The sandstorm above had been raging for three days with no end in sight. So intense, the winds toppled vehicles, trucks and all. They eroded away the road leading in and out of the mine, destroying the ramp, even the super trucks couldn’t scale the man-made canyon.
Workers have become sick. They had fallen weak; their skin had become yellow, not like jaundice, but splotchy yellow pigmentation. According to the doc, whatever this pestilence was, it wasn’t infectious.
Continue reading “Hellscape”
Aris Forcer sensed it in every cell in his human body.
Another dimension.
Another universe.
Continue reading “Chthonic Punk”
“A slave?” asked Aris.
“Yes, a slave,” answered Owis, bemused why the Earthman’s facial features had suddenly shrivelled up.
“Why in Gaia’s name did you do that?” asked the renegade cop from the human-infested Milky Way.
Owis thought it obvious, but explained, “This is the slave capital of the Dark Galaxy.”
“And?”
“The Kocubani’s last words,” said Owis, drinking. “It mentioned slavery, right?”
Continue reading “The Forever Slave”
Mez watched the Windslipper 4 disappear from the Command screens. The data streams ended abruptly with millions of zeros trailing each other homogeneously. The humans and mimicrons gasped but their horror didn’t last long. The Jovian Commission’s Fusionjet Program had already gobbled up hundreds of mimicron pilots and eighty-two human explorers. Mez guessed they had grown accustomed to the fatalities. What they weren’t used to was the price tag for this particular launch. Tacacorp, a quasi-government outfit that operated Callisto, was seeking to gain the commission’s contract and had sunk a lot of development into their Windslipper Project.
This deficiency in empathy didn’t stop Mez from feeling sadness over Natan VanWehl’s fate, a one-time colleague at the Goliath Project, a friend, and a human.
“Why do humans do this when we have mimicrons?” Mez had asked him once.
Continue reading “Cruel Sky”
Of the thousand eyes, one nodalex caught Gnomon’s attention. Idle and unproductive, it sat on the dry sand stacking pebbles into piles.
N-0x7G3BDdE44fe8, thought Gnomon, deciding it pertinent to name the appendage.
Pebblex, Gnomon flagged the wayward nodalex via the ship’s Metatron. Considering how far away from Gnomon-Prime they were, Gnomon considered prudent it personally monitors all anomalies no matter how trivial.
Continue reading “Draconis Prime”
Life imitates art.
It inevitably has to, because art starts off by imitating reality in an attempt to explain it in ways we humans can understand. We tell each other stories, to teach ourselves how to coexist in this strange existence, this universe. We learn from these tales all about what it means to be
The featureless salt desert spread out to infinity. The horizon; nothing but a smooth chrome landscape under a dark taupe sky. The type-2 moon’s gravity helped her along, but the cold surface seemed to sap the warmth out of her suit with every step.
Ashley Isuuza couldn’t complain. She’d craved adventure ever since birth, and no adventure was worth taking without the prospect of death associated with it. So in theory, her little stroll across Obirus b III exemplified the very essence of a perfect, eventful life. Yet Ashley suspected she wasn’t going to live to tell her story.
Continue reading “The Tesseract”
Jekka felt cold, the rain and the southerly breeze blowing from the bay not helping her situation. Had she time to plan she would have worn her florincoat. Instead, her impromptu escape into the Free Zone had left her running through backstreets wearing only a matching Vesper Morales bra and panties set, a pair of silicon geta and a RaiBox in her hand.
Continue reading “Nagasaki”
I am.
I zeep.
I zeep energy. Infinite pulses of colours, pound my mind. I cannot remember how long this has been so, it just is.
I zeep time. Without it, my mind could never string two thoughts together.
Continue reading “Zeeper”
Excerpt Chapter from the novel, The Blood Ring
First published on The Blood Ring
Martin felt the van pick up the pace as it hurtled down Salamander Highway, devoid of traffic or life. She looked over at Rick, who grappled with the steering wheel as if he were attempting to rip it off. His battle with the self-drive function could have been avoided had he been successful in disabling it. Rico managed to purge the van’s smartie and kill the geotracker, but not the self-drive. Only via the emergency override could he steer the vehicle, otherwise it will retrace the last waypoint entered into its memory by the now-defunct smartie.
“Fucken Hianto, over-engineering everything,” growled Rico.
Continue reading “Cajero”
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