A Heart Too Big
She stood there staring at her body, wondering why her husband opted for an open casket. Even when she was living, she was self-conscious of her looks. But now in…[...]
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You’re Always Here
Thirty-five minutes and twenty-nine seconds. He walks in when the clock ticks thirty, and her heart skitters with instinctive, awful familiarity. It is the little things like these that she…[...]
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Six Home Runs
VIDEO: Most Valuable S3E7 “Six Home Runs” air: 6 October 2016 dir. Henry Yang CAROLYN GENNARO: Welcome to “Most Valuable” on Showtime, interviewing the athletes at the heart of the…[...]
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A Gray Interlude
After the bombs fell, the world turned gray. Not just in the distance, although you could only see an arm’s length ahead of you. But when you looked at the…[...]
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Color of truth
“Mind the shadow. What do you think that means, Anton?”“How should I know? I think this guy was paranoid. The outside team found this yesterday with the corpse. He wasn’t…[...]
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The Forty-Fourth
Stars I am dying beneath a sky that does not care. The stars above Verantis are unfamiliar. Cold. Indifferent. They have seen countless deaths and will see countless more. Mine…[...]
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A Melting Planet
To Willy, Irene was like a mystical creature. He’d learned extensively about her in his research, to the point where meeting her in the flesh was surreal. Likewise, Irene had…[...]
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The Necessity of Blood
You must not bleed. You learn this first of all. Before love, before knowledge, before faith. You must not bleed. To bruise is unideal but sometimes a blow must be…[...]
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The Girl Who Saw Green
“Just one, please,” I said, fishing around in my pocket for change. Crap, forgot my wallet again. The cashier nodded and gave me a wrinkled smile as she hurried to…[...]
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The Colour Tax
Lumi was seven when she asked what blue cost.Solenne rinsed the breakfast bowls with cold water. Grey soap melted across her fingers in thin strips. The city climbed at the…[...]
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Blackberrying
The two cloaked sisters entered the greyscale forest. To E, the youngest, it was just the forest. A world without colour was all she had ever known. A was just…[...]
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The Color of Nothing
Shirley Harbrecht hissed into the receiver. “Richard! What about the car insurance?”She needn’t have worried about Jeffrey overhearing her, because her young son was lost in the project that lay…[...]
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Black Market Hands
Black Market Hands By: Michael K Norris Officer Wells rapped his knuckles on the garage’s side door as a robot walked by on the nearby sidewalk - holding a dog…[...]
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Red Shifted
Ezekiel Crowe once drew maps for the living. His clean lines guided lost souls through the untamed wilderness, steering them clear of swamps and bogs and onto solid ground. For…[...]
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Smoke and Signals
Experiment complete. Status: Failure.“Wynn. Good morning, Wynn.” A bird three shades darker than that of the light grey sky chirped from a thin branch outside a domed glass window that…[...]
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Pale Blue Sky
There was naught a tree speckling the horizon. White, cracked salt flats spread before me, crumbling beneath the weight of the pale blue sky. Nary a wisp of rain cloud…[...]
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Before the Sun
The twilight of dawn covered the ground. The light slithering over the trees, the fields, the unkempt grass. The shadows cowering away with increasing speed as the early rays shot…[...]
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A Very Red Vase
The upside to catching a lasgun beam in the stomach rather than a lead bullet, Sinclair thought, is there is no bullet you have to dig for before stitching yourself…[...]
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Resolution Revolution
Trigger Warnings: - disturbing imagery- societal manipulation- militant themes Jade Zelenska was a snapshot of whimsey in an urban jungle. From the space-buns wrangled by mismatched, neon scrunchies to the…[...]
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The Grayscale Syndrome
CW: Mass death, suicide, apocalyptic themes The Grayscale Syndrome “This is the Friday night edition of the Critical Mass podcast with Ava Winslow. I would ask how everyone is doing,…[...]
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The Shape of Knowing
The Shape of KnowingThe lights went out on a Wednesday in October, which was an inconvenient day for the end of the world. Don Anderson was in the shop behind…[...]
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a universe of accidents
It takes Tim four tries to find a universe with a sky that looks like his own.There’s nothing particularly unique about this universe. It looks the way everything has looked…[...]
