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 ...
Sotto Voce
The universal translator she wore around her neck always told me how she felt. When she sighed a series of clicks into my hair as my hands brushed the blue skin in between her 2nd and 3rd sets of arms, it was the translator that said, “Oh, ...
Threshold
Our research ship; the Threshold, hovered about 800,000 kilometers from the event horizon. We could've taken better readings by moving closer, but then even the most powerful engines ever designed wouldn't have been able to hold us back from the intense pull ...
Jack
Market Special
The butcher brought his cleaver down with a meaty “THUNK†and scraped another festipods head into the waste bin. He hung the shimmering body on a hook in line with a dozen or so just like it and grabbed another from the pile.
“These are as fresh as ...
Pickup
It was the numbers tattooed on the backs of their necks that always got me. Why couldn’t they have them in a more obvious place? Halfway through a conversation with them, I’d still be trying to catch a glimpse of their tattoos in ...
Oak Island
The last morning, we gathered on the beach. Someone made the inevitable Nevil Shute joke and too many people laughed. The noise was braying, desperate and I moved away from it, worried, somehow that I might get some on me.
‘Leigh?’
Vanya ...
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