literally a motive force.”
With forced flourish, Finnhil picked up a glittering form from the table that could reasonably be described as Buck Roger’s hairnet. Beaming with pride, he placed the glittering, filament-laced thing on his narrow head.
Grunden sniggered.
“Quiet you!” Finnhil shushed. “We’ll edit that out. No more interruptions. No more.”
“Nevermore.” Grunden grinned.
“Enough already.” Finnhil regathered himself. “Thought is a motive force. Dark energy is its quintessence, the moduli, the scalar fields that result. Viewed through this lens both the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox coalesce into what I call Finnhil’s Final Solution.”
Grunden sniggered again, but Finnhil charged on. “The proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, the signs of their communicating civilizations, is all around us. We are that proof. The concept of dark energy only exists because of thought and reason. It is a product of intelligence. Cosmological expansion is really a factor of the growth of sentience, of intelligence, of reason in our inter-galactic brethren.”
Finnhil spread his hands expansively. “For those paying close attention, we were alerted to thought as motive force over a hundred years ago. Like many break-through discoveries, mine stands on the shoulder of giants. None greater than Edgar Rice Burroughs. He alone understood the relationship between dark energy and intelligence. Through his iconic John Carter he showed us the way to tap into the invisible forces that could propel us to faraway worlds. Burroughs was the one who sussed this truth for humanity.”
Finnhil’s spindly fingers danced about his head. “The device I’m wearing is wirelessly connected to an apparatus I call the Perturbational Complex Engine. In essence it is a wave generator that reinforces neural activity. I am about to use it to focus on a single thought, a bold concept, that will send me to Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom. That is fitting. The imaginative pioneer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, paved the way, and now I will definitively demonstrate through proof of concept that concept is proof.”
Finnhil pushed a series of blinking buttons on the Perturbational Complex Engine. The device hummed and the delicate filaments of his gossamer headdress glowed brightly. “Humanity may not be, but I am ready.”
Nothing happened until Finnhil’s face contorted in ecstasy or agony or both. And Grunden grinned a last time. “Nevermore.”
At the site that had been the residence of J. M. Finnhil, a firefighter digging through the largely charred, shredded and unrecognizable remnants of the house, discovered a badly damaged cell phone. No human remains were recovered.
After weeks of working with the shattered phone, all the forensic technicians could extract was a garbled video with only two clear but disjointed words: proof …. nevermore.
by Julian Miles | Jul 28, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Go left. Left! Between the trees.”
“Rule nineteen: do not follow a road.”
“Not the gap on the right. The gap on the left. Left!”
Tersi rests a hand on my shoulder and cuts into my comms.
“Check definition: road. Query application of rule. Go left.”
“Revision: indicated route is not in contravention.”
I watch the view shift until rows of trunks are hurtling past on either side. Muting the line, I pat their hand.
“I don’t know how you do it. Every day I hate the asshat who mandated A.I. for frontline ops.”
“I’m immune. Spend four years seconded from tactical to A.I. training and command clarification becomes second nature.”
“Must make it easier.”
They pat me on the head.
“Well, dealing with the A.I. is.”
“Set myself up for that.”
“True. Right, the swarm are approaching the first marker. What’s on the menu?”
I check my defensive breakdown.
“We’ve got Taranis engaging the top cover, so we’re up against gatling cannon, rapid-fire missile batteries, and net casters. Plus the usual hawks.”
They slap my head.
“Wired trees!”
“Altitude plus twenty.”
I see the view rise. The makeshift wall of cable-strung branches passes below.
“Mission default.”
The view drops again. My display lights with red and blue markers.
“Red Flight engage. Blue flight engage. Green flight engage.”
Tersi crouches down by me.
“Green flight already?”
“They’re looking to drive us down to the gatlings. Standard tactic is to accelerate under the hawks and missiles.”
“So green flight are a pre-emptive response. When the gatlings pop their hatches…”
“They’ll be ready.”