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Blood Orange
Clementine would have been accused of being a witch, she thinks to herself as she uncovers the items donated to the museum. Thunder rumbles in the distance as she is…[...]
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The Humanoid
1 The twenty-second century anno domini was seven years in when a rod of purple lightning cut through an enormous dark cloud sauntering past a most orange, most arid landscape…[...]
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I The Chimera, T The Tachyon, and We The Web
My kin told me a long time ago in my youth, “The earth remembers what” others “forget.” “Others? Of whom do you speak?” I asked ”You’ll see” said affirmatively my…[...]
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A Pagan May Day Festival in the garden of Earth, Wind, Fire and Water
"Good day" echoed thru the huge stainless steel room. White lights glared off the the shiny floor and walls. Stale air hung still, smelt metallic. A crowd of women, silently…[...]
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Jave Islands
The sun is hot on my skin. I have so much to do and so many places to be but I'm not in a hurry. I've had a song stuck…[...]
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The Earth Remembers
Ruth stood at the shoreline and took deep breaths. She had been in charge of the island for years, but sometimes, standing here, staring into the openness of the water,…[...]
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The missing Variable
The projection models said Miami would be underwater by 2050. They didn't say anything about the asphalt breathing.I felt it before I saw it — a deep, sub-bass shudder through…[...]
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SKIN DEEP IN THE PROMISED LAND
Dr. Irina Polavina did not set out to change the world. Her target was much more mundane. She simply wanted to rid the world of grey hair. Studies by her…[...]
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The Day The Moon Went Dark
The moon went dark. It wasn’t noticed right away. Lunar cycles and all that. The New Moon, the moment of every cycle when we look to the sky and see…[...]
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Sons of Gilgamesh
I am professor Almeck Geboddi, and I am recording this tape to substantiate our findings on this expedition to seek the origins of the ancient epic poem about Gilgamesh King…[...]
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Field Notes From Extinction
FIELD NOTES FROM EXTINCTIONHolly Ringwood TRANSMISSION BEGINS: LOG 01 - Terra Reconnaissance MissionArchival Unit 04 reporting COMMENCING TERRESTRIAL SURVEY: Atmospheric Instability: 20% This planet is vacant. This was not anticipated.…[...]
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The Formless Gate
The sun had just begun to touch the hills when I reached the Formless Gate. There was but one gap in the mighty trees, a yawning mouth that both beckoned…[...]
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The Coquimbo Node
The ceiling fan spun slow, like lazy vultures circling through the smoky neon haze of the bar. The air was thick—too thick—humid in a way that didn’t belong this close…[...]
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The Last Midwife
The Last Midwife Her name was Evelyn Marrow. In the dim, sterile glow of the Evergreen Care Facility’s common room, she sat alone with her memories and the faint, ever-present…[...]
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To Subatomic Particles You Shall Return
Alpha Memento Mori was a special universe. Like every universe, stars moved out of their neighborhood seeking new beginnings. But they strayed too far and consumed all their resources in…[...]
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The Earth Remembers
It is said that the earth remembers what we forget. Steph first heard the line from her father, Oscar, on a morning when the sea looked tired. Not angry.Not stormy.Just…[...]
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The Small Ones First
I found them by their heat.From altitude, the planet read mostly in blues and greens, the thermal signature of a world still within habitable range but trending wrong. Pockets of…[...]
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The Art of the Aeolune
They called the Collapse a technological failure. The downfall of humanity. Grids failed. Satellites dropped, crashing onto earth. Networks went dark. Then the cities. There was no power. No way…[...]
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The Spirit of Seeds
The wind howled like a lioness asking for her mate. A long, drawn out burst of chaos followed by waves of silence. The tree branches pleaded for the breaks as…[...]
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The Archivist
The fire crackled. Sparks of ash shot into the air and lit the night sky with their own kind of starlight. It was beautiful, in a way. And yet it…[...]
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Ancient, Mighty and Eternal
Prompt: Write a story where the line between myth and reality begins to blur.Prompt: Write a story that connects mythology and science. Ancient, Mighty and Eternal “It’s an agglomerated catastrophe,”…[...]
