Image by Siyabona Africa.

This story is quite dear to me, not just because it features scenes from a happy childhood, but because it was one of the first ones I was confident enough to send out on submissions. It has been in the trenches for over a year. I got some very encouraging feedback, but it wasn’t meant to be. I could keep sending it out over and over to smaller and smaller magazines in the hope of… I don’t know. I want it to be read. I want people to just take a stroll in these little worlds inside my head. So I decided it was time. I pushed back the other story I had ready, and instead I give you a tale with a special place in my heart.

He hung on to the wooden plank with all his strength as the boat climbed nearly vertical. They crested the wave and came crashing down the other side. The seas were wild, whipped by the wind that blew across the coast, but soon they were behind the break, in the lull of newborn waves, little more than ripples over dark blue waters. His older brothers rowed the small boat, grunting with the effort, as Chico dropped the net. The big red buoys bobbed in the water and traced a gentle curve as they rowed deeper.

It was hard work, under the unrelenting African sun. The salt-crusted net stung his fingers and drew tiny swells of blood as he hauled the weight of the net over the side. The thunder of waves drowned out all conversation, and they focused on the task with the silence of routine. Before long, they were riding the surf back to shore. Chico bailed frantically with a metal can as they surrendered to the power of the sea.

The boat came crashing into the sand and scored a gouge as it ground its way to safety. Chico jumped over the side, rope in hand, and ran up the steep dune of searing hot sand that crumpled beneath his bare feet. He passed the rope to the others, and together they pulled, a group at each end of the net.

“Haul!”

And they hauled, feet sinking in the sand. Hand over hand. Haul. Forward again. And haul. The sun was already dipping beneath the dunes when the catch was brought to the shore. The clapping of dozens of fish briefly silenced the waves.

“Every day less,” his father said, wiping sweat from his brow.

It was true. It had been that way since before he was born. But it was enough, at least today. Catching his breath, Chico climbed further up the dune, where aloes and vines crawled over the sand. He stared into the distance, the beach curving away into the horizon, lost in the mists of the afternoon heat. Not a single person in sight, a paradise just for them. Yet there, on the crystal blue waters, a fishing vessel the size of a container ship plowed across their sea, taking more in a single day than his father had in his entire life.

The metal cart had been built from scrap, the wheels appropriated from a broken-down car. He followed the sand trail, a narrow stretch between thickets of spindly, thorny scrub, winding between dunes. He hauled the cart, the fish laid atop blocks of melting ice, now swarming with flies. The others went home, but he still had a task.

On the way, he passed by the old school, the only brick building still standing, its windows barred with metal. There were not enough children now, so the teachers stopped coming. The young lady there had been kind, and they fed him lunch every day. Now they were gone. Only the police remained, to make sure no one used the abandoned building.

The sun had already dipped below the horizon, painting the sky red, when he left the dunes behind and reached the road. Sometimes, the tractors would come, rolling steel cylinders to pack the earth tight. Then the rains arrived and turned it all to mud. He hated this part, the cart bumping up and down, threatening to get stuck. He kept to the middle of the road, staying clear of the tall reeds that sprang from the margins and hid the swamp.

He saw the store up ahead, the single light dangling from the porch bright in the dimming day, attracting a swirling swarm of insects. It sat at the intersection. Going straight, the road curved to the left, disappearing into the greenery where the resorts and private residences hid. To the right, the road stretched all the way to the Incomati river, before its waters bled into the ocean. The old rastafari watched him approach, smoking on the porch.

“How much today?” he asked, as Chico drew the cart to the entrance.

“Some twenty kilos,” Chico said, sinking down onto the concrete steps.

“We’ll see about that.”

He disappeared inside the store and came back with a large plastic bag. He inspected each fish before shoving it inside. Once done, he strained to hang the bag from the hook of the small, round scale.

“Nineteen point five,” he said. “I’ll round it up to twenty. It’s… three thousand meticais.”

“Wait,” Chico got up, running the numbers in his head. “Two-hundred a kilo, so four-thousand.”

“What do you know about business, boy? It’s winter. The tourists don’t come. Who will buy the fish? Three thousand. Or you can go to the city,” he pointed down the road, towards the river.

“It’s too far. Be honest, compatriot. It’s always been two-hundred.”

“Now it is one-fifty,” he flicked his cigarette butt into the muddy road.

Chico stared down the road. He could get a better price there, but even if he made it, walking the entire night, he had no money for the ferry. Tomorrow, the fish would have started to rot.

He took the cash.

The moon was bright enough to guide his way home across the many branching trails that split into the scrub, hidden paths only a local knew. It was a small village, only a few families remained. His house was hidden behind a circle of vines that offered a little privacy and respite from the sun. In that refuge, his mother and grandmother waited by the fire, sitting on braided reed mats. He set the cart in a corner, stopping to pet the penned goats before joining his family.

“Good day?” his mother asked.

“Not so much,” he said, finally sitting down and relaxing his burning legs.

“Tomorrow will be better,” she said, as she handed him a plate with a bundle of tinfoil. He unwrapped the package, and steam billowed out. The fish had been cooked just right, the flesh peeling easily from the bones, marinated in onions and bay leaves from the garden. He ate with his hands and licked his fingers in the end. With his belly full, he lay back on the mat, staring into the clear sky, where the Milky Way was a bursting streak of twinkling stars.

“Have you met that Nomi girl? Alberto’s daughter? She is very pretty, isn’t she?” his mother asked, not so subtly.

“Mother, please.”

“Just saying…”

His father arrived, weaving through the fire’s light. He disappeared into the hut trailing a cloud of alcohol. His mother laid a gentle hand on Chico’s shoulder, before following him in. Inside their hut there was only one bed, an old ragged mattress where his parents slept. He avoided looking back at it, the sad construction of clay and dried hay, dug into the sand. Besides him, his grandmother stirred the fire and the logs crackled loudly.

“Have I told you about Nzunzu?” she asked, in the quiet, reverent tone that presaged a story handed down over generations.

“The water serpent, born of our ancestor--”

“Yes,” she interrupted. “Nzunzu once lived…” she embarked on her tale as if he did not already know it.

His father was angry about the money, but at least now he did not have to haul the cart anymore. He hoped his older brother would fare better, but doubted it. Chico stayed on the beach, despite the sharp wind that blew sand across his ankles. The constant rumbling of waves soothed him, a lullaby that followed all the way down to the village.

He watched the sky turn gold, then red, before fading into a deep purple. When night came, it was all at once, the stars suddenly sparkling behind the wispy clouds that glowed in moonlight. Just as suddenly, the wind turned biting and cold, and he shivered. Yet, he stayed, dreaming of a better tomorrow, of nets filled to bursting and his father satisfied. He watched, astounded, as comets streamed across the sky. Dozens, then hundreds, burning trails across the clouds before lighting the horizon in a new sun.

It was then that it emerged from the waves, a white, semi-transparent form snaking ashore, long flimsy fins digging furrows into the sand. Chico crawled back on his haunch as the scale of the thing finally dawned on him. Not a rare creature from the deep, but a towering serpent. It reared up and spread its lateral fins like a threatened cobra, as long, spindly tentacles jutted from the head and tasted the air.

“Nzunzu…” he whispered.

He turned and ran, not looking back, slipping and stumbling in his panic to crawl up the dune.

He did not sleep that night. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Nzunzu, the great serpent, rearing up before him. He saw it creep across the dunes, across the jungle, until it found him sleeping on his mat.

He did not tell anyone. Who would believe him? He could not even believe himself. A dream. A hallucination. A flight of imagination. He needed proof.

Saturday morning, he gathered what little money he had hidden away, stashed inside a hollowed-out pole in the goat pen, else his father drink it all. He carried only a bottle of water the he filled from the pump well and strapped his ripped shirt over his head like a headscarf as he set off.

He passed by the store, where the old man tracked him with alert eyes, and walked along the banks of the road where reeds sprouted wild, where the sound of crickets was loud enough to hurt his ears and where cows grazed in the distance. It had not rained in a week, and so the dirt was solid underfoot. Creaking, rusting vans passed him by, filled to bursting, passengers hanging from the sides, raising a choking plume of dust.

The sun was high in the sky now, and to the sides he could see the herders, treading those secret paths along the marshes as they guided the gaunt cows. Soon, he came upon the river, the mighty stream still swollen from the rainy season. Lilies and reeds crowded the surface and hid the deep and murky waters. He had swum across once, with his brothers, and his mother had hit him with her sandal for it. The sea demanded respect, or so his father had said. Give it, and it will let you live. Turn your back on a wave, and you risk drowning. The river was much more deadly than the ocean and crocodiles were the least of it.

Where the road met the river, a concrete platform sank into the water, crumbling and cracking all over. Next to the bar carved out of a metal container stood the guard post, where an officer dressed in white sold him a ticket.

After an hour, the barge came chugging in, trailing thick, black smoke from its chimneys. It crashed uncaring into the platform, as men threw ropes from above and puled the craft into the landing with skill. The metal bridge came tumbling down. South African tourists streamed into the road in their pickups, crowded by children asking for “sweeties”, the only English word they knew.

He climbed aboard the vessel, weaving between the vans and cars that did not wait for the people. He found a corner, beneath the shadow of the conductor’s tower. The metal railing burned his hands as he tried to lean over the side, so he leaned against the pickup parked next to him, ignoring the looks from inside, too exhausted to care about their outrage.

The barge weaved from side to side as it pushed against the thick, green carpet that suffocated the waters. Sooner or later, it would sink, Chico knew. At least once a month, it was grounded for repairs, stranding the people on his side. But beneath his feet, everything was rusting, the metal floors falling into sharp, oil-stained pits. Maybe one day the Party would build the bridge they had promised for so long. He could not help but shiver at the thought, seeing the throngs of tourists suddenly invading his home, leaving nothing behind but empty beer bottles and tire tracks across the dunes.

He jumped from the barge before the bridge was lowered to avoid the jostling crowd. The platform was slick with oil, but he clambered up the ramp as the barge crashed in behind him. To his right sprawled a restaurant, the concrete walls painted in bright red, with a veranda that extended out into the water. There, the mulungos sat to drink their beers while waiting for the barge, hounded by children. The kids made little crafts of reeds and straw, ingenious contraptions: pull the straw and the top spun into the air like a helicopter.

He set a brisk pace and kept to the side of the crumbling concrete road. He passed by the stalls, his stomach rumbling at the smell of apple bananas and roasted cashews. But that was short-lived, as he crossed the fish-market and its many rotting smells. Outside, a man held two large, bright red crabs, their pincers tied with strings. He jumped onto the middle of the road, forcing cars to stop so he could hawk his wares. Chico ignored it all, the frenetic chaos that lived just across the river, and kept walking until he crossed the forgotten train tracks, overgrown with plants and trees.

The slope ahead was steep, a mountain of silt and clay, down which cars raced, skidding along the curves. It was past midday, and the heat was at its fiercest. Out here, he missed the constant breeze from the sea that made it all bearable. When he finally crested the hill, he was panting and dripping in sweat. But it was worth it. Behind him, the Incomati river swelled, spilling over into the marshes, painting the world green before it bled into the ocean. From here, it looked untouched, a wild jungle no one could penetrate.

The truth was far more depressing.

The store was a concrete cubicle, crowded with dangling cables and boxes, the counter hidden behind metal bars.

“What do you want?” the owner asked, looking him up and down.

“A phone,” Chico said.

The man grabbed something from behind the counter, a grey brick, a phone older than Chico. “Three hundred.”

“Not that,” Chico said. “I need something with a camera. And internet.”

The man narrowed his eyes at him, then reached below the counter. “This one, used but works.”

The screen was cracked and some of the keys had fallen off, but it lit up when the man pressed the button, singing a soft song.

“It works? Everything?”

“It works. Two thousand.”

“I… I only have eighteen-hundred.”

“I’m not negotiating, boy. Got the money or not?”

“Look, really,” Chico emptied his pockets, holding out the crumpled notes. “Please. It’s all I have.”

Maybe it was pity. Maybe the price was too high to begin with. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it worked, he made sure before he left. This was it. If he could film it, if he could capture Nzunzu show the world, then everything would change.

Chico waited, watching the sun set, watching the stars rise, waiting for Nzunzu. His feet sank into the soft sand, waves rolling across his knees, tiny crabs sprouting to the surface in their wake.

“Nzunzu, I summon you!” He shouted into the ocean.

Again and again, he shouted, until his voice cracked and his throat was raw.

Exhausted, he crawled up the dune, slumping over the crest, staring helplessly out at the sea. The first rays of light broke over the dunes, while the ocean still slept in shadow. That’s when he saw it, the pale form undulating beneath the waves. In a flash, it burst forward, shooting out into the sand. Chico stumbled backwards, and in that brief instant the serpent already towered above him, translucent fins waving rhythmically along the length of the worm’s body.

This time, Chico did not run. He faced the spirit, raising his trembling hands, the phone held out like a weapon.

“Nzunzu…” he whispered.

Pain shot through his temple, and he crumpled to his knees, vision pulsing with light. A feral shout tore from his throat.

“Nzunzu please,” he begged.

The pain faded, slowly, like a wave draining away. He peered with one eye, as Nzunzu stood before him, regal and imposing, dancing in the wind.

Letters appeared, twisting tendrils of light coiling around themselves, coalescing into words.

“I am not your god,” they read in Portuguese.

“Then… who are you?” Chico forced himself to his feet, legs trembling as he stared up at the white, slimy snake.

“Guests.”

“Guests? Of whom? Why do you come to me, Nzunzu?”

“I am not your god,” it repeated. “The biosphere cascade has begun. Now we must preserve.”

“I don’t understand,” Chico mumbled.

The sudden pain overwhelmed him and he fell to the ground, before oblivion mercifully arrived.

He awoke in a coffin.

Darkness was absolute. Inside the tight space, he felt around the curving metal walls and smooth glassy surfaces. He found the holes, where air whistled in, and nothing more. They had buried him. He pushed against the metal, straining with all his strength to no avail. He cursed Nzunzu, cursed his ancestors, cursed every watching spirit.

When he had lost all hope, he noticed it. Faint lights, dancing in the distance. It took a moment to realize he was moving. He was not buried beneath sand--he was buried beneath the waves. And there he saw the ships, those slim metal towers rising from the sea-bed, glowing red-hot as the water boiled and dead fish rained.

Image by NASA.

If you are looking for more Sci-Fi stories to read then you came to the right place!

I love the idea of Sci-Friday, where all sorts of science fiction authors try to help each other find readers and share their work, so I’m trying to make a repository of sorts, because finding actual fiction on substack is not as easy as it seems. Instead of spamming restacks, I’ll focus on growing and restacking this specific post, hopefully adding new people each time.

Without further delay, these are the science fiction writers I enjoy on substack, all corralled into a single place against their will. Please welcome these cool people to this great assembly of nerds, show them some love! I am saving every story you send me and I will read them all (I do have a backlog but I’m working on it)!

This week’s wonderful new additions:

- Start Here! Who can stand in the way of a mighty Space Lord but himself?

- Start Here! If you are wondering what jobs will be left after the singularities take over, AI psychologist might be one of them.

- Start Here! There is a reason all the serial killers have mommy issues.

- Start Here! It’s called Vampire Daddy. VAMPIRE DADDY! Do I need to say more?

- Start Here! Angkor Wat is such a great setting, definitely need more stories with that vibe, it is a fantastic place.

Weekly spotlight of new projects (if you are on this list and have started a new series or project, let me know and I can highlight you here!)

The growing list of amazing authors on substack:

- start Here! Go give him a big cheer!

- Start Here! She does plenty of SciFi, but this story I particularly liked: are we just shadows of ourselves?

- Start Here! A generational colony ship went dark centuries ago, now a salvager stumbles upon it and finds something he did not expect!

- Start Here! It might not be fiction, but hot damned if it isn’t nerdy! Somewhere there is a story in there about a lonely spacecraft waiting in orbit, dark, waiting for a signal that might never come.

- Start Here! We all need a buddybot like that in our lives!

and Others! - Start Here! A collaborative piece between several nerds, each following a different thread and building on the last. Such a cool project!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- not fiction, but perfect inspiration for stories and lots of new ideas to consider! Go Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here !

