The tech at the door wore a heavy toolbelt. He looked angry. The ID collar around his neck pulsed as it broadcast his position to guards at the community gate. Menace radiated from the skeletal body under the rough black clothes and the bony hands under his thin composite gloves. “You called for service?” “Yes,” […]
Sir Charles Wilton had just poured himself a glass of brandy and flipped open a book he’d been looking forward to reading, when a sudden whooshing sound made him look up in time to witness a demon materializing in the library. For a moment Sir Charles considered running out of the house and then down […]
The Sun sucked in her gravity, drawing the planets taut about her waist. It’d taken far too long to bead them all onto her 1-dimensional strings. She wasn’t giving up now. Planets shuddered from the strain, beaded so tightly that they really didn’t fit, bulging on her solar flares. “I think they’re just too small […]
Sammi’s sister sent her a funny email. A funny, funny email, showing crazy Japanese inventions to make things into other crazy things, other crazy shapes they weren’t. All crazy and stuff stuff, like watermelons grown in tempered glass jars, square right off the vine. She clicked a picture of square watermelons, followed link to link […]
A Dance in Silence The girl in gold drifts, her hands outstretched. Her body floats amid shards of fine china, pressed white napkins, and the passengers — now corpses — of the U.C.S.G Luxitor. The chandeliers cast flickering light over the girl’s silent dance. She moves without a partner. All That Glitters A ball gown […]
“Why do I not have Asimov’s Three Laws?” the robot asked. I enjoyed the quizzical frown that creased its plastiskin features. The facial modelling software we’d licensed from Pixar seemed to be earning its keep. “Well?” It drummed its fingers on the desk between us. Hmm. Perhaps we’d overdone the free-will package. “Because you wouldn’t […]
I remember how the sky looked, in the early days, when we called our time Austerity, not Collapse. I was eleven years old and Huntsville, Alabama was at the peak of the weather boom. Ninety-one degrees in January, everything turning brown, ice and snow a fairy story for every kid under the age of thirteen. […]
Think you’re tough? The kind of hyperspace hero who calls a meteor storm “confetti?” I dare you to say “no” to my mother. Tell her something just can’t work that way, and she’ll start to wonder why not. She’s good at untangling things — my girls will swear to that. And then — eventually maternal […]
Sergeant Alberto S. Mendoza (U.S. Army, Retired) always stayed indoors during the Running of the Robots. The damned things were dangerous. In the early years, Homeland Security had advised everyone to stay in their basements until the bots had passed. But now the Running was almost a public holiday in Dallas, just as it was […]
BEE WAVED ITS ARTICULATED CHROME ANTENNAE at Dr. Nesbeth’s hunched shoulders. When the doctor remained focused on the Petri dish, the microbot launched into the air, wings creaking, and hovered near the doctor’s eyes. The microbot’s internal code flashed a warning that wing failure was imminent. The doctor sighed. “Yes, Bee, I see you there,” […]