Agent Nasani felt the impact on her chest. The freefall suit could withstand a beating, but the human catapult formed by Team Artemis smashed Nasani so hard that her weightless body was sent back to the periphery.
Thirty seconds.
Continue reading “Proxathlon”
To his chagrin, I volunteered straight away.
Emmetrius wanted nothing else but to lay low and wait this out. Stranded fifty megaparsecs away from civilisation, I couldn’t understand his logic. I guess he didn’t trust me one bit, believing I would make some pointless attempt to escape his custody.
Continue reading “The Sargasso Void”
First published on Wattpad
Apparently, they aren’t even reptiles.
With skin covered in scutes, boasting a vertebral sail and powerful jaws, this thing looks like a fat, bear-sized lizard, but Russell Hansard seems to think the wildlife around here predates the dinosaurs by fifty million years. Out of the two thousand surviving passengers on board the Cruise Ship Eudora, Mr Hansard is the only one who claims to be schooled in palaeobiology.
Too bad he isn’t here to see this monster. Somehow it managed to get into the ship and feast on an elderly couple lodging in one of the balcony cabins.
“It’s the biggest one yet,” I gasp, having abandoned living in fear; embracing this impossible, marvellous world.
Continue reading “Permian Spring”
Hacking robots can be lots of fun. Celebrating April Ghouls Day at horrorscribes.com with this flash fiction entry.
Sawtooth froze.
His clown quartet went from performing a slo-mo at the crossing lights to lunatic postures, ridiculing the angry driver. The black Audi inched closer, but when Mr Axe showed off his plastic hatchet, the motorist reversed and made a wide turn to avoid the colourful foursome.
Continue reading “The Fright Machine”
This flash fiction piece took out the inaugural Punk Out: Wattpunk Contests and Prompt challenge.
As the electrical generator housing was hit with a deafening crash, the entire offshore installation was jolted with a sudden, violent force that reverberated through the metal structure. The lights flickered and then went out completely, leaving the interior quarters in pitch darkness. The installation manager, who had been monitoring the situation from his control room, felt his heart sink as he saw the screens go blank and the alarms fall silent.
Continue reading “Offshore”
Narkvosu just wanted to survive.
At least long enough to complete his quest. He could care less about ever returning to his home city. Alone, he explored the last obstacle to his journey, an ancient cavern carved out long ago. Concrete and steel are now dust. Bedrock exposed. Nothing remained, the running creek, the moister and gangumoss making short work of what was once probably a vast urban habitation. If one could not define any of the telltale signatures of a past civilisation, the sub-level appeared just like a long natural cave.
When access to the internet and information becomes inaccessible to a vast majority of the population, dead drop networks spring up everywhere. But someone needs to maintain this free access to information, otherwise, the population remains mired in ignorance and cut out of the wealth cycle.
*first appeared on Wattpad
Mateus Fiel knew of the fierce territorialism between rival scanbob gangs in the area. He chose to ignore it, the score proving too lucrative to pass up. Venturing outside of his home exurb constituted a risk. Many did so to engage in leisure activities, and many more did so for business opportunities. Mateus did it for both reasons, so he considered the risk he took this time around as absolutely justified.
Continue reading “Dead Drop Society”
This short story won 1st prize on TheNextBigWriter → Locked Door Contest
The ephemeris data seemed healthy enough. The storm, on the other hand, ripping across space from the comet’s horizon, appeared hazardous. Transiting through the comet’s coma the shuttle vibrated slightly. Carl Reagle knew the outgassing from the bright side lacked enough violence to cause any serious problems. The comet had just emerged from out of the frost line, so the sun’s rays were not harsh enough to feed a fully-fledged tail.
Continue reading “Ice Hangar”
What if I were to tell you that a vast galactic civilisation exists, much older than ours and that this space-faring society was a great consumer of things such as art, food and resources…
…that we Earthlings are a newly discovered delicacy and that a vast market waits?
Is this a bad eventuality for mankind or a good one? If a taste for humans takes off, if this becomes more than just a fad, to feed such a vast market, how many billions of people would need to be exported to meet such demand? Billions more would be required to be bred to sustain supply. Humanity will eventually be farmed on other planets across galaxies.
A shortcut for humanity to spread across the stars, yes?
What if I were to tell you that the wretched and corrupt among us were to abandon resistance and flock to these new overlords, selling out their fellow humans in a mad scramble to secure their own individual survival, to carve out their own suzerainty over the helpless, clueless majority?
You would say this is ridiculous paranoia.
I’d say this process has already started.
