by submission | May 10, 2025 | Story |
Author: Evan A Davis
“Another round for my friends,” Dallas announced, “on me!”
Every patron in the Four-Finger Saloon loudly cheered, raising a glass to the famous outlaw. The barkeep tried to protest, but was quickly drowned in the oncoming tide of customers. The automated piano man struck up a jaunty song for the gunslinger’s generosity.
With that, Dallas slipped behind the digital curtain nearer the back and descended the hidden set of stairs which led to a small room lined mostly with stolen goods. A scrawny man with lined cheeks and a pinched mouth stood behind a service window adjusting a ledger. “Bernie!” Dallas greeted him. “Long time, no see!”
The pawn broker vented an impressed whistle. “Nathan ‘Diamondback’ Dallas. What brings you ’round?” His hand slipped under the counter for the silent alarm.
The outlaw laughed and held up a torn coupling. The broker’s mouth drew a tight line, which Diamondback countered with a bright grin.
“Just you and me,” he said, tossing the security coupling aside. He skipped down the remaining steps and began to mosey with his hands on his hips, the chrome of his blaster catching the dim light. “And a family matter does,” he said. “You seen my brother Spence lately?”
“No, sir,” Bernie lied. “He still flyin’ with you? Last I heard, you two split off near Saturn-way.”
“You heard right. Not so much lately on account of a…familial dispute. Speakin’ of, I’m here for my grandmama’s urn. And before you say it, I know Spence sold it here.” He let his hand fall to his blaster. “Recently.”
The broker adjusted his tie, stalling for time. “Well,” he said after a moment, “The urn itself is sealed iridium. Very rare in itself. I could certainly sell-”
“Bernie! You give me my grandmother!” He fired a plasma round just over Bernie’s shoulder, which prompted the broker to hand over the urn in question. “Thank you,” Dallas said genially.
Once again aboard his ship, his trigger finger unlocked the bioscanner at the urn’s base. Glittery, scarlet light danced over the flight consoles and nodes in the cockpit. That same trigger finger then ran smoothly over the stolen Venusian rubies housed within the urn.
“Thanks again, Nana,” he smiled warmly.
by submission | May 9, 2025 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
He awoke with a start. Cockpit red with emergency lights. Tried to move. PAIN! Slipped back into darkness. He awoke again; air still red.
“Ship?” he whispered.
“Yes, captain?”
“Need medical help,” he gasped.
“Affirmative. Medimechlings dispatched. Your condition is critical. Initiating emergency protocol B6. Distress beacon activated. Transponder check, affirmative, active. Requests for aid sent to all confirmed-non-hostile ships in range. Please try to…” But he had already drifted back into unconsciousness.
He came to in a warm yellow light that didn’t sear his eyeballs. Awareness seeped in: the smell of antiseptic, the humming and beeping of monitors, sensors on his chest; he was in a med-bed. “Where…?”
“Good evening Captain Gupta.” A voice from the air. “Please relax. You are out of danger. An assistant will be with you shortly.”
A minute passed. A figure appeared, literally, near his feet. Pleasant, presenting female. “Greetings. I am SIGGI, your holographic Synthetic Intelligence Guide and General Interface.”
“Hello, Siggi, I guess. Where am I?”
“Welcome to Anjou Station, in stable orbit around the planet of Marchioness Prime.”
“I’ve never heard of Anjou Station.”
“We are a small, private facility offering galactic-quality medical services in a refined and entirely discreet environment, for the discerning and demanding short- or long-term guest. We are operated by a sister company of your employer, Trans-Lines, You’ve been here quite a while, it’s good to see you lucid.”
“What happened?”
“According to the investigators, a pinhead-sized piece of ultra-dense material punctured your ship’s starboard protective shielding, outer membrane and inner membrane, before passing through you, and exiting through the membranes and shielding on the port side. It was not possible to identify the material, although our defence research arm has made strenuous efforts to do so.”
“My family…”
“They are aware of your situation.”
He lay back. He was lucky to be alive. Not least because… “Why did the ship wait to send medibots?”
