the Neon under Night Water cyberpunk universe

Ledger rose, bent close to the tied man, regarding him with the expression of someone inspecting a rotten corpse. Then he grabbed the chair, lifting the man and blocks and all, and tossed it an astounding distance. The mind-boggling feat of strength seemed to cost Ledger little effort.

They watched him sink. Eddie wondered how long it would take the guy to fall all the way to the bottom. He held his own breath.

The boss sat again and lit a cigarette. “I would like you to work for me. You come highly recommended. Our organization has need of a man with expertise in custom implants. Working for us has benefits few in Night Water enjoy. Wealth. Women. Respect. But you must not take this offer lightly. That man,” Ledger gestured vaguely toward the water, “took our relationship lightly. Do you understand?”

“Eddie’s Upgrade”

The underwater half of Night Water resembled airside except in mirror image, buildings stretching down toward the deep rather than up to the stars. Subpods instead of quads, fish instead of pigeons and far more illicit activity. If any activities could really be considered illicit in Night Water. Neon signs boasting gambling, sex, modifications and virtual worlds lit up the neath in Korean, Chinese and English. Marco descended past blooms of jellyfish, lines of sub traffic, three men in propeller-driven dive gear pulling a body-sized bag and spider-like aquabots doing maintenance on the outside of his building. A great white swam past, close, and for an instant Marco’s eyes met the blank gaze of the predator. Then it moved on, compelled to swim and hunt and never stop.

“Stealing the City’s Dark Dream”

“They’re coming and coming and coming, no question, no escape and if you hadn’t made me you would have gotten tenure at Heidelberg University in ten years and Cillian would have pioneered a new style of painting that would have influenced two generations and you would have adopted three more climate refugee orphans, two girls and another boy. They’re all racing here, neogelical covert ops teams and Samsung syndicate assault squads and the Sovereign’s genomod guard, all wrenched gravitywise, careening and crashing matter and energy…but the local Night Water bosses are closest. Bennett, Ledger, Price. Price will get to us first. They cauterized his soul out of him in the wars and he’s collecting the tech puzzle pieces he needs to take over Night Water and it’s a new stage of evolution with exponential snowballing monsters gathering Godpowers—”

Stephen broke in, hands up. “Stop! Just—”

“You’re bloated and rotting and floating down crushed in the black pressure and stuck in the pull of planetary mass and fish are picking at your cold, open eyes.”

“Demon’s Orbit”

the Hominum Futurus space opera universe

Kace came closer to the captain. “Listen. I just want the package. That’s all. I’m gone after that. But my wife...she has more of a, what should I call it? Itch. To murder your type. Know what I mean?”

Valen struggled against the boa, which tightened around him. “Do you think I’m going to hand over an illegal device with that kind of power to you and your psychotic wife?”

Kace let out a long sigh and leaned on some railing. “Let’s just be straight, man to man. My wife bought that device for me as an anniversary present. You can understand. She put a lot of thought into it, and paid a frankly ridiculous amount of money for it.” He surveyed the men laying all over the bridge. “I’m trying to save your life. If you don’t tell me where it is, then she’s going to feel compelled to ask you herself. That will not be good times on your end.”

“Us vs. Them”

“You don’t get it. The Chaku didn’t just invade one or two planets, and they didn’t come to steal technology or resources. They feed on people, Dad. And their favorite way to eat us is while we’re alive and screaming. How can you just go about your day like that’s not happening?”

“It’s terrible. Absolutely. But they won’t come here.”

“You’re kidding yourself. They’ve already attacked dozens of human worlds. The Chaku are ravenous. They’ll never stop unless we stop them. Better to fight them out there, away from our home. Better to fight alongside the other humans. If the Chaku beat the humans out there, and then come here, we’ll be fighting alone.”

