Three Strikes
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
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
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
"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
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
Gone with the Solar Wind
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
“The Americans’ new weapon is unstoppable, sir.â€
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?â€
“We ...
Original Death
This time it hurt. Which was rather odd.
He could remember losing body parts in battle before, but never had it hurt. He clearly recalled losing most of his right leg to a direct plasma hit on his way into the bunker at 23-0-9. That had only slowed ...
Potential Loss
Ix looked out the main window, sighing as she viewed the once-vibrant blue world below her, now gray and barren. She wondered if the strange fate that befell this place could have been avoided, and was embarrassed to admit that she couldn’t think of any way ...
The Language Barrier
Altitudal Lapse.
Guy Daschien released the breath that he'd been holding. The seal between his helmet and collar snicked shut, and a little hiss announced that it had become airtight. He gripped each of his wrists in turn, pulling his gloves on tighter, making sure that the burrs ...
Sshh! Quiet!
Jericho sighed contentedly as he eased himself into the contoured leather recliner of the Virtual Library booth. He’d spent most of his lunch break scouring the Multi-Mall for an empty VL booth and was determined to make the most of the remaining ...
Classroom 010
Guerillas in Our Midst
Binary Thinking 101
The war against the Centauri was not going well. For the first two decades of the war, the combined forces of the Earth Coalition had battled the military forces of Alpha Centauri to a virtual draw. However, in recent years, the Centauri offensive had ...
The Delicacies of Zombiekind
Footprints
They say the wind carries the souls of the dead, forever blowing to remind us of things past. At least, that's what the kasht say, but then our worlds usually have less wind than Tun Ekshati. Most humans don't believe it.
Marcus might. He's been ...
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