“Under the Future Accords of 2058, artificial and synthetic intelligences may intervene medically only with patients’ specific consent, except in cases of clear life endangerment.”
“I was injured. I could easily have died.”
“Yes. It was an anomaly. The unit is being deconstructed to identify the source of the error. Trans-Lines extends its apologies for the inconvenience caused.”
“I feel like I should be angrier.”
“You are under controlled sedation; strong emotional responses to this and other issues could be harmful to your recovery.”
“Other issues? What other issues?”
SIGGI’s pause was noticeable. “This is a private facility. Regrettably, the maximum amount guaranteed by your personal health insurance and employer’s coverage has been exceeded. There is a substantial debit on your account, roughly equivalent to eighteen times your annual salary, that will need to be met. Failure to do so by transferring the appropriate amount or voluntarily entering debt bondage may result in the Anjou Medical Corporation taking legal action against you.”
“But I can’t afford that! And I can’t enter bondage, I need to support my family!”
“Trans-Lines is willing to offer an alternative solution. All your related current and future medical expenses will be met in return for signing a binding non-disclosure agreement preventing you from discussing the ship AI failure.”
Costs for cover-up. If ships could kill by neglect, what other systems could do the same? No wonder they didn’t want word getting out. And if he didn’t sign, would the systems here be among them? It wasn’t something he wanted to test.
“Not like I have a choice, is it?” he asked bitterly.
Wisely, SIGGI did not reply.
by submission | May 8, 2025 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
The tall lean figure stood before the honeycombed wall, searching the triangular nooks until he located the scrolls for engineering marvels. Tsoukal pulled out the uppermost scroll and unrolled it on the polished stone slab behind him. He placed a slim rectangular weight on each end of the scroll to hold it in place, and leaning over, began to read.
Tsoukal’s finger traced the hieroglyphs on the scroll, helping him decode the specifics inked on the parchment. This was exactly the scroll he was looking for! Overhead, the library’s skylights faded from white to orange to twilight blue. At that point a mechanical curator rolled in with a lantern held high.
“If you continue reading, you need more light,” it stated in a flat voice.
Tsoukal waved it away. “I’m finished,” he said as he rolled up the scroll. He turned to the wall, waiting for the curator to leave. Instead of replacing the scroll in its nook, he hid it in the billowing top of his scholar’s blouse; he then pulled a blank scroll from his satchel and inserted that into the empty space.
Tsoukal made his way through this vast library—the repository of all knowledge, not just of the marvels of engineering, but also mathematics and astronomy, as well as the gossip of history—until he reached the towering front doors. Pushing through them always made him feel so small; a mere insect crawling through the eternal aperture of accumulated wisdom.
* * *
Tsoukal stood on his flat rooftop with his house guest, the intrepid adventurer Martel. Together, they discussed the upcoming launch of the obelisk-shaped craft on the edge of their squat city.
“How can our citizens not understand this is a turning point for our civilization?” Martel asked.
“They’re afraid of change,” Tsoukal responded, saddened by his own answer. “Because they have comfortable lives, they mistakenly think things will always stay the same. They don’t accept the only constant in this life is change.”
He pulled the scroll from his shirt and handed it to Martel. “One more for the journey,” he said with a smile.
Martel read the inscription on the side of the scroll. “More instructions for marvelous feats of engineering!” He slid the scroll into a pocket inside his kaftan. “This will be an enormous help when we land. Thank you, friend.”
“Thank you for being brave enough to participate in this endeavor.”
Martel looked out over the twinkling lights of their city. “We really don’t have a choice, do we?”
Tsoukal sighed. “No.” He turned to face Martel. “Scouts report the barbarians are already on the move and will be at the gate within the month, and…”
“They will—again—burn down the library,” Martel finished. “Along with the rest of the city.” He crossed his arms. “That can only happen so many times before there’s nothing left to save.”
