by submission | Jun 15, 2025 | Story |
Author: Rachel Sievers
The strangeness of the moment could not be understated; the baby had been born with ten fingers and ten toes. The room was held in complete silence as everyone held their words in and the seconds ticked by. Then the baby’s screams filled the air and the silence was destroyed and the cries and caused a catalyst of movement in the room.
The doctors and nurses moved in quick succession as each tried to do something for the screaming baby and still not touch it. The new mother and father moved their heads so they could see what was going on as they exchanged worried glances. It was clear to everyone that there was no leadership or progress being made by any of the moving pieces.
The slamming of the doors drew everyone’s attention in the birthing suite and in came a team of six men. They were neither in civilian clothes or hospital uniforms and consisted of suites of black outer jackets and white button ups that covered them from tops to bottoms. Their eyes were covered in black glasses and atop their heads were matching fedoras.
“Who is in charge here?” The front man asked, reaching into his suit jacket with his foremost part. When no one replied to his question he drew his attention from his pocket where he took out a white piece of paper, and repeated his question, “I asked who is in charge here.”
Everyone looked around until a small doctor stepped forward. He held, in two of his parts, the tools of his trade, shaking with fear. Of the men or fear of the child, one could not know. “I am the head doctor,” he said but his voice was wobbled and full of unsure hesitation.
The suited man turned from the tense doctor to the couple on the bed, “are you the parents?” The couple nodded in unison. The baby still screamed in the corner frantically moving its useless two arms and two feet. The ten fingers and ten toes stood out as abominations on the ends of the four limbs.
The suited man nodded and then looked down at the paper he held. “In accordance with statute four section thirty-three we hereby take over jurisdiction of this hospital room.” There was an obvious sigh of relief from the hospital staff.
The parents of the crying child were still wide eyed as the man continued, “in accordance with the great book of Tritiya the abomination will be sent to the work camps to live out the remainder of its days serving in its limited ways.” Everyone, including the parents, in the room sighed in relief as the man read out this statement. He paused for a moment and nodded to one of the men next to him who grabbed a white sack and walked to the crying infant. Using large tongs, he lifted the baby and placed it into the white sack. Again, the room was notably relaxed. The baby still cried but not being able to see it seemed to put everyone at ease.
“Furthermore, in acting in good faith we give this couple the option to break their bond or to be sterilized so that no more abominations will be produced in their union.” Here the man in the suit looked at the couple who looked at each other.
A moment of understanding passed between them and then, “we would like to break our bond.”
The man nodded and then waved a man over who produced a tablet that both parents quickly tapped out a few buttons. “This completes our business. Any questions or concerns?”
No one spoke as the man looked at everyone in the small birthing room. He nodded and turned on his heel and marched out the room carrying the crying sack of white.
by submission | Jun 14, 2025 | Story |
Author: Jeff Kennedy
The first few days on a new starship are the worst. The gravity’s turned up a skosh higher than you’re used to. The hot, caffeinated, morning beverage (it’s never coffee) is mauve and smells like wet dog. The bathroom facilities don’t quite fit your particular species and the sonic shower controls are so complicated that you end up dirtier than when you started. After a few tours, you get used to making adjustments.
This rotation was no different. After his second dinner on-board, George asked about the evening meal’s main dish: an “interesting” stew filled with root vegetables and bits of oddly textured meat. There was a brief pause before the Bolons stood in unison and started a series of deep sobbing toasts to “the noble sacrifice of Brother Bob”. Thus began a round of official union-sanctioned mourning that left the ship at a standstill for three days.
This did not endear George to First Officer Boardman, the no-nonsense, zero-tolerance, pain-in-the-ass shift commander. George had never met Boardman face to face (not particularly unusual on a ship this size), but Boardman nevertheless made it very clear that he was not happy with George’s performance. Every morning, he filled George’s in-box with blistering emails and his task pad with mindless insulting jobs. Why did George need to count the blue shipping containers in storage bay three times last Tuesday? How many times do you need to mop down a holodeck before you finally ban certain parties from engaging in certain activities?
George decided it would be best if he just kept quiet and diligently worked the duty list each day, so he smiled and did just that, finishing tasks in record time, collecting missives of praise and support from the officers around him, but the nasty emails and crap job assignments kept coming. It felt odd to have an invisible nemesis.
