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 ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer A grey horizon arcs cleanly against a backdrop of pristine stars. “Well I’ll be damned. It worked!” I look back at Arty. He’s already halfway into his suit. “Going somewhere?” He grins. “After so little time cooped up, I need to get ...

Author: Tinamarie Cox Rosemary sat under the harsh light of a small vanity in a Vegas chapel touching up her makeup in an attempt to disguise all the decades she’d walked the Earth. A soft knock at the door was a welcomed distraction from her reflection. “Ted!” She stepped ...

Author: Rick Tobin “Careful with lighting, Captain. Don’t kill them.” Jerry Carter readjusted reflectors a few inches from a grouping of small barrel cacti in the spaceship’s arboretum. “Why keep these damnable things? Don’t get enough of them taking over Earth?” Captain ...

Author: David C. Nutt They call me a saint at the long term care facility. I go and sit exclusively with patients who are in irreversible comas. Sometimes I hold their hands. Sometimes I sit, as if in prayer with my forehead lightly touching their arm. Once I proved to the ...

Author: Philip G Hostetler I set my guitar down in it's stand, I went to take a piss, the Zuntory whiskey was running right through me. D'rard had warned me not to drink too much, but he was fucking my ex-wife so fuck him and the high horse he rode in on. I walked back out ...

Author: Majoki The mason aligned the large sandstone block and lowered it onto the mortar he’d just ladled with water against the growing heat of late morning. The heavy block nestled into the mortar resting on the soft metal plugs that would keep the stone level with its ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer I’m all for elegant combinations of form and function, but I’ll never agree that bioreactors sat every hundred metres is an improvement over having trees and streetlights. These ‘greenboxes’ even have benches on their pavement sides, ...