by submission | Jun 7, 2025 | Story |
Author: Colin Jeffrey
As the sentient slime mould squelched slowly across the asteroid it lived on, it found its mind – such as it was – occupied by a single thought:
Ludwig van Beethoven.
This was strange for several reasons, most obvious being that slime moulds are not renowned for their thoughts on music. Or thoughts. However, this particular slime mould was not your average gelatinous lifeform.
It had achieved sentience via a spurt of just the right stray radiation, the absorption of just the right mineral dust, and possessing genes agreeable to change. Eventually, it developed awareness and a tendency toward introspection. Its favourite pastime was pondering the nature of Beethoven’s music.
This behaviour had started when its mutated body – acting like a biological radio receiver – absorbed signals from a satellite circling the closest star. Among the data traffic was a faint rendition of “Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony,” occasionally accompanied by the composer’s name. This information lodged itself in the slime mould’s not-quite-a-brain.
For years onward, it waited each day for the satellite’s alignment to return.
Eventually, though, the signals stopped. This upset the creature terribly. It had never been upset before, so its pain was new and all-encompassing. So much so that it determined, somehow, to get those sounds back.
So, it built a transmitter. Of sorts.
What it really did was think furiously about replicating the signal and sending its own. This caused the metallic particles within its body to realign and – in one of those one-in-a-trillion coincidences – created a crude radio transmitter. As improbable as this was, the slime mould then managed to more improbably summon its collected solar energy to produce one short, weak transmission:
“Da-da-da-DAAA.”
Exhausted, it settled down to wait, not knowing if it had been heard, but satisfied in a job well done.
Some 24 hours later, a human scientist conducting radio telescope studies of the Oort cloud from Mars’ moon, Deimos, saw a brief – but clearly aligned – set of data in her readings.
Brimming with excitement, she isolated the section, cleaned it, amplified it, and played it through her console’s speakers.
She recognised it immediately – the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth.
In the years that followed, people all over the world argued furiously about the signal’s origins, who had sent it, and whether they should make a Korean reality TV show about it.
Eventually, space agencies collaborated on a mission to locate the source, then promptly sent individual spacecraft, racing to be first.
Three hundred years later, the first missions arrived. They found a single gelatinous green mass sunning itself on a rock.
It felt their presence, lifted a pseudo-limb to taste their vibrations. It quivered with anticipation. Not knowing how to communicate, the astronauts simply stood around it at first, taking selfies.
After some time, the slime mould decided to see if they knew of the Beethoven it had heard so much about.
A simple four-note melody played through the radio headsets in their helmets.
Amazed – but already prepared – one of the astronauts played a reply through his radio. It was the entirety of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
The slime mould, enraptured, sent scintillating ripples across its surface. The dim light of the distant sun played along its edges, dancing and writhing in time with the music.
The visitors from Earth could feel the joy rebounding through their bodies as the creature sent wave upon wave of emotion in rolling electrical barrages.
When the music finished and the entity slowly stopped pulsating, one unmistakable sound came through their headsets.
Laughter.
Wet, wobbly, joyous laughter.
by submission | Jun 6, 2025 | Story |
Author: Naomi Klouda
Snow fell on Alaska, and we celebrated.
We swirled in a circle, tasting flakes of sky.
“Kelp brew for everyone, even the children!” Jenna Ben shouted.
How we celebrated! Three circles switched hands and partners aboard our oil platform’s broken asphalt.
Sky poured in billowy pieces, turning the tarmac white – the first time in my fifteen-year life. Snow in Alaska!
Jenna Ben’s sad walrus eyes, waist-length hair tied back and hanging in thin strands down her skinny back – she was our leader and my great-grandmother.
“Snow didn’t desert us! We are loved!” she proclaimed. “Each snowflake is stamped by the heavens…”
Frozen air, personified.
“This tells us we can return to land,” Jenna Ben said. “We’ll need the snow, we’ll live among her arms… We’ll watch the glaciers freeze again.”
Did I believe her?
Jenna Ben spoke like she knew.
But it could not freeze like long ago.
“Snow heralds the cold. Welcome it into your hearts!” she coaxed we shivering onlookers. “Embrace with your arms up, palms open!”
I raised my arms. I caught snow in my palms. I drank the kelp brew. I danced into the night as snow piled up. But I did not believe in the power of snow.
