Player Pianos
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Greenland.
That’s where we discovered them first. All melted wires and skin grafts. Christmas lights in their eye sockets and playing poker with old-school punch cards. The population of an entire small town turned into player pianos.
We found ...
Full Circle
Author : John Kinney
When I was twenty years old, advancements in medical science and our understanding of DNA coding finally climaxed. I invested half of my money in a company called Stockholm and Siegfried, who specialized in genetic manipulation and, most importantly, cloning. They ...
It all Makes a Difference
Author : James McGrath
"I know you've all heard it, but you have to hear it again..."
We'd heard the guide's speech six times, so Kirstin and I stood at the back joking around as usual. He'd recite the dangers of leaving the tunnel, how we'd be guarded and eventually he'd tell of our ...
Dreamstim
Author : Travis Gregg
As I fired my gun into the Stim’s chest I wondered if he saw me as a monster or if he understood that I was only doing what he had forced me to do. His choices had brought us to this point and I was just trying to clean up the mess. My partner and I got the call ...
Symbiosis
Author : Bob Newbell
The Cold War between the United Colonies of the Asteroid Belt and the Oort Cloud Alliance had been going on for almost 50 years when open warfare finally broke out. The planet Uranus proved to be such a rich source of helium-3 that neither side felt it could allow ...
The Final Assault
Author : Josie Gowler
I opened my eyes. I was lying on an army bunk. My lieutenant and best friend Nick was sitting at the foot of the bed. He sat there in silence looking a cross between concerned and pissed off. With a black eye.
I got up, staggered over to the toilet behind its ...
Guide To Alien Sex For Dummies
Author : Geetanjali Dighe
Congratulations! You are one of the lucky few who has just won the underground bestseller “The Guide To Alien Sex For Dummies”!
Trusted Industries, now in their 100th year of mining, and the sole asteroid mining company (37th asteroid mined!), are giving away ...
The Time Goblin
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
Throughout the universe there are many creatures that eat other creatures. Few however match the intelligence and hunting prowess of the time goblin.
His species is incredibly rare, a solitary armless biped said to have originated from an ancient ...
The Mathematics of Future Paradox
Author : joe malone
"Can we watch Michelangelo work today?" my wife said, at the breakfast table.
"I have to go into the future today," I said.
"The future? You said that you would never go into the future. You said going into the future is like a man opening his girlfriend's mail. ...
Police Control
Author : Stefan Aeschbacher
The look down the barrel of a gun was frightening; much more frightening than I ever imagined it to be.
'ID yourself citizen' the cop behind the barrel barked.
I moved my left wrist, containing the ID tag, towards the reader. Much faster than I expected ...
Field Test
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The moonlight is cut off by drifting clouds as I hurdle the wall and drop into the shadowed mess that comprises the unfinished foundations of what will be the Chibakan headquarters when they finally find some new backers.
Behind me I hear the ...
Embargo
Author : W Hunter
“Where is everybody?” Enrico Fermi, 1950
The enormous space craft slid out of the hyper-dimensional matrix in the orbit of one of the gas-giant planets. It gravitated towards the inner planets smoothly, gathering data by the millisecond. Within a short time the ...
The Man With No Name
Author : Desmond Hussey
The Climber clings to the base escarpment of Olympus Mons’. Freezing zephyrs tug at his dusty, ocher robes as he scales, hand over fist, the sheer face of ruddy basalt.
“What is the nameless name?” Master Su-gee asked him once, long ago. His voice soft as ...
Salary Man
Author : Ray Daley
The Misthkthos had been on Earth over a year when I talked to my first one. They'd come in peace, landed in a quiet region and strolled out of their ship into the night to check out our planet.
Easy enough to spot them as aliens you'd think? Then you'd be thinking ...
Fun Slows Us Down
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I’m with the XIA. The Xenomorph Intelligence Agency. I’m undercover. This is a soft war; more of an intelligence-gathering mission to discover weak points and destabilization technique hypotheses in case they’re needed.
It’s the pin-striped skin ...
Past Tense
Author : Robin de Graaf
Bartleby pushed open the heavy pub door. A bell jangled and a handful of pub patrons gave him a quick look-see. Realizing that they had no idea who he was, they quickly returned to their pints. Bartleby looked around, until he saw who he was looking for. He took ...
Old-Time Memory
Author : Kiel Finger
He stabbed his knife into the hardpack soil.
It didn’t go in very deep; in fact it barely stood upright. Maybe an inch or two into the ground, tilted to the left. Not as dramatic as he would have liked, but the meaning behind the act was clear.
It was an old ...
Pageturner
Author : Joseph Pascale
My ears were assaulted by a variety of sounds as I entered the 21st Century-style café. The most alarming was the grinding sound that could have come from a malfunctioning robot, but was actually emitting from large copper contraptions. I was also unaccustomed ...
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