Author: David Barber It is a room inside the mountain-sized Jirt lander, itself tiny compared to their vast craft in orbit. Franklin sits at a glassy table, on a frail glassy chair, in a cold, translucent space curved like an egg. He has laid out his fountain pen and a ...

Author: Tim Love Once we'd enhanced the Quantum stabilisation fields, our biggest hurdle to implementing Shrődinger's cat experiment was more ethical than technical so we temporarily relocated. To bracket the data we brought along Pavlov's dog and lab rats, bypassing ...

Author: Philip G Hostetler Xanta Truz County is well known for vortexes and psychedelic eddies. Some say there's a social black hole effect where all the locals there are pulled by a metaphysical critical mass, a repelling pushing and compelling pulling, forced us apart and ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The shot resounds like thunder. All around the room, sidearms are lifted from holsters, sentry guns swing about, and the few sensible beings take cover. I quickly holster my weapon before one of the not-sensible beings decides I’m their ...

Author: Hillary Lyon The window cracked, then broke, allowing a tendril of dust to slither in, covering everything in its narrow path with a fine coating. We wiped it up, patched the oval window with a metal plate soldered in place. Reassuring each other it was repaired, we ...

Author: Hannah Caroline Wayne Vika was bopping down the sidewalk, holographic music blending seamlessly with reality. The street was empty, a marvel in a city so large, as she danced with the holo-girls, smiling and singing along with the synthesized melody. Her cutoff ...

Author: Alastair Millar As I walked the rocky path from !X’alt, above the vapours that rise from that city on the great ammoniac lake, I came upon a native temple beside the way, and though I could not discern its name among the inscriptions thereon it seemed to me that I ...

Author: Majoki Light leaving the sun took a little over eight minutes to reach Earth and about four and a half hours to pass Neptune. Another two hours and those much fainter rays registered on the hull of the Kaladiss deep in the Kuiper Belt. The survey ship was very ...

Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer They'd tested it, of course, but she was the first person they'd installed it in. The injections were painful, and numerous, the material marching through the subcutaneous layers of her flesh like an army of angry ants, and when it was ...

Author: David Broz A warship never took the same route twice, to or from battle. As the joke goes, it's because they usually disintegrate on the way there or on the way back. By all accounts, The Ebenezer was the luckiest starship in the Earth's fleet, probably because ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer I'm no expert, but the big green flash followed by a noise reminiscent of a building collapsing makes me think it's time to leave this habitat. Things about us start to shake. I look down, then tap the wall by his head to interrupt his ...

Author: Jeremy Nathan Marks “He was the one afraid to cut the cake” -Bob Seger When workers joined the lines at the Gratiot Plant, they signed away their hands. Losing their hands was the first step toward gainful employment. After three years, ...

Author: Mahaila Smith The casting call was very specific. No bodymods, no one over 6 ft. No medical conditions. She taped her audition in an office tech supply store in front of a tall, tubular black camera-droid. She introduced herself, Jordan Wreath, age 24, from ...

Author: Helena Pantsis I learnt in the moments I stole when I was sixteen that time piled up, folded in and on top of itself like leaves of an endless, unwilting cabbage. I took seconds from my father, gathering them like crumbs of toast on the plastic table cloth, and ...

Author: Christopher De Pree She was funny at first, more of a party trick. You could ask her a question and she would answer in fully formed sentences. She could write stories, essays. Other versions took our pictures, selfies and wove them into fantastical scenes. Made us ...

Author: Majoki The shovel chimed lightly against a larger rock and the gravedigger paused in the hole. Sharp gusts lifted the loosened dirt, whirling it across the high plain into the reddening dawn. They would come soon. They always did. A slow procession up from the ...

Author: Bryant Benson I have wandered Earth for over a century searching for another one of my father’s creations. Even those that hunted us so long ago had all disappeared. Between the relentless plagues and rising oceans that consumed their coastal cities, it didn’t take ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer No guns down there. No swords, either. Nothing bigger than a table knife, and nothing double-edged. The humans who first founded a colony on Kenshun were an unarmed combat cult. Their teachings quickly became the laws by which this odd ...