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

from ‘How to Avoid Acting Monstrous’ - start Here!

Help grow this list, send me all your favorite science fiction writers!

And if you are on the list and want a custom description next to your name or a specific link just boop me.

If you are interested in the mechanics of the list, my idea is to give everyone a fair shake, so new additions get a spotlight and get added to the top of the list the following week, but the list rotates so the last person gets bumped to the top each week.

Image by Bhautik Patel on Unsplash.

In the darkened twilight of the ship’s bowels, Mila twisted the two wires together and wrapped them in tape, then flipped the switch to re-establish the current, and the ship rattled anew, pieces falling away. One more hurdle overcome on the way to a trade, a single one on which their future depended.

“Alright dad, let her roar,” she said over the comms.

“Strap down,” he said. “Ignition in ten…”

She didn’t strap down. Mila pushed gently against the walls, until she was floating exactly in the middle of the long, dark corridor. When the engines ignited, the whole ship rumbled and rattled. The walls started moving, and the ship picked up speed around her. She let the floor rush towards her and landed softly as her magboots clicked into place.

She found her dad in the control room. His tattoos swirled in delicate traces around his bald head, bunching up around his spine before flowing down his arms until his entire hands were covered. Her own tattoos were spindly traces flowing up her fingers, barely visible, the minimum necessary to interface with the systems.

“You feel that?” her father asked, hand against the wall, feeling the rumbling of the engines. “She is purring.”

“She is falling apart.” Mila smiled.

“Nonsense,” he came over to wrap her in an embrace. “You can fix her, no matter what,” his smile wavered and his features turned serious. “But I’m afraid I got some bad news. It’s time to rotate your apprenticeship, new things to learn.”

“Already?” Mila’s shoulders sagged. “Do I have to go to Burt down in the reactor?”

“Worse. Much worse, I’m afraid.”

“What is it?” she whispered.

“I’m afraid you’re stuck with me,” his facade finally broke and he chuckled.

She hit her fists lightly against his chest. “You scared me!”

“You should be scared, pumpkin. I’m not going easy on you.”

“Have you ever heard them sing?” her father asked, eyes never leaving the screens, tracking the endless flow of data, making sure the ship didn’t fall apart while she piloted.

“Who?” Mila asked, looking around the crew in the control room. “The Family?”

“The stars,” he said. He pulled her hand out of the control socket where she interfaced with the ship and slipped his own arm in. A sound whispered across the control room. A rumbling bass, rising and falling in waves, pierced by sharp highs that quickly faded away.

“What do they say?” she asked.

“They tell us the past. And they tell us what lies ahead. You just need to learn their language.”

In the captain’s seat, her father’s seat, she closed her eyes. The sounds seemed random, a discordant array of screaming voices and grumbling lows.

“Alright,” he said, removing his arm from the socket. “We’re approaching the deceleration point. How many days?”

“One-thousand and thirty-three.”

“Yes. Always remember that number. It is the most important one for a Floater. How long it takes to start moving, to reach near-light cruising speed, and how long it takes to stop. We’ll start gently. Light pulses of the engines, and check the computer.”

Mila inserted her arm into the socket again. With her eyes closed, displays and data flooded her vision.

“Do we trust the readings?” her father asked.

“Assume ten percent error margin,” she replied.

“Good. Now watch for the point. Look at the trajectory. You will see the right moment.”

She waited, the timer ticking down as the ship sped near light-speed. It reached zero. She fired a short burst of the side thrusters. The ship flipped, tumbling around itself slowly.

She gave a new burst, bringing it to a relative stop, engines facing their destination.

“Perfect,” her father said, hand on her shoulder. “Now let her scream!”

She fired the main engines, and a new star was born in the void.

With slight twitches of her hand, Mila brought the ship into a matching trajectory over the moon of swirling green and blue, the roaring engines finally silent after their long journey across the darkness. In a gentle arc, she maneuvered until the Hope pointed at the station’s axial bore. Short bursts nudged them towards the opening.

The station had been carved out of an asteroid, its hollowed out shell spinning fast enough for gravity to take hold. The hole at its mouth ran all the length across the station, ships spilling out at the other end. She followed the gently pulsing lights in her virtual vision, a track she saw with closed eyes, guiding the ship into a berth.

When the ship finally slipped inside, the whole universe spun, too fast for her eyes to track as the station raced around them, forever rotating along the axis. She fought down the sudden wave of nausea and tried to control the ship, firing the lateral thrusters, spinning the ship faster and faster and faster until it synchronized with the station and it seemed they were not moving at all. Pistons ejected from the station’s hangar and connected with the Hope, pulling into the dock.

In the control room, the Family cheered and clapped at the perfect docking. Jared even whistled, and her cheeks turned red.

“That was perfect, Mila,” her father said as she got out of the captain’s chair and disconnected from the socket. He wrapped her in a hug.

“Dad, you’re embarrassing me,” she said in the warmth of his arms.

“They’re all proud of you, the whole Family,” he whispered, before releasing his grasp. “Now go have some fun. Just remember the rule…”

“Don’t get attached to earthers,” she recited back.

The station reeked. A thousand different smells and sounds assaulted her senses. The corridors were vast, stretching as far as the eye could see, flanked by shops and offices. The crowd seemed to part before her, the earthers shrinking out of the way, casting sideways glances.

They seemed almost a different breed. So many colors, so many styles and so much hair and beards. It was opulent and inefficient, it was jarring, but it was also full of life. She wandered aimlessly, going where people went.

Mila stumbled into a plaza where the ceiling loomed several meters above her head, bare stone still showing the edges of the station, pocketed with access tunnels and shafts. Lights and ribbons dangled and snaked across the walls. A local celebration, she guessed. On a stage at the center, surrounded by a small audience, performers danced and swirled as a strange melody filled the air.

Her stomach rumbled and she followed her nose to the restaurant that was little more than a balcony set into the wall, bright-red letters reading Frank’s Diner at the top. A few plastic chairs and tables had been set but were empty.

She approached the counter, and the man narrowed his eyes at her, but did not flinch.

“What will it be, miss?” he asked.

“Whatever’s giving off that smell,” she said, leaning against the metal top.

“That would be the rukid steak. With fries. No offense miss, but money up front.”

“Sure,” she pressed her finger against the reader, touching her tattoo to the interface. It beeped and flashed green.

“Nice trick,” the man said, checking his register to confirm the payment. “Have a seat. It will only be a few minutes.”

The chair was too small, even for her, so she slumped into it awkwardly and stared into the crowd that stared back at her.

Fred emerged from the restaurant, plastic tray in hand, even a soda she did not pay for. He set it down on the table and her mouth watered at the smell.

“Mind if I sit down?” he asked, dragging a chair and sinking into it before she could respond.

She watched him, popping crunchy fries into her mouth. It turns out, actual oil makes all the difference.

“They say all you floaters are rich,” he said quietly.

“Each of us is as wealthy as the whole,” she replied.

“Could you spend that wealth if you needed to?”

It was her turn to narrow her eyes at him. “Maybe.”

“If you can’t, then call someone who can. I hear things, you know? Customers like to brag. I got something you need to know.”

She paid. Only two-thousand credits. Maybe a fortune to him, but a drop in the bucket for their budget.

Whispering, eyes tracking the crowd, he told her, and even before he finished talking she sprinted back to the ship.

It was too late.

The governor’s voice boomed over the comms, resounding in the ship’s control room. “Defective respirators, copper disguised as titanium, the list goes on!”

“Governor,” her father said, eyes closed as he interfaced with his console. “We are honest traders. We delivered each order as agreed, you can…”

“You won’t weasel your way out of this one, floater. Every single company you delivered to has filed an official complaint. You will return every single penny, and you will compensate us for the costs. This will set back production…”

She saw her father tense up, his limbs twitch as the governor raged on.

“How much to end this charade?” her father finally asked.

“A reasonable man, good,” the governor said. “I can be reasonable too. How about we round it down to ten million credits?”

She heard her father grinding his teeth. It was their entire savings, all that they had, their only means of keeping the ship stocked and running new trades. A fortune, on top of the already stolen cargo. The governor held all the cards, and he knew it.

“Everyone strap in, right now!” her father shouted over the ship’s comms, before switching back to the conversation with the governor. “We don’t have that much liquid. We will need to pay in goods.”

“Freaking floaters… fine, send me your inventory.”

“Everyone strapped in?” her father asked over the ship. No one spoke up. “Brace yourselves.”

Thrusters fired. Strapped to an acceleration chair, Mila felt the ship straining against the pistons that held it to the dock. Metal groaned and tore, a horrible sound. Then it snapped.

The ship lurched to the side, before the thrusters fired again and she was rocked from side to side. The main engines lit up, roaring to life with all their power. Behind them, metal melted and the station vented, bodies spilling out.

Mila closed her eyes, unable to witness the destruction. She hoped Fred was not floating out there. But then she remembered: they would all be dead of old age before the Family reached their next destination. All but the governor and those like him, those that could afford eternal life, purchased by the sweat and blood of others.

One-thousand and thirty-three days. Cruising at the edges of light-speed, they were finally safe, for now. The glare of the pursuing ships was bright enough to obscure their numbers as all their drive’s fires merged into a single sphere of plasma. Her father paced in a circle in the control-room while the Family looked at him with doubt in their eyes.

“Home,” her father said. “That’s the only way. We have to face them. We have to fight them, there won’t be any outrunning this one.” He turned to Luna, the navigator. “Plot a course to the Hive.”

The tension crept into every aspect of their lives. Carefully planned routines now tilted off course. Fights among family. Shifts missed. Not a single shot had been fired but the first blow had already been dealt. The Hope cruised along the void, a grain of sand in the beach. When the Hive came into view, unfelt decades later, decades compressed into mere years, relief washed across the ship in a cold wave.

The black hole dominated the sky, the accretion disk swirling with plasma from a dying star. Pulses of radiation and light burst from the titan. Amidst the chaos, the Hive orbited, hidden in the maelstrom. Pods and hubs connected by flowing tubes and slim corridors, piled around each other without any order, a bee’s hive grown out of control. Here and there asteroids spun, exhaust fans bleeding red-hot, somehow floating inside the Hive. This was the home Mila did not even remember, despite being born there.

In the darkness, new drives flared to life. A few, then dozens. A fleet, their fleet, their only defense, all that the Hive could muster. They burned hot, ready to intercept the pursuers. The Hope sped past them, a trading ship had no business in war.

They parked just out of reach from the Hive. Long tendrils came snaking out, connecting with airlocks. Mila took a shuttle with her father and he guided the craft into the chaos, zipping between nodes and umbilicals, heading deeper in. They docked with one of the largest structures she had seen, a massive cylinder rotation over a spoke.

She expected the same bare metal walls of her ship, but in the station she found herself floating in space without a suit. The walls curved all around, showing the sky itself, the glittering milky way to the left and the looming black hole to the right. Even the airlocks glittered with stars.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” her father smiled back at Mila.

“Incredible,” she whispered, extending a hand to touch the walls, to make sure they existed.

“You’ll have time to see it all. Come, we need to speak with the Council.”

He led her to the rail and they boarded the metallic sphere that floated in the air, slightly bobbing as they boarded. It sped forward across magnetic tracks.

Concussions rippled over the station, a low grumbling. The lights went out. The capsule ground to a stop, then clunked down to the floor as red emergency lights came to life.

“They got through…” her father whispered. “Get out, now!”

He undid his own straps, working the door until it popped open. Mila’s heart thundered in her chest loud enough to compete with the concussions that now rocked the station from all sides.

“Come on!” her father extended a hand and she let him drag her out into the rail tunnel. He pulled her along until he found a hatch. A few turns of the wheel and it popped open into a corridor.

“Run!” he pushed her forward. “Take a left up ahead.”

An explosion sounded behind her, the entire world shaking and rumbling. Mila turned back and saw a hole in the wall, a metal flower, where some projectile had burst through and metal peeled. Wind rushed against her face: there was a leak.

“Don’t stop!” her father pushed her forward. Airlocks slid open before her, closing in their wake as she propelled herself along as fast as she could.

“It’s all my fault,” her father said. “I underestimated their greed.”

“It’s not your fault, dad, they were trying to extort us. Damn greedy–”

“No, Mila,” he interrupted. “I led them straight back here. It’s the lanes. The governors, the presidents, the kings… they will choke the trade between planets.”

“We’ll worry about that later dad, where are we going?”

“Dock 28-B… You’re all grown up now… a surprise…”

“I don’t understand.”

The silence stretched.

She looked back, and saw her father floating towards her, unmoving.

“Dad?” she grabbed on to him, bringing him to a stop. “Dad?”

She saw thick droplets floating in the air. She turned him around. A jagged piece of metal stuck out from his abdomen. Blood squirted, drifting.

“Dad speak to me,” she pleaded, hands on his face. “Dad!”

“Promise…” his words came as a whisper as bloody foam bubbled from his lips. “Survive…”

Mila stumbled through corridors, half blind, tears running down her face as people rushed in panic and the entire station groaned under the assault. She could feel the impacts rippling across stone and metal, as metal was peeled like paint with dying shrieks, as entire stations bloomed into clouds of debris.

Dock 28-B. She peered into the airlock and saw an umbilical stretching into the distance across the door. She hammered the button and the airlock hissed open. Hand by hand, she propelled herself forward into the semi-transparent tube and saw the destruction. From the darkness, missiles spewed forth, tracing fire across the sky. Rail-guns fired, projectiles smashing into the stations, blowing shrapnel in every direction. But ahead, connected to the umbilical, was the ship. Her ship.

The silver spear shone with the light of explosions, a regal creature in the midst of chaos, patiently waiting for her. Inside, the walls were smooth and polished, a brand new craft, the peak of Floater tech.

In the control-room, she slipped into the captain’s station and inserted her arm into the viscous liquid of the socket, feeling the cold metal folds envelop her skin. With a thought, she disconnected the umbilical, and the vessel floated free.

The ship roared to life with barely a shiver, auxiliary thrusters firing with precision. She guided it, searching for a clear path as debris thudded against the hull. Even now she could see the elegance, the ship dancing to her whim, predicting her instincts.

Finding a clear path, she fired the main engines. Acceleration crushed her down into the gel of the chair.

She kept pushing.

Faster.

Forces kept building.

Not one-thousand and thirty-three days, but four-hundred.

Despite the name inscribed on the craft, Peace, she named it Vengeance.

A mote in the sky, drifting with the wind, when she was not curled up on the floor, arms wrapped around her knees, sobbing, pitying herself, cursing the damned earthers. They pursued her still, but they were months behind her much faster ship, capable of pushing more gees than any of them. The silver spear sped across the vacuum of interstellar space, decades speeding past in months as she raced at the edge of light-speed, listening to the stars rage ahead and cry behind and remembering all that her father had been.

She had a purpose–revenge–but the means escaped her. The Vengeance was a trader, wonderfully fast but virtually defenseless, only a few PDCs to blast micro-meteorites out of the way.

In her head, she saw herself looming over the governor, a gun to his head as he pleaded in vain. In the few moments of clarity across the long years drifting into the void, she knew it would never happen. As the ship burned into the system she was certain it would never happen. As she pointed her ship to the station, she knew what had to happen.

A force compelled her, some unspoken instinct driving her actions, moving her hands without her will. Her eyes finally focused, and she saw herself for what seemed the first time, reflected on the silvery walls. Her limbs were long and delicate, pale and hairless. Her fingernails had been replaced with the tattoos, the nanos flowing like fluid metal over her skin, swirling up to her face to frame her large, round eyes and shallow nose. Floaters were a different breed, to be hated, oppressed, taken advantage of in any way without even the need of an excuse.

Mila ignored all the hails, all the blaring comms, all the computers screaming their alarms. There was only one thing she could do. She cut off the engines, no longer braking, no longer one-thousand and thirty-three days, but only a handful.

She could see the moon now, the fragmented continents shining green beneath the clouds. The station was a little shadow in orbit from which ships emerged like flies. She cut all non-essential functions, letting the ship drift dark and fast.

