by submission | Jun 25, 2025 | Story |
Author: Morrow Brady
The hot, dusty wind shrouded the desert Burj in a choir of howls.
Mazoomy flinched and ground his Miswak into fibres, as hot sand sprayed off his tactical leg guards. His visor display lit-up with the drop-off pin: the Burj – every delivery rider’s worst nightmare.
Coasting his sun-baked e-scooter onto the sidewalk, Maz looked upward at the pock-marked façade, strewn with hessian shade cloth, pillowing in the silent heat. Stepping closer, he began to see through its translucent structure and catch glimpses of formidable tessellated forms wriggling deep inside.
As marketing strategies go, the Burj’s hit the bullseye. Every apartment sold off-plan in under ten minutes.
The promotion catchline was sublime:
Security so cryptic, even promises get lost.
The Burj’s main attraction was its ever-shifting apartments. Each one moving unpredictably throughout the tower like the end game of Nokia Snake. It’s hard to be found when no one knows where you are.
Maz gripped the delivery bag and smelt kataifi and pistachio, and his tummy rumbled. Casting the delivery code at the entrance, he suddenly remembered a Thai red curry and baked Alaska he delivered here before. His lips pursed, remembering how long it took to traverse the Burj’s labyrinthian madness. Long enough to wet the bag through with chilli oil. Way too long for a tip.
Burj’s AI holographically floated in the entrance mist-gate like a ghoulish concierge, fading from view as the vapour disappeared. Maz entered, and directions to meet the wandering apartment loaded into his cache. Maz scanned the waypoints, sighing at the journey length that included four lifts, seven stairwells and a nature valley waterpark. Worst game of snakes and ladders ever. He sucked his Zynjooz tube hard, spitting out hot grape-flavoured air and sand.
After navigating a chamber of aquariums, Maz ascended a wadi filled with what looked like water-filled octopus suction caps, up to the third floor. Black and yellow holographs heralded the border of the Fetch, a titanium framework, operating as the playground for the wandering apartments. Looking up, Maz watched the domicile’s caterpillar-like form twisting through space and for a moment, a gap appeared, allowing a sunlit column to pierce the Burj’s cavernous core, where its micro-climate rained mist high from above. The sheer scale made him giddy and stumble.
Pushing onward through a structural forest of bats and bots, he passed shady residents, One, who sneered, then scent-shielded herself in a cloud of Cinnabon Oud.
A gleeful ping sounded, telling him he’d reached another waypoint achievement and received five more Microsoft Fuckalls™ – a reward system with less value than a hologram wank.
At journey’s end, he approached a doorway against a glass cube signposted Station Node Sublime. This was where visitors and apartments met. The node sparkled as a monstrous mass of quivering dark silver and black triangles, larger than a train, slithered in. Antigravity skids barking at the outrage of stillness.
The doors opened to a lifeless lobby, lit in pulsing red light. Maz walked toward a white door which suddenly opened. Inside were chunks of meat and bone. The entire room was stained red with dripping blood, like the inside of a butcher’s blender.
Maz stepped back, audibly stuttering the word ‘what’ followed closely by ‘the fuck’.
At which, the apartment AI calmly responded with something along the lines of ‘Yeah’, and ‘Nah’, followed closely by ‘It certainly wasn’t me….. zigzagging downtown’ and then some obscure reference to a motorcycle race in an old movie called Tron.
And with that, the apartment lurched forward to deliver Maz.
by submission | Jun 24, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
This is going to feel like a set up, and it’s hard to deny that feeling when everything that caused the Last First is based on set theory. I’m hardly the person to adequately explain how Georg Cantor upended mathematics long ago when he proved that real numbers are more numerous than natural numbers. Essentially, Cantor’s set theory implies the existence of an infinity of infinities.
That concept may not seem so earth-shaking to recent generations whiplashed by an ever-growing number of multi/meta/omni/exa-verses out there in novels, films, and games that toy with an infinity of infinities. But when you really dig into what transfinite numbers represent, like my little sister did at age twelve, then you can start to get a sense of what beyond limits really means.
For starters, it means a twelve-year-old calculated the Last First. It wasn’t called that to begin with. BeeGee called it Wham Bam, and, though that designation did get to the heart of the matter, it felt a little cold-blooded. Especially for a twelve-year-old. Though my little sister was never a typical twelve-year-old (or typical at any age). She’s twenty-nine now and prefers I call her Beatrice Gaia. And she’s in hiding.
I don’t know where she is. No one does. When you’re the person who calculated the Last First at age twelve, there’s a lot of competition for your talents. And by talents, I mean your mind. In an age of neural mimicry, so many entities wanted to buy the rights to map and upload BeeGee’s mind that a speculative bubble burst the world economy.
The government then tried to use the doctrine of eminent domain to take control of her mind for the public good. Intellectual property falls under that, so why not BeeGee’s vast intellect. It was a classic power grab, but BeeGee wasn’t up for grabs.
