by submission | Apr 29, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
One cannot speak of the Universe. One can only speak of rocking chairs, carnations and a pen. This is the path to understanding. Take it on good authority.
Travel writers speak of ordeals as the ideal. I would not say that losing my tablature in Genra was an ordeal in and of itself, but the event precipitated my run in with the Pharph. Many travelers rave about Genra’s pristinity, a term I find a bit forced since the Fall Treaty of 2207 mandated any outloop of the Unified System “leave no trace” under threat of “immediate UniSys revocation.” Zero impact. Zero tolerance.
So, pristinity is the default and prevails in any outloop world. And, I must admit that Genra is particularly fresh and untouched. Chattering cacinadees give off a morning scent reminiscent of cinnamon. Iridescent gullas a hundred clicks distant waft unworried in buoyant thermals along the Tieriesien range. Industrious sticklers wrestle with dew-balls on regolith paths which weave intricately through the ancient settlement.
Genra is Old World without staleness, and I cannot help but wonder if that was why a Pharph was summoned when I reported my tablature missing. I’d set the device next to my morning tea, then been distracted by a merling hopping from a shock of thmaris near the whooping pond. I left the hostelry deck to get a closer look at the merling’s filigreed coat, and when I returned, my table had been cleared including my tablature.
Providing locals with any tech above class one is forbidden on outlook worlds. So, theft of UniSys tech is considered aiding and abetting. It was a sticky situation, and so began my ordeal, which is supposed to be the secret spice of travel.
I went to Genra to find a quiet corner in the Universe. That’s all I wanted. I didn’t need the Pharph. But the Pharph was called when I discreetly mentioned my missing tablature at the hostelry reception. The Pharph arrived promptly for there is no other way a Pharph can arrive.
It perceived me, and I felt my skin prickle like lightning about to strike nearby. Then I felt as if I’d been dunked in pudding. Overly sweet pudding. A Pharph can’t help this, but it is nonetheless off-putting. I gagged.
Steady, old man, came the reassurance of the Pharph directly into my mind. We’ll get this matter settled straight away.
It’s just been missing a moment, I mentally spluttered feeling every bit the naughty child caught.
Tut. I’ll just have a look around.
The last thing you want is a Pharph “looking around.” Normally they are forbidden to do so. That is also a mandate of the Fall Treaty of 2207, but it does not apply to outloop travelers—especially ones that have misplaced their technology.
When a Pharph is in your head, rifling through your recent memories like some big game hunter in a jaunty pith helmet and jodhpurs, you begin to understand what colonization feels like to the locals. The Pharph was unerringly polite, almost jovial, trying to reassure me: What a topper that image of those flocking gullas is! You’ve captured that well. A first rate memory, old man. First rate. You’ve got a knack. But having a Pharph knocking about in your skull is like your mother going through your dating profile. It is an emasculating experience.
The Pharph eventually found what it needed in the reflection of a stickler’s dew ball. A fimtim. The pea-brained marsupial plunged from its tree lair and snatched my device from the table, then quickly climbed back into the courtyard canopy. Fimtims hoard shiny objects in their nests. I cannot say I blame them. Those dextrous and simple-minded arboreal share much in common with us on that count.
The Pharph recovered my tablature from the fimtim’s nest and returned it to me with a too-friendly nod. We got that solved spit spot, eh. Keep an eye on those critters, what say. We wouldn’t want a literary chap like you with such cracking conceit getting revoked. And then the Pharph was out of my head and waving a friendly goodbye.
Only a Pharph had the capacity to mentally zoom into that peripheral memory of mine of the stickler’s dew ball and confirm the fimtim’s “theft.” I could have been grateful. I was not. The Pharph had parsed my memories with almost infinite granularity, and showed me that I was a book too easily read. And discarded.
The Pharph seemed to enjoy its travels through my once-pristine mind as an explorer of a place untraveled. Curious and exulting. But my mind can never be the same. Is that bad? Not necessarily. I haven’t sworn off travel in outloop worlds. But I’ll be more prepared. No tablature. Nothing but rocking chairs, carnations, a pen.
And a humility well traveled in any world less traveled.
by Julian Miles | Apr 28, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Linda looks about as she blows into cupped hands. It’s been a brutal November, and the forecast is that it’ll be a white Christmas from everything freezing over instead of snow.
She glances at Will.
“So what’s a polinismum again?”
He gives her a withering stare.
“‘Polynex Quismirum’. A living fossil. My grandfather believed it to be the root of all werebeast myths. My father thought it some sort of changeling analogue. They were both right.”
Linda frowns.
“This wouldn’t have anything to do with the disappearance of your father, would it?”
Will nods.
“He went out to catch one. It caught him.”
