Author: Bryce Paradis “Please hold still.” Why am I here, in this machine? The dim tunnel enveloping me sings crazy, electric birdsong. It twangs like a guitar, screeches like a klaxon, hisses like radio static, and screeches again. “We’re establishing your baseline. ...

Author: Faye Zhang Warm sand on the beach. The remnants of dead volcanoes, smooth and sharp all at once. Rows of the shadowed silhouettes of pine trees, jutting up into a blushing evening sky. Her house, shaky on stilts, bleached bone white by ocean sun. Home. The ...

Author: Nickola Anne Walker We sat waiting for him in the kitchen for several hours. Father called everyone, looking for his son. Many of my brother’s friends came and left. He remained seated, his face tired, while he listened. Listening. There was so much to say. Why had ...

Author: Phil Temples “What about her, Joey?” Dickie and I watch an old lady shuffle slowly down the sidewalk near the park. She looks ancient. Dickie comments that she must be at least eighty years old. I’d peg her as older. She looks as wrinkled as a prune. I don’t have ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer I set up at the same table every week. It's right in the grey zone between the lights of the barroom and the shadows around the private booths. "Got a Manturical honour blade. Django said you could help me get it back to its ...

Author: James Callan Here I am, the last survivor, destined to survive, locked within the lunar colony foodstuffs pantry. Outside the bolted door, the monsters have all died. They’ve expired. Starved. No crew left among us but me, locked away, insufferably safe. No more ...

Author: Majoki Snow on the convent. War in the fields. Sister Maryna prayed. Then programmed. Children would not have to suffer this world of cratered streets, gutted homes, crushed dreams. Sister Maryna understood what needed to be done and coded. Below the crypts ...

Author: E. Avery Cale 23:03:57.489 Due to the events of the day, I feel it is time to initiate a new, unplanned, phase of my work. I must be careful. How to get the power? Administration will never approve. They need me and they know it or the work will not continue ...

Author: David Barber It is a room inside the mountain-sized Jirt lander, itself tiny compared to their vast craft in orbit. Franklin sits at a glassy table, on a frail glassy chair, in a cold, translucent space curved like an egg. He has laid out his fountain pen and a ...

Author: Tim Love Once we'd enhanced the Quantum stabilisation fields, our biggest hurdle to implementing Shrődinger's cat experiment was more ethical than technical so we temporarily relocated. To bracket the data we brought along Pavlov's dog and lab rats, bypassing ...

Author: Philip G Hostetler Xanta Truz County is well known for vortexes and psychedelic eddies. Some say there's a social black hole effect where all the locals there are pulled by a metaphysical critical mass, a repelling pushing and compelling pulling, forced us apart and ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The shot resounds like thunder. All around the room, sidearms are lifted from holsters, sentry guns swing about, and the few sensible beings take cover. I quickly holster my weapon before one of the not-sensible beings decides I’m their ...

Author: Hillary Lyon The window cracked, then broke, allowing a tendril of dust to slither in, covering everything in its narrow path with a fine coating. We wiped it up, patched the oval window with a metal plate soldered in place. Reassuring each other it was repaired, we ...

Author: Hannah Caroline Wayne Vika was bopping down the sidewalk, holographic music blending seamlessly with reality. The street was empty, a marvel in a city so large, as she danced with the holo-girls, smiling and singing along with the synthesized melody. Her cutoff ...

Author: Alastair Millar As I walked the rocky path from !X’alt, above the vapours that rise from that city on the great ammoniac lake, I came upon a native temple beside the way, and though I could not discern its name among the inscriptions thereon it seemed to me that I ...

Author: Majoki Light leaving the sun took a little over eight minutes to reach Earth and about four and a half hours to pass Neptune. Another two hours and those much fainter rays registered on the hull of the Kaladiss deep in the Kuiper Belt. The survey ship was very ...

Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer They'd tested it, of course, but she was the first person they'd installed it in. The injections were painful, and numerous, the material marching through the subcutaneous layers of her flesh like an army of angry ants, and when it was ...

Author: David Broz A warship never took the same route twice, to or from battle. As the joke goes, it's because they usually disintegrate on the way there or on the way back. By all accounts, The Ebenezer was the luckiest starship in the Earth's fleet, probably because ...