The ground rose and fell with the passing of the waves below. Dr. Keyla Sower was thankful for the treaded walking surface and her brand new and too tight work boots. If the motion weren't obstacle enough, it was raining and slick. The layered sheets of graphene and tiled technical ceramics felt sturdier than their… Continue reading Liberation Station
Tag: Climate Change
A Shared Inheritance
Jay looked out at the Last Continent from the deck of the massive refugee transport, the cool wind slapping at his hair in the early morning light. He'd always heard it was a frozen land of ice and pictured pristine white peaks above sleek white plains, but instead, this. Shores of gray and brown slush… Continue reading A Shared Inheritance
Throw Away Your Body Parts
The fires that night were so bright that I got out of bed thinking it was sunrise. I pulled up the time out of habit, and when I saw the hour I leapt from the fold-out to the balcony door and slid it open in one explosive movement. My conapt was on the 177th floor.… Continue reading Throw Away Your Body Parts
The Last Wonder
Above, thick bundles of diamond nanotubes cut thousands of parallel vertical lines in the air, disappearing in low cloud cover. Below, the ruins. The buildings that were still standing were either skeletons or bloating, sagging corpses. Shipping containers were strewn about among the hulls of gondolas like a knocked-over bucket of Legos. Capsized ships and… Continue reading The Last Wonder
Real Bad Debt
The smell of rotten eggs was suddenly strong and inescapable. It made Florencia scrunch her nose, and her back teeth floated. She scooted off the hard and scratchy sofa, shifting her weight from one hip to the other until she was up. Her slippered feet shuffled over the engineered vinyl flooring to the sliding door,… Continue reading Real Bad Debt
What Grows in the Orchard
Kartika walked through the soft grass of her family's orchard, smiling as the sun warmed her shoulders. The first promise of autumn was in the breeze. It was nearly time to harvest. Even with her prescription sunglasses she had to squint against the multifaceted reflections of the sun. Rainbow prisms flitted in her periphery vision… Continue reading What Grows in the Orchard
A Couple Questions
"It's raining, Detective," said her assistant. "Bring a coat." The voice was only in her head, but when the neurons were cajoled into firing in just the right sequence the effect was no different than a face to face conversation. Reality was only a matter of interpretation—always had been. Take the rain, for instance. Brigid… Continue reading A Couple Questions
Something Drastic
As she pulled them apart with her mind, one by one, the soldiers naturally, inevitably, were drawn to her. They believed they were made of bone and flesh and sinew, but Ayla saw beyond it. The soldiers, like all other things—living, dead, or somewhere in bewtween (where most things dwelled)—like Ayla herself, were made of… Continue reading Something Drastic
A Simple Scam
The metal container was the size of an old refrigerator and weighed a lot more. If it weren't for her exo she would have had no chance of moving it, not all at once. And Alexa only wanted to do this once. One big payday. It was a simple scam. It really started 150 years… Continue reading A Simple Scam
Ex Astris
Roman's heart raced. This was it. The culmination of three years of painstaking nonstop work. Truly nonstop; he'd found it easier to live in the lab for the last several months—years? Surely it was only months—venturing out less and less frequently. His fellow lab assistants shared his zeal, but no one could compare to Dr.… Continue reading Ex Astris
Warmup Pages 