Zolt
Author: David Henson The hunt has been good. Zolt feels inside the pouch stitched with sinew to his belt. He removes a long, curved tooth and touches it to his forehead. The charm has worked well, …
Sci-FiMess Hall
Author: Josie Gowler I slam on the retro brakes and skim past the first skyscraper, getting thrown forward and to the left in my harness as I dive within metres of the glassy face. The ship jolts i…
Casting Seeds in the Nick of Time
Author: Richard M. O’Donnell, Sr. At near light speed, the starship Genesis sailed into the wormhole. Two-point-five nanoseconds later, the ship neared a rip in the wormhole, a rip that had a…
No Place Like Home
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer Bennett stood out on the sweeping plateau of rock a mile above the ocean and watched as the planet’s orange sun dipped below the horizon. Beneath him, miles …
Suckle
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer The twins lay entwined, shuddering beneath the sodden pail that unfurled from the peak of the seventh hill that ghosted at their back. Babes, innocent as a mother…
Date Night
Author: Mark Joseph Kevlock The metaphysical archive didn’t have as many visitors as it used to. Satch understood that. Still, he treated each one with all the kindness he could muster. The p…
Fourteen Hundred Grams
Author: John McLaughlin “Christ, this place is a dump.” Paul Braun glanced around the offices of Organic Transport, Columbus branch. Dust-streaked fliers pepper the walls: Fifty-Thousan…
Kronos Awake
Author: David C. Nutt Dimitri sat up as the semi-viscous fluid keeping him alive in suspended animation oozed off his body. “Ship, how long have we been in fluid?” There was an unexpected pause tha…
The Building Blocks
Author: Malcolm Carvalho The algorithm has just been published. I move my fingers over the cylinder in the centre of the room. A tube runs into it. I verify the cylinder’s valve can easily control …
Addendum to Fermi’s Paradox
Author: David C. Nutt “Wally, do remember what they used to call us back in fourth grade?” Wally bobbed his head up and down “Uh-huh, sure do. You were Adrian the alien and I was Wally the werewolf…
Crushed by love
Author: DJ Lunan Earth’s first extra-terrestrial visitor for 500 years is a peace offering and a miscalculation. Intended for a swift twenty-year journey through its own solar system in the Monfix …
Children of All Ages
Author: Mark Joseph Kevlock “They all came to see me: the man who could age — or de-age — at will. They all thought it was a trick. When you reach one hundred years of age, the body becomes e…
Valentine
Author: J. H. Malone “Happy Valentine’s Day!” “Oh, Honey, for me? How sweet!” “Open it. Then I’ll take you out to dinner.” “Ok, just let meR…
Never the Shroud for a Good Man
Author: Jae Miles, Staff Writer It’s easy to spot strangers round here. They’re the ones who call the grass-banked sewer on my right a canal. “And in those days of tribulation, the faithful called …
The Red Lion
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer The man awakens and he is sitting in a tavern. His fingers trace the time beaten patina of the hard wood upon which he rests and his eyes trace the exposed beams …
Eyedentity Theft
Author: David Henson I go to the woman at the check-in of the Identity Bureau and touch the space where my right eye used to be. “I’m Roger Sanders and —” “Look at the scanner to verify.” I clear m…
Journey to the Center of the Bureaucracy
Author: Thomas Desrochers Basil had never imagined he’d be a bureaucrat, but The Tower housed eighty million bureaucrats servicing a legal machine a thousand years in the making – it was inevitable…
Hypocritical Oath
Author: Ken Carlson The pain in his side was a steady series of jabs. Alone it wasn’t enough to knock him down; no, the bill from the hospital was good for that. Six months of security work on this…
Two’s A Crowd
Author: Thomas Desrochers Effedel and Ifrit found each other in the subspace E-bands while they were still more than five thousand light-years apart. Both were on sponsored three-decade survey flig…
Customer Service
Author: Ken Carlson “Where did you find this one?” “Does it matter?” “No, I suppose it doesn’t.” “Then stop asking!” Norris kept his mouth shut. What was the point now? He and Sheila decided this w…
Aroha
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer An escape pod drifts. Radioactive crystals cling as hair to its skin and a man’s voice pleads out and into the void. A voice where an automated signal would suffi…
Seventeen Moons ’til Doomsday
Author: Jae Miles, Staff Writer The young man is wearing a vantablack bodysuit that leaves only his face discernible. Matching cloak, gloves and boots are stacked next to the log he sits on. A sens…
The Coordinates in Time
Author: Alzo David-West Contrary to the anticipations of the ancients, the problem had not been solved after eighteen-thousand years. It was still impossible for a bioform to travel far forward int…
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Author: Richard M. O’Donnell, Sr. The toddler unclipped his seatbelt and floated away, gurgling and laughing as he drifted toward the… The what, Lady Maggie Durante wondered. There was no cei…
The crones creep in from between the trees, four of them, silent as shadows, each from a different direction. The goddesses told me to meet them here, but I don’t know who these old women are. They…Jealous Me
Author: Mark Thomas If time travel has taught us anything it’s that inevitability is a slippery subject. My story became mathematically more likely each time I ingested a tablet, but it was never a…
And Then There Were (N-One) by Sarah Pinsker I considered declining the invitation. It was too weird, too expensive, too far, too dangerous, too weird. Way too weird. An invitation like that would never come again. I’d regret it if I didn’t go. It lay on our kitchen table for three weeks while A Man and Three Brothers
Author: Mark Joseph Kevlock A man and three brothers knew the secrets of the world. Thus, they began a quest to unlearn them. They sought a place to pour out their secrets, where none would ever fi…
Q&(A?)
Author: Alex Z. Salinas There was once a creature much like a man who lived on a planet all alone. He was carbon-based, drank water, and received nutrients from luscious plant life born from fertil…
Dodgy Homebrew Love
Author: Thomas Desrochers The most popular topic of all was always Love. That was how neuro-sims came to the forefront of entertainment, you know. Plug in and a skilled corporate smartiste can have…
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Author: Jae Miles, Staff Writer I always remember the secret my great-grandfather told me: “Absinthe was never to blame, my dear. It’s what was added to the absinthe that caused problems. By accide…
Delphine
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer The Major can taste the sweat as he walks through the brothel. He likes it and he rolls it in and sucks it beneath his tongue. The door at the end of the corridor…