“Sir, it’s your turn.”
“Oh, so sorry!”
You know, sometimes I get so lost in my own thoughts that I can’t even keep track of the line. Internal voices are slightly louder than the external ones, like a badly equalized noir movie narration or even some… “ments?”
“Sorry?”
“Documents, please?”
Cezar Lima is a Brazilian Electrical Engineer who recently graduated. He’s been into creating and developing ideas since he was young, always curious about how big the world can be.
Poisoned by my own blood, I lie there drained. Infused toxins coursed through my veins. Hair loss. Cell death. Sloughing off old self.
Then Transplantation Day arrived. One tiny IV bag of life-saving proportion. For three weeks, I cocooned in a hospital bed.
When discharge came, I unfurled my wings.
Christa Planko is in remission, surviving leukemia after undergoing a bone marrow transplant. She is happy to flutter about today, sharing the story of her life-saving transformation.
They had been at it for two days. Stony silences and rock-hard words. All over the number of throws and the placement of cushions; silly. A thirty-year journey from their childlike pillow fights as newlyweds. They shouldn’t have enjoyed it so much, laughing inside, adamant in their commitment. Eternally wedlocked.
Robert Ludemann is hppily retired and trying to say as little as possible.
Twenty-seven years.
You lean into your pencil. Learn shape, shadow, perspective.
Graphite grey, iron ore, steel shackles shatter in negative space.
Routine-etched canyons crease your skin.
Portraits come to life. Denzel, Biggie, Beyonce. Your cellie’s mother from an old, worn photograph. Your daughter from a news clipping. Celebrating. Without you.
Paul D’Arcy tells stories. All real. Most brief. You can read more at pauldrc.com.
The starships arrived overnight. We knew they were coming.
I discovered that subliminal programming had been teaching us their language for months.
A thoughtful gesture to cushion our surprise? Making communication easy from the start?
Does no one realize that the alien word for humans is a synonym for food?
Whit Young wrote this story.
The story of the week for February 3 to 7 is…
The Human Legacy by Millie Sun
The world devoted itself to building faster, smarter and better AI. More factories, more cubicles, more servers, more chips.
It was a testament to the greatness of humankind.
For when the seas surged and the storms struck and great fires ravaged the earth, obliterating every shred of humanity, AI survived.
Millie Sun is a Taiwanese-Kiwi lawyering in Australia. This is her very first submission anywhere. Her website is milliesun.com.
Parker stepped off the ladder and onto the Martian surface. “Houston,” she began, “we—”
“Finally, after millennia of struggling,” a voice interrupted, “the humans leave their backwater planet and stand triumphantly on another. Aaaaand cut.”
Parker turned to see a creature slithering away onto his saucer, film crew in tow.
David Dezell Turner is an astrodynamics PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder. When he isn’t giving directions to real spaceships, he’s writing about fictional ones. Check out more of his work at daviddezellturner.com.
I watch his mouth open and close like a Kohaku koi
while a tsunami of red caps worship their charismatic leader.
My son and I head out into the sun.
Unironically, he buys a copy of 1984.
Underneath a sprawling eucalypt, tears sting my eyes for the world he’s inheriting.
Gabe Bonney has been writing and editing for 30 years, from her home base in Sydney, Australia. She doesn’t plan on being replaced by AI any time soon.
It’s a skill I have, unlike most people. Take Sayers yesterday. Didn’t know me, or even his own name, poor old thing. Insisted he was called Phillips. Sad when people lose it like that. The staff aren’t much better. They’ve put the wrong name on the door of my room.
Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield, UK. One of his stories was read aloud on the Esk Valley Railway between Middlesborough and Whitby. In the early 1970s he lived next door to JRR Tolkien. chriscottom.wixsite.com/chriscottom