The Color of Sunset

by | Aug 1, 2025 | Story | 0 comments

Author: Sarasi Jayasekara

Sammy could see color. That was the part that bothered me. Not that he had all his organs intact while half my body had been replaced with machines. Nor that mama hadn’t spoken two words to me since he’d been born. All that didn’t trouble me. This was going to be her last baby. Her womb was faltering. Couldn’t blame mama for being happy about Sammy being new and healthy. But he could look at the world and see colors. That was unacceptable.

Every morning, he doodled nonsense on the light wooden floor of our apartment, with crayons of different shades of dark. Then he pointed to the scribbles and yelled “mwountain! flowwer! sky! yelloow!”

Pff.

I bet it’s not even yellow. Kids are stupid.

Anyways, this was a long time ago. This was before Sammy tried to grow up, and his body decided, nope, not gonna.

I wish I could tell you that Sammy lies in a nice peaceful grave on a mountaintop somewhere, like they used to do with the dead, in the before-times. So let’s pretend that’s what happened.

I don’t remember being sad about it. Was I even sad when Mama left? She had saved up enough money to go to a retirement camp. It was a better life―far better than the factories―as far as we knew. So she was gone. And I had no right to be upset. That’s how life goes.

I hadn’t thought about them for years―Sammy with his crayons and mama with her smile. But today, when I got to know I had finally saved up enough money for retirement, I didn’t know who to celebrate it with. The only reason I could make the mark was because I did nothing but work. No talk, no drinks, no friends.

So I walked into that abandoned part of town I used to live in, found our old apartment and sat there, staring at the wooden floors with faded crayon marks.

Flower―Mountain―Sky―Yellow.

#

Merky wasn’t someone who anybody trusted. He made a point of lurking around the factory on pay days, selling smuggled goods to desperate souls.

“Oi,” he yelled when he saw me walk out, “I heard you made the mark yesterday.” He winked.
I gave him a nervous smile, saying nothing. The only way I had avoided being talked into things all these years, was by avoiding the whole talking part.

“I knew a lad with the same eyes as you,” he blurted as I tried to walk away. “I just sold him a color upgrade.”

#

He took my whole retirement fund.

There was little guarantee that it would even work. I had given myself to Merky’s people to do the transplant. I was half expecting to be stabbed in the gut and sold for parts. But somehow they didn’t. When it was done, Merky gave me a wicked smile and shook my hand.

I don’t remember much of that evening. But all these years later, Merky still makes fun of me. Apparently my first words were “Show me something yellow!”

I do remember that he took me to watch the sunset.

Hawkett versus Hawkett

by | Jul 31, 2025 | Story | 0 comments

Author: Dimitry Partsi

Hawkett and his desk arrived on the 17th floor at precisely 9:04 a.m. The desk, a formidable beast of faux-wood laminate, announced its presence with squeaky caster wheels. Hawkett, a man with a perpetually surprised expression, was, in his own mind, a legal force of nature. A legal beagle, as he sometimes called himself.

His first stop was Zenith Innovations & Futures. The receptionist here was a young man with a slick haircut named Chad, who looked at the desk with detached irony.

“Bringing your own workspace, bro? That’s a vibe,” Chad said.

“Is not vibe, is law office,” Hawkett corrected him. He leaned forward, placing both hands flat on his desk. A king addressing the court. “Have you been sued, but do not know it yet?”

Chad held up a hand. “Gonna stop you there. We’re good. Our legal team is fully gamified and blockchain-integrated.”

“I see,” Hawkett said, a flicker of something that might have been hurt in his eyes. “You are forcing my hand.” He cleared his throat. “Zenith Innovations versus Hawkett! For wasting my valuable time! You will be responsible for all costs.”

“Costs for what?” Chad asked, genuinely curious now.

“Snacks, for one,” Hawkett said gravely. “Deposition is hungry work.”

After being escorted out, his next target was SynerCorp Global Solutions. He rolled his desk to the reception station where a woman named Kathy was fielding a call. She put the caller on hold, eyes wide.

“Can I
 help you?” she asked.

“I am here to take on your case,” Hawkett said, his voice a low, confident rumble. “For you, against you, perhaps even diagonally. We are flexible.”

“We have a legal department,” Kathy said, her hand inching towards the phone.

Hawkett sighed, a sound of profound disappointment. “You leave me no choice. We will now be forced to sue on your behalf.”

Kathy frowned. “Sue who on our behalf?”

“Myself,” Hawkett declared. “SynerCorp Global Solutions vs. Hawkett. For emotional distress caused by your rejection. I know all my own weaknesses. The discovery process will be devastatingly efficient.”

Kathy was already dialing security. His final target for the day was the most ambitious: the law firm of Sterling, Finch, & Hurst. He rolled his desk straight into the heart of the office until he was stopped by a tall, skeletal man in a pinstripe suit. This was Mr. Hurst.

