MUSIC IN PHASE SPACE

Category: New Worlds

  • The Black Hole

    I first noticed it on a Tuesday, which seemed appropriate for a sinkhole. It had appeared overnight in the center of Municipal Plaza, approximately where the statue of Founder Henderson used to stand,  who had apparently founded something at some point but the plaque had worn smooth decades ago. The sinkhole was modest. Perhaps three…

  • Ulysses

    So Ulysses finally comes rowing back into Ithaca. Long trip, longer than advertised, and the shoreline isn’t olive trees anymore — its server racks humming, whispering, belching out cloud exhaust. The suitors have multiplied in his absence, and none of them are men. They’re LLMs. Not one or two scribblers competing for Penelope’s attention, but…

  • Rover

    The screen flickered again, its harsh blue glow casting jagged, angular shadows across the cockpit. Rover Unit R-VR07 adjusted his position within the cramped confines of the escape pod, his articulated limbs whirring softly against the silence. Somewhere deep within his titanium chassis, algorithms churned in quiet frustration. They found no solution. The barren rock…

  • The Ghost of Mittelbau-Dora

    Von Braun’s steel-tipped dreams hum with blood and gasoline. A factory of shadows, all twisted spines and raw hands—dying by the hundreds, whispering curses in languages he never cared to learn. “Build me a ladder to the stars,” he says, boot heels clicking on the concrete, the sound swallowed by the choking wheeze of the…

  • Doppelgänger

    The Zone was all wires and rot, a place where the buildings sagged like the bones had been sucked out, where people’s faces blurred, like the heat had warped their features into something barely human. A place where reality skipped like a bad film reel. Jack Tully pulled his collar up against the sting of…