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…

Author: E.M. McCarthy I shop here. There are better places to stop and shop, better prices, better inventory, but this place reminds me of the good old days, and they replicated the look of the old…

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…

Author: Hillary Lyon Micah stood up straight, pushed back his hat and flashed his brightest smile at the tourist taking his picture. They always placed their family members on either side of him an…

Author: Rick Tobin “Ouch! That hurts!” Clint Aurelius pulled back his tattoo needle from his thirty-something assistant wincing under his application. Clint took some deep breaths while resting his…

Author: James Lawrence Rhodes “There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.” – Dante Alighieri The tender and sun-reddened skin had begun to peel, large…

Author: Rick Tobin “Was food satisfying?” A mechanical, calm, nondescript voice asked from invisible speakers. “It was cold. I need warm food. You know that.” Zuri sat cross-legged, staring into a …

Author: Justin Williams “Shit…” Velia pulled the car over on the side of the road as the check engine light flashed. The car sputtered to a stop and Velia glanced at the rearview mirror. Lily…

Etrian blocked a glaive swing that would have decapitated him, moving backwards and trying to find his balance. His attacker leapt in again, sweeping a low strike at his legs. Another hurried parry and another step back. A third attack, this a stab …

Author: Steven Holland Unit 153 drummed its fingers on the armrest of its chair. The android’s eyes darted around the room. Frantic. Searching for stability. Finding none. “People are watchin…

Author: Hari Navarro There’s a galaxy tucked away neatly within a grain of sand on a beach that stretches out within the warm memory of my youth. In it a planet and on it a palace and a windowless …

Author: Irene Montaner Their planet was insignificant. A pint-sized rock orbiting a small star in the middle of its life cycle. It was geologically diverse and had a rich atmosphere that had allowe…

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…

Author: Jae Miles, Staff Writer The wind up here is gentle, bringing the smell of summer fields from the uplands. Below my bloodied feet the valley stretches from side to side as far as I can see, …

Author: Ian Hill Affin slipped and slid over the lumpy white slopes. Her hair hung clotted with curdy chunks, and irritating crescents of tallow lingered under her fingernails; most of her skin was…

Author: David Henson I regain consciousness in a small hut made from sweet-smelling grass and blue sticks. A male garbed in the same type of grass stands over me. When he notices my eyes are open, …

Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer Rebecca stood in the middle of her little gallery and surveyed her work. She’d hoped her recent direction was going to be different, maybe spark some kind of…

Author: Jae Miles, Staff Writer “If any can show just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let them now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold their peace.” The traditional silence …

Author: DJ Lunan Clarke peered mesmerised through the tiny pod’s porthole at the forested planet, verdant, moist and fertile stretching to the horizon. He smiled, doubting it could save his soul, b…

Author: Lisa Conti Until today, I had only seen government-sanctioned flames. And I had never felt them; never known how heat could change so rapidly with distance. Never smelled smoke. Never felt …

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer She makes love to him in the long grass that encircles the base of the old stone lighthouse in a moat of shivering green. His untrained skin too it quivers. Thoug…

Author: Malcolm Carvalho Pa is sleeping. It’s one of his intermittent naps. They said the meds would make him drowsy all day. He looks serene when he is asleep, even in these fifteen-minute session…

Author: DJ Lunan Tung carefully poured the molten metallic liquid into the stone mould. Almost three litres heated to 650 degrees. The orange liquid sizzled in contact with the colder, crystal marb…

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 …

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…

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…

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…

Author: Jae Miles, Staff Writer I encounter God at midnight in a convenience store. She’s chatting with the bloke behind the counter while making herself a caramel latte on the new coffee machine. …

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer The Detective lays in the warming twist of the hot-tub, an outrigger cocoon that juts, one of many, from this recreation floor high above the 2211th Precinct. The…

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer I was going to say that everyone knows of Shoichi Yokoi, the Japanese soldier who hid for many years, not knowing that the war had ended. But most, probably, do n…