Intentional Paradox

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer The team signaled goodbye to the assembled early humans. The tribe of twenty-three men, woman and children stood there in their animal skins. Many of them held the new tools. All of them now held the knowledge that had been passed on to them in the ...

Two Graves

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer They say that a man who seeks revenge should dig two graves, one for his target and one for himself. I dug two hundred and seventy-nine. Into two hundred and thirty-seven of them I put all that remained of the inhabitants of my home town, Padgest. I ...

Three Blind Mice

Author : Bob Newbell The crew of the starship looked at the strange yellow star on the viewscreen. The interstellar vessel's enormous magsail was slowly decelerating the vehicle against the star's solar wind. Soon there would be a series of aerobraking maneuvers carried out ...

Of Quints and Quads

Author : Joshua Ginsberg Jeff sat at a circular table in the cafeteria, going through some of his data captures and interviews. It was an annual assignment – covering the oldest high school tactical combat drone rivalry in the country. Both schools had fallen to a Tier II ranking over ...

Dreams

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer Images of lost socks at the bottom of wells. Trees of math and flesh jealousy cascading through a brain that had no awareness of what a human body felt like. Jeremy Carson was one of the smartest scientists on Earth and the corporation he ...

Cops

Author : Bob Newbell Officers Castillo and Thrin'Lar heard the terrorist screaming epithets at them both as he was escorted out of the courtroom. With court adjourned, the two LAPD officers who had testified against the man who was accused of bombing four different buildings ...

Never Going Home

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer “Tell the Charmian that we can see her.” “She refuses to believe us.” “Oh, for the love of Turing, she got out before sensor tutoring?” “Seems to be the case, sir.” The half-kilometre diameter of the moon Abaddon hangs in near space on ...

Art of War

Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer I drop from warp-space long before entering the Veretti system - a safety precaution that has become standard protocol on my salvage missions since my near-fatal incident in the Hox system. The extra flight time adds up, but it’s better than ...

Scapegoat

Author : Ian Hill At first I thought we were just going on a trip to see the holy city. We, my father and I, boarded an opulent train replete with red carpet and finely crafted oak furniture. The immaculate standard of the church lined the sides of the train, and it charged through the ...

Storm Clouds

Author : Harshavardhan Rangan It was the day the clouds came alive. We've always thought of them as gentle puffs of water vapor. We were wrong. They weren't gentle, and they'd had enough of us. Our understanding of the water cycle had one small, fatal flaw. We assumed the clouds had ...

Boundary’s Edge

Author : TPKeating It took me just a few minutes to unpack and activate the robot. “How can I assist you, friend?” she asked, softly. Friend? I could leave her on for a year, for five years, ten, learning and developing and simply being, and then simply shut her down on a ...

Siren Song

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer My name is Clancy. I am a semi-autonomous security program. I guard a warehouse. I am the guns, the cameras, the traps, and the locks. I am the lines in and out. For me and my kind, boredom leads to emotion. This is a weakness. It makes us ...

Life in the Wild

Author : Bob Newbell The pup frolicked along with his two bigger brothers in the synchrotron radiation of the Crab Nebula. As they played, their bodies soaked up ...

No Portraits

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer The normally white bulbous head of the spacer became yellow as he indulged in triple Rotten Roxathdons on the rocks over ...

Djedi's Device

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer The sun clears the mountains and shines across the sylvan landscape, it’s rays sparkling from the dew on the grasses, bringing ...

An Important Message

Author : Alex Sivier The large door at the bottom of the chrome craft opened with a faint hiss and white clouds billowed out into the cool Swiss air. A ...

Eve

Author : Sean A Murphy Waking up in the dust. System check, full functionality. Scanning environment. Laboratory, minor damage. Functional assemblers and VI ...

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