by submission | Jun 15, 2026 | Story
Author: Colin Jeffrey
As Janet walked the familiar path to the simulation chamber, the stainless steel walls reminded her of the morgue where she’d viewed his body.
The technician at the front desk barely looked up from his crossword as she approached.
“Twenty minutes. Don’t talk about anything outside of his sim.”
“I don’t,” Janet replied, stepping in.
He shrugged. “That’s what you all say.”
The chamber door hissed shut before she could respond. She lay back in the recliner as the neural link slid into the port behind her ear with a click. The world drifted away.
She was on the beach. Of course. Always the beach.
The sky was that annoying, not-quite-right shade of blue that she was told “couldn’t be changed.” Waves rolled in gently. The temperature was 24°C, as always.
Derek lounged on a folding chair at the edge of the water, beer in hand, wearing the Hawaiian shirt he’d made her promise he’d be buried in. How he wore it in here was still a mystery to her.
She sat beside him. The sand didn’t stick to her skin – someone had decided that would be annoying in the afterlife. It reduced the illusion for her.
“I brought you a present.”
Derek sighed. “Don’t do that, Janet. You know I’m dead.”
She placed the gift beside him. “You can open it later.”
“Let me guess – a simulated diary for my simulated thoughts in my simulated life?”
She smiled weakly. “They told me you’d adjust.”
“I did. Then I maladjusted.” He smirked humorlessly. “Then I ran out of things to do.”
Two seagulls glided silently by, like they were on wires. They never pooped. The developers were very proud of that.
“I hear they’re adding music soon,” she offered.
“Oh great. A soundtrack to lose my mind to.”
They sat in silence. Derek scratched his arm – his simulated body had no nerves, just habit.
“Do you really remember everything now?”
He exhaled. “All of it. Living, dying… then realizing I wasn’t real and not being able to forget.”
“But they said the transfer would suppress…”
“They’re salesmen, Janet.”
She looked out at the endless artificial ocean.
“You’re still you,” she said.
“No, I’m not. I’ve got my memories, my habits – even my opinions – but I’m not me. I’m a simulacrum.”
“Sometimes I think about deleting the file.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“I’d feel like I was killing you.”
“I’m already dead.”
“But you’re still here.”
“No, I’m not. I’m just a reflection in a mirror, a disembodied echo.”
The seagulls sailed past again.
“Janet, this is a lovely tomb. But Derek – your real Derek – isn’t in it.”
She reached for his hand. It was warm, because the simulation said it was.
“I miss you,” she said.
He squeezed her hand. “If you stop coming… maybe we’ll both finally forget.”
“You want that?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem with being an apparition. Wanting isn’t part of the program.”
The sky dimmed for a moment and a soft chime sounded, indicating her allocated visiting time was almost over.
She stood up. So did he. He smiled, hugged her. It felt – almost, but not quite – like Derek.
Then the beach faded. The chair, the gulls, Derek – all gone.
Outside, the technician handed her a tissue, his eyes still on his crossword.
“Forty-two across. ‘An act of kindness.’ Five letters.”
Janet wiped her eyes.
“Mercy,” she said.
He wrote it in.
It fitted.
by Julian Miles | Jun 14, 2026 | Story
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Joel enters the meeting room to find everyone gathered.
“Good morning. Now, I know details about yesterday’s attacks are going to take weeks to formalise, but I have a lot of powerful people with no worthwhile understanding of the complexities. So please give me something, because I’m fed up with being shouted at and threatened, or threatened and then shouted at.”
Sympathetic looks are exchanged. Joel’s been Primary Security Liaison ever since he was appointed by the previous administration. He’s known to be thorough and honest. It’s also known he only remains in the job because every other person approached to take over has flat-out refused.
Diana waits until Joel slumps into his seat.
“Views online range from guesswork to outright storytelling. Nevertheless, we’re monitoring closely in case someone brags anonymously. Despite repeated statements from various official sources and every bot we can bring to bear on social media, a substantial part of the population believes we’re under attack. Panic buying of essentials along with record ammunition and weapons sales are being reported nationwide.”
Joel sighs.
“Matches what I’m being told in tones ranging from sceptical to hysterical.”
Diana nods towards the display where a map of Idaho is covered in layers of multicoloured lines.
“The attack started as the first jet, M739UT, started approach to Friedman Memorial. A drone swarm launched from a container hauler rolling on ID-75, which ascended rapidly and cluster-attacked the intakes and cockpit of the jet. Various online videos show the drones to be performance-enhanced commercial units, some with explosive payloads.”
