Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer Tāne hoists himself over the wrought iron gate and as he falls heavily to the ground, he feels it. A deafening coldness as the old building strains and grins. It had been enticing him here for years. Villa Mater had once been a home for ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer Another cold coffee. It's the last one I'll have for a while. Tigerhouse closes tonight and affording bean coffee will go back on the luxuries list. "Last one?" Elena slides into the seat opposite, looking like a pinup from the side of ...

Author: Rick Tobin Pressing slick walls within Perri’s briefing center opened gigantic multi-verse mapping systems across a great briefing hall aboard Haven’s interstellar spacecraft. The Order’s enclosure pulsated with its anthem, rising to crescendos oscillating beneath ...

Author: Bryan Pastor “We should have listened to your father and stayed out of this place.” “Nonsense… Woo what is that?” Neil and Toby paused to examine their find. It stood twice as tall as than them, reminding Neil of the holoart of Michelangelo’s David, they had ...

Author: J. Edward Hamilton Fragments of shattered glass float elegantly before him, and as Cameron imagines the glittering specs are stars in a little microcosm galaxy, he realizes this scene is the last beautiful thing he’ll ever see. It’s growing warmer now as their ship ...

Author: David Barber It was an old silver Zippo lighter. You had to hunt down little squirty tins of fluid for it. After his dad quit smoking, it had banged around a kitchen drawer until finally claimed by Max. He inhaled the heady smell of naphtha. “Hurry up, ...

Author: Suzanne Borchers The rain pelted his metallic covering while his smooth rollers skidded on the sidewalk. How far to the warehouse now? Too far to go before the cracked seams allowed moisture into his circuits. Cyrus3 pushed up his speed, careening wildly, his vision ...

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer The woman, who’d run to the farthest edge of a star system to find who she was, contracted into herself as she read the message and discovered that, perhaps, she had not. Renfield Station/ Pluto/ Transmission Incoming: “You don't know ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer Confined in a 4-metre cube with nothing but my thoughts for company. Poor conversation and haunting memories by day, convoluted dreams by night. The dreams are too disturbing to contemplate long enough to unravel, so they leave varying ...

Author: Arkapravo Bhaumik “ … according to them, GOD was a superior being who cared for their well being and could undo their wrong-doings. Most of their morality was related to GOD. They often gathered together to lyrically speak about GOD and bestowed GOD with offerings ...

Author: DJ Lunan The policewoman eyed me sternly through the crosshairs of her pistol. Her blue uniform wet from the remnants of the time blizzard I’d arrived with. Her free hand flat-palming to dissuade a rash attack. Yet she clearly wasn’t police. And I was ...

Author: John McLaughlin To Whom It May Concern: My wife and I have reviewed your report with great disappointment -- with such disappointment, in fact, that only after two straight weeks of sobbing, dry-heaving, and manic-hysterical disarray, only then could I ...

Author: Rick Tobin “He’s on edge again. It’s intolerable when he tears into our crew like this. Makes me itch all over.” D-7 moved away from overheated control panels. He heard sputtering of wiring insulation against conduit. Corrosive effervescence from singed plastic ...

Author: David Henson The prisoner, his shoulder burning with pain, winces the pickaxe overhead then slams it down. The crystalline surface fractures. The shards slice his hands as he loads the jagged pieces into his wheelbarrow. When he hesitates, a disembodied voice tells ...

Author: Rollin T. Gentry A series of video clips play on the large screen behind the podium, low budget re-enactments, as a smooth, male voice narrates: fear of heights, fear of the dark, snakes, and spiders. Primitive humans making simple mistakes leading to their demise. ...

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer The man hangs inverted and naked from the pole that sits at the centre of a galaxy. A neglected cosmos of once delicate but now mob trodden flowers. A meeting place that slopes down, pulling away from where the eternal city had halted its ...

Author: Mark Joseph Kevlock The snow outside is at least four feet high. This will finally give us that chance to talk. Only, which one of us will begin? "I never meant to hurt you," Marcine says. "You tried to kill me on three separate occasions." "I don't always ...

Author: Richard M. O'Donnell, Sr. Tee-Crux entered the spaceport with her service animal in tow. Everyone stopped to stare at her ET-Ultra. Even the ticket agents and porters gawked. Tee-Crux was especially pleased with the oohs and ahhs from the verbal races and the ...