Hypocritical Oath
Author: Ken Carlson
The pain in his side was a steady series of jabs. Alone it wasn’t enough to knock him down; no, the bill from the hospital was good for that. Six months of security work on this mining colony might just cover it if Murphy didn’t worry about food or ...
Journey to the Center of the Bureaucracy
Author: Thomas Desrochers
Basil had never imagined he’d be a bureaucrat, but The Tower housed eighty million bureaucrats servicing a legal machine a thousand years in the making – it was inevitable. His job was simple: audit the legal codex. An automated program could do ...
Eyedentity Theft
Author: David Henson
I go to the woman at the check-in of the Identity Bureau and touch the space where my right eye used to be. “I’m Roger Sanders and —”
“Look at the scanner to verify.”
I clear my throat and swirl my finger around in my empty eye socket.
The ...
The Red Lion
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 ...
Never the Shroud for a Good Man
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 ...
Children of All Ages
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 ...
Valentine
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, ...
Crushed by love
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 ...
Addendum to Fermi’s Paradox
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 ...
The Building Blocks
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 ...
Forging time
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 ...
Into the Gorge
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 ...
Day at the Office, Night on the Job
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 ...
A Devil’s Trade
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 ...
Three years of space to grow
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 ...
Bg’lkk Ut’rk: Hot-Lizard Enthusiast
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 ...
Roiland
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 ...
The Wounding Table
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 ...
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