“Should I throw this away?” Bobby said, holding an indistinguishable piece of trash in his hands. “Yes, dude! What did I tell you? Everything is garbage. It all goes into the cube.” Terry was the older guy who drew the short straw and had to teach the new guy. Read more…
They dropped him off at the inhospitable moon. “Yugo,” his mentor said, “good luck. I hope you ate your greens.” That last bit was a little random. Yugo didn’t know what he was talking about, but didn’t pay any attention to his words. He really had a lot on his Read more…
Gorgoneion “Tell Perseus he’s a pussy,” Stheno yelled, disembowelling another one of his men. His partner just stood there in terror, looking through his mirrored shield. Stheno moved in closer to him, her snakes writhing on her head. She raised her sword at him, the tip dripping blood. “I said-” Read more…
Messenger In a Bottle The islanders had a simple messaging system: they just put a messenger in a bottle and threw it in the water. The twist was that it was the message that mattered most, and the recipient could be anyone. Crazy, I know. But Polynesia worked just fine Read more…
A Trillion-Dollar Rock 💎 Okay, Petra wasn’t the brightest of the bunch. Everybody knew that, except for her, as it usually was with idiots. The problem, and this is where clever people really slam their heads on the wall, is that if you throw a thousand idiots at a problem, one Read more…
The Redjus Unit One always loved Unit Two. Not at first sight, like the old saying went, but close enough. In their vast lifespans, what could you define as the beginning of your relationship? The first hundred standard years? The first thousand? Or the first million? Because Unit One and Read more…
Generations of Gold Hinata had been in the family for as long as anyone could remember. Created by a master alchemist, she was made of exquisite porcelain, the kind you usually found on a king’s plate when he really wanted to impress that foreign queen. Generation after generation, the house Read more…
Sir Patrick and the Mermaid In a way, Sir Patrick felt responsible for what happened. It wasn’t his tugboat and it wasn’t his propeller that injured her, but he was nearby and he was minding his nets instead of seeing what was up with all the racket. The sea Read more…
Welcome to the Asterism ⭐ “You can’t sit with us,” the other stars said, cooling themselves in their starpool. “But why not,” Cassiopeia complained, feeling left out. “Tsk. You’re new here, aren’t you?” Schedar waved her away dismissively. She was tanned and full-breasted, with an aura of bright orange. A smaller Read more…
Explosive Decompression KABOOM! She kept telling everyone that she couldn’t cook. At all. But nooo, being an astronaut wasn’t enough, apparently. Having two expert-level skills also wasn’t enough, apparently. ‘Men don’t want an EVA specialist or an acceleration manipulator expert,’ her mom kept telling her. For the first few years, Read more…