Author: Ashwini Shenoy The first time, I think it’s a dream. You and I are holding hands. The night-blooming jasmine spreads its fragrance, sweet and soothing. The fruit trees sway in the twilight. The birds chirp and butterflies swirl. Our garden, our labor of love, built ...

Author: David C. Nutt “OK everybody up and let’s get the blood flowing.” Marcy Partridge rolled her eyes. Yet another impossibly annoying corporate team building exercise. She had no idea why all of a sudden the company was inflicting these motivational morons upon them. ...

Author: David Barber McMurdo Station’s a rough town. It had ambitions to be a city one day, with law and order, and schools and churches and such, but meanwhile bullets were cheaper than bread. Hucksters still sold snow shoes to climate rats fresh off the boat, like ...

Author: Alice Rayworth Every morning, at 9am, the same moving truck pulls up and the same family gets out. They are untouched by weather; even as the world turns grey and cold around them, they remain in the same summer clothes they first arrived in. People who live next ...

Author: Ken Saunders Another coughing spasm tore through him, sending waves of pain to every corner of his being. He wiped his mouth with the hospital blanket they’d draped over him, and when he lowered it, he saw that it was wet with his blood. His eyes went to the dark ...

Author: Morrow Brady The hot, dusty wind shrouded the desert Burj in a choir of howls. Mazoomy flinched and ground his Miswak into fibres, as hot sand sprayed off his tactical leg guards. His visor display lit-up with the drop-off pin: the Burj - every delivery rider's ...

Author: Majoki This is going to feel like a set up, and it’s hard to deny that feeling when everything that caused the Last First is based on set theory. I’m hardly the person to adequately explain how Georg Cantor upended mathematics long ago when he proved that real ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer Dropping in from on high is never my favourite part of an op. Jumping off high places pains me more, though. A primitive survival thing, I’m sure: don’t step off cliffs, it’s a really bad idea. There aren’t any cliffs this time, but coming ...

Author: Alaina Hammond Yesterday I received a text from an unknown number. “Hi! I hear you like my work!” I immediately knew who it was. Or rather, who it was pretending to be. It’s so creepy that the robots in my phone can tell what I’ve been reading. Even when it’s ...

Author: Claire Robertson Those four great comets pull white scars through the sky. Fans of fire expand over our heads, and you still can’t bear to look at me despite how I ask you to. I want the last thing I see to be something familiar. The half-eaten chocolate cake ...

Gramps started slipping after his 105th birthday. Nothing dramatic, just forgetting a story or two, repeating a conversation from the hour before, stuff like that. Our family and about 40 others went to the surgical center for the informational briefings about a revolutionary AI “personality ...

Author: Angela Hawn “Ready to sing for your supper?” The head honcho in the antique army helmet flashes a toothy smile at our little group before acknowledging the wider audience. Applause ensues. "Of course", I say, channeling my storytelling grandmother whose ...

Author: Sasha Kasper As the blaring siren assaults my eardrums, it becomes increasingly harder to deny my rapid descent. I float directionless through the cockpit. Up, down, left, right, have lost all meaning. The notion of gravity seems to me a cruel joke, of which the ...

Author: Majoki You’re in your pod and Qwee hides your stylus as a joke. You smack Qwee because there is no other response. Qwee loves it and moves on to hide another podmate’s stylus while you flag the incident with the podmaster. Just another day in the pod. While ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The fizzing sound stops as the skies turn from vibrant blue to dull purple. A golden sun sinks from view on the horizon. “The sunset always takes my breath away.” To be correct, the lack of heat excitation causes the Moatalbana moss to ...

Author: Rachel Sievers The strangeness of the moment could not be understated; the baby had been born with ten fingers and ten toes. The room was held in complete silence as everyone held their words in and the seconds ticked by. Then the baby’s screams filled the air and ...

Author: Jeff Kennedy The first few days on a new starship are the worst. The gravity's turned up a skosh higher than you're used to. The hot, caffeinated, morning beverage (it’s never coffee) is mauve and smells like wet dog. The bathroom facilities don't quite fit your ...

Author: Bill Cox In the summer of 1950, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in North America, physicist Enrico Fermi posed a simple but profound question to his colleagues – “Where is everyone?” If life was abundant in the universe and often gave rise to intelligence, ...