Author : Jules Jensen He looked like the most average business man in the world. He even carried a briefcase in one hand. I wondered if he packed away a pitchfork or angel wings or horns or a halo …

Author : David Henson Ro and Ju are holding hands on a platform under a busy leviway when a sparrow lands nearby. Ro releases Ju’s hand, draws his DeathRay, and fires. The sparrow glows brigh…

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer He’s at the door ag- BANG! Loud. Never try and creep up on a paranoid woman with pre-menstrual hypervigilance and a pistol. I usually spend three days screaming at …

Author : Joseph Lyons I put my mother in a home a few months ago when her Alzheimer’s became too much for me to deal with. Now here I stood with early-onset, refusing to go the same route. The doct…

Cherry Squid By Celeste Hollister It was the cherry squid that did him in. Outside his window, seventy stories up, the advertisement bloomed, melon yellow, racecar red. A shoal of squid rippled across the holo, a tangram pattern that morphed into a human face. Almost human, but with a Vrellan’s ruby eyes. Then a blush of […]

Author : Tiasha J. Garcia “This was not how I imagined this going.” The words drifted into the pristine silence, disturbing nothing and no one. “I–I thought there’d be more time.”…

Author : Joseph Lyons A few years ago I was lucky enough to land a reasonably well paid job. Like most well paid jobs in this system it meant not great work in a not great place. It was a mining fa…

The Ghosts of Europa Will Keep You Trapped in a Prison You Make for Yourself By Matt Dovey –then scooted her chair over to the microscope. Amira only needed a glance at the holographic zoom floating over the scope. The viral cells were replicating rapidly, budding and splitting at a phenomenal rate. “Hey, Mariana, look at […]

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer My eyes were the first to go. They’d been deteriorating since my mid thirties, and after a bacterial infection in my early forties I couldn’t focus on…

Author : Philip Berry “Just see what you can do with it Tak, if you’d be so good. No great urgency.” muttered Johnson, Alec Tak’s immediate superior in the Office of Colonie…

Beetle-Cleaned Skulls By J. E. Bates Fine amber dust infiltrated everything in the Preserve. Each morning, I vacuumed it away with my ventral hose prior to opening my kiosk. I paid particular care to my curios: the fossils, the bismuth crystals, and the beetle-cleaned skulls. Forebears, especially the children, delighted in receiving my curios as gifts. […]

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer The shapeshifting aliens are untrustworthy. It’s not their fault. They see the world for what it is, through a kaleidoscope. Us humans, we only get to se…

Author : Mordecai J Banda Michael had come back from his daily walk. He had eaten his breakfast and attended to various things to keep himself healthy. Now it was gaming time. This past month the F…

Author : Dina Leacock I sat at the table for two and waited for my date to arrive. We’d been emailing since we first “met” on “Find-True-Love.com and now we were finally going to meet. Taking the m…

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer The cigar from the dead guard’s pocket has a red and gold band that says it’s from Havana, the first pleasant surprise of tonight. “Ricky. Help me.” I look across t…

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer I’d always wanted my own planet, and now my dreams were about to come true. Sure it was my entire life savings plus everything of value I had. But what a deal! I…

Malcolm should have been thinking about shrimp, but he was thinking about Sumitra’s smile instead. He hated himself for it, but he was almost glad for the leak in the shrimp pond, since it ga…

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer John Jones leaned heavily on the counter in the hotel bathroom, a haggard face he barely recognized staring back at him from the full width mirror. Six o’cl…

Author : Scott Shipp Ian was cornered. He had run straight into a dead end alley. Right on his heels were two cyborg cops, and he had the money credits hacked from the bank all over his data stores…

Author : Thomas Keene Every metal surface inside the cabin sang, and the readouts flickered. A steady, pure note that Charles called “the Banshee”. Evan clenched the crew telemetry read…

Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer I needed to disappear. Fast. I never wanted a criminal life. It’s not like I killed anybody, or stole the nation’s pension plans, unlike some governments which…

Author : Glen Luke Flanagan “These monstrosities are a threat to national security, to morality as we know it, and to our very sense of self.” Senator Ethan Calhoun punctuated the last statement by…

Author : Kellie Warren We never thought we would be the ones. We weren’t smart enough. To discover new worlds, new planes of existence, new life. You had to be intelligent for that. Some might have…

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer The white Silracan clicked its chest-legs together and reared back in what was the human equivalent of a bored sigh. Between it and the hologram of the Earth f…

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer “Brigitte! Slow down!” I thought I loved Adrian. I really did. I even fooled myself for the first year of our Outer Reaches tour. Then on Certys I had to stop him t…

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer Billy-Jim Crenshaw was snoozing in his swamp shack when the explosion shook him fast awake. “What th’…?” He scrambled to his feet and, throwing the crooked door …

Author : Trent Isaac The man wrestled a pile of rods, plates, wires, lights, and fingers through the door and let it crash in a heap. “Or there’s this one,” the man said as he swabbed his bald head…

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer It was a beautiful day for a ship launch. These are the things I remember: I remember the sun shining down out of a blue sky that arced from horizon to horizon…

Author : Bob Newbell I remember the day things started disappearing. I was driving into work listening to the news on the satellite radio. Astronomers had observed that a galaxy called MACS0647-JD …

Author : Robbie Kowalski “Hey Marv, have you ever wondered where all the shit goes once you flush the toilet?” “I don’t know Joe.” Marv said unenthusiastically as he tried to figure out a crossword…