by submission | Jul 16, 2025 | Story |
Author: Colin Jeffrey
As the steam-powered Queen Victoria chugged its way across the palace forecourt, the sound of a volley of cannon shots rang out through a public address system.
A troop of mechanical horses paraded noisily in front of the queen, boilers whistling, gears grinding. Mannequins attired in military garb rode upon them.
“Preeee…sent arms!” yelled the recording of a sergeant major to a platoon of animated dummies ranged across the parade ground.
“Ooooorder…arms!” the recording continued.
Just then, one of the machine-driven horses exploded, spraying hydraulic oil and boiling water all over the John Brown mannequin mounted upon it. The horse and dummy crashed noisily to the ground.
“Oh, no, no, no!” screamed Jacamo Smith through his megaphone. “Stop!”
As Jacamo leapt from his director’s chair, he swept his hand across an array of switches, turning them all off. He threw his megaphone on the ground, strode out onto the parade ground. “Just once,” he said through gritted teeth, shaking his fist at the cloudless sky. “Just once, I would like to have everything make it through a whole procession!”
Jacamo surveyed the remnants of John Brown’s horse, its brass and steel innards spread across the ground. He knelt beside the mangled automaton, his face softening. “Oh dear, old boy,” he murmured, patting what remained of its flank. “I’m sorry I yelled. A momentary setback is all.” He snapped his fingers, and a clanking gaggle of retrieval automata gathered up the pieces of Brown and his horse, and whisked them off to the workshop.
He stood up, looked out across the silent parade ground. The mechanical Queen Victoria stood majestically in the afternoon light, her polished brass parts gleaming. He glanced at his pocket watch. “Oh my, they’ll be here at any moment,” he said to the ranks of staring dummies. “And we have to be prepared.”
Jacamo adjusted the lapels on a regal-looking mannequin. “Sergeant Major,” he said, saluting. “Please ensure the men are presented at their very finest.”
As he approached Queen Victoria, he ran a loving hand along her wooden superstructure. “Apologies, ma’am, just a little more pressure,” he whispered, finessing a valve. Steam hissed reassuringly.
He turned back to the courtyard, where wind stirred the air, blowing around torn epaulettes and fragments of discarded promenade plans. A soldier mannequin fell forward in the breeze, landing on its face with a hollow clunk.
Jacamo ignored the fallen dummy, clapped his hands three times in rapid succession. “On your best form everyone!” he said. “They’ll write stories about today!”
He strode in front of the platoons of assembled figures, hands clasped behind his back, addressing them in a grand voice.
“I know the council has doubts,” he said. “They laugh at me behind closed doors. But when they witness this, when they see what I have built, they will know the magnificence of Jacamo!” He paused, his voice now barely a whisper. “Then they will release me from this place.”
Suddenly, steam valves hissed, a swaying mannequin creaked.
He turned on his heel to face the timber Queen Victoria and nodded reverently. “Yes, ma’am. It shall be done.”
In the sky, the two suns dimmed briefly as a large cloud crossed their faces and long, late afternoon shadows extended across the arena. The seemingly endless desert stretched away in all directions, the parade ground and its buildings a tiny island in a vast ocean of sand.
Jacamo looked out from his domain, his eyes focused on the distance. “They are coming. I heard their voices in the fog this morning,” he said. “They’ll be here any time now.”
by submission | Jul 15, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Carpenter counted out loud while trying to carefully step over the swollen bodies. In the clunky hazmat suit his boot came down on the neck of a child.
Swynton jerked away from the sight, but there was really nowhere to turn from the reality of hundreds of bloated bodies washed up on Galveston’s beaches. Carpenter had asked her to accompany him into what the local officials had dubbed the Containment Zone. Police and Coast Guard vessels just offshore were still busy trying to corral the corpses that had yet to wash back in with the tide.
Based on what she was seeing, hundreds and hundreds looked to have perished. The days-long heat dome had spiked yesterday, the grid failed, and multitudes flocked to Galveston’s beaches in a mad rush to cool off in the Gulf waters. But there was no relief in the sea. Only tragedy.
The warmest ocean temperatures ever recorded combined with the searing air temps overwhelmed most beach-goers. Heat exhaustion and heat stroke robbed them of strength and/or consciousness, and they simply drowned in the steamy, still waters.