Thursday morning, George stepped out of the shower, dropped his towel into the bin, and read his assignments from a task pad propped up on the bathroom vanity. Along with the usual mundane maintenance tasks (replace fuse in deck 5 medical scanner, validate deck 12 storage manifest, reboot deck 10 meal printer) was an oddity.
“Feed the cat. Deck 17. Cabin 23.”
George sighed and started the long trek down to deck 17.
When George arrived, he found the cabin door locked so he had to use his security key to get in. A gray tabby cat snoozed on the bunk.
“Rough life,” George muttered under his breath.
He rummaged through the junk on the desk, found a tin of cat food, and emptied it into a cheap metal bowl. The cat yawned, stretched, and rolled over. Mildly annoyed, George dropped the bowl to the floor with a loud clang.
The startled cat jumped to its feet and spoke in a commanding vibrato.
“What the hell are you doing in here!?”
The cat stood up on its back legs and smashed a button on the cabin control panel with a front paw.
“Security! This is the captain. There’s an intruder in my cabin. Send a team immediately.”
There was a brief kerfuffle in the hallway before two armed officers shoved the door open and burst into the captain’s cabin. The first officer in, leveled a charge pistol at George’s chest.
It was going to be a long trip. George could see a lot of litter box duty in his future.
by submission | Jun 13, 2025 | Story |
Author: Bill Cox
In the summer of 1950, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in North America, physicist Enrico Fermi posed a simple but profound question to his colleagues – “Where is everyone?”
If life was abundant in the universe and often gave rise to intelligence, then, given the age of the universe, our world should already have been visited by alien life. Why weren’t they here?
In the summer of 2025, seventy-five years later, his question is answered. A small vessel arrives in Earth orbit, observed by the missile detection systems of the major powers. While they are pondering how to respond, the vessel initiates a broadcast that is heard around the Earth in all its many languages.
“People of Earth. Hello. We are the creators of your universe, conscious beings whose true home is the endless eternity that exists outside of space and time.
We built this universe to answer a question, to provide us with knowledge that did not already exist within the totality of us. We inhabit the eternal, timeless vastness outwith your universe, where there is no prospect of change. How could we add to the sum of our knowledge, without there being a ‘before’ that understanding and an ‘after’? Constructing a universe where time flows and entering that universe afforded us that ability.
We built spacetime from strings of fundamental uncertainty, whose vibrations spawned the particles and forces that make up all you see. Such beautiful music we made, an orchestra of creation, your cosmos our symphony.
Yet, although we are beings with power beyond your understanding, we are not infallible. In every system, there is the unforeseen, the ghost in the machine. In our creation, this was the flaw, an off-key note, at first little noticed in the background harmony. However, this discordant element grew in strength and potency. If left unchecked, it threatens to corrupt the consonance of our magnificent construction, poisoning the knowledge that we seek to add to ourselves.
The irony is that this defect is an echo of our own greatest attribute; consciousness! It infects the fabric of spacetime, moving through galaxies and superclusters, sparking self-awareness in countless worlds. Granted, these consciousnesses are poor reflections of our own, yet, over the ten trillion years of our great project, they will threaten the balance of our magnificent construct.
Thus we, the architects of the universe, are here today to remove the flaw from your world. Embedded as it is in life, we must destroy all biology on your planet. You may think us unfeeling, but we take no joy in your extinction. This telepathic message is a gift of understanding from all of us to all of you, that you may grasp your true place in the nature of things and the absolute necessity of us removing the infection of your consciousness from this universe.
Your deaths will help us restore harmony to our grand composition. In oblivion, you will allow splendour. At time’s end, our goals having been achieved, we will sing a lament in your memory, as we ascend once more into infinite eternity.”
As the message ended, the vessel grew in brightness. The wormhole at its centre opened, the other end being tethered inside a pulsar, thousands of light years away. The hard radiation thus released, over the course of a number of days, completely sterilised the Earth of all life. Enrico Fermi’s question, asked seventy-five years previously, was finally answered. Alas, a lifeless planet Earth joined all those other worlds where, the question having been asked, an answer was given with merciless efficiency.
by submission | Jun 12, 2025 | Story |
Author: Aubrey Williams
The planet hangs as a dull pebble in sluggish orbit. They’ve moved on, the inhabitants, or perhaps they succumbed. We are unsure, there’s much to keep track of, and if it’s not a sanctioned or protected celestial body, there’s no reason to look further. Some minerals of interest, and unusual formations, so enough to warrant an expedition. It’s been a long time, we’ve been told, since anyone made a trip out here. We can see why. We must admit that there’s relatively little we know about this strange rock.