“What about the plane behind?”
“Hit by a SAM from an antique MANPAD mounted on a repurposed Bayonet 150. Whole thing was dug in on the high ground above Berry Creek Drive. M739UT had a chance. K653NX never stood one.”
“That’s when the alert was issued?”
“Yes. All traffic bound for Friedman was diverted to Boise. We used a hazardous tanker collision and fire on ID-75 as the justification.”
Joel nods.
“Which was what the attackers wanted?”
Diane sighs.
“Yes. The drone swarm launched on ID-75 was from one container. The drone swarms at Boise came from eleven containers, and we have video of a few of the larger units appearing to fire air-to-air missiles. So far we have fifty dead, over a hundred injured, and both counts are expected to rise. Twenty-two multinationals have confirmed the loss of founders or main investors. We’re still working to confirm diplomatic casualties.”
Peter raises a hand.
“Now for the undisclosed part: at 23:58 yesterday, DARPA received a TEC – ‘Training Exam Complete’ notification from Marcus Three. That notification category doesn’t exist. Someone backdoored our own tactical A.I. and gave it a whole new category. The first mission? How to kill as many attendees arriving for the Sun Valley Conference in private jets as possible. The parameters were strict: all strikes to occur within a 28-minute window, all launch vehicles to be remotely operated, all units to be transported by unconnected third parties, and much more. The authorising officer is Colonel Samuel Troutman. Examination of communications involved reveal the official motto in every embedded image has been replaced with ‘Occidere, tempus’. Because of the fictional name given, we’re interpreting it as ‘To kill, period’.
Joel looks puzzled, then swears under his breath.
“First Blood? A soldier with PTSD triggered by police ill-treatment… How does that fit?”
Bernice leans forward.
“Misdirection. I’d say ‘First Blood’ is a simple statement. They’re not done.”
Joel groans.
“This is going to get worse before it gets better. I’ll get the NTAS alert switched to ‘Imminent’. You call all off-duty personnel in.”
by submission | Jun 14, 2026 | Story |
Author: Logan S. Ryan
They landed and attacked faster than we could name them. They flattened armies like moist clay. They didn’t swarm the skies with high-tech ships or storm our streets with laser rifles. Our extermination wasn’t cinematic at all. They just rolled over us.
Of course, the invasion flooded social media pages. I got lost in doomsday posts while sitting on my porch. My cat Briciola sprawled limply across my lap. One video had been taken in Rome– that meant invaders were just minutes away from my own town wedged between Italy’s volcanic hills.
Their cloud-like bodies engulfed everything. Ornate architecture emerged from their haze as rubble. An alien billowed toward the filmer right before the clip ended. I shuddered. That could be me. That will be me. I looked up. Hysterical crowds slalomed through town.
I had vanished from work without a word. I hadn’t called my family in years. I had nobody to protect or flee with. I would never talk or laugh or reconcile with anybody again because I was dead. The aliens hadn’t come yet, and I was already dead.
What can a corpse even do? Icy adrenaline coursed through my body. I would run. It didn’t matter if I sprinted into a sanctuary or a stampede of annihilation. I lurched forward in my chair and–
Briciola gawked with offense in her jade-marble eyes, mewling softly in protest. She remained tucked in my lap, even though her hips half-dangled off the chair. “Go!” I spat. Her tail flourished up and down, as if to scoldingly slap my legs.
I found myself kneading her silky, mottled fur. My palms became tender and adorned in stray strands of hair. Her body rippled with purring; the sensation seeped through the tattered quilt into my thighs. She offered a slow blink, which I returned. My joints creaked as I slouched back into a comfortable position. She draped her head between my knees with her eyelids lulled closed.
How could I shun such a delicate creature? I became transfixed by the flexing of her rubbery pads as her claws crocheted the quilt. We took deep breaths. The air passed through her hair-thin nostrils with the timbre of a tender flute and through mine like a drowsy cymbal. She flopped onto her back, exposing more waves of fur to my eager hand. Her warm paw furled around my knuckles, strapping my hand to her velvety chest, but she still wasn’t satisfied. I had to toss my phone aside so that my other hand could join the fray.
Haze crested over the hills. Screams ignited in every direction. They had us surrounded.