Carpenter stopped counting and removed his boot from the child’s neck. “Sorry. This is just a shit situation. Nobody…no body…deserves this.”
“It’s horrific.”
“Yes. And it’ll get worse. The county coroner’s office called me in. I’m getting called in a lot more places for these kind of tragedies, to collect data, analyze it, and model the scope of the problem. Officials have started calling me the heat death guy. But nothing I’m doing is stopping what’s happening.”
“So, why am I here?”
“Because I could get you past the police tape. Because you’re a local and you need to see this. Because you’re a media influencer and someone needs to tell this story in a way that’s visceral, that’s viral.”
“Won’t the sheer number of dead here say it all?”
“Numbers, statistics. We’ve heard them all for decades as climate catastrophes kill more and more each year.” Carpenter knelt down and gingerly brushed his sandy boot print off the child’s neck. “So, get out your phone, Swynton, and do your viral media thing because data doesn’t always change beliefs, but corpses, lots of corpses, do.”
by Julian Miles | Jul 14, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Water drums upon my helmet, makes a low hissing as it streams over the audio pickups, and fills the air with splashing sounds as it cascades from my armour to fall inside and outside my impromptu shelter.
There’s a rhythm to this. It’s complex, but my sis used to be a drummer. I can pick it out – or trick myself into the comfortable illusion. Either is good: my breathing has slowed and heartbeat is steady.
Refuge this isn’t. It’s a hide. Beyond the deadening provided by the water, I can still hear comrades and strangers dying while our armoured offensive burns amidst the ruins of what used to be a capitol city.
Am I going to venture out? Only if the water stops. I think I glimpsed a fire blanket on a wall further down the hallway: should have thought to grab it. In my defence, I was moving as fast as possible in near-mindless terror at the time.
General Astaren said it better than I ever could:
“The rumours you’ve heard about the Ressen using giant flying creatures are nothing but- Jezuz fucking Christ! A dragon!”
His transmission crackled and stopped a few seconds later; seconds we spent listening to several hundred soldiers suffering fiery deaths.
While we stared at each other in a mix of disbelief and panic, what came for them crossed the intervening kilometre and hit us. The minutes after that arrival will disfigure my dreams forever.
The water trails off to a trickle that thuds down on my left shoulder.
“Fuck my life.”
I chose it, but still. The posters had promised a short, glorious war followed by victory parades and eternal partying. So far, the only accurate words from that description have been ‘short’ and ‘war’.
These things look like dragons: four legs, two wings, long tail, long neck, wide head. Their scales are mirror-bright and impervious to everything we’ve thrown at them. Their ‘firebreathing’ seems to be some form of plasma. Whatever the science involved, the effect is bright and devastating.
Their flying is as far from clumsy as nobody expects from two-hundred-metre-long reptiles. They can manage bursts of Mach 2, can hover briefly, and combine the two abilities in dazzling displays that remind me of the gravity well antics my grandfather used to do for a living at the family fairground.
“Bingo One? That you, Greg?”
The f-!
“Bingo Med? Charlie, you made it?”
“Most of me. Lost an arm, but the MedOp backpack I always complained about turned out to be quicker than death. I feel great, but tomorrow’s going to be no fun.”
“I like your optimism. Where are you?”
“Huddled in a shower in flat 218. You?”
I chuckle.
“You remembered that old joke too? I’m in same, somewhere on the third floor. Did your water just stop?”
“A few minutes ago. I’m thinking we need to move.”
An idea occurs: I run a quick allies scan.
“Just got scanned. Tell me it was you.”
“Yup. You’re right below me.”
I point my ‘urban entry facilitator’ at the floor and fire the last round, then tumble through the hole.
Charlie gives me a thumbs up.
“Tidy landing. Shall we get down to fucking off?”
After pulling her to her feet, I take a moment to run an extra tensioner round her torso to secure the MedOp pack against her ruined upper right side.
“I didn’t even feel that.”
“Another pain for tomorrow.”
“Down to the sewers and go left?”
“Good plan.”
She thumps my chestplate.
“Let’s move.”