“And we enter a new dark age,” Tsoukal added. “Which is why it is imperative that you and your crew get away with your cargo of scrolls. A fresh green world awaits, one where you can build a new settlement, one where we have a real opportunity…”
“To start over,” Martel stated with undisguised optimism.
by submission | May 7, 2025 | Story |
Author: Colin Jeffrey
On some mornings, around eleven, the postman will drop a letter or two into the mail slot. But many of these are not letters – they are coded messages disguised as bills or advertisements. Only I know their secrets.
You see, I am a messenger of the gods.
Just yesterday, I was instructed via a gas bill to telephone my local hardware store and inform them of a circuit breaker that was about to overload, and burn their building down.
Two days before that, a brochure for “Happy-clappy kitten wash” told me to address a football match crowd through the PA system to tell them that they were – with the exception of Harry Fleagle in seat 28 – all sinners.
And, three weeks ago, I averted a major meltdown at a nuclear power plant, when I convinced its computer system that the “blue glowy things” in the water weren’t drowning, and it should leave them where they were.
Since I lost my online government job two years ago for supposedly being “too disruptive,” I have been given a greater number of tasks by the gods, and I have carried them out diligently.
Lives have been saved, wrongs righted, passive-aggressive warnings delivered.
Though my internet connection has been disrupted quite severely recently (by nefarious agents, no doubt) and I have had to resort to manually printing out my communications for hand delivery. I can only hope that this method has been effective.
Interference will not thwart me, however. My mission is one that has been diligently carried out by humans for millennia: Joan of Arc was a notable one, as well as Saint Francis, Giordano Bruno, and many others. But not Rasputin. He was a nut.
Speaking of nuts, that’s what they call me. But I don’t mind, really, I know my work is vital for the safety of humankind. Taunts do not move me from my hallowed path.
Just now I have received a menu from the local pizza place. It is dripping with coded messages.
When they put a red circle behind the word, “pepperoni” that means “trouble”, three holes on the picture of a cheese means “aliens”, and a line under the words, “family size” is code for “invasion”. As such, the whole world is in trouble, and they need to launch a counter attack.
I must warn the government.
“Dad!” Missy yelled from the kitchen, “The stupid AI toaster is making up stories again!”
Missy’s father, Mike, walked into the room, looked at the toast in her hand. “See,” she said, pointing to the words burned into the surface of the bread.
Her father read aloud. “Alien attack imminent. Launch counterstrike Alpha nine dash thirty.”
He sighed, yanked the toaster plug from the wall.
“I’ve had enough of this stupid thing,” he said, carrying the toaster outside. “The warranty has expired, it makes terrible toast, so it’s going in the trash.”
With that, he swung the toaster by its cord, and hurled it into the garbage can. “Who on earth needs an AI toaster anyway?” He said out loud as he wheeled the bin out front for the weekly pickup. “Stupid companies trying to make dumb things smart so they can charge more, that’s who.”
As he turned to go back indoors, Mike looked up at the sky for what would be the last time.
A hundred thousand battleships of the Graxian war fleet surged through the upper atmosphere glowing bright red as they hurtled downward, spraying fiery death from their enormous array of fearsome armaments, hell bent on destroying the Earth.
by Julian Miles | May 6, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The control room is gleaming. Elias Medelsson looks about with a smile. The night watch clearly made a successful conversion of tedium to effort. He’ll drop a memo to his counterpart on the Benthusian side to express thanks.
“Captain Medelsson.”
Elias turns to find Siun Heplepara, the Benthusian he had in mind, beckoning from the privacy alcove.
He joins his counterpart, settling against the opposite wall as privacy screens activate.
“Greetings, my friend. What’s kept you away from your tank this morn?”
Siun raises four tentacles, carefully holding the corners of a red-banded hardcopy.
“This, Elias. Sufficiently grim tidings that I could not settle until the matter is resolved.”
Elias leans forward and reads the memo. Anything significant enough to be transmitted in code only unravelled in a K-Phase printer is never going to be good. He finishes, then looks at Siun in disbelief.
“Montelordo? As in Gram Montelordo, President of the Orcan Federation?”
“The same. I have confirmed it.”
“You used your network?”