*
My people have lived on the abandoned oil rig Thalassic since the year 2103, twenty-two years ago. Ocean stole the land, even certain hills, and gave us abandoned oil platforms, “drilling rigs so plentiful dotting Cook Inlet that people took their pick which one they wanted,” Jenna Ben told us.
We look out on the skyline. We see rigs as far as the eye can see. Some are friendly and some are not. We stay to ourselves.
We partner with Kipnuk, the third platform closest to us. These giant rigs formerly siphoned the earth to suck every oil drop.
In the first years Post Climate, people picked from the plentiful rigs. Jenna Ben tells of a time when people deserted the warming, flooding Alaska in giant ships. Those left behind resorted to whatever craft, short of swimming. One rode to our rig on a floating rooftop: Elias Roof, we called him.
“What did we find on the rigs?” Jenna Ben asked. Couches, pool tables, chairs, beds. Canned goods. Foods, still stacked in freezers if run on solar panels. Heaped computers that could be turned back on.
“Those were the best years of our lives,” Jenna Ben told us at night. “Pick your oil rig! So many to choose from. Almost like the beginnings of Earth, when there were only two humans to be loved by God, Adam and Eve – we had our pick.”
“Thalassic picked us,” she said.
People gasped in fear when they heard the reference “on land.” The older ones cringed when the World Shifted in Flooding was mentioned. They remember the quakes.
“You born after the W.S.F. won’t know this,” Jenna Ben said, her voice lowering, “But in O.L. times we loved the trees, so many kinds of trees it broke your heart – We saw a hummingbird wavering in air in a single spot to eat from one flower. We saw velvet mountains and felt brown soil where rocks crunch as you walk. Oh, the boulders of the earth! People used to put rocks in their pockets. It’s a sin not to love the earth back when it loves you…”
I’d never seen soil you walk on. I knew nothing of hummingbirds.
A smart mouth in the back yelled, “We’ll never see dirt again.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Jenna Ben squinted at the crowd.
I felt ashamed to notice it was cousin Yusiik.
“You’ll see,” Jenna Ben said threateningly.
We needed to at least act like we believed.
*
People went out one day and came back with more stories.
“There’s a strip of land at the foot of where Tuxedni Glacier used to be,” said Tuqen, a middle-aged man. His one blue eye looked back, and his brown one looked forward. “Dwarf plants grow small as mosquitoes, birch trees big as rulers. There’s lichen on rocks where Tuxedni receded. And fireweed, lupin!”
As if saving the best for last, Tequn said, “We must move there.”
I didn’t want to hear.
It’s a rule to Not Be Afraid. Fear causes humans to kill things they might love.
Mother Thalassic was the only home I’d known. I was born on this rig to Sally. I remember her before the Starvation.
We buried Sally beneath the waves.
“From water, humans came, and to water we return,” Jenna Ben rained angry tears as she bid her granddaughter goodbye.
*
One day after the snows, we set off. Fifty of us. Plus, twenty or so from Kipnuk.
The people prepared boats in this way: Inflatable boats from sunken cruise ships, patched with jeans and old silk ties, and heated tar balls.
I scored a double kayak.
We loaded for a tentative journey.
“One must always be ready,” Jenna Ben told us.
We traveled for hours to get to land.
If gold color held wings and flew as grasslands, if velvet purple lupin didn’t ache so … Ah, these sights straight from myth.
We landed.
The land stayed beneath my feet. I felt dizzy. Brown particles of ground-up mountains formed soils.
Stones so plentiful! Soils and dirt, silky silt on fingers.
I saw the tiny birch.
People sobbed as if greeting their friends in the rocks and distant trees.
Soon, everyone tasted rocks. Just as we had tasted snow. Only this time, I suspected the Earth was tasting Me back.
“We’ll stay for a while,” Jenna Ben announced. “To be loved by the earth back is the best of all. Right?” She planted her feet on the ground.
“Put your hands together in the air!” She coaxed. “Clap so the Earth can hear you! Clap loudly and without reservation…”
I felt the earth listening.
I believed, at last. The Earth might love us, too.
by submission | Jun 5, 2025 | Story |
Author: Colin Jeffrey
The newly-created Department of Temporal Dysfunction hummed with bureaucratic indifference as a voice called out across the waiting room: “Number forty-seven!”