“We Hunt Together”

The reticle in his vision continuously scanned and locked onto anything moving, infobubbles appearing to offer analysis. A Homo Sapien man ran between apartment buildings, shrieking with a millipede-like creature scuttling up his back. A Homo Apparatus woman with augmented arms thrashed a snake-like animal that groped frantically toward her with bizarre fanged mandibles. A Homo Simius teenager covered in skittering insectoids jumped out of a thirtieth-story window only to spread his fleshy wings and crash headlong into Grieger's building and fall to the pavement below. He spotted a dozen other alien species implanted with Chaku symbiotes, each more horrifying than the last.

Grieger held the rifle tightly, gripping the cold metal. Twice while watching the battle outside he found himself at the door, about to rush into the fray. But the boy. The woman. If he left now, he wouldn't be there to get them out. Trying to save everybody would just mean getting killed and saving nobody.

”Defective”

Ro set the dog down in her chair and pulled a plasma pistol from God knows where. Kace held up a hand and barely managed to open his mouth in protest before Ro leveled it at the elderly lady’s head and fired.

The woman’s skull exploded. Red, wet bits of sloppy mess sprayed into the air and rained onto the floor of the bridge. Ro giggled and stepped closer to the headless body, peering at the smoking neck stump. A six-inch grey slug wriggled out of the esophagus and flopped onto the floor, then tried to inch away. Ro picked it up and held it in her hand. With a squeal of joy, she squeezed and popped it. Her face lit up with a how-great-was-that expression.

“Rescue on Marianus Prime”

the Homo Monstrum horror universe

He got into the shower, noting dispassionately that the bumps had spread over his entire body. Many had developed scabby, greenish crusts. And despite how he'd been eating and sleeping, his dad bod was transforming. The old-man potbelly had given way to abs, and his normally flabby arms had hardened with muscle. He picked up the bar of soap and regarded it in his fingers, which he had to admit looked fully alien now. They were markedly shorter and hook-like, the skin grayish and tough. At some point he couldn't remember, the fingernails had fallen off, and the tip of each thick digit had narrowed to a sharp point. He observed these things as if he were merely noticing dandelions growing in the yard or rain clouds blowing in.

“Vector of Infection”

The flower's tendrils reached out to him. They caressed his skin, each glancing touch setting off fireworks in the pleasure center of his brain. Alex saw the flower doing the same to Megan, and for an instant a thought passed through his mind that this was weird, that flowers didn't normally do this, but the notion broke apart before it even fully formed.

One of the tendrils found Megan's ear, then another her nose, her mouth, and her eyes. The threads snaked into these openings, and she shuddered as if in climax. Alex sucked in a breath as the wisps penetrated him, too, every opening on his skull. He pushed his face even closer, nearly losing his balance and wishing only that the flower had more threads and he more eyes and ears and noses.

Psychedelic fireworks of color exploded in Alex's brain and he heard himself groan. He was dimly aware that he'd fallen to the ground. His vision smeared and slid as dizziness overwhelmed him, and his consciousness ebbed away by degrees into the sweet relief of blackness.

“First Urges”

the Numenthrall

fantasy universe

She shook her head and reached into her mind. While her memories on many subjects seemed quite full, none of the knowledge revealed anything about her. She knew about Equilarion, about its people, places, and even history, but when she tried to bring forth even so simple a detail about herself as a name, she found nothing.

She turned back to the room and noticed a tall mirror near the bed. She hesitated for a moment and then stepped before it. A gasp escaped her mouth and her hands flew to her face.

Her heart hammering in her ears, she stared into the dark eyes of a stranger. Long scars lined her face, some of them less stark, some of them a fresh and angry red. Her hair was shorn nearly to the skin. She pulled back the sleeves of her robe and found scars there, too. Farther up on the insides of her inner arm she discovered scars of an entirely different sort, words clumsily carved in her flesh. The left arm screamed “YOU WILL PAY,” and the right shouted “KILL YOURSELF BEFORE.”

“Scars and Solace”

stand-alone stories

He woke to Sarge over him again, and immediately felt fear take a back seat to shame. He’d just let the grizzled veteran see him faint like a young woman in a Victorian romance novel.

