I’m hanging there on the back of a Tim Hortons truck, tracking the kilometers left to Vancouver, adjusting magnet strength as my passenger sags, asleep in the cradle of my frame, when BAM. Metal-on-metal contact, passenger heart rate through the roof, and I’m running subroutines in a blind panic. “Oh, hey,” sends an unrequested packet. […]
The creature hid in the universe’s shadows, and if we’d known that the Andromeda XI would cross its path, we’d have avoided that quadrant entirely. Or maybe not. Maybe we did know. I don’t recall. The log doesn’t indicate any intention of approaching the cosmic being, though the man called Tyrol suspects the records aren’t […]
It didn’t surprise anyone on Peachtree Circle that the Joneses were the first in the neighborhood to buy a time machine. After all, they’d also been the first to lease a suborbital condo, to purchase their own Servo-Droid, and to subscribe to the Alien-Plant-a-Month club. The time machine, which they installed in their rock garden, […]
You should have seen this, Rowan. From the observation platform on the converted oil rig, I watch the giant conveyor lift the chunks out of the ocean, see them climb to the coastal plain, see the freeway width of the belt disappear over the horizon, and feel like a Lego figurine in a life-sized industrial […]
They are one of a kind, both of them. Both want to build the future, attend MIT for the resources and connections. While other people date, they Skype with engineers at the LHC. Afterward, people say they’re glowing like they’ve screwed all night. “Multiverse Theory is like screwing—” Miguel says. Juniper finishes, “—always splitting zygotic […]
“The thing about Heisenball,” Paulie tells me with a grin on their face, “is that you can’t win. But you can’t lose, either. Not really. It’s not about the game.” “Yeah,” I say. “I know. You’ve told me like a million times.” Ever since we started dating, I add in the privacy of my own […]
After a marathon day of coding, Cordelia1564 completed the night’s VR-cast just in time to go live with it. She held her breath as her avatar disemboweled four Khazak horsemen with a stiletto she’d pinched from the harem master, hung their bodies from a tower, and decorated their nude backsides with pointillist designs copped from […]
Aelegan burned the last of her energy as she floated towards the sun of the eighty-third solar system from Prime. The rest of her broodmates had already left for the ascension place. If she didn’t go soon, the ceremony would begin, and they would move forward without her. She needed fuel for the journey. She […]
I wake in the debriding tank screaming, thrashing, choking on body fluids and saline. The ship’s soft medical manipulator arms try to keep me still. Milky strands ooze from my cracked flesh like the heat-thickened proteins of a poached egg. In my mind, I am still holding you. I search for you in the cloudy […]
The Elevator dock is packed. It was designed for launching satellites and cleaning up space junk, not for funerals. Sandy gives me a sisterly hand-squeeze as if to say that she knows how strange it must be for me to be here, like this. This isn’t how it was supposed to happen, our first trip […]
