The bars of the cage sparkled. Each morning the cleaning detail scrubbed them from outside the building using long handled brushes. A clean cage kept life threatening germs away from the inmates, the same germs that caused the near extinction of the human race.
The near future…
“Don’t talk about God or the worthwhile causes. I won’t believe what anyone says. They’re in it for themselves; they have to be. Survival is the only strategy. Take it from me. I know what I’m talking about, and bollocks to the rest.” Edwards paused. “Are you paying attention?”
Panoni wasn’t listening, and to prove the point scratched his balls.
Decrypted sections of the file are as follows:
Data log attributes: Begun on 5787th day of 23rd Lunar Cycle
Type: Personal
Today was the day I started on the gene project. It was not as complicated as I expected. Unit 5481 tells me the beginning is always easy. All you have to do is choose the number of genes you want to work with. It’s maintaining the culture that’s the nightmare.
Continue reading “Unit 4207’s Failed Assignment by Piyali Mukherjee”
Professor Tomlinson was a disappointed man. He had recently achieved his life’s ambition, and already he could see it beginning to crumble.
He turned in his seat, and shouted across the laboratory to his assistant. “Hargreaves! Give me those figures again.”
Hargreaves was sitting in front of a luminous screen, looking at a series of diagrams that were filled with information. He was checking through each one in turn, collecting and collating the data. He pushed his spectacles back into place on the bridge of his nose, and repeated exactly the same numbers that he had read out a few minutes earlier.
“You’re looking for some answers. I can understand that. I can relate. Isn’t that what the hippies used to say?”
Joe’s gaze remained flat. He waited for the man to continue.
“Don’t say much do you? I’m guessing you’re all out of empathy as well as words right now but if not, I won’t keep you. Good luck in finding a tree left to hug.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell us why it started.” Continue reading “Kill Switch by Nik Eveleigh”
May this year was freezing. No snow just cold nights. Raw days. I went to the allotments every morning to check on the hens. Feed them. I don’t go any more. They’re all dead. A virus Harry sez.
When I used to walk down to the allotment along the narrow paths The Gardeners keep free of weeds the frost made that sound under my feet only walking on frost makes. Crunchy-crackly Jen calls it, like she would know.
Lissa felt old. Her bones were tired and her soul weary. Mama and Baba had been long gone and she had spent countless years alone in the dark, cramped place where they had all existed.
The three brief occasions when she had gone “up top” were her dearest memories. In the deep of the night, when the gangs roamed outside the draughty windows and the spotlights from the Enforcer’s wagons slid across the walls, scaring the cockroaches and scorpions, she would close her lids and take her thoughts to the sun-kissed meadow and the startling blue of the sky.
“Lissa, wake up.”
The child opened her eyes, night goggles hid her father’s eyes, mirrored ovals glowed on his face. “Come on my love, get up”
“Baba, the siren didn’t sound, we are early.”
“Yes, but it’s time.”
“Michael, she’s frightened, don’t alarm her.”
“Hush woman.” The tall figure turned to his wife, he reached out, the gesture softening the impact of his words. “Are you ready?”
“I am.”
“Bring the clothes for Lissa, don’t forget the gloves and the headset.”
The two hundred and fifty kilometres per hour station-to-station no-turbulence pipe came to a stop. End of the line. Everyone off.
I stepped out the pipe onto a narrow walkway amongst a shoulder-to-shoulder throng six wide whose momentum funnelled me toward a down-ramp and into a square, where a girl with dreadlocks leaning against a 3-D sandwich-board bit through a foil wrapped protein bar – without first removing the foil.
Continue reading “Do Eros Sevens Dream Of Jupiter And Mars? by Adam West”
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