Author : J.P. Quinn Arron sat on an outcrop of rock. He’d stopped to watch the sunset. He knew he shouldn’t have, but he couldn’t help it. It was the shift from copper to blue. That extended interlude between day and night, where, for a few fleeting moments, he could almost be home. A ...

Author : Daniel Fairbairn A wind that started a billion years ago ended today. It sighed past my apple tree and ended its journey. The breath of an age of warriors, poets, beasts and storms lay in the marks in the dust. The grass stood still as if in some moment of ...

Author : Matthew Harrison It was a struggle, but they managed to get the trainees ready just in time for the cocktail. “I don’t see why we need to bother,” Simon said as he surveyed the work. He had crumpled his suit, and didn’t have a spare. “We can just explain the ...

Author : Bob Newbell Wachter ran out of the bank just as the alarm sounded. It was not an auspicious beginning to what Wachter had imagined would be a long and successful criminal career. The teller had initially thought he was kidding when he'd asked for $20,000 in cash. ...

Author : Alicia Cerra Waters “Don’t touch that,” I said as I slapped Henry’s hand. His doughy cheeks formed a pout as he let go of the zipper of his thermo suit. Somehow, hiking through the mountains of a planet on the brink of being engulfed by a dying star had not helped ...

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer I look human. In this new world, that is freakish. I am stared at with disgust. My taboo choice of structure is offensive. I have two legs, two arms, no tail, a cranium and a chest cavity. I walk around, balancing from stilt to stilt, ...

Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer The bench seat complained loudly as Thom7 lowered his armoured bulk into it. Waitresses hovered near the cash register nudging and whispering to each other before one, having apparently drawn the short straw, ventured over. "Would you ...

Author : Leanne A. Styles “Welcome to your new life,” the foreman says, thrusting a set of gardening tools and a pair of overalls at me. I take them and file in line behind my little brother. “Have you ever seen so much green in your life, Della?” my brother says, ...

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer My dad was a spy. A really good one, according to mum. I couldn’t get her to understand. How could he have been any good if he got caught? It meant there was a better spy, or spycatcher, out there. That was who I wanted to be. Twelve ...

Author : Callum Wallace "Forward! Move forward!" I duck the humming blue blow as the throng presses me onwards. "How much further?" Davos looks afraid, scared of the dark, frightened of the ubiquitous pressing weight above. I grip his hand, "We'll know soon ...

Author : Bob Newbell As the sun went down over the giant dome that covered Mesogaea on Mars, moisture condensed on the dome's inner surface. Soon, it was raining over the enclosed metropolis. Detective Vogt had read that rain was common on Earth before the Great Asteroid Collision. But he ...

Author : Perry McDaid (Falcon) Revelation did not come as a rosy warm feeling of wonder, but a rending, ripping divestment of accepted resentment. It left a vacuum: a void greater than that between his adopted planet and the existence into which he had first … ‘been born’. This space ...

Author : Travis Gregg Indentured servitude has been illegal for centuries, at least on Earth. Mars though, Mars is the new frontier. The Wild West. On Mars a lot of things that used to be illegal are being revived. The deal was seven years of labor, seven years of running ...

Author : James Riser Tetsuo kept a collection of five hundred yen and one hundred yen coins that was worth a lot of money to an antique dealer. Instead, he used them on a noodle vending machine set against the wall of a hollow, ancient building near, what history said, was Akita Port ...

Author : Callum Wallace The heavy perfume of roses assaults my nostrils; the smell of youthful summers spent in glittering woodlands, diamond rivers, fields of grass blowing in the wind. I barely remember now. I stink of my work; darkness, shit and fear. The rank taste sits ...

Author : Beck Dacus The organic machine hobbled unsteadily on the shoreline, leaving wet tracks in the sand. The gelatinous-lensed camera gazed up and the blue sky, and noticed a strange crescent, apparently far above, lit by the Sun. This was a surprise to the remote ...

Author : Gray Blix It had been nearly a year since he'd brought a girl home, and his heart raced as he fumbled in his pocket for keys. "Need help?" she asked, groping in the general area of his pocket. Her face so close, he couldn't help but say, "You're beautiful." "You don't have ...

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer The metallic grey blob shot across the cavern and landed with a wet ‘splat’ in the circular tub of turquoise gel. The conical lid had an aperture the exact size to admit the blob, and a length of cone precisely calculated to prevent any gel ...