Four Minutes
With her eye pressed to the inside of the window and his eye pressed to the out, their lashes navigate the viscous silicate surface of the glass. Somewhere inside, they twine.
The same happens at each of their fingertips -- ten hers and ten his ...
Station
I wake up from a dream about bookshelves and the answers to life. The sheets are damp with sweat and tangled around me. I sit up and look around at my dark room, allowing my eyes to adjust. The stars twinkle outside my living quarters ...
Interface
“Synaptic couplers disengaged.†Andrei Milosovic sat up in the recliner, gingerly rubbing the back of his neck. He glanced at the control room window; his colleague there beckoned him up. The Institute had paid for the nanosurgery and training- all so that one of ...
Cargo
"Excuse me, umm..."
"Can I help?" Roisin responded pleasantly, turning to see who had addressed her.
"My name's Gillian...I'm looking for someone who could courier something for me...do you know...?" Gillian's question tailed off. She ...
Twitch
I’m a human channel changer for reality. I invented the device. I’m testing it on myself. I had my medibot install the absurdly simple wave generator in my cortex. If I concentrate in a certain way and jump at just at the right time, ...
Heat
It was hot. It was always hot. There was no escaping it and there hadn't been for hundreds of years. There was only the unyielding, unbearable sun and the empty horizon wavering like seasickness before her. Not that seasickness was really an issue anymore. Where ...
ICE
Conrad latched his helmet and checked his seals. The adrenaline was pouring into his system as he fidgeted in line with the others waiting for the lock to cycle. He was about to face his first battle against the ice marauders.
Academy had been the hardest ...
A.I.
Artificial Intelligence. We sure screwed that one up.
It was the holy grail of programmers for decades. From Turing up to Schellman and finally that bastard Candona. Candona found that humans get a sense of satisfaction from a job ...
Mirror Girl
Physical
Jeff stared: Surrounded by the usual crusty slop of a school nurse’s office was a fish tank, populated with 3-inch poodles, their gray-green hair wafting in the water. The nurse laughed.
“Soto’s poodles. Gotta love ‘em. Those Bolivians did ...
Phantom Limb Syndrome
My brain burns with electric fire. Numbers cascade across the surface of my mind, one after the other. Geometric progression, X+Y=XY.
Numbers are the language of heaven, or so they tell me.
They replaced my gray matter with plastic parts and ...
Run and Hide
They say that there not very many places left on Earth to hide. People who say that have never been to the jungles of South America or the plains of Australia or the slums of Norway. There are thousands of places left on Earth to ...
The Griffin Maneuver
“It’s called the Griffin Maneuver, and it’s going to make me famous,†said Stacy Griffin, a third year Earth Force Cadet. Her classmate at Jupiter Station, Marcus Rider, looked at her with dubious eyes, and a smirk that he knew would irritate her ...
Redneck
Failsafe
Ron relaxed and watched the drifting stars.
The Do's and Don'ts of Deep Space Hyper-drive Repair, that's what he would call his book. Maybe he should record it into his suit for posterity. He'd already gone through the checklist and found the step that ...
Weapons
In small German-occupied towns during WWII, if a local woman had a German soldier boyfriend during the occupation, she was hung when the war was over. People who had been seen talking to Germans and helping them had their heads shaved in the ...
Unconventional Warfare
General Elias Knox sat staring at the paperwork at his desk, utterly confounded. "Would you care to explain what happened, lieutenant?"
The lieutenant swallowed nervously, trying not to tremble noticeably. "Sir, we dropped the conventional bombs ...
Calling All Volunteers
I couldn’t get to NASA’s Office of Human Capital Management fast enough. The e-flyer said they were looking for 1000 healthy individuals, between the ages of 21 and 32, that would be willing to participate in the first manned colonization mission to a ...
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