One afternoon in late October, autumn made its presence known in the English countryside for the quiet acts of dancing leaves and the chill of wind gusts. This subtle announcement signified the upcoming arrival of the harvest moon, an event that a tiny village overlooking a golden sea of wheat looked forward to every year. ...

Peris and Alfie sat facing each other on Nor’s ribs, their feet dangling. They continued to orbit the yellow star while Nor lapped at its energy, half-asleep. On a normal day, they’d be underway as soon as they woke up, but on this occasion, they let her doze.  “It feels wrong to exercise control over ...

1. There’s a moment, a second in time, when something happens that we can’t turn back. It’s the accident where we’re not there but at home unaware of what’s coming.  The instance that changed my life, our lives, happened on an uneventful Friday night. The boys were in bed, or at least pretending to be. ...

Peris couldn’t remember feeling more relieved than she did when Nor disengaged from the rusty hatch and they put the whole dirty-minded, overheated space station behind them. Let’s get away from here! She transmitted, but she barely bothered to stay engaged after they cleared the arms of the flimsy metal snowflake.   Nor glided blithely ...

They could always feel the difference at the heliopause where they stopped riding the system’s solar winds and Nor could stretch herself out and approach lightspeed. It was a limitless expanse of possibility. Neighboring stars elongated into streaks of plasma and Doppler shifted blue as they drew closer and red as they passed. But the ...

Peris stood on the brink of the cliff and reached out with her mind while she held her lightstick over the chasm. Stray orange pebbles skittered into the murky schism below while she pitched her body in defiance of gravity. Night had already fallen, but she pictured the twin suns, fierce and blazing in the bright green of midday. Then she imagined the sky ...

The young woman traced her fingers over the two reels and slid the cartridge that contained her fabricated image into the mouth of The Memory Box. It was half past ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. There was plenty of time before the post arrived. She cleared her throat and switched the recording device on. ...

The man in the white coat approached Andrew. “I’m Dr. Ben Matthews. Unfortunately, the prognosis isn’t favorable, but we are trying to figure it out.” Andrew shot out of his chair. Trevor followed suit, his heart raced. Oh God. First Allan, now Richard’s going to die. “What do you mean, the prognosis isn’t good? What’s ...

I pull the lever as the whistle blows, and the press comes down. Low gravity makes the seal on the components produced on the moon superior, so my quotas have increased again. I heft the pieces into their crate roughly, but the shift is over, and it’s been a long day after a crazy week ...

A crowd of hopeful Arizona State University students gathered around the bulletin board outside Dr. Isis Nassar’s lecture hall. She posted the semester’s final scores. There was a cluster of students who anxiously waited to scan for their grades. Hopefuls who wanted their scores to be high enough to get selected for the internship slots. ...