Movies always get this part wrong. In real hospitals, nothing beeps. Beeping means something bad is happening; your body is failing at some integral task and needs help before it collapses into chaos. But in the ICU med bay of the Starbound, the second largest vessel this side of the Rift and the crown of…
The bell chimed as the front door swung open. My head snapped up from my crossword to find a man about my age with the most striking face and killer jawline. Fuck, that’s a shame. He wore a bomber jacket, jeans with a distressed knee, and black Chucks. From what I could tell, he bore…
The Grove of Knowledge benefitted from an accord with the fungi underground. The fungi spread far and wide, with eyes and ears in every corner of the realm, allowing them to provide the trees with all manner of news. “There’s a pirate queen docked in the castle’s main harbor.” “Lady Greyton has been missing for…
I did not invite the Tongue Takers to dinner, but three extra chairs have found their way to my kitchen table. They returned early this morning. News of their arrival oozed through town like a pox, spreading across the marketplace in a wave of moaning and wailing. The cleverest of us had fled inside, locked…
Nomi knew she couldn’t eat her mother all by herself. But the idea of calling a reclamation team made a silent scream spiral out of her chest, infinite in every direction. So she sat in the corner, tucked against the bulkhead, and watched rigor mortis slowly settle the folds of her mother’s face. Nomi had…
“Where were you when you got your superpowers?” It’s the age-old question, isn’t it? Me, I was at the grocery store, buying a black forest cake and sauerkraut for the wife, who was pregnant at the time. I’m at the age where the stores are playing my jam. I’m also at the age where I…
Leah rests a palm on her belly as she wishes upon a shooting star: Tiny jellybean, may you have a sweet life, unlike the spice-filled bitterness of my own. High above, Godmother hears and twirls her wand. A collection begins. The first two smiles are a shared dessert; secrets between new parents who can’t stop…
Carenza’s mind is a looking glass. When Orla peers into it, she sees herself. She sees her years of neurological study and cognitive research and days and nights of sleepless toil. She sees her hopes and dreams for a better society, polished and perfected, dancing across the cranial folds in sparkling electrical charges. Orla has…
The radio in the lab had gone to static. A remnant of a bygone era, its shallow dial returned nothing but chunky blips and bloops as May fiddled with it. Her human fingers were too analog to capture the narrow viable band. The design was as old as she was: red blocky display, no brain….
Some gods don’t get prayers. Not even a ‘thank-you.’ That’s the world we’re living in today. There’s so much stuff everywhere that humans don’t know what to pay attention to. They obsess over stupid things while the important ones fade into the background. The God of Computers, for instance? She gets prayers all the time….
