The worst had happened. I was in the care of Beloved Uncle, the public face of the Eastern Police. He had been appointed as a Machiavellian move, the political men who installed him meant to allow him a reign of outrageous violence to quell the populists and then kill him and replace him with ...

It’d be funny if I could still laugh. Instead I sit here smiling, waiting for the nurse, smiling at the white and the clean and the pure. I hate smiling. She’s smiling back at me too, her teeth as white as the walls, undoubtedly brushed with the same sanitizer. I want to punch her but ...

“No, I don’t think you understand. Let me tell you about death.” The mechanic’s subject blinked. The mechanic allowed himself a bit of wonder at the ingenuity behind that movement. It did nothing; the subject's glass eyes were not cleaned or refreshed with liquid. And yet, it did ...

Riktor ducked beneath a broken beam in the house and kept his live porta-mic on at his side. The satchel strapped around his left shoulder hugged him tightly. "This is Rik Vance with Underground Union reporting to you from housing project 56." He heard the groans coming from down the hallway ...

Two weeks ago Forsythia moved into a new apartment in a beautiful old high-rise. Everything there was antique, from the dark wood paneling to the rich carpeting. It was a far cry from the decaying 20th century-style cinderblock tower that Forsythia used to live in. There were multiple ...

When Ren won the global lottery he thought his handheld had been hacked. He knew his chances of winning were small but he bought his tickets daily just like everyone else. The ads said that you paid for the excitement of playing and Ren knew it was true. As soon as he got the news Ren called a ...

Down the hill, past the cornfields, just north of Brattleboro and west of New Hampshire is a bend in the river that they call Deo’s Hole. It’s a deep place that comes just after some tame rapids, a perfect swimming hole that just happens to have a rocky outcropping above it from which ...

“I still don’t understand how anyone could justify putting a little kid through this.” Quinn’s father glared at the doctor, viciously protective. The doctor shrugged. “It’s to discourage use. They didn't intend it for little kids.” His mother had been begging hopelessly ...

“So what about ‘light blue’ or ‘dark blue’? Can I just say ‘tinoh ekilit’ and ‘tinoh saikilit’? Or do you have to use a separate word?” “No, no, you’re missing the point. They don’t have light blue or dark blue. It’s either blue or it isn’t.” “But they have ...