David Conyers

From the one hundred kilometre altitude viewing platform of the Quito Space Elevator, Natalya Serov counted the hundreds of corporate logos spread like quilts across the Andes and the Amazon rainforest. Brands included MaxiCola, Conical Energy, MarsPlus, Jovian-Briggs, Europa Water, 8Quantum, LaPlasta Limited, France Inc. and many more of the Solar System’s wealthiest corporations. She was reminded of a sponsorship notice for a trade show convention, but one that used an entire country as its billboard.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

(more…)

Barry Rosenberg

It was a few weeks before Christmas, and despite the Queensland heat, people were rushing to and fro with bulging shopping bags. Everyone was busy with buying, buying, buying. The shops on Cobble St were close together and their weathered look suggested that they had been there forever. They were traditional shops, too: the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. It was the type of street, with its suggestion of antiquity, in which a young man could wander and his mind could turn to fantasy.

(more…)

Simon Petrie

It had been known since the early 1950s that high levels of radiation could induce gigantism in certain species. But since most of the early cases had involved arthropods and poisonous lizards of, it has to be said, a rather aggressive disposition, the commercial implications of this line of research were not as obvious as they might otherwise have been.

“Nuclear Physics for Market Gardeners,” p. 126, by Hank Bremsstrahlung

(more…)

Trent Jamieson

The Prosperity Act needed good people. Not everyone could handle the work. Not everyone could kill children.

*     *     *
(more…)

Patrick Hew

Hell to a violinist is the ticking of a metronome, the robotic, relentless and remorseless tick, beating out the time, beating the soul out of the music. And in every tick of the metronome, you can hear The Devil. Practising.

(more…)

Kieran Morgan

1

A child’s foot stepped hesitantly onto the quicksand, and began to sink, ever-so-slowly.

“Howie… you’re sinkin’,” a small voice piped up.

The foot spread its small toes as wide as it could, and moved just a little bit sideways, and the sinking slowed. It didn’t completely stop, but it was unhurried now, as imperceptible as one of those slow bubbles that form on the surface, taking hours to pop in a sloppy belch.

(more…)

Rachel Holkner

Briony chose the room. There were three similar upstairs, but this was the smallest and did not even come with a decent view. Her mother had intended it for storage. The room was slightly longer than it was wide, with wooden floorboards, pale yellow walls, one small square window and a cupboard built in to one wall.

“Briony,” her mother said, “You’ll never fit anything in that tiny cupboard. It doesn’t even have shelves.”

(more…)

Kyla Ward

“[Zdrastvuitye]! Salām and hello! And welcome everyone aboard our Scorpion Tour Bus! My name is Zenka and I will be your guide on today’s tour of New Alamut or, as it is more colourfully known, the City of Assassins.

(more…)

Patty Jansen

Dust.

There was a taste of dust in Nick’s mouth.

Dust that coloured his hand orange-red and dulled the surface of the silver ring on his finger.

The ring. Kylie.

(more…)