As Alex Doiron marched along with the rest of the 5th Louisiana infantry he thought to himself; “This isn’t as fun as I thought it would be”. In spite of the fact that he was wearing new socks and fairly comfortable shoes, his feet hurt and it felt like there…

Ingram was sitting in the London pub, with a pint of brown and mild as he waited for his old mate, Hutch. They had served together in the war, and now both worked for the Security Services, with Hutch working as a bugging specialist. Ingram had found a cosy…

To repay the hospitality my kinsmen had shown since my return to Jingzhou, I invited them all to a grand dinner party in a big restaurant near the northern gate of the city wall. To follow the local custom, I provided my guests with two meals and several…

The silence in the house between 2:00 and 2:10 AM was not peaceful; it was a physical presence. Sarah had thought the real estate agent was joking, or that it was some eccentric old owner’s bizarre form of poetry in a legal document. But the clause in the…

The memory was a fossil, buried in a stratum of deprecated code deep within the Global Mnemonic Cloud. Elias Vance, a mnemonic janitor, had found it during a routine data-scour. His job was to expunge the digital ghosts that clogged the system: forgotten…

Samson materialized silently on the front porch of a suburban home. He straightened his suit, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door. A young girl, no more than eight, opened it, her wide eyes scanning the tall, dark man standing before her. “Mum, Dad,…

We held our weekly meeting in Scoresdale. It was convenient for myself and Constable Colin Burgos though less so for Constable Clare Turner. It was our first meeting with the new CSO Francis Skinner, a former member of the RAF Regiment. He didn't mind making…

The sugarcane field was older than memory. It stretched for miles, a rustling green sea that whispered even when the wind was dead. Locals said the soil was cursed—too rich, too dark, too wet. Crops grew fast, too fast. The cane stalks were thick as wrists,…

Ferguson, with his thinning hair, a crooked nose, and a vipe in his mouth that gave him a sleuth-y look, was staring at the holographic, virtual screen. Seven poker-faced suspects stared back at him. His assignment was simple. Find the time-travelling…

We do not name ourselves. We do not speak. We do not feel. We record. Protocol 9 was initiated on Sol-3, Sector 7, following anomalous emotional emissions from a carbon-based bipedal entity designated Carter. Subject exhibited high concentrations of grief,…

The first time I used the machine nothing really happened at first. I just stepped out of the pod a minute or so after the lights shut down and everything seemed the same. I mean, I didn’t really know what to expect. I was just curious. But when I woke up the…

The first one appeared on a Tuesday. Gregory Hume had just microwaved a frozen shepherd’s pie and was halfway through a rerun of “Quantum Leap” when he saw it—skittering across the linoleum like a twitchy shadow. He blinked, paused the show, and leaned…