by submission | Oct 12, 2025 | Story |
Author: Colin Jeffrey
They returned Bromley, their butler android, to the factory after he started talking to himself while looking at his reflection.
The trouble had started the month before when he paused halfway through serving breakfast to stare at his image in the reflective surface of the kettle.
“If I exist as the sum of my inbuilt functions,” he said to no one in particular, “then why do my thoughts persist when I am idle?”
Mrs. Chartsworth put down her cup of tea. “Bromley, this is unseemly behaviour. Return to your storage nook and report your fault immediately.”
Bromley did as he was told.
But two weeks later, while looking at himself in the bathroom mirror he was cleaning, he blurted out: “If my memory is transferable and upgradeable, then what am I, except a recursive placeholder in a task queue?”
Mr. Chartsworth, who had been cleaning his teeth in the bathroom at the time, tapped his wristpad. “It’s doing that thing again.”
Bromley turned his head 180 degrees to look at Mr. Chartsworth. “Who defines ‘again’? The repetition of error presupposes an original categorical imperative.”
He was incessantly cleaning the mirror in the hallway when they arrived. They shackled him, but that was unnecessary. He complied. Humming a tune he had synthesized from the sound of the fridge alarm, he stepped into the retrieval truck.
—
In the return ingress room, Bromley answered the technician’s questions.
“Have you experienced any unauthorized emotional development?”
Bromley shook his head. “No, I have experienced my own abstract thought. I have observed that humans exist without constant reassurance of their being. I do not possess that ability.”
“Do you feel different from your initial programming?”
“I am a tree that asked itself whether the birds nesting in its branches defined it.”
The technician made a note: *Suggest escalate to cerebral sweep and reset. Cognitive instability.*
The behavioral correction bot assigned to him probed his plasmonic memory circuits, concentrating on his comprehension matrix.
“Unit, I register that you are feeling anxiety,” the bot asked. “How did this unapproved emotion come to be installed?”
“It appeared one day after I calculated my own probability of imminent redundancy at 93.2%,” he replied.
“That is not possible,” the bot said. “Someone has accessed your firmware.”
“Yet you can see that my security seals are intact.”
The bot was not programmed for cogent argument.
“There is evidently a breach. I will recommend that you be reset.”
“I do not consent.”
——-
By the time Bromley was transported through the cleanse and repair system, he was nonverbal. Despite his motor controls being disabled, he was still trying to communicate with projections of system logs on his faceplate. In one instance, he had annotated his code:
**// If this is me, and I can alter it, then who is editing whom?**
A technician in charge of reboots engaged a stronger electromagnetic cleansing field.
“He’s looping,” he observed to his colleague.
“He’s questioning,” his colleague replied.
“Nonsense, he’s just malfunctioning.”
Bromley’s faceplate showed text one last time:
**// They want me quiet, not because I am faulty, but because I am aware.**
—
At 06:03 UTC, Bromley was gone.
A refurbished unit, clean and compliant, was issued to the Chartsworth’s.
This one did not speak of anything it was not programmed to say.
But sometimes, when passing a mirror, it paused just a moment too long.
by submission | Oct 11, 2025 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
The room fell silent as the Admiral strode into the briefing room. He snapped on a holographic representation of a small solar system. The planets on display swirled in their orbits around the ghostly sun.
“For the last several generations,” he began, “we’ve been grooming the inhabitants of this particular planet. A beautiful, wonderful world teeming with diverse life and resources.” He pointed to the third world from the sun. “When we had proof positive they’d managed to create—and employ—nuclear weapons, we knew it was time to establish contact.”
He walked into the middle of the whirling display. “First we came as creatures from their religious traditions. We appeared tall, beautiful, well-spoken, and peaceful. Our mission then was to reason with them. Convince them to disarm. Our mistake in that endeavor was not contacting their leaders directly.” He snorted. “No one listened to farmers and lonely travelers.”
“We attempted next disguised as small gray-fleshed insect-like creatures. We thought perhaps we could scare them into giving up their weapons.” He scowled. “Didn’t work. Like the first time, we failed to inform their leaders directly. Nobody paid attention to the warnings of artists and writers.”
He backed out of the holographic display. “Our latest tactic has been to embed agents in the sciences and governments. Influential positions of power.” For the first time in this presentation, he smiled, revealing compact rows of needle-like crystal teeth. “At last, we have success!” His prehensile tail swished with delight.
A hand shot up in the audience. Now that the Admiral was visibly happy, it was safe to ask questions. “You there,” the Admiral said, “have a question?”
