Nepenthe
“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
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
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
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
“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
Fallout
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
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
“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
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
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
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
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 ...
Catlike Tread
"Where am I?"
"A sub. We're in the middle of the Deneb main belt."
"Name and designation?"
"This is the Catlike Tread. Ess-ess-you-nine-seven-four."
Orig got to his feet. The inside of the sub was cramped: the ...
City Of Light
The sun sinks in the west like a heart as I row towards the city of lights.
I do not know what the city is called. I have been rowing for so long that names have become vulgar sounds, meaningless and wild; not just the names of places, but also my own. ...
A Mother's Love
Sally Baker considered herself a good mother. She grew her own baby and gave birth to a daughter, Jane, by natural means, barring the odd shot of hormones to hold off genetic defects. She refused sensory enhancements ...
Turing Test
“Where will you be when the world ends?†she asked.
“Right here,†he said.
“Will you be conscious?†she asked.
“I expect so,†he said, “though consciousness is hardly ...
Down the Tubes
Mrs. Taggart sat down at her desk and sipped her coffee while going over the day's lesson plan. When the clock struck eight, she set down her coffee, reached behind her ear and synced herself to the network. ...
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