“You all right, soldier?”

“Yes, sir. FRC is fried...it caught me off guard. Sorry, sir.”

“It’s okay, son. Run a diagnostic. Let’s see what the damage is.”

West tried to pull up his mental desktop. Nothing happened.

He concentrated and tried again, with no better luck. He ground the palms of his hands into his eyes. No, no, no! This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Please, God, just–

“Corporal West, report.”

“I, uh...I don’t have a screen. My skullHUD’s down.” The drone operating system. Weapon and ship links. FRC. All gone. “Sir, that means I won’t even be able to deploy drones the next time–”

Sarge cut him off.  “All it means is that you get the opportunity to enjoy a time-honored tradition of the Marine Corps. You get to kick ass implant-free, the way God intended.” He reached out and helped West up. “Let’s move.”

“Fear Regulation Chip”

Ewan beat his massive wings with full force, soaring skyward. He marveled at the graceful strength he felt flowing through them. The red forests below disappeared as he passed through a layer of green clouds and sped on to the peak of Mount Nirvasa, where the legendary Wauk’errian female waited, guiding him to her with a hypnotic mating call.

“EWAN.”

The mountain, wings and green clouds vanished. He was back in his chair, squinting as Luna lifted the helmet off him and pulled the plug out of the jack behind his left ear. 

She whispered, “Come on. I’m leaving tomorrow. Can’t you come to bed now?” 

He squirmed. “Hey, I was just getting to the good part.”

“It’s just…” she ran her fingers through his uncombed hair. “I have to take the pod to Diamus 3e in the morning. I won’t see you for ten days. Or even talk to you.”

“Why wouldn’t we be able to talk?”

She shot him a look of patience worn thin. “Seriously? I told you yesterday that I have to be on comm lockdown because the company’s paranoid about corporate espionage lately.”

“You did not.”

“Jesus Christ.” She sighed. “Fine. But I have to hop to a new body in the morning before I go. Don’t you want to do it with me in this rep one last time?”  

Honestly, after 189 years of marriage. What are we trying to prove? Lifetime pair bonding made sense when humans still died. But now…

“OK. Listen, how about this? I already poured a fresh drink. I’ll just finish this hatch—”

Resignation clouded her face. “Yeah. Sure.” As she left he thought he might be out of the woods, but she paused on her way out. “I know you can just load a hatch at any moment where three supermodels are blowing you or you’re riding a cyborg T-Rex around or whatever.” Her voice sounded like she was trying not to cry. “How can I compete with that?” And before he could think of anything to say, she was gone.

“Lunar Escape”

Tommy screwed his mouth shut as they pounded a spike into his wrist. Three bearded men in crudely stitched leather clothing held him down to the wooden beams, the fourth man choosing the next rusty nail from a pouch, the crowd watching impatiently in the midday summer sun. The smell of humans who had never touched soap filled his nose.

Until all his limbs were fixed to the wood, the men handled him like a poisonous snake and the throng stood back as if he might suddenly spring. They acted like this every time.  

But Tommy didn’t resist. He’d never resisted the ritual, not once since it began.

Only when they righted the cross and his full weight bore down on the iron ripping into his wrists and ankles did he make any noise at all. A groan erupted from his gut but he stifled it, gritting his teeth.

You deserve this. You deserve so much worse than this. Take it.

He let the pain wash over him. From this higher perspective he could see the breeze rolling lazily over the endless grasslands. No roads, cities or machines. He still thought of this place as Illinois, though that word had not passed human lips in nearly a century.

“Zack’s Rescue” 

“Sean.”

The boy’s eyes shifted to Craig.

“I love you so much. You know?”

“Yeah. I know.” His eyes went back to the wall. They sat there in silence for what felt like a very long time.

Finally Sean said, “Do you think God did this?”

“What?”

“When it first started, I saw people on TV arguing about what caused it.” His speech was slow and thick. “One guy said it must be a biological weapon that got out of control. Another guy said it had to be aliens. A woman said God did it to us.”