“And what, in God’s name, is this?” Hurst asked, his voice like gravel.

“This,” Hawkett said, gesturing grandly, “is justice.”

“Get out of my office before I have you sanctioned into the next century.”

Hawkett shook his head slowly. “You are making a terrible mistake. A mistake I must now rectify. Sterling, Finch, & Hurst versus Hawkett. For
 for being mean.”

Hurst actually took a step back. “You can’t sue yourself on our behalf for ‘being mean’! There’s no standing! It’s gibberish!”

“Standing?” Hawkett scoffed. “I am standing right here. With desk. And is not gibberish, is opening statement.”

Mr. Hurst, a man who had faced down federal prosecutors, looked truly broken. The sheer, unadulterated absurdity had short-circuited his legal mind. He reached into his wallet and pulled out two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills.

“Here,” he croaked. “This is a retainer.”

“You are retaining me?”

“I am retaining you,” Hurst whispered, “to not sue yourself on my behalf. Ever.”

Victory. Hawkett pocketed the money. “A wise decision. My case against myself was very strong. I would have destroyed me.” The squeaky wheel sang a song of triumph as he rolled toward the elevator, a fully-retained legal beagle.

” Last Message”

by | Jul 30, 2025 | Story | 0 comments

Author: Rida Tariq

*That bell of the night:-

The phone bell rang at 2:30Am . “Liza” picked up the phone.
There was a name on the screen that had been erased for three years: “Max❀”
Panic, surprise, and a forgotten pain all woke up together. “Hi…?” Silence then a halting, fading voice: “Forgive me, I’ve lost my way back…” Then the signal broke. The line was cut.

* Three years later?

Max, who had suddenly disappeared three years earlier from Liza’s life for no reason.
No reason to call now, why was he calling today? And how? Liza redialed her number “Number not available…” She searched his name on social media but all profiles were either closed or inactive.

She finally opened his old emails.
One title was: “If I disappear…”.
She had never opened that mail to avoid pain.

* That mail:-

“Liza, if you are reading this mail, maybe I have left your world. But I am not going to die…
I have just known something that the world wants to hide.”
“A truth… that burned inside me. I used to work in an organization where digital experiments were being done on the mental state of human beings. AI doesn’t just drive your phone, it also dreams of you.”
“If you ever hear my voice again, you will understand that I am still imprisoned somewhere perhaps in time, maybe in the system…”

* Soundless tears:-

Liza stayed up all night listening to old voice notes. Then she found a file with the name “Last ping -17B” a secret recording.
Max’s panicked voice: “Even if they erase me, my memory will remain. It is not easy to stop AI, but it is also difficult to bury the truth.”
In the background some people were screaming, alarms were ringing then everything was over.

*The last clue :-

Liza sent that file to a cyber specialist she trusted. The message came from back him : “This file is not an ordinary AI system it is the remnants of the ‘Nova Project’, an experience that would turn human memory into a code.” “Your friend may not be physically, but is alive in data.”

*Digital grave?

Liza decides, she will bring back Max’s data. She downloaded the backup of “Nova Project” from a deep web server. An algorithm opened, with thousands of “memories” videos, audio clips, dreams, fears.
There was a folder: “M-K_313” and a file: “heart.memory.json”. She opened the file, and the first sentence was: “Liza, I didn’t want to forget you, the system forced me.”

*New contact:-

A few hours later a face appeared on Liza’s computer screen, blurry, digital, but like her love.
“You really are here?” Liza asked, “So you can come back?”

“No, but you can tell the world my truth.”

*Last Message :-

For all, Liza made a documentary with all the digital evidence: “The Last Message: Searching for a Man” Millions of people around the world saw this. Many said that their own fans had also disappeared suddenly maybe they were all part of a ‘system’.
Liza only spoke one line in the last scene: “Love doesn’t go away. It just starts to live in a new form.”
The final “last message” is not just a search for a person, but a question: “Is our existence just a body? Or everything we leave for each other sounds, words, memories, and a last message?”
If technology can separate us, maybe it can also connect us the only condition is that we have the courage to listen to the truth.

Proof of Concept

by | Jul 29, 2025 | Story | 0 comments

Author: Majoki

“Based on the most current cosmological evidence, the known universe is less than 5% ordinary matter, all the crap we can see and touch.”

“That’s still a lot of crap.” Grunden grinned. He always grinned.

Finnhil waved him off. “That’s nothing. We’re after paydirt, the thing that makes up over two-thirds of reality.”

Grunden’s eyes widened. “Porn?”

“No. That’s just the Internet. I’m talking about dark energy.”

Finnhil waited for Grunden’s backtalk. None came. He sighed. “Really? You have nothing to say to that. We’re on the verge of testing one of the most revolutionary ideas in scientific history, and now you have nothing to say?”

