by submission | May 3, 2025 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
He turned the corner at a run and slammed his shoulder into the white partition leaving a smear of sweat and blood but kept going. His bare feet slapped franticly on the tile-like floor as he sprinted down the hall. He wished he could wake, but he knew this wasn’t a ‘naked in school’ dream. This real nightmare was a thousand times more intense. And although the corridors somewhat had the look of an institution, he knew he wasn’t even on earth anymore. The differences were ominous, there were no doors anywhere, only stark blank walls. And no ceiling, just blackness overhead, an artificial light came from someplace illuminating the passages. He didn’t slow and the terror behind him was keeping pace. The passage he was racing down was coming to an end and he had to decide whether to go left or right. He had done this before, but he momentarily forgot where he was along the route and had an instant of panic trying to remember which way he needed to go. The wrong choice would mean he’d come to a dead end and be cornered and devoured. There was only a precious few seconds to choose as he struggled to gasp in air and push his legs an iota quicker. Left. He took the turn as fast as he could using his hands to propel him forward off the wall without slowing much. To his disadvantage, the thing behind him had remarkable agility because of its segmented body and it cut down the gap between them at each turn. Down the straightaway he accelerated to his fastest to stay ahead, the voracious snorts right on his ass a reminder of what awaited him if he stumbled for even an instant. One more turn, left again, nearly lost his stride, banged into the wall and pirouetted into a three-sixty, reestablished his frenetic pace losing only a fraction of time. But would that cost him? The end was ahead, sixty seconds of distance run, but the breath of the beast was rank heat on his back and thighs. Had to push the limitations of his body for the last stretch. Almost there. He dove over the threshold and the divider instantaneously closed behind him, separating himself from the pursuant. Whatever it was, thumped into the barricade and yowled in protest, having been denied its prize. Rolling onto his back, the cool floor solace against his fevered skin, he desperately tried to satiate his lungs. Opening his eyes he gazed up into the darkness above him wondering if they were pleased that he had made it again or disappointed that he was not caught. For the next few minutes, he slowed his hammering heart and smoothed out his breathing, knowing they were probably monitoring his vitals. Calmed to near normal, he finally rose and went over to the table and chair, dropping his bare ass into the seat. He partook of the fine meal that was laid out before him, all his favorite foods, or at least an incredible facsimile to the point that he could not detect the difference. As he enjoyed his dinner, he did his best to push away the thought that inevitably, one of these times, he was not going to be here eating his treat at the end. He was going to be the treat. Just not this time.
by submission | May 2, 2025 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
My team assembled on the roof of factory near Prahova, Romania. Our objective was the next building over. Non-descript, a gray cube with the latest security measures at all entrance points, to include the heavily tinted sky lights. That’s why we were going to saw a hole in the roof. Repel down to the floor, disable the fire alarms (who the hell does that?) and then torch the interior.
We ziplined to the target roof. The industrial laser we brought was more than adequate for the job. We dropped through the roof and hit the floor. NODS up and on, target acquired. Six palettes of interactive voice assistants, tablets, and laptops. Each one indistinct from any other of its kind on the market- except for some rather strange characters after the UPC stickers. Stamped on like stock or model numbers.
I bought my beloved his device for his 30th birthday, got a fantastic deal on it. He loved it and honestly it worked great. A timer. A juke box. An argument solver. A cookbook. A polite know-it-all. It really made our lives easier. I don’t know how many times I said “We should have done this a long time ago.”
Then he started getting sick.
At first, he was just tired here and there, but things were really hopping at work for him so it made sense. Then he was so tired on some days he could barely move. I took him to the doctors. “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” they said. There’s no real cure for that so it was some over the counter energy boosters. It didn’t help one little bit. He just got worse.
They did blood tests. “Extreme anemia” they said. So it was shots and pills. The counts kept going down. He was not the man I married. Thin, gaunt, confused. More blood tests.
“He has a rare type of hemophilia,” they said. “Not much in journals about it yet but the symptoms are lining up.” He died four days later. Then our kids started getting sick. “Mommy, daddy keeps coming into my dreams and sitting on my chest.”
That was my wake-up call. I sat bedside with my littlest that night. Around 3:00 am a mist crept along the floor. I was prepared. I turned on the UV grow lights. The mist retreated and back into our beloved virtual assistant. The speaker even made its signature two- toned “off” chime.
I went back to my room, went online and discontinued the service to our device. The next day I unplugged it, bashed it all to pieces and left it out in the sunlight. A few moments later, it burst into flames. My kids didn’t have the dreams that night.
