Ashley Lefey had seven outfits, a different colour for each day of the week. She’d developed the system whilst interning at Facebook, inspired by Mark Zuckerberg’s famous elimination of small unnecessary decisions. Unlike Zuckerberg, her wardrobe routine didn’t condemn her to a life of monastic grey t-shirts.
Continue reading “Fortune’s Gambit by Ed Dearnley”
The world ends soundlessly and mid-confession.
First, there is only darkness. Because sight fails, scents strip my room into view. Charred electricity and ingrained grease. Then melting plastic and flammable plaster. Then Victoria’s Secret body mist and snot-kissed posters.
Continue reading “Solar Storm by Veera Laitinen”
They only had time to perfect the robot dog, and the robot car, and the robot bank teller, which still eyed people like me with suspicion. And the robot mail carriers, whose knee socks would not stay up. And the robot Walmart greeters, whose human accents weren’t much better than the old GPS bots that put the emphasis on the wrong syllable (“Take a left onto ML … K-Junior Boulevard”). And the robot armed-agents-of-the-state, which, it’s weird, actually did resemble pigs. Before the outside air became unbreathable, they never got around to perfecting the robot house cleaner. That left them no choice but to save people like me, laborers who more and more had gotten used to things not working in our favor.
Continue reading “Bunker Cleaning Lady by Franny French”
“Harry… Harry…”
The voice was muffled, barely audible.
Who was Harry?
A foaming mess of memories flooded into his head, a tidal wave of information he could barely comprehend.
The wave retreated, leaving a simple truth washed up amongst the flotsam and jetsam.
He was Harry.
Continue reading “Last Stable Backup by Ed Dearnley”
Saudade: (n.) a nostalgic longing to be near to something or someone that is distant; the desire to be near again to what has been loved and then lost, “the love that remains.”
Continue reading “Just Give It Time by Matthew J. McKee”
Clothes have gone out of fashion because public life has disappeared. People continue to get out of bed but they don’t waste time getting dressed. People don’t dress for work and they don’t go to church. Men and women no longer wear underwear. That’s modern America. Many people no longer even use the toilet. Late century sidewalks are dirtier today than they were in the Wild West. It was once due to the number of horses.
Continue reading “Deliria, 2068 by David Lohrey”
One clear night, a freakish bolt of lightning felled a giant oak tree in a park, and a shapeless creature emerged from the smoking crater at its base. The creature flattened into a pool of “tar,” slithered under a boulder at the lake’s edge, and silently brooded there.
Continue reading “The Gift by Arthur Pitchenik”
Three months to Election Day
“Mazie Tanner has a real likability issue to contend with,” said the slick, over-Botoxed TV pundit. “Folks just aren’t that into her. Polls show her earning a paltry thirty-two percent if the election were held today. That’s no bueno in a gubernatorial race against Robert ‘Mr. Charisma’ Sturgill, who’s got well over sixty percent. Now, if the lady tried smiling once in a blue moon—”
Continue reading “The Likeability Problem by Kirsten Smith”
The children tumble into the church basement, pushing, dodging, and shouting. Good boys and girls, but wild with pent-up feral energy. Deacon Grumpus pauses at the top of the stairs. He understands the cacophony and approves. Good old-fashioned childish exuberance. So human, organically human, as it should be. Exactly what the Divine Order of Cellular Humans teaches its followers.
Continue reading “Sunday School by Marco Etheridge”
When an Antarctic scientist uncovered an alien space ship while digging for a latrine, he sent for the best crypto-biologists, archaeologists and astronomers to come to the Antarctic base. After the local Antarctic scientists were assembled, they entered the ship which had unrecognizable instruments and made weird sounds like those of a Theremin. They quickly discovered something encased in ice, which they hauled off to their camp.
Continue reading “Brave (not nude or new) Newt World by Doug Hawley”
literally stories 