by submission | Aug 26, 2026 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
It crept up on them, the Fugue. It happened so gradually as to be almost imperceptible. It certainly took years, possibly even decades to draw them in, until it had all in its thrall, but they continued to function as both individuals and as a society.
The trains are still running and the wheels of industry continue to grind. They are able to work and to feed and clothe themselves. They care for the children, but neither nurture nor attempt to teach them. In fact they are as disinterested in them as they are in everything and everyone else but they do keep the children physically safe. This is something that concerns us. Is it evidence? Does something remain? Is there a spark of humanity still within them, but buried deep.
I am one of the few unaffected by the malady. It is unnerving to observe humankind in its fugue state. I am constantly reminded of those old video games, the characters slotting into place as and when necessary. Their movements robotic and jerky, resting in between and conversing but only when it is absolutely vital to do so. It isn’t so much they have little interest in each other but more that they are unaware of anything and anyone else around them. It is as if they are automatons being controlled from afar by an all-powerful and unseen force.
We have taken control of all assets and shares. We own all the large corporations and businesses, anything and everything that is lucrative is now ours. We don’t need a monetary system – there are so few of us and so much for us to choose from but I suppose we are safeguarding against the future, just in case they emerge from the Fugue unscathed. And occasionally someone does recover. So far, they have always been happy to join with us and why wouldn’t they? After all we, the lucky few, are now the all-powerful entity looking down from above. We are the ones who control the game.
by Julian Miles | Aug 24, 2026 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Spacers and submariners have a lot in common. Biggest difference is they have specific purposes and set periods on board, whereas free traders live in a fancy tube because it’s the only place we’ve got.
Anything that threaten ‘fireflies’ – the ships we call home – terrifies us. Every crew’s paranoid about stopping or avoiding them. But yesterday we caught the one of the worst: Jasmo Dean, wanted on sixteen counts of Wanton Plunder: taking everything a ship has, including the air, and the lives of the crew.
“How did he get aboard?”
Captain Rand’s livid, but we don’t know the answer. Two people came aboard at the last spaceport, neither were Jasmo, and they’re sitting opposite me right now.
Misty speaks quietly.
“He said he arrived a few minutes before Barton caught him.”
Barton howls with laughter.
“In the middle of the big empty, he just popped in?”
Misty nods.
“Said he wouldn’t have bothered us but urgently needed a toilet. Ate something bad on Brindak.”
We all stare at her. Brindak’s two months away in a different direction from the route we’re on.
Rand pats her hand.
“He’s shining you on. That’s how his kind lull you into befriending them: first they gain your trust. Eventually they’ll turn on you.”
“Can the accused say something, please?”
We all look about in fright. Barton brings up the cell hologram: Jasmo’s sitting cross-legged, looking up at a cam.
“Yes, I’m still confined. No, I can’t explain in any way you’ll understand. But if I could have a candle, I can demonstrate.”
Rand bristles.
“No way in creation I’m giving you a fire source!”
Jasmo grins.
“I didn’t say I wanted a lighter. Just a candle.”
Rand points at me.
“Did you search him?”
“Yes. One rucksack containing basic toiletries and old clothes. No technology except for a standard issue crewmate dagger in a plain locking sheath.”
He nods. You never separate a spacer from their utility knife. It arrives with you, and often will become your headstone.
“Show of hands. Do we give him a candle?”
Misty throws her hand up.
Barton considers, then raises his slowly.
“Fifty-millimetre stub. Not a whole one.”
Good idea. I tip my hand his way.
Our passengers are divided: Abello shakes their head. Drantysh raises a hand.
Rand shakes his head.
“Four to two. Who’s taking it?”
Misty stands up. Barton gets a fresh candle from our trade goods and cuts the stub from the wick end. She goes. We watch the hologram.
Jasmo gives her a little bow without rising. After she exits, he gets up, retrieves the candle, and… Waits?
Misty rejoins us.
“Now watch.”
We all focus on the hologram.
