Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer In a room darkening as night falls, lengthening shadows are rearranged by the flickering of a grimy display screen. White, blue, green, yellow, black. The night briefly reforms. An image of an emblem flashes up to fill the view. It ...

Author: Brian C. Mahon Posit this: If post-singularity, the lucky ascendants have their consciousness uploaded to a massive mainframe, they would have two rewards. One: As long as the servers are powered, time is untethered from sensory perception. A second could be a ...

Author: Carmen Condon 'It was one of them …' 'One of the robots?' 'Yes! They think a robot smothered him …' Variations on this theme drifted between the deceased's relatives; their eyes averted from the aged care automatons whirring gently down the aisle. Verity ...

Author: K. A. Williams The steel android watched the aluminum android cleaning the window and said, "I overheard that the humans plan to destroy all older model androids by melting them down." "Thank you for telling me, I will inform the others." Walter 99 finished his ...

Author: Amanda Leon I live a life by a thousand cuts. I’ve died too many times to count. I always feel it towards the end, the straining of my old self on new muscles, my bone edging out, ripping slowly through flesh. Some humans never change. They occupy the same body ...

Author: Majoki Once there was and there was not a place. a time. a man. a woman. a child. a robot. The medina was a maze of alleyways and shops largely unchanged for centuries. Until this one. Saad, Buchra, Abbas and Rafik sidled through the dark, narrow footways lit ...

Author: David Barber "There's the official version," said Lev. "Where First Contact was that signal from the Jirt ship out in the Oort. Then there's what really happened." The old hands round the bar had heard all this before, but it was Lev's birthday and he was footing ...

Author: Georgia Scalise It's common knowledge that eyesight is a thing of the ancient past. Ask any kid and they'll be more than happy to tell you the stories about how millions of years ago, humanity supposedly lived above the surface, basking in sunlight and using their ...

Author: Majoki What do you think we hit, Captain? Can’t say. We went through the critters pretty fast. I’ve never seen anything quite like that flock: multicolored, almost metallic, circling in a protective formation. Very strange. We’ll have to wait until the techs ...

Author: Angela Acosta Juru steadied the nozzle skyward, working his way up the curvature of the inner dome. It was tricky work sealing in the pleasant mixture of breathable air for the new inhabitants. The locals christened their new home Stoda, short for Standard Dry Air, ...

Author: Fatemah Albader “You look beautiful today, Maggie,” said Barry Chambers, of Barry Chambers & Associates. “Thank you, Master Chambers. But I am obligated to answer that I always look the same.” Maggie wore the same yellow dress every day. It complimented her ...

Author: Lewis Richards A rumble from deep in the ship jolted me back to my senses, mechanical protests from the air scrubbers up-ship as they struggle to compensate for the rapidly expanding population on board I guessed, all but confirmed by the light-headedness that had ...

Author: Rick Tobin Choxthonzu wandered towards ghastly yellow glows of a huge, throbbing sign disrupting grim darkness, below which shadowy figures scurried from a cement block, like ant farm residents, hoisting grains to distant abodes. Choxthonzu was drawn below the ...

Author: Carla Ra There was a slight chance her name would be Little Bun. Most likely, though, she would be named Suzanna. Her mother kept cycling names in her head at the moment of birth. She would stop when the baby arrived, and the last name would be the chosen ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer A quiet Thursday night, working away on the laptop. Actually doing nothing of any substance. Too many opinions to agree with, laugh at, or marvel over. So many people being misguided. So many of them seemingly wanting to be, as an ...

Author: E. O'Neill Cyrus Bellini handed a deposit receipt and club membership card to the teller and watched as she punched in the numbers. "There you are, Mr. Bellini", she said, sliding the card across the counter. "Your new total is fifteen thousand and sixty ...

Author: K. A. Williams It was hunting season on Kreegat. Beasts were imported from neighboring planets to designated areas on this small world. My section now had a furry, yellow hindosen. The animal had been released hours ago, but the shuttle was late. The rain ...

Author: Carew Bartley After the dusty, scorching heat of the Via Flaminia, I looked forward to the cool silence of the tomb I had read so much about before my trip. Originally buried in a Central Italian necropolis, the tomb had been assiduously reconstructed in the ...