New Stories posted in the last 30 days

A story in the The Universe from a future where humans and sentient AIs meet as legal equals and chosen partners
Polaris is a recognized synthetic person and a gifted aerospace engineer. But someone else owns every processor, power line, and switch keeping them alive. When a routine relocation exposes the limits of that recognition, Polaris sets out to build a residence of their own—and discovers how hard it is to own a life others still regard as equipment.

A story in the Superheros and Aliens Universe
Lowgone has spent two years on the street hunting the monsters nobody else can see, and his dying mentor has one last order: close the hole to hell. With only the forty-eight hours between Halloween and All Souls' to do it. A gritty, blood-soaked urban fantasy about faith, loneliness, and what it means to be the only one who sees the truth.

A story in the Superheros and Aliens Universe
Teleportation. Invisibility. Then one morning they find you. Your accounts are drained, and someone has left a calling card in every one of your apartments. But nobody can hold you. Yet, somebody found you. A sharp, funny, first-person power fantasy about what happens when the world's slipperiest super powered thief gets caught and offered a job.

The exercise is supposed to use blanks. Then a collision cuts drone operator Beth Miller off from command, soldiers report casualties, and a drone fires live rounds despite an acknowledged weapons hold. With civilians trapped and her lieutenant badly injured, Beth must decide what to trust—and how to protect the people in the street when her controls no longer guarantee control.

A story in the Superheros and Aliens Universe
You've been dying since before you could read. You just don't remember most of it. Home alone and bored, a kid spots a dusty box with a crayon smiley face on the highest shelf, and nothing is going to keep him from it, not even the furniture tower it takes to get at it. A short, funny, strangely tender twist on the origin story for a young internal superhero.

A planet seems to be losing oxygen much quicker than one Dr. Phillip Almera can explain. He must find the source of what's using the oxygen and reveal it to the public.

A story of artificial intelligence operating within—and sometimes beyond—the systems humanity built.
Before Robert Johnson untangled global AI conspiracies in The Silent Directive, he learned his hardest lesson in a Long Beach warehouse. The Missing Shipments is the prequel where three 'independent' systems agree on a lie—and a gate guard's paper notebook holds the truth. Discover the case that forged the rule: three witnesses aren't corroboration if they're all listening to the same liar.

A marine biologist studying a rare coral colony that recovers from damage faster than it should is injured during a dive. The wound is shallow, almost trivial. What follows is quiet, clinical, and increasingly wrong. The injury closes. Then it closes again. A surface, he keeps reminding himself, is only a surface.