Katherine Smyth needed a miracle.
The anti-matter induction chamber was history. Instead of a silvery sphere nestled in the heart of the Fortunato’s engine, a metal flower blossomed, as if opening toward weak sunlight. Her toolkit slipped from numb fingers, thudding onto the deck. Without the chamber, the Fortunato had no engines.
“Lendur!”
Captain Donahue, the drill sergeant grandma commanding House Azure’s shuttle fleet, blew into the pilots’ ready room like a southern hurricane.
Lachlan set down his dripping mug and gave her a jaunty salute, left hand behind his back to hide the coffee-stained sleeve. He hated that his boss’s voice made him jump like
“I hired a mechanic, not a food service worker. What’s with the hairnet?” Greg Hahn sniffed, as if I were trying to smuggle improperly preserved twentieth century school lunches from my shuttle onto his shiny space station and he smelled something foul.
Don’t let his attitude bother you, Joe. You can handle another Z Job.
“Yo, Enzo! Is it done yet?” The beleaguered customer yelled down through the grate. The man’s week-old musk permeated every inch of his grimy home—even saturating into the floorboards.
“It’s Enza,” Joe Enza whispered under his breath.
Everyone always confuses it. Joe screwed the cap back on the tritium diffuser as he squatted
Keep the clock running, Aria. Mother’s words spun through her head like the thick white snowflakes tumbling around her.
Aria Clockkeeper adjusted her grip on the icy key and fumbled with the lock on the clock tower door. Her huff of irritation froze in the air.
“Need help with that, Ari?” Will’s
The stiffness in my metal joints tells me there’s a chill in the air. I look up, and a flake of snow falls on my sight-sensor. Thin steel wipers swipe it away, sending it onto the miles-long heap of rubbish and waste—forgotten objects from a faraway world, once loved, now cast into the
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It was Christmas Day, which may have been more obvious if the world hadn’t ended seven years ago.
I missed the holiday season, when people still debated over whether decorations should go up before or after Thanksgiving. Now, people discussed how to avoid the disease slowly consuming all of humanity.
“Rapunzel,” Midas said, shifting
Elianna released two bursts from her jet pack and realigned with Polaris.
The jarring incineration alarm blared on her exosuit, triggering her heart to beat a staccato. She suppressed a squeal. I’m actually saving the North Star!
Geysers popped and spewed gas on the yellow giant’s surface, hundreds of miles away, but she could
I stood beside a cliff’s edge above the Pacific Ocean, preparing to jump.
Theoretical physicist Wanda Pepper stood between me and the edge. Her cropped, raven-black hair had a stray, orange-dyed curl in front that bounced when she moved toward me.
Wanda patted the electrodes on my chest. “You’re all set.”
I scratched the
“Quarantine means no going outside, old man,” the guard growled beneath his face mask. Well over six feet with a vice-like grip, he dragged me inside as his name tag bobbed in and out of my peripheral vision. Pickerman was clearly stamped in sparse utilitarian lettering.
“Just going for a walk, sonny,” I said…
November 9. The best and worst day of my life.
I paced my minuscule apartment, plagued by a frenetic excitement that made my fingers twitch and gut clench. Outside, a frigid, torrential downpour assaulted Portland, obscuring the cityscape.
Dad’s ringback music played in my ear. On the last note, he picked up.
“’Ello?” He sounded almost… groggy.
“Ladies and gentlemen, step right up!”
Darcy O’Connor winces as a loud female voice bursts out of the AI interface speaker. Her robotics lab used to be such a peaceful place.
“Only one ticket to learn your future!”
This is the AI’s way of requesting paper. Darcy keeps turning off Carnival Mode, but it always reverts.
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