Cerulean

Author : Gavin King The edges of my vision blurred blue. I shook my head to clear the visual illusion away, but it just seemed to intensify, the padded walls of my room taking on a strange, mottled cerulean that dissipated when I looked directly at it. Was this what the ...

I, Lensman

Author : Adam Zabell The Einsteins aren’t allowed to pilot the ships because they’ve all got some manic desire to fix the universe. Save Gandhi, kill Hitler, vote in Florida or Minnesota or Puerto Rico, stuff like that. There’s even one who wants to kill Lincoln. For the ...

Survivor

Author : Tim Crosby I am weeping in the burned rubble that used to be my home, in the ash that used to be my hometown. Every day I look for other survivors. I have not seen anyone else in over five weeks – and even that was just a fleeting glimpse of silhouettes in the ...

WAMB

Author : Jeff McGaha John fumbled at the door, the alcohol hindering his coordination. His frustration, first directed at the keys, grew to include the lock, the door, the house and eventually Mary. His fury cresting, he pounded his fist into the door. “Mary...honey...open ...

Mistake

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer It was a rookie mistake. It was embarrassing that someone of my history and career would do something so basically stupid. I liked working with primitives. I remember living with the Inupiaqs, sharpening arrowheads with them, cutting ...

Ugly Fish

Author : Q.B. Fox When we broke down, it left me with some time to kill, so I slipped into a little café near the port and bought a latte and a muffin. The breakfast rush had long gone and it was still too soon for an early lunch, so I was the only customer apart from a ...

Hot Rock

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Kruger had given up wiping the dust off his goggles, relying instead on the shadow cast by the ridge line for direction, a shadow that was shrinking. They'd have to find a pass to the other side before the sun swung overhead, or risk ...

MindShare

Author : mjcast I toss and turn trying to log on to the sleep server. By myself in my bed, my apartment, yet never alone. The endless chatter of the web constantly bombarding my consciousness with pictures, messages and update streams. I am unable to tune it out, log in and ...

Grafting

Author : A. Munck Man claims a bad joy. He has his hand on the radar. The oil, sweat sheen on his palm reacts with chemicals on the screen and reveals ships in the darkness. Man has waited a long time alone in the dark. “Stasis... two-thirds.” The new planet spun ...

Only the Good Die Young

Author : Gavin Raine A small child came up to me while I waited in the park. Came right up to me, touched my colourless hair and ran his fat little fingers over the wrinkles on my face. When he asked me what they were, I told him that old father time had carved them with his ...

The Geothermic Siphon (An Ideal Solution)

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer Although born of desperation, it certainly seemed to be an ideal solution. Volcanologists had concluded that a devastating eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera would occur within ten years; fifteen at the most. To make matters worse, ...

The Tally

Author : Todd Hammrich The first thing to hit him upon waking was the metallic taste in his mouth. Every morning it was the same taste. It told him the machines inside his body had been working again; cleaning, scrubbing, scraping and sterilizing. It was the symbol of his ...

Talkstink

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer It was refreshing in a way, this whole ‘not having to talk’ thing. The blue Radocephamoeba across from me ‘listened’ patiently to the string of questions embedded in the constant flow of my pheromones and body odor. There were ...

Humanitarian, not Vegetarian

Author : Eric L. Sofer Humanitarian, Not Vegetarian We were assembled for the yearly Meal of Thanks, and we had imported food, delicacies from Earth. Dad gets it through his job; he works for a corporation that does space exploration. About forty years back, they found this ...

Blink 542

Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer We stole the blinkpacks from the research facilities at Ceti Alpha. Stable displacement technology, suitable for individual use. We sealed the holes in our assault armour and slapped on the packs: suddenly we could step through walls and down ...

Stars Fall At His Command

Author : Benjamin Fischer “I want to talk to the shaman.” Borhani’s words drew blank looks from the Lakota braves. A few raised their eyebrows and the surliest of the lot paused his cigarette long enough to spit. “The medicine man,” said Borhani. “What the hell are you ...

Unity Dome

Author : Dr. Alexanders Hundreds of years of exploration, trillions of dollars into research on space travel, all culminating in the single most astounding and miraculous discovery in all of human history, and the only tangible result of that effort was the Unity Dome. Gerald ...

At Night We Slept

Author : Ken McGrath The days were beyond hot. The unforgiving, bitter red sun dominated the sky, pulsing waves of heat flowed downwards onto the battered, scorched earth. We walked, trying to keep in the thin shadows cast by withered, torched trees. Their branches, like ...

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