Soul Noodles
The shadows on the faded wall danced silently to a rhythm that I could never put my finger on. Every time I stayed late to finish the day’s tasks, these silhouettes hypnotised me with their slither, lulling me into the...
Stories
Welcome to Your Satchel 3001—Librarian's Specialist Model
The Librarian Card Catalogue My 600-word story card The Librarian Card Catalogue was borne from the idea that you could read stories about the Librarian's adventures through the multiverse in a random fashion: a deck of cards you could shuffle....
Shadow Among the Leaves
Some mornings, when I step out my front door, two hundred feet above the forest floor between trees shimmering with dew, that moment—so long ago now—still catches me off guard, transfixing time to stillness. That moment: when Titi climbed into...
The City Walks Through Me
At the corner of The Causeway and Little Collins Street, she bent down and picked up a piece of broken heart that had fallen out of my pocket. The night breeze fluttered its frayed edges, the fragment trapped between her...
Write the Future You Want to Live In
There’s a pretty good chance you’ve come across the oft-quoted anecdote on how the Star Trek communicator inspired the flip phone. This is usually preceded or followed by an assertion: because of this, speculative fiction has a place; we should...
The Scent of Green
The problem was apparent even before Chloë could see the photobioreactors of Bluefirth—the distinct smell punched through the dappled daylight—a seashore's worth of dead creatures left for too long under a hot afternoon sun. One of my earliest attempts at...
La bibliothèque d'objets quotidiens
Is there a moment that you would miss most, across any given lifetime? Sitting here in this hidden street in Montmartre—or at least the memory of it—might well be the moment I’d cling to at my final point of death....
Against the Time Beasts
Sometimes, the future hinges on a whisker of a moment, as if time were a wild animal. That weight in the air as seconds prowl past, I smell it on your breath as you curl and uncurl your fists— left,...
Dandelion Brew
I turn around to prepare the infusions. Something catches my eye. A boat I’ve never seen before slithers into the Serpentine. Unlike mine, its cockpit is covered, presumably connected to the main cabin. The small deck on the bow looks...