Everything is broken. The screen that takes up one entire wall of the play area is broken, cracked from corner to corner. There’s nothing usable in the games and toys cupboard, which is piled high with neatly stacked boxes full of mismatched parts and flat batteries. The few handhelds that work at all are agonizingly […]
Bella arrived late at the party, carrying a doll in a box in pink wrapping paper. She’d owned the doll when she was young, and she’d hoped Natalie would like that. Now, she wished she’d bought something. Her sister’s husband answered the door while holding a bunch of balloons. He looked surprised. Sorry I’m late, […]
2336.10.19 Dear Mom, Dad, and the rest of the family, By the time you get this missive, the deed will be done. I think it is best this way—an old-fashioned letter and a fait accompli (that’s “an accomplished fact” for you, Raymond 🙂 ). I know it may come as a shock to some of […]
Castle Jordan stands in a place that makes sense according to the logic of castles. It has a good view of a remote area, the better to spot siege-minded armies on the march. But castles do not fit the logic of the moon. Exposure and isolation aren’t very useful survival traits here. A new line […]
“On the bright side,” said Zara, poking at his glasses a week before, “this means you get new eyes.” But I don’t want new eyes, he thought. The surgery isn’t bad, as surgeries go. The one he had when he busted his knee ten years ago, as a teen, was much worse. Or maybe it […]
Kaityn Falk loves the dark phase of the moon. It’s quiet. Soothing. Insulated in their spacesuit, comm dimmed, Kaityn sits in the rover and watches the sky. Here on Io 7, a newly discovered satellite in retrograde orbit around a dwarf planet the size of Pluto, they are the only living human in several thousand lightyears. […]
Okay, this rogue robot recovery gig is getting old and I’m saying this as the tech geek of the team. So that should tell you something about our situation. I mean, it’s not like the hacker is trying to steal different robots every time—it’s always a Commando 237X, which also happens to be like one […]
I gotta tell you, as a puppet life sucks. I mean, cartoon characters got it easy. They don’t have to deal with five-fingered monsters crawling all over them or being nailed to the floor. Or dying. I was talking with old Scoobster the other day. Once you get past the doggy speak, he’s pretty clear. […]
Once upon a time, long, long, long, long, long, long, ago, there were three raptor sisters, hatched beneath a lucky star. They lived in a wood together, they stole sheep and cattle together, and all in all, there was no tighter-knit hunting pride of matriarchal dromaeosauridae between the mountains and the sea. The oldest was […]
“So you’re a chef,” the huntress said, after she’d saved the day, “and you’re out here to hunt and cook a dragon?” “Yes?” Kee picked leaves off her muddied pants, a futile gesture. The huntress stared at her with a slight frown. She was compact, shaved hairless, brown-skinned, and wore Easterner boiled leather armour, dotted […]