Flight Test

Author : James Mallek

It was with a running leap that he finally brought himself to do it. John hurled himself off the top of the eighty-story Hertz Building.

5 seconds of free fall before he righted himself, face down, parallel to the ground.

Terminal velocity ...

Once in a Lifetime

Author : Matt Brubeck

We're in the Starbucks next to the club, hanging out after a show. Aaron looks up and gives a brief snort. "Check it out," he says, nodding toward the door. I see a trio of young kids, studying the menu and trying to look cool. I recognize them from the crowd ...

Children's Programming

Author : Kevin Byrne

The adults were all sitting down, watching the children interact with one another; to a soul, they all said the same thing to me: "I cannot believe how well-behaved your son is. We try so hard just to get our child to even listen to what we're saying, much less ...

Best Friends

Author : Alex Meggitt

I shift around on the couch, flipping through the channels and trying to make myself comfortable. Tim is sitting on the other end, watching the television cycle through sounds and images. The complacent look in his eye clears for a second as he sits upright ...

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer The two of them sat facing each other in the living room, the father and the fidgeting male his daughter had brought home to meet him.  From the kitchen came snatches of conversation, the talk in excited giggles of things only a mother and daughter ...

The Skein Tree

Author : Michael "Freeman" Herbaugh

“Sit down Philip,” the old man sighed, “I’m going to tell you a unique story.”

Philip had never seen the Old Man look his age, yet today he looked every day of his 94 years. He’d only been working for him for five years now but ...

Jump Start

Author : J.R.Blackwell, Staff Writer Georgie threw the best parties, mostly because he had a carpet he didn't care about. Heather and Ralph used the monthly parties as an excuse to play drinking games and challenge each other to contests. The winner was usually responsible for dragging ...

Swarm

Author : S. 'Hrekka' Clough

The launch chamber decompressed, the escaping air flushing Will's Swarm from the Carrier like so much flotsam. His sixteen Swarm were joining others who were launching from the Colichemarde and her two sister ships. His visor highlighted each ...

Wet

Author : Michelle Pitman A holo-spa is not really that much fun. For one thing you can’t actually feel holographic water. If they ever figure out how to make holo-water feel like its real, someone out there is going to become 1: Real famous, real quick! And 2: Make a fricking whole ...

UN Resolution 951167-B

Author : Pyai (aka Megan Hoffman)

Max sat behind the deck, and yawned. He saw out the glass through the dusty blinds of his office two men in dark suits walking briskly down his dark hallway. He looked around, quickly. He shoved the Twinkies into his desk drawer, flicked the entire ...

Three Strikes

Author : Duncan Shields

The black non-stick plastic of the cop’s fist presses my fat lips up against my teeth until they split. The drugs from the gas are slowing all this down and adding the colours. I’m seeing so clearly and feeling none of it. My own blood squirts hot into my ...

The Flawless Nature of Deductive Reasoning

Author : J. S. Kachelries

We had been in Antarctica for two months studying the alien spacecraft. It had been discovered a month earlier when a portion of the Ross Ice Self caved into the sea. Based on the thickness of the ice covering the ship, we estimated that it was buried ...

Tears from the Sky

Author : C. Hale

Shortly after the perfection of the gravity lens telescope, astronomers had tracked a celestial body twice the size of Earth and calculated its trajectory as intersecting Earth's orbit. A full year of recalculations and simulations had all yielded the same results. ...

Dream of Other Days

Author : David Zhou

"Have a good weekend, Mr. Lark," he said, scooting his chair underneath his desk and shuffling his papers a bit.

"Don't stay too late, y'hear?"

He laughed, and shook his head. Smiling faintly, he grabbed his bag and started for the door. He had a ...

Mesmerized

Author : Jim Stitzel

The bag of chips was all but empty, just a few crumbs left in the bottom. He shook the bag, bouncing it in his hand, so that the niblets would fall together in the corner. There were so few left - and he wasn't one to waste anything - so he tilted the bag to ...

I Pledge My Life

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Unsol remembered his twelfth birthday, remembered his fathers face alight with pride as he read aloud Unsol's draft notice. 'You're going to be a pilot, Unsol.' His father beamed 'You'll be the most valuable commodity in the Corps.' Thirteen years ...

Gone with the Solar Wind

Author : Patrica Stewart

The finals of the twenty-fourth biannual solar wind races were in their thirty-ninth day. The race course was a 15,000,000,000 mile Z-shaped trek within the Alpha Centuri system. The Alpha Centuri system was considered ideal for solar wind racing because ...

The Wall

Author : Benjamin Fischer

“The Americans’ new weapon is unstoppable, sir.”

The Admiral grunted. “That’s a bold claim, Commander Caswell,” he said, shifting in his deep leather chair before the wall of screens. “Care to expand on that?”

“We ...

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