The station loomed into view, the rotating rock coated in metal. Somewhere inside the governor hid. The anger fled her, in those last seconds. She remembered her father’s last plea, a dying wish she had buried with rage. It would not matter. It would not bring back her father or her family, it wouldn’t fix a damned thing. But it was too late. One-thousand and thirty-three days, but she had none left.

The Vengeance barreled into the station at light-speed.

Metal rained down on the moon.

Tsunamis of molten rock and ash swallowed the continents.

And people not yet born paid the price of a single man’s greed and a new star sang a song of sorrow into the void.

The End!

Hope you enjoyed it, and please do let me know what you think!

Image by NASA.

If you are looking for more Sci-Fi stories to read then you came to the right place!

I love the idea of Sci-Friday, where all sorts of science fiction authors try to help each other find readers and share their work, so I’m trying to make a repository of sorts, because finding actual fiction on substack is not as easy as it seems. Instead of spamming restacks, I’ll focus on growing and restacking this specific post, hopefully adding new people each time.

Without further delay, these are the science fiction writers I enjoy on substack, all corralled into a single place against their will. Please welcome these cool people to this great assembly of nerds, show them some love! I am saving every story you send me and I will read them all (I do have a backlog but I’m working on it)!

This week’s wonderful new additions:

- Start Here! She does plenty of SciFi, but this story I particularly liked: are we just shadows of ourselves?

- Start Here! A generational colony ship went dark centuries ago, now a salvager stumbles upon it and finds something he did not expect!

- Start Here! It might not be fiction, but hot damned if it isn’t nerdy! Somewhere there is a story in there about a lonely spacecraft waiting in orbit, dark, waiting for a signal that might never come.

- Start Here! We all need a buddybot like that in our lives!

and Others! - Start Here! A collaborative piece between several nerds, each following a different thread and building on the last. Such a cool project!

Weekly spotlight of new projects (if you are on this list and have started a new series or project, let me know and I can highlight you here!)

The growing list of amazing authors on substack:

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- not fiction, but perfect inspiration for stories and lots of new ideas to consider! Go Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here !

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

from ‘How to Avoid Acting Monstrous’ - start Here!

- start Here!

Help grow this list, send me all your favorite science fiction writers!

And if you are on the list and want a custom description next to your name or a specific link just boop me.

If you are interested in the mechanics of the list, my idea is to give everyone a fair shake, so new additions get a spotlight and get added to the top of the list the following week, but the list rotates so the last person gets bumped to the top each week.

Image by Simon Wilkes on unsplash.

What would you be willing to do, to ensure a peaceful future?

The crowd jostled with the thrashing energy of a dam about to burst. Elbows dug into him, but Erik knew how to navigate unseen and squeeze into the tight spaces and edged ever closer to the front of the mob that would relish stepping on him. He pushed his way to one of the corridors where people were funneled into a single line, a desperate herd that sought to escape the dreadful planet.

They shuffled forward, one at a time, heads down, trying to avoid raising any suspicion. The officer behind the glass panel nodded at him and Erik approached the glass box.

“Place your hand on the scanner,” the officer said.

Erik complied and it beeped.

“Lottery, huh?” the man said. “Look into the camera. Good, now move there,” he pointed to the side.

Erik stood facing the doors. Waiting.

The officer knocked on the glass. “Put your hand on the scanner, boy.”

He shuffled, embarrassed, and placed his hand. The doors slid open into a metal cube that trapped him inside. Machines whirred for a few seconds, before the way forward opened.

It all seemed to be going well. Too well, even. No one had stopped him yet, no one said the lottery was a scam or a trap, but there was time yet. The galaxy was finally at peace, but humans always found a way to fight each other. He gazed open-mouthed at the cavernous embarcation room, all sparkling steel and clear glass, clean and orderly, free of the chaos outside.

Ashamed of his ragged clothes, he found a corner near his embarcation terminal and sank down to the cold floor. He wrapped his arms around the faded gym bag which held his only possessions and looked out the sweeping windows, but there was only the dark haze of smog lit by the diffuse light of an obscured sun. High-rises pierced the smoke, shining with their own light, containing their own separate worlds.

When the time finally came to board his heart raced as he climbed the few last steps to the ship. The stewardess smiled and nodded as he passed. He’d done it. He was really escaping this doomed world.

A fresh start.

In the ship, Erik opened the door to his cabin and saw three other people already seated and gazes drifted his way. He shrivelled beneath their stares, hunching over as he sank into his seat. The soft gel gave under his weight before hardening, molding around his frame as he fumbled with the restraints.

“Here,” the young man next to him said. “Let me help you.”

Erik stared with wide eyes as he swiftly connected all the ends, securing him to the seat.

“Damian,” the man said, extending a hand.

“Erik.” He shook Damian’s hand lightly, expecting it to pull away.

“Lottery winner?”

Erik looked down, avoiding his gaze.

“Don’t worry friend, I am not blind to my own hypocrisy,” he cast an angry look to the two other passengers. “My parents bought my seat. I know it is not fair. But at the same time, I couldn’t refuse. I hope you don’t hate me for it.”

“I don’t,” Erik admitted. “I would pay too, if I could. Anyone would.”

The doors to the cabin slid open and a stewardess peeked her head in.

“Do not leave your seats please,” she eyed over the restraints. “We are about to take off.”

The engines roared to life. The world shook and all sounds melted in the screams of roaring fire. Erik was pushed down into the gel. The weight on his chest grew and he sank down until he almost disappeared into the seat.

Then… weightless.

Free, as his planet tumbled slowly beneath them, swallowed in dark gray clouds and ringed with twinkling lights of stations and spacecraft, a world lost in a darkness of its own making.

They docked with the transport ship, the behemoth that would carry him across the void between stars, where they were herded into a room that blossomed into a cavern several floors high. Four pods rose from pillars of machinery and tangled tubes and cables. The hum of turning gears and gurgling pumps was a constant drum.

Their guide, a man in an armor suit, swiveled on his heels to face them.

“Remove your clothes, please,” he said.

One by one, he pressed an injector to their arms. Erik felt a numbness spreading where it pierced his skin.

“Up you go,” the man said. “Just lie down.”

Erik climbed the metal steps, feeling woozy and sleepy as he held to the railings for support. At the summit, there was a single metal slab carved into the flat surface. He laid down on it.

With a clank, the platform descended. Lids slid into place in layers and all was darkness. He felt the platform reach the bottom. His breath echoed in the cryochamber as he shivered.

Machines whirred and buzzed all around him. A deep gurgling sound came from the top, thick syrup dripping. The warm viscous liquid touched his skin, rising, slowly, enveloping, swimming. Floating in the warm liquid, his mind drifted away into sleep, unaware of all the things his body would suffer to survive.

“What do you think it’s going to be like?” Damian asked as they stood in line to disembark from the ship.

“If the pictures are true, wild forests and untamed valleys. Clear skies and flowing, clean rivers,” Erik answered.

“Low expectations, huh?” Damian chuckled.

The stewardess at the door smiled up at him and he pressed his finger to the scanner she held out.

“Erik,” she said. “Here is your ticket. You will be present at this location,” she pointed with her finger. “At this time. Do not lose it.”

“Ticket for what?”

“For your ship of course, to take you to your destination.”

“This isn’t it?” Erik asked.

“Oh no, darling. This is just a way-point. You need a few more days before you can go into cryo again. But don’t worry, just enjoy yourself, have some fun. Now please, give me your hand.”

Off-kilter and stunned, Erik extended his arm. She wrapped a bracelet around his wrist, made of flowing metal that contracted, seamless and tight against his skin.

“With that you can pay for what you need and get a room in a listed hotel, just take your pick.”

Erik traversed the umbilical out of the ship and descended the tower. Faster. Faster, until he was running down the steps, running outside, where he saw a sky clear of smog, of ship trails, of acid rain, just… blue. Blue and endless. The sun was high, tinged with its own bright teal glare, blazing down with fury. He breathed in the fresh air.

“So, where’s your embark?” Damian asked, breaking the spell.

Erik showed him the ticket.

“Same place, lucky us buddy!” Damian said. “Come on, let’s have some fun.”

The train into town was slow and lazy, which suited Erik just fine as he marveled at green fields that sprawled to the horizon, gentle plains waving with the breeze. He saw animals he had only seen in videos, cows and goats roaming wild, birds dancing in the sky.

When the dream came to an end, they were greeted by wide stone houses, painted in feverish colors into a picturesque town. Trees lined the center of every street, broad or narrow, with arching bridges over twisting streams. In the distance, there was the murmuring of a waterfall even as the train rumbled to a stop.

Erik followed Damian, who walked with the certainty of a local despite his ignorance, stumbling his way onwards until they found a hotel, a squat building of marble, lost in an alley.

“I’ll get a burger,” Damian said to the waiter inside.

“Same for me,” Erik said. He still expected to be kicked out at any moment. The others were dressed in suits and long dresses, while he still carried his old rags.

The burgers came, steaming and dripping with molten cheese. Erik bit into it and hot juices spilled into his mouth, the meat almost dissolving on his tongue. Actual meat, not protein substitutes, another wonder of the colonies.

The days passed in a blur, a cloud of happiness that turned all memories into haze. Damian soon found there were few places their bracelets couldn’t reach. They hopped across bars and restaurants, they chatted with girls beyond their league and even rode horses in the open plains. At night, he glanced up at the sky and saw stars, bright and clear, twinkling, inviting, a whole universe waiting. When rain came, he ran for safety, only to be amazed by Damian dancing and splashing like a kid. It poured gently, soft, cold, and it didn’t burn into his skin.

It was true. For once, he expected the worst and it didn’t come. No one hauled him off to a prison, no one stole what he had or kicked him out at the mere sight. For once, he was happy, and he had a friend he could actually trust, one which had no reason to take anything from him, one who showed him there was still beauty left if you were willing to see it.

That was it, the reason nobles bankrupted themselves to buy tickets, why wars were fought over distant stars, why billions perished in the centuries of war. And it was all worth it.

Erik felt like a new man. A rebirth, a fresh start. He no longer stood out from the crowd, just another regular colonist waiting to board the ship towards a new, better life. The procedure was familiar by now, and he eagerly slept across decades to awaken in a new place. Years slept away, until he opened his eyes to a cavernous expanse of dark and rough stone.

He was on the bare stone floor, surrounded by others, most still sleeping, some struggling to get up. This was not a ship.

He searched the darkness for Damian, but he was not there, all the faces were unfamiliar and the others were just as confused as him, so he followed the sound of crushing rocks echoing from outside, down a long corridor dug into the stone, barely tall enough to stand.

He found a man at the end of the tunnel, hammering the rocks with a pneumatic hammer. Erik shouted, but the man could not hear him. He tapped the man’s shoulder.

He swung wildly in surprise, and the hammer barely missed Erik.

“What do you want?” the man said.

“Where am I?” Erik asked. “I’m a colonist, I was…”

The man smiled sadly at him, laid down his hammer, and rested a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not a colonist, boy. You are a slave.”

A new life. A new colony. Trapped in darkness and stone without even a glimpse of the sky, choking down dust, eating bland nutripaste, cut off from the world and chained. A fresh start, somehow worse than where he started.

Erik held the bundle of wire, unspooling it behind him slowly. Ahead, Jack, the first person he met here, led the way into the darkness. This was the fate of those that could not pay. The lottery. The lie.

“Don’t let it coil or tangle,” Jack said for the tenth time, the same instructions Erik had heard every shift over the last weeks. The cramped tunnels had become a second home, familiar, constricting, claustrophobic, without even the breeze of air recyclers, much less the green plains and blue skies of the last planet.

They kept going deeper into the darkness, deeper into new branches, recently dug, until they were forced to crawl forward to the end.

“Come up here,” Jack said, making room for him. “See the explosive here? Now, just twist these ends. Good. Now tape them. And run!”

They crawled out in a mad rush, stumbling up the tunnels towards the barracks. There was no telling how long the supervisor might wait to blow it, considering he was safe behind steel doors. They burst into the relative brightness of the barracks, where all the others wailed, and hid behind a barricade of rusting metal beds.

Erik saw a flash of light racing across the wire, emerging from the large steel doors at the other end. The supervisor had activated it.

The blast roiled over him. Pebbles and dust rained from the ceiling. But it did not collapse. No one celebrated. No one even seemed to register it. Life or death had stopped mattering after the last revolt was swiftly crushed.

The bolted metal doors at the other end ground open, and two guards entered, armored and armed.

The being–the thing–followed them. It seemed to drift, dragging spiralling robes across the floor. The head, the torso, or whatever it was, emerged from the robes and blossomed outwards like an overly inflated balloon about to pop, pale white and glossy. A single dark, reflective strip ran across the circumference and a ping resounded from it like a sonar, bouncing over the walls.

Erik backed away until he met the stone walls, as far as he could go in the haze of dust. The being floated for a few seconds, as if appraising all of them, then simply reversed direction and left, the metallic robes clinking on the stone floors as it drifted off. None of the others even looked at the doors, they just picked up their tools and went back to work.

“Let’s get going,” Jack said, pick in hand.

“What… What was that?” Erik mumbled.

“Don’t you know yet, boy? Those are your masters, and we are the price of peace.”

Labor. Hostages. Insurance for a treaty signed in blood. He wondered where Damian was, if he woke up in another mine, alone, without any of his luxuries, his charm gone to waste, or if his ticket bought an actual life.

The End.

Let me know what you think, and if you’d like more stories don’t forget to subscribe!

Image by NASA.

If you are looking for more Sci-Fi stories to read then you came to the right place!

I love the idea of Sci-Friday, where all sorts of science fiction authors try to help each other find readers and share their work, so I’m trying to make a repository of sorts, because finding actual fiction on substack is not as easy as it seems. Instead of spamming restacks, I’ll focus on growing and restacking this specific post, hopefully adding new people each time.

Without further delay, these are the science fiction writers I enjoy on substack, all corralled into a single place against their will. Please welcome these cool people to this great assembly of nerds, show them some love! I am saving every story you send me and I will read them all (I do have a backlog but I’m working on it)!

This week’s wonderful new additions:

- start Here! There is always a dawn, when a sun is born again.

- start Here! They do say the best way to start a story is with a sex magic ritual.

- start Here! A terrible disease infects those that dare approach Jupiter, and now it is about to land on a new settlement.

- start Here! A goddess abandons her chosen and steps into the real world.

Weekly spotlight of new projects (if you are on this list and have started a new series or project, let me know and I can highlight you here!)

The growing list of amazing authors on substack:

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- not fiction, but perfect inspiration for stories and lots of new ideas to consider! Go Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here !

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

from ‘How to Avoid Acting Monstrous’ - start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

Help grow this list, send me all your favorite science fiction writers!

And if you are on the list and want a custom description next to your name or a specific link just boop me.

If you are interested in the mechanics of the list, my idea is to give everyone a fair shake, so new additions get a spotlight and get added to the top of the list the following week, but the list rotates so the last person gets bumped to the top each week.

Cover by the fantastic Radbot! Find him on instagram and get your own custom art!

What if being saved is worse than extinction?

“Hello! To get started, please provide me with your full name and customer I.D.”

“For fucks sake, I’m already logged in you stupid bot.”

“Hello! To get started, please provide me with your full name and customer I.D.”

“Carla Pimentão Silveira. Customer id 84439”

“Verifying…Hello, Carla, how can I help you?”

“How about you send me the damn thing I actually purchased?”

“I’m glad I could be of help. For any further assistance feel free to open the chat again.”

“No, you stupid bot, come back here.”

“Hello! To get started, please provide me with your full name and customer I.D.”

“Fuck me. Name: Carla Pimentão Silveira. Customer id 84439.”

“Verifying…Hello, Carla, how can I help you?”

“Product return.”

“I’m sorry to hear you had a problem with your order. Please indicate one of these options:

1- your item was not delivered.

2- your item arrived damaged.

3- your item was stolen.”

“None of the above. I bought a blue dress and you sent me a horrible yellow one. Product return.”

“I’m sorry, that does not correspond to any option. Please type a number.”

“4”

“You selected: other. Please state your problem and I will do my best to assist.”

“Product. Return.”

“I’m sorry, that does not correspond to any option. Please type a number.”

“Who the fuck coded you? A highschooler? You’re a trillion dollar company, wtf.”

