Author: David Barber An old spacer complaint is that home is never where you left it. Spacers end up in bars like this. Relationships don't survive years out in the dark, but that doesn't matter here, one loner recognised another. Perry listened to them arguing about ...

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer I have been in this asylum for so long that its corridors have become my arteries and its rooms my veins. I really feel more than a little lost, and my gums are covered with a grainy film. I don’t know why I stopped here. I don’t know ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer I staggered from the wreck of the Templeton stark naked. I’d been submerged in a sensory womb, enjoying some virtual sports with colleagues from C-Shift, when all three dropped offline. I wasn’t to know their side of the ship had been torn ...

Author: David Henson After work, I stop by to check on my father and find him carrying a flashlight around the well-lit house. “Is everything OK, Dad.” “It’s your mother.” “I miss her too, Dad.” “No, Son. This is your mother.” He holds up the flashlight. His ...

Author: Lorna McGinnis Dear Valued Employees, As you may know, the world will be destroyed next Wednesday. A massive asteroid will strike the earth at approximately 4:00pm PST, and that will be the end of humanity. Unfortunately, additional requests for paid time off ...

Author: Brian Etta “Breath through the nose and out through the mouth” Justin let that instruction carry him. Sitting in half lotus he resisted the urge to itch as he scanned his body for sensations and in so doing produced and amplified them. There had to be something to ...

Author: Majoki Her eyes were oceans of possibility. Blue and depthless. And I was shipwrecked. A fallen eyelash crushed the sails and within moments my ship foundered in the shoals of the iris. When I climbed, half drowned, upon the pupil, I was looking straight down ...

Author: Jim Anderson A bell rang and the finding room fell silent. The finder — a small, silver-haired woman in a lavender robe — turned to Ulrich and said, “A simple question, Citizen. Do you believe in one objective, mechanistic reality governed by the laws of Newtonian ...

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer This is where we end. Tucked so neatly under the aftermath. I stare at my now long dead cat as its fur fuses and its stench fills the sill upon which it lays. I see its flesh sag and melt and my mind shifts to the meat in my moribund ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The tennis-court sized office is lit like a summer afternoon. Everything within is red, but each item is a different shade. “You must tell me who makes those soft ownership collars for you. I’ve only seen that shade of purple once ...

Author: Majoki “A synaptic map of the brain.” “Social media pathways on the Internet.” “A spider web. If the spider had taken acid.” The program director waited as each volunteer gave their interpretation of the sprawling diagram being displayed in the research ...

Author: Andrew Dunn They come every seventeenth year. Momma says they are evil, each one a little piece of hell called forth by her ex-husband to torment springtime before summer’s heat dries our corner of Georgia to a crisp. “Cicadas.” Molly said. “They’re just ...

Author: Calum Strachan It was an overwhelmingly unlikely occurrence. Somewhere at the end of time, as the universe approached uniformity, a localised phenomenon sprung out of the thin and fragile space. Purely by chance, the particles that had drifted alone for so long ...

Author: Mark Renney Tanner’s job was to remove the evidence, to wipe away the traces. He considered this task as necessary, that he was an essential part of the system and for more than forty years Tanner’s belief in the system hadn’t wavered. He had remained resolute, ...

Author: Letícia Piroutek Hayden slams the door of his underground metal shoebox. Technology my ass. Everything is cramped and he can hear his neighbors yelling as if they’re inside his “apartment”. It consists of a sink with artificial water that tastes like plastic no ...

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer Silicon ash flutes through ink and glints as ascending blackened leaves in my wake. I can hear my vertebrae as they torque. I hear them and the chatter shatters as they arch. I hear them even as my ears sear from my head and the torque ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer How were we to know How far this war would go? We weren’t ready, We’re never ready, To be over. Bombs rained down without warning. The Keloden landed on the planet the next day, while we huddled in a shattered basement. Clinging to ...

Author: Moh Afdhaal Bile singed Vesper Krel’s throat as he squirmed at the dark shapes that haunted his periphery. The curious ailment that wreaked havoc on his gastric system, had been diagnosed as a probable symptom of expedited re-acclimatization to Earth’s atmosphere ...