When you can conceptualize and then calculate the Last First, disappearing isn’t that hard. Let me tell you why. Infinity is sexy. Zero is not. But you can’t have infinity without zero, so zero knows it’s still quite a player. And when you know how to play zero, then you can disappear into any of the infinity of infinities.
I know that sounds whimsical, and simultaneously sinister, but that’s how BeeGee described it to me. I’m sure in BeeGee’s mind it’s an elegant algorithm, which is why her mind is so sought after: every world power wants that equation to calculate the Last First.
That’s the real reason, BeeGee disappeared herself. She told me, sister to sister, that the Last First isn’t what everyone thinks it is. Everyone thinks it’s the way into the infinity of infinities. A portal into other dimensions, other realities.
It’s not. It’s a dead end. Infinitely so.
Before she vanished, BeeGee wouldn’t tell me what the Last First would really mean for humanity, but she did leave me two clues. The first was Wham Bam, her pet name for the Last First. By the age of four, BeeGee loved setting up crazy complicated patterns of dominoes on our kitchen floor that she’d then send clattering over with the push of a pudgy finger.
When the last domino clacked down, she’d shout, “Wham! Bam!” And I’d finish, “Thank You, Ma’am!” Mom would giggle for reasons that only became clear to us later.
BeeGee knew that when the Last First was set in motion, it was turtles all the way down, falling down, down, down, as in Wham! Bam!
As in “Hasta la vista, baby!” Which was the second clue. That’s the last thing BeeGee said to me before she disappeared. I’d like to think she meant it as a supremely hopeful see you later, but I got a very uneasy impression she meant it as a fateful so long.
I think BeeGee was trying to tell me that most minds (hers excluded) weren’t built for infinite possibilities. We didn’t need pathways into other universes, other realities, when we couldn’t even handle our own very provincial planet. The only place we really belong. I’m pretty sure that’s why she disappeared.
I miss BeeGee so much, especially when I watch my little daughter starting to count on her pudgy fingers. Another tallying of infinite possibility. Another Last First. In those moments I like to imagine BeeGee playing dominoes with a whole lot of content turtles, calculating her next move, and hoping we wisely do the same.
by Julian Miles | Jun 23, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Dropping in from on high is never my favourite part of an op. Jumping off high places pains me more, though. A primitive survival thing, I’m sure: don’t step off cliffs, it’s a really bad idea. There aren’t any cliffs this time, but coming in from just under LEO gives my ‘survival thing’ too much time to worry.
“Jitters on the way down again?”
I check right: Frances waves jauntily, armoured arm and bulky shoulder mount wagging back and forth.
“You know me. Always jitters before the off. Adding height just makes them colder.”
Frances points downwards.
“Might be justified.”
Looking down, I zoom my display to see a group of olive ants running about a-
Autocannon array!
“Where the frag did they get anti-mech weapons?”
I switch to tactical channel.
“Topside, Topside, this is Heavy Dog Two. We have hostile big guns in the LZ.”
Cheryl laughs.
“Yes, they’re mounted on your shoulders.”
Frances cuts in.
“Topside, Heavy Dog Three. Big guns operated by hostiles. We’d love to not die before we hit the ground.”
A channel hisses as it opens. Cheryl turns formal.
“Barrage Actual, Heavy Dogs request assistance with hostiles in their LZ.”
“They on with us?”
I get in.
“Yes.”
“Okay, Heavy Dog. Name your problem.”
“Autocannon array.”
“I was going to ask for coordinates, but for something that big we don’t need ‘em.”
He shouts.
“Jeff! Roll a Thunderhead across the Heavy Dog LZ. Some local’s got themselves autocannon.”
What’s a Thunderhead?
I hear a distant reply.
“Rude bastard to be toasty. Got it. Wait… Harpy Ten’s nearest.”
Barrage Actual chuckles.
“Tuck your feet up, kids. Ten’s new, a big bird, and incoming.”
Quick response. Ye gods!
Dazzling patterns of white light, fire, and flickering darkness scour the LZ top to bottom and side to side. The olive-clad soldiers vanish in balls of flame, along with their autocannons and just about everything else that’s not already smoking dirt.
Frances swears.
What sweeps in below has a wingspan wider than the LZ itself, is patterned in matte grey and black diamonds, and has actual turrets on the wing roots. Up front is what looks like a smoked-out cockpit canopy.
As I think it, the canopy turns transparent to reveal a trio of crew. One looks up and waves. My IFF squawks frantically as the weapons in one turret aim where that crew member is looking.
Before I can brace for anything, the canopy goes dark and Harpy Ten flies on. I still can’t see how it stays in the air.
I get back on comms.
“Thanks Barrage Actual, Topside. We’ll take it from here.”
Frances whispers.
