Author: David Henson Randall disengages from his charging port when Director Gravasin of the Institute for Research on Eternal Life enters the office. “Good morning, Director. It's early. Are you getting enough sleep?" "Don't start, Randall. Activate the Cellular Decay ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer A savannah night is interrupted by the snarls of attacking lions. I hear screams, see flashes of weapons as wielders fall. They keep popping in. I’ve become adept at making sure they don’t leave. While watching, my mind returns – as usual ...

Author: Richard Wren Grampa Leg heaved his large, square frame from the floor and trundled across the family room to where the youngster sat. Deep in concerned thought, the child twiddled his long fingers, picking at the rubbery fingertips. Ma watched from the corner of the ...

Author: Mina Captain Agnes Parker rubbed the back of her sore neck and rolled her shoulders. If anyone had told her how many tedious tasks a captain had to deal with every week… Currently, she was examining the ship supply lists as certain items kept going astray. She lived ...

Author: Mark Joseph Kevlock We came to their planet to study them. But we found their understanding of the universal mechanisms to be shockingly limited. We've managed to locate only one man, thus far, among billions, who possesses any true grasp of the situation. His name ...

Author: Josie Gowler Since I woke up in the base hospital, there’s been a steady stream of people coming and going and being nice to me in between. The burns on my hands are being dealt with: they don’t hurt at all now. The skin just feels tight under the bandages. When ...

Author: Alzo David-West Tomi Mura, a specialist in inter-planetary law, sat aboard a six-person capsule en route to Planet Arazan. The magnetic-field modulator of the small hyperbolically propulsed vessel gave her the sensation of gliding gently through the depths of an ...

Author: Alexander D Jones The queue was massively long. Fridays were always the busiest. Everyone would clock off early so that they could get a decent night’s sleep. Garth was probably thirty people away from the check-in point and the building’s entrance. He checked ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer Where did your rock ‘n’ roll fable go, Ella May? Did it get lost way back amongst the evergreens, or did it get too close to the railroad tracks, and go under them drivin’ wheels? “Can I help you?” I remember when you bought the first ...

Author: Alex Z. Salinas I pressed my palm against the reinforced window in my bedroom. The glass felt cool, exactly like they felt in my previous life. The difference was that on the other side of this one, there was stretched before me an infinite and ever-expanding black ...

Author: Neil Otte Sean sighed as he leaned his head back against the tree. The good ones always left him with this amalgamation of thoughts and feelings, this clash of excitement and longing with the realization of routine and boredom. He closed his eyes and listened to ...

Author: Jatayu It made headlines. It was the talk of social media for a week which is, like, forever. “Someone came back!” “Wait, what? When? Who?” No one knew who and that was cause for amazement too; since World Citizenship came online there simply weren’t any ...

Author: Mina Dr Carlson looked up wearily as the last patient of the day came in. She was a new patient, Emily Mitte-Kunagi. He noticed that her body language and her clothes were aimed at not drawing attention to herself. It worked until she sat down, removed her darkly ...

Author: Dylan Otto Krider Rick saw the Universe in folds. He coded a program that could make anything in origami. You put in, say, a rhino, and it would make the plan, complete with lines for the folds, and when you were finished, it looked exactly like that rhino. Exactly. ...

Author: David C. Nutt “How’d did your last trip go Vincent?” (Sigh) “Not good Director. We keep hitting the same walls. No matter what we do, nothing has an effect.” “Nothing?” “You heard it right chief, nothing.” “Maybe we should go for a larger effect.” “Like killing ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer Tapestries hang on the walls of a room where anatomical diagrams and scientific charts would have been, centuries ago. Two men stand reading a display that floats above the supine form on the chrome table at the centre of the ...

Author: Roger Ley ‘So, what’s your star sign?’ Mary asked, and took a sip from her glass, she watched him closely over the rim. It was one of her stock questions on first dates. You could tell a lot about a man, depending on how he reacted. His actual star sign was ...

Author: Alzo David-West Two neutron stars, ten times the mass of the sun collided, unleashing a cataclysm—an explosive kilonova, whose massive gravitational waves undulated through the dark mantle of spacetime, forging in their course a planetary system composed of fifteen ...