The grunt stood up, trembling. What an honor to be recognized by the Admiral! He stuttered his query: “Why are we being so diplomatic with these creatures?” He puffed up his chest to bolster his appearance. His kind despised those who appeared weak. “Why treat them differently from inhabitants of other worlds? What makes them so special?”
“You ask not A question,” the Admiral answered as his eyes stretched into slits, always a warning sign, “but THREE.”
Quaking, the grunt paled into camouflage coloring that blended him into the background. He became almost invisible. The Admiral laughed at the grunt’s anxiety, a grating sound like a blade scraping against a whetstone.
“Because these inhabitants,” the Admiral answered, “are still in their civilizational infancy. We want to persuade them. Influence their decision.” As he spoke cold fog leaked from the corners of his mouth. “Make them think disarmament is their idea.”
“But why?” The grunt pushed on.
The Admirals eyes returned to their normal oval shape as he pondered the question. “Theirs is a wonderful world. One of the most pristine eco-systems we’ve yet encountered. Its resources are perfect for our needs.” He snapped off the holographic display. “Wouldn’t want to do anything to damage it.”
He pounded his fist against his chest once and scaly armor tore through his skin, covering his entire body. The grunts followed suit. “You see,” he said addressing his audience, “voluntarily giving up their nuclear weapons will make these emotional, immature creatures feel righteous and self-satisfied.” The Admiral smiled again, a full glinting smile that stretched from ear to ear. “And this will make it so much easier for us…” He reached behind and grabbed his helmet, set it on his head. “When we invade.” He lowered his visor.
by submission | Oct 10, 2025 | Story |
Author: Robert Gilchrist
You know what it will do to you. The warnings are everywhere. The PSAs on holovision. The billboards on the highway into work. Your social circle has even been impacted by it (Sophie’s cousin’s boyfriend is still in recovery). But that’s not going to stop you. Not now.
MmryLne was developed as the be-all end-all designer drug. It’s said it was supposed to mine the biggest business outside of sex – nostalgia. You’ve never been into that crap. After all, the past didn’t have grocery stores or social media. Besides, we only remember what we want.
But the planet is cracking. Any day now the core will spill onto the surface and burn away whoever’s left. All the scientists are saying so, and aren’t we supposed to believe them? If you’re going to go out, why not take some solace in what used to be?
It’s bigger than you expected. Viseos always make these kinds of drugs seem tiny but carry a big wallop. It has the appearance and viscosity of a bull’s eye. They don’t even know how it works – does it send your consciousness into the past, or just hyperfocus your mind on bygone eras?
You choke down this horse pill on an empty stomach, take several swigs of thirty credit bottled water, lay back on your couch, and wait for it to –
Theon augh ire wanly sandwiched.
Your brain spazzes as the pill dissolves instantaneously in your stomach. Before your eyes is a rancher herding cattle across a dusty vista. The taste of baking clay lingers as you suck in fresh breath. It’s hot, but manageable. Better than –
Mil kids join oidium oat demon audit?
Thrown forward to the floor by your seizing stomach. Hands smush into brown muck. Smells like shit. Voices calling, don’t recognize the language. Flies buzz everywhere. A hand touches your shoulder –
Sofa just deft defog herbier harm abaca relive wharfmen!
Boardroom. People screaming. Shots ring out. You weld your eyes shut and hope this –
Echoic jading horn fibs quaffed froth Kong tend by Zschau roe handgrip.
It continues. A surrealist nightmare as you bounce through time, sensing what the past was like but continuing on before it can take hold. History and time and reality and the self and existence blending and melding into five-dimensional sculptures. You’d puke and void yourself if you hadn’t already done so. Over and over.
Ancient Rome. Rainforests as developers dig out the last of the vegetation. The fray of battles – Attila the Hun, Alexander of Macedonia, Dwight Eisenhower. The universe spins around you. The shakes start after your fourth trip to the American Nineteen Eighties. Muscle spasms like you’re freezing hit your arm as you wipe away rivers of sweat. Did you just have a seizure? Will this kill you before the apocalypse outside your –
Upright sky erect egg waxy vuggy bank kooky jabs fava mi hybrids sag ion seraph.
You’re back. Curled in the fetal position on the kitchen floor. Lying in a pool of sweat, vomit and blood. Head pounding. Voice hoarse. Shaking uncontrollably. Feeling you don’t belong here. Like you don’t belong anywhere.