Fast forward back to today. We’re done at the objective and back on the other roof, watching the flames rise. We see ground hugging mists gathering, exiting the building, coalescing. “It’s a dog,” one of my team says. “No,” says another, “Look, it’s a child.”
Whatever it was, it was moving fast, but not fast enough. The light of dawn hit it and there was a bright flame, and it was gone. I switched channels on my radio and keyed my mike. “Mission complete, target eliminated.”
Once, they occupied bodies of loved ones and walked the earth. Once, they had to be invited in, step across actual thresholds. Now? Say a pet name for your device into thin air. Click for notifications.
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Do you really know all that you’re letting in?
by submission | May 1, 2025 | Story |
Author: Nicholas Johnson
“But what if you didn’t have to experience that pain now? What if you already did?”
The doctor leaned forward, placing his elbows on the shiny glass desk, smiling with predatory teeth.
I tapped my knee and tried to avoid eye contact, angry at my therapist for suggesting this treatment.
“All pain is temporal,” he continued when I didn’t respond. “We get to decide when to deal with it. Why do you think people drink?”
I sensed I was about to fall into his trap, but I couldn’t find an escape route. “Uhmm…to get drunk, I guess.”
“Sure. But mostly they do it to shift when they experience pain. Feel a little better now, a little worse tomorrow.”
I rubbed my forehead and tried to process. I shrugged in acquiescence, unable to handle disappointing him.
“And this is the same,” he continued, leaning back into a perfectly ergonomic chair. “Life is simply choosing when to confront pain.”
“We eat junk food to feel better now but worse later,” I said, a little surprised with myself.
His smile could have jumpstarted a classic car. “Exactly! And here we use that simple concept, that pain is linked to time, to create a new method for processing. We call it temporal pain displacement, TPD. You currently deal with pain now or in the future. But,” he leaned forward to set the hook, “what if you already dealt with it in the past?”
*
The TPD implant changed my life. No anxiety, no depression. Somehow the thing convinced my mind that past physical pain was instead processed emotional angst. That broken leg when you fell off the swing? Getting laid off last week. That time you got hit by a baseball when the pitcher’s curve didn’t curve? Your cute coworker rejecting an offer to grab a drink.
“It’s Your Pain. Why not USE it?” The pamphlet sat alone on my coffee table—two days with the implant and my apartment had never been cleaner. Almost everybody I knew had the implant. Why wouldn’t they? It was like those weight loss shots that were controversial a century ago but were now used by basically everyone. TPD implants kept our minds as healthy as our eternally skinny bodies.
I mused which injury my brain had used to process the divorce. The car accident when I hydroplaned into that streetlight?
Despite the amazing relief, a question lingered at the back of my mind—was I going to run out? My childhood had been relatively cozy. Other than some sports injuries and a couple car wrecks, had I really suffered enough to sustain a lifetime of mental anguish?
I rose from my couch and started to panic.
It vanished.
Fuck! I thought, followed by relief. I must have just used some minor knee scrape as a kid or something. I flipped through the pamphlet but couldn’t find if pain can be used more than once. I sensed I was burning through past injuries as fast as I could worry about them. Pain is temporal, but is it finite?
I felt a momentary wave of envy, instantly cleansed, for those lucky bastards who had been severely injured as kids. Broken spines, fractured vertebrae. That would cover so much mental anguish!
I looked at my freshly cleaned window. Only the fourth floor. I would almost certainly survive a fall to the grass courtyard. I would probably break some bones! I would be able to immediately recover from like the next ten breakups!
My heart never felt lighter, my spirit never freer. I smiled like the doctor the whole way down.
by submission | Apr 30, 2025 | Story |
Author: David Margolin
Maggie and Trent were a self-sufficient young couple, both remarkably dexterous and tech savvy. They did all their home repairs, serviced their own cars, and every few weeks Maggie cut Trent’s hair.
“Home haircuts are great– think about how much money we’ve saved,” Maggie said proudly.
“All we need to do is count the money in the cookie jar. You’ve dropped in 50 bucks each time, right?” asked Trent.
“No, only $35, I gave you the senior discount.”
“Smart alec, I just turned 35, not 65.”
“Just sit still, I don’t want to hurt you.”
There was more to the home haircuts than saving money. Trent’s naked upper body, Maggie’s low-cut bathrobe, and the closeness of their bodies were an erotic recipe. After haircuts Maggie often insisted on a close inspection of her handiwork in the privacy of their bedroom.