“What are you payload wings?”
“Yellow flight: double stack of Darts. Standard 20-kilo HE. One in four is split-load with incendiary. One in ten has special ordnance instead.”
“Which we’re not mentioning. Out of curiosity, though: razors or pellets?”
“Duriken.”
“They went ahead with those? All hell will break loose when warfare monitors find out.”
“There’s a Red Wolf flight in a holding pattern, ready for clear up.”
“How exactly do you ‘clear up’ depleted uranium using flyers?”
“Seeding strike on their munitions piles.”
“So it’s not our depleted uranium mines they’ll find. The enemy was planning a war crime. Lucky we stalled it, etcetera. Good headlines, pats on the back all round.”
“You got the whole thing in one. I had to explain it some.”
“Which is why you run them and not the other way round.”
I check the statuses.
“We’re through. Took down eight out of ten of theirs, lost half of ours. You want to add the rest to the delivery or loop them back?”
“That doubles the strike size. Add them.”
“All flights go yellow.”
An extra hundred lights turn yellow. I watch views shift as they join the strike formations.
“Looking good.”
All the views go dazzlingly bright, then blink out.
Tersi leans forward.
“Surely that’s too soon.”
They’re not wrong. I bring up the Red Wolf station scans: a collage built from views when each is pointing the right way.
Flames. A sea of flames. I call for statuses. Nothing.
Tersi flicks her comms to ‘all’.
“This is Home Flight. Op Abort. If you’ve got anything, bring it back.”
They glance at me.
“I’d heard about a low flying drone response based on a banned World War One weapon. A Livens Flame Projector. It was banned for being too horrific. Fired a hundred-metre cone of napalm.”
I watch the flames.
“Mounted in towers, two hundred metre range, pitched towards the right altitude. No humans to incinerate.”
I glance at Tersi.
“The atrocities restart here.”
She frowns.
“True. No way they’ll hold back.”
by submission | Jul 27, 2025 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
It was our usually bad-tempered neighbour Mr Winkelmann who first told us we could get ‘special benefits’ if we registered in person at the Central Bureau in Lapis. Indigo’s government knew we spent a lot on the exoskeletal clothing and bone-strengthening drugs we needed to help us deal with the gravity, and wanted to help. Later, on the etherwave, the President said that if we signed up, the government would guarantee better jobs, despite all the bad things people say about us. Mamma thought this was great. Pappa said nothing, but the lines in his face seemed deeper, somehow. I was just excited that we’d get to make a trip to the capital.
When we got there the following weekend, Central Plaza was filled with other Latecomers – people who’d arrived in the last Wave from Earth, like Mamma and Pappa, or their children, like me. There were lots of Security Bots, too, but nobody was causing trouble. We queued in the sunshine for hours, under a sky the glorious colour that gave our planet its name, but eventually we got to the scanning booths and had our DNA taken “to avoid fraud”, whatever that meant. Nobody really told us anything; when we tried asking, one of the uniformed scanner operators laughed and said “don’t worry, things will start happening soon”. Mamma was excited to find out what, but Pappa looked skeptical.
That night, there was another broadcast. The President was delighted that so many people had come forward. To save money, Latecomer support gear would now only be available from the State, so anyone who hadn’t registered should do so quickly, or they’d not be able to get anything. “I don’t like this,” muttered Pappa, but Mamma said being efficient was important.
A few days later we heard that all Latecomers were going to be moved to Azure, the second continent, to a brand new colony! We’d get proper houses, and wouldn’t have to worry about being bullied or discriminated against! We were told to come to the Spaceport, with two bags each; everything else would be shipped later. Mamma was delighted – a new home instead of our cramped apartment! Pappa just looked sad.