Benthusian interspatial communications are the envy of human worlds. They’re also a bone of contention as every negotiation that includes an attempt to acquire them for human use has those parts removed prior to agreement. The use of K-Phase printers on a ‘black box’ basis is the only concession, and that only in the last decade or so.
“Then fill me in on the scion of unbelievable wealth and power we know better as Engineering Apprentice Ridal Klon.”
Siun softly clicks his beak before starting, a sure sign of distress in this normally unshakeable octopod.
“Hossaw Montelordo, heir to an empire that threatens so many, harboured dreams of being something different. To be recognised for his engineering genius on his own merits, apparently. This placement is the end of an elaborate, year-long identity switch.”
Elias raises a finger.
“Switch, not construction?”
Siun folds the memo rapidly and intricately until it turns to dust.
“We offered Ridal employ after receiving a recommendation from Lamarry.”
Elias blinks. A recommendation from the Benthusian royal caste. They never come without fair reason. He suddenly realises why Siun stayed awake.
“Where did they find the body?”
“Pieces of him found in an agricultural shredder. Ridal had a spanner forged from meteoric alloys in his pocket. It jammed the unit.”
“Somebody was clumsy. Not Hossaw, I presume?”
“Two thugs employed by the boarding officer he bribed. They gave him up. He gave us Hossaw, complete with recordings.”
Elias takes a moment.
“This is a potential diplomatic incident. It could start a war.”
Siun slowly shrugs. Elias still can’t work out how a being without shoulders does it so well.
“You’ve received a suggestion, Captain Heplepara?”
“The loss of Ridal has insulted Lamarry, but they understand it is the act of a selfish child.”
Elias smiles.
“What have those illustrious minds recommended?”
“Ridal was an orphan. While he showed tremendous promise, it would not be unheard of for an apprentice to make a mistake. Especially as the replacement Ridal has proven to be nowhere near as good.”
“Something like forgetting to safety the flash chamber before cleaning?”
Siun nods.
“I like it: caught in an emergency meteor-avoidance burn. Tragic. Not even a body remaining. But Ridal would get a memorial on the walls of Habshedur.”
Elias nods.
“A proper tribute, while Montelordo junior stays lost.”
Siun swipes left to reveal a live feed.
“We have secured him in Benthusian quarters.”
Elais checks the schedule.
“The next maintenance cycle starts in an hour.”
“He’ll not miss his accident.”
“I’ll draft a memo for command.”
“I will inform Lamarry.”
Elias nods.
“Justice for Ridal.”
by submission | May 5, 2025 | Story |
Author: Chelsea Utecht
Today is the day our masters treat us to sweet snacks of expensive corn and sing a song to celebrate their love for us – “Happy Earth Day to you! Happy Earth Day to you! Happy Earth day, our humans!” – because today the orbit aligns so that we can see a blue glimmer that is the planet of our origin. While this day will come to the masters ten or twelve times, we tend to only live long enough to see it twice (and I was too young to remember my first time).
“Look!” My master points, but their eyesight is better than mine. I squint, and they laugh, ruffling my hair, which they keep short so it sticks up on end. They sing, but I’m still squinting, wanting to badly to see that speck in the sky they say my ancestors once owned. They’re talking about the loneliness, living among other humans in cramped boxes, sometimes ten in a family. They’re saying I’m lucky to have all this space all to myself, to never even see another human but a few times an orbit. They’re saying we used to have no masters to feed us and groom us and pick our clothes. “So sad,” they say, pouring corn treats from Earth into my bowl, but I wonder if it doesn’t sound a bit like ruling.
“Eat up!”
I want to hush them as I stare desperately at the night sky that is a mess of stars, but they’ll take away my treats if I do.
There. Tiny. Blue. Somehow mine. “I see it…” I breathe.
“Good job!” They clap. “Quick with your treats. It is time to sleep now.”
I turn to look at them, wide black eyes full of the only love I’ve ever known. And that’s probably enough. Certainly Earth hadn’t been better than this. That’s what they always say.
They whisk me away.
Happy Earth Day.
I’m grateful for my master.
I’m grateful for my corn.
I’m grateful for my cage.
