Hope
The Second Society
Most of her thoughts were consumed in blind panic, so she wasn’t really away of what was happening until she had dug herself halfway out of the dirt. She was wearing the dress her sister had put her in to be a bridesmaid last spring, and her face ...
Time Trap
Seven years of work here in the KT and the worst that’s happened to me is that I lost a fingertip in a time trap. It’s still there, falling to the floor in a three second loop over and over again for eternity over in Cardiff. The victim is still turning ...
The Plum Eater
It started, as many such things start, with a plum.
The fruitseller first noticed the plum eater when he came by the same stall not once, not twice, not thrice, but fifteen times in the same cycle. He would always pick the juiciest plums; freshly cloned ...
Discovered Upon Drawing a Curtain
A large ripe melon rests on an operating table. Members of the surgical team stand in the wings, preparing long serrated knives. Spotlights illuminate chunks of crushed ice that slip down the sides of the patient. My mouth becomes moist in sympathy. I take ...
The Danger of Hubris
I am very, very sorry. What else can I say? If it means anything, at least I will die before you. I probably only have a few hours left...just enough time to tell you what happened, and to ask for your forgiveness.
I am (actually, was) a graduate ...
Mobius Revisited
The three children stared at the table top.
"How's it doin' that?" the fair haired boy whispered, reaching two fingers out towards the dull metal object floating above the center of the cracked table. The only girl of the group, tall and gangly, ...
Guardian
Next of Kin
The old woman had not been seen for quite a while. Nor was it unusual for a person to not be seen for months at a time. Robot or (for the very wealthy) android assistants handled the details of day to day life.
The old woman had not answered the door ...
Renegotiations
Basajaun sighed and rubbed the sweat from under his eyes. A shadow had fallen across reflected rays of his private sun.
“What is it you want?†he asked, blinking and groggy.
The shade resolved itself into the slim image of a woman ...
Necessary Fictions
"Mr. Jerome?"
Pen and thoughts still pressed to the page, the writer looked up: a tall man in an old-fashioned suit weaved his way through the happy hour crowd.
"David Jerome. It's really you!"
Another fan? God, why can't people be ...
Threshold
The Career of a Psychic
Einstein’s Last Words
I walked into the offices of Temporal Travel Inc. A bored agent three rows back motioned me toward him with his free hand, as he peered around his upturned coffee cup. “Good morning, Sir.†he said as he placed the empty coffee cup squarely on a ...
Alternate 7816JS
Dinosaurs thundered through a post-industrial city on their way to work. Suits and ties. Briefcases built to fit thick, knobby talons. The stink of mammal bacon on the breath of some, boiled plant on others. Pollution choking the air and grease and oil and ...
The Last Beautiful Thing
Ron was sprawled on a park bench. His dirty hands were tucked into the kangaroo pouch of his salvaged Nike hoodie. He exhaled a cloud of vapor and wheezed with his next breath. A single tear ran down his cheek and was absorbed in the dust mask that protected ...
Sky Marshal
It was wet work, being in the Sky Platoon. Yawning decades hunched in the basket of those primitive balloons with nothing for company but the clouds and the telescopes for watching all our friends below.
Time moved differently in the chronosphere and it ...
Space Walk
The helmet amplifies my own breathing and makes me feel uncomfortably confined. It’s like when you can hear yourself chewing and it sounds so noisy because of the bone conduction going on with the sound but outside of your head its fine. Except with me I ...
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