Author: Don Nigroni A scholar I know read this Latin passage in an ancient manuscript containing a complex formula for presumably transforming lead into gold. Yet the formula looked peculiar and unlikely to accomplish its goal. I once worked in a research lab studying the ...

Author: C.R. Kiegle “You’ll need to initial here, here, annnnnd, here,” the man at the check-in counter told Estella as he flipped through the pages of the form. The room was lit with white, sterile lights that had a slight blink. “Mmm. Okay,” she replied quietly, marking ...

Author: Rick Tobin A massive bright white RV was parked oblivious to the dangers of LA criminal elements on Figueroa Street. A sloping blue ramp led to a double door in the rear. The words “Second Chances” were stenciled over the back entry along with a welcome “Please ...

Author: Mark Renney The V-Training has always been controversial, even more so now, some forty years since it was first introduced. The ground offensive has been obsolete for decades and wars are waged from afar, controlled by the kind of people who first designed the ...

Author: Alzo David-West We were all enjoying a day on the beach. The sun was bright, and the water was cool. People were laughing and swimming. People were sunbathing and picnicking under umbrellas. People were having a fun day. Then slowly, there it was, a dark cloud ...

Author: Majoki The network was nearing completion, and nobody felt the weight of it more than Yehzaat. He knew what the ZG3 network would mean for humanity. Finally, there would be universal access to enlightenment. No longer would the conduit to nirvana be through ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The farthest corners of the room are lost in shadows as the night draws in. A small group huddles closer to the fire and the pool of light shed by the bulky oil lantern, hung high enough above that its thick smoke goes up and out rather ...

Author: Tracy Aspel Artificial Intelligence is a load of nonsense. No bot or other digital thing can truly conceptualize, devise, and realize amazing work. What does it know of heartbreak, terror, or feelings even us humans can’t fully encapsulate in words? So, for starters ...

Author: Alastair Millar Mixology’s not my scene, but you go where the job takes you, right? The multispecies crowd in the Spacefarers’ Lounge, which bills itself as the premier bar in the Sagittarius Arm, is young, wealthy and out for a good time. There’s loud music, the ...

Author: David Barber Someone asked me once what I remembered best about Mars. It might have been a TV interview, or that woman writing a book about the Ares missions. The sun afire behind closed lids came suddenly to mind, or was that a wishful memory of sighted days? ...

Author: Kevlin Henney This is not love. It was. Once I loved Bryony. Now I love Mary. I sit across the table from the jar, unsure of what I have reclaimed. Time and self and memory? Less real than a butterfly, more solid than a dream. The meeting of a wish and an ...

Author: Maxwell Pearl I cackled. It was easy to cackle. It seemed right, somehow, now that I’d arrived here, now. I looked down and saw the dress was different and hung a bit more loosely than the one I’d put on just a few minutes ago. Well, that was unexpected. The black ...

Author: J.B. Draper When you’re a Stopper, you tone out the background noise. You live in the silence. That’s what Badger told me when I got in the game, but I never thought I’d enjoy the quiet so much. Here, on the corner of a dingy street, the traffic roars and people ...

Author: Alzo David-West AM-I was the only one left. The light was expanding. And the Earth was still. The moment had been foreseen many billions of years ago. The red engulfing sun and the burning planets. AM-I wondered why. Why had it been left alone after the great ...

Author: B.M. Gilb “I don’t like that we’d ‘buy’ Charlotte a friend.” “We wouldn’t be buying her a friend, Leo. We’re essentially adding a new member to our family. Like a dog,” says Amelia. “A robot is not a dog,” says Leo. He stuffs another garbage bag full of dead ...

Author: R. J. Erbacher A meteor did in the dinosaurs. 70,000 years ago, an Ice Age wiped out all but a few handfuls of Homo-Erectus. Almost half the population died in the 1300’s because of the Black Plague. Armageddon had been predicted since man could tell ...

Author: Mark Renney The bullet passed straight through him. Of course it did, he was a Hollow but he was the latest model, state of the art, the most efficient and lifelike replica on the market right now. Lenny groaned, because to all intents and purposes at that ...

Author: Ell Rodman I spent most of Monday morning awake in bed, staring at a clock that reads three hundred and eighty two. Its set into a wall of deep green steel tainted by orange rust. Or did the clock stare at me? I could never tell where the cameras were. Next to me, ...