Author: Rick Tobin Keet rested on the alien ship’s bridge, its green, leaf-like skin absorbing the nourishing rays of a distant Earth sun. It was a new recruit explorer among the plant-based race known as the Jotso Witan, traveling in massive, organic vessels orbiting a ...

Author: Majoki “We eat life, not sunshine.” Shielding his dark eyes from the desert brightness, Sitanni surveyed the acres and acres of solar panels filling the valley floor and waited for Jub to respond to his provocation. It didn’t come. Jub stood silent soaking in the ...

Author: William Torphy I’ve always heard voices, whispers actually, from another dimension. I exist between worlds, suspended between the quotidian concerns of one and the timeless aspirations of another. People call me distracted, ditsy, and sometimes even disturbed. They ...

Author: Graham Mossman I loved Afterfone when I was alive, but now I curse the jackass who invented it. They started by calling their dead friends and family, but then they realised that by building in a universal translator, they could call all kinds of interesting people ...

Author: Alastair Millar You know how sometimes you enter a room after a while, and you just know that someone’s been in there? It’s not your imagination. It could be an aroma so slight that you don’t consciously notice it. Maybe something’s not quite in the same place it ...

Author: David Broz I knew the stars would fall, and they did. I watched from the observation deck as the midnight sky slowly brightened, burning with orange streaks, brighter than the hottest day, and I watched as the stars came crashing down. Down through the dome ...

Author: Toshihisa Nikaido The woman jolted awake, surrounded by unfamiliar sterility. She didn’t know where or even who she was, until a cracked nametag dimly illuminated by a slit of light from across the room caught her attention—the letters “Ali” remained. She approached ...

Author: Majoki When I broke into the abandoned home, I hadn’t expected to stay long. I only wanted to get off the streets and out of the cold for a few days. I was pretty broken down. Being on the run for years will do that to you. So, I’d hacked the home’s defenses and ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer I look back as the car accelerates away. She’s standing there under the streetlight, perfect, one hand raised in tentative farewell, the box I gave her tucked under her other arm. Then pa takes a hard right and she disappears from view - ...

Author: Joanne Feenstra A woman pounds on our front door. She is gaunt and tall, wet hair: short roots tipped with long dyed blond ends. We've seen that look before here in the Mercy Valley: city people. We've pretty much lived through the first couple waves of city folk. ...

Author: Shanna Yetman Leila likes to lie within the algae when the air is thickest with smog—smoke, nitrogen oxide, and ozone particulates squeezing at her lungs, agitating her asthma. Today her chest is tight. The smog has sat on top of the city for days, building up as ...

Author: David Barber The dry and sunny weather spoiled their holiday, confining them indoors until nightfall. It was Lord Byron who proposed they pass the time by writing tales to entertain one another, and for two days the villa beside Lake Geneva was silent with their ...

Author: Rick Tobin In the heart of New York City, in the shadow of towering brownstone apartment buildings, eight-year-old Ro was a peculiar sight. Her curly hair framed her youthful face, and her eyes sparkled with an otherworldly innocence. On the steps of her building, ...

Author: Morrow Brady The Data Centre hummed like a tuning fork orchestra. In a low-rent corner, a makeshift workshop sat wedged between a run-hot server and a rank of sweating helium spheres. Roughhouse acoustic walls, a vain attempt to stave off tinnitus. For the third ...

Author: Majoki Shamash, the Mesopotamian sun god, probably didn't see this coming. Considering he was also known as the god of justice and equity, he really should’ve had an inkling of this kind of cosmic irony. Though we shouldn’t blame a dusty old deity when it's ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer There are naked angels riding our missiles down, using their wide wings to override delicate guidance systems by brute force. Distant explosions show that, yet again, we’re going to kill more friends than foes. Actually, those ...

Author: H.E. Shippas On a balmy winter’s day in Arizona, a man crawled out of Lake Xochimilco. This wasn’t any ordinary man as this man had been born with the axolotls. He was labeled the “Axolotl Man.” He told the press his name was Steve, but the nickname stuck. “How ...

Author: Paul Schmidt Key strokes echoed across the office room with an uneasy rhythm, one that could only be heard in a room full of programmers aware of their impending demise. Not literally, of course, but their professional one. As the chief developer of NU/O ...