Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer The man awakens and he is sitting in a tavern. His fingers trace the time beaten patina of the hard wood upon which he rests and his eyes trace the exposed beams that dance and flicker at the ceiling. The woman who sits across from him is ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer It’s easy to spot strangers round here. They’re the ones who call the grass-banked sewer on my right a canal. “And in those days of tribulation, the faithful called unto Old Peace, but his thing was endurance without fighting, so he ...

Author: Mark Joseph Kevlock "They all came to see me: the man who could age — or de-age — at will. They all thought it was a trick. When you reach one hundred years of age, the body becomes elastic, the flesh conforms to the soul. If I thought myself a ten-year-old, I ...

Author: J. H. Malone "Happy Valentine's Day!" "Oh, Honey, for me? How sweet!" "Open it. Then I'll take you out to dinner." "Ok, just let me... What could it be?... Wow!... A CRISPR valentine..." "I taped the pills to the back. Let's take them now and in a month, ...

Author: DJ Lunan Earth’s first extra-terrestrial visitor for 500 years is a peace offering and a miscalculation. Intended for a swift twenty-year journey through its own solar system in the Monfix Galaxy, the visitor that breached Earth’s atmosphere had voyaged for ...

Author: David C. Nutt “Wally, do remember what they used to call us back in fourth grade?” Wally bobbed his head up and down “Uh-huh, sure do. You were Adrian the alien and I was Wally the werewolf.” Adrian chuckled. “I was a bit strange back then, before I learned to fit ...

Author: Malcolm Carvalho The algorithm has just been published. I move my fingers over the cylinder in the centre of the room. A tube runs into it. I verify the cylinder’s valve can easily control the flow and pressure of the hydrogen atom stream coming into the ...

Author: DJ Lunan Tung carefully poured the molten metallic liquid into the stone mould. Almost three litres heated to 650 degrees. The orange liquid sizzled in contact with the colder, crystal marble of his signature insignia cast into a double shield reminiscent of a ...

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer Beneath a stark winter hue that washes but never cleans a young woman lays naked, the cold winds filthy besom scratching as it dusts her with crystals that flurry as ash. A security camera gazes down blind and useless. The upward ...

Author: Brooks C. Mendell Day jobbers think offices clean themselves. They show up in the morning at their desks, put down their gourmet coffee on coasters their kids made, flick the mouse and check the Inbox without wondering who swept the floors or removed the lettuce ...

Author: Ken Carlson “This a good trade, Tommy; a good trade.” “Yes, Mister President.” “It’s the kind of deal that’s good for America. Maybe it’s my greatest trade ever.” “Yes, Mister President, right this way, sir.” The President and Thomas Lee Jarvis, a junior ...

Author: DJ Lunan The Zeppelidrone hovered soundlessly outside the window blinking its countdown, indicating less than twenty minutes to make our decision to sign the contract. “You will need to be sterilised before we can go, no natal medical facilities on-board”, said ...

Author: Thomas Desrochers Bg’lkk Ut’rk had found the blue jewel with its eccentric inhabitants and decided he wouldn’t make contact. His name sounded like “big lick” in the planet’s principle political and business language, and he was of the opinion that first contact by ...

Author: Jamie Bainbridge-Wood Marshal was a photographer, an anachronist and a killer. Before we met, he hadn't bothered to iCap any of the women he had finished with: he used an old camera, the print kind. That's a throwaway fact- an affectation- for someone who isn't a ...

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer Her fingers are young but they feel wrapped in the heft of ancient mountains as she writes. Her nails are blotched with ink but she remembers the taste of the paint, that which she mined from beneath their tips as she thought with the edge ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer We dash around a long curve that should get us out of their sights for a while. “In all those old films we watched, fighting the evil empire involved a lot less running away from angry warriors with frighteningly accurate weapons.” Freya ...

Author: DJ Lunan “London is ours! Zero-ing in on infamy!” announced Haggard Elsson, winking to the air steward and striding purposefully from the First Class exit from BA0171 with his Executive Assistant Freya trailing him, awkwardly wheeling both of their ...

Author: James Hornby In all my days on Gulliver's Rest, I never believed that the War would reach us. From the window, I see the sky is pitted with scars from the wreckage of an Artari Sunskipper, ripped from history in a series of blinding flashes. I came to this planet to ...