Hope those scaly fuckers can’t dig as well as they can fly.
by submission | Jul 13, 2025 | Story |
Author: Bronte Lemaire
“Oxygen level is at 1%. Please follow the emergency protocol.”
Sarah sighed and let her head fall against the window. The stars flowed gently over her cheeks and created extra pinpricks of light between her freckles. She felt me staring and I looked away, pretending to find interest in a rusty screw in a panel. I watched her smile in the corner of my eye before looking back to the moon we were circling.
“Any last confessions?” she asked.
I clicked my tongue. “Nothing worthy of note.”
She just rolled her eyes and scooted closer, letting our knees touch. The soft whirring of dying machinery and our breathing was the only sound held in the spaceship. It was all outdated and had been left to decay by the space colony, never thinking the emergency spacecraft would ever be in use. Humans and their inability to see their own mortality is a powerful thing, and a useful thing to know when you never believed in your own invincibility.
Sneaking on was easier than breathing. Now quite literally.
“Think they’re looking for us?” I asked, gesturing to the chunk of metal floating to our left.
“They’ve got more things to worry about than two missing people,” Sarah countered, “We weren’t high on the menu anyway.”
I raised an eyebrow. “We were most definitely reserves though.”
“A light snack maybe.”
“Nah, have you seen my thighs? I’m a full course meal, thank you.”
She laughed, nearly hitting her head against the wall as it flew back. “True, true. I wouldn’t have minded having a slice if you were being served up.”
I grinned as she re-established herself, sneaking another proper look at her face as she checked the dashboard. “I’d be sure to save you the last bite.”
“Oxygen level is now under 1%. Please follow the emergency protocol.”
“God, shut up,” Sarah groaned, kicking a speaker in the wall half-heartedly.
The emergency protocol in question was reconnecting with the station and that was a no go. Even if we weren’t in danger of blending back into the screaming and starving and morally abandoned society that had formed over the past few months on the space station, the spot from the tiny ship was a far quieter and more peaceful place to die.
It suddenly became harder to look at each other, aided with the lack of oxygen flowing to our brains. But this was it, the last voyage. She took her hands in mine, both pairs scratched and scabbed but still warm.
“Any last confessions?” she whispered, her eyes like dripping blackholes, begging to suck me in.
I rested my forehead against hers as our hearts took their final beats, ready to take a bow for their final performance. I brushed the freckles on her left cheek that we once made look like the Lyra constellation with a pen we once found.
“I’m glad it was you.”
by submission | Jul 12, 2025 | Story |
Author: Colin Jeffrey
“The total value of your haul,” said Twopenny Armchair, eyeing the console, “is twelve point five dweebles.”
Kentish Town sighed. It wasn’t enough. It never was. But there was no haggling with Armchair – Town had two fewer fingers on his left hand to prove it. So he took the money, stuffed it in his pocket, and left.
Trudging into the street from the refundery, Town turned the coins over in his hand. Just enough for one crash, but no dinner. Again.
The nearest crash bar was across the street. Not the cleanest place, but it was close and they knew him. Not that it mattered; they’d sell him out quick if he was on a purge list.
Pencil Sketch was on the door, nodding to Town as he entered. Sketch had been a breaker once, but bouncing at the Crash Barn was easier. He still disassembled the odd miscreant, but at least he worked indoors now.
The place was half full. Some were jacked in, others sat at the after bar, vaping synthadone.
Town found an empty crash sack, dropped his dweebles into the slot, and a jack reeled from the ceiling. He flipped open his chest port, plugged in.
The world fell away.
He drifted in velvet black. The crashfield unfolded under a moonlit sky. Floating corridors lined with fog doors swung inward. Stars formed cryptic alphabets in the sky.
He was barefoot on moss. The air murmured memories.
“Town,” said a voice like a whispered thought.
He turned.
Chattel Mortgage stood in a suit of branches, her hair a halo of static.
“You’ve rusted,” she said.
“I didn’t choose this arc,” Town replied, though he wasn’t so sure.
“You didn’t not choose it.” Mortgage plucked a floating door, held it like a mirror. Town saw himself as a boy made of chocolate cake, mouth all cherries. “We all return to where the forgetting began.”
“What is this place?”
