All Stories

You leave before the birds can begin to sing. And though the elders rise, stone-faced, to strap a sword to your belt, no one comes with you; this is not their journey, after all, not the way it is yours. Color is finally bleeding back into the world when you slow to a stop before […]

“This,” her father says, the stone a matte black promise in his hand, “is how your ship will travel.” With a bravura flick, he throws it out onto the lake, but all she can focus on is the spike of tendons in his forearms, the frail human machinery of him suddenly revealed in this one […]

GERMINATION The first bud sprouts from Charlie’s left thumb. You think you’re dreaming. Another nightmare, but so much more fantastical than the ones you usually have. Charlie crashing his plane in the jungle. Charlie’s parachute failing. Charlie screaming as napalm melts flesh off bone. Charlie, reporting for duty one leg short, clumsily hefting a gun […]

The silhouette of the Pharos lighthouse floats on the water in the distance, its peak is like the eye of a god, always monitoring its subjects. I can see why it’s considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. I’m standing on a hillside with my back to the library. Below me, the […]

Here is the son of a helium baron. His head is a mylar balloon, lolling above his polo shirt collar. The collar a green piqué. The shirt striped in navy and white. Here is the house that helium built, floating sixty feet up in the sky. A complex system of three thousand ropes tethers it […]

“I’m in.”  Samir stands in the nexus of corridors. They recede from him in all directions, motion-sensor spotlights on the ground fading along the path he’d taken, plunging the past into darkness. He’s a young man, cuts an unimpressive figure: medium height, medium build, dark hair that falls in lank strands below his ears, quick, […]

PROLOGUE ### Event 110107 from the Chronicles of Ideal Histories Translated by Senior Historian Gordon Moyes Classified Information ### This is how it happens. Tyson March kisses his wife, leaves his home, and treks to the Tunnels. It’s early morning, the skydome has just ticked over to dawn mode. Street lights still illuminate the faces […]