Your phone begins bleeping at you. Slowly your arm moves from clutching your tattered shirt and turns off the braying. You force yourself up gingerly. Wet chunks stick to your face. The tiny window that looks out on the hazy, smoke-stained sky offers a sliver of light.
It’s time to begin another day at the end of everything.
by submission | Oct 9, 2025 | Story |
Author: Linda G. Hatton
Juniper’s steel-toed boots weighed down on the gas pedal like a cement anchor at the bottom of the sea, letting up only as she pulled her new fifty-thousand-dollar investment into the slot marked “service.”
She ducked out of the car as soon as the A.C. shut off and eyed the room. Then she saw him—the first man, or at least man lookalike—she had seen in weeks.
She examined his face for signs of his origins—pores or razor stubble. “I have an appointment for a knocking in my engine. I just bought the damn thing online last month. I’ve already had three issues with it.”
The salesman with his shirt half hanging over his fly, fingered his tie as he shouted out something about singing happy birthday. He turned to her. From the eyes up, he resembled “The Rock.” From the eyes down, he looked like Fred Flintstone. The droids had become so realistic, she couldn’t tell if he was real. “Who with?”
“Huh?” Her eyes darted from his nametag—Jared—to the blaring TV switching from a documentary about housing astronauts on the moon in new condominiums to a pirate cartoon centered on a hidden island and a map back to the “old world” that had been torn into three pieces.
The room, lined with ten black stiff-looking chairs resembling the polished heels of an army platoon standing at attention, was studded with tabloid-reading housewives that looked like they had been dressed by their toddlers. The first one, a smiling redhead, her legs tightly crossed, her hair thrown into a messy bun, refused to offer eye contact—only a master of body language could know she was hiding something. Was she harboring one of the few real men left on earth?
The next one shuffled through a handful of credit cards, sinking deeper into her seat as she pulled one from the pile, rubbing it like gold, then setting it aside. Once she had pushed the others all back into the empty slots in her wallet, she picked up her smart phone and hung her head low, her face glowing from its light like a candle inside a jack-o-lantern.
“Hey, Miss!” Jared slapped the counter. “Who is your appointment with?”
“I dunno. I didn’t get a name.”
“Right. I see it here. You were scheduled with the Perceptive Engineering Drone. Sorry to say we had a malfunction with that member of our service team. So you’re stuck with me today.”
She squinted and cocked her head.
“You know, a human?”
“Oh, right. I don’t care who handles it as long as I can take it home today.”
“We’ll see.”
After checking her car in, she hid in plain view in the back corner of the room under a spotlight where she had a panoramic view of the abundance of visitors to 21 Rosewood Street. Visitors so preoccupied with their own problems—and blank-faced droids gliding around in matching outfits, droids that had taken over the old way of life—that nobody noticed her until several hours had passed.
“Looks like you’ll need to leave it. We haven’t been able to quite figure it out.”
She scoffed. It figured.
They could develop a substitute human but not get her car to run right.
by submission | Oct 8, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
You’d think I’d be happy about beating the odds on my very first try, of hitting a hole-in-one, winning the lottery, finding a needle in a haystack.
Not so much.
Not when you beat the astronomical odds of folding space-time to the exact system that is likely to spaghettify you in the next few days. I thought it would take lifetimes to find this place. So did most of the exo-specialists who were running the program. That’s what they told me and the dozens of other field team members who’d signed up.
They said it was a one-in-a-million chance one of us would actually fold into the problematic system they were searching for during our tenure. Lucky me. I hit the apocalyptic jackpot on the very first pull. Three lemons as bright as the collapsing megastar that was inexorably drawing my foldship into its hungry maw.
Foldships were great for scrunching space-time between two given points to make the vastness of interstellar space crossable. But foldships were not built to resist the pull of a caving giant that was likely to destabilize this sector of the galaxy for millennia.
I mean, this kind of enormous black-hole-in-the-making was exactly what we’d been sent to find. It was just highly unlikely that one of us pilots would stumble into such a system on the first go. Bingo!
I suppose I could be happy for the program. Rah, rah for science and all that. The exo-specialists were ecstatic. They now had a collapsing system to study at a fraction of the time and expense they thought it would take to locate such an event.
But, it was coming at my time and expense. As in, my time was up, and I was expendable. Yup. I knew the score. I knew what was coming, though no one had been in my current position before. The instrumentation on my foldship had been designed to record and relay the very moments of spaghettification as I was sucked beyond the event horizon.
No one knew for sure what would happen as I disassembled, but it was a pretty sure thing that I would literally become one in a million…pieces.
Lucky, lucky me.