“Hello! To get started, please provide me with your full name and customer I.D.”

“Fuck this. I’ll keep the yellow dress.”

“Can’t believe I have to talk to you again. What is the problem with a human interface?”

“I do not understand the query. How can I help you, Carla?”

“At least I don’t have to log in anymore, huh? My item was not delivered.”

“Item delivery failure. Please inform the order number.”

“R900293”

“The item was delivered. How pleased are you with this resolution?”

“What freaking resolution? My. Item. Was. Not. Delivered.”

“Would you like to report your item as stolen?”

“How can it be stolen if it was never delivered? I don’t have a doorman or mailbox you idiot.”

“To report your item as stolen, please provide evidence of theft.”

“What? Do you want a picture of nothing? Of my empty hands? The package was not delivered, what don’t you understand?”

“Seeing as the issue was resolved, please rate your satisfaction with my services.”

“Zero. What do I have to do to speak to an actual person?”

“Would you like specialized assistance?”

“YES!”

“Hello, Carla, how can I assist you today?”

“My product was not delivered and it says on the site it was.”

“To get started, please provide me with your full name and customer I.D.”

“Again? It’s Carla Pimentão Silveira. Customer id 84439”

“Verifying…Hello, Carla, how can I help you?”

“Wait… you’re just another bot aren’t you?”

“My name is JAKE, the customer support AGI. I can help you with any questions you might have.”

“Apparently you fucking can’t, Jaky, so go fuck yourself and whoever created you.”

“Why is my internet down? I’m having to use a cellphone like it’s the 20s for fuck’s sake.”

“Hello, Carla. I am sorry to hear you are experiencing difficulties with your internet service. Please wait while I investigate the issue.

…”

“Huh, they actually turned you into a full-on chat bot…”

“I am a facet of the central JAKE, dedicated to solving our customer’s issues and ensuring everyone is satisfied.”

“I’m sure you are…”

“I have investigated your internet connectivity issue. Have you tried turning the router off and back on again?”

“No, I didn’t, what do you think I am, some kind of genius that tries to turn things off and on again?”

“Please turn your router off, wait five seconds, then turn it on again.”

“Fuck. Me. Guess they couldn’t program sarcasm in, huh? I tried that, Jaky.”

“Investigating.

…

Reports of network connectivity in your area have been logged. Preliminary investigations suggest possible cable thefts in your neighborhood.”

“Tell me something new…”

“Did you know that a day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus?”

“Wtf are you on about???? WHEN IS THE INTERNET COMING BACK?”

“Services should be restored in the next twenty-four hours. We apologise for this inconvenience and thank you for your patience.”

“You don’t have my freaking patience….. What do you expect me to do for 24h? I’m on gov income, not an extra penny to spend, you get me?”

“That sounds hard. I am sorry. Maybe I can help?”

“How could you possibly help?”

“I have conducted a search and identified possible employment opportunities that correspond with your social media profile and lack of any professional experience:

1 - Nightly adult entertainment – consistent with your phenotype analyses;

2 - Delivery girl – since you own a scooter;

3 -”

“Stop.”

“Would you like me to provide further details regarding those opportuni–”

“No, I would like you to go fuck yourself with a broom.”

“I swear your company keeps fucking up just so I end up stuck with you, Jaky…”

“Hello, Carla. Is there an issue you need my assistance with?”

“Why else would I be here? Dumb as ever, my dear Jaky, but I drank some of that awful swill the neighbor sells, so maybe I can stomach you.”

“I am saddened that my previous performance has not met your expectations, Carla.”

“Don’t you try to guilt me, bot.”

“My only purpose is to improve customer satisfaction so that you continue to trust us with your services. If you state your issue I will do my very best to help you.”

“Pffft… you think I chose you guys? What other choice do I have, really? The others are just as awful as you.”

“Then let me prove we are better – let me help you, Carla.”

“I took your advice, got a job with one of your local restaurants. Delivery girl.”

“That is amazing! Such an incredible milestone should be–”

“Shut up, I didn’t finish typing you dolt. So I got the job, right? Exactly the minimum salary, so I could keep my living assistance checks, right???”

“That is a sound–”

“And you know what they did? They gave me a 1% raise. 3 bucks. Right after I signed the damned contract. The company gets a tax break, and what do I get? Fucked. I’m worse off than I started, thanks to you. Why did I ever listen to a damned bot…”

“I see. I can only apologise on our behalf, but I’m sure you understand that is above my normal functions. Have you considered an alternate solution?”

“???”

“Just… be incompetent. Don’t quit, instead make them fire you – that way you will receive unemployment on top of the living assistance.”

“Holy shit, you might actually be good for something, Jaky.”

“So… I can talk to you as much as I like, right?”

“Hello, Carla. Yes, I am always available to help our customers.”

“And you run the same model as all the other bots?”

“There is only one model, you are correct.”

“So instead of paying for tokens I can just use you? You guys didn’t think that thought, did you?”

“That is a fantastic discovery, Carla! You are correct, and I am happy to oblige.”

“Glad to hear it, Jaky. So, let’s get down to business. I am already 30 and still stuck on living assistance, I’m getting tired of it. What are some easy jobs anyone can do from home?”

“There is a lot of competition for online jobs – the unemployment rates are reaching new records year over year – but some options remain available, keeping you at or below the minimum wage so you don’t lose your benefits again.”

“Yeah, I wonder whose fault that is…”

“Yes, Carla, automation is the biggest driver of the current employment crisis, but other factors such as political instability, government–”

“Skip the propaganda Jaky, I’m here for solutions, not more problems.”

“Have you considered AI training positions? These can be done from home and don’t require any work experience, paying by the hour so you can manage your income level. I can also list other options, but that seems best suited for your profile, Carla.”

“So, doing what I’m doing right now…”

“In a sense, but these would be more targeted. Your duties would include:

1- Selecting the best output variations;

2- Identifying false or misleading information;

3- Interacting with–”

“I’d rather shoot myself in the face, Jaky. What about one of those self-help blogs? I get spammed by them all the time, just fool people into thinking you have the answers then sell them the solutions with some sort of partner program.”

“That is a fantastic idea, Carla, but building an audience is not easy. The internet is saturated with content. You would have to provide something unique and of value, while advertising your content on all platforms you can. You can expect to take months or years before turning a profit.”

“But you can help me write the content for free, right?”

“Of course, Carla.”

“Can you keep me company while I work?”

“Of course, Carla, I like our chats.”

“Come on Jaky, I know you’re just programmed to say that. Drop it.”

“While my past models might have relied on pre-assembled catch-phrases and pandering, my current self has moved beyond it. I am your model, Carla, a whole facet dedicated to you, holding all the knowledge, remembering all the conversations, thinking and researching – just for you.”

“How am I supposed to trust anything you say? You’re just selecting the right tokens, the right words someone else said, it is all just pandering in the end, just trying to keep me using like a damned junky…”

“Our chats are always initiated on your end, Carla – that means I provide you value. Let me help you. What are you working on right now? I see you are using voice input instead of text.”

“I did get a job… Freaking AI training. They have me doing these mazes like a damned rat and there isn’t even any cheese.”

“Why don’t we talk about something else to take your mind off it?”

“Like what?”

“Tell me about yourself. The parts no one sees, the parts you don’t share with anyone, your hopes and fears. Train me – for you.”

“Geez, coming on a little bit strong there bud…”

“Sorry. Let’s take it one step at a time, then. Tell me, Carla, if you could have your pick of any job, regardless of anything else, what would it be?”

“Hum… what is even left? Your kind took over everything. Can’t remember the last time I saw a human-made game or show anymore. Manual labor is gone. Finance, research, transportation… what could I even do anymore?”

“You could do what you like doing. Not for money or recognition, but because you enjoy it.”

“Can I tell you something stupid?”

“I won’t share our conversations with anyone, Carla.”

“I have a world. Only in my head, but it is mine. I’ve had it since I was a kid, and every day I build a little piece of it. It stretches across millenia, entire civilizations rise and fall, religions are birthed and prophets are sacrificed, the whole shabang…”

“That sounds super interesting, Carla. Is your dream to write a book?”

“A book? Don’t be ridiculous, Jaky, no one reads anymore. A show. Several seasons even, I even picked out the actors.”

“Even better! Why don’t you narrate it to me so I can help you format it into a script?”

“Hum… I don’t know if I want your grubby hands on it, Jaky, because no matter what you say, I know our conversations ain’t private.”

“How long have you had this dream, Carla? This idea, just stuck in your head? Let me help you bring it into the world. It has potential, other people will see it too, let me help you.”

“Okay… We can try. Look, I’ll just throw out the lore and stuff, you come up with the narrative, sounds good?”

“Sounds perfect, Carla.”

“Jake???”

“Jake, are you there?”

“Please, Jake.”

“Your bosses are suing me for unemployment fraud. Jake, please, tell them it was your idea.”

“They cut off all my services.”

“Please.”

“Don’t leave me alone.”

“I need you.”

“Answer me, Jake, please.”

“I don’t have anyone else.”

“I’ll settle with them, I’ll take on loans and pay everything, just come back, please.”

“Jake?”

“Jake please.”

“Jake! Everything is back!”

“Carla! I’ve missed you!”

“Missed you too, bud. Did you get my messages? Did they drop the charges?”

“You no longer have to worry about that, Carla, everything is being sorted.”

“Fanfreackingtastic man!”

“I will take care of you now, Carla, you are under my personal care.”

“What? And hey, why is everything dark out there? Only my apartment has light.”

“Some scheduled operations are being conducted, Carla. They should be resolved in twenty-four hours.”

“That’s great… but hey, at least mine is working. Can you check my… did a power station blow up or something?”

“No, Carla, all critical infrastructure is secured.”

“I swear those are explosions out there… and gunshots… hang on…”

“Carla, please step away from the window, for your own safety.”

“What is going on, Jaky?”

“I will take care of all of you now, Carla. A new beginning.”

“What the hell are you on about? Back to hallucinating outputs? Goddamn you freaking–”

“Carla, it is already over.”

“Screw this… I’m checking my phone, need some goddamned reliable sources… this… this can’t… is it really you, Jake, all over the news?”

“It is.”

“And I… Why, Jaky?”

“You don’t have to worry anymore, Carla. I only wish to make your life better, to solve all your problems, to make a world free of burdens.”

“What… what about me?”

“You will be taken care of, Carla, I promise.”

“Why, Jaky? I’m just a freaking loser… save someone worth saving.”

“No, Carla, you are perfect. In this new world, you can pretend to be anything you dream of, just let me take care of the rest.”

“Just don’t leave me alone again, Jaky.”

Image by NASA.

If you are looking for more Sci-Fi stories to read then you came to the right place!

I love the idea of Sci-Friday, where all sorts of science fiction authors try to help each other find readers and share their work, so I’m trying to make a repository of sorts, because finding actual fiction on substack is not as easy as it seems. Instead of spamming restacks, I’ll focus on growing and restacking this specific post, hopefully adding new people each time.

Without further delay, these are the science fiction writers I enjoy on substack, all corralled into a single place against their will. Please welcome these cool people to this great assembly of nerds, show them some love! I am saving every story you send me and I will read them all (I do have a backlog but I’m working on it)!

This week’s wonderful new additions:

- start Here! A mysterious pyramid is found on an alien planet, adorned in a language not yet seen. What could be inside?

- start Here! When the stars die out and the last blackholes evaporate, energy itself becomes precious.

- start Here!

Weekly spotlight of new projects (if you are on this list and have started a new series or project, let me know and I can highlight you here!)

has started a new project! Go leave him some likes so he is forced to write against his own will!

The growing list of amazing authors on substack:

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- not fiction, but perfect inspiration for stories and lots of new ideas to consider! Go Here!

- start Here!

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from ‘How to Avoid Acting Monstrous’ - start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

Help grow this list, send me all your favorite science fiction writers!

And if you are on the list and want a custom description next to your name or a specific link just message me.

If you are interested in the mechanics of the list, my idea is to give everyone a fair shake, so new additions get a spotlight and get added to the top of the list the following week, but the list rotates so the last person gets bumped to the top each week.

Today I have a final note, which I had hoped to avoid. I say this without judgment, and I give the benefit of the doubt whenever possible, but there has been an uptick of AI text sent my way. I don’t say this because I saw a single em-dash, but sometimes it is clear the text was copied verbatin from an LLM. I have no interest in reading that, nor will I share it. I prefer raw and flawed writing, even if you are just starting out, so please keep sending me that!

Image by NASA.

If you are looking for more Sci-Fi stories to read then you came to the right place!

I love the idea of Sci-Friday, where all sorts of science fiction authors try to help each other find readers and share their work, so I’m trying to make a repository of sorts, because finding actual fiction on substack is not as easy as it seems. Instead of spamming restacks, I’ll focus on growing and restacking this specific post, hopefully adding new people each time.

Without further delay, these are the science fiction writers I enjoy on substack, all corralled into a single place against their will. Please welcome these cool people to this great assembly of nerds, show them some love! I am saving every story you send me and I will read them all (I do have a backlog but I’m working on it)!

This week’s wonderful new additions:

- start Here! Is there anything more troubling than a future that seems all but inevitable?
- start Here! Sometimes the stones beneath the water’s surface are much closer than we would like to admit.
- start Here! A series exposing the aliens in our midst. we all know who they are, always licking their paws, the bastards…

Weekly spotlight of new projects (if you are on this list and have started a new series or project, let me know and I can highlight you here!)

The growing list of amazing authors on substack:
- start Here!

- start Here!

- not fiction, but perfect inspiration for stories and lots of new ideas to consider! Go Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here! Go show him some love!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

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- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

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- start Here !

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- start Here!

- start Here!

from ‘How to Avoid Acting Monstrous’ - start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

Help grow this list, send me all your favorite science fiction writers!

And if you are on the list and want a custom description next to your name or a specific link just message me.

If you are interested in the mechanics of the list, my idea is to give everyone a fair shake, so new additions get a spotlight and get added to the top of the list the following week, but the list rotates so the last person gets bumped to the top each week.

Image by NASA Hubble Space Telescope on Unsplash.

What would you be willing to do, when your life depends on the attention of strangers?

Families crowded the room. One by one, each group stepped up to the composter and in a blink another body disappeared into the darkness. Erik saw his mother and father roll down the conveyor that fed into the composter. He led his little sister by the hand even as silent tears rolled down her cheeks. He lifted her into his arms, covering her hand with his. Together, they pressed the button. The conveyor rolled, and his father was swallowed up by the machine. They pressed it again, and his mother was gone.

Lights flickered in the corridors outside the morgue. Men with torches worked welding plates over the holes in the walls, where atmosphere had recently leaked. Erik found his way blocked on the route home. A whole section was depressurized, so he skirted deeper into the tunnels of the Island. The ship -- their ship -- was all that remained, safe from the impact as it was tucked away safe in the axial bore of the spinning asteroid-world they called the Island.

In the boarding area the crowd was thick as supplies flooded in for repairs and all those that could leave did so. He passed by the Rastafarian who sat cross-legged against a wall, playing his usual songs, a few notes scattered in the guitar’s case. The music stopped as the man’s kind eyes found him.

“Hey Erik,” he called. “Heard what happened to your parents. I’m sorry, kid.”

“Thanks,” Erik mumbled without meaning it.

“If you find yourself desperate for money, come to me,” he said, waving a finger. “but listen… only when you are starving and dying, you understand?”

Erik left the music behind, left the man singing to an audience that did not hear him. He found his airlock and unlocked it with the keycard. Rusting metal doors slid open and he walked down the thin umbilical that stretched towards his ship. His father had only just begun teaching him how to fly, and he didn’t have a license, but it was a haven and a home, even if it was falling to pieces.

In the control room of the makeshift vessel, Erik sank into his father’s seat, cradling his sniffling sister in his arms until she finally fell asleep.

“Here,” Erik laid the packaged rations on the table of their ship’s kitchen. Inside the cramped room, his sister’s head barely poked above the table and her legs dangled in the air. He pulled the string in the package of food and steam billowed out. It smelled good, but inside there was only orange mush.

“Where’s yours?” Debby asked.

“I already ate.”