The first outbreaks started in Asia and for a few days everyone assumed it would be contained and figured out. But within a week it spread to every country and region on the globe. Tap water. Rain water. River water. If you drank anything that hadn’t been bottled or sealed before the outbreak, you’d get severe flu-like symptoms within a few hours. You’d fall into a coma within a day.

And then you’d wake up as one of them.

“I have no idea. Everything fell apart so fast at the end. People were saying a lot of crazy things but probably nobody knows for sure.”

Sean didn’t reply and Craig realized he shouldn’t have said that.

“No. You know what? Now that I think of it, I bet there are scientists in a bunker somewhere who know. They must have figured it out by now. And they’re producing a cure or vaccine. Right?”

“Yeah.” Sean’s voice sounded less than optimistic. “Unless God did it.”

”Zombies Never Get Thirsty” 

“Well. He tried not to show it with Kyle. But he was scared.”

“Understandable.”

“Very scared. A few times I talked to him at night after Kyle fell asleep, and he told me what he learned in training about fighting the Vulgak’tu. Their cruelty. Ruthlessness. Their god-awful weapons and tactics.” He ignored the articles along the left side of his vision detailing the brutality of the species.

“Did you talk during his deployment?”

“Not much. The military ran the synthetic forces ragged. He didn’t have a lot of down time.”

“Of course. What was he like when he first came home after the war? ”

She wiped her eyes and nose with a tissue. “Different. Totally different.”

“How so, exactly?”

“He was broken. I don’t mean malfunctioning. I mean shattered, spiritually. The new programming they put into him to allow him to fight, I think it created a lot of cognitive dissonance with his original core programming. It counteracted his instincts of gentleness and respect for others. All about getting him to devalue life and develop a propensity for killing. On top of the traumas he lived through, how could that not mess with someone’s head?”

”Joshua Was the First”

This was the part Billy hated most.

“Ahem.”

No response. It wasn’t always easy to pull a person out.

Billy coughed.

The man opened his eyes and gaped around at the room as if it surprised him. His eyes settled on Billy.

Billy said, “Excuse me. I was just wondering if there might be any job openings.”

With those words, spoken with real lips out loud into the actual air, every pair of eyes in the diner opened and turned toward Billy. They stared at him unapologetically, a few with jaws hanging open or forks halted halfway to their mouths.

The man made knowing eye contact with customers, confusion and embarrassment written on his face.

Billy said, “I’m sorry. I’m not hived. Ryker’s Syndrome. But I was just wondering if you might need someone to wash dishes or sweep up or anything?”

Several of the customers gave each other looks, but said nothing he could hear.

The man moved his mouth soundlessly, as if he’d lost the way of speech. Finally he squeezed out a hoarse “no.”

“Any chance there’s work anywhere else in this town?”

With a sheen of visible sweat on his forehead, the man held up his hands, palms out, in a gesture Billy didn’t understand.

”In the Shadow of the Hive”

Just as I focused on my breathing, trying to keep myself from full-on hyperventilation, a sphincter-like door opened to my right.

What walked in was the most grotesque thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I froze, my mouth hanging open.

Its body consisted of a thin, veiny stalk that changed colors as I watched, from dark purple to red and then green. It seemed too thin for what it supported. At the top of the stalk, a fat translucent sack lolled almost obscenely, its thin membrane holding in some kind of liquid, like a half-filled water balloon. I could see and hear the liquid sloshing around inside as it moved, but couldn’t make out anything like a brain or organs. And the stalk moved by means of half a dozen tongue-like appendages at the base, stepping gingerly like spider legs.

As it neared me, I held my breath and closed my eyes, barely peeking out. One of the appendages stretched upward toward me, elongating as it lengthened. The seafood smell grew stronger, filling my nose. Every muscle in my body tensed in horror as the dark red tongue-like tentacle reached toward my face.

It touched my cheek, barely making contact at first, then flattened out and licked across my face, over my nose and mouth. I grimaced, squeezed my restrained fists and a frantic moan escaped my throat.

