Fictional Worlds

Two things were wrong with the Spasskaya assessment. The first was the painting: a tiny square in a simple frame, something I barely noticed at the time, but which would go on to cause us so much suffering. The second was the woman. Wailing greeted us when we arrived, almost at midnight. Assessment teams had to come without warning. Snow fell in great marching waves, helpless in the hands of the wind off the Moscow River.

archived 27 Sep 2019 12:28:36 UTC

Author: David K Scholes The three of us pored over the various 3D mind image, life force energy, and bio patterns. The “B” team, consisting of robotic investigators stood ready to assist us. There were, of course, other “A” teams and many, many other robot led “B’ teams, the world over, doing the same work. […]

archived 17 Sep 2019 13:04:41 UTC

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer “For a long time, people wondered just what the first-ever crime committed in the Martian Colonies was going to be. The first murder. The first rape. The first vicious assault. The first deletion of a child’s innocence. For a long time, people wondered, but now they wonder no more.” “Spartan […]

archived 21 Aug 2015 20:30:12 UTC

He had to track her down ... wherever it took him.

archived 26 Aug 2022 13:22:49 UTC

archived 14 Oct 2019 13:34:36 UTC

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer Words fall like hawks. I know someone is going to die. As the Cantor finishes his brief condemnation, I see her move like a broken mannequin; a ballerina of sudden and grace. There’s a falsetto gurgle that bubbles into a dying sigh. She’s quick tonight; a minor offender. The crowd shivers […]

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer With slow majesty the huge spacecraft swings about, displaying alien lines in the distant star’s light. Mantled wings of golden energy cant toward the tiny needle that darts about, shooting beams of visible and invisible energy at it. The behemoth remains silent and apparently indifferent. “Damn it! Why doesn’t it […]

archived 26 Aug 2022 13:06:09 UTC

archived 20 Jan 2020 23:58:58 UTC

A trip back home for Christmas.

You’ll notice how the commercials never mention the price. They’ve all got some lab-coated guy with chiseled cheekbones spouting dumbed-down drivel about how emotions have wavelengths, the same as light or sound, which are reflected and absorbed by the objects around us. How this discovery has the potential to revolutionize your life. Yes, you, the one glued to your screen at three a.m., binging YouTube videos.

It’s midnight and I can smell the new moon through the cracks in the concrete. This organism in my womb has heightened my senses in unnatural ways. I can hear the Council’s hushed arguments through the walls of my cell as they contemplate my death, their words carried by the night wind through the cracks in the concrete that constitutes the community prison. Old habits die hard. We’ve been on this planet for less than ten years and a prison was the first building we constructed.

Welcome back, listeners! It’s me, Eli McCarthy, your go-to podcast host for allllll the juiciest super drama. I’m thrilled to be coming to you live from the maximum-security containment wing of Site 92, where I have the pleasure of interviewing Sixten Graves, known by most of you as Sol Undertaker. For those of you living under a rock [chuckles], Sol Undertaker placed themself voluntarily in prison here.

archived 25 Aug 2022 15:43:27 UTC

Author: Ross Field “You are ready to hear the story of our people my son” With their backs to the blinding light and whipping sand they descended down the wide tunnel worn smooth from time, through the carcasses of toppled skyscrapers, museums, and churches compacted together. “When the sky failed them our ancestors found safety […]

archived 25 Aug 2022 15:40:32 UTC

Author: Jenna Hanan Moore They say a kind word never broke anyone’s mouth, but that’s not true. A kind word broke my mouth. Strictly speaking, I don’t have a mouth. That is, I don’t have a physical opening in my face from which to project my voice. But I do have a language processor and […]

archived 25 Aug 2022 15:37:20 UTC

archived 25 Aug 2022 15:35:40 UTC

Author: Chana Kohl With my blade’s edge poised and a steady hand, I watched a decade of locs fall into the sink. A military uniform, once diligently maintained, hung lifeless in a closet. A soft tunic slid across my clean-shaven head, worn over jute trousers, and cinched, not by a tactical belt, but with a [�]