The Other Side of the Screen
Author : Ian Muneshwar
Billy lost his grandmother to the portable DVD player five months after his grandfather died. It started when she discovered that, with Netflix, she had access to an almost infinite supply of B-rated romances. Before long, she started using the portable Sony so ...
Ringminer's Daughter
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Ringmining attracted a certain kind of personality.
Not exactly hermits but beings okay with long terms of isolation. Pairs or groups of people rarely worked the rings.
Lena should have known better.
Each ringminer scoopship was like a baleen ...
Junkyard Funeral
Author : Aiza Mohd
There’s a funeral being held in the junkyard today.
Its mourners come in a neat little line of twelve, proceeding in that beautiful precision of steps that only them bots ever have. When I was young, I learned to tell for myself whenever the girl at the ticket ...
Lucky
Author : Gabriel E. Zentner
Today’s the day.
I’ve got my ticket, got my number. Granted, everyone’s got a number. It’s not your standard lottery, and I suppose the odds are so much the worse for that. That being said, the stakes are a lot higher than a few hundred million ...
Deafening Silence
Author : Adam Levey
The pilot, Simon, surveyed the scene of utter devastation all around him. Spent ordinance drifted in the space between thousands of shredded warships, many the size of mountains, with gaping wounds as big as apartment buildings. Ammunition spilled from storage ...
Birds of a Feather
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
Tensions are high in the control room as the Pegan ship passes the Moon. Speakers emit a constant chatter of enigmatic chirps, beeps and ultra-sonic tweets which constitute the Pegan language.
“You’re telling me, we’ve been in contact ...
The Alien
Author : Suzanne Borchers
Zoe watched the starlit sky reflect off the ship next to her. She touched the smooth metal, and then began pounding it. She pounded the ship’s side again and again. Despite the pain she kept pounding.
“Honey, stop.” Derek grabbed her, and held her to his ...
Jigsaw
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
What a mess. I’m standing on the fifteen-foot diameter stump of a Redwood, sliced off three feet from the ground as if by a gigantic razor blade. About me, the effect radius covers nine miles. In front of me is the twisted confetti that used to be ...
Breaking the Wedge
Author : Scott Summers
At 18:55 Standard, the Breakwater dropped out of superspace above New Tellis and began jettisoning escape pods into the atmosphere. Leaking oxygen and billowing fire, the ship guns rotated on their axis and fired into the empty space overhead. Torpedoes, missiles ...
Children of the Sun
Author : Demond Hussey, Staff Writer
She appeared as a blazing slash across the midnight sky; a falling inferno, trailing multi-colored flames in her wake. Her impact shook the foundations of the continent, causing minor earthquakes and avalanches worldwide. Forest fires raged around ...
They Don't Play LCROSS
Author : Connor Yeck
Employee entry, Kennedy Space Center:
I don’t know if the other guys do this, but I like keeping records so I’m typing some things on my own terminal while we wait. Is personal stuff allowed? The rockets are past the point of alteration anyway, so there isn’t much ...
Welcome Home
Author : Nils Holst
It had been five years since Theo had seen another human being, much less saluted one.
“Captain Theodore Holmes of Alpha Company, Third Colonial Marine Battalion?” asked the man with the holopad. He didn’t look up as he scrolled through the UNSS Sargazzio’s ...
Backup
Author : Amanda Schoen
I was at work when the chat program pinged. We weren’t supposed to take personal calls so I ignored it. Two seconds later it pinged again. And again. Oh hell. One conversation couldn’t hurt.
My sister’s handle popped up. <Mel, I have some bad news. Dad passed ...
Runaway
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I suppose if it was anything that drew me to her, it was the scars on her face. Four parallel lines on one cheek. Too precise to be accidental, I assumed, but too faint to be for show. Too far apart to be a bar code, and just near enough to each ...
Spark
Author : Mickey Hunt
"Welcome to the edge of the universe," I said cheerfully. "The very edge."
The clutch of tourists easing into my parent's store seemed overawed. At night, part of our sky is lit with nebulae, pulsars, galaxy clusters, and all sorts of stuff, but the rest of the ...
Plain as Plain Can Be
Author : C.L. Guerrieri
I sat at the monitoring bay as he stood there, roughened hands folded calmly behind his stained, dark brown overcoat. His receded cheeks mostly hidden by a thin, graying beard and a matted ponytail, the captain smiled as his thinned eyes squinted out the front ...
The Morrow Upon Midday
Author : Timothy Marshal-Nichols
Dearest, Humblest and most Obedient Sir,
Please be informed, as agreed in mutual undertaking, that yourself named Mutch, first name, Alfred, are contracted to duty and that the lease of said duty is due forthwith to expire. Thus upon the thirtieth inst ...
The Etheronian Situation
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
It had been four days since the ship’s doctor had quarantined the galley and shut down the deck’s gravity plates, and Captain Carson was becoming concerned. Not about the unwanted patient that was hold up there, but about his ship, its crew, and ...
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