“They never found a body, though?”
“Exactly. When people disappear, we make up stuff to explain why they left. When people are found as partially eaten bodies, we get up in arms and start looking for whatever did the eating.”
“Ignoring the implied intelligence underpinning your argument, are you saying this poly-whatever is big enough to consume an adult human and leave no trace?”
Will shrugs, looking unhappy.
“That’s the simplest explanation, but it doesn’t sit right with me. Sort of like there being a single Loch Ness Monster. Unless it’s the ghost of cryptid, there has to be a more than one.”
Linda grins.
“Not a fan of the ‘extremely long-lived last example of its kind’ theory, then?”
He grins back.
“About as much as it being a bio-submersible piloted by alien lizards.”
She presses her hands over her mouth, her laugh escaping as a snort.
“I hadn’t heard that one.”
Will touches her arm and whispers, pointing with his other hand.
“There.”
Linda stares towards the old bus shelter, looking for the looming threat in the light from the streetlamp above it. She’s about to ask him ‘where’ when she sees a movement.
The bench inside the shelter is compacting itself, the slats of the seat and back moving together while the legs at either end extend! Like some headless, tailless creature it shakes itself in a very dog-like manner, then stretches like a cat, alternating raised ends. That done, it settles back into looking like a seat.
She leans closer to Will, trying to stop herself shaking.
“Are we safe?”
“Yes. It’s an ambush predator. I’ve been watching it for a week, and I think it’s a juvenile. Certainly not big enough to take an adult human.”
“What do we do now?”
“Approach slowly, then use the graphene net to catch it.”
“What if it tries to, I dunno, roll away?”
“The net has tethers. We’ll spike them to the ground. Should hold it until the catch team arrives.”
Linda nods. He takes an end of the net protruding from the laundry sack he picks up. She grabs the other end.
“Chat as we approach. Wonder about the last bus. You know.”
“Gotcha.”
They approach casually. As they get between the pretend bench and the streetlamp, Will shouts.
“Now!”
They pull the net out and get it over most of the bench before it deforms, extruding a pair of greyish pseudopods to prevent them covering it.
“Pin it down!”
Linda shouts and leaps. He follows.
Will lands, taps his phone to call the catch team, and grins at her. Her eyes widen. The shelter itself closes about them. Brief, muffled screams go unheard.
The catch team arrives a few minutes later. There’s a torn laundry sack lying by the streetlamp. Of Linda, Will, and the bus shelter, there’s no sign. The search lasts for hours. It ignores the long, grassy hummock that’s appeared in the grass verge on the other side of the road.
by submission | Apr 27, 2025 | Story |
Author: Colin Jeffrey
“I didn’t say it was your fault,” Aldren Kleep moaned, rolling all seven of his eyes at the human standing before him. “I said I was blaming you; It is a completely different concept.”
The human began to protest again, citing ridiculous notions like “honesty” and “fair play”. Kleep shook his heads in unison. “You really don’t have a clue, do you, Earthling?”
Kleep had been working among humans for nearly five of their earth years now, and was still dumbfounded by their naivety. How a race almost totally unable to utilise (or even understand) the art of perfidious bureaucracy had managed to survive for so long, he could not fathom.
“But you’re shifting all of the blame for this failure to me!” The Earth creature whined. “I have done absolutely nothing wrong.”
“Ah!” Kleep smiled with three of his mouths. “Now you get it!” With that, he waved his hand over a console and the human disintegrated. “A pity you won’t be able to use it.” He added.
The communicator on his console honked. Kleep eyed the caller flag. It was Farnit Popple. Right on time, he thought. He opened the screen.
“Popple, you unregistered offspring of a tram driver,” he chided, citing a popular insult amongst his race. “Have you called to congratulate me?”
“Indeed I have, sir,” Popple replied, ignoring the insult, faces smiling in mock bonhomie. “Yours is a triumph of manipulation and underhandedness, unrivalled in the annals of pettiness,” his voice dripped with all the sincerity of someone selling holiday timeshares. “Your work will resonate through the great halls of red tape for a thousand orbits.”
Aldren Kleep allowed his most supercilious smugs to occupy all three of his faces. “Yes, it was, masterful, wasn’t it?” He preened. “And I fully deserved it, because I am so much better than obnoxious vermin like you.”
Popple smiled back, his facade of cordiality unwavering at the verbal abuse.
After watching Kleep wallow in his own grandeur a while longer, Popple politely coughed into two of his hands, spoke again.
“There was one other tiny thing, sir, if I may?”
So full of hubris that he would almost consider the possibility of not short-changing a beggar, Kleep hadn’t caught the slight shift of tone in Popple’s voice.
