Author : Matthieu C. R. Cartron It was after several hours, and, several brief outbursts, that Henry came to a most significant conclusion: A frog simply cannot learn calculus. Henry was a very smart nine-year-old. So smart, in fact, that he was already taking college ...

Author : John Gerard Fagan The air inside smelled of bonfires. He shivered and fastened the boy’s jacket to the top. “Try and sleep,” Claud said. Broo replied with silence, staring at boots that were too big for his feet. They huddled together on the ship’s metallic floor ...

Author : C. James Darrow From ninety six million miles away Earth looks like a faint blue ornament hanging off something unseen. Every ounce of life our solar system cradles and keeps warm is on that pale speck and from this distance it all seems so insignificant. Soon ...

Author : Alex Smith Six of them stood around the grave, silent. It was the first time they had lost a soldier. For a long while, nobody moved. The air was still, disturbed only by the whirs and clicks of their implants, and the gentle humming of respirators. Eventually, ...

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer (We hope you’ve linked after following our Intergalactic Most Requested: Should I Be Keeping a Human? infoburst. If not, link it before continuing.) IMPORTANT: if you bought your human for a sub-adult of your race, please void the ...

Author : Russell Bert Waters She slept as he observed her for the final time. The moonlight brushed the canvas of her skin with a paint that revealed her natural beauty. He yearned to wake her, to spill his regrets out in one long glut. He would not do this, of ...

Author : David Henson Ellen watches as the machine, bigger than Harold, starts vibrating, its red and blue lights blinking slowly. Gradually the vibration becomes a loud grinding sound and the lights a purple blur. When everything stops, Harold swings open the large door, ...

Author : Jules Jensen The world is dangerous. “Yes, I know this.” No, you don’t. People will kill you for water, for food, for anything you have that is even slightly better than what they have. They don’t care about your past, your present, your future. They don’t ...

Author : Leanne A. Styles The Guardian: I watch with sadness as Anna tugs her brush through her damp hair, yanking unsympathetically when she hits a tangle. She never used to be so angry and uncaring. She was fun and full of joy ‒ infectiously so. For twenty-five ...

Author : Philip Berry Carl insisted that he travel alone. The invitation was sent to him, the wording made it clear that they were interested in his ideas, and the fact that he was only fifteen made no difference. His ideas were mature, that was all that ...

Author : David Atos You look like a worm to me. No, please, don’t be offended. That’s the best way I can describe it to you. To your poor mind, trapped only able to see three dimensions, while you zip along on a fourth. Four simple dimensions, it’s so limiting. A ...

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer “Abomination!” “You’re very rude.” I rotate my right forearm through a rapid one-eighty. There is a ‘snap’. “And dead.” Bamid rises from cover: “Weren’t you supposed to capture him?” I smile: “He was a veteran of Tobruk. His feedback-scarred ...

Author : Elora Powell Just an ordinary day. Woke up. Had breakfast. Went to work. Came home and made coffee. Sat down in front of the TV. Some old movie was on. Black and white. About a mad scientist and his wife. “Lance! You have to stop the experiment. He’s been in ...

Author : Matthew Harrison Susan led Tommy by the hand into the kindergarten forecourt, past the big red climbing frame. “No, not yet,” she said, dragging him back. “Wait until the break.” “You know,” she said to Marjory, who was likewise preoccupied with her son, “I ...

Author : Tiasha J. Garcia "This was not how I imagined this going." The words drifted into the pristine silence, disturbing nothing and no one. “I--I thought there’d be more time.” The two grotesquely bloated figures slumped over the bolted-down commissary tables ...

Author : Joseph Lyons I put my mother in a home a few months ago when her Alzheimer’s became too much for me to deal with. Now here I stood with early-onset, refusing to go the same route. The doctor nodded. He knew why I’d signed up. My job was simple. Travel forward, ...

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer He’s at the door ag- BANG! Loud. Never try and creep up on a paranoid woman with pre-menstrual hypervigilance and a pistol. I usually spend three days screaming at random people for doing things so trivial they didn’t know they were ...

Author : Philip Berry "Just see what you can do with it Tak, if you'd be so good. No great urgency." muttered Johnson, Alec Tak's immediate superior in the Office of Colonies (First Wave). The buff folder landed on Alec's desk with a slap and lay there like an unclaimed ...