A sticky wet film that smelled like squid covered half my face and I fought to keep myself from throwing up. The creature brought the limb toward the top of its stalk, where I now noticed the skin looked different because it had a ring of dark bumps. The thing brought its tentacle to that ring and slowly slid the appendage there, wiping the part that had touched me over bumps. Its entire body shuddered, and an ugly sound between a gurgle and a moan emanated from it.

Was it tasting me? Smelling me?

”Dokkaebi”

“I have to tell you something.” He peered around the corner into the hall, then closed the door quietly. “Last night I went into Sophie’s cloud memories and changed them. I erased everything about Dana’s accident and Bowman’s Syndrome. And I wrote in some happy memories.”

Audrey’s discomfort level rose from 34.53% to 93.19%. “Michael, it is a serious crime for a cloud administrator to alter others’ memories in any way.”

“I know.”

“Cases of memory falsification have occurred on nine different occasions since the widespread implementation of cloud memory augmentation. In each case, the offender received the death penalty.”

Michael closed his eyes and sighed. “That’s right.”

Audrey noted that upon learning of the felony, a subroutine had automatically begun compiling data to send to the authorities.

“Listen, Audrey. This might be hard for you to understand. The doctors said they can’t do anything more for Soph, and the scans show she’s...” He breathed in deeply and put his hand on his chest in a gesture Audrey believed indicated extreme emotional pain. “The scans say she doesn’t have much time left. I know you have to report the crime, but just do one thing for me. And for Soph.”

“What?”

“Wait until she’s gone.”

The droid paused the subroutine. She analyzed the situation and possible outcomes. The directives clearly mandated that any serious crimes must be reported. But if she did it now, they would come and take Michael away today. What would happen to Sophie then? Human children’s dependence on parents is a strong instinct, all the more so when a child is sick. Sophie had already lost her mother. If she disclosed the tampering, Audrey would cause Sophie to lose her father — in her last moments of life.

However, Audrey found that the directive did not mandate a specific timeline for reporting crimes.

“Yes, Michael. I will wait.”

”Beneath the Cloud”

I raced to the glass door, my heart pumping waves of warm adrenaline. A six-foot-long millipede with hundreds of spidery, thin legs yanked the man into a tree. Two huge, black pincers in the front balanced out an arched stinger at the other end.

It backed up an elm tree holding the guy by the ankles with its pincers. He reached out toward the woman and shouted, “Karen!” and the thing snapped its stinger into his neck. He tensed up for a second, and then his arms dropped slack.

But he wasn’t dead or even unconscious. I guess the sting paralyzed him from the neck down. His eyes got even wider and his shouts became more frantic. One of the other customers had opened the door, so I heard him clearly even over the blood thudding in my ears.

“Holy Christ, Karen, oh my God what the fuck someone help me Jesus don’t just stand there—”

The creature dragged him to a high branch. Then, with the guy squealing nonstop, it crawled circles around him while working webbing out of its back end with a pair of extra-long legs near its tail, wrapping him tightly.

People yelled, took pictures and video, called 911, ran to their cars. Karen passed out.

Once he’d been wrapped, the thing started eating. Settled right on top of him and chewed on his face. Its mandibles ripped into his cheek, his neck, and then worked with extra excitement when it got to his eyes. The guy alive, awake, screaming the whole time.

I sprinted to my car and almost crashed a dozen times on the way home. It was the same story everywhere, the radio said. I called home over and over, but no answer. When I got there, the sitter was gone and Nick shook in a fetal position under the bed.

After that, we found out just how fragile society really was.

”Keep away from People”

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

An awkward moment of silence passed as Jenny waited for some further explanation. When none came, she took out her key card and unlocked the door.

“Well, I’m here. Come on in.”

Jenny flipped on the lights as she entered, put her bag down on the first table, and sat. William closed the door behind him, walked right over without using his stick to navigate, and sat in the chair nearest to her. He scooted it uncomfortably close to Jenny’s, so that their knees nearly touched. Jenny pushed her chair back a little, but as soon as she did, he moved closer again.

