Everyone fails the first time. It’s what Tucker told you, morning after morning, as you and he sipped coffee from the same old mugs, preparing for another day of training. via Pocket

In all my days on Gulliver’s Rest, I never believed that the War would reach us. From the window, I see the sky is pitted with scars from the wreckage of an Artari Sunskipper, ripped from history in a series of blinding flashes. I came to this plane…

The manual had been totally inadequate. For a start the Chinglish translation was hopelessly out of date, there were archaic digiverbs in it that must have been superseded at least three authorisations ago. via Pocket

The metal clasps dug into my arms as they strapped me to the chair. I spat on one of the guards and called into question the loyalty of his wife. He raised his hand to strike but the other guard stopped him with a simple movement of the eyes. via Po…

“—and she said, well, that’s as may be, lad, but if you don’t recall what color it was, then I don’t see how I can help you!” Roars of laughter seemed to shake the hot taproom. via Pocket

It is the business of the Dream Curator to choose, and at the moment he is doing so. On his left, an uninspiring rococo fantasia on a childhood humiliation; on his right, a fractured symbolist nightmare of mollusks and walls of televisions. via Pock…

We were getting coffee, which we used to do all the time, when Tierney told me she was thinking of having it done. I’d hurt her feelings. I hadn’t meant to. As I tried to think of what to say I followed the line of her eyes to a woman who’d just wal…

The Dream Curator - Lightspeed Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2QVrLZx

The Real You™ - Lightspeed Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2AgNQw1

Use the photograph above as the inspiration for your flash fiction story. Write whatever comes to mind (no sexual, political, or religious stories, jokes, or commentary, please) and after you PROOFREAD it, submit it as your entry in the comments sec…

“House The Restaurant,” by Lee Blevins - Defenestration via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2PFQWyP

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, he looks away and begins clicking and whistling. I ask about my crewmates…

I first encountered the new barre studio in my neighborhood as I was walking home after meeting my coworkers for drinks. The light streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows and illuminating the crisp white walls and hardwood floors caught my at…

Rebecca set her fork down. “Be honest with me. How is work going? I mean, really.” He sighed, shoulders rolling forward. “It’s bad. Real bad.” Damn, she hated to see that look in his eyes. She reached across the table and snaked her fingers through …

How to tell your boyfriend you are in love with a robot: Tell him, “I may possibly be in love with a robot,” because absolutes are difficult for biological brains to process. He won’t be jealous. via Pocket

The worst day of Wells the Magician’s life begins pleasantly enough, with a shot of whiskey at the Lost Kingdom bar. via Pocket

The box sat upon the table. It was inanimate, but strange waves of light moved across its surface and Roman felt a tingle in the back of his head like the beginning of a headache. via Pocket

I rested my eyes upon the tessellated sphere. It was such a beautiful dream. It was such a spectacular failure. If the world is a golf ball, then I’m the one who drove it straight into the bottom of the lake. My club? A thing so simple, so deadly, s…

Perhaps it would have been better, somehow, if this had been sample #142 or #96 or #305, something innocuous and meaningless but no, it was sample number one, the first, and he already wanted to taste it. via Pocket

My daughter fell from the top of the world. She tripped, she gripped, she slipped, and she fell. Into three kilometers of open air. I have a desk. Everyone on the atmospheric entry project thinks it’s the quaintest thing. They can’t understand it. v…

The path to enlightenment is through obedience to wisdom, and who is wiser than the Everlasting Emperor? via Pocket

[CC] Welcome online, Cybernetic Elbow Model CI953-L. This is your introductory Initial Boot orientation. You are currently in a locked and muted configuration while external medical systems run diagnostics to see that your replacement procedure has …

It was the end of all chaos. The room was clouded with murky smog. Ling Xi had coughed herself awake. via Pocket

When we set out to weave a new world from the old, broken one, we knew we pledged the lives of our clutches and our clutches’ clutches to wandering the wastes. via Pocket

It was midsummer when I arrived in Corcaigh from Sadbhsfort, and the famine parties were in full swing. I don’t know if you remember the posters for them—in a vibrant shawl, a red-headed woman stands, holding a twin in each arm. via Pocket

My grandmother is five hundred and ninety-two years old. Left to her own devices and the pitiless march of time this wonderful woman, who is actually my many times great grandmother, would have slipped away and into the finality of whatever the fuck…

“I give this gift to the people of tomorrow. On the precipice of this great twilight I take comfort in knowing that as our ports run dry and our rails rust the people of the world will always have access to the materials needed to shape the world ar…

The thing I just saw dead on the road is huge. It’s not human. I’m glad of that. via Pocket

On a far balcony, people are starting to panic. A crystal goblet flashes rainbow reflections as it tumbles, the hand that held it snatched backwards so quickly the goblet falls straight down. The holder was my target: now more a thing of art and geo…

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer “Will there be zombies?”, she asks and I shake my head no and we weave around the discarded limbs and the stalled cars and sodden newspapers with pages that no longer flick and away from this city of rot. via Pocket