Author: Phillip E Temples I know he’s at work right now. I called his office number earlier from a burner phone and he answered. I slip quietly into the hallway of the apartment complex, looking in both directions from the stairwell door. It’s the middle of the morning; no ...

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer The rain is sharp as the one-armed man pulls his daughter up the gray steps and barges his shoulder to the door and staggers from the dark night and into the old psychiatric hospital’s milky black gloom. Steadying, he listens. He knows the ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer Crane somersaults over my head with a gleeful shout. He lands behind me in the crater as a spray of purple fire lashes by above us. “Why are you so bleedin’ happy?” “I love it when a war doesn’t fuck about.” “Come again?” He waves his ...

Author: Mike Croatan We were made of clay. We spread across the earth like a virus, even before we became one. We fed off the earth itself until there was a myriad of us. Then we became cannibals. Devouring each other mercilessly, we doubled, tripled, quadrupled, until we ...

Author: KevS The old lady lays, eyes closed beneath the crisp white sheet and soft pink wool blanket. The blanket is rare, the last sheep seen centuries ago, but she is wealthy, and her records told me, she had this as a child on Terra, something handed down through ...

Author: Rick Tobin “Was food satisfying?” A mechanical, calm, nondescript voice asked from invisible speakers. “It was cold. I need warm food. You know that.” Zuri sat cross-legged, staring into a video wall displaying an exquisite Zen garden spreading to an indefinite ...

Author: DJ Lunan I work nights. Protecting the humans roosting in my cave. Well, those that can pay in protein, dry wood, and nurture. Here they roost. Sleep, love, cry, shit. This winter, our protein and vegetable larder is stocked but we are perpetually at risk. During ...

Author: Rick Tobin Ranson picked at a sharp raspberry seed wedged tightly between canine and incisor, stubbornly poking a nerve in his aging gums, distracting attention from a therapist’s droning. “Your weight is ignored by some on this ship, but as the assigned analyst ...

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer The Detective lays in the warming twist of the hot-tub, an outrigger cocoon that juts, one of many, from this recreation floor high above the 2211th Precinct. The steam peels away thoughts of her desk and of stacked files of death and ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer I encounter God at midnight in a convenience store. She’s chatting with the bloke behind the counter while making herself a caramel latte on the new coffee machine. “So I said to him, you shouldn’t service rich people all the time. Try ...

Author: Michael Mieher Friday, December 18th, 2043 Day 503 of the 3rd Mars Pilgrimage joint SpaceX/OneSpace mission. "I'm sorry Captain Shu.", First Officer Griffin Musk said, trying to keep his exhaustion from showing. "Even the ISS and Peary Station are dark, ...

Author: James Lawrence Rhodes "There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery." - Dante Alighieri The tender and sun-reddened skin had begun to peel, large flakes revealed raw nerves. Alakai was not alone in her suffering. Her shipmates ...

Author: Mark Thomas If time travel has taught us anything it’s that inevitability is a slippery subject. My story became mathematically more likely each time I ingested a tablet, but it was never absolutely certain. Every clock puncher understands that he or she will ...

Author: Rick Tobin “Ouch! That hurts!” Clint Aurelius pulled back his tattoo needle from his thirty-something assistant wincing under his application. Clint took some deep breaths while resting his hands from arthritic agony. “No intent to harm…just tidying your ...

Author: Abigail Hughes I know you made it clear we were not supposed to talk during our “break”, but I have something I need to get off of my chest and now that it is impossible for you to automatically know what I’m feeling, I have been reduced to contacting you through ...

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer Europa Nov. 22, 2122 [GMT] 5400 mSv The submersible hovers in the heavy sodium sea 99.8 km below the Europan crust. Steadying it snaps to grid-coordinate: K-V-6-2. “Damn. You sunk my battleship”, quips 2nd Lt. Percy Newberry in a ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer There’s a half-kilometre tourist cruiser flying between Adma and Therna. It looks tiny from this distance. Compared to them, it would be at any distance. Douglas Thenix translated the Decoran Stone, an artefact found during the excavation ...

Author: Richard M. O'Donnell, Sr. Norman reached across the Golden Bowl of Mystery and tugged Saffron’s blindfold down over the corner of her eye. “No fair peeking, you can only touch the objects inside the bowl to guess what they are.” Saffron pouted her lips. “Sulking ...