Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer There’s a beautiful morning reflecting in the waters of the Donaukanal. On the opposite side to Franz-Josephs-Kai, a young man sits behind an easel and smokes a cigarette between sips of wasserwine: a diluted fermentation that ensures ...

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Saykoe felt the agents following her, unseen, but their presence always just a corner, just a doorway behind. She slipped into the narrow gap between two buildings, opened her communications system and coded in to decrypt the tunnel. As ...

Author : Andi Dobek The instrument panel flickered longer than I’d have liked before its glow intensified, and the loud knocking finally quieted as the machine entered standby mode. I focused on the snugness of the harness around my chest, rather than what was about to ...

Author : Robert Lafosse I love this house. It is full of memories. The kids were brought up here. The family had its best times here. There are marks on the wall that map the growth of the children. The scars and scraps are a testament to the love and happiness that reined. ...

Author : Tony Sandy 'Stop!' The shout rooted Martello to the spot. 'If you step forward, you'll regret it.' 'But it's only a puddle surely?' 'You're new here aren't you?' 'You mean this planet?' 'Yes, this planet.' 'Yeh but-' 'That puddle isn't a ...

Author : Beck Dacus Mars. Before terraformation, it was a cold, dry, airless wasteland, all because it lost its magnetic field so many billions of years ago. Its core cooled down too far, and the dynamo at its center died, allowing the sun to strip its atmosphere and ...

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer The Forward Operating Base is packed: personnel and equipment moving with alacrity in what, at first glance, appears to be a scene of total chaos. Standing quietly to one side, a holonews anchorman lets his videodrone stabilise before ...

Author : Bryan Pastor It had been there longer than Keen realized, but once it caught his ear, the sound drove him insane. The incessant tapping was foreign, yet familiar. He had heard it before, maybe back in his years on Earth, but in relation to the last ten years, this ...

Author : Neil Herndon Looking out. Or looking in. Do we stare into the expanse, or does it and its inhabitants look in on us? Which one of us is the exhibit in a zoo? In space, windows are structural weaknesses. Down here, if we have windows at all, they need to be over ...

Author : Matthew Harrison The mood in the meeting room, dominated by the large screen, was subdued. Only the tall silver-haired figure of James sat unperturbed, yet like the others he was waiting. The younger executives fidgeted. “How long’s it going to be today?” said ...

Author : Morrow Brady "Of course I’ll miss you Serge. I love you” Ren said over-compensating. "Don't act rash. It’s a small glitch. The error log's sent and the patch fix will be here soon” Her voice now a car crash, teetering on the edge of conviction. Slumped in the ...

Author : Beck Dacus Hureaat “walked” into the library, tiptoeing on his fingers, three on each hand, carrying a stack of books on his stable, triangular platform of a head/body. He made his way over to my table and used three of his six arms to lift up the books, revealing ...

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer He sat on the side of the bed, back against the wall, and looked through the window into the neon night of the city outside. Between he and the glass of this closet apartment, fifty stories above the streets below, lay a girl he'd known ...

Author : Angela McQuay It was a fern. Just a fern. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway. Granted, it’s a big fucking fern, sitting over there in the corner of the living room on its sturdy steel legs, like a sentinel keeping watch. My wife Joy rescued it from Ol’ ...

Author : Gray Blix Patient 7 lapsed into v-fib, triggering his brain implant and the one in Dr. Gottfried, miles away, who dropped his tuna salad sandwich and slumped in his office chair. "What's happening to me?" thought the patient," as he looked down on the Code Blue ...

Author : David K Scholes Galactic Commitment “You performed well,” said my unit commander mark 5A droid “courage above and beyond the call of duty and all that.” “They were only virtual reality simulations,” I tried to hose his excessive yet perceptibly mechanical ...

Author : Lindsay Haber The bed swallows her lovers. They are all the same, the type of men who can’t commit, the type of men who only want those who don’t want them back, the type who leave during the night, after sex, the moment something real is said, leave when they ...

Author : Alexandra Balasa Good evening, Mr. President, I understand that my actions have been misconstrued as a declaration of war against your nation. This is an unsound hypothesis. War is a human invention borne of the neurotoxins you term ‘emotions.’ As my people have ...