Maggie picked up the only dangerous tool involved in the process, sharp scissors. For an instant Maggie held the scissors vertical to the back of Trent’s neck. Jethrow, their 20-pound impulsive, acrobatic, mischievous black cat, chose that instant to fling himself into Maggie’s right hand. The scissors were driven about half an inch into Trent’s neck, puncturing through his skin and subcutaneous tissue. Trent screamed in pain as his left hand reflexively covered the wound.
Maggie coaxed his hand away and examined the damage. She hoped that the blood would be oozing rather than gushing. Maggie, wide-eyed, couldn’t suppress a loud, “Ahhh!” There wasn’t any blood. There was a jet-black substance trickling down the back of Trent’s neck–viscous, mercurial, and pulsating—it smelled like brake fluid. Until that moment, she hadn’t had a clue that Trent was anything other than a red-blooded human being.
“Do I need stitches?”
“Not exactly, more like a mechanic.”
“This is no time for your weird sense of humor.”
Trent put pressure on the wound with a nearby dish towel and went into the bathroom to survey the damage. Maggie followed close behind. They both stood facing the mirror, her body supporting him from behind.
Adrenaline propelled Trent past trepidation into action. He removed the towel. “What th–”
“Don’t freak out, you aren’t the only odd one in the family.,” Maggie said very softly and soothingly. She turned her left arm palm up and firmly pressed her thumb down in the middle of her forearm until something clicked. Then she slid the previously invisible rectangular panel down towards her fingers. Maggie watched Trent’s reaction closely as a glowing green circuit board came into view.
They made eye contact in the mirror. Trent spoke first, “For better or for worse.”
“Until death–or malfunction–do us part,” Maggie chimed in.
They kissed, and Trent said, “Let’s finish the haircut, but maybe just take a little bit off the sides this time.”
by submission | Apr 29, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
One cannot speak of the Universe. One can only speak of rocking chairs, carnations and a pen. This is the path to understanding. Take it on good authority.
Travel writers speak of ordeals as the ideal. I would not say that losing my tablature in Genra was an ordeal in and of itself, but the event precipitated my run in with the Pharph. Many travelers rave about Genra’s pristinity, a term I find a bit forced since the Fall Treaty of 2207 mandated any outloop of the Unified System “leave no trace” under threat of “immediate UniSys revocation.” Zero impact. Zero tolerance.
So, pristinity is the default and prevails in any outloop world. And, I must admit that Genra is particularly fresh and untouched. Chattering cacinadees give off a morning scent reminiscent of cinnamon. Iridescent gullas a hundred clicks distant waft unworried in buoyant thermals along the Tieriesien range. Industrious sticklers wrestle with dew-balls on regolith paths which weave intricately through the ancient settlement.
Genra is Old World without staleness, and I cannot help but wonder if that was why a Pharph was summoned when I reported my tablature missing. I’d set the device next to my morning tea, then been distracted by a merling hopping from a shock of thmaris near the whooping pond. I left the hostelry deck to get a closer look at the merling’s filigreed coat, and when I returned, my table had been cleared including my tablature.
Providing locals with any tech above class one is forbidden on outlook worlds. So, theft of UniSys tech is considered aiding and abetting. It was a sticky situation, and so began my ordeal, which is supposed to be the secret spice of travel.
I went to Genra to find a quiet corner in the Universe. That’s all I wanted. I didn’t need the Pharph. But the Pharph was called when I discreetly mentioned my missing tablature at the hostelry reception. The Pharph arrived promptly for there is no other way a Pharph can arrive.
It perceived me, and I felt my skin prickle like lightning about to strike nearby. Then I felt as if I’d been dunked in pudding. Overly sweet pudding. A Pharph can’t help this, but it is nonetheless off-putting. I gagged.
Steady, old man, came the reassurance of the Pharph directly into my mind. We’ll get this matter settled straight away.
It’s just been missing a moment, I mentally spluttered feeling every bit the naughty child caught.
Tut. I’ll just have a look around.
The last thing you want is a Pharph “looking around.” Normally they are forbidden to do so. That is also a mandate of the Fall Treaty of 2207, but it does not apply to outloop travelers—especially ones that have misplaced their technology.
When a Pharph is in your head, rifling through your recent memories like some big game hunter in a jaunty pith helmet and jodhpurs, you begin to understand what colonization feels like to the locals. The Pharph was unerringly polite, almost jovial, trying to reassure me: What a topper that image of those flocking gullas is! You’ve captured that well. A first rate memory, old man. First rate. You’ve got a knack. But having a Pharph knocking about in your skull is like your mother going through your dating profile. It is an emasculating experience.
