Sci Fi

Token Unknown

QUERY:IMG\VFA\REF\HED.CAN RETURN:TOKEN.UNKNOWN Lena rubbed her eyes and took in the stillness of the street. The hot summer breeze rustled the weeds growing through the cracks in the pavement. Dogs barked off in the distance, staking claims over what was once a dense urban center. Off in the distance someone else dismantled the door to an apartment building; another scrapper looking for salvage. She should move soon to follow the shade.

Ophelia Ripples

She rose out of the water laughing, spitting up water and pointing straight up at the sky. “Bitches used to worship the moon,” Emmy cackled, pulling long tangles of hair away from her face so she could properly address the three corpses perched at the head of the pond. She waited, respectfully, for someone to respond, but must have sunk back underwater before either could think of something clever to say.

The Crane Locket

The children were not permitted to wear them. Only when their minds had set would they join the Conscience. Teenagers sought knock-off Lockets, sneaking them from a black market and wearing them when adults weren’t around. No one explains what the Lockets are, what they do—no one can—so they are just part of the landscape of adulthood, a privilege to covet, a marker of coming of age.

This Steel Soul

Android Processor Unit 54783 snapped awake at the feeling of a sudden electric surge. He hadn’t really been asleep, because he hadn’t been able to dream for the five hours he spent in his cocoon shaped recharging booth. As he stepped down, muscle memory compelled him to run a mechanical hand along the surface of his head, fingers passing through transplanted hair. Attached to his back by a plastic harness were pulsating wires and a coolant system, a monitor running alongside them for the benefit of engineers looking over cooling and power levels or any other kind of system damage. APU 54783 had been damaged only twice since he had come into existence, once when his body malfunctioned after handling an NIB magnet, and a second time when a dormant grenade had gone off in his hand. He could remember seeing blood spurting from the tear, but he also knew that to be impossible. What the engineers had mopped off the floor as he was transported for repairs was something closer to petroleum jelly.

Doomsday Diary

Doomsday Diary It catches my eye. Glinting in the dust and rubble. With a quick glance over my shoulder to check nobody is in sight I snatch it up, tucking it into my jeans pocket to look at later. Maybe it will be a clue. Or, at least something I could trade. Sorry Granny. I know that’s a bit of an unglamorous end for your precious locket. The one I fingered so many times as a child. Sitting on your lap, looking into that craggy face full of stories, feeling like you had all the answers but you wanted me to find them out for myself.

Neon Green

The blanket slumped off the side of the mattress. Sleeping in the house, especially when their old fan was broken, was impossible. Dry dusty heat simmered under the lead-lined ceiling, and Hara felt like a soup ingredient, boiling in a big pot. She was splayed out on the blissfully empty mattress, trying not to think about how little she had slept on her few precious hours off.

Hibernation Nation

Captains log: Operation Hybernate on US Vessel Loop 1 The council called a meeting two days ago. President Musk was not only in attendance but was leading the meeting. That alone had us on high alert.

Human Extinction

Be Better

The Department of Emotional Stability and Public Sanity had voted that sentimentality was no longer useful. The debate had been quick, and the Department Chair had appeared on TV that Friday announcing that "another microchip would be made mandatory to stop sentimentality from corrupting us from our present missions". Most citizens had taken this announcement in good stride, and those who questioned it were asked to do so with a Department Representative. No one ever did. The microchip installation would happen at the Department's main building. So, Steph and David had decided to go together, once again , so they had developed a quaint routine to the installations. They would stop for strawberry milk at the Milk Bar, talk about something trivial and small and then Steph would pretend to be concerned about what the chip would do. Steph would usually pay as David had lost another job.

The Best Life in Lowton

The fire cracked and popped in the broken and crumbled hearth. A child swaddled themself in a tattered blanket against the chill of the drafty shack while smoke from the burning refuse stung the eyes and cloyed at the nostrils. The crackles and pops of the fire disrupted the whistling of the wind through the broken walls and the low rumble of hunger that coursed through the girl. Outside on the streets, people scurried past in the night, with their heads cast down as they hurried about their business. The girl shivered and shifted closer to the sputtering fire and stared into the flames hoping that the noises and hunger would burn away if she gazed long and hard enough. Despite the smoke stinging her eyes as she watched the flames, something stirred in her stomach. At first, she thought it was just hunger, but there was something different about it. It felt familiar and new at the same time, like a secret she had forgotten.

Hunting Krakats

Hunting Krakats If life was a bed of roses, I’d look for the thorns beneath the pretty surface.If life was a rainbow and sunshine, I’d look for the colors that were left behind.If life was a memory from before I'd look for a happily ever after. In a time that was and life that is….all of it.

Morning

It was still dark but the moon kept me straight. I saw the garden first. The once was garden. Little bits of hidden order if you looked hard enough. Raised beds now sinking ships. Wild vegetables no longer tended resting contently in a sea of weeds. Nothing is tended now and everything is better for it. I am reassured of this as I bite into a tomato straight from the vine. Red nectar singing down my throat. It was in my searching for another that I spotted the house. The unmistakable glimmer of a glass window through the overgrowth. I tried the door. Locked. If only they knew how little that would matter. I start to look for another way in. Glass breaking always upsets me but it must be done. Shards glint against my headlamp, welcoming me in.