It was a pretty simple program.A collaborative effort between me and another user on a forum I like to frequent. We like to help one another with all sorts of projects, personal and professional. He and I were both freelance software developers, and made a good team. He went by …
IT SKITTERED its way across the leaves, and I knelt down to get as close as I could. Eight legs, black body – it was one of the feared ones; a black widow. I knew that before I pulled up Nature’s Identity on my phone. But I needed to log …
I grew up in a very remote small town called Funkley in northern Minnesota. I had lived my entire life there. Despite what you might read about it now there once was a small population that did reside there.That is up until 2004.Nothing really ever happened in this town. Everyone …
I have sat with the knowledge of that night for ever such a long time now. I have flirted with the idea of telling someone – maybe the police – or confiding in a counselor, but I know it will do little good. They would think me mad, even my …
I tried to warn them, but they wouldn’t listen. I warned them immediately after I was returned to the marsh, but they decided to detain me and ignore my claims. Twenty years have now passed, and they still don’t listen despite the urgent message I was unfairly tasked with delivering. …
The one thing I know, perhaps the last thing I know to be true, is that there is a very fine mist between one dimension and the next. And crossing that mist is never good. Because even a shift in the smallest detail offers magnitudes of misfortune. – “Because hard …
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, huge numbers of formerly classified government documents were made available to the public for the first time. Such was the glut of these documents that even now, many of them have yet to be fully translated into English by historians and …
”Angels, mommy, look!” I glanced away from my sad excuse for a sand castle and back at my younger brother, who was standing at the edge of the beach in his bright yellow trunks and leaning forward as if trying to make out something in the distance. ”Look, mommy, look! …
I hate snow. I hate the way it silently descends from the sky, I hate how cold it is to the touch, I even hate the puddle it leaves behind when it melts. But, most of all, I hate it because it reminds me of the night my husband was …
I don’t work for NASA. I’m a lowly office tech at a company affiliated with NASA. We store data off-site mostly concerning their many, secret unmanned missions to the moon, including the countless ones that took place in between the Apollo launches. There are regular landings, even today. As you …
43 years ago, on the 5th of September 1977, a space probe was launched from Earth, and sent on an endless journey through space. The probe, which was affectionately named Voyager 1, contained a multitude of information regarding humanity, including our language, our art, and in a more metaphorical way; …
There it was. A fragment of the universe, hurtling through the cosmos. And there I was, gazing up from the comfort of a farmhouse rooftop, built by my father’s hands smack dab in the middle of nowhere. In all the years we lived out there on the countryside, not a …
Freedom, contrast, and relief. These words described the start of a particular May day in 2009. I stepped foot outside my house to see the bold, glowing sun escaping the somber clouds in the sky. Intruding through this sight was a collective of royal blue-colored balloons; a color that fit …
Hello… Static….error Hello, is this damn thing on, how in the hell… Static….error This is Captain William Brink…. Static…. Ok, got it. This is Captain William Brinkman of Boson Fleet Nova transmitting. We’re on an exploration and retrieval mission for Tula 13. We’re scheduled to arrive on the planet in …
The Lost Transmissions of Captain William Brinkman Read More »
Late one night, I found myself driving down what seemed like an endless stretch of road. I was on my way back from a week-long business trip, facing at least a twelve-hour drive home. Having always been scared of flying, the monotonous trek was unavoidable. Though tedious and sometimes downright …
When the leaves began to fall that first week in October so many years ago, I could not have been less prepared for what would ultimately alter the course of my life and any foreseeable future linked to it. Autumn was the time of year that I would spring to …
“Holy shit! Is that what I think it is?” Brandon’s eyes widened into saucers and, despite being filled with an unabated rage towards his older brother just a few hours ago, Michael couldn’t help but smile and nod at the expected reaction. Even with everything that had happened earlier in …
*Static* …Is it… *Crackle* No…just turn it…tha- *Static* *Pop* KJ: Hello? *tap tap* Hello? There we go. Okay, starting now. My name is Katie Johns, and the following testimony from Andrew Kirby is being recorded in an attempt to preserve our history and make sure a tragedy like this never …
“THEY’RE NOT COMING, THEY’RE ALREADY HERE.” That’s all the email said. No subject, no name, and the email account was clearly a junk or throwaway account linked to AOL mail. At first, I laughed at the ridiculously serious message, not paying it much thought. I used to sign up for …
Part 1 As you may have expected—though probably not with the particularly correct prescience—the siege of Area 51 ended disastrously for everyone involved. How do I know? I was of the deluded though determined congregation that stormed the base. Our numbers were minuscule in comparison to those who had pledged …
It was a clear night in a small community near San Francisco, California when a mysterious blue light was seen by several residents as it fell from the sky. The next morning, a none-too-bright man in his early twenties went to check out the field where the strange blue object …
When I was a boy I used to live in this little town outside Casa Grande, Arizona. Well, when I say small town, what I actually mean is five houses in the middle of nowhere in the desert, with a water tower and a separate generator that ran the electricity …
The scratching of graphite on paper. The short, whispered phrases. The gentle, distant ticking of a muffled old grand-father clock. These are my recollections of my time talking to Thomas Berkley in January, 1980. I was called in to see Mr Berkley at short notice. My time in Boston was …
It was supposed to be such an uneventful day, but overhead the clouds churned and plotted. Rebecca Madison saw and heard the roaring of the wind against her car, but she didn’t care. It was warm inside, so what did the fierce cold outside have to do with her? It …