On Departure Day we were there as instructed. Mamma was goggling: “They’re taking us in style,” she said, “that’s a space-capable liner!”. Our bags were taken by some uniformed attendants, but when we got on board it was nothing like I expected: no cabins, just big dormitories with bunks set into the bulkheads, three-high from floor to ceiling. We managed to get a vertical for ourselves, and I got the top bed! Mamma said not to worry, it was only a short ride. Pappa’s face was grey, and he stayed silent, but I didn’t understand why – even if it was uncomfortable, this was an adventure!
But we didn’t get taken to Azure after all. Instead we were onboard for weeks, and then found ourselves deposited at a bleak landing pad on Earth. The Terran Government wasn’t expecting us, and made a big fuss, but Indigo just stopped talking to them. We never got out baggage back, and now we’re living in a tent in a field while things get worked out. The Sun here’s the wrong colour – big and orange instead of small and blue – and the sky just isn’t right, but I guess we’ll get used to it. It looks like we’ll have to.
“What do we do now?” asked Mamma the night after we arrived. “Start again,” replied Pappa, tiredly; but for the first time in a long while, he was smiling.
by submission | Jul 26, 2025 | Story |
Author: Don Nigroni
“Thoughts can’t die or fade away,” my little brother, Arthur, told me two months ago.
He was an adorable bald baby who grew into a self-taught bald polymath.
I replied, “So, what if thoughts do spend eternity in the thought-ether?”
“If someone could access them then he could find buried treasure, solve unsolved crimes and know our enemies’ ultra-secret schemes. He’d be rich, famous and powerful!”
“But how could anyone ever enter into that domain?”
“That’s easy. Whenever we think, we’re there. But wandering freely about and sorting through the endless mass of junk to find the gems, well, that’s the hard part. However, I know that it can be done.”
I was skeptical and said, “I double dare you to prove it.”
He asked me what I would need to become a believer.
I paused and, after running my hand through my hair, said, “I’ll bury a penny somewhere and you return it to me.”
It was a 1998 Lincoln cent, and that night I buried it an inch in the ground at the library. Early next morning, Arthur stopped by my house and returned my penny. He also bragged that he could find Cleopatra’s tomb.
“But you don’t speak Egyptian,” I said.
“First,” he explained, “Cleopatra was an ethnic Macedonian Greek who spoke many languages, but her first language was Greek. And second, the thought-ether is full of thoughts, not words.”
I soon learned Arthur was using an EV fast charging station to increase the intensity of the electricity in his brain. And he did quickly become phenomenally rich, famous and powerful.
I was confident that he would ensure that I got rich too. But that was until today when, at our mother’s house, he abruptly remarked, “Yesterday, I stumbled upon your thoughts about me.”
So what, sibling rivalry is normal and natural I foolishly thought.
by submission | Jul 25, 2025 | Story |
Author: Sarah Goodman
One unblemished red apple. I passed it along the conveyor belt. Swoosh. One green pear. Its surface was a little rough, but it was decent. Swoosh. Another apple, but this one had a bruise on its side. A horn blared. A door opened, and I slid the apple down a chute marked “B.”
I’d been working at the Produce Product Complex for three years now. I got the job just after the supernova explosion that damaged Earth’s ozone layer, leading to the destruction of nearly all plant life. Here at the Complex, I had a steady income and access to one of the most valuable resources on the planet.
Perfect fruit had become as rare as gold bars used to be. The rich of the world bid on it at auctions, with professional bidders standing in for anonymity. The pieces were later delivered in armored trucks. I never saw anyone eat them, but I could imagine. Maybe they arranged them on gold-plated saucers, cut with diamond-encrusted paring knives. The rich used to trade in precious metals and gemstones, but those were just pretty things now. Still inaccessible to the public, but no longer commodities worth trading.
I was a Grader. Fruit would arrive in front of me on a conveyor belt. If it was nearly perfect, I passed it to the next stage, where it would be photographed and prepared for auction. Depending on its condition, I could alternatively place it gently in a cart marked “A,” let it slide down a chute marked “B,” or toss it into a trash box marked “C.” The ones in the box were for us, but not officially. The company didn’t want to tarnish their reputation by selling low quality produce. We were supposed to dispose of it to keep supply low and bids high. Instead, we marked them as discarded while we took them home to consume or sell on the black market.
