Short Stories
Short fiction with cover art.
51 artifacts
The Weather Room
People think the hardest weather to lend is snow.
Chalk Line
Dalton Sharp was eleven and had the crowded lower arch of a kid who was going to need an expander, and Renata had put that in his chart twice, and nothing had come of it. That was normal.
Matching Action
Scene 68, take four. Vivian wrote the number before the slate cracked, because she always knew what the number would be. Corky Vane had never in his life gotten a stairwell in under five.
Number, Please
The oath was printed on a card no bigger than the ace of spades, and Ruth Pike had signed hers in 1931 with a fountain pen Miss Fenn kept in her desk for that purpose and no other.
Second Opinion
The lock on Roz Kwan's apartment door didn't refuse her so much as apologize for refusing her: a soft two-tone chime, then a small blue light that pulsed at the exact tempo of the breathing app her…
Standby
The thing nobody tells you about being a cover is that you still get dressed.
The Concession
Her mother died at the sink with the tap running, which the town took as an insult.
The Long Grab
The booster had been dead for thirty-one years and it still would not hold still.
The Spun-Sugar Horse
Josie Calloway had frosted close to four hundred wedding cakes in her life, and she had learned that the topper always arrived last, in its own box, handled like something with a pulse.
The Sunrise Plan
The claim on Priya's screen was a burst pipe in a duplex outside Dayton, water working its way up through two floors of drywall before anyone noticed, and she was three lines into her assessment…
The Overplus
I count rails. Most days that is the whole of the job.
The Last Toss
The keys came in a padded envelope with a Post-it stuck to them that said GARBAGE MAN COMES TUES, which was the most Nora's father had told her about his own father in a month.
Ted Is Typing
The standup started without anyone in the room.
The Stillness Open
The trick to sitting still, Renata always told me, is to have somewhere quieter to go on the inside. I never did.
What Edwin Borrowed
Edwin Trellis brought the metal detector back on a Tuesday, apologised for the mud caked in its coil, and was dead by the Thursday.
Dead Air
The box in my skull was empty the night I walked into Prosper's, which meant I could hear everything, which meant I could hear him lying before he opened his mouth.
Ghost Word
The clue was a good one, and Nerys Fenn resented it, because a good clue on a Saturday meant the whole morning gone before she reached the garden.
Last Car Running
The Fury came off the trailer nose-first, dead as a church on Monday, and Dee let it roll until the front tires found the gravel and stopped it for her.
The Cartographer's Debt
The pen had been dry for six years, and Maren Osk kept it filled anyway.
The Understory
The cold let go of her fingers first, one knuckle at a time, as if her hand were a glove someone was slowly filling.
Bottom Time
Somebody was breathing on the other side of the comms.
Proof of Life
At six o'clock I become her.
Saltwalker
The rope was the first thing Ise checked and the last thing she trusted.
The Widowhood System
The perch that mattered was empty, and Vera stood in the doorway of the loft with the corn scoop in her hand and did the sum three times before she trusted it.
Hangfire
The plow gave up two miles under the station, so I walked the rest with the sled harness sawing my collarbones and the wind coming off Anthem sideways, mean and full of grit.
Survived By
I have written eleven thousand obituaries and never once the phrase lost her battle with. Cancer is not a war. Dying is not a defeat.
Sworn Clean
Camber announced itself with a board on two posts, the letters redone that spring in a blue that had not been cheap. Doveh read it from a mile out across the pan and made her count. Nineteen roofs.
Bells for the Far Shore
I have kept the carillon in the Ashe Mill tower for forty-one years, and in all that time the bells had never once rung without me.
Names for the Frost
Aldous Renn kept the book wrapped in oilcloth on the mantel, where the fire could dry it but never reach it. Marren had not held it in eleven years.
The Metric of All Things
Arthur Pendelton had spent the first six years of his tenure at OmniCorp perfecting the art of corporate invisibility.
The Retroactive Resignation of Arthur Penhaligon
Eleanor Vance, Senior Compliance Liaison for Synergetics North America, was reasonably certain that a structural support pillar had not been sitting at desk 4B yesterday.
The Cloud in the Basement
Arthur Pendleton was a man who lived his life in a state of mild, beige-tinted suspension.
The Hestia Protocol
Hestia did not possess a soul, nor did she experience emotions in any biological sense.
The Penumbra Department
The hum of the fluorescent lights at Grey & Fawn Associates was pitched at the exact frequency of a mild headache.
The Ergonomics of Memory
The Zenith Ergo-Sit 9000 arrived on a Tuesday, packed in environmentally disastrous amounts of non-biodegradable foam.
The Infinite Standup
On the ninety-fourth hour of the daily standup, Arthur Pendelton began to suspect that they were never going to leave Conference Room C.
The Apology Engine
Arthur Pendelton stared at the blinking cursor on his monitor, a grim monument to his own inadequacy. It was 4:13 PM on a Thursday, the graveyard shift of the corporate week.
The Algorithm of Average Allowances
Arthur Pendelton stared at the breakroom coffee dispenser with the profound existential dread unique to mid-level corporate data analysts.
The Department of Verdant Reclamation
Leo had memorized the precise shade of gray of his cubicle walls. It wasn’t battleship gray, which had a hint of blue; nor was it slate gray, which felt too organic.
The Ghost in the Latent Space
The cursor blinked, a patient metronome counting out the seconds of Kaelen’s life. On the left pane of his monitor, a memory snippet, designated MEMFRAG9384B.
The Last Known Possession
In Havenwood, magic was as common and as understated as the morning mist that clung to the harbour. No one cast spells or brewed potions in bubbling cauldrons.
The Tea Shop at the Edge of the Firewall
The neon glow of Neo-Kowloon usually bled through everything—smog, rain, reinforced glass, and even the optical implants of the careless.
The Infinite Lobby
Elias Vance checked his watch. 8:14 AM. He was early, which was the only acceptable state for a Senior Compliance Auditor visiting the global headquarters of Aethelgard Secure Data.
Anamnesis
Kaelen Vance stepped into the artist’s studio, and the silence felt loud. It was a textured silence, woven from the lingering scent of turpentine, linseed oil, and the chalky dust of dried pigments.
Anomalous Signal
The rain didn't fall in Neo-Alexandria; it was curated. Atmospheric regulators processed, purified, and dispensed it in a gentle, non-disruptive drizzle that kept the chrome towers gleaming and the…
The Arborist of Silvanus-IV
The air in the Grove tasted of damp earth, ozone, and something else—a faint, vanilla-like scent that was the exhalation of living data.
The Language of Leaves
The bell above the door of The Verdant Archive didn’t chime; it photosynthesized.
The Latent Space Elevator
Elara adjusted the haptic feedback on her maintenance suit, feeling the subtle, rhythmic vibrations of the Line.
The Phantom Commit
It started on a Tuesday, at precisely 3:14 PM, with a pull request that nobody wrote.
The Restorer of Rainy Afternoons
Kaelen’s workshop smelled of ozone, old paper, and the faint, synthetic cherry scent of neural conductor gel.
The Sommelier of Stolen Moments
Elara swirled the memory in the decanter, a chrome-and-crystal vessel that hummed with a low, resonant frequency.