“Travel, as with most things deemed impossible without technology, is a matter of focus and will. On a planet, you focus on a star in the sky. Out here…”
He holds up the candle in one hand, then snaps the fingers of the other.
It lights! The blue globe throws shadows across his face.
“Then all a wizard has to do is will oneself onwards.”
He vanishes!
Utter pandemonium breaks out.
Much later we’re all sitting around, almost scared to look at one another. Jasmo, impossibly, is no longer on the ship.
His voice comes, sounding like he’s shouting from far away.
“Sorry about the scare. The authorities fear people like me. My peers hate that I won’t hide. Two very different motives behind me being framed as a pariah. I’m no threat to fireflies. You’re like tiny islands in an endless sea of night. Only a fool would harm such.”
by submission | Aug 23, 2026 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
I splashed cold water on my face, took a deep breath and made my way downstairs to the kitchen. I was not looking forward to the conversation I knew was coming. I entered the kitchen and all my appliances sung out with a cheerful “good morning Carl!”
I rolled my eyes and said nothing. Experience taught me that none of my appliances understood sarcasm. I made my way over to the refrigerator. It was my “oldest” appliance and has known me the longest, its patented “comfort care” program along with its upgrades has been with me, transferred to each new refrigerator, since college. Some folk actually loved the interaction and lived their life as if they were the main characters in an ancient cartoon where all inanimate objects had faces and personalities. Oh, you could buy that kind of life and several of my former friends had that in their entire house including appliances that snored in sleep mode. That’s why they are former friends.
I walked over to the fridge. “Hey sleepy head!” It said. “Looks like you had a rough night. Want to talk about it?” The pitch, timbre and accent made my fridge, (Marcy was her name,) sound like a cross between Betty Boop and a therapist. It was designed to catch me off guard so I could vent my frustrations, have them archived and examined by a more powerful psychotherapist program and then get back to me with therapeutic advice or maybe a health and wellness check from the local mobile psychologist and (of course) police.
“No Marcy, I don’t want to talk about it. I just want some quiet.”
Marcy sighed “OK Mr. Grumpy pants! You be as quiet as you like and I’ll run through your daily affirmations.”
I wanted to say ‘somebody please shoot me’ but I knew that would get me a quick trick to the therapist couch or 24 hr. stay in the local psych ward. Instead, I went to my happy place, a junk drawer where I hid an actual print on paper tri-fold brochure. A brochure that offered off-off grid community living. A place where “appliances were just that and no back talk.” I opened up my vintage laptop, a sweet HP from 2037, the last model with no holographic display and checked my email. I smiled. My application had been accepted. I looked at my antique analogue watch. My ride would be here in 20 minutes. The instructions were quite clear: one duffle, clothes and toiletries, no phone, no computer. If I had been truly alone I would have shouted for joy and done a jig, but given my household appliance monitoring that would surely get me committed. I kept it way cool.
By now all my appliances were chattering at me. I drank the coffee the brew pot offered, grabbed a sandwich from the deli center. I turned around and said out loud “Hey guys, I’m just going outside and get some fresh air.” I went outside and barely sat down when my ride pulled up. A nondescript guy in a 1959 Convertible (electric conversion of course.) He honked the horn. I threw my duffle in the back and got in. As we pulled away from the curb I heard my fridge through the external door cam speaker. “Carl? Carlton? Where are you going? I don’t see anything on your schedule. Carl?”
I just smiled and waived.
by submission | Aug 22, 2026 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
“I hold souls in limbo, or consign them to oblivion.”
“Come again?” She’d asked what he did, and now just looked confused. He grinned; he didn’t often get hit on in bars, but she was pretty enough in an obvious kind of way, so what did he have to lose?
“I work for MemoriaCorp – you know, the people who make copies of your loved ones so you can keep talking to them after they’re dead? I’m the chief avatar wrangler.”
She looked at him for a moment, wide-eyed, and then: “Oh Em Gee, a fellow geek! I thought the only people in this place were lawyers and brokers!”