A siren blared as a red light lit up the room, marking the end of the shift. I sighed and climbed off my stool. I picked up the box of damaged fruit and carried it to the employee changing room. I peeled off my sterile outer garments and tossed them into a bin, then pulled my duffel bag from my locker and poured the fruit inside.
As I exited the building, I looked around to make sure no one was watching. It was getting dangerous to be a known Grader. Word had spread of the stash we could be carrying, so Graders were getting mugged more than ever.
I turned onto my street, a once-commercial part of town turned residential after businesses could no longer procure anything to sell. We lived in what used to be a Greek food restaurant.
My three kids sat on the floor, each holding a video game controller. They didn’t get out often. They stared, transfixed, at the screen. They had that game system before the explosion, and it luckily still worked.
I dropped the bag onto a table and walked to the industrial sink to wash my hands. As I dried them, I turned back to face the room. The kids had spotted the bag, but only one got up. He unzipped it, looked inside, and pulled out a nectarine. Without a word, he carried it back to where his siblings sat and took two bites. Then he set it down next to him, picked up the controller, and continued to play.
I stood there, just staring at the partially eaten nectarine. People outside would kill for what was in that bag.
by submission | Jul 24, 2025 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
She was seated on the closed toilet, legs crossed, just a bath towel wrapped across her breasts, water still dripping from her brunette hair onto her pale bare shoulders. She pulled the straight razor along her skin, her fingers laced between the shank and the tang, thumb on the heel. She wondered why Achmed even owned a straight razor.
From the bedroom, on the other side of the slightly ajar door, he expostulated on her lifestyle as he dressed for work. His reproach was a combination of righteous accusations and learned diagnosis. She was listening but not hearing any of it.
What she was in the mood for was – an iced coffee. She produced one. On the side of the sink, in a to-go cup with a lid and straw, condensation on the outside of the plastic. Filled with chunks of ice, a touch of caramel creamer. The dark liquid was the same color of Achmed’s skin. It was his skin, muscular, hairy and fragrant, rubbing up against hers every night when they made love that was one of the pure pleasures in her life. But the consequence of her desire meant she had to listen to him berating her each day. All the words up until now were abrasive white noise that didn’t register, until something he said filtered through.
“Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity.”
Bastard.
She contemplated her cup of iced coffee, pause, and produced another one. And another and another and another, until they filled every inch of the bathroom counter top. She gazed disgustingly at her vindictiveness.
Achmed talked for several more minutes before coming into the bathroom to brush his teeth. His voice halted in mid speech when he saw the abundance of identical cups in neat rows. His line of sight tracked from the peevish display of potency to her defiant stare, his face displaying a tense mixture of anger and revulsion.
She tightened her grip on the wood handle of the razor until her knuckles lost their color. He nodded imperceptivity, walked out of the bathroom, slammed the bedroom door behind him. A minute later she heard the car starting in the driveway and the small squelch of tires as he accelerated from the house.
For long moments she sat motionless as each drop of water gave into gravity and fell to her skin.
If he came home tonight, and if she was still here when he did, it would probably start off very badly. Things would be shouted that would be hard to forget. He would show amazing restraint in his effort not to hit her, as would she, in not producing something malicious. Then the moment would come when they would tear at each other’s clothes and make violent love, leaving bruises and bite marks. And as she laid there recovering, Achmed snoring, she would dot the inside of their bedroom with fading stars the size of fireflies. That would moderately pacify her into sleep.
For this morning, she just continued to shave her legs with his razor, and ponder what would be the consequences if instead of sliding the edge of it across her skin, she dragged it sideway just above her femoral artery. She supposed lots of people had similar notions in varying scenarios and like mostly everyone else she was far too much of a coward to attempt anything beyond visualization.
The simplest solution was not always the correct one. Sometimes, there was no solution.
