Author: Alastair Millar You know how sometimes you enter a room after a while, and you just know that someone’s been in there? It’s not your imagination. It could be an aroma so slight that you don’t consciously notice it. Maybe something’s not quite in the same place it ...

Author: David Broz I knew the stars would fall, and they did. I watched from the observation deck as the midnight sky slowly brightened, burning with orange streaks, brighter than the hottest day, and I watched as the stars came crashing down. Down through the dome ...

Author: Toshihisa Nikaido The woman jolted awake, surrounded by unfamiliar sterility. She didn’t know where or even who she was, until a cracked nametag dimly illuminated by a slit of light from across the room caught her attention—the letters “Ali” remained. She approached ...

Author: Majoki When I broke into the abandoned home, I hadn’t expected to stay long. I only wanted to get off the streets and out of the cold for a few days. I was pretty broken down. Being on the run for years will do that to you. So, I’d hacked the home’s defenses and ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer I look back as the car accelerates away. She’s standing there under the streetlight, perfect, one hand raised in tentative farewell, the box I gave her tucked under her other arm. Then pa takes a hard right and she disappears from view - ...

Author: Joanne Feenstra A woman pounds on our front door. She is gaunt and tall, wet hair: short roots tipped with long dyed blond ends. We've seen that look before here in the Mercy Valley: city people. We've pretty much lived through the first couple waves of city folk. ...

Author: Shanna Yetman Leila likes to lie within the algae when the air is thickest with smog—smoke, nitrogen oxide, and ozone particulates squeezing at her lungs, agitating her asthma. Today her chest is tight. The smog has sat on top of the city for days, building up as ...

Author: David Barber The dry and sunny weather spoiled their holiday, confining them indoors until nightfall. It was Lord Byron who proposed they pass the time by writing tales to entertain one another, and for two days the villa beside Lake Geneva was silent with their ...

Author: Rick Tobin In the heart of New York City, in the shadow of towering brownstone apartment buildings, eight-year-old Ro was a peculiar sight. Her curly hair framed her youthful face, and her eyes sparkled with an otherworldly innocence. On the steps of her building, ...

Author: Morrow Brady The Data Centre hummed like a tuning fork orchestra. In a low-rent corner, a makeshift workshop sat wedged between a run-hot server and a rank of sweating helium spheres. Roughhouse acoustic walls, a vain attempt to stave off tinnitus. For the third ...

Author: Majoki Shamash, the Mesopotamian sun god, probably didn't see this coming. Considering he was also known as the god of justice and equity, he really should’ve had an inkling of this kind of cosmic irony. Though we shouldn’t blame a dusty old deity when it's ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer There are naked angels riding our missiles down, using their wide wings to override delicate guidance systems by brute force. Distant explosions show that, yet again, we’re going to kill more friends than foes. Actually, those ...

Author: H.E. Shippas On a balmy winter’s day in Arizona, a man crawled out of Lake Xochimilco. This wasn’t any ordinary man as this man had been born with the axolotls. He was labeled the “Axolotl Man.” He told the press his name was Steve, but the nickname stuck. “How ...

Author: Paul Schmidt Key strokes echoed across the office room with an uneasy rhythm, one that could only be heard in a room full of programmers aware of their impending demise. Not literally, of course, but their professional one. As the chief developer of NU/O ...

Author: Peter Cherches I left my apartment only to enter my apartment. That is, instead of leading to the hallway of my building, the door led back to my apartment. My apartment had become a recursive loop. I was a prisoner, couldn’t get out, because going out only meant ...

Author: Ann Tandy The house was old, but not particularly interesting–it was the previous century’s version of a model house, with the same layout as its neighbors, the same banisters and door trim. But it was theirs, and they settled into a comfortable if chaotic life. ...

Author: David Penn From a human perspective, the dominant inhabitants of Isvara 9 are some of the most physically repulsive creatures known. With their metallic carapaces, they resemble enormous blue bottle flies, though instead of the compound optical organs of Earth ...

Author: Majoki It really wasn’t his thing: pain and panic way too up-close-and-personal. The chaotic video and jarring audio, the total mayhem of battle were so not his thing, but it was up to him to wrap this melee in a nice, neat bow. A twenty-two minute package of war ...