“Below the forms. A plane the Crashdrivers can’t scrub.”
“You know me?”
“More than you know.”
A chime echoed, like a bell struck too hard. The doors began closing, one by one, with the sound of fluttering pages.
Mortgage stepped back.
“Damn. A tracebot. Unplug before you’re archived.”
The corridor bent sideways.
Town fell upward into himself.
He gasped awake in the sack, heart pounding. The jack slithered away.
Sketch stood nearby. “Hard crash? You were only eight minutes.”
Town sat up. “Felt like a year.”
Sketch shrugged. “No refunds.”
Outside, the world was harsh, loud. The dream clung like talcum powder on his skin.
In his coat pocket, something rustled. A torn scrap of paper. On it, just one line: Ask the egg what it remembers.
Town knew where to go.
The crash memory sat in his head all the way to the flatlands. Past shuttered stalls and flickering ads, Town reached an oval booth. A Memory Egg.
He hadn’t seen this one since he was a boy, but he remembered. You’d pay a half-dweeble, and it’d spit out a cryptic “memory prediction.” Some crashers said they foretold truths. Most called them junk. The fad faded. They were scrapped.
Except one.
It opened with a woosh. He stepped inside. The walls glowed, the Egg whirred. Illuminated text floated in front of him:
WE REMEMBER WHAT YOU SOLD.
He frowned. “What did I sell?”
YOUR TRUTH.
A flap opened and a silver slip slid out. The egg shutdown.
Town stepped outside, read the words on the slip.
THEY BURIED IT. DIG DEEP.
In his chest, something shifted. Not a memory, just the shape of where one used to be.
by submission | Jul 11, 2025 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
“What I can’t stand about humans, being human when I’m on vacation, is how cold- (is that the right word?) No. Isolated? Isolating? How isolating it is. I mean, here you all are, in some cases millimeters apart from each other and sometimes inside each other, yet you are trapped in this, this, well pardon my bluntness, wiggly water bag wrapped around a collagen and calcium frame. One that’s prone to soft tissue damage, radiation burns, gravity, physics, hell! It’s a wonder you guys get anything done without dying. Even your sensory apparatus is limited. Can’t see infrared, microwaves, just a limited spectrum. Touch- you guys barely go beyond button pushing. Rough, smooth, wet, dry, hot, cold, habba jeez you’re limited. Taste? What’s up with that? Love to know how that got in the design but it does make things more interesting. Like, when you guys drink coffee. Ugh! Don’t get me wrong when I’m one of you I can’t get through the day without a cup of it. Funny thing is once you go human, you just keep coming back. I know, weird right?
I guess that’s why my employer sent me to broker this deal. I was among the first to flick into you and well, I think I know you all well enough by now to not make this too weird for you. Demand for your experience is trending. You guys could stand to make a hefty amount of coin. We’re past the stage where we can hide and for everybody’s safety and sanity, we need to cut a deal. If not, then some of our- how shall I put this- less enlightened individuals will start cutting in on you when you least expect it. The whole witch trial thingy was partly our fault, but those folks have been punished. Oh, yeah that won’t happen again and well, um, our government officials are not too keen about all this given what happened last time so until they come around to seeing our point of view… well let’s just keep this amongst us and your folk, OK? We know how much you guys like the shiny, so we left you some stuff as a token of our good intentions.”
The attaché collapsed in his chair. After a deep breath he came around. “Well?”
The ambassador nodded. “There’s a four-by-four foot cube of solid platinum in the room next to us. Next to it is a same size cube of rare earth materials. Just the rare earth alone would make us billionaires.”
“You shittin’ me sir?”
“Hardly. I might even be underestimating the numbers a bit.”
“This would eliminate a lot of problems for our folk. Not bad for first contact with an alien race.”
The ambassador smiled. “I don’t think it would make much difference, overall. I’ve been in government service my whole life and one thing I know for certain is something like this…well let’s just say none of the ‘resources’ would get to the right places. To people who need it. You and I could do this much better as a charitable foundation and be better off as well. This mission isn’t on the books, no one knows about it but us, and with a little paperwork shuffling, we could keep this to ourselves- run our own game.”
“So-“
“Yup. We’re moving out of government service and into the private sector.”
