Author: William Gray These bite marks on my forearm. Just below the crease of my elbow. They’ve always been there, even as a child growing up on the colonies of Ganymede. Their pattern is unique. All slim, clean lines with the exception of one wide, jagged rip exactly ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The snow is so fine it sometimes drifts about for hours before finally settling. The result is a mist that makes everything vague before fallen snow obscures it completely. This being acid snow, obscuring may become erasure when thawing ...

Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer I look out the viewport to the crushing void of space. It doesn't feel real. I don't feel connected to any of this, out here alone amidst all this nothing. "Put all the weight on the balls of your feet and press them into the floor," ...

Author: David Henson I wake up sweating, check the alarm clock. Three fifty-nine? Too light. I fumble for my watch. Almost 10. “What’s wrong with the a/c, Daniel?” Jean says sleepily. *** I come back from Kyle and Lisa’s across the street. “They don’t have power ...

Author: Mark Joseph Kevlock Solinsky sat upon the mountaintop and watched his hometown die. As the sun set at his back, the farthest outskirts of the city fell into shadow first. Solinsky had his telescope trained there, upon the edge of town. He gasped to see the first of ...

Author: Abigail Hughes Sure, he’s not exactly the same. There are small differences. Some easy tidbits that I picked up on. Like, he’s right-handed. Ian was left. And this morning he asked if I wanted to take a week off. Save up for a get-away. The Ian I married would ...

Author: Daniel Thron Thirty breaths, and then my world will be over. I know I will die from the moment I know anything at all, an understanding so innate, so instantaneous and thorough that it seems to precede me, which makes sense, as it was coded into my mind before you ...

Author: Hari Navarro The girl sits atop the corrugated roof of her grandfather's garage as her fingernails loosen and flake from her hands. Her dog, Apollo, a grandiose name for so tiny a pup lays curled into a tight coil dead at her side. Absently she caresses the ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer I see her shoulders tense, then one hand releases as the other arm swings out and round. Ashes form a plume on the wind. “He’s gone, Darion. Free at last.” Essa blinks back tears as she smiles at me. There’s a release in her eyes, a ...

Author: Lora Kilpatrick Moon for Sale Looking for space? No pun intended. 14.6 million square miles of untouched beauty (except for a few boot prints, rover tracks, and flags). Half of the property looks out into deep space—great for stargazing! ...

Author: Alex Z. Salinas Erections used to mean something. This is the summation of my research at the bibliotech. Long before Dr. Claude “Stretch” Kransenberry, “the Grand-Godfather of Teleportation,” untangled the stickiest of equations in quantum entanglement and ...

Author: Roger Ley The Land Rover stopped, and Riley pointed, the prehuman footprints showed clearly impressed into the flat, dry, African rock surface. It was the third day of their family safari in the Great Rift Valley ‘We can spend a few hours here but we need to get to ...

Author: Hari Navarro Large Hadron Space-Time Shunt, Saint-Genis-Pouilly/Global Broadcast in ...3...2...1 - Transmitting: "I'm no speaker. My life a desert of beautiful numbers, a place where words stick as I swallow. I haven’t been chosen, it’s but chance that I find ...

Author: Irene Montaner The pink young woman was followed by a green man. A deafening explosion and hundreds of sparkly green dots illuminated the night sky. His features could be properly distinguished against the darkness. A middle-aged frowning man; he wore glasses and ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The truck crests the ridge with a loud whine from the drive servos momentarily rising above the sound of tyres on rough ground. “There!” A slim figure leans against a rocky outcrop: shirtless, barefoot, a cigarette hanging from her ...

Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer Walter moved purposefully around his small kitchen, pulling out bottles and tins, each marked with black ink on hastily applied white labels. Jasika read them while he worked; garlic powder, dried dill weed, flour and bread crumbs, and a ...

Author: Ian Hill Farmer Hoggins stood bent in his field, working over a particularly embedded knot. Sweat dripped from his brow and mixed with that of the ground as he repeatedly scratched at the sinuous snarl with the jagged end of his plow. The fibers before him were so ...

Author: Rick Tobin Tight bindings held her fast to something upright and cold. She stood blindfolded before her captors. Sweat trickled over her eyebrows, infiltrating throbbing eyes, and then eroding mascara into rivulets over her black cheeks and paralyzed quivering lips ...