Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer June looked up as the diner door opened. There was Jack, ten-fifteen every morning like clockwork. Same dark, carefully pressed single-breasted suit, always with his trench coat folded over his left arm, fedora perched on top of his ...

Author : Tim McDaniel The ceiling opened and the Priest Judge Arbitrator descended into the Control Center. Tloygruu bobbed his head up and down the correct number of times, but one hand snuck down to tug on his genitalia. There was no need for concern or worry, he ...

Author : Gray Blix Glastonbury Tor was cordoned off by military, of course, but one hundred and fifty metres below tens of thousands coursed through the town and fields east, where a festival was underway. Costumed performers from Renaissance faires, popular in Somerset, ...

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer I’m pulling taters when I hear the bell and the rhyme starts pounding in my head. I scatter the haul as my legs take off of their own accord, carrying me with them. Run, run, run, The snuffymen come! No time to hide Just dive ...

Author : Chris Lee Jones My twenty-first birthday, and I've got him a gift he can't refuse. He's older than me and I know that bothers him. He hasn't expressed as much in words, of course; he's not that kind of guy. But he's my kind of guy. "Wait a few minutes," I ...

Author : Beck Dacus I knew she was weird well before I talked to her. Why? Simple: she tripped. Nobody walked around without Antrips. These little computers in motors on your knees can predict when you’re unbalanced, and the braces connected to them around your upper and ...

Author : Garrisonjames It isn’t extinction if we’re all still alive. It isn’t an apocalypse if the process of societal transformation brought on by accelerating technology eliminated all the old problems like poverty, taxes and death. It isn’t any kind of dystopia or ...

Author : Callum Wallace Bob and Dave were digging. Neither was sure what they were digging for, nor when they had started. Bob's hole was bigger though, and he knew this was good, for some reason. He vaguely remembered an old story, a myth, about some chap who ...

Author : Kraig Conkin Being a state of the art security drone, the People Pleaser 2200 didn’t feel the need to celebrate milestones. It held no sense of personal accomplishment, so when it’s internal logic board reported that ten days had passed without a single safety call ...

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer When the last of the ships left, they blasted craters a mile deep in the earth, so large it would take the better part of a day to walk their circumference. The ground at the bottom of these holes had been heated to molten, and had ...

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer Crystallized atmosphere streams in slow motion from shattered windows and blown-out doors. It catches the light and paints rainbow banners against the starry night beyond the curved expanses of cracked supraglass. This was Balyen Station, ...

Author : David Henson "Tommy and Sally, fly down to your seats and turn off your levitation belts, OK?" Miss DeRozan says gently. The two children ignore their teacher at first, then glide down to their places. "Let's get started," the teacher says. "We're going to have ...

Author : Dylan Otto Krider I don’t believe in love, but spent my entire professional life studying it, the last ten years in your lab. Our compatriots believed in it. They believed it made us human, separated us from the animals. They think love was the basis of morality: ...

Author : Joachim Heijndermans “Hello? Is anyone there? I can't see. Is anyone out there?” “Yes, I'm here.” “Who are you? Where am I?” “I'm Kon. Can you tell me who you are?” “My name's Harry. Harry Fitzpatrick. I'm an accountant for a firm on 8th street. I...I don't ...

Author : Gray Blix "Pangaea," we nicknamed the planet, after its one-island-continent which resembles Earth's Paleozoic-Mesozoic supercontinent of the same name. I was showing Krispie, named after a... well, you'll see, the relative motions of our two planets around their ...

Author : Alicia Cerra Waters Once a month, someone had to delete the files of the undesirables. It was an easy job; go into the server room, which was illuminated by the light of countless green-glowing network ports, punch in a command, and watch as a neon status bar ...

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Tran adjusted the grapples on the Canbarro reactor core slung under the ship from the relative comfort of the cockpit. He balanced the load as close to center as possible, making sure to clear the four point vertical thrusters he'd need to ...

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer Old Avon looks up: “That’s going to cost you.” He always says that. Doesn’t matter if you pick up a piece of twine or a gold ring, his opening lines are fixed. I grin: “Can’t be worth much if it’s ended up here.” “It’s here for ...