“That’s you,” the Seraphim sitting next to Quetzalcoatl said, pointing to his ticket. “You’re forty seven.”
Quetzalcoatl stood up, brushed back his resplendent feathers, and followed the caller through to an interview room.
“So, mister Quetzalcoatl,” she said opening his file. “I am your consultant, Bertha Glump,” she flashed a perfunctory smile at him. “I see that enroute to your prophesied return from the east in the year of the reed, you were knocked out of your timeline. Is that correct?”
“I am Quetzalcoatl, supreme creator, god of wind and rain,” he replied, unable to fathom his situation. “I demand that you allow me to continue on my journey, or I will smite thee.”
“Now, mister Quetzalcoatl,” Glump said, pointing to a sign on the wall. “You must know that we do not tolerate any threats of smiting, sacrifice, devastation, or eternal damnation. Do you understand?”
Quetzalcoatl did not understand.
“You command me, mortal?” He waved his hands in the air, chanted. A thunder cloud appeared over Glump’s head, accompanied by a growing wind. As he directed lightning to strike, Glump pushed a button on the table. Quetzalcoatl’s summoned weather dissipated.
“Mister Quetzalcoatl,” said Glump angrily, as she waved away the remnants of a cloud. “This is unacceptable. This interview is terminated.”
Two guards entered the room, shackled Quetzalcoatl, led him away to a cell.
“Whaddya In for?” a voice in the corner of the cell asked.
Quetzalcoatl detected the presence of another supreme being. “Lost. Tried to smite someone,” he replied.
“Hermes,” said the other. “Delivery issues,” he shook his head. “Long story.”
“When I am released,” fumed Quetzalcoatl, “I will destroy them all.”
Hermes leaned forward. “Yeah, doesn’t work that way,” he grinned. “You see, without the humans, there would be no one to worship us.”
Quetzalcoatl pondered this.
“And I’m sure as Tartarus not going to worship anyone,” said Hermes. Thunder rumbled across the room. “Except you, Dad. Sorry, I mean Zeus, sorry.”
“What would become of us without human worship?” Continued Hermes. “We are, after all, gods only to the mortals. Without them, we are nothing.”
There is truth in his musings, thought Quetzalcoatl.
Several hours passed, the door opened. “Number forty-seven, your review has concluded.”
Back with Glump, her tone apologetic.
“Mister…sorry…Lord Quetzalcoatl, I beg your forgiveness,” She fell to her knees. “We…us…humans need your help.”
“My help?” Quetzalcoatl boomed,”After you… Confined me?”
Glump nodded her head furiously. “Yes, oh Great Quetzalcoatl. We are so very sorry. Really. But since your…accident, the weather has become unstable. Tremendous storms are enveloping the world, gale force winds are literally tearing the earth apart. Our temporal physicists believe your absence has created a significant anomaly, affecting the very elements you command.”
Quetzalcoatl stroked his feathered beard, Hermes words echoing in his mind. “So, you need me because the fragile balance of your world tilts without me.” He said, letting out a laugh. “Very well, mortal. Release me. I shall consider repairing this disruption. But understand this: my temper, like the winds, can turn fierce. Do not disrespect me again.”
Glump bowed deeply, fumbled for a button on her desk. “Guards! Escort his Eminence the Lord Quetzalcoatl back to the time stream. Quickly! And with the utmost respect!”
As Quetzalcoatl swept out of the room, an earth tremor shook the building. Glump shouted into the intercom. “Priority – release all deities immediately and issue all a grovelling apology. Quickly!”
The Department of Temporal Dysfunction was clearly out of its depth.
by submission | Jun 4, 2025 | Story |
Author: Kenny O’Donnell
Touchdown. The ship rumbled. The landing gear drilled into the asteroid, anchoring his one-man yacht. The asteroid, only a kilometre long and half as wide, was too small to hold a ship without anchors. His joints popped as he floated from his chair in micro-gravity. He grabbed a handle on the bulkhead and swung himself down the central ladder into the airlock.
Eighteen months of drifting on a course he programmed atrophied his muscles. He had only enough strength to put his atmo-suit on. A suit older than the ship itself. Emblems of empires, insignias of a fallen army marred by time. A relic, like himself.
