Tag Archives: humanity

GRAHAM SCOTT: Only Thing Left to Do Is What We’ve Always Done

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On Monday, the Cassie hivemind forecasts a global superflu, ninety percent lethal.
On Tuesday, Aspasia predicts five percent.

The differing projections hinge, it appears, on the mathematical solution to Rostwick’s Paradox, on which the AIs disagree, and which no human can understand.

Quite in the dark, we’re rooting for Aspasia.

Graham Robert Scott teaches writing at a university in north Texas. His stories have appeared in Barrelhouse Online, Nature, and 50-Word Stories. See more at hemicyon.wordpress.com.

NATHAN ALLING LONG: The Day The Earth Stood Still

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Millions of microbes live symbiotically on every body, but this particular infestation was way out of control. Gaia had tried shaking them off, drowning them with strong showers, even killing them with heat, but through it all they persisted.

Finally, she stopped spinning and watched them float off into space.

Nathan Alling Long’s work has appeared in over 100 publications most recently in Manhattanville Review, Mud Season Review, and The Journal for Compressed Creative Arts. His collection of fifty flash fictions, The Origin of Doubt, was released in Spring 2018 by Press 53.

PATRICK Mc LOUGHLIN: The Mind is an Endless Maze

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Walking the cows down the narrow road after milking, I felt protected by their company. The last light held enough reassurance.

While returning alone with the dusk pouring through the branches, the old ruin became the only presence, harbouring contrary spirits, and I ran.

Forty years later, I’m still running.

Patrick Mc Loughlin is an English Language Teacher in Ireland and dabbles in writing. He also dabbles in painting and music and someday hopes to do more than dabble. He lives in the west of Ireland where it’s hard to concentrate.

JIM DOSS: I Close My Eyes to See the World More Clearly

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Unspeakable darkness, slowly illuminating into an alley with dipping gutters. Tenement houses, three mismatched shoes on each doorstep. Girls hawk their wares, calling out over the cobblestones, flirtatious, looking for customers.

God is forever hiding somewhere among the gargoyles.

I fall in love a lot, always with the same woman.

Jim Doss has published two books of poems: Learning to Talk Again and What Remains. He also published a book of German translations entitled The Last Gold of Expired Stars: The Complete Poems of Georg Trakl 1908 – 1914. In his spare time, he is an editor for the Loch Raven Review.

JOHN LANE: To Whom it may Concern

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I kept my eye on you for a long time.
And what did I see?

Disobedience.
Blame-shifting.
Murder.
Lying.
Drunkenness.

And that was just the beginning.

Your poor use of free will
makes me reconsider your existence
as a race.

I will make my decision very shortly.

Deeply concerned,
GOD

John Lane is studying poetry at The Writer’s Center, and is an Army and National Guard Veteran who has been working in the aerospace industry for eighteen years.

MICHAEL MAU: The Upload

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Effie tells me she’s uploading herself to the cloud. “It’s for work.”

“That’s ridiculous. You’ll be like a bot.”

She tells me our minds are the future; our bodies are too slow.

I take her slow hand and say I love her.

She says she’ll send me a meme. :-\

Michael Mau wrote this story.

WIM HYLEN: Animal Liberation

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Who would win: a bear or a man with a baseball bat?

Ralph and I want to liberate the animals from pens and slaughterhouses. But after liberation, we think they should participate in humanity’s deranged games, like cage fighting. We think it will, oddly enough, promote understanding between the species.

Wim Hylen’s work has appeared in Four Chambers, Café Irreal and McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, among other places. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife and daughter.

JOY MANNÉ: From Here to Eternity

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Eternity Press Announces Titles for 2018

  • How It All Began
  • When The Creator Shouted
  • And the Earth Trembled
  • When Life Was Born
  • And It Grew (er What Grew?)
  • Until We Became Human
  • Oh, No, Not That
  • Indeed
  • And Now Look At The Mess We Are In
  • Save the Polar Bear
Joy Manné links flash fictions into short stories, writing usually in parts: solos, duets, choruses; different views of the whole experienced by different characters as the story builds, arcs, and reaches its ending. Find more at joymanne.org.

PENNY SENANARONG: Heartless

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A void sits in between his rib cages; he lacks the beating bit of flesh that makes humans human. So, she fills the emptiness with memories of overgrown moss and poisonous flowers, along with false promises of eternity.

It is the closest thing to her heart that she can give.

Penny Senanarong is currently an A-Level student who grew up in the bustling city of Bangkok. Although Thai is her mother tongue, the world of English language and literature fascinates her, and she wishes to be a part of it through writing fiction.

ALEX MASSEY: Brain Raves

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Engineers created robots that wrote music based on brainwaves.

We wanted to hear thoughts of wonder, imagining a new wave of ‘sub-conscious’ brain-raves.

Exhilaration turned to panic as a deeply buried sorrow filled our ears. A dying world screamed within our minds, and we had turned the volume up loud.

Alex Massey is a writer and the editor of Story Seed Vault. They can be found hiding behind decorative foliage at parties or on Twitter.