A Certain Distance from the Floor
Author: Moriah Geer-Hardwick You might call it fear. When your knee gives out on the stairs, suddenly, without warning. Gravity snaps its jaws around you and rips you from a passive illusion of self-control straight to the floor. An immediate awareness of potential…
read moreThe Wall
Author: R. J. Erbacher Bruce moved across the monotonous landscape with ease. Not quite desert. More powder than sand but not really either. All beige, all flat. Featureless. Except for the wall. The diminished gravity and PowerDrive suit made walking relatively…
read moreThe Necessary Room
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer We are alone. There is no body and no thing out there in the ink that surrounds our spinning ball of candy streaked blue. No migratory Sibylla trees on Aeneas 10, no carnivorous Hing fungus hanging in carnal embrace from the ceiling…
read moreVisionaries
Author: Jae Miles, Staff Writer The guide says it starts small: things move when you’re not about. Takes a while to be sure. Walking into your lounge to find one of your books floating in the middle of the room while something unseen turns the pages? Conclusive. Time…
read moreShore Leave
Author: David Barber Cally had hacked her teacher. She gave herself grades good enough to keep her mothers happy, but not so good they attracted attention. Also, she rigged the on-line attendance so she was free to have adventures in the Station’s ill-lit underdecks….
read moreDiffusion
Author: Jason McGraw Images of vectors, numbers, and circles reflect off of a bi-metallic cube. Gold touches lead at a wide, dull blur. Machinery forces the metals together and a clear sleeve prevents bulging. Crew is receiving a “big-picture” brief from Captain using…
read moreConstruct
Author: Moriah Geer-Hardwick “I would like my arms back.” The machine’s voice is gentle. Almost childlike. There is only the hint of a request nuanced within its inflection. Jacob looks up slowly for a moment, then lets his attention slide back to his tablet. “That’s…
read moreFocal Point
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer Sebastian stood in the middle of the living room, basking in the late afternoon sunshine. Rays scythed through the walls of glass, catching random dust particles and lighting them, like so many flecks of stardust. He felt the polished…
read moreBeneath Foreign Tides
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer Waves lap at the cusp edge of the astronaut’s open visor. A saline swill that now sloshes into his suit and streams down across his body, running its length before agitating the warmth that stings and clings at his thighs. His arms…
read moreArchetype
Author: Jae Miles, Staff Writer There’s never enough time to correct the big mistakes. That much, I’m sure of. As a modern scientist, I can state that it’s one of the few things I am firm in my assessment of. What with the discoveries of the Conscious Reality…
read moreFeed Me
Author: Thomas Tilton The gentry signaled me by dilating the pupil of its lidless right eye. Time to work. I hoped my task would not be too demeaning. I promptly headed over to the gentry’s floating throne/toilet and inquired as to its needs. I could feel the…
read moreS.E.T.H.
Author: A. Zachary Spery Seth was awakened. He felt oddly compelled to fix something. The computer began streaming information to him. Seconds ago, the sensors had recorded an unexpected collision. The colony ship was off course and tumbling. The Semi-sapient…
read moreGarden Genesis
Author: Elaine Thomas The warm sun felt good on the old man’s skin. He stood on the balcony, gazing down into the garden. “A beautiful day,” he thought, “a good day to die.” He examined his hands, gripping the railing, wrinkled, marked with spots of age and prominent…
read moreBe Very Wary of Infohazards
Author: Shaked Koplewitz The orders were clear: As tempting as it was, we were not to let the psychics process the alien message. Instead, we were to send it through to an old-fashioned linguistics team, who’d work with pen and paper to decipher what they could of it….
read moreSalience
Author: Moriah Geer-Hardwick “I wanted this to mean something.” He looks back at me over his shoulder. “What are you talking about?” I start to reach for him, see his body tense, stop cold. “This!” He swings a hand out over the city beneath us. It’s a black heap of…
read moreThe Ice Pane
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer “Do you know what happens when you stare into television static?”, he asks. “You start to see patterns, forms that join and fuse and start to make sense of the chaos. The flickering separates like pulled away meat, not completely,…
read moreAppeal
Author: Jae Miles, Staff Writer “Your lights are too bright.” The fresh-faced lady looks nonplussed. The bearded man behind her taps something into the rig on his wrist and the brightness cuts by half. He gives me a thumbs-up. I nod. The suited man who looks so out of…
read moreMachines
Author: Elizabeth Hoyle “Do you remember me?” The machine they were strapped to was hot. “No. Do you?” “No.” They were silent for a long moment. “What are we going to do?” The woman could not remember why they were here. “Well, they said they have a machine that can…
read more