“Sorry to disappoint,” he waggled his eyebrows to show he was joking, “but I come here because they mix a better martini cocktail. Want one?”
“With that recommendation, sure!” she squeaked, sliding onto the barstool next to his as he signalled the barbot. Her name was Annie, he learned, she’d moved to Chicago to get away from her overbearing parents, and she worked as a remedial programmer for CPD’s rollerdroids. She was bubbly and smart, and clearly in need of a little company, which suited him fine. A couple of hours and a few drinks later they went back to his place together.
The door had hardly dilated shut when she grabbed his elbow. “Alone at last,” she purred into his ear, as he turned and took her in his arms.
“D’you want a fix first? I’ve got some good stuff.”
“No, just you,” she murmured, and leaned in for a kiss. He was vaguely aware of her fingers on the back of his neck, and then everything went dark.
* * *
When he awoke, the only thing he could move was his eyes, and they darted wildly around their sockets. He was on the couch, and she was sitting in the chair opposite, smoking one of his expensive herbsticks.
“Ah, you’re back,” she said, unsmilingly. He tried to speak, to curse at her, but his vocal cords wouldn’t cooperate. “A paralytic,” she added. “Under my nails. Illegal, but a lot of us working girls use it.”
A pause. And then: “My real parents died in an aircar crash years ago. When my grandmother passed, her avatar was the only family I had left. I missed one lousy payment because my banking agent glitched and was taken offline for maintenance, and MemoriaCorp–you—instantly cancelled her policy. Deleted her. Took her away from me all over again.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t believe it when you told me who you were; I was just looking to turn a trick. And then I wanted revenge. So here we are.”
His eyes weren’t moving any more, but she could see the fear in them.
“Sitting in your office pressing buttons, you’ve got no clue how much harm you cause. How much pain. How much rage. I. Wanted. To. Kill. You. But sitting here I realised that that would make me a murderer, just like you. So I’m leaving now; the drug will wear off in a few hours. You’ll probably soil yourself, and I’m not sorry. But all those people left behind, milked for their savings, grieving…? Remember them. If I can find you, so can they. Think about that before being so quick to flip the switch next time. Or someone’s likely to flip yours.”
Tears were working their way out of his eyes. Shame? Anger? She couldn’t tell. And as she left, she knew it wasn’t important, because all that mattered was that she was better than him.
by submission | Aug 21, 2026 | Story |
Author: Elizabeth Hoyle
“You have to leave! Now!”
“Not the reaction I was hoping for,” I muttered under my breath, uncertain where to look after such a lackluster response to the revelation that I was a time traveler. “Why do I have to leave? I just got here.”
“Every second you’re here gives them more of what they want.”
“Which is what? Who is they?”
He hurried to the back of the room, pulled at a loose panel on the lower half of the wall.
“I saw that this might happen in one of the company’s files. Their emergency situation protocols were thorough. I didn’t think you’d show up so soon after I got it active. Luckily I prepared.”
I crossed the room as he pulled more panels from the wainscoting. “I was prepared to be the one answering questions not asking them.”
“I don’t have time to ask so go ahead with your answers. I am curious.”
“My name is Diana Silverman. I am a traveler from the Chronos Sola Company. One of ten who have been given access to the first completed time machine. This is my third successful trip—”
“What year?” He threw the question over his shoulder.
“Three C.S.—”
“They even renamed the dating system after the company? Hubris is too small a word for those fucks. You’ll have to squeeze.”
There was a knock at the door I’d landed in front of.
“Judging by the look on your face, that is not good,” I said.
“No, it isn’t. Come on.” He waved me closer to him and covered my head as I crouched into the hole he’d made in the wall. My heart skipped a beat when I saw it in the room. A sleeker, smaller, and better version of the time machine I had left in the lab at the Sola campus. I turned to him, my hair obscuring our faces from one another. Whoever was at the door knocked again.
“How do you have this? We’re in seven C.S., right? The machines aren’t at this level yet.”