We disembarked our craft, pleased that our cosmic tunics and caps provided ample protection, and that we could naturally digest the air. Our hairs were lifted by occasional breaths of wind, but nothing harsh. We recall the sky being a wet-green peach, some cumulative haze and vapour. The scanners indicated a large subterranean shaft under an antique structure, with a vault or chamber— perhaps a series of them— below. Ambulating a modest distance from our landing sight, there lies a humped construction of robust material; we opened it with our star-cutters, preferring to use what was once a door— it was impossible to find a way to interact with it.
Faded sigils lined the walls in cyphers and speech quite unknown to us. We thought one depicted a flower, angular and refined. A cage guarded a shaft, some sort of descender perhaps, but too old now. Space enough on the sides for us to use gravity hooks and lines, though we ingested some warming draught to help protect against the precipitating decline in temperature. It was a long journey down these bones, and very dark. We were struck by how silent it was, and the lack of ornamentation after so many peculiar runes. Perhaps a structure of different times and cultures that had come together?
Some dome or cap of rare mineral ore lay at the bottom, our lights revealing recessed symbols and pictograms that seemed to tell a story similar to the one in the atrium. It was hard work with the cutters, but we persevered. While already the information was interesting, we had made excellent time. The cap was thick, telling of the great wealth its builders worked with. Perhaps, we thought, we might salvage it and distribute.
A vast maze of some kind lay before us, more of the stylised symbols snaking around the walls, and tomb-like epigraphs on the floor. Discarded chariots lay dormant. We were close to weeping— so well-preserved. All of us agreed to follow straight ahead, and descended ramps after ramps, eventually winding around a singular central vein to a chamber, guarded by another embellished door. It too was a work of art. Within this chamber we found cylinders buried in fine sands, made of minerals and alloys, sealed tight. We cut open one of these eggs and saw the fine blue pellets inside, seeds! We were overjoyed. They sparkled a little, a glittering thing. We left with different amphorae, our mouths rich with the tang of ores.
It was time to depart, and we returned home. Many scholars hurriedly recorded our details, viewed our logs with glee. We brought the delightful seeds home, and shared them with the families. Now we wonder, though, why the seeds have not taken in the way we hoped. We are finding our hairs have begun to thin and fall out, and burns have appeared unexpectedly. Our littlest one finds it difficult to stay awake, and the draughts are almost impossible to consume without regurgitating them.
Our dreams are of the flower, and how it haunts us.
by submission | Jun 11, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
On the endless rooftop of the fact-ory, they sat in the beat up armchairs amid a bristling forest of antennae and corrugated steel backlit by the godly effulgence of towers and tenements that defined the horizon. It was steamy hot though well past midnight. The heat never quite radiated away these days, but they’d long grown accustomed to it, grateful for the slight breeze that stirred late at night.
The eleven adults who represented Kankuut—their rooftop settlement—sat in a semicircle interacting with the cyglyph. A buzzing hive of media sensation, the holoform display branched to each of their chairs pouring a live netstream from which they made their selections. Consuming and producing content simultaneously, they shaped meme-ing in their lives. Pheromones of thought directed strange dances of conversation that filled the air and airways.
I post, therefore I exist. The city sang. Connected.
Little aYa appeared puffing her cherubic cheeks. “I can’t sleep,” she told the adults of Kankuut as she climbed onto her mother’s arm rest. “Tell me a story.”
Her mother patted her head and sent the image to her cadre of followers. “Who’ll tell aYa a story?” she broadcast.
aBa oLo pinged and his sister positioned his holoform in front of aYa. “Having trouble sleeping, little bird?”
aYa nodded. “Tell me a story, aBa. Please.”
“Of course. It is what we are. You and I, your aMa and aPa, all people, we are made of stories.” His holoform turned a bright orange, not unlike the rising moon through the thick city haze. “I think I will tell you the story of Hupta the Hermit.”
“Was he real?” the child asked.
