Author: Alastair Millar “He’s going to be there again,” said Julia. “Well yeah, it’s the big family occasion, right? Same as every year.” Her companion guided the aircar into the automated traffic lane, handed over to Municipal Control, and turned his seat to face her. “I ...

Author: Elizabeth Hoyle He’d kept his charging cord in all night so his hands wouldn’t shake as he went about town. Yet they shook. His audio sensors were primed for any and all noises within a two hundred yard perimeter, no matter where he had walked throughout the city. ...

Author: Majoki Kenji adjusted the carbonized breastplate and finished his couture by placing the bulbous lenses under his eyelids. He looked in the mirror, but did not smile, though he was pleased. They did not smile, thus he would not. He left his aparto, a small green ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The gigantic purple and gold sphere is set at the centre of the dining table when Menna races downstairs. “You’re home! I thought I- What’s that?” Vendi gives me a smile. She predicted every word. Then again, she’s been working from home ...

Author: Soramimi Hanarejima When we meet for coffee this afternoon, I find out that we’re both reading the same book. My book club’s pick this month happens to be your bedtime reading. So of course, I have to ask, “What’s your favorite story in the collection so ...

Author: Barbara Fankhauser Dear Friend, I call you friend. I hope that is okay. That it pleases you. I understand the imbalance in our stations in life. You—well, you being what you are—I being who I am. But still, when last we met there seemed to be a connection. I ...

Author: Arianna Smith The doctor glows in the overhead light. He is the doctor because he is the doctor. The light is called light because that is what it is, and that is what it does. The doctor has a pale face with green eyes, and his face is lovely, and his green eyes ...

Author: Mark Renney I enter the Field of Research almost every day. In fact, I spend most of my time here now but I do so covertly, in my unseen state. I only make myself visible on the other side, beyond the barriers and fences that surround the Dome. And I only do this ...

Author: Hillary Lyon “Aloysius, what are you doing up here?” Roget looked around the cluttered, dusty attic. He gently kicked a cardboard box labeled ‘Mom’s Books.’ A storm of dust motes exploded around his foot. Without looking up, Aloysius answered, “I’m writing.” He ...

Author: Majoki “Someone tell me what’s happening!” Subtechnician Tantynn yelled as he spaghettified. A physical state that closely resembles the squiggles of a toddler’s finger painting. Specialist Pingul sighed. Which probably looked to an outsider as if her head had ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer I’m not supposed to care which particular variety of illegal folderol a target has been committing. My job is to bring them to whichever form of justice is applicable. We default to it being that of the reality flow they’re in, unless ...

Author: Audrianna It looms over our city, its glass panes providing us protection from the world outside. The world that is full of carnage, ruined by mankind. So we stay in the Dome. . . . I am close to my little brother, even after the death of our father. We look ...

Author: Simon Kerr Iru glanced down past the beast's flank, twin pulsars shining in the dark below, rotating once every ninety seconds. The race began when the pulses aligned. Scanning the other racers, she accessed her synaptic implant, modulating heart rate and blood ...

Author: Jean Faux I wonder if I have a little door that opens up at the back of my head. It wouldn’t have a handle. It would be one of those doors that you push in the right place and it softly springs open. If it opened I wonder what someone would see. Perhaps there’s a ...

Author: Timothy Wilkie Swathed in star shine and hidden behind the sun was our destination. I couldn't wait to be buried in the bosom of old mother earth where the worms and insects thrived on bacteria not chemicals. A long time ago I threw away my mother for life among the ...

Author: David Henson Medical advances made a valiant run at organic immortality but couldn’t advance beyond the millennium barrier. Not surprisingly, immortality in our epoch is digital — just as you folks in the past speculated in your movies and books. Here in my time, ...

Author: Majoki “Ain’t it fun to be pals with things everybody else is afraid of?” The clown said this right before being eviscerated. It was unexpected. All of it. Dry Springs wasn’t usually the kind of place where folks lived in fear of killer alien robots. Which is ...

Author: Soramimi Hanarejima We need the dystopias she is adept at crafting—need them to serve as compelling cautionary tales now that nothing else does. But she much prefers to render quotidian moments of splendor and serendipity. She doesn’t want to put herself through the ...