Resistance
We have seen you come before. We have always resisted. We will always resist. The first aliens came as conquerors, ready to crush us, ready to destroy us. We went to ground, we hid. We fought. We picked away at them, bit by bit.
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Science Fiction
The Darkness Between the Stars
Buddy and I abandoned our hydrogen nomad at the edge of the wastelands before trudging around the rusted chain-link perimeter of the abandoned fairgrounds, waiting for the blast of steam and guttural earthly moan to escape.
The Aliens Said They Wanted to Party
It was close to midnight on the second day of Diwali when we got the message. From deep space—far out past the Kuiper Belt and Pluto, which is not a planet anymore and probably pissed about it—a radio signal penetrated the atmosphere and reached our big-ass dishes in the desert made for this type of thing. Props to NASA, they only took four hours to decode the encryption algorithm.
The Heist for the Soul of Humanity
The simulation blossomed around Nadja Gavrić like a hypercube unpacking itself into three dimensions. The plain metal floors of the Roses’ cargo bay turned the shiny white of faux marble. The walls closed in, became a circular chamber. Display cases sprang up around the perimeter. Nadja stumbled backward when her right arm suddenly joined an exhibit of Cometborne funerary instruments.
The Only Writing Advice You’ll Ever Need to Survive Eldritch Horrors
1. Second Person POV: You’re a good person, although your ex doesn’t believe it—and here you are, writing in the second person, which your ex says is a limiting, even off-putting POV, simply to get his attention, to tell him your side of the story. Your boyfriend broke up with you last week after confessing he had doubts about your character. What really hurts is that since the breakup, he’s left your emails and texts unread.
The Last Lucid Day
You’re asleep in dreams of your father holding your head underwater, so the call from Magnolia Assisted Living goes to voicemail. “I didn’t raise a son of mine to count on his fingers,” your father says in the dream—because ah, yes, it’s all of your worst moments rolled into a single nightmare. You hear the beeping of your alarm and you know you’re dreaming, but you can’t wake up any more than you can pull yourself free of your father’s hands.
Warning Notes from an Annihilator Machine
05.22.2028 — Dear Teejay_009: Today makes it a decade and a day I have been keeping tabs on you. I started by watching your mother, monitoring all her movements while she housed you. There’s no better time to relay this message but now.
The Help Hotline
The trouble started after my husband reported a strange Zoom call at work. The company he worked for was a tech company that dabbled in defense contracting. I know all tech companies make weapons, but I didn’t want him working on that kind of stuff. He never promised he wouldn’t.
Udo Gehler and the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance
Udo Gehler saw his next opponent was the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance and didn’t even blink. He’d been curled up in his personal ARMOR lounge, holo-projecting the replay of his last match frame by frame, noting every instance he’d lost momentum or ceded terrain control.
The Waking Sleep of a Seething Wound
Dawn shot a quiver of cirrus that smeared like sunscreen across the sky. Bini had been awake for hours, back aching. She was too old for this shit. Mox still slept like the dead, her snores a regular wheeze. Hard to imagine Bini had once slept beside that noise every night.
