Subscription Stories - page 2

EN SOLEIL Arlan Andrews, Sr. I wash the dusty feet of Jesus; I wipe His Mother’s furrowed brow. Under the bright lights of the museum’s mobile maintenance cart, my careful inspection of the statue reveals that Michaelango’s Pieta is none the worse for wear. I think, Miraculously, they’ve even repaired the hammer damage, almost out… Keep Reading

FERMI-BOT FRONTIER Chris Phillips A static voice in Curt’s ear said, “A light’s busted on level seventy-two. Get it sorted.” It might have been Peggy, but he wasn’t sure anymore. The further out the ship traveled, the more its voices blended. “It’s Thursday,” Curt said, at least he thought it was. Without night and day… Keep Reading

PERMUTATIONS OF THE SOUL Melanie Rees Yesterday the number of millionaires peaked across the nation. The chance of the average person achieving everything they ever dreamed of was… well, it was very high. No doubt, the Fortune Teller knew the exact probability. But the man about to interview me wasn’t a millionaire. His fortune was… Keep Reading

BREAD AND SALT Mark Silcox As the stimulants entered his bloodstream, Klaus saw a human figure moving behind tracings of frost on a glass panel. It was his wife Claire, who had obviously already been released from dormancy. But this was wrong, he remembered: they had always made sure in the past that their two… Keep Reading

AFTER JERUSALEM Mark Patrick Lynch At first there was shuffling, scratching, a long moment of silence. And then the voice whispered in the close dark, hesitantly forming words on the other side of the grille. “I’m sorry, Father. I don’t know how to begin this.” The priest did his best to stifle a sigh. On… Keep Reading

HABEAS CORPUS CALLOSUM Jay Werkheiser Jared stared at the paper without comprehension. “Man, I don’t understand any of this legal bullshit.” “It says that, since your life sentence was handed down before the immortality treatments, it’s tantamount to cruel and unusual punishment.” Prescott pulled the paper away from the Plexiglas divider and placed it neatly… Keep Reading

THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF DRIVERLESS CARS Charlie Fish I reckon me wife’s having an affair. Sharon and I got together back when I was boning up to be a London cabbie. I was always hunched over a map, or going out for runs on me bike, or sitting there reciting every shopfront from Marylebone to… Keep Reading

YOURS IN HEAVEN James Beamon Yours in heaven, you are the first person I wanted to contact cause I knew you’d appreciate the irony of it all. Aliens nabbed me on the Sudanese border like some B-movie and I’ve been on display most of this time. But I got a reprieve. I sold them on… Keep Reading

THE PRICE OF KNOWING Nick Nafpliotis “It’s stopped, ma’am.” Sally Watson heard a lot of things while commanding the Voyager 4 ground team, but learning that the craft had inexplicably ceased moving was not something she’d ever anticipated. “Come again?” she asked while staring up at the monitor. “Voyager 4 has stopped moving. It’s not… Keep Reading

THE TEENAGE GIRL’S ROBOT ARMY Rawle Nyanzi From the backyard of her two-story home outside Brisbane, eighteen-year-old Carmen Bronsted monitored her legions of machines as they advanced through the Australian outback. Tablet in hand, she adjusted tactics and production; in the fully robotic economy, one had to use machines to hunt down raw materials and… Keep Reading

PRICE OF ALLEGIANCE Alex Shvartsman “Mr. Tobin, there is a Cicada here to see you.” Alastair Tobin, Earth’s ambassador to the Galactic Union, was more than a little surprised. In his eight years of service he could count on one hand the number of times anyone had visited his office on Union Central Station. On… Keep Reading

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN August von Orth My Fireball XL5 spaceship crashed on Mercury. The ninety degree heat transformed the curb in front of my house—mostly crumbled to rubble—into a great planet Mercury. The strange man walked up to me as I sat beside the crash site on the curb. I should probably have been… Keep Reading