“So, what did you want to see me... talk to me about?”

“Do your students need an excuse to stop by and say hello?”

“Of course not. I just assumed you’d have some specific reason for coming.”

William didn’t speak for a moment, and Jenny fidgeted. Finally, he said, “Do I make you uncomfortable?”

“No! Of course not. Why would you?”

Another few beats of painful silence passed. She cleared her throat and crossed her legs.

He cocked his head. “You’re new at this.”

“What?”

“This is your first time.”

She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “Oh. Yeah. Like I said, it’s my first semester teaching. I actually just got my master’s in the spring.”

“So young.” William turned as if gazing off into some distance only he could see from behind his dark sunglasses. “Ah, you’re a new mother, yes?”

Jenny sat up straighter and narrowed her eyes. “How do you know that?”

“A little boy, thirteen months and six days old. Ben. Your mother, Diane, is a great babysitter. She’s feeding him right now. Such a beautiful family. Absolutely delicious.”

”New Teacher”

Mike, though, didn’t seem as far gone as the others. When Eric burst out the back door, Mike turned to him. His voice came out soft and tipsy. “Hey, man. You see this plant? Can you smell that? This thing smells exactly like my first girlfriend in high school. Just like the perfume she wore. How fucking weird is that?”

“Yeah. I know it smells good, but let’s just go inside, okay?”

Mike waved his hand as if to dismiss the suggestion as ridiculous. “No, man. C’mere. Smell this thing. I’m telling you. Fucking amazing.”

“Seriously, dude, listen to me. Let’s go in the house.”

Mike drunkenly put his arm around Eric’s shoulder. “Okay, okay. Let’s go inside.” Just as Eric took a step toward the house, though, Mike’s grip suddenly tightened, and his words came out clipped and angry. “But first you’re going to smell it.”

Eric tried to push his friend off him, but Mike was bigger and heavier, and latched on tight, bear-hugging him with both arms and dragging him toward the plant. Mike pulled hard, but a burst of adrenaline and instinct flooded through Eric. He shouted, kneed Mike in the balls to break free and sprinted as fast as he could.

A block away, he turned back and made sure his friend hadn’t followed him. He paused and sucked air. “Oh Jesus. Oh Christ. What the fuck?” What could even explain this behavior? He didn’t know which of the theories he’d seen online was right—aliens, experiments or magic—but whichever it was, he needed that gun.

”The Black Growth in the Back Yard”

That night she dreamed of a wet, black cave in their back yard. There was another woman standing there who was somehow familiar but she wasn’t exactly a human and her face was a blur even when she wasn’t moving.

It went into the house and reappeared again, walking past Jen and holding Olivia with care and delicacy. Olivia reached out to Jen and began screaming and Jen begged it to stop, but it kept walking and Jen pleaded through tears but the thing took no notice of her at all. Olivia shrieked as if it were squeezing her and when it got a dozen paces from the mouth of the hole it grabbed the baby by the ankle and flung her into it. Olivia disappeared from sight and it was already heading back into the house. It went in the back door and came immediately back out pulling Liam by the wrist. He was wearing a suit and reaching for her as it dragged him past and he looked her right in the eye and cried and screamed, “Mommy why? Why Mommy?”

”Can Never Be Put Right Again”

"Collapse. It's already starting, so much earlier than expected. Droughts. Floods. One side of the country on fire. The other coast getting slammed by an unprecedented hurricane season. The deforestation, agriculture, factory animal farming, urbanization, destruction of ecosystems—it's a tinderbox for infectious disease. This pandemic won't be the last or worst, that's for sure. Not to mention there's literally an epic extinction event happening now. Today. A catastrophic loss of species biodiversity that boggles the mind. End of days shit." She grunted quietly and grimaced. "We're a cancer. And there are almost eight fucking billion of us."

“Another Baby”