Havok Publishing

S12 - Multiversal

Butter Be Worth It

“Have you found it yet?”
I wince as the prince’s voice shrieks in my ear and adjust the earbud’s volume. “We just arrived, Your Highness. I will keep you apprised of our status.”
“Stop killing Time, Alice,” Topper says from my left as he returns the tin of teleporting cookies to his pocket for

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A Strange Afternoon

There’s an old adage that dogs are a man’s best friend. Leave it to humans to gloss over the fact that we cats are the literal guardians keeping their species alive.
“Dinah?” my girl Alice called to me as she lounged in the garden grass. As far as humans went, she wasn’t the worst.

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Mechas in Titanland

“I wasn’t always a soldier, Leroy,” Alice growled as she piloted her hundred-foot-tall, gear-powered, British Mark VII Mecha, overlooking the coast of Praia do Guincho, Portugal.
“Oh?” the young French lieutenant remarked through the AM radio system as he sat in the adjacent American-made Ford T1919 Mecha.
“I grew up a proper Victorian girl

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Alice Looking Into

Alice was feeling quite irritated with the world when she opened the front door and discovered a folded square of paper addressed to her upon the step. The message it contained looked like gobbledygook until she remembered she’d seen this sort of thing before. Holding it up to the mirror in the hall, she

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We’re All Impossible Here

The Queen of Hearts stepped over Alice’s corpse, her long, crimson cape trailing across the body. Any true Superior wore a cape, of course. The Queen had written that law herself—partly to prove that, despite Alice’s claims, the girl’s DNA held no potential for Superior gifting.
Beneath the Queen’s boots, the engines of Hearts

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Alice Draws Attention

“Ahchoo!” Alice’s blonde hair bounced as her head jerked forward.
“Goodness, Alice.” Her sister, Lorina, raised her eyebrows. “God bless you, but remember to cover your mouth when you sneeze. Even when a lady has a cold, she never draws attention to herself.”
“Excuse me,” Alice said stuffily. Yawning, she settled back

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We’re All Mad Here

Alice had one goal for her final session: to beat her high score.
Dayora Night smiled winningly. Alice crossed her arms.
Game on, Alice thought.
“Tell me more about this Wonderland of yours.”
Alice raised an eyebrow. “It’s not my Wonderland. I daresay the Queen of Hearts would order my head on a platter

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The Sleep Switch

The voices in the workroom rise until they carry out into the rest of the house, shattering my unpleasant dream.
“I never wanted it out on the market!” Father says, with more anger than he’s had energy for in a long time. “It’s not stable. Not finished!”
“There was nothing you could do

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Long Way From Home

Alice slipped her helmet over her close-cropped hair and took the shuttle’s controls. When she was younger, she’d tinkered with the helmet, adding a holographic program to alter size perception, virtual reality games, and other novelties, all operated by her wrist comm. If only the helmet possessed a feature that could rescue her from

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Hat Couture

“Off with your hat!” Mother raged, fists clenched skyward.
Alice set her book down and placed her hand on the banister. Mother’s cheeks flushed redder and redder until Alice feared her head might whistle like a tea kettle and pop off entirely.
“Alice Rose, you’re eighteen, and it’s high time you start acting like

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A Pet by Teatime

I knew I shouldn’t have tried to catch the movi, but all the other kids in the colony had pets. A teleporting space dog seemed perfect! None of the other kids talked about that at teatime. And I now knew why.
Why didn’t I listen to Dad? I gazed in every direction

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