Author: Alfredo Capacho The deletion queue blinked patiently on Arin’s console, each consciousness backup represented by a small, pulsing icon. Most were routine: expired licenses, voluntary purges, memory consolidations. Nothing unusual. Until he reached File ...

Author: Jillian Schedneck It was the day after the wedding and everyone else would be hungover from the moonshine, the blodaskov, and the quantum gulps. Arden hadn’t swallowed any of that. She left the others to their beds, partners holding each other’s hair back as they ...

Author: Alastair Millar Don’t be nervous. I don’t know how tight you are with Johnny Red-Eyes, but he wouldn’t send a customer somewhere dangerous. I don’t bite. What can you call me? Just ‘Jane’ will do. I don’t need to know your name. Johnny’s paying me good for this ...

Author: Majoki The hall hushed when Toynbee took the stage, a first for an HDM. Typically, there would be snide remarks, a general sense of junior high rudeness at the appearance of an HDM. Because, really, who took a holo-digi-man seriously? HDMs were binary shills, ones ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer It’s an awful mess. Jamie chuckles. I stop myself from snarling at him. Taking an extra breath before replying, I manage to keep my tone curious. “You find something funny about mass death, Mister Crea?” He looks at me and nods, ...

Author: Don Nigroni Abby, As you know, I never liked your husband and tried to talk you out of marrying him. But I never told you that, when we were kids and he lived next door, I once spied him in his backyard slicing the legs off a turtle he had put on its back. Last ...

Author: Alfredo Capacho After the Collapse, when machines devoured memory and history, humanity discovered a strange salvation: stories could be coaxed into flesh. A whispered myth became a bird. A bedtime tale became a guardian. Every narrative left the tongue and walked ...

Author: Anselm Eme The sky over Karu, a crowded settlement on the edge of Abuja, glows the colour of burnt copper. People blame Sahara dust. Inspector Daramola Owei knows better. Dust does not hum. Dust does not vibrate the bones. He stands on a cracked rooftop, ...

Author: David Barber Rona Lal no longer remembered her exact age, but the entelechy did, and arranged a surprise for her birthday. There would be a trip to the beach in what used to be England and the company of Jammes Bek, who had once been her husband. "Can’t hear ...

Author: Alfredo Capacho They called it OptiCore. The city’s central AI was designed to optimize happiness. It monitored everything—traffic flow, food distribution, emotional tone in conversations, even the frequency of laughter. Citizens wore MoodBands that pulsed with ...

Author: Majoki Cast out the pearly gardens of MechTropolis. That was my fate. My flight. I fled the marble columns, floodlit fountains and quantum portals of the great city built upon my lie. I crossed the digital divide and entered the analog wilderness. Storms beat ...

Author: Mark Renney The Sweepers are always plentiful, inconceivably there isn’t ever a shortfall but always enough recruits coming through on that metaphorical conveyor belt. A surplus filling out the application forms, readily signing on the dotted line, undergoing the ...

Author: Majoki It’s hugely satisfying to watch the person who murdered you, go bonkers. Gyrsen was thrashing like a madman as company security restrained him outside the boardroom. He frothed and spittle flew everywhere as he pointed my way, screaming, “He’s here! He’s ...

Author: Andrea Tillmanns The colony had called for help, and we had come – with a heavily armed spaceship. But there was nothing here for us to fight. The planet was empty, except for the long-decayed corpses of the colonists. And the shadows that first invaded our ...

Author: Alzo David-West "Citizen. You are called before the Court of Will." "What's my crime, Counsel?" "Your crime, Citizen, is that of being born outside the Will of the State." "My birth was out of my control. I had no choice in it." "No, Citizen. Your ...

Author: Daniel Miltz They live remote, because living remote they remember everything. The neighborhood leans inward like old men listening, and the people hold faces that don’t blink. During the day, the ghosts come out wearing the habits they died in: a man still counting ...

Author: Keisha Hartley Amara’s head knocked against the cold car window, jolting her awake. Her fingers were numb from clutching the long black case on her lap. The Uber driver sped down the winding path unbothered by the rain. Ahead, the dark spires of her grandmother’s ...

Author: Majoki Well into the neopandemic I noticed the countdown. Inside my left eyelid. A faint image, like a digital timer flickering. I couldn’t make out distinct digits in the rolling blur of numbers so there was no real way of knowing if it was counting up or ...