At age nineteen, Robot Girl had dropped out of the most prestigious university in the country, had no objectives in life, and was now stuck pet sitting for the lovely lesbian couple at her old church.

Nanlee was a woman with the sort of past that necessitated moving to a non-extradition treaty country, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t planned on enjoying her “retirement” on Luna Colony.

“It’s all gone.” The ethereal voice whispered—almost robotic and clearly distant—its desperate lament choked off with a gasp, which tugged Itoro back from unconsciousness. Sprawled on her back…

Úna’s dad once said to her: “You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” Spring had turned and they’d come cycling up the highway, fourteen kilometres north through a land bedecked with rocky…

Lewis was poking at his tablet, trying yet again to open the training module from Station Commerce, when the sensor above his shop door chimed. “Not now!” he snapped without looking up. “But… but I….”…

Jaxon was not a connoisseur of art, but he could identify a work’s salient features. And the salient features of these particular works were that they were valuable, lacking any obvious security…

You can hear it, in the basement, behind the metal boxes that your human puts her outer-coverings in just when they start to smell good—when the boxes are done, she brings out her things stinking of flowers or fruit. via Pocket

Diwali, the Festival of Lights is a magical time of the year, even on the Indian Battle Station. via Pocket Escape Pod 703 Light and Death on the Indian Battle Station | Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2TFpTbn

via Pocket

When I met her, I was twelve. There was no one else to take care of me. Before she showed up, she was preceded by this man in a pinstriped suit. A harbinger. He sat me down in his sterile office and he said, “Time Law is not a joking matter. via Poc…

Peifan had come and gone before Nevaeh reached the lab office the next morning. Nevaeh had hoped to say goodbye, but she supposed that if an algorithm had guillotined her graduate school career like a French royalist’s head, she’d have snuck away, t…

I’m all stims and grins as I kick open the door to West Precinct, strung-out bounty dangling from my headlock like a slab of vat beef with a fauxhawk. via Pocket

He is lying on the splintered, faded-gray wood of the dock, the fingers of one hand dangling in the slough and glitter frogs in his hair. His breath catches and he cups the back of Christian’s head. An airplane is flying far, far overhead. It sounds…

Of course, if someone were systematically scrubbing the Internet of all references to the glitter frogs, then how do you explain the Tumblr gif sets? The audio recordings? The videos that don’t involve illegal firecrackers and animal cruelty? via Po…

I’ll keep this one, I thought, that day at the fair, as the sunset cut a sharp line across the sky. Gina’s laughter rose in a crescendo of delighted giggles, and life seemed absolutely perfect: a sparkling gift of wonder and joy. I’m not going to se…

The Tale of the Golden Eagle by David D. Levine This is a story about a bird. A bird, a ship, a machine, a woman—she was all these things, and none, but first and fundamentally a bird. It is also a story about a man—a gambler, a liar, and a cheat, b… EP402 The Tale of the Golden Eagle – Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2RdbtOM

Tagedouchet teased her father as she leaped over the long stick he swung at her ankles, raising a puff of sand with her sandals, the gritty substance drifting between her toes, and landed, folding her knees, narrowly dodging the swing of her father’…

Mother never wanted me to take the meteorology job. “Those high fences and secret regulations,” she said. “There’s something shady about Rubens’ Medicines” —dear Mother’s tone was sarcastic when she wished it— “mark my words, Genevieve. via Pocket

Every night I come home and I drink. I trade away the hope, the guilt, the fear, even the love–I think it’s love, crazy as it seems. I trade them for oblivion, because otherwise I won’t sleep at all. via Pocket via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Escape Pod 695 This Is As I Wish To Be Restored (Flashback Friday) - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2Zx80Lx

If you are reading this, your Loved One has died. We are sorry for your loss. via Pocket via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Escape Pod 696 The Homunculi's Guide to Resurrecting Your Loved One From Their Electronic Ghosts - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/32ugG7t

Raya eases power into the singularity engine and all her senses sharpen with the glorious, brutal reality of the moment: dead ahead there’s the blacklight-purple disk of Wolf-Rayet 104, twenty-eight subjective minutes before it goes core-collapse su… via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Escape Pod 697 The Last Stellar Death Metal Opera - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/307B7Wc

Points of Origin Most people who have reached their eighties without raising children have every right to believe that they will go on not raising them, and Judith and I were no different until the day they turned up with the social worker, neatly s… via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

Martian Chronicles They say you can’t smell anything through a launch-hood, but I still smelled the pove in the next seat as the space-attendants strapped us into our acceleration couches and shone lights in our eyes and triple-checked the medical r… via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io