He chuckled. He always knew he would die wearing this. He thought it would have been decades ago. When war was so much simpler. When death was real and not some fairy tale of a forgotten civilisation. A fantasy perpetuated by an empire that cheats death.
He clamped a tether to the yacht’s hull and let go. The asteroids gentle spin took the ground from his feet. After a few yards the tether pulled taut and like a fish caught on a line he jerked into a slow spiral.
It was sunrise every few minutes as the star came into view with every rotation. Saturn was in view, almost in line with the rocks axis. She was no bigger than his fist. He had fought for her once, many wars ago. Fought, killed for her moons’ resources. Won them too. For the empire. The one who lauded him as a hero, the one he was now hunted by.
Their hunt will be over soon enough. His last breath would be the end. He wouldn’t abort his ships transmission this time. The data packet would send on an open channel. Proof that his now war crimes were once orders of the Empire.
He enjoyed the poetry. His final breath will destroy an empire which he slaughtered millions for. One he was once proud to be a part of. But he had waited long enough. Now he was ready. He wasn’t going to rush it. This was on his terms, not theirs. He tapped the controls on his arm and instructed his suit to inject him with morphine.
Stars twisted above him, around him. The darkness of space grew darker. Once he was gone he hoped it would be a little brighter.
by submission | Jun 3, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
When his son stepped through the privacy-field into his home office, Manfred began to disconnect.
“You told me to come see you after I finished my homelearn session, Dad.” His son’s eyes narrowed disdainfully at the etherware bands his father removed from his head and set by the brainframe, their household’s direct link to the infosphere.
“Dex, your mother and I both wanted to discuss this with you. But, it’s dust up on Mars, so she messaged me to talk with you tonight. To have a kind of old-fashioned man-to-man talk. You’ll be eighteen in a month and you’ll be eligible to — ” Manfred hesitated. “You promised you wouldn’t decide until Mom returned, but that could be a year now, and she’s worried…we’re worried…you won’t wait.”
“I’m not going to wait. I’m going Post on my birthday,” his son declared.
Manfred rose out of his chair. “Dex, don’t do this to your mother, or me. You haven’t thought this through.”
His son’s eyes narrowed fiercely. “You mean about getting rid of this crappy body, asthma, acne, colds, retro-flu and all that other biological bs? I don’t need this physicality. Nobody does since Singularity. I’m ready to upload. I’m going Post!”
“What about this?” Manfred placed a hand on Dex’s shoulder. “What about touch? Talking face to face? Man to man? What about having a child of your own someday?”
“You mean, so I can watch my kid grow apart from me as my body slowly rots. I’m sorry, Dad. You’re living in the past. It’s dying and so are you. I’m going to live forever as a Post. I’ll experience every possibility.”
“It may not be that way, son. Not everything happens like the sim ads promise on N-vision.”
“You’ve never even done the simulation. I’ve done it plenty. It makes your precious brainframe seem like a thousand-year-old abacus. You don’t have a clue how it liberates your mind.” Dex hesitated. “And Melanie’s visited.”
Manfred shook his head.
“She has, Dad. I’ve felt her, like she’s trying to pull me beyond N-vision and the infosphere. She’s tugging at my mind, but I can’t go because of this deadweight. This body. I want to go with her. You have no idea how that feels.”
“I know the grief her parents feel!” Manfred shouted. “They’ve had to cryo Melanie in her room. They’re hoping she, her consciousness, will come back. No one even knows if that’s possible.”
His son went rigid. “You’d better not do that to me. I don’t want some metabolizing mass that’s supposed to represent me frozen forever!”
“You’d rather we just forget you were once our living, breathing son?”
“Chrislam, Dad! You are so…so human. Why can’t you see the future? Do it with me. Plenty of families have. Then you and mom could be together forever, too.”
“What about your sister?”
“You can all go Post when she turns eighteen.”
“We may not want to. It’s not so simple. I don’t want to become a hive-mind hybrid.”
Dex exploded. “I can’t believe you use that kind of propaganda! It’s racist. It won’t stop the trend. Thousands go Post every year. The numbers keep growing. It’s evolution. You Corpses are going to die out within a few hundred years.”
