Author : Vanessa Kittle Max stood looking out of his window into the night. He lived on the 50th floor of the Palmer building in New York. The rule was the higher the better, and while he was nowhere near the top, he was still far up enough to get above most of the smog. He ...

Author : Linda Breneman “I can control a computer with my mind—from inside a dream,” New Scientist, February 2017. At first I was content to fly like a bird and have brief tea parties with my dead mother. Later I took to diving off buildings and bridges. Like the patron ...

Author : Joachim Heijndermans They won't stop staring at me. I've been stuck here for forty-two hours. I haven't slept in all that time. I don't know if I can keep it up. Normal procedure is to set the beacon on board the ship off, then find shelter and food and stay put ...

Author : Morrow Brady Live again, said the cruise brochure. It should have said lie again. The lift vessel arrived carrying my personal pod cabin and minutes later, PrinceStellar, an orbiting trans-galactic cruise ship was in view and my mid-life crisis journey had ...

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer Every anniversary of the counterstrike, they show that cursed video. You know the one: snow on the ground, ashes in the air, a lone woman in a ragged battlesuit moving cautiously across an open field. She’s gripping a Mantis 14 like the ...

Author : Jose Corpas At ringside, where you could hear the loose boards under the canvas rattle like an old boardwalk, about twenty fans took their seats. They were joined by friends and relatives of the boxers, decked out in those digital t-shirts the universities tried to ...

Author : Henry Peter Gribbin As a national security advisor to top level government officials for the past decade, I have been privy to information which would have scared the daylights out of any ordinary person. The way I coped with all the near disasters, political ...

Author : James SW Paris They came from outside the solar system, in a ship the size of Mars. We thought it was something natural, then it performed a braking maneuver around Uranus, and the planet’s twenty-seven moons slid out of its way, returning to their normal orbits ...

Author : Suzanne Borchers Wind ground sand into her eyes, nose, and lips. Her unprotected ears caught crystals of silica within their folds. Her eyes burned. She wanted to pick at the stubborn particles with her fingers but forced herself to wait. It would be pointless. She ...

Author : Matthieu C. R. Cartron The planetary nation of Ozda was illiterate—in English and in many other far away languages that is. It was practical to learn the languages of nearby planets, but beyond that it made little sense. A waste of time, actually. Without a ...

Author : Morrow Brady I grew a heart on my intestine to prove my wife wrong. ”You're wasting money Eric. You'll only get cancer” Kara frowned, as I tossed the stem cell unit into the shopping trolley. I knew the risks of growing your own organs, but my mid-life aches and ...

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer He stands near three metres tall and his smell precedes him. It envelops all who dare approach the being renowned for murderous piracy on a scale never before seen. The wiry lad he towers over is, nigh-impossibly, even filthier. Both are ...

Author : Irene Montaner “And have a nice day,” said the cashier, as he handed me the brown paper bag with my purchases inside. “You too.” I smiled back at the young boy in front of me. Probably no older than twenty and enjoying the thrills of his first job. “No, I ...

Author : Russell Bert Waters Kyle staggered a bit, the bank line in front of him morphed into a field, then a grassy patch of hill, then back to the line. The man ahead of him shot him a suspicious glance, then looked back ahead as though no one existed. Kyle’s ...

Author : Henry Peter Gribbin In the far corner of a basement laundry room of an apartment building a portal to another dimension was located. One of the tenants, a young redhead with bright green eyes by the name of Maureen, had a strong feeling that something wasn’t quite ...

Author : Craig Finlay It seemed fine, to place it there. You were on the weekly trip to the greenhouse with Mom and Dad and Stella holding your hand the whole way as you skipped 10 meters at a time through the light gravity of the inner ring. It was warmer there, drawing ...

Author : Josh Thompson A planet full of gods is not a nice place. Ancient humans knew this and their legends were full of betrayal and conflict and suffering. If anything, the inhuman powers of the gods brought out what was most human in them. That was the ultimate lesson ...

Author : M. Irene Hill A whisking wind stirred up a cauldron of crows that congregated amongst the remains of the centuries-old pagan temple. Accompanying the wind, a young woman of tempestuous temperament and flaming hair. Unconcerned by the rumbling heavens, Akasha ...