by Scott O’Neill I get the others to stop whimpering so I can hear my smartwatch. “sAIveME free expert system downloaded. Please summarise your crisis.” “Class-Nine shuttlecraft. Drive damaged by hostile lifeforms. Pilot and engineer eaten by same. Nontechnical crew to repair drive for escape.” “Acknowledged. Scan damage and available resources.” I show my […]
by Liam Hogan “Ship! Seal doors against the zombies!” A relaxed, artificial voice queried: <Define zombies?> As far as our ship’s mega-intelligent AI was concerned, there wasn’t any difference between us and them. Whenever one of the infected approached any of the doors, whether to sickbay or the bridge, it opened with a polite […]
by Samantha Arthurs They told me that smart cars were the way of the future. I wish now that I had never listened. I’m trapped inside; my own coffin on wheels. The automatic door locks are no longer responding to my fingerprints. My voice commands go unheard. I’m not sure where we are going. […]
by Rita Riebel Mitchell Bloodcurdling screams echoed through the halls. By the time Principal Maynard reached the new humanoid teacher’s classroom, they had stopped. “Class, say hello to Mr Maynard,” chanted Miss Hildroid. Terror reflected in the students’ tear-stained faces in a room that reeked of vomit and urine. “I heard screams. Everything okay?” […]
by Megan Kiekel Anderson I awaken from the darkness to an oversaturated cartoon world, everything blocky and poorly shaded, like N64 graphics. There’s no temperature or movement in the air, not even the faintest aroma. The only stimulus is the simplistic terrain and soothing ocean noises on a loop, like a sound machine. “Welcome, […]
by Vijayaraj Mahendraraj The permeating retro music was jarring in the elegant sterile room. The mechanical arms were busy, joints gyrating loudly. The robot had a clunky jaw, bulky pistons, and dated hardware. It performed a simple task for the evolved androids that now populated Earth. It sang gratingly, “Out with another plop. In […]
by James Rumpel The Creator will be so pleased. My emotion recognition software detected how happy he was when I successfully diagnosed and cured the illness of that one tiny human. I suspect that his joy will increase exponentially when I am able to do the same for hundreds more. It was easy to […]
by Liam Hogan In the storm’s dying gasps, we descended the cliffs to see the wreck, cloaked in tattered sails, masts broken, and hull holed. It was far from the worst sight; the beach was littered with crawling shapes. The wreck was barely thirteen hours old, but these pitiful bodies were similarly shattered, in […]
by Ria Hill He remembered the splintering of wood, but it had been so long since he had heard a crashing wave he barely remembered what one sounded like. The smell of the sea was a memory. The air around his ship’s hull was silent, as still as it was saltless. In the shocking […]
by Fiona M. Jones I laugh to think how hard we fought over the Titanic. How carefully I’d mustered confusions, mists and timing; how Cyrin, late on the scene, gave that iceberg one final tweak of speed and direction, and reckoned the shipwreck hers. The long hours that followed, while we ripped it apart […]