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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Author: Angela Hawn “Ready to sing for your supper?” The head honcho in the antique army helmet flashes a toothy smile at our little group before acknowledging the wider audience. Applause ensues. "Of course", I say, channeling my storytelling grandmother whose ...

Author: Sasha Kasper As the blaring siren assaults my eardrums, it becomes increasingly harder to deny my rapid descent. I float directionless through the cockpit. Up, down, left, right, have lost all meaning. The notion of gravity seems to me a cruel joke, of which the ...

Author: Majoki You’re in your pod and Qwee hides your stylus as a joke. You smack Qwee because there is no other response. Qwee loves it and moves on to hide another podmate’s stylus while you flag the incident with the podmaster. Just another day in the pod. While ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The fizzing sound stops as the skies turn from vibrant blue to dull purple. A golden sun sinks from view on the horizon. “The sunset always takes my breath away.” To be correct, the lack of heat excitation causes the Moatalbana moss to ...

Author: Rachel Sievers The strangeness of the moment could not be understated; the baby had been born with ten fingers and ten toes. The room was held in complete silence as everyone held their words in and the seconds ticked by. Then the baby’s screams filled the air and ...

Author: Jeff Kennedy The first few days on a new starship are the worst. The gravity's turned up a skosh higher than you're used to. The hot, caffeinated, morning beverage (it’s never coffee) is mauve and smells like wet dog. The bathroom facilities don't quite fit your ...

Author: Bill Cox In the summer of 1950, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in North America, physicist Enrico Fermi posed a simple but profound question to his colleagues – “Where is everyone?” If life was abundant in the universe and often gave rise to intelligence, ...

Author: Aubrey Williams The planet hangs as a dull pebble in sluggish orbit. They’ve moved on, the inhabitants, or perhaps they succumbed. We are unsure, there’s much to keep track of, and if it’s not a sanctioned or protected celestial body, there’s no reason to look ...

Author: Majoki On the endless rooftop of the fact-ory, they sat in the beat up armchairs amid a bristling forest of antennae and corrugated steel backlit by the godly effulgence of towers and tenements that defined the horizon. It was steamy hot though well past midnight. ...

Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer Lewis got the assistant at a regifting exchange at the company Christmas party. He didn't turn it on until February when a snowstorm kept him working from home for a week. It had been opened before, the setup was already complete, but it ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer In a dusty corridor away from busy areas of Area 702, two people with ill-fitting lab coats concealing their uniforms are huddled under a disconnected monitoring camera. One takes a hit on a vape stick. The other lights a cigar. “I heard ...

Author: Simon Read To: All staff RE: Causality Protocol De-prioritisation Null/null/null, 00:00 This communication serves as formal notice. Treisman Industries no longer operates under linear temporal constraints. All protocols reliant upon fixed sequencing have been ...

Author: Colin Jeffrey As the sentient slime mould squelched slowly across the asteroid it lived on, it found its mind - such as it was - occupied by a single thought: Ludwig van Beethoven. This was strange for several reasons, most obvious being that slime moulds are ...

Author: Naomi Klouda Snow fell on Alaska, and we celebrated. We swirled in a circle, tasting flakes of sky. “Kelp brew for everyone, even the children!” Jenna Ben shouted. How we celebrated! Three circles switched hands and partners aboard our oil platform’s broken ...