The Cry Of The Seagulls
Author: Irene Montaner Seventeen days. Alana made another straight line beside the previous sixteen. The faint light of the first sun rays already filled the kitchen. The kettle whistled. Alana poured herself a cup of tea and watched the milk swirl in the brown water….
read moreDawn of the Disenfranchised
Author: David C. Nutt I watched the wifihead bounce into the door. I Love clueless look they all have when they realize they’ve lost connectivity. Next comes the part I love even better, when they swipe their finger across the door to open it. None of them have been…
read moreAwake
Author: Evan Whitbeck Light . . . warmth. It’s far, but what I begin to feel rouses me. Where am I? I guess if I’ve woken, I must be someplace again. Ping. A sound? A sound! And I felt something! Something hit me, flew into me — I crashed into something, but I know…
read moreThe Debris
Author: Mark Renney The road is becoming much more difficult to follow and there are places where it disappears entirely and each time it does the road becomes a little harder to locate. Davis is now spending most of his time meandering back and forth, searching for…
read moreStare Down The Fear
Author: Janet Shell Anderson I’m driving up 34, but no one’s on the road. Tractors sit in the muddy fields; nothing’s planted. Where’s everybody? Usually they’re on I-80 anyway, so that’s probably the reason, plus it’s Sunday morning, and except for church traffic in…
read moreIn the Fog
Author: Katlina Sommerberg Soft red-violet and indigo flog floats off the floor, obscuring my body beneath glittering colors. The fingers that held my boyfriend’s are drenched in sweat and water vapor, clammy in this cold tank. There is nothing but the fog. My body…
read moreOrientation
Author: Greg Roensch With a slate of afternoon meetings on her mind, Alice Loverly, the long-time VP of Human Resources, hurried into the breakroom for another dose of caffeine. What she saw froze Alice in her tracks and erased all thoughts about meetings, coffee, or…
read moreThe Infinity Initiative
Author: Michael Anthony Dioguardi “Forever?” “Forever,” the doctor replied. The patient breathed in slowly, swallowing before he spoke, “The view’s incredible from up here! What did you say the name of this quadrant was?” The doctor activated the patient’s interface…
read moreNo Output
Author: Jae Miles, Staff Writer The corridor colours shift from pink to green to white as Elliot races through departments into the blue shades of the secure section. A guard at the entry has the presence of mind to raise the access scanner so it reads his ID as he…
read morePacking for the Post-Apocalyptic Journey
Author: Shannon O’Connor Usually, in all the movies and books, the post-apocalypse is followed by a journey of some kind. The world falls apart, and the characters involved have to leave their homes in order to find food or shelter, or go somewhere safer. I work in a…
read moreAstronavigation
Author: Mickey Hunt Their rozière dirigible’s month-long flight from the eiderdown coasts to the Annual Gathering coordinates would demand precise maneuvering. “Once we find the northern jet stream,” Rho Aquilae’s father said, crisply, “we’ll journey to the proper…
read moreA Desert’s Tears
Author: Samuel Stapleton Xayana had no parents because she was engineered and grown in a lab, as most assassins were these days. Though it’s not as horrendous an upbringing as you might expect: she grew up surrounded by peers, received an excellent education, had…
read moreThe Meat Shall Inherit the Earth
Author: David C. Nutt It started with isolated incidents. Dead hiker’s bodies being found half-eaten. Forensic reports coming back that the teeth and claw marks were postmortem, small animal… most likely chipmunks and ground squirrels of some kind. Nothing too…
read moreEaten
Author: Michael W. Clark Now that I had eaten to the crew, what was I going to do? Autophagia? That seemed a pointless waste of energy. Cutting off my leg and cooking it? A waste of energy all round. Killing one’s self in space though was efficient, relatively simple,…
read moreThe Signal
Author: David Barber Like lots of people in the months since the Signal arrived, Alistair ran the SETI app on his phone – not the SETI@Home data program – just feed from one of the new radio searches. He’d got into the habit of laying his phone on the pillow next to…
read moreBlight
Author: Jae Miles, Staff Writer They rally about their standard bearer and draw swords – swords! – It’s 2894, not 894, you fanatiki. After screaming their ancient slogans of hatred, they switch to Ido so they can hurl challenges toward the armeo that surrounds them….
read moreA Finite Number of Oranges, An Infinity of Tables
Author: David Henson Loretta Saunders tapped her father’s kitchen table. “Imagine this is our universe, Dad, and these five oranges represent all the particles in it.” She laid the fruits in a row. Whenever Jacob’s physics professor daughter summarized one of her…
read moreCreating a Golden Egg
Author: Katlina Sommerberg “Not a golden goose, but almost as good as one,” Mabel said. “And you’ve got twenty.” She had her doubts, but her skepticism melted after seeing my living prototypes. The spring rain drizzled down, and all my hens came out to frolic in the…
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