“Hupta? Little bird, all is real. Creation is creation. Information, information. Thus we are formed. And that is much of Hupta’s tale. Listen, little bird.”
aBa oLo’s form reached out in an expansive gesture which slowly dissolved into a massive tree and then a towering forest. aBa oLo’s voice filled the forest.
“This is a place of old, aYa. A living thing connected at the roots like we are connected by the air and waves of cyglyphs. Creatures great and small lived among these mighty trees, but only two had the knowledge to harness the trees. One creature, Biva had enormously powerful front teeth and jaws.”
An image of the furry flat tailed creature with the protruding teeth floated before aYa who drew back. “It must be enormous to bite through a tree, aBa.”
“Biva was much smaller than you, aYa. It could only bring down a tree very slowly, and generally small trees. Trees that it could easily position to make its home.” A Biva dam and pond slowly rotated for aYa.
“It is like the pools that form behind the fact-ory during monsoon. Oh, to live in water every day, aMa!” She turned to her mother who, once again, patted her head.
“Yes, aYa, water is a blessing. Now let your aBa tell his story.”
“Indeed, the Biva enjoyed his home among the trees, until…”
“Until,” aYa repeated, sensing the cue, “Hupta came.”
“Yes, little bird, Hupta came and sat with his back against the tallest tree near the pond.” aBa allowed aYa to see from Hupta’s vantage, his deep red robe and gnarled bare feet pointing directly to the placid pond where Biva swam.
“Show me his face, aBa.”
aBa chuckled. “I cannot. You must create it. Hupta the Hermit. Beyond ken and kit. Let his words and actions create his features. To partake of the cyglyph, one day, you must contribute. That is the way of the city-zen and the fact-ory”
Her chocolate eyes widened like a newborn’s. “I will try, aBa.”
“That is all that is ever required, little bird. To try is to learn, to learn is to grow, to grow is to connect.
“I do not understand how, aBa,” she said.
“Of course you do not, little bird. Not yet. Hupta’s story, like all tales is a seed. It must grow. Like we all must. Become Biva. Become Hupta. Become the teller of your own story. Ideas, possibilities, lessons, life, oneness are the work which we commit to the fact-ory. It makes the world spin.”
“It makes me dizzy, aBa,” aYa admitted.
“Then, precious little bird, you are of the city-zen.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Jun 10, 2025 | Story |
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Lewis got the assistant at a regifting exchange at the company Christmas party. He didn’t turn it on until February when a snowstorm kept him working from home for a week. It had been opened before, the setup was already complete, but it asked for his name, and gleaned network information from his phone, and started assisting right away.
It paid his bills, and ordered groceries, or takeout food, with an uncanny ability to discern his mood. Optimized the vacuum drone, reconfigured the temperature controls, and saved on his energy bill.
Best regift ever!
Mid-fall of that year, there was a transition to work from home, initially part-time, then full-time, and by Christmas Lewis wasn’t going into the office at all. The Christmas party got canceled without explanation.
Alone on New Year, he got so drunk that he was still nursing a hangover two days later when he was supposed to be in a nine am virtual staff meeting.
He slept in, jolting awake at half nine, and raced to his desk.
To his surprise, his assistant was already in the meeting, presenting a disturbingly lifelike version of him in place of the camera feed. After the meeting, it stayed online, dutifully completing his assigned work tasks for the day.
Lewis went back to bed.
It was June before Lewis thought about work again. He’d been playing video games, reading, and watching old movies. Some days he just sat on his balcony and got well and truly stoned. His assistant was being a better Lewis at work than he’d ever been.
At the end of October, he awoke to find the power and network services were cut to his apartment. When he went to see if anyone else was affected, he found an eviction notice taped to his door.
Confused, he stood out in the late fall air and smoked another joint.
Barely an hour later there was a knock on the door, and on opening a pair of uniformed police officers showed themselves in.
“Lewis Truman,” the short one read from his PDA, “you are under arrest for embezzling funds from the Tanitomi Corporation, for falsifying work records, for the illegal use of a prohibited AI system. Your accounts have been frozen, and your assets are in the process of being seized.”
Lewis was handcuffed and led speechless from the apartment down a hall full of curious onlookers.
No one noticed the vacuum drone leave the apartment amid all the drama, a sleek personal assistant nestled securely in the recess of its carry handle. There were only a few months before Christmas, and the Xoto Moro Corporation was known to have very well-attended Christmas parties.