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The Last Calibration
Elena Vasquez pressed her thumb against the brass adjustment wheel. Forty-three years calibrating Precision Balance #7, and her thumb still remembered the exact force (2.3 pounds) before the mechanism engaged.…[...]
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The Soul of a Tree
I ached. My branches creaked like the old bones of a buck. Had many come and go. Some never return. A loss of the tiniest bird makes my heartwood ache…[...]
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Web of Life
[Set in the Pantheon of Worlds universe] Earth carried the heat and pressure for a long time before she named it fever. For millions of years it had built in…[...]
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Interchange
[Set in the Pantheon of Worlds universe] South America felt the land bridge solidify, like scar tissue forming where no scar belonged. For sixty million years, since the age of…[...]
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Beneath the Oak
Padraig stared at the grove from the other side of the fence. Green like that made his stomach ache. The white drone beeped and hovered above the ground beneath the…[...]
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How to rebuild the future
The Earth remembers what we forget. The husks of humanity’s past glory, laid out all around for us to admire… And yet, we lack the ability to restore them, to…[...]
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Myths Made Real
Ewan felt the bumpy texture of his basketball he dribbled against the tips of his fingers. Nimbly they caught his hand before he sent it again to the ground. The…[...]
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Who Will Remember the Incolae?
Who Will Remember the Incolae? “The best way to heal a world is not to break it in the first place.”—Captain Arthur Landsman, exploration cruiser Daniel Boone Horsehead Bay, Planet…[...]
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I Do This to Remember
When people ask me how or why I chose to get into this line of work, I tell them the story of my grandfather’s funeral. Which, I know, is never…[...]
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Archive of the Quiet
Nova had seen the planet answer in many ways. It had warmed the moss beneath her palms when she was afraid. It had raised stone ridges where she needed footholds.…[...]
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Es Tut Mir Leid
Es Tut Mir Leid (I'm Sorry)By Jeff RonayHe was in trouble. The two rifle-bearing MPs blocking his entrance to the building after he’d parked his faded Chevy pickup sent a…[...]
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I Went to the Woods
The forest sat alone in a cradle made of sand. It was a seven day drive across the sun-bleached wasteland, nothing but arid desert as far as the eye could…[...]
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At the Dawn of the Second Age
Evie was only six years old the first time she met a unicorn. It was not, as she had thought, a horse with a horn on its head. Rather, it…[...]
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Where I End, I Begin
I woke up to the sound of shelling. It had become my usual morning routine, the same way my hair felt heavy and greasy now under the helmet I never…[...]
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Interview 1
“Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today, Mr. H,” I set my recorder on the table, “Do you mind? Helps with my notes.” I smiled at…[...]
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Dr. Lethargy and Joe
You can learn how to crochet granny squares on YouTube, and you can memorize a recipe to make a peach-infused Sex on the Beach. You can master bleaching your hair,…[...]
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This Water Lives in Muña
Father Time watched the death of Mother Earth and in his sorrow became a drunkard that knew not whether to regress or progress, so in his confusion he mashed it…[...]
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Superstitionology
When the third black goat of the local farmer, the third-born of his family, unexplainably died that night, under the light of the crescent blood moon, everything became as clear…[...]
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The Experience
Preface:Author get to experience only what you see in the movie. Chapter One: The Author Lois tried to calm her nervous by pulling out a cigarette from her jacket pocket.Noticing…[...]
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The Irreseus Anomalies
I found myself at quite the impasse as I began research at the prestigious Irreseus University, under the equally prestigious, if not more prestigious Doctor Ambrose, whose name would be…[...]
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The Smallest Expert
The Smallest Expert The future of indoor plants was saved on a random Thursday morning by a seven-year-old girl with a bottle of beer. At the time, the little girl…[...]
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The Final Destination
The Final Descent"Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say," Hotchkiss said, staring at the cold flecks of light in the darkness outside the…[...]
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Asphalt and Ashes
"Remember, little one, the Earth will be angry.” Grandmother said, the wrinkles on her face like furrows in a farmer’s field, timeless eyes like the sea and the sky and…[...]