“Sorry. I was passing gas.”

“You are a living metaphor, Grunden. A living metaphor, but I need your pissant help today to film this. Get your phone out.”

Ever-grinning, Grunden did and started recording.

Finnhil cleared his throat. “Greetings. I’m James Monroe Finnhil. This day, I’ll achieve a breakthrough that will change the way we think about humanity and our supreme role in the universe.”

Gesturing with spidery hands, Finnhil motioned to the apparatus on the table before him. “Through years of experimentation, I believe I’ve determined the nature of dark energy, the force that drives all matter, seen and unseen, in the cosmos. My theory is simple but sublime: dark energy is intelligence. It is the source not of life, but of consciousness. Thought is literally a motive force.”

With forced flourish, Finnhil picked up a glittering form from the table that could reasonably be described as Buck Roger’s hairnet. Beaming with pride, he placed the glittering, filament-laced thing on his narrow head.

Grunden sniggered.

“Quiet you!” Finnhil shushed. “We’ll edit that out. No more interruptions. No more.”

“Nevermore.” Grunden grinned.

“Enough already.” Finnhil regathered himself. “Thought is a motive force. Dark energy is its quintessence, the moduli, the scalar fields that result. Viewed through this lens both the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox coalesce into what I call Finnhil’s Final Solution.”

Grunden sniggered again, but Finnhil charged on. “The proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, the signs of their communicating civilizations, is all around us. We are that proof. The concept of dark energy only exists because of thought and reason. It is a product of intelligence. Cosmological expansion is really a factor of the growth of sentience, of intelligence, of reason in our inter-galactic brethren.”

Finnhil spread his hands expansively. “For those paying close attention, we were alerted to thought as motive force over a hundred years ago. Like many break-through discoveries, mine stands on the shoulder of giants. None greater than Edgar Rice Burroughs. He alone understood the relationship between dark energy and intelligence. Through his iconic John Carter he showed us the way to tap into the invisible forces that could propel us to faraway worlds. Burroughs was the one who sussed this truth for humanity.”

Finnhil’s spindly fingers danced about his head. “The device I’m wearing is wirelessly connected to an apparatus I call the Perturbational Complex Engine. In essence it is a wave generator that reinforces neural activity. I am about to use it to focus on a single thought, a bold concept, that will send me to Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom. That is fitting. The imaginative pioneer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, paved the way, and now I will definitively demonstrate through proof of concept that concept is proof.”

Finnhil pushed a series of blinking buttons on the Perturbational Complex Engine. The device hummed and the delicate filaments of his gossamer headdress glowed brightly. “Humanity may not be, but I am ready.”

Nothing happened until Finnhil’s face contorted in ecstasy or agony or both. And Grunden grinned a last time. “Nevermore.”

At the site that had been the residence of J. M. Finnhil, a firefighter digging through the largely charred, shredded and unrecognizable remnants of the house, discovered a badly damaged cell phone. No human remains were recovered.

After weeks of working with the shattered phone, all the forensic technicians could extract was a garbled video with only two clear but disjointed words: proof 
. nevermore.

