Author: Tobias Hope Young The falling star landed about fifteen years back. Killed everything in a ten-mile radial. Science folks say it did this by changing the center of cavity in the area. Ya see cavity is the thing that keeps us from floating away, and the center of ...

Author: Jennifer Thomas Esteemed benefactors, honored guests: Thank you for attending today’s repatriation ceremony. We begin with our customary Planetary Acknowledgment. We gratefully recognize the communities on whose ancestral and unceded planet we gather today. We ...

Author: Igor Dyachishin Today may be the most important, and last, day of Anatoly Kravnikov’s life. When he was 25, Anatoly founded Kravnikov AI mostly using borrowed money but also some that he inherited from his mother – a stock market player with incredibly effective ...

Author: Aubrey Williams My job is a strange one, but it pays well, and only takes me a few hours, so I can’t complain. The company I work for— one of those powerful computer research firms, I won’t say which— has a very large office in the city. It’s the fourth-tallest ...

Author: Majoki I plotted interplanetary trajectories with a buggy whip. I routed the whole of the Infonet with a dot-dot-dash-dot. I was the perfect blend of the new and old. And loony as a toon. They called me Quantum Annie. My processing schizophrenia can be traced to ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer Don gives Ted a grin, then turns back to the dishevelled man standing in front of them. “Tell me again.” Ted snickers quietly. “I liked the bit where she rode in on a dinosaur.” The man sighs. “Short version: we’ve been messing with ...

Author: Mark Renney The ‘Visage Wipe’ was promoted as a grand project. The language the campaign used was both simplistic and pompous. It was claimed it would unite us and yet only those aged between fourteen and twenty-four were eligible. For anyone older, it had been ...

Author: Ruhsen Dogan Nar "Here it comes, get ready!" shouted Mehmet from atop a heap of dirt dumped two nights ago. Ali's high-pitched, adolescent voice echoed from the roof of a three-story building at the entrance of a shantytown adjacent to Izmir's skyscrapers: "I'm ...

Author: Haley DiRenzo They asked when I would get tested, surprised I’d put it off. I’d tied myself to him with legal contracts and witnessed vows, and I always jumped at the opportunity to relieve him. But I waited for his mother, his brother, his cousins, his friends. All ...

Author: David C. Nutt Dear Alive, To begin with, I absolutely hate the word zombie. I also hate the terms walking dead, animate corpse, and un-dead. I prefer the more PC term altalive. Look, I don’t know who is tapping into this- a researcher, psychic, or hacker, just ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The little lights bob and weave, but they’re definitely getting closer. I check behind me - the remains are unidentifiable: just more victims of this horrific incident. How close should I let them get? No, wait. I sit down, putting my ...

Author: Majoki You gave them the names. All of them. Jelenik, Szmania, Guar, Imhotep, Salasi, Yun, Indrasutthan, Porter. Faisel knows it. His broken face, his darkened eyes tell you in the sterile moments of your visits. You wrap his lacerations, dampen his fever, ...

Author: Aubrey Williams “Look, I’m not apologising, and that’s that!” The man glared up at the smoke alarm, its smug viewfinder glinting annoyingly in the evening’s neon haze. “Oh really? You just had say *that* to Catherine?” “Hey, I felt she ought to know you’re ...

Author: Hillary Lyon Kaz tumbled through the centrifugal force of the prismatic vortex, finally landing on the planet’s surface with a cruel thud. Medical nanobots lining the interior of his suit immediately went to work, infusing themselves through the pores of his skin, ...

Author: Christopher DePree Kate and I trudged up the hill on our evening walk, heading west of the house to get to the clearing. It was cold, and a thin layer of icy snow crunched beneath each step. The snow was not deep. A buzzard glided slowly across the sky above us, ...

Author: David C. Nutt All of us on this mission were eager to explore, chosen from among thousands of applicants as being restless beyond restless to know what was next as we traversed the void. When we landed on this new planet, we could not believe our eyes. An entire ...

Author: Marijean Oldham The Mississippi only ran backwards, south to north, twice that we know of. First time was during the earthquakes of 1812. And the second was the day the meteor fell. In the months that followed, we felt a drop in our stomachs any time we crested the ...

Author: Jennifer Thomas “Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time.” —Greeting in Amoy, one of 55 languages on the “Golden Record” sent toward interstellar space on Voyager 2, 1977 CE [Transcript: Testimony of Android 32XX, ...