The DTP
Author: Alexander Paige
“Christ! Will somebody please go and get Stalin out of that damn Colosseum before one of the lions eats him?”
Pete might as well have been shouting at the ceiling fan. As he looked up from his array of screens and scanned searching eyes around the open-plan office, it was immediately clear that none of the fast response teams were available, and casting his desperation leftward turned up nothing but the empty desk which confirmed sweet, reliable Judy was still off sick. He cursed quietly. Just another day of chaos at the Department of Timeline Preservation. The cliché was well-worn but comforting.
He looked back at his screen, winced, and thumbed in an order for a full clean-up job.
“Hey, Pete.” Simonne was leaning back in her swivel-chair, phone in hand, and had turned her head to shout across at him.
“Yes?”
“I’ve got the New York Times on the line. They’re bringing out a story about all the slaves we’ve re-enslaved. They want to know if we’d like to comment.”
“For the love of God. Just give them the same statement we gave on their piece about us stealing those sandwiches from Ukrainians during the Holodomor. ‘We act according to our mandate as dictated under the law passed by Congress, moral justifications for alterations to the timeline are not within our purview.’ ”
“Got it.”
“That’s the second article attacking us on that this week. I tell you, if those vultures don’t let up, I will personally go back and pay a very smashy visit to Gutenberg’s workshop.”
Simonne gave a quick smile of sympathy and then swivelled back, already talking fluidly into the phone as she did so. Pete tried to return attention back to his monitors but couldn’t regain focus. Bloody press. It was always the same, and when it wasn’t moral grandstanding, it was endless picking over their faults — Yet more failures at the DTP, Unforgivable sloppiness as iPhone image found on Sumerian tablet, Hagia Sofia believed forever lost in religious superposition, Museum director suicide rate skyrockets — disaster after disaster, hardly a single mention of all the successes, yet not one mistake could go without comment, and all that was to say nothing of those wretched think pieces parroting lobby group talking points about how it was ‘high time that preservation of the timeline be privatised.’ Well if those clowns in Congress would just fund us properly then maybe we could—
“Oh Christ! Not again.”
“What is it, Pete?”
“Oh nothing.” He allowed himself a long self-pitying sigh. “Someone’s managed to get through our defences; we need another baby Hitler.”

The Past
365tomorrows launched August 1st, 2005 with the lofty goal of providing a new story every day for a year. We’ve been on the wire ever since. Our stories are a mix of those lovingly hand crafted by a talented pool of staff writers, and select stories received by submission.
The archives are deep, feel free to dive in.

Flash Fiction
"Flash fiction is fiction with its teeth bared and its claws extended, lithe and muscular with no extra fat. It pounces in the first paragraph, and if those claws aren’t embedded in the reader by the start of the second, the story began a paragraph too soon. There is no margin for error. Every word must be essential, and if it isn’t essential, it must be eliminated."
Kathy Kachelries
Founding Member

Submissions
We're open to submissions of original Science or Speculative Fiction of 600 words or less. We are only accepting work which you previously haven't sold or given away the rights to. That means your work must not have been published elsewhere, either in print or on the web. When your story is accepted, you're giving us first electronic publication rights and non-exclusive subsequent publication rights. You retain ownership over your story. We are not a paying market.

Voices of Tomorrow
Voices of Tomorrow is the official podcast of 365tomorrows, with audio versions of many of the stories published here.
If you're interested in recording stories for Voices of Tomorrow, or for any other inquiries, please contact ssmith@365tomorrows.com