Building World

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer I lowered my huv from the sky and dropped into the garbage-strewn parking lot of Building World. Parking next to a contractor’s huv-truck I made my way inside and stood there in front of the directory. Behind the digital sign was a sixteen ...

Keep Watching the Skies

Author : Bob Newbell I set the display to pan to the constellation of Canis Minor. The holographic celestial sphere rotates all around me until the Smaller Dog comes into view. I wave my hand over the controls. The display zooms in on Procyon A. The white main sequence star ...

Come Tomorrow

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer The echoes are thunderous, something that keeps most of the predators down here away. This far along, everyone is fatigued. Even the children no longer have bursts of energy. Existence is eat, sleep and march to the beat. The chant cadences ...

And Yet, It Moves

Author : Susan Nance Carhart "There's no way to program my time machine remotely. Not really," Solberg told his friends. "I can't perform a unmanned test. I can't even use an animal for the passenger. But the modeling works. It all comes down to me." The friends caught each ...

Prometheus Station

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer The Prometheus Station was an engineering marvel. Orbiting the Earth in a low altitude sun synchronous polar orbit, it did the impossible. Its six mammoth hyperspace siphons sucked more than a Zettajoule of energy directly from the ...

Specimen 459

Author : Melinda Chapman Specimen 459 cannot see its reflection, or the glass itself, or the woman entering the room beyond it. Christine enters the small laboratory and settles into the office chair in front of the glass capsule. Contemplating the specimen inside, she ...

Touching Heaven

Author : Sierra Corsetti The visor of my pressure suit starts to fog up at 11,243 feet. My pilot notices as he tweaks the gas valves that propel the balloon ever higher into the winter night, and grins knowingly. I adjust a knob on the control panel that’s inset to my right ...

Crash

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer “This is not a conspiracy theory” was tattooed across the dead boy’s back. Below that it read, “It’s a matter of public record.” This was all in black gothic lettering above the twin towers. Below that was a multi-headed snake monster ...

End of the Universe Theories

Author : James Bambury V pricked the side of the universe and giggled as it contracted and spun about in circles. “Did you see that?” V poked another universe. It collapsed into a space-time singularity and V laughed again. “That one had more of a fizz. Make some ...

Lucky

Author : Sierra Corsetti “Have your cards out and ready for inspection! Anyone holding up the line will be left behind!” Renee slipped through the throngs of people, patting a pocket here and there. She couldn’t take anything now of course, not when she was about to board ...

Curiosity

Author : Daniel “Mother unit, what happens to humans when they die?” The mother unit, 523 as she was usually called, stopped in her work for a second and thought about what her offspring unit had said. “Is 43 thinking of 1001?” She asked the question lightly, hoping not to ...

Strange Encounters

Author : Desmond Hussey Sodium lamps paint the night phlorescent orange, reflecting off the oily, wet pavement. Vermin, human and rodent, litter the streets. I took a wrong turn somewhere and find myself navigating the wretched slums of humanity’s cast offs looking for ...

Warriors for the Working Day

Author : Jake Trommer When the Terran Hegemony declared war on Nouveau Katanga, they weren’t lacking for cockyness. General Janssens boasted about how his intrepid soldiers would march over N.K.’s “rabble in arms” within the week. As the rabble in question, my colleagues and ...

Freedom

Author : Bob Newbell Two minutes to go. Two minutes from now I and my fellow soldiers will come out of hiding and overrun the enemy base. Or try to, at least. And the same thing will be happening all over the world. The United States, China, Russia, India, Brazil, dozens of ...

Fallen

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Gabriel pushed open the cockpit canopy of his shattered craft and watched as it broke free, tearing away at the hinge to fall to the earth below. He wept. Ahead of him, a tree many times as tall as his craft was long lay broken, it's roots ...

Old Cars Never Die

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer Flat and wide like an evil grinning manta ray; the 1966 Pontiac Parisienne two-door hardtop is, in my opinion, the sexiest automobile design to ever grace the streets of our planet. That was my first car way back when, a present from my ...

The Thinking Cap

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer “Status, Mr. Ortega?” was Captain Edgington’s terse request to his first officer. “Not good, sir,” replied Commander Ortega. “It appears that Chief Engineer Koshiba had ordered all of his senior engineers into the engine room in his ...

Food Chain

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer Imagine a blue spider. One of the big hairy ones that move really fast. Make it the size of a tomcat. Replace the back pair of legs with bat wings. Add venomous spurs to those wings. That’s what is watching me as I sway head-down in the ...

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