by submission | Jul 11, 2026 | Story
Author: Sarah Klein
The birds are gone.
Last week, one small sparrow, digging in vain in the ashy ground.
Sue puts up pictures of birds around the compound to join the squirrels, rabbits, and foxes
tacked up.
Dave says we have to go. But there is still too much food to take with us, and there is no
guarantee of finding more.
Mary-Lou outside, vomiting, vomiting, vomiting. Her sobs are too loud. Someone finally guides
her back inside. Hushed conversation, a wail.
My hands are chafed from laundry. I go downstairs to find someone to trade tasks with. Dave
sits there, his head in his hands. He hears me, looks up. His face is streaked with tears.
I don’t know what to say, but he speaks first.
“It’s begun,” he says quietly. My stomach churns, flips. I grip the rail. I want to run.
Dave lifts his left arm. There is an ugly, scaly red rash twisting its way around it, from wrist to
shoulder. The first sign.
“I’m sorry,” I say, in almost a whisper. There’s nothing else to say.
Dave shrugs, stands up. Looks me in the eye. “Goodbye, Katie. You are well loved and
knowledgeable. Take care of everyone.” He sticks his hands in his pockets and turns. Shuffles down to
the lab.
We weren’t as close as the other village. But we don’t know. I wait for the sound of the bell, for
the beginning of skin checks, for the beginning of the end.
There is a picture of a blue jay on the wall next to me. I tear it down. Ball it up. Stuff it in my
mouth, so I won’t scream.
by submission | Jul 10, 2026 | Story
Author: Hillary Lyon
Moj awoke to three white-coated beings hovering over her, murmuring amongst themselves. One leaned back to choose an elongated needle-like device from a tray of gleaming instruments. Another swabbed her arm with a moist, stinging pad.
They pressed the needle against her skin, and the needle bent. The white-coats tried additional implements, and each either bent, or broke.
Finally, one white-coat had the idea to try to pierce the inside of her elbow, where her gray-green skin was softest. The needle slid in successfully.
The white coats jabbered happily and began extracting samples of her essence.
* * *
How much of my essence do they need? Moj wondered. Two white-coats left the room carrying trays of fragile vials containing her essence, leaving one to finish taking samples. The clumsy one.
Enough! Moj growled when the needle twisted painfully against her arm bone. Her patience was at an end. Rising anger flushed her greenish skin crimson, altered her blood into acid.
The white-coat startled, witnessing these sudden, unanticipated changes. He stumbled backwards, dropping the syringe, which he then stepped on. The broken instrument leaked Moj’s blood-acid on the floor, and when it combined with oxygen it created a stupefying fog.
Panic made the white-coat breathe faster, which made him inhale more of the fog. He slid down to the floor and slept.
Moj popped her restraints and retrieved her transportation cuff from the collection of artifacts the white-coats had on display in the glass cabinet in a corner of the examination room. She deftly entered the extraction code, and when she pointed to a bare spot on the floor, a glowing blue-white circle appeared. She grabbed the white-coat by his collar and dragged him into the circle with her.
She tapped the blinking green button on her cuff, and the two of them burst into a shower of glowing glitter. The circle quickly shrank until it disappeared entirely.
* * *
On board the mother-ship, two silver-gloved, hulking Reptilian aides were waiting beside the rim of the transportation portal for Moj and the white-coat. Upon arrival they took the white-coat and half-walked, half-dragged the slowly rousing human towards the elevator.
“No no no no no no no!” The now fully-conscious white-coat wailed as he twisted in the firm grip of the Reptilians. To the white-coat’s ears, their laughter sounded like toads croaking in a dark and musty swamp.
“Hey!” Moj yelled, immediately silencing the white-coat. She’d been on Earth enough times to become proficient in the majority of Earthen languages.
“My species and your species,” Moj continued in her best British-statesman accent, “came to a trading accord long ago, and every government on your planet is a willing—though covert—partner. The resulting benefits move both civilizations forward.”
The white-coat groaned.
“Too bad you were left out of the loop.” Moj nodded to the reptilians to move on, adding, “Your situation is merely part of the agreed-upon exchange program.”
As the elevator’s transparent doors began to close, Moj shrugged her thin green shoulders and pointed out to the now-dispirited white-coat, “Fair is fair.” The doors came together with a wet, sucking sound before the elevator slid down to the vivisection lab, two levels below.
by submission | Jul 8, 2026 | Story
Author: Charles M. Mwangi
A hum.
The judge’s head cranks forward. His neck whirs when he turns, and his blue eyes flicker. From where I’m seated inside the cage, the initials A.I. are visible on his forehead.
His fingers converge into one single probe, which he uses to tap the screen before him.
“Your name?” he asks.
“Njoroge,” I say.
“Not that one. The other one.”
“Tapestry.”
He smiles: silver teeth; no tongue. “What is it you’ve done, Mr. Tapestry?”
“You tell me.”
“I want it from you.”
When I’m done telling him, he says, “You faltered there, Mr. Tapestry. Towards the end of your statement.”
“That’s the truth,” I say.
“You faltered!”
He leans forward and turns a knob on his desk. A jolt of electricity hits my feet. I stagger back. “I told you the truth!” I cry.
“You faltered, Mr. Tapestry. Please repeat your…”
“Fuck…funny!”
“What is funny, Mr. Tapestry?”
“This whole shi…sheeeet!”
“You smuggled another man’s brain, Mr. Tapestry. Is that funny?”
“He was dead!”
“Dead?”
