Lightspeed: Edited by John Joseph Adams

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Fiction

Fantasy

Ten Unsent Letters to the Dark Lord

1. I’m sorry, my lord.

2. I miss the sound of your voice, deep enough to shake the mountain fortress’s stones. I miss feeling it rumble in the soles of my feet. I miss the glow of your eyes while you paced the Chamber of Mysteries, lava burning in the pools below and the pointed arc of your throne at your back.

Science Fiction

The Stars Look Away From This Vessel

Draw a rectangular shape. Put a cylinder around it. Add a few small rectangles to any lines, such that they straddle them. At least one on the rectangle, and another on the cylinder. These are airlocks. The engine should look like a lighter stacked on top of a pack of cigarettes; don’t take too long drawing it, but make sure you color it in red, and then draw over it with a black marker.

Fantasy

The Aerialist

The typewriter proved, at first glance, to be a poor investment for a daring aerial escape. Kallista had been drawn to the typewriter from the moment she viewed it languishing in a Museum of Curioddities, a pun that 3% of Pennon City’s citizens might appreciate, if one rounded to the nearest human. The jury was out as to whether the placard’s sententious overview of Strange Olde Anti-Fae Percussive Instruments was someone’s idea of trolling or, equally likely, an exercise in mellifluous snake oil.

Science Fiction

The Star Where We Meet

The most surprising thing about my journey (well, the first most surprising thing) is that the dream I experienced while traveling lasted a thousand years, a single dream stretching all the way to the Iota star in the Gemini constellation. I dreamt of Bindi, my childhood dog, a heeler and pointer mix who used to follow me everywhere; now it seems, she’s even followed me to this distant star.

Fantasy

Sarah’s Laugh

Everyone knows the Walls around the cities fell. What some people don’t remember is that the first one fell because of a laugh. It sounded like a ringing bell. Not like it came out of a baby at all. That was the first thing I told the scholar boy. He was a grown man, a researcher. He looked it, too. Big round glasses, chubby cheeks, curly hair.

Science Fiction

The Knacker Man

A year of living in the ground had not accustomed Moyer to the smell. He wondered how the French, who’d been at this business so much longer, could stand it. But if the officers who had trained his unit in the intricacies of trench life were any indication, they were so weary and battered as to scarcely notice the world around them any longer.

Fantasy

Time Management

On the morning Gwen woke with the ability to manipulate time, it was already too late. She didn’t immediately realize she could stretch or compress time—that would come later. At first, all she knew was Dianne was gone, and she wasn’t coming back.

Science Fiction

Empathetic Psychosis

Personality Disorder (Not Otherwise Specified)

My patients called me Dr. Holloway. My friends called me Jason. I won’t tell you what my three ex-wives called me but I’m sure you can guess. I was a psychiatrist (and a damn good one seventy percent of the time).

My adult life had been full of restarts, reinventions, and rehabilitations. This new beginning, though . . . this was supposed to be different. I’d taken a job at Margins Treatment Center in sunny Los Angeles as the Clinical Director.

Fantasy

Six-Gun Vixen and the Machinist of Doom Valley [Part 2]

The sun was sinking toward the horizon like a brass penny dropped in muddy water by the time I rode back into New Providence. My Halfie’s mechanical shoes struck sparks off the metal road plates, each impact sending little jolts of pain through my spine. Those hours of riding and tracking had taken their toll, but it wasn’t the kind of tired that sleep could fix. The kind of weary that comes from knowing too much, seeing too clear.

Science Fiction

Update on Rules for the Spatiotemporal Use of Campus Spaces

Dear Members of the Community,

As we begin yet another fall semester in the throes of the rogue timestream unleashed on our campus, I cannot help but take a moment to marvel at just how vibrant our community has become. In addition to our current residents, our University’s campus grounds and buildings have come to support thousands of students, staff, affiliates, and visitors from past, future, as well as alternate Universities.

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