“You don’t think they recently made these machines, do you?” He fixed me with a stare that was wary and pitying. “Chronos Sola has helped destroy the earth but they are the best gardeners, planting the seeds they needed to make their rise inevitable, their technology ubiquitous.”
My mind raced at his words. “You mean all of this has been planned?”
The knocking turned to a booming at the door. He shoved me further into the uncovered room. “Nothing is coincidence or luck when it comes to making those with resources even more wealthy.”
“Then this trip has been planned, too, just like my other ones. They’re looking for you and for their machine.”
He has one more board to put back into place. “Go home. Fight them however you can.”
“Rebellion is ubiquitous, too.”
He grinned then finished hiding me. The door in the next room gave after I jumped in the machine.
by submission | Aug 20, 2026 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
“Fire the tracer!” Elliot commanded while centering a tiny submersible targeting an immature Nateria Squid in inky, frigid Saturn’s Enceladian waters near the moon’s deep thermal vent ridge. System data lit a screen indicating a direct hit as Mar’s artificial intelligence tracked the squid’s directions toward a large swarm.
“That’s a huge shoal of squid, El.” Trenton gasped as the tiny craft navigated automatically through the obscure darkness. “I can’t believe our luck. The Center will be pleased.”
Elliot stared with amusement at his junior assistant volunteer assigned to hazardous missions to establish the squid’s herding capacity, ensuring a continued supply of unique, priceless chemicals that extended human TERT gene activity tenfold. The elites of Earth would pay handsomely to triple their life extension with reinvigorated telomeres. Martians cared less for what they considered a sacrilege of the Creator’s will.
“This will be the final proof that we can perform measured culling while ensuring the species continues. There might still be a price for us to pay. I saw your vitals when we cut through the tiger stripe at the South Pole. One in six of us survives that, but the pay is worth the risk.”
Elliot’s tone calmed the young explorer’s excitement.
“You noticed?” Trenton whispered.
“It’s my third and last trip, kid. I’ve beaten the odds, but to do that, I notice everything. You replaced the second assistant who quit after his first voyage. I lost the first guy after a crash through the stripes. If we keep our heads on now and breathe slowly, we’ll have enough air for three days…then out we go, shooting up through a frozen geyser. The rescue craft tows us back to the space station. Then you can count your fortune and go home.”
“And that’s it? We discover one fact, and they reward us? Then let’s head out. I don’t want to end up like the first assistant.”
“A momma’s boy, huh? Keep cool and papa will…” Elliot went silent as his eyes scanned troubling sonar readings.
“What is it?” Trenton asked with concern.
“Company. I heard they were here again. There’s a group of harvesting pirates from Earth’s Moon that has other ideas. Call them competitors. They don’t want the old ones. They’ll decimate this new swarm if they can find it. Immatures have higher drug concentrations. We led them right in, but they’ve made a dangerous mistake. We need to veer course immediately. Head for the geysers now!” Elliot screamed his order as he pulled the guide yoke hard to the left after turning on a rescue beacon.
Trenton lurched to the side against his security straps. “Won’t help. They’ve already seen the squids. It’ll be a massacre.” Trenton’s jaw went tight in the G-force of the craft’s acceleration.
“We need to be gone, now!” Elliot yelled again.
“But…” Trenton tried to protest the wild evasive maneuvers.
“You hear that kid? That screeching noise? It’s not from our gear. They make it. I know what comes next?”
“They…those make this? God, it’s almost deafening!”
Trenton ground his teeth from the overwhelming screeching flooding his ears.
“They aren’t stupid fish, kid. They own this world. I saw it on my first trip. Another ship was with me before we knew two craft were a threat to the squid. We heard chatter from a mother and her young. We didn’t understand without intel. They control the ice.”
The aquanauts heard spikes of sheer, violent shards of giant frozen spears colliding from the surface, descending on the hunter’s vessel behind them, becoming filaments of fresh food for their prey.