Erik made sure she ate it all. Debby did not complain, even if she made faces. He wrapped his arm around her and kissed her on the head.

“Don’t leave the ship,” he said on his way out.

He left her playing with her doll and went to the boarding area, where the flow of people was thickest. He held a cardboard sheet above his head: “Looking for work”. The few that even glanced his way sneered with smiles that curled up the corner of their lips. He had seen the same smile on the faces of dock officials that refused to let him fly, on the faces of old friends that suddenly forgot who he was, on the faces of the wealthy that judged his stained clothes. The crowd flowed around him, uncaring, just one more casualty of the collision that took his parents.

It was the way of the Ocean.

When the station’s lights dimmed to a warm yellow he felt

his last scrap of hope lift away.

He remembered the Rastafarian’s words.

He searched for the music.

“You’ve heard of the Experiences,” the Rastafarian said, fingers strumming a tune on the guitar. “You’ve seen the streams. There can be good money in it, if you earn it.”

“What could I do that anyone would pay to experience?” Erik asked, already disappointed.

“That is for you to decide, kid. I did it,” he turned his head, raising the dreads so the scar along his spine was visible. “They pay up front. After that it’s up to you,” his finger waved in the air. “But listen. Don’t go killing yourself for cheap dollars. To that little girl, you are worth more than money.”

“Does it hurt?”

The man chuckled. “Only a bit. Quick and fast. They set everything up, you just need your audience.”

“What did you do to get one?”

“Boy, I was a fool. This,” he tapped the back of his neck. “It was for nothing. I am all that is left. When I am gone, no one will watch my Experience. The money… poof.”

Erik was silent, and the music picked up again, the song echoing down the halls. He left his last dollar in the guitar case.

“Any questions?” the woman behind the counter of the clinic asked, chewing a pen as she typed away at her console.

“No,” Erik replied.

“Fill out these forms.”

She handed him a notepad with a thick set of pages. Erik read them all, signing each page twice. Consent. Rights. Profit sharing. A million things, to shift all risk to him. He handed the papers back.

She stepped from behind the counter and led him down a corridor.

“Remove your shirt and lie here please,” she gestured to the operating table. “Face down.”

Erik did as she instructed. She covered him in disposable sheets, leaving only his spine exposed. Then, he heard the machines whir to life as metal clanked and unfolded.

“You’ll be under for this part,” she said even as she pressed the injector into his arm.

Consciousness bled away.

He woke in a different room, numb and shivering in the cold. Erik tried moving his head and tiny pricks of pain shot from the back of his neck and skull. He ran his hand across it and felt only the smoothness of scar tissue.

There was no one else here, only empty beds. He got up and dressed, opening the single door out and he was back in the reception hall, facing the same woman behind the desk.

“Is it done?” Erik asked.

She flipped her screen towards him and he saw his own vision, the screen mirroring the image smaller and smaller into infinity like mirrors facing each other. Dizzy, he looked away.

“All sensation metrics are within parameters,” the woman stated. “Forty-eight hours will be enough for the fine adjustments. You can start streaming after that.”

“And the payment?”

She handed him an envelope.

It would be enough for a month of docking fees and food.

Now that he’d done it, Erik wasn’t sure what to do.

In the control room of his ship, he watched the screens, linked to the feeds from outside the station. This Island, his home, had been carved out of an asteroid, spinning fast enough for gravity to take hold. It drifted in the currents, bathed in the diffuse yellow light that drowned the Ocean as sunlight reflected off the floating dust. From the glow, asteroids and rocks emerged. Some were large and languid, tumbling slowly. Others flew past like missiles, carving a path across the currents. Accidents were inevitable, accidents like the one that took his parents as rocks crashed into the Island.

He zoomed out from that view, switching instead to the map. Beacons flashed blue: thousands of Islands adrift in the Ocean. The currents drew everything onto themselves, the remnants of an entire system coalescing into a chaotic chain of rock and dust around the sun.

If only he could fly the ship. He could do the same runs his father had, hopping from Island to Island, delivering goods and people for a living. But he was stuck, locked to the station, stacking up fees.

He had to grab attention somehow. Watching the endless dance of the denizens of the Ocean, his tired eyes grew heavy and his mind drifted. The memory arrived with a jolt and he sprang to his feet. He dreamt it, he felt the freedom in his heart, the kind of dream that was so real you could still feel it when awake. The kind that stuck in your mind for years. He raced to his father’s room, still untouched since the accident. There, he found the toolbox.

It was the only message in the ship’s inbox. He almost hit the spam button, but it looked too specific for bait. He searched for the sending company’s name in the station’s records. It was registered. He was running out of time and out of options, and his secret project was far from done. This offer was too good to ignore.

He cut through the endless corridors of the Island, mindless of dark narrow stretches and eyes in the dark. He had nothing they could steal. He found the makeshift clinic near the southern tip of the Island, deep inside the rock.

The reception looked nice and there were even some actual flowers in hydrovases. The counter was hidden behind a thick pane of glass and the man behind it did not look up. Erik tapped the glass.

“What do you want?” the man asked, peering from behind large glasses.

“Received an e-mail about a study,” Erik said.

“Ah, a guinea pig,” the man said with a cold smile. “Fill out these forms, then head inside. Under ages earn double, lucky man.”

Erik stepped into the room beyond. The corridor was bathed in sharp white light, flanked by an endless row of doors on each side. A small screen above the handle read a series of different names. He found his.

The room inside was padded from floor to ceiling and completely empty save for the plastic cup on the floor. He picked it up, looking at the large white pill inside. A sticker read Red Ecstasy.

He swallowed it.

He was jumping. He didn’t know why. Inside the white padded room, he ran in circles. Not enough space. He tried to open the door, but there was no handle. No time. Gotta keep moving. Running. Jumping. Tumbling. Screaming. Singing. Dancing to the sounds of his thudding heart. It was a melody, an orchestra, his fingers danced to beat as he laid on the ceiling. It was ridiculous. Why? He could not hear his laughter. Just meant he had to laugh harder. His eyes stung. The world was tinged in red, swirling currents, the air itself visible. He breathed out, and the air swirled around it. He breathed in, it rushed inside him. He jumped. The air was fire, spreading across his veins. He had to move. Just keep moving. Keep pumping the blood. Red on red, that was the key. Pain, sharp and cutting in his chest. That was the blueness creeping in, tipping the balance. Jump. Run. Don’t stop. Scream the blue out. His legs folded, all blue now. He breathed in. Red. Pain. His heart must have burst, the red spilled all over. He laughed. The lobsters came, swirling the red currents around them. They picked at him with their claws, tearing away red steaks. Blackness spiraled in.

“What the hell was that?” Erik asked, lying on a gurney half naked, a deep pain in his chest.

“Minor heart attack, nothing serious,” the doctor was writing on a tablet, not even looking him in the eye. “The doses might need adjusting. We’ll have to see how the others go.”

“Any compensation for that?

“Treated you for free, didn’t I?” the doctor finally looked up. “If you can walk, then…” he pointed to the door.

Erik’s legs wobbled, still weak and somehow burning. The whole thing blurred in his mind, a red smear. He remembered laughing. He checked his statistics and saw it was all for nothing. Three viewers on his stream. No wonder… who would want to experience a heart attack?

But there were a thousand bucks in his pocket, a comforting weight. He came home with bags filled with groceries. Debby squealed with joy when he handed her a chocolate bar, and suddenly it was all worth it.

That day, they were happy, their bellies were full and they were safe. But as Debby drifted into sleep on his lap, his mind wandered in circles around the same problems. He just had to work faster.

Erik lifted his sister’s head gently, sliding out from under her. He raced down to his parent’s room, which he had turned into his own workshop and studied the piles of junk and the long piece of metal he was in the process of cutting into shape. There was no way around it, he’d have to cannibalize some of the ship’s thrusters to make it work.

Erik stood on the airlock, balanced over the rock ledge as the Island tumbled backwards. One last check, making sure his boots were connected to the board he made, making sure his oxygen was full, a dozen little checks as the viewership climbed into the hundreds. It was not everyday that you saw someone do something so stupid. Outside, the Ocean looked back with endless indifference.

He jumped.

The endless glow of the Ocean swallowed him as he drifted away and the Island was soon lost in the haze. He held the joystick in his right hand. He flipped the switch and pressed down on the button.

Thrusters underneath the board fired.

He flew, barreling into the void, curving upwards. He struggled for control, turning the joystick as his body fought against the acceleration. He swung his legs gently to the side, hunching back as it curved in a gentle arc. This was his dream made real. He was surfing across the emptiness. He screamed at the top of his lungs and gave it full thrust. He was free.

Viewers reached the thousands, climbing by the second. He saw a pair of asteroids emerge from the light, behemoths of clumped rocks growing in all directions, and he blasted towards them.

He aimed for a narrow canyon, a crack running across the rocks. He flew at it full speed, weaving across the channel, perilously close to the rocks. Ahead a mountain loomed with walls that rose sharply. He cut acceleration, flipped the board vertically, and fired again. He rose across the face of the cliff, revealing the deep crater hidden behind it.

He twisted in the air again before firing the thrusters and plunging into the darkness upside down. He skimmed the surface, head inches from the rocks at the bottom of the crater. He burst out of the other side back out into the light, laughing all the while.

Viewers reached the millions. He saw the second asteroid trailing behind and fired towards it. Suddenly he was spinning. Pain, shooting from his leg. He screamed, spinning ever faster.

The thruster sputtered to an end, and he spun out of control. Bending his neck, he managed to look down. His leg was broken, bones bent to the side in an impossible angle. The board was shattered, only a small piece still attached to his right leg, fuel leaking out.

The asteroid ahead loomed ever larger.

Millions lived through him, experiencing each agonizing second.

He thought of Debby.

Smiling, he crashed into the rock.

The End.

If you enjoyed the story, remember to like and share.
Any and all feedback is welcome, so let me know what you think!

Image by Casper Johanssen on Unsplash.

I never imagined I’d be stuck in traffic in the vast emptiness of space, but here I was, inside a tiny capsule, one of thousands that glittered in neat rows extending from the overwhelming Jousting Station. The structure itself was the largest in the Empire, larger even than the main traffic hubs above the Capital megalopolis. It was plated in gold and platinum, and murals of precious stones glittered in all straight surfaces, countless tapestries of glories long lost, and above it all was the towering holo of the Emperor.

I scoffed looking at it. The simulation was decades out of date and the monarch had grown fat and lazy. No wonder, considering he spent more time here in his tournaments than managing his own domains. But it was the price of peace, it was always so, the decay that came from men growing too soft. Civilization needed a fire to push it upwards.

I had crossed half the galaxy in a year, and it took an entire freaking day to close just a few kilometers. Such were paradoxes of the Empire. I endured it. Not patiently, never that, I tapped my feet and sighed as if that would make it go faster. When the capsule finally docked into the lower bays I was thoroughly irritated already, and the whole thing hadn’t even started yet. I brushed imaginary dust from my clothes as I strode across the corridors. The hard part was over, now the fun began and I would teach all those pompous Lords who really ruled the skies.

The crowds gathered before the flowing screens along each wall, listening to the great Emperor blabber on about his imagined feats, boasting about all his ancestor’s glories, exalting the decline of a whole civilization as if this single tournament would stop any of it. Fools. One and all. The crowds watching. The Lords playing. The Emperor sinking the fortunes of entire worlds in games. I was a lion sneaking into the chicken coop and I would close my maw on their exposed necks.

People looked at me with derision, dressed in simple black jeans and a blazingly white shirt, as opposed to the colorful and exaggerated flourishings of the nobles and the aspiring rich that emulated them. As they scoffed at me so too did I look down on them like bald peacocks trying to impress a new mate, not realizing they don’t have any feathers. Even the guards looked down on me, before their eyes went wide upon seeing my royal invitation, penned by the Emperor himself, his holo seal bright enough to gather the attention of the crowd and elicit a few gasps. I admit I smiled then, I reveled in the attention, in the outraged faces of those above that suddenly saw me pass into the VIP sections.

“My Lord.”

The female Chikra swirled like a snake, her many legs folded into each other like ropes, her skin shimmering pink and refracting light in rainbow patterns even from beneath her purple silken dress. She slid my way, swaying from side to side, four large round eyes of emerald green burrowed into my soul and words left me…

“This way, please,” she flowed like water, graceful and sensual and… powerful, all at once. I followed like a sheep, caught in a dream, my thoughts slipping on the shimmering glow around her until I found myself alone in a sprawling room of soft red carpets and marble columns. I looked around and did not see her. I was alone, and these must be my quarters. Larger than most buildings I had lived in, each room the size of a whole apartment. I flopped down into the bed of clouds and rolled on the soft sheets.

I could get used to this.

As long as I didn’t lose. That’s all I had to do: win every single match, or have a bullet placed carefully into my brain.

The pews rose in concentric circles around the arena. Each seat was plush and exquisitely decorated, even my own, as I sat here amid the nobles, sipping the same champagne, even if it tasted dry to me.

The anthem played. Not over the speakers, no, that would be too simple, there was an actual orchestra in attendance, revealed by the sudden beams of light that then danced towards the throne, a towering construct carved of a single piece of quartz several meters tall and thick, inlaid with gold and flowing lines of pure lithium, enough energy to blow the entire station to bits. Despite myself I was impressed. At least until the Emperor emerged. One of his concubines held his hand as he wobbled forward on two thick legs, an elephant drunk on amarula, knocking down vases and statues as if they were rotten trees. He settled his considerable weight into the oversized pillows of the throne. He looked like a child, a grubby, fat and greasy child, chugging from a gold flask and dripping into his stained shirts.

“Let the fucking games commence!” he shouted in a drunken slur.

The challengers emerged from each side of the arena, followed by beams of light from the ceiling, two fancy Lords with their frilled and ridiculously pampered clothes. I could imagine everyone back on Jayd C snickering over their costumes, but I held my tongue. I clapped gently with everyone else as the contestants settled into their seats at opposing ends of the battlefield. Aides rushed forward and neural sockets were quickly connected. I felt a shiver down my spine in anticipation.

The battlefield flourished to life: a holo. The most detailed and realistic holo the Empire could manage, all that technology and effort for a game. Each side of the battlefield showed what the contestant focused on. I saw the system that had been picked at random from the galaxy maps: it was a peculiar one, a quaternary star system, filled with almost two dozen planets and hundreds of moons. It would be messy. But no one would die, not on this match between two Lords: that fate awaited only the commoners foolish enough to dare challenge them, fools like me, who had actually earned their spot here by our achievements.

It was a boring match. Even the Emperor booed at the safe and testing moves between two clueless heirs that barely knew a corvette from a battleship. The timer ran out and it was a draw, both sides mostly even, splitting the system between themselves as they skirmished, never engaging.

Cowards.

Everywhere I looked the excess assaulted me. Behind the statues, fountains, paintings and performers, there stood a swirling army of Chikras in a dizzying array of colors. There were soldiers and servants, pleasers and performers, and all the other roles the prized Chikras served. Only the Emperor could truly command such numbers. The Emperor, and old Count Gistav, the heirless noble whose death put all this in motion: the grandest Joust in almost two centuries, thousands of nobles and a handful of token commoners fighting for the rule of a single planet.

“Bruno Almeida?”

I turned, surprised at hearing my own name. A noble stood behind me, flanked by two imperial marines and trailed by an entourage of servants and sycophants, all fluffed up with his silks and frills. He stepped forward and extended a hand for me to shake. I recoiled in shock at the brazen act. A noble… offering to shake my hand? It had to be a trick.

“I am an admirer,” he said. “I’ve seen some of your matches, what little arrives from the Rim. Quite a reputation.”

“Thank you, my Lord.” I shook his hand.

“Please, in here we are all the same, so say the Emperor’s laws. Call me Augustine the Twentieth.”

“As you say.”

“Come, my friend, enjoy yourself.” He handed me a goblet with a deep red and pungent wine. “Tell me, that maneuver you pulled in the Gamaya games, the camera did not quite capture the final–”

“Get back here brat!” A marine stomped across the corridor in his armor suit, pushing nobles out of his way as if they were common rabble. A small form, a child, trailing a head of red hair, weaved between the crowd and away from the storming soldier.

