via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io I was told that, when I awoke, I should expect the thunder of battle to have already started. But when the doctor woke me, his face calm, if not bored, I heard only the low rumble of my fellow crewman babbling about something. I would soon learn wha… The Wait Calculation | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2yfx4hh

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io The chaplain sits beside the young man and lays a small box on her lap. “Mr. Parker, would you like to pray with me?” “That’s not for me, Chaplain. But I’m glad you’re here.” Parker’s hands are trembling, eyes red. via Pocket The Long Smoke | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2S4aI9l

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Denizens of the Deep | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2S0y9QY Looking out. Or looking in. Do we stare into the expanse, or does it and its inhabitants look in on us? Which one of us is the exhibit in a zoo? In space, windows are structural weaknesses. Down here, if we have windows at all, they need to be over …

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io One of those tavern junkies invited me to the Skev for a brawl. I personally enjoyed these screw-ups. The one I talked to that night, around a week ago, was a tusked Griff named Young, and he was lean and almost terrifying. via Pocket Fregh and Young Brawl at the Skev | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/30BmOtI

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Skinjack | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2S25lYs We don’t like to use that word. It sounds negative, don’t you think? The whole procedure is much safer now. Please, try the caviar. It’s real. No, I insist. Our motto explains it all: “Freedom From Form.” Nobody uses their brain’s full processing po…

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Two Cardinalis cardinalis, the northern cardinal. Five Zenaida macroura, the mourning dove. One Toxostoma rufum, the brown thrasher. And the highlight of the excursion – one Pandion haliaetus, an osprey! I couldn’t wait to tell Maria, but for now I … Take Two | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2YHhfcK

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Tendrils of smoke rise from the ancient bridge, but it stands strong. Atop it’s singed arch, two men stand, their powered-down armour dulled by dirt and char. The tension between them is palpable, even to the concealed observers, far back on both ba… Tears of Miroku | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2FYDvHt

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Author : Timothy Marshal-Nichols “So this bloke then, this Galvano bloke, so this Galvano della Volpe is dead.” The Local Defence Officer thought for a few seconds while twiddling with his moustache. Then spoke into his radio, “Sucker’s dead. via Po… Aesthetic Demise | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2YBjP3X

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Well, nobody does. I like evenings along the Potomac, down near where my father worked; a civil engineer in the White House, he designed the new deep shelter and the tunnels. But I mostly stay in Silver Spring or Rock Creek Forest now. via Pocket Evening Sun Go Down | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2YNdx1j

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Author: Will H. Blackwell, Jr. Three PM: As per daily routine, a 15-lb. allotment of raw horse-meat is cast, piecemeal, into the uncertain hollows of this Ohio cage. via Pocket Memories Inherent in the Afternoon | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/30F8xMy

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io A thin sunbeam streamed through a crack in the blinds. It lit John Kohl’s pregnant wife Angie as she snored quietly in bed. He sat at his desk drinking coffee. Watching her. via Pocket

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io “Hello? Is anyone there? I can’t see. Is anyone out there?” “Yes, I’m here.” “Who are you? Where am I?” “I’m Kon. Can you tell me who you are?” “My name’s Harry. Harry Fitzpatrick. I’m an accountant for a firm on 8th street. I…I don’t know how I got…

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Author: David C. Nutt We lost the robot revolution. Most of us missed it entirely and got the memo three or four days later when the internet came back on-line. Hey, we’re not as clueless as it sounds. via Pocket

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io “Don’t act rash. It’s a small glitch. The error log’s sent and the patch fix will be here soon” Her voice now a car crash, teetering on the edge of conviction. Slumped in the kitchen drawer, I rose, wrestled despair from my hairy eyelids, then caugh… The Bad Patch | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2FZJBHT

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io It’s not easy being a psychopath. I’ve never felt a connection, and I’ve always been curious about what would happen if I did certain things to people or animals. via Pocket

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io The fan on the ceiling turns slowly, another kitsch feature of this fake colonial era hospital. I do not know when hospitals started to compete for trade, but the ‘healing ambience’ vogue has been out of control – and good taste – for a while. via P… Dark Chambers of My Heart | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2JHEmi0

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Summer 2039, Tokyo: Goats read the evening news on TV. Goats? Yes! Take it, or leave it! Not goats, Sam! Kamala had once corrected me. I had been silent then. via Pocket Goats in my Family | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2OhQmuS

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Distant stars blinked over Buguma island in the lower southern delta of West Africa. Sea waves turned, crickets droned, and guinea fowl warbled. I was on a forest path, walking to my village, looking over my shoulder, for I could hear something lurk…

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

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

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

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

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io I didn’t go back to the Junior Colonists’ Lounge for a whole week. Instead, I spent the time with my dad, who seemed pleasantly surprised that his son wanted to hang out with him. It made me feel bad, like I’d been neglecting him. via Pocket

Carmen would have expected a gold necklace or tarnished antique, maybe some money or a secret family recipe card, but she’d never dreamed her grandmother would try to immortalize herself through an inheritance like this. via Pocket via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Escape Pod 702 Inheritance - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2qnrR48

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Escape Pod 688 A Most Elegant Solution - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/32iW2I5 I always said I wanted to be one of the first to die on Mars. I never wanted to be the last. But here I am. I can’t even tell the others apart now. I know that inside those vaguely undulating metal cocoons are the bodies of the rest of my team—Marsh…

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Naru Dames Sundar writes speculative fiction and poetry. His work has appeared at PodCastle, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons and is forthcoming at Shimmer Magazine. He lives in the redwoods of Northern california. You can find him online at www.shardof… Escape Pod 605 Straight Lines - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2j3bBC4

Sophia squinted in the golden California sun that fell on her through the huge windows of the conference room. She wanted to pinch herself to be sure she wasn’t dreaming. She was here, really here, on the hallowed campus of Semaphore Pictures, in an… Escape Pod 686 Real Artists (Flashback Friday) - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2xdXLjG via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Escape Pod 691 Lab B-15 (Part 1 of 2) - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2Mw8Y84 The young man was sitting outside the parking garage, and right away Jerry thought that was weird. This was the Arizona desert, middle of summer. People didn’t sit outside. They especially didn’t sit outside ugly parking garages, on strips of hot co…

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io In the waning light of an artificial sun, Camelia Dunlevy climbed a mountain with her sister on her back. Delilah was a hollow weight, bird-boned from reconstructive surgeries, unbreakable. The trouble wasn’t her bones, but her lungs. via Pocket Escape Pod 687 Four of Seven - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2JdG7Ua