Stories
He knocked on the door twice. A small metal trapdoor slid open, revealing only a pair of eyes. “Passcode?” the man said impatiently from behind the door. “Control what you can,” said the man outside. The door opened onto a dark corridor that led to a lavish room filled with
Stories
“Mission control, we are in orbit and ready to land. Over,” said the pilot of the space mission carrying mycelium to Mars. “This is mission control, we copy. Good luck.” Dr. Archid watched the monitors as everything unfolded. “Do you think it’s going to work?” asked her colleague, Mizar.
Stories
Listening to the song “Hijo de la Luna” by Mecano, he started to wonder why the moon would want a child. The water was still, except for the ripples made by the paddles of a small boat. When the ripples faded, in the middle of the dark lake, the man
Stories
He was setting everything up, laying out the chairs and blankets. It was something they had done for years—to watch the meteor shower. She was a mechanical engineer and had managed to create a machine that translated a live image of the night sky into a kind of tactile
Stories
“I’ll tell you a secret,” he said as they walked back from the store, taking the shortcut through the cemetery. “It’s a secret because, to this day, I’m not quite sure what I saw. That one summer in the woods—I woke up in the middle of
Stories
“Dude, come to the window—he’s back, doing his thing,” J said, pointing at the homeless man across the street. The man dragged a box closer to a mailbox. Stepping onto it, he struck the mailbox a few times with a broken stick mended with tape. Then, straight-backed and
I saw him as we drove by—an old man wearing a straw hat, an unlit cigarette resting on his lips. He sat on a pylon, staring into the distance as if time no longer mattered. His dog lay in the grass at his feet. We circled around to the
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She grabbed the crystal and held it in the air. Twisting it three times, she pulled it down like a zipper. As the crystal descended, it tore open a cut in the fabric of reality. A breeze spilled through from the beach on the other side. Her hair lifted with
Stories
There once was a fisherman. He fished at night on a quiet lake, carrying nothing but his gear and an oil lamp. One night, the sky was full of stars, the moon whole and bright, its reflection resting perfectly on the water. From that reflection, he caught a fish. A
Stories
A snap of the fingers, and its thumbnail lit up like a candle. The creature peered through the circular window. It had only one good eye; the other was glass, usually clouded white. The window itself was stained glass, fractured into a dozen colors that bent the winter light. He
Stories
As the glass elevator rose, the sound of strings filled the space—the vibration of chords resonating through wood. The building was almost entirely glass, broken up by metal railings and columns. Most of it was offices, with a large balcony-like opening in the center that looked down onto the
Stories
He was in charge of changing the lightbulbs of the stars that went dark after a while—if you will. He worked in something like the back of a bowling alley, except it was the universe he was responsible for. He was blind as a punishment, or so the gods