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”
There are many benefits to writing short stories. Writers do it to practice and develop their style of storytelling, and it also allows them to explore singular ideas, concepts and themes. The narratives are easy to control, the outcomes have less room for error, and you can get your story out quickly.
Continue reading “The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party”
The function room is modest in size, stark and somberly lit. A low hum from the air conditioner can be heard. Douglas sits at a small conference table with his arms crossed. He has a defiant expression on his face as he looks past the table at another man sitting across from him.
“I must have thought I put them there,” he answers.
Continue reading “Subordinate”
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”
“It’s a square.”
Silv heard correctly but wanted clarification. “What do you mean a square?”
“Probe One has just completed a second sweep over your location,” said The Captain, sitting comfortably in the Vitalis Express orbiting KIC10905746 C. “We’ve now got a clearer picture of what’s down there. The anomaly’s actually a large geometric shape, fifty metres wide, just north of your location. In fact, there is a grid of quadrilateral structures underneath a kilometre of nitrogen ice.”
Looking over at Denis, Silv felt vindicated. “Was I right in choosing this dormant glacier for a first landing?”
“Could be naturally occurring formations,” said Denis.
Continue reading “Relic Hunters”
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”
A Snapshot in Time Writing Contest
Cursed be thy Greeks
Damnation beset my fate.
The tower defenders dismantled the upper terrace, using the stone bricks to drop upon our heads. With burning oil and arrows, the misery brought on us by the Greeks plunged my fellow knights, my brothers, into despair. Heaven’s determination to punish our great transgression with this fierce deluge of rain, sent us scampering like mud rats back towards the Bosporus.
Continue reading “Lions of the Cross”
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”