Category: fiction

Technicalities: a sci-fi story

I’d like to offer something different for your reading pleasure: a sci-fi short set in a bleak colonial future. Merry Christmas!

Technicalities

I joined the mechanised division in 2505 after graduating with a 412.3/1 kill average. My first co-pilot was a greyhair named Johnson. She’d been planetside for too long. She mumbled to herself and her kill ratio had dropped to 214.9/1.

Our assignment was cleaning up a regressed colony in a spiral arm of Andromeda. It was dull – like pouring boiling water over ants every day. We’re supposed to supervise the targeting systems, select the lethality of response, and make decisions about terrain and weather. The AI was programmed on a peacekeeping routine but Sarge taught us you could complete the mission faster if you maxed out the damage detectors’ sensitivity.… Continue reading...

The Cave Diver: a Halloween story

Photo by Chris Bayer on Unsplash.

Leaves are streaming from the trees and the long nights are drawing in. At this time of year the weather keeps us indoors, our mood becomes more introspective and our taste for the macabre grows. It’s in this spirit (👻) that I offer this chilling tale.

The Cave Diver

The pumpkin curdles on the porch. Its innards are cooked by candle heat, its rind-crown open to the autumn air. Trees crack and groan behind the garden fence. I remember the story Dad told us in our gloomy garage one Halloween about his friend: the cave diver whose buddy line went slack. Like everything Dad said, it was given to us as true. A master story-teller, he’d chosen the garage as the coldest, darkest, eeriest place in our suburban home.… Continue reading...