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The King Of Qadesh: The History of the Power Talisman
“Years ago our nation was facing unparalleled peace. After the split from Egypt, our people established themselves near the basin.” Grandma stated as she held the book containing the secrets…[...]
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From Rot to Rebirth
Fresh air seeps through the slowly opening petals of my Ephyte Cradle. For the first time in this new life, I feel cool and thick air on my cheeks. This…[...]
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The Cartographer of Quiet Places
Maren Voss has spent seventeen years making maps nobody ever truly reads. She charts dead moons, catalogs debris fields, marks the coordinates of places so remote that the light leaving…[...]
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The Quiet Between Worlds
By the time the Acheron cleared the Moon and settled into deep-range trajectory, Elias Vane had stopped checking Earth every hour. The first week, he kept finding reasons to return…[...]
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Failure to Connect
Elaine kept the lights off when she got home because the dark made the apartment feel larger. Outside her single oval window, the planet Sera-9 glowed in bruised shades of…[...]
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2 body problem
A 2 BODY PROBLEM “Whoever reads this, I want them to know I was the first to figure it out. It was me, J. Luis Zabala. I was the first,…[...]
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The Darkest Point of Night
Every bit of starlight we see is ancient. The night sky is a tapestry of twinkling relics flung across millions of lightyears, eons from when they first burned. Even after…[...]
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Madman’s Ball
Doctor Lena was escorted into the cavernous citadel of the Hierophant, a madman cloaked in shadow. The doctor used the telescopic functionality of his cybernetic eyes to peer into the…[...]
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Stranger in a Strange Dating Scene
“I’d thought you’d be taller.” “I’m not really looking for a floogian right now.” “Do I look like I date Terrans?”“YOU DARE PROPOSITION ME, EARTHLING!?”“✡︎□︎◆︎🕯︎❒︎♏︎ ◻︎♋︎⍓︎♓︎■︎♑︎ ♐︎□︎❒︎ ⧫︎♒︎♓︎⬧︎ ⬧︎♏︎⬧︎⬧︎♓︎□︎■︎📪︎ ❒︎♓︎♑︎♒︎⧫︎✍︎”“Sorry,…[...]
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Before We Were Selected
On this planet, love was no longer private. It had become administrative. Not because emotion had disappeared, but because survival had made it inefficient to leave partnership to chance, or…[...]
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The Greenhouse Incident at Station 648
I was alone for New Year’s Eve this year. But then, that was my fault, so I could hardly blame anyone else. Who was it, again, who opened the plant…[...]
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An accidental miracle
Ships Log; date unknown, time unknown.I've landed on a planet that, until today, didn't exist on any of our charts. It wasn't supposed be in our path to DL261. We…[...]
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The Becoming Protocol
*some words in this story have been adapted into their closest human equivalent for clarity Thalën's hands wouldn't stop moving. He kept smoothing the fabric of his selk, then his…[...]
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Is Anybody Out There?
Captain Paul Chalmers was woken by the sound of the proximity siren ripping through his skull. “What the fuck?” he murmured, opening his eyes to see the strips of lighting…[...]
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Make No Mistake
If you limit your actions in life to things nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much. - Lewis Carroll Bekky was a miracle to behold. She…[...]
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Quick Deaths
Kael armed the forbidden gas at 03:47 local time, fourteen minutes before the bakery ovens would have been lit.The standard harvest protocols glowed amber on the console beside it. Two…[...]
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To the Moon… and Back?
The lifeless lunar landscape lay beyond the small window of the habitation unit. Black skies, white mountains. No air to breathe. The surface was scorching during the day and freezing…[...]
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Mission Zeus 5: The eyes of a scientist
Day 1,765 — First Entry I remember when things were normal. I was with my family, having dinner with Celine and the kids. Marcus had just won his baseball tournament…[...]
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Signal Drift
Commander Elias Voss had forgotten what wind sounded like.Not station ventilation. Not the endless hiss of oxygen cycling through metal lungs. Real wind. The kind that moved through trees and…[...]
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Home Again
It was not possible. His parents were standing there, hugging him, overjoyed for his safe return. The reporters, screaming questions at him, ‘How are you feeling?’ ‘What was it like?’…[...]
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