Dino’s at the hatch, jigging up and down like he does when he’s worried. “Table Seventeen, the Lantoran’s getting antsy!” I flip the trout end-over-end in the pan: “Tell the lovely cephalopod that his trout is being sautéed in ox butter and I will n…

How much is enough? When is it time… for the end? She’s just a reporter. This is just an interview. via Pocket

Vapour coils along the bough, drifting away in little skeins of dissipating light. Tobias grins. Luminous breath: sure sign of irrevocable infection. “How do you feel, my son?” He looks up at the white rectangle glowing at the throat of the padre’s …

The aliens dug our tunes. It was sweet. They came to down to us in these big blue ships, all curves and awe-inspiring slowness through the clouds like settling continents. Freaked us right out. We, the human race, didn’t even try to attack. We’d see…

Under a sweltering summer sun in southeastern Ontario, an aerial camera watched as two boys walked through a wheat field. Each boy dragged a heavy wooden plank; as they traversed the land, stalks of wheat bent and flattened underneath them. via Pock…

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Featured Writer “Then stop putting your money in it. Now come on, we’ve got to go, she‘s coming back tomorrow, so we only have a little time. We have to get to the lab,” Jess scolded. via Pocket

She danced across the living room in a yellow sundress, her heels tapping to flamenco on the smoky hardwood. It was Charlie’s favorite outfit–the one he’d gotten her for their anniversary. Her hips swayed like magic, he thought. She paused for just …

Valeria knocks down Devis and scores. The 10-year-old girl then stands over the boy and laughs. Later that day, Valeria is having supper with her parents. “Don’t play with your food, Sweetie,” her mother says. “We don’t get vegetables from the hydro…

When the guy with the horns came in, I knew it wouldn’t be a good shift. He scowled when the ZapStop’s doors refused to slide open for him. Ignoring the late-hours doorbell, he pounded one meaty fist on the shatterproof polycarbonate. via Pocket

Richard was forty, paunchy and balding when he came home early and found Susan on the bed they shared. via Pocket

Solar flares were partially blocked from pillaging the threatened planet below the behemoth spacecraft. The Bohemia created a cascading, billowing shadow across the Jagron’s continents. via Pocket

‘I’m sorry, Darling but I’m just not in the mood,’ said Martin Riley. ‘I’m nearly seventy and you can’t expect me to have the same enthusiasm I had when we first met.’ ‘I did not mean to upset you, Martin,’ said Mary. ‘I do not wish to put pressure …

I took my shot and it landed true; a beam of light, passing briefly through the void and extinguished in a collapse of reality. Well, not exactly. There is no direction, or time, in the Manifold–only the roiling chaos of the quantum fields. I’ve wal…

Lieutenant Tann wiped his fuzzy torso. Months in a Chrono-tube caused the growth of a downy hair that matted together on the backs of his legs and arse. The computer suggested both Lieutenant Tann and Major Spar rub themselves with oil before taking…

We’re glaring at each other across a gap that is – as we have repeatedly tested – exactly nine metres wider than either of our best reaches. The ground for kilometres around us is nothing but churned mud and scoured rock. Not a leaf, not a lifeform.…

The brown woman came to Vrau from the sky, without a name of her own. Piarcu knew that she was nameless, even though the women of his family only whispered it when they thought no one else could hear. via Pocket

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer You had to fall into mine. Lord, but you are a sight for jaded eyes. Hair like liquid night, eyes a man could drown in, lips that form a bow Robin Hood would kill f…

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer Doctor Jessup is terribly polite. We’re stirring our coffees before he asks his first question. “What started it?” I smile: “Why do they all add up to six?” “Pardon…

“He’s up. Turn it on,” someone says. The doctor. As I open my eyes, the whiteness hits. It’s like I’m having an idea, but it’s too much for my brain to hold. I squeeze my eyes shut and gasp, trying to… via Pocket

It’s the lack of sleep that’s the worst. I can live with the brutal beatings, the agony of untreated broken bones, the drugs that fuck with your head, the insidious cold, the gnawing hunger, the burning thirst and the routine rape, but I would liter…

Slumped in the alley, the woman repeated the name like a prayer, mostly forgotten long ago. No, that wasn’t it. Passersby ignored her: just another failed rebel unable to move on. via Pocket

A software bug killed 64 people this month before it was discovered. The administrators have brought the system down and a patch is working its way through the emergency release process. via Pocket

It emerges from whatever variety of nowhere that allowed it to traverse the vast distances between the worlds of the Beacon, and I know that it’s a Stranger. via Pocket

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer “It’s a pure stroke of genius that I was able to downsize the stabilizer assembly in time for the conference.” Stuart fiddled with his bowtie with his free hand while piloting the sedan with the other. via Pocket

From the couch, engineer Stanislaw Hast looked past the grey-suited, female psychiatrist and through the broad window. The star, a long dying sub-giant, threw a dusk of burnt ochre over the orbiting city, its rays painting the sunward face of tall b…

Red emergency lighting makes more shadows than seem possible. President Booker leans back from the table and looks sideways at the one shadow he knows. “Clarence Dimitri. via Pocket

The space station was silent in the way that a black hole is black; it was more than just an absence of noise. There was something physical to the silence, a force pulling in all sound and eating it. via Pocket

HK-812 stepped out of her charging pod and gazed out the single narrow window that her 8×14 living space boasted. The brick wall outside was a whole eight inches away from the glass, and the morning sunshine gave the red-brown a cheery tone. via Poc…

I make the coffee in the French press like I do every morning. Then, I regret it by the time I reach the City Freezing Works. A doubled edged elixir, the coffee rouses me from my bed and then inspires uninhibited vomiting by the time I reach downtow…

Perhaps the most famous planet in the colonized Galaxy– aside from Earth, of course– Centauri B Prime may have the highest standard of living in the Milky Way. via Pocket