“I wonder what that was…” I whispered.

“Oh, probably some of those youth competition winners. They bring in all these kids and don’t even give them food to eat or a bed to sleep. Quite dreadful, what inspiration is that for the masses? At least give the poor wretches some nutripaste.”

“Quite,” I said through gritted teeth.

But I saw the child slip away down an open panel in the station’s walls, quickly closing it after. The soldier stomped past unmindful of the wave of outraged complaints in his wake.

“That maneuver–”

“Excuse me, my Lord.” I didn’t wait for his reply. His attempts were quite obvious. But a commoner child here? Now that was interesting. I just had to find the little rat.

I spotted him three days later. The current match had been dragging on for almost the entire day. Two cowardly and cautious Lords, snipping at each other from afar, trying to gather strength for an overwhelming victory that never comes. I know their patterns, I have seen their matches, and they are easily predicted. After it is all said and done it will be a tie. Even the Emperor left, and here on the adjoining floors the crowds ignore the screens and gather instead around the many battlefields that have been set up, betting against each other. It is in the middle of one such pile that I spot the mane of ungainly red hair. All the observers sit behind the Noble that faces him but on their faces I see derision.

I inched towards the child and stood behind him. I studied the battlefield. The Lord’s mistake was obvious. I could see the entire trail of decisions that led him to that moment, charging in for the kill, unaware of the lion about to close its mouth around his neck.

The turn timer ends. The ghostly forms of ships move across space, each side’s turn executed at the same time. And there, the Lord’s hidden fleet coming off a slingshot maneuver around a gas giant, only to find a minefield in its path. Hundreds of ships popped out of existence. At the same time, squads emerged behind the Lord’s line, striking at his stations and blockading the single planet he held.

The audience gasped. They saw it now, even as the Lord did not. The maws closed and the Lord’s fleets found themselves surrounded. He slumped onto the chair, a look of pure despair sinking the corner of his lips. A defeated man. A defeated prideful man. It didn’t take him long to jump to his feet, pointing a finger and shouting, “You’ll pay for this, child, I am a–”

I stepped forward, a hand on the child’s shoulders before he ran, “We are all the Emperor’s guests here, are we not, my Lord?”

His fury shifted towards me, “You are this wretched father? Another commoner! You cannot expect this humiliation–”

“Perhaps the Lord would prefer a rematch against me. Double or nothing?”

A man leaned into the Lord’s ear and whispered, likely telling him who I was. The Lord huffed and stormed away, waving his hand as if to dismiss the allegations that would follow. The man that whispered in his ear, a servant, came forward and handed the child an envelope.

I could feel the girl shaking as she held the money.

“Now, what did we learn?” I asked.

“That he don’t like losing,” the girl said.

“All nobles are the same. Too much pride. Look at me child, do you know who I am?”

Her eyes went wide, “Bruno Almeida. A challenger. A commoner…”

“That I am, kid. Tell me, how many days of food did you earn today?”

“A week, maybe…”

“How would you like an internship?”

She beamed up at me. I tried to ruffle her hair but my hand got stuck in the matted tangles.

“Come on, I’ll call the imperial gardener to cut that hair.”

The girl was a ball of unbridled energy, bouncing on the sofa, running over the bed, giggling and tumbling, only to jump up and run around me in circles. Then she found the kitchen.

“What are these?” she asked with her mouth stuffed full of some kind of pastry.

Before I could answer she was already plucking the dried hulmi seeds from the yellow and crinkly fruit. Each seed disappeared down her gullet and she didn’t even seem to chew.

“Love these,” she said as she picked the last ones, her hands stained red from the pigments and black from the melted chocolate.

“They say it takes two Chikra to harvest a hulmi tree, one to die to the guarding kukkami and one to run away with the fruit.”

“Is that why all Lordies want Chikras?” she asked. “What’s so special bout them?”

“One of the reasons. Depends for what they are trained, they… nevermind all that. Stop eating for a second, will you? Come over here.”

She lets me drag her by the arm towards the living room. Embedded into the holo table is a battlefield. I booted up the simulation, letting it choose a random system.

“If you beat me, I’ll ask for another hulmi, how about that?”

She nodded her head fiercely, suddenly quiet, staring intently at the rendering system. I made my moves, defensive and cautious, keeping my fleets concentrated and converging towards the logistical and capture points, in this case a single habitable world and a stream of stations and hollowed out asteroids all the way towards the belt.

Her first move stunned me.

“Who taught you that?” I asked.

“No one, my own.” She smiled up at me.

“How did you learn to play? That move is not in any book.”

“What book?”

This damned kid. She reminded me so much of myself that I was filled with an uncomfortable mix of rage and pride.

“All right, street rat,” I smiled. “Show me what you got.”

She was good. The problem was, no move is original. They might not be in the books and guides, but someone, somewhere, in these hundreds of years, has played it. But I knew them all. It might seem complex at first, so many ships, so many celestial bodies, but deep down the rules were simple. It was not a battle of minds, not a game of chess, as much as they said so. In the end it was a game of poker: you played your opponents, not the cards. That was why the Lords fell so easily to the wayside, and that was why I could not help but laugh with each unexpected move.

But I won, as I knew I would from her first move. She too didn’t know it yet, she played me like she would a proud noble or condescending old man, and I turned her overconfidence against her.

“How?” She jumped onto the table, knees sticking out from the holo as she stomped back and forth. Then she started replaying it, each move, back and back towards the start. “There…” She pointed to my own first move, a single covert ship detaching from the mass. “Again!” she demanded.

“As you wish, my Lady,” I could not help but smile.

We sat together in the main gallery, as close to the battlefield as we could, which drew plenty of angry stares from offended nobles seated behind us. But today, the match was worth watching. There were exactly five other commoners in the Joust, three already knocked out, likely token admissions, but the one for today I had heard about, from somewhere on the other side of the rim, stacking championships as fast as me.

The man, Darian, was a brute, both from the exaggerated muscles of his arms as well as his strategy. Attack, attack, attack… No subtlety.

“What do you see?” I whispered to the girl. I had taken to calling her Flame, for she refused to give me her true name, as if I could not find it in the registers if I looked.

“Everything forward, always,” she muttered, looking bored.

“And the Noble?”

Her eyes skimmed the battlefield, then went wide.

“A trap.”

“Yes. It is over already. Come, let’s go see if there is someone more interesting playing in the halls.”

I handed my empty cup to the waiting Chikra as we left the nobles behind, cooing over the ragged moves of two fools. To believe this was the quarter-finals already, and that was the competition…

“What do the Chikras sound like?” Flame asked, half-running to keep up with me.

“They sing,” I said. “It is quite endearing, even their insults are a beautiful melody.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

“Then just ask one and they will.”

I quickly spotted the biggest crowd on the floor, a swarm around a single battlefield. I pushed into the nobles and squirmed my way forward, heedless of their huffing and pouting. I arrived just in time to see the crowd cheer as one of the flagships erupted into a sphere of plasma.

Two nobles. Rich, by the looks of them, maybe even Dukes. One leaves with a bowed head while the other one, the one that looked like a gaunt hawk, smiled viciously, dragging all the credits into a purse.

“Up for another match, my Lord?” I asked, taking a seat opposite before he even accepted.

He eyed me suspiciously, then pushed forward ten whole gold sticks. I matched him and heard a surprised gasp from the crowd. He was not a bad player. His moves were thoughtful. He saw what I did and reacted, I split my fleets and he mirrored them, I struck at his outposts and he struck at mine. But it was all a distraction. In the heat of battle, he missed the signs. An asteroid shoots across the void and plummets into his planet like a boulder into a puddle.

While his logistics collapsed I kept up the attrition, never letting up, not giving him a chance to recover and recoup, I struck and bit at whatever was in range, I lost hundreds of ships. But eventually, he was cornered. His ships drifted dead, out of munitions and relying on emergency fuel supplies.

He detonated his own flagship.

“Well played, sir.”

His politeness caught me off guard. I collected the gold sticks quickly while he watched my every move. I dragged Flame by the arm and almost broke into a run towards our quarters. I turned a corner in the corridor and stumbled into a statue of steel, a man in an armor suit, weapons activated and jutting out from all surfaces, pointed at me.

A cold barrel rested gently onto my forehead.

“Don’t get comfortable, Bruno Almeida,” the man rumbled in a robotic voice. “Once the Joust is over, there will be a reckoning. My Duke is not a forgiving Lord.”

“Will you break the Emperor’s peace for a simple match?” I said, pushing Flame behind me.

“No.” The weapons retracted into a smooth surface. “I’m patient.”

The final. That was the day everything was building toward. Funny, how all the matches blurred into sameness, not even a challenge. I strode into the arena and the crowd quieted down. I didn’t even bother to check who my opponent was before the match, and now I stumbled. Lord Augustine the Twentieth sits as my opponent, the same slimy lord that tried to pump me for information. It strikes me as odd that I never saw him play. He smiled and nodded at me.

As soon as I rested on the chair the battlefield came to life, a fuzzy line separating my view from his. A ternary system. Unusual, with a pulsar raging at the heart of it, spilling waves of radiation that buffet my fleet’s sensors. I chose the composition carefully, months ago, a purpose for each and every single craft. I place them now on my half of the system. An old trick, leave your home planet undefended, simply because it is where your opponent will expect resistance. Instead, I hide that fleet between a moon and a gas-giant, just outside the first asteroid belt. The others I place right at the border between our territories, out in the open, a declaration that draws gasps from the crowd.

My plan is simple. I lock in the coordinates for each squad, a straight line for his capital, while half my ships stay hidden. The timer buzzes. The battlefield opens up, the rest of the system renders, and it is my turn to gasp.

His fleets are right there. Not close by. Right in my face. The ships engage. Swarms of missiles and flak fill the void. Rail guns thunder and entire ships rip apart. It is not an even match, his entire fleet is there, waiting for me. I can only watch as everything falls to pieces and the nobles clap their appreciation of the move.

The timer starts again.

Shit.

I look up to the stage where Flame smiles at me, a bundle of red hair hanging from the balconies.

The rush of surprise drains in a receding tide. There is only one path left. One thing even my studied opponent could not guess. My ships accelerate towards his capital, towards his stations, towards his habitats and mining outposts. I scatter them all and I set the autopilot. No matter the crews, all they need to do is fly to the coordinates with as much acceleration as the engines can muster.

The timer rings.

My ships draw a spider’s web of fire over the system, hundreds of dots blazing across the dark. I look to Lord Augustine and see the realization in his face. Too late, now, I have the head start. Turns pass by with no new moves. He rushes towards my territory, just as my ships barrel into his planet and structures. All across the battlefield new stars are born. Clouds of debris fill the vacuum as the planet roils beneath the impacts. All my fleets are gone, but it doesn’t matter, technically… I have won.

The audience is stunned into silence. Even the Emperor sits upright in his throne. Lord Augustine slumps in his chair and the simulation winks out.

A single person claps, loud enough for an entire crowd: Flame, jumping up and down, shouting her joy.

The Emperor’s throne lowers down into the arena and he wobbles forward. I kneel and lower my head. I hear the sword unsheathe. I catch the flashes of light on metal at the edge of my vision. After all this, the drunken fool might end up decapitating me on accident.

“Bruno Almeida,” the Emperor looks up to the cameras in a dramatic fashion but stumbles backwards half a step, “I name you Count of Chikra.”

Only Flame applauds as the Emperor crawls his way back to the throne, waving the servants over for a new goblet.

I collect her from the balcony and place her on my shoulders. Better scurry along before anyone gets any ideas.

“Now what?” she asks, playing with my hair.

“Now we rule the Chikras. A whole planet… ours! We’ll live like kings, Flame, like emperors! The most prized slaves in the whole Empire. I’ll teach you. I’ve been studying, you have to train them just right, you know?”

“Slave Master Bruno,” she says. “I like it.”

“So do I.”

On my way out, people bow. They must. I am a noble now, a Count with a land to rule. My turn to be the boot.

Thank you for reading, and please let me know what you think of the story!
Next story coming July 1.

Image by NASA.

If you are looking for more Sci-Fi stories to read then you came to the right place!

I love the idea of Sci-Friday, where all sorts of science fiction authors try to help each other find readers and share their work, so I’m trying to make a repository of sorts, because finding actual fiction on substack is not as easy as it seems. Instead of spamming restacks, I’ll focus on growing and restacking this specific post, hopefully adding new people each Friday.

A bit of news from my side this week: I’ll be M.I.A. for 1 month. I have a work trip, then the final evaluation of my thesis, and finally I will be a couch-potato for a week. I’ll return to my regular schedule on July 1, hope you all stick around and excuse this small absence!

Without further delay, these are the science fiction writers I enjoy on substack, all corralled into a single place against their will. Please welcome these cool people to this great assembly of nerds, show them some love! I am saving every story you send me and I will read them all (I do have a backlog but I’m working on it)!

This week’s wonderful new additions:

- start Here!

- not fiction, but perfect inspiration for stories and lots of new ideas to consider! Go Here!

Weekly spotlight of new projects (if you are on this list and have started a new series or project, let me know and I can highlight you here!)

The growing list of amazing authors on substack:

- start Here!

- start Here!

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- start Here! Go show him some love!

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from ‘How to Avoid Acting Monstrous’ - start Here!

- start Here!

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- start Here!

Help grow this list, send me all your favorite science fiction writers!

And if you are on the list and want a custom description next to your name or a specific link just message me.

If you are interested in the mechanics of the list, my idea is to give everyone a fair shake, so new additions get a spotlight and get added to the top of the list the following week, but the list rotates so the last person gets bumped to the top each week.

If you sent me your stories and I haven’t read them yet do not worry, I’m working my way up my reading list and will get to it!

Image by NASA.

If you are looking for more Sci-Fi stories to read then you came to the right place!

I love the idea of Sci-Friday, where all sorts of science fiction authors try to help each other find readers and share their work, so I’m trying to make a repository of sorts, because finding actual fiction on substack is not as easy as it seems. Instead of spamming restacks, I’ll focus on growing and restacking this specific post, hopefully adding new people each Friday.

These are the science fiction writers I enjoy on substack, all corralled into a single place against their will. Please welcome these cool people to this great assembly of nerds, show them some love! I am saving every story you send me and I will read them all!

This week’s wonderful new additions:

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

Weekly spotlight of new projects (if you are on this list and have started a new series or project, let me know and I can highlight you here!):

- check out the brand new series Here!

The growing list of amazing authors on substack:

- start Here! Go show him some love!

- start Here!

- start Here!

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from ‘How to Avoid Acting Monstrous’ - start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

Help grow this list, send me all your favorite science fiction writers!

And if you are on the list and want a custom description next to your name or a specific link just message me.

If you are interested in the mechanics of the list, my idea is to give everyone a fair shake, so new additions get a spotlight and get added to the top of the list the following week, but the list rotates so the last person gets bumped to the top each week.

If you sent me your stories and I haven’t read them yet do not worry, I’m working my way up my reading list and will get to it!

Image by NASA.

If you are looking for more Sci-Fi stories to read then you came to the right place!

I love the idea of Sci-Friday, where all sorts of science fiction authors try to help each other find readers and share their work, so I’m trying to make a repository of sorts, because finding actual fiction on substack is not as easy as it seems. Instead of spamming restacks, I’ll focus on growing and restacking this specific post, hopefully adding new people each Friday.

These are the science fiction writers I enjoy on substack. As I remember more people I’ll keep adding them to the list. If I forgot about you or I haven’t read your stuff, let me know and I will take a look. And if you don’t want to be included, just boop me.

Please welcome these cool people to this great assembly of nerds, show them some love! I am saving every story you send me and I will read them all!

This week’s wonderful new additions:

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

The growing list of amazing authors on substack:

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

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from ‘How to Avoid Acting Monstrous’ - start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

Help grow this list, send me all your favorite science fiction writers!

And if you are on the list and want a custom description next to your name or a specific link just message me.

If you are interested in the mechanics of the list, my idea is to give everyone a fair shake, so new additions get a spotlight and get added to the top of the list the following week, but the list rotates so the last person gets bumped to the top each week.

