Category: Science Fiction

Huge Study Shows History of the Pandemic in Africa

A very large international team of researchers has compiled and performed phylogenetic and phylogeographic analysis on massive amounts of data related to testing people in Africa for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The results are published in Science. The global pandemic has been underway for almost two years, and during that time, many...

Two Minutes Cameron Robert Thompson

Time. 10:19 p.m. South Florida. The traffic light rests at red for an eternity, mocking me with its condescending gaze.  I quickly turned my head both directions, not a car in sight for what it seemed to be miles.  Is this some kind of joke?  Looking into the rear view...

Supersmall device uses individual atoms to store data Blocks and rows of chlorine atoms encode words

These orderly patterns of dark blue dots indicate where individual chlorine atoms are missing from an otherwise regular grid of atoms. Scientists manipulated these vacancies to create a supersmall data storage device. The locations of vacancies encode bits of information in the device, which Sander Otte of Delft University of Technology in...

REM sleep help store memories

Scientists suspected that the eye-twitchy, dream-packed slumber known as rapid eye movement sleep was important for memory. But REM sleep’s influence on memory has been hard to study, in part because scientists often resorted to waking people or animals up — a stressful experience that might influence memory in different...

The Workshop at the End of the World -Kristin Janz

The workshop’s bright interior felt like a sauna after the numbing midwinter cold outdoors. The old man immediately took off his fur-lined hat and gloves and started unfastening the buttons of his greatcoat. His workers glanced up from benches and forge upon his entrance, but they took too much pride...

The Graduation Gift -Sheryl Normandeau

Anya’s earworm was malfunctioning. There could be no other explanation for what she was feeling: she had caught herself several times humming the melody of a tune that wasn’t her graduation song.  Just this morning at breakfast, her fingers had developed an impromptu twitch, tapping out an unfamiliar rhythm on...

Time, Again Tim Maly

Before we met, you showed me your diary. I must confess that I am still confused by this sequence of events, as, I imagine, you must be confused by my decision to leave your life so suddenly. I’ve gone over everything in my head time and time again and I...

Packing Light

Gustavo Bondoni The humans were taking too long. They seemed hell-bent on stopping at each and every burial nook and statuette — no matter how badly overrun with cobwebs — to make a little notation. Location, description, photograph number, everything was placed in the little black book. Emmerson was a...

Saviors

James Beamon # After two days of space travel, I briefly considered suicide. It seemed the only way to save myself from Kael’s crappy rations. The crappiest kind, the white pouches with token descriptions like “MEAT” and “VEGETABLE” stamped across the front in bold, black letters. “Almost there,” Kael said...

Cafe Macondo

::Megan Arkenberg:: The scanner bips and gives a four-note ascending scale of disapproval. Item not found. I look at the package in my hand. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but this coffee’s not in our system. It’s from an alternate dimension’s grocery store.” Her lips make a smacking sound like a magnetic...

Light and Ash 0

Light and Ash

Alan Bao The Chinese are coming. Paul Revere never had a chance with Taiwan, and the island falls within a week. No nukes–just tanks and landing crafts and bodies on the ground–your old-school stuff. A red tide out of the East, five gold stars glinting on each uniform. Mushroom clouds...

Eyes Like Microscopes 0

Eyes Like Microscopes

Steve Gillies The alarm clock read 4:40 am when I slapped it off my bedside table to no effect. The ringing didn’t stop. For a second I thought about which thin-walled neighbor would wake this early before I noticed the clanging noise sounded more like a fire alarm than an alarm clock.

An Inhabitant Of Carcosa 0

An Inhabitant Of Carcosa

 Ambrose Bierce For there be divers sorts of death — some wherein the body remaineth; and in some it vanisheth quite away with the spirit. This commonly occurreth only in solitude (such is God’s will) and, none seeing the end, we say the man is lost, or gone on a...

Zero Hour 0

Zero Hour

Sue Burke The man had deep worry lines between his eyebrows, although he was only in his twenties. When he woke up after a restless sleep, he looked at the window.