Manfred winced at the nasty term. “You really believe the Postsingularity Office? That you’ll become a liberated consciousness, no longer constrained by time, space or physical maladies? This isn’t just some slick N-vision ad promising omnipresence. What will your ‘totality’ mean when it just looks to us like you’re brain dead?”
“You and mom should’ve thought about that before you had kids. Posts have been around for over twenty years.”
“Only daredevils, neurotics and freaks did it then!” Manfred shot back.
“So, which category do I fit? Do you consider me a freak?”
“Right now, you certainly aren’t behaving human.”
“Then, this is a good move for me,” Dex said quietly. “Is that your back-handed blessing?”
Manfred sat down, rubbing his temples in a way parents since the dawn of time would recognize. “Just one more question, Dex. Will you try to ‘visit’ us?”
His son smiled earnestly. “Every day.”
Manfred took a shallow breath. “Then promise me one thing.
“Sure, Dad. Anything.”
“If, as a post-human you really do attain these purported god-like powers,” Manfred pleaded, his head beginning to throb, “be merciful, my son.”
by Julian Miles | Jun 2, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Joey looks around at the crowd.
“I see we’ve some new faces tonight. Thanks for coming.”
He presses his palms flat on the table.
“You’ve done what each of us has done at some point in the last few years: you’ve realised there’s something deeply wrong with our world. Those we’re told are leaders, and those we’ve had held up as experts, are all lying.”
Sounds of wordless agreement swell, then fade.
“Some of you have already lost friends and family over this. For those who haven’t, trust me when I say it’ll happen to you. Every person returning here tonight has been cancelled by people they thought strong. People they thought loyal. It’s a hard path we walk.”
There are nods. Sympathetic glances and pats on the shoulder are exchanged.
“You can’t explain to them. You’ll try, but until each of them takes the steps you have, they’ll reject the truths you offer.”
“What truths are they, though?”
Joey swings his gaze to meet that of a short, wiry guy. He sees himself reflected in the lenses of the spectacles this retro-styled apparition is wearing. Are those video glasses? No. Just deeply vintage. The exotic earbuds kind of spoil the ensemble, though.
“Welcome, friend. Before I answer, let me ask where you are in the Matrix? Shadow government? Slave cities? Project Eurostate? Tartarian Empire?”
He adjusts his glasses.
“I’m from beyond the ice wall.”
Everybody turns their attention to him.
Grinning, Joey straightens up.
“Another veteran reality pilot! Well, those territories are still out there, but only a select few will get to see them.”
The short guy nods.
“Because of the Satanic Cabal?”
Joey waves his hands dismissively.
“That’s just another diversion. Tartaria didn’t fall. It’s the hidden Fourth Reich. Until we’re ready to colonise the lands beyond the wall, they’ll keep us here. No point in invading until we’re sure to conquer.”
The short guy bursts out laughing.
“Oh, by the gods! A new conspiracy!”
He leans forward to stare Joey in the eye.
“Is it your truth, or did someone give it to you?”
Joey nods.
“Took me a while to see it, but the only thing that makes sense is we’re being restrained.”
“You think the stagnation has a cause beyond the maniacal thirst for power?”
“Without question. There’s no way the population of an entire planet would let itself be ruled by a tiny group of self-centred sociopaths without some sort of intervention.”
“Something beyond the abilities of those sociopaths and their schemes?”
“Absolutely.”
The short guy smiles.
“Can I run the alternative past you all?”
There’s a pause, then nods and looks of surprise.
Joey grins.
“Go for it.”
The short guy claps his hands together.
“All of the conspiracy theories are true, but not all are true for this Earth.”
A voice comes from the back of the room.
“What?”
The short guy checks his bulky wristwatch.
“Quick version, then: beyond the ice wall are twenty-six other Earths. Each has two active conspiracies. However, right now, your Earth has no conspiracies because it’s the control world for this century. The simple truth is that you only have yourselves to blame for what you’re living through.”
Joey looks about at the stunned faces, then bursts out laughing.
“That’s too far gone to even be funny.”
The short guy slowly looks about, then shrugs.
“Have it your ways, then. Cheerio.”
He turns and leaves. People chat and laugh. More drinks are ordered. The evening carries on.
Joey wakes just before dawn, heart pounding. Why did the short guy count how many people were nodding?
