Dream Weaving

Author : Salli Shepherd In Fresno, California, Kalisha Henderson jacks herself in to a palm-length, slimline psii-pod and closes her eyes. She is young, barely in her teens, and her mind soon fills with images of pink, prancing horses ...

Hammond's Miracle Machine

Author : DarlingDante Dr. Hammond mopped the sweat from his forehead, his round red cheeks heaving in labored breath. He’d maintained a manicured composure during countless conferences, lectures, and even the couple of morning news ...

Reality Fading

Author : naquoya It ended as it always was. Just me with my thoughts bidding farewell to the only friend I really knew. At least he was the only one who really knew me. There was no grave site. No urn to hold his burnt remains. No, there ...

The Machine

Author : ifrozenspiriti "True knowledge comes from memory," he proclaimed to the gathered smiles and nods. "Memory is what makes us human." The next morning, he fed the memory of lackluster lovemaking and asthmatic perfume staining ...

Grishna

Author : Kathy Kachelries, Staff Writer They'd followed the grishna since the beginning of time. Their elders described uncountable days and night, each lasting several lifetimes, since the first keeper had been formed from hard-packed snow and melted by the grishna's breath. They ...

Nepenthe

Author : Brian Armitage

“He's up. Turn it on,” someone says. The doctor.

As I open my eyes, the whiteness hits. It's like I'm having an idea, but it's too much for my brain to hold. I squeeze my eyes shut and gasp, trying to...

...where am I? The doctor is ...

The Virgin Nature

Author : Tim Hatton

The hull was a likely prospect. Nothing much else caught his eye. The inside seemed neglected - full of potential indeed, but sorely neglected. There were also certain crucial updates missing from the internal computer system. The map array was as recent as ...

Heavens

Author : Amy Monroe

By way of introduction: Sweit was the one who kissed like a file cabinet and she was the one who kissed like a plate of raw liver. Rays of light came through the subway ruins, skating through the upper Bronx and into Westchester, and they caught Mardi ...

Temp Guard

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

Being a temporal border guard is an okay job. It pays the bills.

It seemed like a cool perk when the position was first created after the The Great Restart of 205?. You’d get to work, do your eight hours, and then get put back into ...

Circumstances Beyond Our Control

Author : Patrica Stewart, Staff Writer

“It’s not a great analogy, Professor, but think of it this way,” explained the chronotechnician, “time flows like a river. Something we call a ‘world line,’ which is the sequential path of an object through space-time. I can ...

Vertiginous Origin

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer "What is it that's troubling you?" The doctor could clearly see the discomfort in the young mans face as he wrote 'Anxiety' on his steno pad. "It's getting harder and harder to go outside. It's wide open spaces, they terrify me." He clutched at the ...

Fallout

Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer

She fought me again yesterday. It made me feel like a monster. I tried the gentle approach but she refused, so I had to take her by force. It was, as usual, satisfying and depressing.

Afterwards, I hid in the forest and slept. I'm afraid ...

Kate

Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer

Kate was lucky. Or so she kept telling herself.

Out of the whole world, she was the only one who had both the right kind of sight and the right kind of mind. It was a self-made mantra, one that rolled across her thoughts, looped back on ...

Take Me To Your Leader

Author : Randall Bennett

“Take me to your leader,” said the squat, green, bug-eyed creature, in an oddly modulated voice.

Carl leaned down, and looked down at it, and his eyes opened wide. He had never seen anything like it before.

“Um. You’re talking to him,” ...

Birthday Boy

Author : Ian Rennie

I sit alone in the dark, the birthday boy. I could have left the lights on, but with only a couple of minutes to go it hadn’t seemed worth it. Typical, really.

Well, this is it. Or this was it, at least. They had taken the neural snapshot four minutes ...

Sleepwalker

Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer

Marie-Christine looked into her mirror at her naked adolescent body, flat and slender. There were parts she was disappointed in and parts that pleased her. She was careful not to stare too long, her parents were sure to be watching her visual ...

Train City

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

We’re both standing on the rooftops of the train city. Two hundred and twenty-three tracks wide, slowly migrating polewards to more oil and frozen fresh water.

Metal groans as the temperature drops. Tenpenny nails shrink and loosen ...

15 Eunomia

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

David Erwin, the lone human inhabitant at the Eunomia mining station in the asteroid belt, was just suiting up to make his rounds when his door chime sounded. Erwin shook his head in mild frustration. Robots never seem to get it. He had ...

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  • Dig

    Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer “Son of a bitch!”. …