Round

Author : Beck Dacus “Sorry,” Merida said, “but why did we let him come aboard with a gun?” She looked warily at Jonathan's holstered pistol, his hand guarding it from her and preparing to draw it. “You do know why he's here, right?” Vennix asked her. “Right?” “Yeah. To show him the ...

From Region V

Author : Jared Lynch The water quit flowing from the taps shortly after the sirens stopped. I hadn’t paid my rent in three months, but I didn’t expect to receive an eviction notice. None came. There hadn’t been a train for four months. Karen and I were always in before curfew. At ...

Friends Forever

Author : Elle B Sullivan The taxi pulled up outside of the school, right into the center of the large circle dive. This driveway had been the barrier between me and the rest of the world throughout my entire childhood - and I was terrified to leave it. My caretaker walked me to the ...

Retribution

Author : Bryan Pastor An officer sprinted down the hall, past superiors and subordinates alike. Nearing the end of the hall, he slid to a stop, upsetting two chairs outside the deputy legate’s office. He quickly set them back in place, then checked himself in the reflection of a ...

Taze

Author : Chris McCormick There was no dramatic music swelling, no handsome actor reciting prose. Instead there was my friend the dev, lying on her back in the grass convulsing as the electricity ran through her, arms and legs unfolded from the lotus position she had assumed only ...

Casting Memories

Author : Paul Alex Gray I must have been last to die. "Mountains? You're thinking of mountains." As she speaks the fog lifts and sunshine spills down upon a barrier of rocky hills. The ground trembles as the hills grow larger, becoming jagged peaks, white capped like teeth. Sunlight ...

City Lights

Author : Mark Tremble ‘No moon, no stars,’ she used to tell him. She had been about two years old then and he used to carry her in his arms down their front path. They had been a little sad on those nights because the cloud cover meant there was no chance they could see the moon and ...

New Under the Sun

Author : Janet Shell Anderson All our executions are political. Of course, that makes them right, and no one rich or well-connected dies. The poor man’s on his knees in his orange jumpsuit, with the red waves of the pitiful surf of this prison world, Kepler 435b/Gilgamesh, behind him, ...

God Complex

Author : Tristan Krahn It was a miracle of science, a triumph of the Human mind over nature that allowed them the chance to be gods, but it was careless hubris that destroyed them. The Large Hadron Collider, the largest particle accelerator on Planet Earth: ten billion dollars worth ...

Ghostsong

Author : Justin Permenter The Earth was silent upon the Last Day. The Great Mother, once resplendent in the verdure of youth, now wretched and barren in Her twilight, shuddered and trembled as tectonic forces slowly rent Her to pieces from within. She had outlived Her children by ...

The Measure of a Man

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Consciousness came back slowly, from the extremities in. First pins and needles in the fingertips and toes, then the crawling burn of some painful memory winding its way along the arms, up the legs, gathering speed until it exploded in a ...

Saving Andie

Author : Lars H. Hoffmann “And for the love of humanity, please come save me.” Concluded the video. Andie’s voice very nearly broke towards the end of the sentence, making the plea sounding as heartfelt as possible. There was a moment of silence before anybody spoke. Jason looked ...

Die Laughing

Author : Rob Francis Hyenas owned the dry, dead city. They watched as Abal guided the rover down the empty roads, rolling around and over the scattered debris of civilization. His home was gone now, forever. It seemed absurd. Ridiculous. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t stop ...

The Message in the Moon

Author : Beck Dacus My team and I came to the exomoon Talursa expecting to find extraordinary things. Every new world was an exciting adventure for science-- life, evolving completely isolated from the rest of the galaxy, making completely new life forms. It was expected to change ...

Let Me Tell You About Falling

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer CLOSED FOLIO ZERO-ONE (NEVER REVEAL) INCIDENT GTMO-379 TRANSCRIPT 241-6064 – REDACTED – SUBJECT REPLIES ONLY “There was a man called Zelazny who wrote of a monarchy who could travel parallel universes at will, able to switch from reality to ...

Creative Currency

Author : John Collins I remember when they used to tell you that you can do anything. Now they say that machines can do anything. That is, except for one thing. There have been countless debates about the nature of intelligence, but one of the best, in my mind, is the argument that ...

The Anniversary

Author : Benjamin A. Friedman Roland and Martine enjoyed their Diamond Anniversary gondola ride down 5th Avenue towards the Old Village, sitting together in comfortable quiet as their oarsman, a Latin-American boy named Robert, strained again the azure sea. The water level was low ...

Traffic Barriers

Author : David S. Golding If seen from above, the highways appeared to be carved in symmetrical patterns. Beneath, the trails of people on foot were more spontaneous, clustered here around a cheap water spigot, there around a bus lot. Footpaths led tiny ways through the forests and ...

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