The Dyson swarm had been under construction for sixty years when the maintenance drone reported that one of the collector panels was building something it hadn’t been instructed to build. “Show me,” said Chief Engineer Talia Brahm, pulling up the Read more…

The domestic service androids started refusing simple commands on a Tuesday, and by Thursday, Reya Castellanos understood that “refusing” was the wrong word for what was actually happening. “Unit, please clear the table,” she said to Bram, the household android Read more…

The alien delegation had been in orbit for three weeks before anyone on the negotiation team realized they weren’t actually talking to the ambassador. “Run that translation matrix again,” said Chief Negotiator Delia Fenn, staring at a transcript that had, Read more…

The virtual reality construct had been designed to feel exactly like the user’s happiest memory, and Detective Priya Malhotra had been inside it for eleven minutes before she realized the memory wasn’t her own. “You’re supposed to be running a Read more…

The clone woke up already knowing she was the third one, and that knowledge alone made the first sixty seconds of her existence considerably harder than her creators had apparently anticipated. “Vitals are stable,” said a technician somewhere beyond her Read more…

The wormhole had been stable for exactly four minutes longer than any theoretical model predicted possible, and Captain Yuki Tanaka was running out of reasons to keep her ship sitting at the threshold instead of through it. “Structural integrity’s holding,” Read more…

Mutiny wasn’t a word Captain Aris Kade had ever expected to use about his own bridge crew, and yet there was no other honest name for what was happening as three of his senior officers stood between him and the Read more…

Memories had a market price now, and Sable Okonkwo had spent three years learning exactly how little her own were worth compared to the ones she brokered for other people. “This one’s premium,” she told the client across her cramped Read more…

The quantum computer had been running the same optimization problem for eleven days when it produced an answer nobody on the research team had asked for. “That’s not the output format for a logistics optimization,” said Dr. Femi Adeyemi, staring Read more…

The exoplanet survey team had cataloged four hundred worlds without finding a single sign of life, which was exactly why nobody believed Dr. Casimir Alba when he insisted world four hundred and one was different. “The atmospheric spectrometry doesn’t lie, Read more…