The Pharph eventually found what it needed in the reflection of a stickler’s dew ball. A fimtim. The pea-brained marsupial plunged from its tree lair and snatched my device from the table, then quickly climbed back into the courtyard canopy. Fimtims hoard shiny objects in their nests. I cannot say I blame them. Those dextrous and simple-minded arboreal share much in common with us on that count.
The Pharph recovered my tablature from the fimtim’s nest and returned it to me with a too-friendly nod. We got that solved spit spot, eh. Keep an eye on those critters, what say. We wouldn’t want a literary chap like you with such cracking conceit getting revoked. And then the Pharph was out of my head and waving a friendly goodbye.
Only a Pharph had the capacity to mentally zoom into that peripheral memory of mine of the stickler’s dew ball and confirm the fimtim’s “theft.” I could have been grateful. I was not. The Pharph had parsed my memories with almost infinite granularity, and showed me that I was a book too easily read. And discarded.
The Pharph seemed to enjoy its travels through my once-pristine mind as an explorer of a place untraveled. Curious and exulting. But my mind can never be the same. Is that bad? Not necessarily. I haven’t sworn off travel in outloop worlds. But I’ll be more prepared. No tablature. Nothing but rocking chairs, carnations, a pen.
And a humility well traveled in any world less traveled.
by Julian Miles | Apr 28, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Linda looks about as she blows into cupped hands. It’s been a brutal November, and the forecast is that it’ll be a white Christmas from everything freezing over instead of snow.
She glances at Will.
“So what’s a polinismum again?”
He gives her a withering stare.
“‘Polynex Quismirum’. A living fossil. My grandfather believed it to be the root of all werebeast myths. My father thought it some sort of changeling analogue. They were both right.”
Linda frowns.
“This wouldn’t have anything to do with the disappearance of your father, would it?”
Will nods.
“He went out to catch one. It caught him.”
“They never found a body, though?”
“Exactly. When people disappear, we make up stuff to explain why they left. When people are found as partially eaten bodies, we get up in arms and start looking for whatever did the eating.”
“Ignoring the implied intelligence underpinning your argument, are you saying this poly-whatever is big enough to consume an adult human and leave no trace?”
Will shrugs, looking unhappy.
“That’s the simplest explanation, but it doesn’t sit right with me. Sort of like there being a single Loch Ness Monster. Unless it’s the ghost of cryptid, there has to be a more than one.”
Linda grins.
“Not a fan of the ‘extremely long-lived last example of its kind’ theory, then?”
He grins back.
“About as much as it being a bio-submersible piloted by alien lizards.”
She presses her hands over her mouth, her laugh escaping as a snort.
“I hadn’t heard that one.”
Will touches her arm and whispers, pointing with his other hand.
“There.”
Linda stares towards the old bus shelter, looking for the looming threat in the light from the streetlamp above it. She’s about to ask him ‘where’ when she sees a movement.
The bench inside the shelter is compacting itself, the slats of the seat and back moving together while the legs at either end extend! Like some headless, tailless creature it shakes itself in a very dog-like manner, then stretches like a cat, alternating raised ends. That done, it settles back into looking like a seat.
She leans closer to Will, trying to stop herself shaking.
“Are we safe?”
“Yes. It’s an ambush predator. I’ve been watching it for a week, and I think it’s a juvenile. Certainly not big enough to take an adult human.”
“What do we do now?”
“Approach slowly, then use the graphene net to catch it.”
“What if it tries to, I dunno, roll away?”
“The net has tethers. We’ll spike them to the ground. Should hold it until the catch team arrives.”
Linda nods. He takes an end of the net protruding from the laundry sack he picks up. She grabs the other end.
“Chat as we approach. Wonder about the last bus. You know.”
“Gotcha.”
They approach casually. As they get between the pretend bench and the streetlamp, Will shouts.
“Now!”
They pull the net out and get it over most of the bench before it deforms, extruding a pair of greyish pseudopods to prevent them covering it.
“Pin it down!”
Linda shouts and leaps. He follows.
Will lands, taps his phone to call the catch team, and grins at her. Her eyes widen. The shelter itself closes about them. Brief, muffled screams go unheard.
The catch team arrives a few minutes later. There’s a torn laundry sack lying by the streetlamp. Of Linda, Will, and the bus shelter, there’s no sign. The search lasts for hours. It ignores the long, grassy hummock that’s appeared in the grass verge on the other side of the road.