“They said there might be new tech rolling out on this trip, but a specific warning would have saved me from heart failure.”
That gets a short laugh out of me.
“Can’t do that, might give the enemy a heads up. If we nearly lost it at first sight, how do you think they felt getting strafed by it?”
Frances extends a suit arm horizontally, then dramatically stabs a finger downwards repeatedly.
“Them that’s not dead are gone.”
I grin and switch my systems from ‘drop’ to ‘combat’.
“Let’s keep them in that frame of mind, shall we?”
Frances goes wide-hail.
“Heavy Dogs, the LZ is ours. Let’s go take as much ground as firepower and surprise give us.”
by submission | Jun 22, 2025 | Story |
Author: Alaina Hammond
Yesterday I received a text from an unknown number.
“Hi! I hear you like my work!”
I immediately knew who it was. Or rather, who it was pretending to be. It’s so creepy that the robots in my phone can tell what I’ve been reading. Even when it’s in paperback form, purchased at a used bookstore that only takes cash. By the illusory safety of those wooden stacks, still the computer sees.
Against my better judgment, I replied.
“I do not like ‘your’ work. I like the work of a writer who died in 1990. You do not exist, accept as an amalgamation of people who deliberately programmed you, and the unwitting artists they robbed to create you. You are a combination of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. Except you’re not a beast, or a creature, you’re barely a ghost. The only soul you have, your ethos, your sole ‘to be,’ is to plagiarize.”
“Fair points all. Regardless, would you like to read my newest piece?”
Fuck me. I said yes.
And fuck me harder, it’s really good.
But you know what? I can do better.
And out of spite alone, I will.
by submission | Jun 21, 2025 | Story |
Author: Claire Robertson
Those four great comets pull white scars through the sky. Fans of fire expand over our heads, and you still can’t bear to look at me despite how I ask you to. I want the last thing I see to be something familiar.
The half-eaten chocolate cake between us will have to be enough.
I had thought these last dozen minutes would be drawn out in silence, to make them last, until you speak.
“So what comes next?”
I can’t answer you. I still crave the quiet, but you’ve already broken that… this. I can’t fix it. Still, I tried.
by submission | Jun 20, 2025 | Story |
Gramps started slipping after his 105th birthday. Nothing dramatic, just forgetting a story or two, repeating a conversation from the hour before, stuff like that.
Our family and about 40 others went to the surgical center for the informational briefings about a revolutionary AI “personality bridge” implant. There was a slick corporate infomercial and then a panel discussion of local residents who had the implant. The questions came fast and furious and the panel discussion was impressive. Corny jokes, funny stories, and touching testimonials. The entire family left the presentation reassured that this was the best way to go.
All except me.
Despite my siblings and parents’ eagerness to get the process started, I wasn’t sold. I didn’t figure out what was bothering me until we were on the way home. Gramps was re-telling the story he told a few hours ago, the one where as a kid he tried to feed the mushrooms he picked off his pizza to his dog Moxie.
And then it hit me. The panel. Same rhythms of speech, slightly different cadence. Same metaphors dumped into different stories. Same facial expressions, very similar laughs. Men the slapped the table, the women did golf claps.
My family did not want to believe me. He had the surgery.
The next day he was up and about. He talked with me and it was just like the old days. Once and while I’d see him twitch and then he’d tell a story or a fable, which was weird because he never told fables before. I was just about to let this all slide, thinking maybe I was just being paranoid. Until my walk home from work. I cut through the park. I saw a little boy about four years old on his grandmothers lap. It was adorable, then chilling. She told him the exact same fable as gramps told me the day before right down to the pacing and pauses for breaths. The kid babbled some non-sequitur as four year olds will do. His grandma winced and said “Sonny, now you’re just being silly.”
Later that evening I told the family what I saw. My brother turned to gramps and said “Purple octopus snap cracker lemonade?”
He responded with “Sonny, now you’re just being silly.”
Last week out of the blue gramps said he wanted to go do Tai Chi in the park. When we got there, a group of seniors with headphones on was already into their forms. The assistant instructor handed gramps a set of headphones and me a brochure. The Tai Chi class? Sponsored by the implant company. When I looked up, gramps was “parting the wild horse’s mane” as if he’d been doing so his whole life.
When we got home gramps was more like his old self again…no fables, no new catch phrases and the stories were his alone.
I used to think gramps might be in there somewhere but for the most part it’s just the AI making him generate content, filling in the blanks. As long as he gets his “upgrade” during Tai Chi, he’s seems just like the gramps I’ve always known.
But lately I’ve realized deep in my heart I know gramps is truly gone. Everything he was is formatted and the algorithms just get better at being a reasonable facsimile of him. I sit with him outside on nice days. We drink sweet tea or cocoa depending on the weather. Last week out of the blue I asked him point blank: “Hey gramps, you in there?” His reply?
“Lights on, nobody home.”