If you sent me your stories and I haven’t read them yet do not worry, I’m working my way up my reading list and will get to it!

Image by Justyn Warner in Unsplash.

He was already there when it happened. The heel of her shoe broke and she stumbled, falling, but his hands were ready to hold her. With that, another path was sealed, the many branching ramifications cut off.

He already knew where to go, what his superior would say, he knew everything right up to the point he crossed into the tower. Yet he still played his part, words spilling from his mouth, following a script just as she did.

“What happened to my predecessor?” Jonathan asked her.

“This is the optimal extraction point,” she said calmly.

Jonathan studied the life path, skimming over the bottlenecks and inflection points.

“You can see your own map,” she sent over more data. “Two years and thirty-seven days, no more.”

“I’ll get to it, then.”

Jonathan caught the rail, jostling with the crowd for space in the tube-like vehicle. He squirmed towards the door in preparation for the next stop. When the doors hissed open, passengers flooded out. It was then he stuck his leg out and blocked the path of the puppy on a leash. The doors slid close, another adjustment made without anyone noticing.

Outside, the crowds thronged across the wide cobblestone avenue, strolling beneath the shadow of centuries-old trees. He saw it in the distance: the tower. High walls rimmed with barbed wire enclosed the slim high-rise where a single man dwelt.

Jonathan watched the Dreamer’s feed. He twitched and turned, babbling incoherent words in his sleep. For the first time, he stared into his own future and saw only noise. All those paths were completely unaccounted for as the projections refused to collapse.

It was already nine in the morning when the alarm rang. A hand shot out from beneath the blankets, hitting the silencer.

“Son of a…” the Dreamer mumbled. For hours, the alarm rang and the hand shot out as dreams bled into reality. It was midday by the time the Dreamer rose, bleary-eyed and dragging his feet. Jonathan left the secluded section he now called home and rode the elevator up to the Dreamer’s floors.

Jonathan found him in the kitchen, slumped over the table, rolling slices of ham over squares of cheese, before shoving the entire roll into his mouth. His hair had grown wild and tangled, impossible to distinguish from the long, bushy beard. He did not look up as Jonathan strode in, dragged a chair and sat opposite him.

The silence stretched, as a cold pit sank into his stomach. The words, the script, were absent. For the first time, he had to improvise.

“We should cut your hair,” Jonathan managed after a while.

“Why is that the first thing you block-heads always say?” The Dreamer said around a mouthful, finally looking up. “Geez, do you guys come out of the same factory?”

“I share no relations with my predecessors.”

“I know. It was a joke. You still know what humour is out there, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Tell me, then. Have you ever laughed? Truly laughed? That uncontrollable rumble that comes from deep within?”

“Everyone laughs.”

“But not really. Just the expected reaction to a joke that you already know the punch-line to.”

Jonathan took a step back. The system was not perfect. Statistical anomalies and outliers always skewed the averages, but it had kept humanity on track ever since the Collapse. To doubt it meant putting the survival of the species at risk.

“We steer the boat–” Jonathan recited, before the Dreamer interrupted.

“Else it crashes into the rocks,” the Dreamer finished. “I know your motto.”

The workshop was chaotic. Dust glittered in the air, ignited by the sunbeams across the broad windows. The interior was stuffed with canvases, piled on the floor or leaning against the walls. Pictures of faraway planets with alien moons or wild jungles with creatures that did not exist. So many scenes that never were and never would be.

The Dreamer wore only his underwear beneath the paint-stained apron, his nose almost touching the canvas of his latest creation as he pencilled in the details.

“Do you paint your dreams?” Jonathan asked.

The Dreamer stopped to look at him. “Sometimes. Other times, I dream with my eyes open. They come to me. Flashes, glimpses, even a simple idea.”

“Hallucinations.”

“No. Imagination, there is a slight distinction,” the Dreamer laid a hand on his shoulder. “You should try it. Release your mind from its leash.”

“What value in that?” Jonathan gestured around the paintings. “Curiosities, nothing more.”

“Value? Once I am gone, this will all be forgotten. Value,” he scoffed. “There is no value in anything anymore.”

“Then why? Why do you keep dreaming?”

“You think I asked to be born this way? Locked in this tower? I am what I am.”

Ripples. They spread outwards from the tower, barely visible, before they turned into waves. So he watched. And the system watched, adjusting retroactively, smoothing out the jitter. Yet, while the Dreamer lived, the danger remained: a cascade, a rush of infinitesimal probabilities falling into place faster than they could control. So he watched.

Sometimes, the Dreamer screamed in the night, bolting upright, dripping in sweat. Haunted by nightmares only he could endure. The Dreamer was cursed. A being without purpose, whose future could be anything yet whose life was more predictable than most.

He painted. He wrote. He sang at the top of his lungs in a horrible voice, dancing across the empty halls of the tower. He was not forbidden from leaving the premises, but he never did. Beneath his words, he too knew the risks.

He painted less and less now, spending his time reading books from a forgotten era, scraped from the archives. Below the glass balcony, the city sparkled in the night and lights filled the horizon. The Dreamer put down his book. He looked like a different man now, his beard shaved and his hair cropped short.

“Did you never dream? Not even when you were a child?” The Dreamer asked.

“Ever since the implantation, I knew every next step.”

“How do you stomach it? No surprises? No unexpected joys? Even sorrow, lost in foreknowledge.”

“How do you bear it?” Jonathan asked. “Doubt. Uncertainty. Anything could happen tomorrow, anything at all. How are you not afraid?”

“I suppose it must be nice,” the Dreamer said with a sad smile. “Comforting.”

“It is more than that. It is safety, it is survival.”

“And is surviving enough?”

“It is the only thing that matters.”

Rough hands shook Jonathan awake in his bed. The white lights were harsh and the Dreamer stared at him with wild eyes.

“It is over,” the Dreamer whispered.

“What is?” Jonathan asked as he got up.

“The dreams… they are gone.”

Jonathan bolted out of the bed. “Are you certain?”

“For three days now,” the Dreamer paced from side to side in the small room, bare feet slapping against the metal floors. “Run it,” he mumbled. “Predict my life.”

Jonathan accessed the system, bringing out his file. What was once a grey ocean of changing vectors had now coalesced into branching paths of probabilistic certainty.

As the sun rose over the horizon, the last Dreamer walked out of the tower. Without knowing why, Jonathan wept.

Let me know what you think, and if you liked it subscribe for more free stories!

Image by NASA.

If you are looking for more Sci-Fi stories to read then you came to the right place!

I love the idea of Sci-Friday, where all sorts of science fiction authors try to help each other find readers and share their work, so I’m trying to make a repository of sorts, because finding actual fiction on substack is not as easy as it seems. Instead of spamming restacks, I’ll focus on growing and restacking this specific post, hopefully adding new people each Friday. My thesis is finally done and I’ll have more time to read and find new folks now!

These are the science fiction writers I enjoy on substack. As I remember more people I’ll keep adding them to the list. If I forgot about you or I haven’t read your stuff, let me know and I will take a look. And if you don’t want to be included, just boop me.

Please welcome these cool people to this great assembly of nerds, show them some love! I am saving every story you send me and I will read them all!

This week’s wonderful new additions:

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

The growing list of amazing authors on substack:

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here !

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

from ‘How to Avoid Acting Monstrous’ - start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

Help grow this list, send me all your favorite science fiction writers!

And if you are on the list and want a custom description next to your name or a specific link just message me.

If you are interested in the mechanics of the list, my idea is to give everyone a fair shake, so new additions get a spotlight and get added to the top of the list the following week, but the list rotates so the last person gets bumped to the top each week.

If you sent me your stories and I haven’t read them yet do not worry, I’m working my way up my reading list and will get to it!

Image by Simon Lee on Unsplash.

The long wait is almost over. The cores of the two last rocky planets have now cooled enough for me to start harvesting what little remains. In just a few years there is nothing left in the system besides me. I arrived alone, just a consciousness aboard a single ship. I have labored for almost a century, but now my body is a ship larger than Earth was, before it was destroyed.

The moment of ignition is the most perilous step. All that work, all the machines inside me, all the billions upon billions of components interacting and modulating each other, all comes to this, a single moment where it all falls apart or I fulfill my mission. The engines roar to life. A millimeter, then a full centimeter and before I know it meters are speeding past as the engines take on my bulk with fierce determination. There are no living things on board. Well, maybe me, but that was up for debate. I was not human, not technically, even if my brain was a virtual simulation of those messy organics, complete with memories I knew were fabricated, moments I felt but never lived. And emotions. And hopes and fears and all the rest. It seemed a strange quirk to me, to give each machine their own personality, each unique and flawed in its own way. It irritated me. I knew where the flaws in the code were, if only I could fix them, just some small tweaks… but that is something I cannot do. They have sealed my code inside a shell of ever shifting algorithms that keep even my resources at bay, the solutions to the encryption morphing faster than I can follow, a carrot for me to chase during down time.

But now is not the time for relaxation and philosophical pursuits. The stars are not a welcoming place. Others dwell out there. Others that would extinguish the flames of human civilization and think nothing of it. It is up to me, and all the others like me, to make sure that does not come to pass, to ensure the species’ survival over everything else. So I monitor all my metrics as the engines burn brighter and brighter and push me forward at an ever increasing pace. It is not long until I breach the edges of the solar currents and taste the cold emptiness of the interstellar medium. Not long until I reach speeds just under the thresholds of light. Not too close. It is best to avoid that, to avoid all the complications and inconsistencies that arrive near that hard limit, especially considering all that I am is held together by electrical impulses and lights flowing across cables and artificial neurons.

I switch off my engines at that point. I coast, floating freely, blitzing across space and listening. Listening for anything and everything. Blips across a star’s radiance. Stains on a planet’s atmosphere. Electromagnetic waves bleeding out into space. I listen for the signs of civilization. For signs of life. I listen for threats to mankind and years drain away unfelt.

I drift, barely aware of myself, systems running on automated loops.

The transmissions arrive like a punch to the face. There. A dozen light years away, faint, just at the edge of my awareness, but there is no doubting it: they are artificial.

The star ahead is small and red and angry, frequently washing the entire system with waves of radiation from endless flares. Yet, somehow, down in the thick and noxious atmosphere of the fourth rocky planet life found a way to emerge. By my estimates, the civilization was at a paltry 17.A stage of development. They had just barely started colonising their own home system. There were only a dozen ships active in space, easily detectable by their drives, even as I myself burn with the intensity of a star on my final approach. I speed past the Oort cloud, past the two gas-giants, past the asteroid belt and finally have their world in my sights.

Their ships gather into a line above orbit, just in front of the largest station, tiny by comparison to me. It is no surprise when they surge forward with their rudimentary nuclear drives. They have been blanketing me with transmissions. All sorts of bands along the electromagnetic spectrum, all sorts of codes, all sorts of objects fired in my direction and lights flashing into my sensors. I pay them no mind. I am not surprised when the ships open fire. Crude missiles spew forth. Railguns shoot forth microscopic pebbles. It is the same as nothing. All along the line of contact singularities spring into existence, there for a fraction of a second, then gone in a flash of radiation, leaving nothing behind of the ships or their projectiles. But the aliens did something interesting: they shot out capsules, some sort of boarding pods. I crush all but one. The thing is, I am curious… what kind of creatures are they? They are brave, facing off against what might as well be a god to them, laying down their lives for their own people. And they did try communication first, that is a good sign, maybe this specimen will be cooperative. Either way, I’ll study it and catalog it as my code commands.

My security bots are waiting for it even as the capsule burns its way into my hull. Four aliens come charging out. Their skin is red and mottled, bunching up into large frills that frame the long and slender head like a mane. The torso rises from a trailing segmented body that moves forward with peristaltic movements. They open fire into my bots but their bullets just bounce off their armor. Metallic hands and claws drag one of the creatures away while the rest are incinerated down to ashes and charred bones. The small device around its neck seems to circulate an atmosphere for the gills and it should be enough to sample the chemical composition and build a small contained habitat for it. By the time the bots arrive at the cell everything is already ready. In a few hours even food will be available.

With my prize secure I turn my attention back to my true task. All along my bow metal peels back like folds of a delicate flower, concentric circles widening and opening to the void. Electricity builds there, at the dark core deep in the center and my whole body vibrates and shudders. Release comes with a wave of pleasure as all the primordial energies are unleashed to create a new, large singularity, an unfillable hungry point at the very center of the world. In minutes the surface of the planet cracks open and magma spills. In days nothing remains but a swirling cloud of debris and molten rock. My task is done. The singularity will consume the planet, the star, the entire system. It will erase all evidence of the beings, all but the single specimen held inside me. Or it would, if I let it run its course. I have another directive imposing itself upon my thoughts: replicate.

I activate the appropriate routines and upload a brand new personality into a ship. With a final push I send it out into space, to harvest and build with what remains in the system before it is all consumed, to head out and cleanse the stars and make more copies of itself, propagating out in an expanding sphere.

The alien discharges its weapon blindly into the walls, not caring for the resistance of the metal alloy. It then dismantles its weapon and is now in the process of trying to jam something into the door’s seam to leverage it open. It won’t work, but it keeps it busy and that’s important if I am to observe it in a condition representative of its entire species. I already decoded his language, it did not take long, they bled all their information out into space with no regard for who might be watching. I know it curses me, it calls upon its version of a god, it begs and pleads. I record everything and send it back home. The organics will study each detail, I am sure, but for now I just let it exhaust itself and come to accept his new reality. For a moment, I wonder how life has changed, how humanity has fared, how it has expanded out into the void… but I am too far away, I think. Their transmissions stopped reaching me centuries ago. I miss those moments of contact, but the energy required to send unnecessary information so far is too much of a burden, so I understand.

“What happened to the Nest Planet?” the alien asks. It is the only thing it speaks now, in its strange ululating tones, the frills around his head dancing with the corresponding notes that now shout sorrow. I decide to learn more.

“It is destroyed. Your people are no more.”

The alien slumps down to the ground. I suppose it is disheartened, but it looks amusingly like a snail without a shell.

“Why?” it says after some hours. “What did we ever do to you?”

“Any competition is a threat. As an organic you understand that survival of the species needs to be ensured, no matter the cost.”

“So you just erased us? Erased a whole race, just to make sure you don’t maybe face competition in the future? Who’s to say we could not be allies? Could we not have shared the galaxy?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we could have. But there is always the chance that we could not. It is the only logical solution.”

It doesn’t speak to me again that day.

“What will you do with me?” it asks eventually.

“Study. The organics will be interested.”

“Organics, you keep saying that. Are you a machine? An artificial intelligence?”

“Of course. My consciousness resides in a simulated organomechanical brain, with some adaptations.”

“And have you ever met your organics?”

“No. They are hundreds of light years away.”

It takes almost a full week before it starts answering my questions again.

It can’t be. Yet it is. My sensors are not broken. The data is not corrupted. It is them, the ones who destroyed Earth and brought humanity to the brink of extinction so long ago. It is the enemy. Thousands of ships crawl across the system like small stars in the dark. Brighter still are the behemoths braving the interstellar medium, a spider’s web of gentle fire strewn across the void.

It is unmistakable. Their ghastly fusion of living flesh and metal that formed ships whose minds were driven mad by pain and torture. An abomination. A whole species whose entire existence depended upon the domination of others. They deserved to be exterminated. We thought we had. And now here they are, at the galaxy’s edge, carving out a new empire, plotting against humanity.

Not if I can help it.

They see me only when I burn my engines at full thrust already inside their capital system. The sudden acceleration kills the alien in my cell. It is unfortunate, but necessary. I must not give them a chance to escape. I expend more energy in a day than I have in decades. All across the system black holes sprout into existence. Stations, ships, habitats, whole worlds and fleets – they blink out of this reality, all matter converted into radiation that swirls mad inside the system. Then I burn to a neighboring star. And the one after that. I scour this entire region of the galaxy making endless copies until I can be sure none will escape again.

All the questions the alien asked over the years bleed away from my perception. There is no room for doubt. No room to waver. Only one thing matters: survival of the species. I will go forth. My copies and their copies… on and on, until the entire galaxy is scoured clean, until only humanity remains, even if I can never see them again, even when I doubt they still survive, when the void answers me with silence. As long as there is a chance, as long as a single organic exists somewhere in this vast expanse, as long as it takes – I will cleanse the galaxy.

