NovaTerra

Author : Willis Weatherford The piercing rays of a fiery star filtered through thickly opaque clouds to light Gerder’s face with a rosy hue: his first dawn on NovaTerra. As he peered through the narrow hatch of Probe Alpha 7, allowing his eyes to adjust to the relative brightness, a ...

I Woke Up One Morning

Author : Rodger Parr If you have ever awoken in the morning to find yourself with the body of a human and the head of an insect then you must surely empathise if not at least sympathise with me. For it was with this strange dilemma that I awoke to one Sunday morning. At first ...

Borne Out of Darkness

Author : Dakota Brown “We are born out of darkness,” she told herself begrudgingly. “Certainly it holds no true power.” Around her, the frightened masses had gathered (after, of course, a stretch of panicked footfalls and curses towards the heavens). They found each other in the ...

Cloves

Author : Rachelle Shepherd We stopped at the Drug Market for clone-cloves, street illegal copies of Indonesian spice and porn-shop perfume. They were thick rolls of black steel with bands of gold in a no-nonsense plastic wrap pack. Even their cellophane slip was less than legal litter, ...

Shape Shifters

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer The shapeshifting aliens are untrustworthy. It's not their fault. They see the world for what it is, through a kaleidoscope. Us humans, we only get to see one viewpoint of the world. People react to our outer shell with no variation. We can get ...

Come On In

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer The bricks are antique but the ferropoxy used as mortar is a giveaway, after you scrape the film of cement coloured paint mixed with sand off. "This is the place. Gird your loins, kids. Jig is on in three, two, one - strike!" The doors are ...

Mother and Child Reunion

Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer “Hello, Mum.” She stands in the doorway, arms crossed, deciding whether she has the guts to enter. The intervening silence is broken by the repetitive hiss-thunk of my artificial lungs and the various beeps and clicks of the life ...

Waste Management

Author : Robbie Kowalski “Hey Marv, have you ever wondered where all the shit goes once you flush the toilet?” “I don’t know Joe.” Marv said unenthusiastically as he tried to figure out a crossword puzzle. “Man all that added weight to ship definitely adds up over a period of time. ...

End

Author : Bob Newbell I remember the day things started disappearing. I was driving into work listening to the news on the satellite radio. Astronomers had observed that a galaxy called MACS0647-JD could no longer be detected. It was one of the most distant objects known, over 13 ...

Launch Pad

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer It was a beautiful day for a ship launch. These are the things I remember: I remember the sun shining down out of a blue sky that arced from horizon to horizon over the beach with only a scattering of clouds above the water. I was perched on the ...

Ever in Your One-Legged Life

Author : Trent Isaac The man wrestled a pile of rods, plates, wires, lights, and fingers through the door and let it crash in a heap. “Or there’s this one,” the man said as he swabbed his bald head with a towel. Brennan scratched his arm through the frayed hole in his sweater as he ...

Swamp Shack Encounter

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer Billy-Jim Crenshaw was snoozing in his swamp shack when the explosion shook him fast awake. “What th’…?” He scrambled to his feet and, throwing the crooked door open, stumbled out onto the back porch. There, upon a small hillock that had been ...

Natural Selection

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer “Brigitte! Slow down!” I thought I loved Adrian. I really did. I even fooled myself for the first year of our Outer Reaches tour. Then on Certys I had to stop him turning the planet into a game reserve so he could quietly harvest the luxurious ...

A Game of Chess

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer The white Silracan clicked its chest-legs together and reared back in what was the human equivalent of a bored sigh. Between it and the hologram of the Earth forces commander lay a chess board made of light. Admiral Grimwald gazed sternly at the ...

The Machine

Author : Kellie Warren We never thought we would be the ones. We weren’t smart enough. To discover new worlds, new planes of existence, new life. You had to be intelligent for that. Some might have been arrogant enough to call themselves intelligent but they were only fools. The ...

Who We Think We Are

Author : Glen Luke Flanagan “These monstrosities are a threat to national security, to morality as we know it, and to our very sense of self.” Senator Ethan Calhoun punctuated the last statement by pounding his fist onto the podium. The fiery Texan was the face of the anti-cloning ...

Identity Crisis

Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer I needed to disappear. Fast. I never wanted a criminal life. It’s not like I killed anybody, or stole the nation’s pension plans, unlike some governments which shall go unmentioned. No. It was much more banal than that. I ...

Siren

Author : Thomas Keene Every metal surface inside the cabin sang, and the readouts flickered. A steady, pure note that Charles called "the Banshee". Evan clenched the crew telemetry readout so hard that waves of color flowed across the display. He was the only crew member with a ...

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