Author: Michael Anthony Dioguardi This cold is not healthy. My skin is cracking. This won’t last—it can’t last, not in space, and certainly not in these conditions. I’m not sure what’s hurting it more, the cold or the rapid aging? Are we traveling at the speed of light? How ...

Author: Rick Tobin Officer Timothy Jeffreys flicked a puffy, trembling hand over his holstered pistol, while staring into and then away from Edward Andrews’ glare. Timothy had rookie bloating from devouring Sheriff’s station sweets. Donut dust still mingled with dripping ...

Author: Takshak It began when the first mind was uploaded. I remember there was a big uproar. Soon there were two camps – for and against. I thought scientists leading us during learning curves would do a better job than yesteryear politicians. I couldn’t have been more ...

Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer Julia sat in her boss's office, barely taking up any room in the massive wingback chair, eyes locked across the massive wooden and steel desk at Tomas. "I know something," she began. "I pay you to know things," he didn't give her the ...

Author: Beck Dacus Kilometers above me, sitting stoic like a mountain, was Verenia. Her green bulk blocked my line of sight to the opposite side of the cylinder, like a hole cut in the sprawling countryside curving up over my head. Lazily she turned-- or rather, we did, the ...

Author: Irene Montaner Seventeen days. Alana made another straight line beside the previous sixteen. The faint light of the first sun rays already filled the kitchen. The kettle whistled. Alana poured herself a cup of tea and watched the milk swirl in the brown water. ...

Author: David C. Nutt I watched the wifihead bounce into the door. I Love clueless look they all have when they realize they’ve lost connectivity. Next comes the part I love even better, when they swipe their finger across the door to open it. None of them have been ...

Author: Evan Whitbeck Light . . . warmth. It's far, but what I begin to feel rouses me. Where am I? I guess if I've woken, I must be someplace again. Ping. A sound? A sound! And I felt something! Something hit me, flew into me -- I crashed into something, but I ...

Author: Mark Renney The road is becoming much more difficult to follow and there are places where it disappears entirely and each time it does the road becomes a little harder to locate. Davis is now spending most of his time meandering back and forth, searching for ...

Author: Janet Shell Anderson I’m driving up 34, but no one’s on the road. Tractors sit in the muddy fields; nothing’s planted. Where’s everybody? Usually they’re on I-80 anyway, so that’s probably the reason, plus it’s Sunday morning, and except for church traffic in ...

Author: Katlina Sommerberg Soft red-violet and indigo flog floats off the floor, obscuring my body beneath glittering colors. The fingers that held my boyfriend’s are drenched in sweat and water vapor, clammy in this cold tank. There is nothing but the fog. My body drifts ...

Author: Greg Roensch With a slate of afternoon meetings on her mind, Alice Loverly, the long-time VP of Human Resources, hurried into the breakroom for another dose of caffeine. What she saw froze Alice in her tracks and erased all thoughts about meetings, coffee, or ...

Author: Michael Anthony Dioguardi “Forever?” “Forever,” the doctor replied. The patient breathed in slowly, swallowing before he spoke, “The view’s incredible from up here! What did you say the name of this quadrant was?” The doctor activated the patient’s interface on ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The corridor colours shift from pink to green to white as Elliot races through departments into the blue shades of the secure section. A guard at the entry has the presence of mind to raise the access scanner so it reads his ID as he ...

Author: Shannon O'Connor Usually, in all the movies and books, the post-apocalypse is followed by a journey of some kind. The world falls apart, and the characters involved have to leave their homes in order to find food or shelter, or go somewhere safer. I work in a ...

Author: Mickey Hunt Their rozière dirigible’s month-long flight from the eiderdown coasts to the Annual Gathering coordinates would demand precise maneuvering. “Once we find the northern jet stream,” Rho Aquilae’s father said, crisply, “we’ll journey to the proper ...

Author: Samuel Stapleton Xayana had no parents because she was engineered and grown in a lab, as most assassins were these days. Though it's not as horrendous an upbringing as you might expect: she grew up surrounded by peers, received an excellent education, had access to ...

Author: David C. Nutt It started with isolated incidents. Dead hiker’s bodies being found half-eaten. Forensic reports coming back that the teeth and claw marks were postmortem, small animal… most likely chipmunks and ground squirrels of some kind. Nothing too disturbing ...