Burnt Offerings

by | Jul 28, 2025 | Story | 1 comment

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer

“Go left. Left! Between the trees.”
“Rule nineteen: do not follow a road.”
“Not the gap on the right. The gap on the left. Left!”
Tersi rests a hand on my shoulder and cuts into my comms.
“Check definition: road. Query application of rule. Go left.”
“Revision: indicated route is not in contravention.”
I watch the view shift until rows of trunks are hurtling past on either side. Muting the line, I pat their hand.
“I don’t know how you do it. Every day I hate the asshat who mandated A.I. for frontline ops.”
“I’m immune. Spend four years seconded from tactical to A.I. training and command clarification becomes second nature.”
“Must make it easier.”
They pat me on the head.
“Well, dealing with the A.I. is.”
“Set myself up for that.”
“True. Right, the swarm are approaching the first marker. What’s on the menu?”
I check my defensive breakdown.
“We’ve got Taranis engaging the top cover, so we’re up against gatling cannon, rapid-fire missile batteries, and net casters. Plus the usual hawks.”
They slap my head.
“Wired trees!”
“Altitude plus twenty.”
I see the view rise. The makeshift wall of cable-strung branches passes below.
“Mission default.”
The view drops again. My display lights with red and blue markers.
“Red Flight engage. Blue flight engage. Green flight engage.”
Tersi crouches down by me.
“Green flight already?”
“They’re looking to drive us down to the gatlings. Standard tactic is to accelerate under the hawks and missiles.”
“So green flight are a pre-emptive response. When the gatlings pop their hatches
”
“They’ll be ready.”
“What are you payload wings?”
“Yellow flight: double stack of Darts. Standard 20-kilo HE. One in four is split-load with incendiary. One in ten has special ordnance instead.”
“Which we’re not mentioning. Out of curiosity, though: razors or pellets?”
“Duriken.”
“They went ahead with those? All hell will break loose when warfare monitors find out.”
“There’s a Red Wolf flight in a holding pattern, ready for clear up.”
“How exactly do you ‘clear up’ depleted uranium using flyers?”
“Seeding strike on their munitions piles.”
“So it’s not our depleted uranium mines they’ll find. The enemy was planning a war crime. Lucky we stalled it, etcetera. Good headlines, pats on the back all round.”
“You got the whole thing in one. I had to explain it some.”
“Which is why you run them and not the other way round.”
I check the statuses.
“We’re through. Took down eight out of ten of theirs, lost half of ours. You want to add the rest to the delivery or loop them back?”
“That doubles the strike size. Add them.”
“All flights go yellow.”
An extra hundred lights turn yellow. I watch views shift as they join the strike formations.
“Looking good.”
All the views go dazzlingly bright, then blink out.
Tersi leans forward.
“Surely that’s too soon.”
They’re not wrong. I bring up the Red Wolf station scans: a collage built from views when each is pointing the right way.
Flames. A sea of flames. I call for statuses. Nothing.
Tersi flicks her comms to ‘all’.
“This is Home Flight. Op Abort. If you’ve got anything, bring it back.”
They glance at me.
“I’d heard about a low flying drone response based on a banned World War One weapon. A Livens Flame Projector. It was banned for being too horrific. Fired a hundred-metre cone of napalm.”
I watch the flames.
“Mounted in towers, two hundred metre range, pitched towards the right altitude. No humans to incinerate.”
I glance at Tersi.
“The atrocities restart here.”
She frowns.
“True. No way they’ll hold back.”

Latecomers

by | Jul 27, 2025 | Story | 1 comment

Author: Alastair Millar

It was our usually bad-tempered neighbour Mr Winkelmann who first told us we could get ‘special benefits’ if we registered in person at the Central Bureau in Lapis. Indigo’s government knew we spent a lot on the exoskeletal clothing and bone-strengthening drugs we needed to help us deal with the gravity, and wanted to help. Later, on the etherwave, the President said that if we signed up, the government would guarantee better jobs, despite all the bad things people say about us. Mamma thought this was great. Pappa said nothing, but the lines in his face seemed deeper, somehow. I was just excited that we’d get to make a trip to the capital.

When we got there the following weekend, Central Plaza was filled with other Latecomers – people who’d arrived in the last Wave from Earth, like Mamma and Pappa, or their children, like me. There were lots of Security Bots, too, but nobody was causing trouble. We queued in the sunshine for hours, under a sky the glorious colour that gave our planet its name, but eventually we got to the scanning booths and had our DNA taken “to avoid fraud”, whatever that meant. Nobody really told us anything; when we tried asking, one of the uniformed scanner operators laughed and said “don’t worry, things will start happening soon”. Mamma was excited to find out what, but Pappa looked skeptical.

That night, there was another broadcast. The President was delighted that so many people had come forward. To save money, Latecomer support gear would now only be available from the State, so anyone who hadn’t registered should do so quickly, or they’d not be able to get anything. “I don’t like this,” muttered Pappa, but Mamma said being efficient was important.

A few days later we heard that all Latecomers were going to be moved to Azure, the second continent, to a brand new colony! We’d get proper houses, and wouldn’t have to worry about being bullied or discriminated against! We were told to come to the Spaceport, with two bags each; everything else would be shipped later. Mamma was delighted – a new home instead of our cramped apartment! Pappa just looked sad.

On Departure Day we were there as instructed. Mamma was goggling: “They’re taking us in style,” she said, “that’s a space-capable liner!”. Our bags were taken by some uniformed attendants, but when we got on board it was nothing like I expected: no cabins, just big dormitories with bunks set into the bulkheads, three-high from floor to ceiling. We managed to get a vertical for ourselves, and I got the top bed! Mamma said not to worry, it was only a short ride. Pappa’s face was grey, and he stayed silent, but I didn’t understand why – even if it was uncomfortable, this was an adventure!

But we didn’t get taken to Azure after all. Instead we were onboard for weeks, and then found ourselves deposited at a bleak landing pad on Earth. The Terran Government wasn’t expecting us, and made a big fuss, but Indigo just stopped talking to them. We never got out baggage back, and now we’re living in a tent in a field while things get worked out. The Sun here’s the wrong colour – big and orange instead of small and blue – and the sky just isn’t right, but I guess we’ll get used to it. It looks like we’ll have to.

“What do we do now?” asked Mamma the night after we arrived. “Start again,” replied Pappa, tiredly; but for the first time in a long while, he was smiling.