Digestible

Author : Kristin Kirby Monday, March 7: Hi, loyal readers! Remember last week how I blogged about that guy in front of me at the salad bar who held the tongs hostage so long they developed Stockholm syndrome? Well, today he must have spent fifteen minutes arranging his cherry ...

Lights

Author : Farah Rahman Intelligence on the ground was that insurgents from the Afghan border were hours away from seizing control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal with the help of North Korea. So NATO drops the bomb on Waziristan and Pyongyang. Meanwhile, a woman gives birth in the ...

Quaratined by Loneliness

Author : Kate Runnels Asker station orbited the now uninhabited planet of Asker II. Yun was the only one left on the station; the only one left in the system for all he knew. No one had responded to his distress signal, no one responded from below and the only craft were on the ...

The Handshake

Author : Hillary Lyon Casey waited in line for more than two hours when the rain started. A soft, misty rain that chilled him to the bone; he tightly crossed his arms and shivered. Even if he caught a cold, attending this event would still be worth it. Maybe, he wondered, he'd get an ...

Pricy Vision

Author : Alfonso P. Posadas Jr. "Here you go, hun." Byron McGrath placed the Prosthetic Sight head strap upon his daughter, Molly. It had taken over a year to acquire the necessary papers and signatures for both the hospital and insurance company to allow Molly to enter the ...

Markovian Parallax Designate

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer “Hello darkness my old friend –” “Really? Nigh-on twenty years of this and you still think I’m your friend?” “It was in reference to a song. As you only ever visit when everything else is dark, it seemed appropriate.” “I know the bloody ...

Orbital Decay

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Lewis unzipped the duffle bag on the table so the stacks of paper bills were visible. "Space suits are expensive," Sweet had told him, "and you not bring back." Sweet eyed the contents of the bag from a distance. "It's all there? I don't ...

A Party

Author : John Carroll I wade deeper into the syrupy present as the drug saturates my blood. It is a hallucinogen. The deck party envelopes me like a parrot’s wings. The air becomes delicious. Through the interactive viewscreen of this observation deck that extends outward from our ...

The Engine Room

Author : Philip Berry I placed the flat of my hand against the thick wall and felt the vibration of a hundred thousand pistons moving in synchrony. Pressing an ear, I heard the high hiss of gas igniting under pressure, expanding, driving the piston heads and collapsing into vacuums. ...

Bad For Business

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer Mark waited just inside the shadows of the alley. Outside, people bustled past with their heads down. Nobody made eye contact with passers-by. Lens readers and the urban legends about malware being zipped into your headware by opti-flash kept ...

The Print Shop

Author : Sallie Lau I am listening to Ocean Acidification and the Prisoners of Omega when they come in. It’s the 0.05 mark of this Mu-sec. Of course it’s them. Them and their perfectly-proportioned domains. I doodle on a spare beta sheet, feigning indifference. But now they’re ...

Recruited

Author : John Carroll I wondered if the pain in my ribs had woken me up, or if it was the sterile stench of the gelatin. It was probably a combination of both. The pirate standing in front of me noticed that I was awake. She didn’t look any older than 24 standard. “Good morning,” ...

Ecophagy

Author : Bob Newbell I'm running out of material, at least material that can be readily utilized. A year ago it was the waste heat generated by my own replication process that necessitated slowing down my expansion. Now, it's the geothermal gradient. On average, for every kilometer ...

The Face Behind the Glass

Author : J.D. Rice I fell. My body twisted and turned for what seemed like minutes, but through my bio-suit I didn't feel a thing. The artificial gravity system and inertial dampeners built into the suit made sure that even a fall like this felt more like diving into a deep swimming ...

The Sun Cult

Author : Sharon Molloy The bean juice tastes as bitter as it always does. I drink it only to stay awake and so live another day. The rest of the tribe piously swallows it as part of the sun worship ritual. They also swallow stupidly circular logic: This plant is the sun’s favorite, ...

Stricken From the Record of Space and Time

Author : Charlie Sandefer The elderly scientist took a nervous breath before he stepped into the machine. He typed in May 23, 2016 and flipped the switch on the center console. The machine began to shake violently. His frail frame was slammed against his seat. He tightened every muscle ...

Stuck on Libby

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer There’s a blue moon above and it’s nothing more than that. Here on Libby, the moons are blue. The rocks here are all shades of blue thanks to a chemical process that occurred during the creation of this planet. The vegetation is blue because ...

Forever High

Author : Joshua Doyle We could have seen it coming for a couple of years. Identification of pathways that lead to cell aging, the discovery of a method of removing the "unwanted side effects" from THC, the discovery that tetrahydrocannabinol could be used to target and suppress ...

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