MicroFictions onTwitter/X from the month of August
Courtesy of Phantom Whispers Magazine! Issue #3 out now! Link below.
MYSTERIOUS DEATHS
"We got the forensics."
"And?"
"It doesn't look good. Idiopathic. All the 'em. The chief thinks they might have been poisoned."
"Let's see. All vitals ceased in one sitting. I think I have a hunch."
"Shoot."
"A surge of adrenalin before affliction; the mark of a curse."
TIMESHIFT
We missed the event horizon by inches. How the solar system didn't end up plunging into the abyss verged on the miraculous. However, this momentous event never prepared us for the strange lapse in time we only found by observing a jump in the proper motion of our nearest stellar neighbors.
ILLUSIONS
When the revelation struck, the world Stephan knew dissolved from his anchors of comfort. Memories once taken for granted dashed against the shores of illusion. Since then, navigating life became a chore, but it paled to dragging his soul through lies that numbed his conscience.
OMNISCIENCE
The final connection, the human brain, ushered in the Great Convergence, the ultimate fusion between man and machine. But omniscience came with the caveat: limited bandwidth. Out went history, privacy, identity, and what it meant to be human. Certainly, playing God had a limit…as well as a price.
COSMIC RAYS
She was worth more than any of us could dream of. A Venus-sized world packed with enough minerals to carry us from here to Tau Ceti straggled within the bands of interstellar space. The catch? She was airless, bombarded with enough cosmic rays to pummel any miner's genetic code.
LIBRARY
Books plastered the walls and stuffed the dockets. The archive went on without end, stuck in the caves of a mountain as far from the Sprawl as they could hide.
Prayers hummed through the chambers, weaving its resonance with an unseen force no swarm of nanobots could penetrate.
SELFCONTROL
At what point does a carefree mind stifle the muse when self-control is irretrievably tossed out the window? It certainly mattered to Able. He too often clowned around at the cost of the very studies that gave him the platform on which his most creative endeavors flourished.
FEAR
"Does it overwhelm you? Does it not fool your agency, your dreams, your plans, your raison d'etre? We are crippled by its very essence, casting our futures, our survival, into the abyss of extinction!"
Bedraggled by the news, both men watched as mobs of savages stormed the city.
NEW PHANTOM WHISPERS OUT NOW! Be sure to pick up a copy!
Phantom Whispers, Issue 3
Purchase the first two issues of Phantom Whispers:
Phantom Whispers, Issue 1
Phantom Whispers, Issue 2
Also, please check out my other short stories: Robert Garron's Substack
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