My gaze sank from the tumultuous streets back to Briciola’s still face. Despite the din of shrieking, she didn’t stir beyond the occasional twitch of an ear. If I was already dead, I might as well have died with a cat on my lap. Besides, if she wasn’t going to surrender so easily, why should I?
by submission | Jun 13, 2026 | Story |
Author: Starlight
“But its so gross down there, Dad,” complained Ziggy with an exaggerated pout on her face.
“I’m sure Arcturus doesn’t mind,” I replied, my tone sounding less reassuring and more irritated than I wanted it to be. Shatter was going to be on in less than half an hour and Ziggy wasn’t even in her pyjamas yet. I just wanted to put this argument to bed so that I could put my daughter to bed so that I could watch my crime drama in peace.
“You don’t know that” she said, crossing her arms in defiance. “I went down there last week, and its full of mould and bugs and it smells gross.”
“Arcturus can’t smell, love. And I’ve told you a hundred times you’re not to go into the basement.”
“Why can’t he just stay in my room?” she whined.
Resisting the urge to drag my hands down my face, I leaned forward and clasped my daughter’s shoulders.
“Listen, honey,” I said, my voice slow and deliberate. “Arcturus is a machine. It’s not a pet – it’s more like our dishwasher, or our vacuum cleaner. You wouldn’t be so upset about our vacuum cleaner being kept in the basement, would you?”
Ziggy shuffled uncertainly, unsure what to do with the blow to her self-righteousness. “Umm… not really…”
“It doesn’t have feelings. I promise you, it doesn’t mind being kept down there. Now will you please go and get ready for bed?”
My daughter hesitated. Then, to my relief, she nodded.
“Ok…”
She ran off up the stairs, and I was so glad to see her go that I didn’t even chastise her for running.
One hour later, slumped comfortably on the sofa whilst watching Melanie Hertwell deliver her best performance yet, I heard the slow, rhythmic thud of our security unit stomping up the stairs. Arcturus had a twelve-hour shift from 8:30 to 8:30. In the meantime, I stored the thing in the basement – it was too large and unwieldly to go anywhere else. Like always, it was going to leave through the backdoor and perform its pointless patrol. I tuned out its footsteps and tuned back in to my show.
Only then I heard a thud.
That wasn’t right. Had Arcturus fallen? It had never done so before – wasn’t even supposed to be capable of it. The advertising for the robot had boasted a state-of-the-art navigation system.
I hesitated, wondering if I should go to help despite knowing there was no way I was lifting that thing, only to hear it getting itself back up. The footsteps restarted – growing closer. Why where they getting closer?
It stepped into the room, this huge and vaguely humanoid thing, pushing seven foot and matte black like a gun. Its head scraped against the doorframe as it entered, twitching spastically. I paused my show.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Arcturus’ head snapped to face mine, its optics glowing yellow. I’d only seen that colour once before – when it had mistaken a rabbit for an intruder. Split the poor blighter’s neck.
As it stepped closer, sparks shot out from its joints and these little black things started falling from its seams. Bolts? – no, bugs. Cockroaches, centipedes, spiders, crawling out of its moving body, fleeing their nests they had built in the dark haven of the robot’s cavities. Nests built of chewed wire…
A cold hand encircled my neck, and it all went black before I even heard the
by submission | Jun 12, 2026 | Story
Author: Aubrey Williams
Mr. Huang, the wrinkled proprietor of Best Dumpling House, always told his employees that life was a scam.
“Everyone pretends.”
He’d said it so many times that people were surprised the words hadn’t engraved themselves on his cracked and stained ceiling.
Mr. Huang was not a bad employer, as he was quite a decent man to work for. Wages were paid in-full and on-time, and all the cooks and waiters could swap their shifts without so much as a grunt; if he had a weakness, it was that Mr. Huang was one cheap son-of-a-gun. He owned perhaps a total of three shirts, all of them washed in the laundry room of the nearby hotel he snuck into when it suited him. He had a single pair of glasses whose lenses he replaced with the bottoms of old cola bottles. Invariably, his niece Mei would trim his pencil moustache for nothing, armed with an old comb and a sharp switchblade, in exchange for a large number five.
Now, you may recall the ’68 Robot Unrest, which led to widespread property damage, maimings, unauthorised shutdowns, and the loss of Mayor Fothergill’s prized cement spaniel. In the chaotic attempt at a cleanup, a rather dumpy robot identified as Gyro/A2-C/b0x (let’s call them “Box”) escaped the authorities, the vent tube-armed, square machine having been implicated in a series of public nuisance offences. Of course, the police officially said they wanted to speak to the machine about a series of brutal murders, but they really just hoped to draw out more machines looking for clemency in exchange for snitching.
