Sci Fi
Humanity on Trial
4th April 'The Civil War is Over' announced the papers. What the rebels had to fight about, though, I never understood. My neighbour said they were probably hiding all kinds of diseases. I read the paper with an overwhelming sense of relief: always hated fighting of any kind. Even when I was a child I would not play-fight with my younger brother. It used to infuriate him when I refused to join in, putting down the plastic sword and insisting that we played cards instead. If Jim wanted something then he got it, but only after I had the toy I had preferred all along. I realise now that it is a childish notion that violence can always be avoided. But finally, the war was over and we could all focus on what was important.
By Siobhán ffrench5 years ago in Fiction
Kalgorithm
Inside my head, Kal says, Get this one wrong, Sophie. Please. She’s afraid. What a drama queen. I adjust the microphone, pretending to think over the problem. The other contestants are sitting behind me on the stage. If – when – I get this question right, I’ll be the youngest MathChamp ever. Only fifteen years old.
By Mark E Bryan5 years ago in Fiction
After the Quake, A Brand New Day
Daylight. Waking from a rough night on the steps of the blown-out office building, Willa found herself clutching the heart-shaped locket given to her by her mother so many years before the world ended. She stretched and took a quick headcount of her charges. Seven children, all were there, asleep in a pile in the cool air. She would let them sleep for a while yet, there was nothing to eat and she would spare their tummies the bad news for as long as possible.
By Lois Brand5 years ago in Fiction
Who you give your heart to
“Shall we begin?” He sat comfortably in the centre of the over-large sofa, arms stretched wide across the back of the chair. The top three buttons of his shirt hung open, revealing the silvery lines of his signature ZetaReader expanding out from the centre of his chest.
By Paul Boden5 years ago in Fiction
When They Came
I can still remember the day that our world fell apart. In fact, it’s been burned into my memory and haunting my dreams ever since it happened. It was just another day in late October, and I was enjoying my first year at the University of Iowa. There was a chill in the wind that added to the already cool temperature, and the trees were bare with their leaves scattered across the campus.
By Colin Trower 5 years ago in Fiction
After the Quake, Before the Dawn
“D'mon... Lizzl!” Willa cried, trying to find her younger brother and sister through the shaking house. The walls rocked and cracked as the floor was rolling and bucking. Large chunks were falling loose from the floors above onto the street outside, the ceiling was dropping sections inside making staying inside treacherous at best. Still, Willa looked for D'mon and little Liz’ knowing that her voice was being drowned out by the noise. The sound of grinding stone was inescapable and elsewhere, alarms sounded, set off by the damage of the violent quake. Somewhere was an explosion and an emergency response unit was responding to a crisis.
By Lois Brand5 years ago in Fiction
Issues, Chapter Three
There was no beam, no line of colour nor electrical crackle bridging the short interplanetary gulf between Drenthis and her twin. Scientooth’s aesthetic had always tended more towards the Biblical. Sunshine and a lazy blue ocean fumed and plunged to purple-black sky-mountains illumining red, as torrential deluges drove down on the turbid waves and lashed Grindopolis’s skyscraper walls. In the promenades of the island city, colonials making purchases or sightseeing or merely talking to each other were drenched between breaths, and seaside recreation was supplanted by mass scrambles to seek shelter from the instantaneous tempest. Then out of the depths beneath Big Grin’s bullseye a body of mind-boggling broadness broke the roiling roof, distance and climatic conditions obscuring from shore any details besides its awesome span. Three more heartbeats of monsoon however and the thing surfaced again, leagues nearer, showing itself for some sort of armour-plated manta ray built like a good-sized sandbar. Atop harbour battlements or flood-defence banks those few Grindo observers who had not yet retreated from the heavens’ inundation stayed just long enough register as much, then fled hopping and wobbling the way of their frenzied fellows.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Hopeful Hearts
The Hopeful Hearts, is what they called us, in the first few days of the Markings. Messiahs. Prophets. Harbingers of hope destined to bring peace upon the decimated world. We were a small community, at first—strange but insignificant little anomalies rearing up in unrefined pockets of the chaotic world. We were easily dismissed, then. But it wasn’t long before our numbers grew, more and more of us bubbling up in more and more places until, finally, we could no longer be ignored.
By Melissa Armeda5 years ago in Fiction
The Preservers
She remembered when she could still feel a heartbeat pulsing through her body. It used to be the first sensation she felt before opening her eyes. She would lie there, half-awake, as the morning light streamed through her apartment window and onto her eyelids. She remembered feeling it throbbing in her fingertips as she rolled over, releasing her pinned arm after a long night of cuddle-sleeping with Max. In her mind, she romanticized that the pulse had felt comforting and natural, though in reality she had never thought about it before it was gone; it ran, unobserved, through each moment of her life. Keeping time. Keeping her alive.
By Taylor Halversen5 years ago in Fiction
Land Of The Free
It was a day that I'll never forget. Glancing upwards, I noticed gray light beginning to filter through the hazy air. I slowly made my way to the top of the tunnel, breathing shallowly near the entrance. The smoke and dust were nearly stifling if you weren't prepared - I knew this from the last time I came up.
By Ashley Rubis5 years ago in Fiction