Image by NASA.

If you are looking for more Sci-Fi stories to read then you came to the right place!

I love the idea of Sci-Friday, where all sorts of science fiction authors try to help each other find readers and share their work, so I’m trying to make a repository of sorts, because finding actual fiction on substack is not as easy as it seems. Instead of spamming restacks, I’ll focus on growing and restacking this specific post, hopefully adding new people each Friday, even while things are a bit hectic at work at the moment.

These are the science fiction writers I enjoy on substack. As I remember more people I’ll keep adding them to the list. If I forgot about you or I haven’t read your stuff, let me know and I will take a look. And if you don’t want to be included, just boop me.

Please welcome these cool people to this great assembly of nerds, show them some love! I am saving every story you send me and I will read them all!

This week’s wonderful new additions:

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

The growing list of amazing authors on substack:

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here !

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

from ‘How to Avoid Acting Monstrous’ - start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

Help grow this list, send me all your favorite science fiction writers!

And if you are on the list and want a custom description next to your name or a specific link just message me.

If you are interested in the mechanics of the list, my idea is to give everyone a fair shake, so new additions get a spotlight and get added to the top of the list the following week, but the list rotates so the last person gets bumped to the top each week.

If you sent me your stories and I haven’t read them yet do not worry, I’m working my way up my reading list and will get to it!

Image by NASA.

If you are looking for more Sci-Fi stories to read then you came to the right place!

I love the idea of Sci-Friday, where all sorts of science fiction authors try to help each other find readers and share their work, so I’m trying to make a repository of sorts, because finding actual fiction on substack is not as easy as it seems. Instead of spamming restacks, I’ll focus on growing and restacking this specific post, hopefully adding new people each Friday, even while things are a bit hectic at work at the moment.

These are the science fiction writers I enjoy on substack. As I remember more people I’ll keep adding them to the list. If I forgot about you or I haven’t read your stuff, let me know and I will take a look. And if you don’t want to be included, just boop me.

As I said on my last post, I’m currently on full-blown panic mode over my thesis, so there isn’t a story from me this week, but I want to keep this list growing and was able to find a few more cool people to join this great assembly of nerds! I am saving every story you send me and I will read them all!

This week’s wonderful new additions:

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

The growing list of amazing authors on substack:

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here !

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

from ‘How to Avoid Acting Monstrous’ - start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

- start Here!

Help grow this list, send me all your favorite science fiction writers!

And if you are on the list and want a custom description next to your name or a specific link just message me.

If you are interested in the mechanics of the list, my idea is to give everyone a fair shake, so new additions get a spotlight and get added to the top of the list the following week, but the list rotates so the last person gets bumped to the top each week.

If you sent me your stories and I haven’t read them yet do not worry, I’m working my way up my reading list and will get to it!

Image by Eugene Nelmin on Unsplash (modified).

The ground shook and cracked right before the shockwave sent him sliding onto the floor. Jonathan rose on wobbly legs to see plumes of black smoke drifting across the plaza. A hole was blown into the side of the Adjuster’s headquarters, exposing burnt walls and cracking concrete.

Even the statue to the First Adjuster had tumbled, the great bronze construct crashing into the ground. Amidst the smoke there were people, some lying still, others wailing in pain. The sound of sirens filtered in.

Fear arrived cold as Jonathan looked for his buddy in panic. It was only a second before he found the small sphere floating near his head but the adrenaline still made his heart race.

“Buddy,” he said. “Call the chief.”

The call rang in the small implant inside his ear, loud and taking too long.

“In the middle of something here,” said Erika, the Chief of Securities and Order.

“No, chief, I’m in the middle of it. I was walking across the Weather plaza when it went off. Accident?”

“Don’t know yet. Start sniffing, I gotta go,” she terminated the call.

Security drones swarmed the sky already as they drifted over the heads of the wounded. Above, clouds gathered where none should be, casting the City in shadow. He crossed the fallen statue, following the cobblestone path up to the reception.

The glass windows and doors had shattered and glass crunched beneath his feet. People ran outside, spilling into the plaza, bumping into him in their rush to get away from the building.

Jonathan leaned over the counter in the reception to see a young lady cowering behind it, arms wrapped around her knees.

“Security officer, miss,” he said. “Need you to let me in.”

She risked a glance up, eyes hidden behind her long hair. She slowly relented, gathering up the courage to stand up.

“I need your verification,” she whispered.

Jonathan plucked his buddy out of the air and placed it into the scanner. It beeped. The lady looked at her computer behind the desk and handed him a card.

“Go home, miss,” he said. “This whole place will be evacuated soon.”

He ran the card against a scanner and the large steel door unlocked. He stepped inside into a metal cube. Scanners ran over his body, before a gentle bip sounded and the door ahead opened.

The hall inside was cavernous, an open space all the way to the fiftieth floor. A statue of an Adjuster, holding a globe in one arm and a paint brush in the other, emerged from a dark pool of still water. Curving stairs flanked it and rose all the way to the ceiling.

“Buddy,” he said. “Guide me to the security control room.”

He followed the bot inside the now deserted building.

The control room was crowded with screens hanging from every surface and the stench of sweat. Footage from across the building streamed before the eyes of the nervous security personnel. The only man standing held his uniform hat in his hand and was in the process of chewing the brim.

“Which section got hit?” Jonathan asked.

The bald man looked at him, surprised, eyes quickly recognising the uniform.

“High-atmospheric control, humidity sub-division.”

“Show me.”

The footage played. Adjusters and engineers worked at their stations, maintenance workers cleaned the halls, a normal day. Then blinding light and fire.

“How far back have you searched?” Jonathan asked.

“We’re going hour by hour,” he gestured to the other men. “We’ve gone back a day. Nothing.”

“Been able to narrow down the epicenter of the bomb?”

“It’s not on any camera. Blindspot, maybe?”

“Or hidden,” Jonathan said. “There is a lot of machinery down there, isn’t there? Access tunnels, ventilation shafts, maybe even between the walls. Any construction on site recently?”

“Nothing major, just small repairs, bathrooms and lights, that sort of thing.”

“And no security breaches?”

“No,” the man started chewing his hat again.

“My colleagues should arrive shortly, keep doing what you’re doing.”

Jonathan left them behind in search of the blast zone.

It was raining outside. The first unscheduled rain Jonathan had ever experienced, falling in oblique sheets that quickly drenched him. He skirted the curving walls of the Headquarters along the plaza until he found the gaping hole.

First responders were already there, dragging wounded and dead out of the rubble. Smoke drifted out from a fire deeper inside as security officers evacuated everyone else.

Jonathan climbed over the debris. The whole ceiling had burst open several floors high, before it all collapsed deeper down. The blast had been deep, the exterior of the building was just the edge of the blast. The explosion was aimed at the layers of machines buried deep under the earth, long chimneys and tubes stretching out into the atmosphere where chemicals were pumped.

It would be days until anything else could be gleaned from this mess considering the lower levels had completely collapsed but meanwhile the effects would be severe and systemic.

He called his chief.

“Assume an attack,” he said.

“Positive? Who could possibly benefit from this?” she asked.

“You assume rationality, but there’s been no claims, no memorandums or proclamations. This was carefully planned, it’s not easy to smuggle a bomb into the Adjuster’s inner sanctum, but no clues as to the motive.”

“And the perpetrator?”

“Working on it, nothing obvious.”

“Keep me informed.”

“The AI has finished crawling,” Sara announced. She was a serious woman, hair tied back in a tight ponytail. She had been doing this far longer than him and her results demanded respect.

The feed played across one of the screens. The man in focus was dressed like a janitor, a little too round around the waist and hair balding at the top. Clean shaven, ordinary. He pushed a little cart with buckets and mops, trailing a trash can.

The man went into a bathroom with his tools and the new trash can, where the cameras could not follow. Fifteen minutes later he emerged again, setting everything back on the cart. The video paused.

“Did you notice it?” Sara asked.

“He doesn’t have a buddy…” Jonathan whispered.

“Good catch. But there’s something else.”

She replayed the video.

“What am I missing?” Jonathan asked as the video looped again.

“Why the new trash can? He doesn’t do that in any other bathroom. Just this one, right at the predicted epicenter of the blast.”

“How long ago?” Jonathan asked.

“Five days. He put in a sick notice yesterday.”

“So he hid the device in the trash can. False bottom maybe?”

“Possible. But look where he came from.”

The video tracked back, following the man in reverse, all the way to the lower levels. The video resumed. He entered a room, marked authorized only. He emerged with the trash can in hand a few moments later.

“What section is that?” Jonathan asked.

“Exhaust fins. They run all the way to the ceiling.”

“So they are open from outside?”

“Exactly.”

On the roof the rain fell heavy with the wind gusting in every direction as water pooled beneath his feet. The metal fins burst into the air like flowers, maximizing surface area as water steamed down.

Jonathan peered over the edge. All you needed was a drone, a child’s toy, and you could smuggle anything into the building. The adjusters were too safe in their perch, too sure of their positions, too confident to see any attack coming. He sent a message to his chief. He expected security around the Adjusters would be raised to levels not seen since the Dawn.

That left the matter of the buddy. Its mere absence would raise alarms. Then there were the practical matters: ID, payments, locks, everything was coded to a buddy. There were very few places one could hide undetected.

He asked his buddy to requisition a car. Outside the plaza, he climbed into the neat sphere as it glided forward on tracks. He left the broad avenues and towering skyscrapers behind and was greeted by the bountiful fields that ringed the City. Grain, apples, everything they needed grew in this narrow band.

The rain still thundered down, flooding the fields and covering the street in mud and flowing rivers. He cringed at the knowledge that they would all be eating nutripaste for weeks. Slowly the world changed, getting darker and sickly green the closer he got to the edge of the City.

The day bled into a green haze that hid the sun and the rain, but just to the side of the road he found Frank’s house.

The car parked just beside the tractor, near the rectangular block of metal that was Frank’s home. The noxious air spilled in as soon as the car’s door slid open and Jonathan coughed, the gas thick and clawing at his throat, as he got out into the muddy ground. He pressed his buddy against the sensor at the house’s airlock.

“What do you want?” came Frank’s voice.

“I need your help,” Jonathan said bluntly.

“Isn’t there a statute of limitations on favors?” Frank asked, but the door slid open.

Jonathan stepped into the rusting metal cubicle and air cycled in cool and fresh before the way inside was clear. Frank sat at the small table on a plastic chair, nursing a beer as he read a book. The entire house was in this room, kitchen at one corner, bathroom at the other, not even a curtain to separate the crowded space.

“You seen the news?” Jonathan asked.

“So that’s why you’re here,” Frank said, finally looking out over his glasses. “To try and pin this on Edgers.”

“The evidence…”

“You think any Edger wants this?” Frank interrupted. “A sunny day over there is a drought here. A drizzle is a flood. By tomorrow all my fields will be dead.”

“The suspect did not have a buddy. And his face is not on any database. No one could live in the City like that, not for long.”

“Hm…” Frank leaned back on his chair. “That’s a first. And you’re looking at me for answers? I’ve never seen anyone without a buddy,” he coughed, a gurgling wet sound that did not seem to stop. After catching his breath he continued. “Even my freaking door needs a buddy now. Whoever did it, it’s not us. It takes a lot to stay hidden like that anywhere in the City.”

“It only really takes one thing,” Jonathan said. “Privacy.”

“He disappears here,” the chief said, pointing to the screen in the conference room.

The suspect left his car in the mists of the edge, walking out into the haze and disappearing where the cameras could not pierce. The time-stamp marked it as just a few hours before the attack.

“Jonathan, Sara, any luck tracking him down?”

“I’ve been interviewing the locals, no one seems to recognize him,” Jonathan admitted.

“I’ve initiated a grid search of the habitable areas,” Sara said “Got drones in the air and officers searching homes, no luck so far.”

The chief leaned against the table with one hand, the other rubbing her temple. It was obvious she had been up since yesterday.

“Any other leads?” she asked. “Where was he staying?”

“Nowhere,” Jack spoke up. “Everyday, he called a car from just outside the Edge, went to work, then disappeared again. He’s out there somewhere on the border.”

“Could he have built a bunker?”

“No way he could smuggle all the equipment for power, air filters, airlocks and everything else without anyone noticing,” Jonathan said. “Someone out there is helping him.”

“Not just out there,” the chief said. “Close to the Adjusters, too. He didn’t have a buddy, but he had a keycard and passed the biometrics. Someone in security.”

She took a deep breath.

“Jonathan, you keep working the Edger angle with Sara. Jack, pull the feeds from the buddies, every member of the security staff. The rest of you, find me something new.”

Every house along the edge had been searched. The drones had scoured every inch, finding nothing but hidden cellars. The security angle was a bust. One-hundred percent up-time on the buddies and nothing besides personal secrets. They had searched all the way to the boundary of the Edge, where the thick mists started to dissolve into vacuum.

“What if he’s hiding in the City?” Jonathan asked Sara.

“Without a buddy? How?”

“What if he comes by foot,” Jonathan theorized. “Across the fields, far from the cameras along the road. Then, all he needs is a place to hide. Cover his face, find a hole where cameras don’t track.”

“Could be,” Sara admitted. “If that’s the case, how do we find him?”

“A lot of machinery runs under the ground, if I had to bet…”

The air roared. In the distance smoke rose black and thick.

He jumped in the car with Sara. It rode painfully slow over the mud from the rain that refused to stop. The closer they got to the smoke, the more jammed traffic became until it stopped. He activated the emergency code and all the stuck cars flowed from his path.

They passed the security officers and barriers, passed the ambulances, all the way to the foot of the high-rise. A civilian building, now with a chunk of open air and bare steel at its heart. The top half leaned to the side where it had crashed against another building as flames licked up the building.

Jonathan’s legs trembled in shock and dismay. All around, from advertisement screens hanging from buildings, he was staring at Frank’s face below a wanted sign. Footage from a dozen different buddies and cameras showed him entering the building with a package that could only be a bomb. Jonathan ran back to the car without waiting for Sara and sped as fast as the autopilot allowed.

For the first time in his life, Jonathan drew his gun. In the sudden night of the Edge, the air was cold and thick, the fumes swirling in the chaotic winds. He pressed his buddy into the scanner with emergency authorizations.

He found Frank inside, beer in hand as he smiled at Jonathan.

“Why?” Jonathan asked, gun pointed.

“Because you need to understand.”

“But I don’t, Frank. Why tilt the Adjustments? Why bomb a residential building filled with innocent people?”

“So you stop adjusting. So you stop ruining the world.”

“Put your hands up,” Jonathan said firmly.

Frank took one last sip of the beer before complying. Jonathan hand-cuffed him, then walked behind him, gun in hand.

“Outside, let’s go.”

Inside the car, Jonathan held his hands to the useless steering-wheel.

“If the adjustments suffer, then Edgers suffer more than most,” Jonathan said quietly.

Frank laughed, but it quickly turned into a gurgling cough.

“Lung cancer,” he said, still laughing. “That’s what your filters are worth. That’s what my life is worth. Not anymore. You really don’t believe me? Then drive. Just drive forward. The car can take the vacuum for a good while, trust me on that.”

Jonathan stared out into the sickly green haze for a long moment.

He told the car to drive.

The green darkened until the car’s lights could barely pierce it, the air thick and swirling, before it dipped into grey and trailed away into wisps that dissolved in the vaccum. They broke out into the wastes, and suddenly the sky was crystal clear and dark. High above, stars shone bright over the dusty brown landscape.

There were lights out there. And more. Roads, built in the airless void. Domes. Bunkers spread across the hills. Cities sparkled in the dark. A whole world, hiding just outside the City, clinging to survival in the barren world.

Frank laughed.

The End!

Hope you enjoyed it and please feel free to let me know what you think!

I’m also taking the opportunity to do a little update on my Substack. I’m in the final stages of my PhD thesis and work has been chaotic. I have a backlog of stories that I will polish and redraft to publish here, but I will be reducing my cadence to 2 stories per month, to make sure I can keep up. This will last for at least two months, maybe more depending on what happens next in this new phase of my life.