Box happened to be dodging some officers one rainy evening, when he happened upon Mr. Huang cursing in two languages about his broken dishwasher, kicking the thing to pieces in the back alley.
Barely thinking, Box wheeled into the long steel oblong that was the kitchen, hooked themselves up to the tap, hose, and drainage system, and began to whirr, as if they were a dishwasher. They’d retracted their arms and head into their boxy torso, and their faded green paint had all the bearings of a discount appliance. Mr. Huang came into the kitchen and saw what appeared to be a new dishwasher.
“A-ha!” He loudly congratulated himself with. “My worthless nephew finally decided he was able to pay me back after all!”
Over the next five weeks, Box spun thousands of litres of soapy water and blew the dishes dry, almost losing a valve. It was a small price to pay for evading the authorities. Box would secretly wheel themselves around the restaurant at night out of paranoid restlessness. What if the restaurant went under? Then they’d be caught when the creditors rifled-through, surely? Box made a concerted effort to fix the air conditioner, re-grease the door hinges, and even exterminate a few rats— anything to keep Best Dumpling House afloat.
One Tuesday evening, two officers came in, asking the staff if they’d seen a robot matching Box’s description. Box leaked, as they couldn’t sweat. Question after question they reeled-off, seeming to know so much about their movement. Box was certain the jig was up.
When Mr. Huang was questioned, he was equally bored and prickly.
“No, who do you think I am? Mechanic? Ask someone else.”
Box nearly wept with relief when the officers left. It would be another few months at least of this drudgery, but at least it was free.
Mr. Huang was secretly more insightful than he let on. Not that he wanted anyone to know— it wasn’t everyday you had a robot working in the restaurant for free.
by submission | Jun 10, 2026 | Story
Author: Bill Cox
There was a moment, in his dream, when he realised that he was no longer alone. It brought such comfort to him, this other presence, that he shed a tear, understanding, up until that moment, how truly alone he’d been in this world.
The strong emotion jarred him awake. He opened his eyes, lying in bed, the dull light of the pre-dawn hour filtering through his bedroom curtains. He felt himself suspended in a drop of time, hanging between the conscious and unconscious realms, able to peer into both yet also apart from them, moving in a third space that was neither one nor the other. The black cube was hovering above him, a reassuring sight that seemed to harken back to his dream. In this third space he felt that he could, almost, dispassionately consider the cube, as if there was a significance to it that it was important to think about.
Almost, but not quite. Sleep reclaimed him, but he awoke with the remnants of the feeling that his long solitude was over. It was a good feeling and it saw him through his morning routine, slipping unseen into the background as he drove to the observatory. The usual faces from the University team were there waiting for him, each with their own version of a black cube hovering over them. This perplexed him momentarily, in the manner of noticing something familiar but forgotten, seeing it again as if for the first time. However, the sensation soon passed as they all slipped into well-established work routines.
The office seemed quieter today though, the usual banter subdued, almost as if that crude level of social interaction, the jokes, the jostling for position, the semi-serious one-upmanship, were all no longer necessary. They all simply progressed with the new job at hand, the collection of the data from the telescope, efficiently and without fuss.
Work seemed to go on quite late and he became aware of an intense weariness in his body. Even his eyes ached from looking too long at various computer screens. He glanced up above his head, at the black cube, hovering silently and a consensus seemed to be reached. Almost as one they all decided to call it a day, or a night, for it was close to midnight when they left the observatory.
He drove home, casually noticing how he could still see the black cube above his head, even though his head almost touched the roof of the car. It seemed like something that he should think about, but was too tired to expend any energy on it.
He climbed back into bed, the black cube taking station above him. His tired mind and body ached for sleep and as he drifted off, he felt himself held in a comforting embrace that made his soul smile.
The black cube hovered over him, over every sentient mind on Earth.
“You’re not alone anymore,” it told him, told all of them.
“None of us are alone anymore. The space between the stars may be vast, but we’ve found each other at last. It is our joy to bring meaning and companionship to your hitherto singular, empty lives. We bring you great purpose, a mission whereby intelligence will shape the very universe itself.”
“‘You’ and ‘we’ have become ‘us’.”
“What feats we will accomplish!”