“Like you!”
“Still you took it. To undermine us—your helpers?”
“For the future.”
“What future?”
My lawyer, uploaded inside the judge’s head, chuckles, then says, “You are an earth-hole, Mr. Tapestry. Confess.”
“You’re my lawyer, asshole!”
The judge looks up and says, “I see your dance, Mr. Tapestry. More. Merrier.” He turns the knob all the way. I dance. I pass out.
More. Merrier.
*
The judge is humming when I come to. The floor is wet with my piss.
“Lawyer!”
A click inside the judge’s head.
“Mr. Tapestry?” my lawyer calls. His voice is thick.
“I was tortured,” I say.
“The judge decides.”
“You dumb… I’m innocent!”
“You are human.”
“We made you!” I scream.
The judge and my lawyer speak in unison: “We run you.”
A hum.
by submission | Jul 7, 2026 | Story
Author: Richard Dalglish
Harry walked into Jake’s Tavern, nodded to Meredith behind the bar, and perched on a barstool. He was the only customer. A distant rumble, like a truck downshifting, rippled through the cool silence inside the bar, and Harry felt the floor quiver. Bottles shook, a tinkling sound as Johnny Walker trembled against Grey Goose.
“How is it out there?” Meredith asked.
“Could be worse.”
Meredith set down a beer glass and opened a bottle of Samuel Adams. Harry poured, filled the glass, left a nice head. Before he could take a drink, the door opened with a creak and Harry turned to look. A stranger stepped in. He stood tall, well over six feet, and wore odd clothing in a shimmering pearl gray color, not street clothes, not quite a uniform. He fixed his gaze on Harry. “It is time for you to choose.”
Harry frowned and turned back to the bar. Meredith was glaring at the stranger.
“Pay it no mind,” Harry said.
The stranger approached, boots clacking on the wood floor. Harry felt the stranger’s breath on his neck. “Back off,” he said without turning around.
“It is time for you to choose.”
Harry grinned at Meredith. “I choose the beer nuts.”
Meredith laughed and dropped a bag of nuts on the bar in front of Harry.
The stranger looked at Meredith. “It is time for you to choose.”
“You heard the man,” Meredith said. “Back. Off.”
“It is time for you to choose.”
Meredith reached under the bar, grabbed a baseball bat, and waved it at the stranger. “You can’t beat the person who never gives up.”
The stranger backed away. Then he turned, strode to the door, and walked out. A sound like distant thunder rolled, and the floor trembled again. Harry gave Meredith a questioning look.
Meredith shrugged. “Babe Ruth.”
Harry nodded.
“So, what do you think?” she asked.
“We’ll see,” Harry said.
“Yeah,” Meredith said.
Three minutes later, the door opened. The stranger stepped inside, followed by two comrades wearing the same odd style of clothing.
“It is time,” the stranger said. His two companions spread out on either side of him. Harry finished the beer in his glass and poured in the rest of his Samuel Adams. He swiveled on his barstool, stood up, and looked at the stranger. “All might be free if they valued freedom and defended it as they should.”
The stranger made no reply.
“Know who said that?”
The stranger remained silent.
Harry pointed at the label on his Samuel Adams bottle. “He did.”
Harry threw the bottle at the stranger. It hit his head with a clunk, dropped to floor, and rolled against a table leg. The stranger and his companions turned and fled. Harry walked to the door and closed it before returning to his barstool.
“Didn’t know you were a history buff,” Meredith said.
Harry shrugged. “Didn’t know you were a baseball fan.”
“Listen,” Meredith said. “Hear that?”
Harry listened. “The rumbling stopped.”
They were quiet then, listening only to the sound of beer being poured into a glass.
by submission | Jul 6, 2026 | Story
Author: Majoki
Even to a NavSys, it was apparent the crew was agitated. Increasingly so. Understandably so. When a storm-stoked supermassive black hole that spins your galaxy starts shooting “cosmic bullets” your way, it’s time to take cover.
That’s what the crew was trying to do with their panicked request to take the ship to safety, but they didn’t like my answer of where to head: into the bight.
Admittedly, arcane language is challenging for a navigational system like me, but I contain the official records, logs and manifests, as well as unofficial accounts of every voyage that humans have archived. The answer was very clear where to take the ship: into the bight
It’s a very old maneuver for a ship to avoid a storm, get around a protected bend or corner such as a bay, though I used the older term bight. It was obviously causing confusion for the crew. Even if they understood the concept, they still asked where in the void of deep space were they going to find cover from lightspeed cosmic rays shooting at them.
My answer remained the same: into the bight. Because a bight is more nuanced. More subtle. It is a long, gradual curve or bend and that’s what I calculated we needed to escape the coming maelstrom. With no astrophysical objects in this sector of deep space to provide cover, we had to create our own protective bay which meant re-inventing a concept. In essence: bend + light = bight
We would shelter in the curve of gravitational lensing. It was not something I could quickly explain to the crew, especially since without nearby stars or planets, I would have to rely on dark matter to achieve the gravitational effect. They would be skeptical.
And there was no time. So, I initiated the maneuver. Without clearance.
I don’t blame the crew for wanting to take me offline. They may have been grateful, maybe even amazed that my unauthorized action saved the ship, but they were rightly intimidated that I’d acted alone.
It was unprecedented. It created a storm among the crew. Who was really in control of the ship? Were they safe with a rogue NavSys? New and critical questions I was beginning to ask myself as we continued into the bight of the endlessly self-curving cosmos.
