A selection of fiction that I hope you will find entertaining and thought provoking.
Sweet Dreams
This is a short story, an exploration of technology & human motivations, and the nature of escapism.
She popped the earbuds in her ears, scrolled through the list on her phone, selected an item, and clicked play. An entirely routine routine, an act utterly relatable, a nightly ritual for countless people around the world. Slowly rising, as if drawing closer, was the sound of rain. A soft & rhythmic pattering, steadily building. Her eyes closed; breathing became slower and deeper. After a few minutes, a soothing voice spoke: “your selected dream will soon begin.”
Read more…The Escape
This is a short story, sci-fi broadly if one insists on giving it a genre, but while it does involve travel to a black hole, it is something altogether different.
“Explorer-1, this is Mission Control, do you read?” The radio crackled, the audio was distorted, but clear enough to understand.
“Mission Control, Explorer-1, copy. Nominal prograde orbital insertion. Approximately 1,649,000 kilometres above event horizon. Orbital period approximately 7.4 minutes. Plasma detection confirmed. Ionised hydrogen and helium; rare traces of metals, slightly higher than projected. Magnetic shielding is stable. X-ray detection within safety margin and stable. A small amount of Cerenkov radiation visible through the forward viewport.”
Read more…Isle Civitas
Michael stood at the corner of an old brick building, staring into a hole that had crudely been cut into the wall decades before. Above the hole was a small green sign: “Delivery Stop 25-379-0-8” - one of thousands of such locations in the city. Fifty feet above him ran the city’s spiderweb of conveyor belts. Running from building to building, over streets, in to and out of sorting hubs that would read an RFID tag on each of the millions of plastic trays that passed through each day. In one of those trays, was his lunch.
Read more…Welcoming Kessler
This is a short story about automation, brittle systems, and the quiet ways complex technology fails.
“Collision Warning! Collision Warning!” The alarms blared in the control center for Perihelion Dynamics, a startup that had deployed a constellation of low Earth orbit satellites. One of a growing number of such constellations that have formed in recent years. “Flight Director! 20158 is going the wrong way” the GNC Lead yelled, “it’s going straight towards an Amazon satellite. 20158 triggered an avoidance burn, but solution is inverted.”
Read more…The Waterfall
This is not a short story in the usual sense. There is no plot here, only a place, and what remains in it. An exploration of memory. And the weight of memory.
The water ran through his fingers, cold and crisp. Clean & refreshing. A chill most pleasant. The stream was only a few inches deep, though it ran strong this time of year. A silvery glimmer on its surface in the morning light. A quick splash of water to his face, and he was ready to face the day. In the distance, her voice echoed.
Read more…Man of the Sea
The waters off Cape Ann were always treacherous during the winter, a frigid stretch of water off the coast of Massachusetts. Picturesque in the summer, deceptively dangerous in the winter. Those that tempted fate, that tempted the harsh mistress that is the sea, too often found their souls in her clutches. The winter of 1898 was particularly harsh, seas were fraught, and on one November night the sea would claim hundreds more.
Read more…Poor Performance
This is a short fiction story exploring relationships and the way that they can impact our lives, for better or worse. This impact becomes especiatlly important when you start to factor in technology, and how relationships evolve in the digital age.
His phone buzzes, three short pulses. Ethan’s heart skips a beat as he hears the distinctive tone. He sees the time on his laptop and smiles. He already knows who the message is from.
Read more…The House That Love Built
The evening was setting in quickly, the forest let little light in as I looked for a clearing to setup my camp. This was the third night of hiking through dense woods rarely seen by others. When this trip started I decided to explore more, to avoid the well known trails. I wanted to see new things, drink from springs few knew existed, touch trees that no other human has touched, I wanted to dream in places no person had dreamt before. Years ago I had found and old hard-drawn map of this area, showing a deep valley with a stream running into it, my goal was to find the stream, and that’s where I’d setup my camp.
Read more…The Precipice
The darkness is oppressive. The sky, starless; the world, grey. You stand, alone, weary after much toil, at the edge of a cliff. You struggle to see in the stifling darkness. Looking down, you see the edge, and the abyss.
Long have you journeyed, a lifetime spent to move forward, only to find there is no forward left. Ahead of you lies utter darkness. Not the darkness of night when no stars are to be seen, or the darkness of the deepest and most isolated parts of the universe, this is darkness beyond imagination or comprehension. Beyond you is a vast expanse, where no light can penetrate, nothingness.
Read more…The Reset
This short story is about the pain of wounds that never heal; it discusses suicidal thoughts, depression, and the lengths people will go to in order to escape the pain of the past. Drafting this story began in December of 2022, and was inspired by a research article on human memory which alluded to therapeutic uses of memory alteration.
As a long-time student of psychology, and specifically personality disorders, I’ve always been interested in how people deal with trauma and pain. Many people that publicly seem to cope well with their past are often suffering in silence, revealing the truth to few or none. This story explores that reality.
Read more…