“Oh, yes?” he replied, absentmindedly, almost forgetting to add a deprecating taunt. “And what would that be, rodent?”
“I have taken the liberty of petitioning the council for your great presence as champion for our upcoming project,” Popple said. “On the Homeworld”
Kleep’s faces dropped.
“What?” He half-whispered.
“Yes, sir,” Popple continued. “it is a gigantic undertaking, and a challenge that must not fail. I thought immediately of you and your vicious work ethic and cruel discipline.”
“WHAT?!” Kleep screamed at the screen, his purple skin turning bright green. “Withdraw it! Immediately!”
Popple could barely keep the smirks off his mouths now. “Apologies, sir, I would not have suggested it, had I known you would not be happy,” a gleam twinkled in five of his eyes. “I humbly beg your forgiveness…” He paused, savouring the moment. “But you have already been accepted.”
Kleep was screaming in rage now, throwing his arms about, knocking over furniture.
Popple continued, unfazed. “Of course, being on our own planet, there will no humans to get in the way,” he added. “Or to blame.”
“Nooooo!”
Popple flicked off the communicator with a triumphant wave of his hand. “Checkmate,” he said to himself, quoting from one of the games he had learned on Earth. My game.
by submission | Apr 26, 2025 | Story |
Author: Robert Duffy
I was bored, so I cranked up an AI-generated version of the 17th Earl of Sussex. Just to chat. It didn’t go so well.
I am shocked, sir, at your lack of propriety!
Well, we’re just more relaxed about things these days than you are.
Are you eating out of a bowl, as you sit at your desk? Is this any way for a gentleman to dine?
Me, with half a mouthful of Ben & Jerrys: What, you want I should dress up to eat rocky road?
What is this…rocky road?
It’s good, you should try some.
Call your servant to fetch it.
You gotta get it yourself. You want it, go get it.
Barbarism! What is this place?
My office. You know what? You’re boring. Deleted.
I’d been working on a model of my Dad, so I decided to run it, just for the hell of it.
Hey Dad, check this stuff out. This is a laptop computer. Can you believe it?
A computer?
Everything you used to have in your office in those tall five-foot cabinets with the spinning tape reels? All in this little silver box. Hell, on this silver tablet. More hell, on my freaking wrist.
Dad stares blankly. It doesn’t seem to register.
Dammit, incomplete model. Delete this rendering.
The new AI generators let you render people up now, in full, three-dimensional form, standing right in front of you. But it depends on how much information you have about them. Render up Boudica, you’re probably not going to get a lot of great conversation out of her, but render your great-grandfather, based on all the archival information available about him, and you get closer to something that can really mess with your head. That’s the beauty of it.
I decided to try the other side of the family. But this time, be complete. Model this one on actual family files—not those half-remembered fantasies I used for rendering Dad. I didn’t have much on him anyway. Obviously. He, uh, deleted too soon. But thanks to that, I got a lot more on Mom.
Yeah! Let’s AI her up into a high-fidelity ultra-real holographic projection that’ll shock my eyeballs and cause my heart to rip itself loose and drown itself in my bowels. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna AI her in the bloody fur coat.
I’m supposed to do this. This is therapeutic.
I accessed everything—emails, newspapers, court files, and I cranked her out.
And there she stood. Glamorous, beautiful, statuesque, a tall blonde woman wrapped in luxurious mink fur. She wore that same coat into court one day, I swear. Just to make a statement.
She smiled at me, and I felt myself wither. And I just had to look. Even though I told the model not to include that detail, I still had to look.
And yes, there it was. I caught a glimpse when the ermine trim of her coat drifted open. The ugly black handle of the skinning knife.
At this point, you either ask your questions, delete the projection, or leave them there paused like 3D wallpaper. I’m still deciding.
by submission | Apr 25, 2025 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
I came out of the ship carrying equipment and my sightline went up to the base of the hill we had landed next to. The preacher was standing there, looking down at the captain. Captain Lane was crushed under a boulder the size of a compact car. The preacher’s stare came up to meet my eyes and I saw the apathy of a blind statue.
Dropping the container I was holding, I charged in that direction. He calmly turned and jogged up into the heights. It took me maybe fifteen seconds to reach the spot where the captain was lying. He was dead, the rock having crushed everything below his shoulder blades. The area around his head was splattered with what must have been a fountain of expelled blood. The massive stone could not have been lifted by one man, maybe not even ten men, and it could not have fallen off anything as there was nothing above it. I only hesitated a few moments before continuing the chase.
