Several years ago or yet to be, Frank Fullie had written on a whiteboard in his garage:
“You can jump forward in time by falling asleep.”
“You can jump backward in time by looking at old photographs.”
“Sideways in time by having empathy with another.”
“Outside time by dying.”
As an afterthought he’d written “Does the Higgs field come into it?”
Continue reading “The Time Machine That Was and Wasn’t at the Same Time by Jonah Jones.”
Ray Dragon’s writing career had fallen hard after his first book, Loving Them Madly, in which Ray detailed the gruesome murder investigation of three young women near the Oberlin College campus with a vivid imagination; now, he was running dry. He wrote a series of travel articles for This Our World, in which he only traveled with a mouse and Google, but the magazine failed before he got a check.
Continue reading “Out There by Ed N. White”
Cass had been on the Cold Case Time Travel squad eight years when I replaced her partner, Hoss. We’d done things differently in Present-Day Homicide so I shut up and listened. Cass was a pro, by the book mostly–she could even fix the damn machine! And since no other towns could afford the traveler fees, we’d be in ’60s Harlem one day and ’30s Greenwich the next. I’m guessing they brought me in for the Harlem cases. Brothers don’t tend to open up to two pale folks from the future. Of course, they weren’t supposed to know we were from the future, but occasionally our Era Lingo implants malfunctioned.
Continue reading “Baby Blues by Jack Powers”
I am a horologist.
Secreting myself in this mid-American city of lost souls, I specialize in the art and science of timekeeping. I have been at my craft for more than a century.
The filth in the street, horses and their droppings that smear the city in a perpetual stink, damnable new cars and incessant street noise have become unbearable, as has the lack of civility and morality. Men in terrible pain limp along the streets only able to stand with crutches, leg braces, and wooden limbs. They are the fortunate ones who survived the war.
Continue reading “The Last Horologist by Arthur Davis”
The usual doubts arrive as I cross the street, heading for the corner of Abbeville Road. This seemed like the right thing to do an hour ago, sitting in a pub on the South Bank, toasting our anniversary with a third glass of wine. But now I’m here, all I can imagine is another rejection.
Continue reading “A Door with a Thousand Locks by Ed Dearnley”
“16 years? Seriously, 16 years? You’re killing me!”
Why do they always yell? I didn’t know this guy, but I knew his story. He was in over his head. That’s how it was with most clockers. Give ‘em a second, they’ll take a year, right? Okay, I know that’s not original, but it’s still true.
“Not yet,” I countered. “Unless you keep borrowing more than you can pay back. And it’s 16 years and 47 days, plus a few hours. How do you want to do this?”
Continue reading “Borrowed Time by Rob O’Keefe”
Dennis followed the program’s commands and was transported from his den to the stoop outside his father’s last home, a condo in West Palm. The graphics and the audio were intense.
He was there.
His breath caught as his father opened the door, grinning.
“Hey, Den.”
“Dad!”
When they hugged Dennis could all but feel him.
Continue reading “Horseshoes and Hand Grenades by Mike Scofield”
It wasn’t until about three in the afternoon that I got back to the bar. After the show the night before, we partied in the bar with the band until about four, then went to someone’s apartment, I think she was with the band, who knew or who cared at that point, it was a place where we could keep going. I left about nine and most of the band was still there, drinking whatever was left, blowing coke, pretending the night was still happening, ignoring the fact they didn’t have another gig lined up.
Continue reading “Swinging At The Daisy Chain by William Kitcher”
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I am a Pen Name, which means (unlike it is for “real” writers) there are little cracks in my mind that lead to places where strangely imagined circumstances are reality. Within one such crack turns a world exactly like our own except for one significant difference: On “Other Earth” the post WWII nuclear testing conducted by the US military out in the American southwest desert did result in the creation of the gigantic ants, mammoth scorpions, huge tarantulas, scores of Godzilla-sized lizards and a smattering of profoundly effed-up human beings that we see only in 1950’s science fiction films. Among the traits these creatures have in common (besides experiencing the enlarging effects of extreme radiation) are an immunity to conventional weapons and insatiable appetites for murder and destruction.
Continue reading “Pie Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon by Leila Allison”
Solitude’s slight light falls faintly across my folded hands
Surrounded by the vacuum of his absence I shiver
a freedom vibration to the tune of Footloose and Fancy-free
literally stories 