Author: Majoki While the xenologists, Cherinet and Litskovic, had gone on ahead, the survey team exogeologists, Vinnu and Samaan, hunkered down in their autopods battered by one of the unpredictable cyclostorms that made collecting samples and readings challenging. Coms ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The spires on the distance give an illusion of peace. It’s only when you get closer you can see they’re gutted frames sticking up like headstones. We used to call the city Heltarvon. It was the trading capital of Briss, the biggest ...

Author: Amanda Todisco Klaudia slit a perfectly straight line down the belly of a frog and cut the skin away from the muscle. She found comfort in the solitude afforded by the lab, the quiet precision of scissors, forceps, organs an ode to the recluse. It'd been 387 days ...

Author: Shinya Kato I click. The system thinks. Between shifts at the hospital, I sit at a terminal with my hand resting on the mouse. Faces pass behind me—colleagues, patients, families—and lately they look unfamiliar, like another species of ape that has misplaced ...

Author: Hillary Lyon After three lonely weeks of bountiful mining in the shadow of the Red Cliffs, Tyros packed up his tools and trekked into town. First he’d visit Akadian Assayers to get his reward in hard earned credits, then he’d hit Bossman’s Saloon and Travel Agency ...

Author: Ayden Vojnic At 02:14, the lights in Ward D dimmed by a fraction. Not enough for alarm, only enough to suggest that somewhere else, power had become more necessary. Klementina looked up from the bed. The child was breathing in short, frightened pulls, each inhale ...

Author: Jonathan Sauzier “A rabbit met its end in the jaws of a wolf dog only months ago in this winter barren, by this tree,” Shyla said, pointing. “Is that so?” I asked. She was eager, and, like always, I was already mesmerized. “Yes, right there, right there at the ...

Author: Kewei Chen On that planet, memory was not confined to a single organ. It existed as distributed biochemical patterns within neural tissue, transferable between minds. Death no longer erased experience; memories could be preserved, copied, and integrated. Yet ...

Author: Majoki Scientists in the early 19th Century were distasteful number crunchers. Human abaci of little worth or note. They should have remained so. What of numbers? What of measurement? Metrics only make us more necessary beings. Why run the numbers when you can ...

Author: Mark Renney The Entities are prevalent in the city, and I see them everywhere now. I am not alone in this, there are others who are aware and can see them but we are decidedly in the minority. There is much speculation amongst us as to what they are or what they may ...

Author: Vivian Pfleger There are advantages to not being human. The hunter’s bullet would have easily killed one of his own, but on me the wound was already beginning to skin over. Over the next few weeks, my body would break down the bullet currently lodged between my ...

Author: A J Paige They’d vandalised the sign again. Who would’ve thought that the Goddard Space Flight Center could prove such an unfortunate choice of name? Mary dropped her gaze and waved at the placard-holding protesters as the guard beckoned her in through the ...

Author: R. J. Erbacher I had been told from a child that ‘nothing’ was black. The absence of light. What you see when you close your eyes, in a prolonged blink, or in sleep, or permanently. The bottom of the ocean. The far reaches of space; Heinrich Olbers be damned. The ...

Author: Zachary Skurski My hands, still wet from scrubbing, are first to feel the chill of the operating room as I step inside. I’d been waiting for this, implanting the latest computer-brain interface. Doing my part for the future. “Good Morning Dr. Freeman,” the ...

Author: Majoki Red Rover, Red Rover, send MADIE right over. Red Rover, Red Rover, send MADIE right over. Red Rover, Red Rover, send MADIE right over. ANDIE sent the request out for the gigazillionth time, but Red Rover didn’t respond. Neither did MADIE. ANDIE widened ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The curtains hang out the window, blowing in the breeze. A tic starts on his cheek, but stills when he looks down, gaze drawn to where a torn page from her notebook flaps about in his grip, like a little bird trying to escape. Far down ...

Author: Jacqueline Kaufman Jean of Arc takes her meds, swallowing carefully. “Delicious,” smiling, almost all her teeth intact. The voices have gone somewhere in the whiteness, gathering strength. In Russo-Amerique, meds are treasure, and she has been selected. Regularized. ...

Author: Moura BUREAUCRATIC RECORDS OF THE END TIMES Automatic compilation of human and environmental records Source: multiple devices Status: recovered fragments THE LAST KNOT (Record 001 — Autonomous diving equipment) Two hundred meters below the surface, the ...