Adult Education

Author : Ian Rennie Patrick held up the device and tried not to talk too fast. "This," he said, "Is a visua. It's a way of making images." Mr Nolan stuck his hand up. Mr Nolan always stuck his hand up. "Like a camera?" he said. Patrick shrugged. "Sort of," he said, ...

Chatterbox

Author : J.D. Rice There’s nothing worse than a malfunctioning robot. If you’re lucky, they just shut down and have to be replaced. Call Alan Cybernetics Solutions, they’ll sent out a truck with a refurbished model, and you’re all set. Less lucky, and you’ll have a robot that ...

A Question More of Custom

Author : Ben Klug They met at the top of Excelsior Tower, in the restaurant. She entered from the lobby, he from the roof. The wind sheared off against the windows, a long low sound. She smiled, waved, and ran to embrace him. “Darling,” he began, as always. “How are you? ...

Logan's Eden

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer Technically, there were still two sexes. The gene techs realized that there was one way to double the births of a new colony. Doubling the births meant a more stable gene pool in half the time it usually took. The solution was obvious ...

The Greatest Lover of Space

Author : Jason Frank "Space is... so vast, so empty, so cold... anyone who has experienced it must desire confinement, fullness, warmth..." The Greatest Lover of Space (TGLoS) speaks but the words, filtered through the protective arrays of my specially constructed spacesuit, ...

On the Way to Forgotten

Author : Andrew DiMatteo I stared out the viewport at the other ships in the fleet. Contact was infrequent - a few transmissions a year, telemetry exchanges, stuff like that. Never my deal since all I did was water plants all day, but we were a fleet, goddammit. It wasn’t ...

Alone Beside a Methane Sea

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer Harry Morgan was a bear of a man. Over six feet and in excess of 240 pounds. He eschewed a prosthesis, preferring to simply pin up the sleeve of his MCU where his left arm had once hung. He wore the morphic combat uniform of the ...

Routine Traffic Stop

Author : Dan Hope "Shut it down! SHUT IT DOWN!" Officer Jepson hovered at a safe distance and watched as the man floated across the landing pad, bobbing up and down, bumping into the guard rail as he slapped frantically at the controls strapped to his forearm. Packs were ...

The Arrival

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer The control harness turned blue a second before I knew we were going to be hit. I pressed up against the back of the transport in a futile simian effort to get as far away from the pain as possible. The light outside the windows went ...

Goodbye

Author : N. Thomas Parshall If I hadn’t made the tran-atomics strike, we couldn’t have afforded the cottage in Coventry. If we couldn’t afford the cottage, we wouldn’t have been docked during the strike. If we hadn’t been docked during the strike, we would have waited to ...

What Goes Around

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer “We know that you released the Vigilante Spheres, Dr. Vehmic. So, you might as well confess,” argued the investigator. Dr. Vehmic leaned back in his chair and smiled. Yes, he did release the spheres, but they couldn’t prove it. “I ...

Relatively Safe

Author : J.D. Rice Discovering how to travel forward in time had been easy. Scientists had been experimenting with the accelerator for decades, perfecting safety limits, performing animal testing, making it ideal for human use. Set a dial, flip a switch, and a human being ...

Traffic Violations

Author : Thomas Keene "But, your honor! I didn't commit that crime." The judge rubbed his forehead with both hands. "Your vehicle was double-parked, on a curb, and had struck a mailbox. We have two store surveillance tapes showing you parking it and driving it away. But ...

Cheap

Author : Thomas Keene "So," the diplomat said, "is our offer acceptable to the people of Earth?" I held my face in my hands and said nothing. The young lieutenant on my right, sat back down with another cup of coffee. The soldier standing on my left shifted his stance ...

Where's my jetpack?

Author : Carter Lee What happened to your future? We're it. We, men from the future, have kidnapped you the day before you were going to make your ground-breaking new invention known to the world. We've taken the invention itself, and every scrap of paper and every shred of ...

Respawn Malfunction

Author : Steven Holland “Mr. Coleman, I already know everything you will teach; therefore, I’m going to ignore you and read about time travel and reincarnation.” Jamie Faulkner was 17, beautiful, and knew it – but didn’t seem to care. She possessed a lean, athletic body, ...

A Sky Empty but for the Sun

Author : JC Crumpton The brown-haired man raised his eyelids that felt swollen and heavy to a sky filled with a burning light as it bore pain angrily into the back of his head. A deep crack split the right side of his bottom lip, forcing him to wince and shrink from the pain ...

Adrift

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer Battles in space aren’t the cool atmosphere bound dogfights of the twentieth century that are still depicted in movies. Battles in space are a matter of orbital mechanics, patience and stealth. Real fighters aren’t streamlined, sexy, ...

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  • Greener Pastures

    Author: Helen Merrick Theresa Davies wrung her hands. “It’s not …