I was the Load Specialist of a five-person team that was sent to this planet to investigate its mining potential. Somehow, Dr. Sayer, a hierarchy for the God of Gaps, managed to weasel passage on the trip as well, through his powerful contacts. He was supposed to be a religious ambassador. To who, we wondered? This place was believed to be uninhabited, though not yet confirmed. Throughout the whole journey, the rhetoric of his dialogue with us was about the miracles his deity could perform. Quelling storms, healing the lame, vanquishing enemies of his faith. Possibly moving boulders?
I followed the tracks his boots made in the dust, turning indiscriminately as he ascended the mountain. And then suddenly there were no more. It was as if a strong wind had swept the imprints away. Or he had inexplicably been lifted off the ground. I searched in every direction. There was only an opening up ahead. I cautiously went that way.
Over the decades, the religious order had diminished in popularity and fellowship, as more of the earth’s mysteries were solved by science. But with the advent of hyper-space travel and the discovery of habitable planets in the last century, renewed optimism had caused a resurgence in the faith of the masses. ‘He was the creator of all worlds.’ Dr. Sayer seemed to be the leadman on that front. Yet a discovery of intelligent life in another star system could derail the fragile theology permanently.
The first crew member to die was our science administrator and co-captain, Lieutenant Mason. He never made it out of hibernation. Somehow a toxin leaked into his oxygen line that our engineer explained should not have been able to happen. Mason was set to substantiate the prospect of life on the planet. This close to our destination it was determined that the voyage would go on. Then, a week later Nancy Singh, the world’s foremost astrogeologist, was found dead in her room, apparently from a suicide. There was no note, no medical history even hinting that she had a psychological problem and before she retired to her quarters, she talked about how enthusiastic she was to see the new planet. There was, however, documentation that she had rebuffed Dr. Sayer’s advances on several occasions. And finally, as we were orbiting the planet to descend, an antenna had been dislodged and had to be reconnected by our engineer Chambers before it was lost in the landing. While outside on the EVA something pierced Chambers’ spacesuit that came from the direction of the ship at a high velocity. He tumbled off into endless space. The cameras could not pick up what the object was or where it came from. We were instructed by mission control to land, deploy the surveying instruments and return immediately. Captain Lane was killed even before we were finished unloading.
As I entered the clearing, I came to the edge of a precipice. Standing on the other side, across a gorge of about twenty-five to thirty meters was the preacher. I scanned for any way that he could have traversed the distance but there was no bridge, no vines, nothing. Dr. Sayer stood there, his arms raised in supplication as he loudly voiced a prayer up to the sky, claiming that he had been the conveyance of the pious purpose to this mission.
I pulled out my pistol and shot him in the chest. He fell the distance off the cliff and crumpled below into a mangled lump of human.
I guess his god didn’t see that coming.
by submission | Apr 24, 2025 | Story |
Author: Paul Burgess
My first two wishes have gone exactly as intended. The debilitating vertigo and dryland seasickness have cleared up instantly. I’ve escaped the month-long perceptual funhouse, not the least bit fun, of the appropriately named labyrinthitis, and as far as I can tell, there are no monkey’s paw-style “be careful what you wish for” consequences resulting from my first wish to end the dizzy spells and unreliable perception or my second one to have enough money in my bank account to cover this month’s rent. “If I were in a cautionary tale, I’d have died instantly or gained the horrifying power to shape the world to match my warped sensory processing,” I think silently.
I’d worried less about the wish to cover my rent because I hadn’t greedily demanded the obscene wealth of an American tycoon but rather the modest $1,500 needed to compensate for the work that I’d missed due to labyrinthitis. However, I still call to check on my mother immediately after receiving the funds because I want to make sure that the windfall has nothing to do with life insurance; I’m desperate, but I’d never sacrifice my precious mother. She is mildly surprised by my sudden concern but certainly alive.
Tariq is not blue, more of a light bronze, but the dread has been purged from the blend of dread and hope I’d felt when he popped out of the thrift store oil lamp I’d bought as a conversation piece and potential prop in a video. Having decided that he’s less of a horror anthology genie and more of a Disney one, I’m eager to make my final wish, set Tariq free, and give him a figurative five-star rating.
He’s interpreted the spirit rather than the letter of my first two wishes, so I tell myself he must be joking when I’m instantly transported into a cramped, dark space smelling of old oil and brass. I call out to him, but he doesn’t answer. My increasingly desperate shouts of “Tariq!” are thrown back at me as mocking echoes.
Was finding a new captive for the lamp a condition of his freedom, or was my request for a new “forever home”, free of mortgage payments or rent, worded too carelessly? I don’t know if I can grant wishes or not. “Assuming I’m now a genie,” I tell myself, “I’d never, as Tariq had done, purchase my own freedom at the expense of another’s captivity,” but I wonder how many years or even centuries he’d told himself the same.
