The stereopsis module clicked open in Wren’s fingers. “For the next five minutes,” she said, “try not to play any ping-pong.” She sliced deftly into my abdomen, and though my somatic subsystem signaled pain, I didn’t wince – wouldn’t want her to think I was nervous. Usually Wren’s workbench loops were stuffed with starship components […]

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The man who’d set himself up out on the point by Gray Lagoon had conjured up a house out of rocks and sea-wrack, but he didn’t wear the badge of any guild or house. He was always polite, but the people who talked to him couldn’t place his accent, and people in Cartau could place […]

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It had been the most desperate moment of Angelo Neumann’s life so far, and you were certain to live through many such moments if you lived for the opera. When he closed his eyes, he could still picture his friend of so many years and partner in so many troublesome events, wildly running away from […]

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She was just here a moment ago, round chin on his shoulder, her laugh low in his ear, fingers brushing his arm. But Bill blinks, and everything changes in an instant, over the course of ten years. He’s still got blue eyes and curl to his hair, and it’s August, sky swearing-blue and without a […]

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Oberon Officer’s Log. Day 10227 This is ridiculous. If we were still at full crew I wouldn’t even be an officer. Also, this isn’t a real log. We are drifting along in the great void of space so there is nothing to report, and even if there were, OOMA would report it for me. At […]

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The gods will mock. Give them an opening, a chink in your facade of self-importance, and they’ll slide their spears of mockery into your heart. Or at least into your inflated ego. Sometimes the jibes came in the form of rain. Thick, heavy drops on a land in desperate need of water. A blessing more […]

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Good morning, Marple Township, it’s time for the weather. It’s going to be a warm seventy-two degrees in comparison to yesterday’s rainy fifties. Gonna be a sunny one! I change into an old band t-shirt from my concert phase, jeans, and flip-flops and then trek down to the mailbox with my paid bills and notated […]

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by Bogi Takács To R, who made it possible   I.  The Battlefield Aniyé staggered, the impossible landscape of corpses and detritus swaying around her, bending over her. Pushing her down. All around her, the proud crimson uniforms were stamped into the soil, stained with blood and clumps of gore. She tried to breathe, tried […]

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Kiat hovered anxiously around the workbench as the techman carefully put the cellphone back together, reassembling wiring and its microboard, its flat paper-thin glass surface separated into two folds. In the techman’s gray eyes, the magnification implants scrolled data directly into her field of vision, visible to Kiat only as faint white lines that etched […]

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One August evening, in a mix of grief and hope, Lara Jane Hudson accidentally opens the portal to Hell. It takes her two and half days to fully realise this has happened: that there is a slightly shimmery, raised-edge circle on the floor of her basement storage room, with a suspicious crust on top like […]

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