Tag Archives: #speculativefiction

The Cipher

The Cipher

A Month had passed since intercepting a message. Most believed it was intercepted from a Chinese-Russian military satellite, our enemy in a war the Allies were losing, but I believed it had come from someone or something else. Everyone knew cracking the code, completely indiscernible to the best and brightest working around the clock, was key to our victory.

As I sat staring at the letters, numbers, and symbols, my eyes bugging out of my head, they began to lift from the page and realign before my eyes. I had done it, I’d found the key to deciphering the entire transmission. The message read,

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The Omphalos

The Omphalos

Bram didn’t fully comprehend the significance of his discovery. To him they were nothing more than aimless notions scrawled on scraps of paper. A whim to fill the empty spaces between the real work.

His mind could be relentless as it hummed along from one thought to the next without pause. Just another moment of noise when all he ever sought was silence.

Yet, the concept now existed, hurtling in all directions like an earthquake rippling outward from its epicenter. He was the Omphalos and they would be coming for him.

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Atlantis (1)

Content Warning: Contains violence, sexually explicit themes and course language.

Atlantis
Part One: Disaster

She remained calm even as her colleagues spawned a storm of nervous energy that bristled all around her.

Amaya stood five foot seven, her jet-black hair contrasting with her white jumpsuit as it fell over her shoulders. As a young child and long before her family moved to England, she remembers standing along the Bay of Bengal imagining what lay beyond the blue. Her father sparking her curiosity with stories of mermaids and monsters filling the deep.

While her peers turned toward the stars Amaya looked to Earth’s oceans. Fueled by her memories the Indian born, Oxford educated graduate, dove into her studies, becoming the rockstar of her chosen field. Her caché landed her a prestigious position on the Atlantis project. As member of the CoreOne team, the cutting-edge oceanic engineer was part of the deep-sea colony from its initial submergence.

That was 17 years ago and Atlantis had grown from a modest research station to an underwater city. Consisting of four cores supporting 17 modules. The colony was home to over 11,000 permanent residences. Its massive entertainment districts supporting 5,500 hotel rooms, three casinos, several restaurant, entertainment and shopping districts, and the state-of-the-art Marine Discovery Center was a bustling vacation destination for many surface dwellers.  

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Deep Below

Following the loyalist insurrection, many Minos separatists were forced to toil long unforgiving hours serving Earth’s greed-driven interests.

My clan survived the initial onslaught, fleeing to the shelter of the catacombs deep below the settlement. I miss the warmth of the Minoan suns but the long-forgotten passages have proved the perfect refuge for ostracized colonists.

The therapeutic properties of the moon’s super-heated core providing us with everything we need while planning our triumphant return to the surface.


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Celesta and the Insilai

It had cornered her in a back alley in one of the rougher areas of Antares City. The backwater center of Antares Prime, a mining colony along the outer rim of the asteroid belt beyond the settlement worlds of Caleb and Karon. The mineral rich rocky band provides the resources that power the tech hungry settlements and keeps the portal to Mother Earth open. The new frontier and the promise of wealth brings all kinds of fortune seekers through the wormhole, the galactic 49ers of the asteroid belt.

Celesta, a bounty hunter by trade knew the creature would bring her a small fortune. The aliens normally avoided the colony, preferring to remain on the more remote rocks of the belt. Only showing themselves when seeking shots of Synth, the highly addictive narcotic preferred by miners hoping to find respite from the hell of this place. The drug had been introduced to the locals in the early years when relations between our species were less strained.

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Beyond the Heavens

Remi had worked for this moment for as long as he could remember; no handbook or road map had guided him to this point; only his dogged determination in the pursuit of scientific discovery and an innate ability to harness his imagination to reveal impossible solutions.

He quivered as the machine sighed and rumbled to life; the air cracking just above the tension of the shimmering surface.

The multiverse was only a theoretical mathematical construct before he’d discovered a way to open the portal that reached beyond the heavens.

Remi envisioned an expansive network of universes hidden behind the opening’s viscous filter.

The autonomous probe entered the diaphragm, wearing immediately in the wind like current; the camera glimpsing only shadows before going dark.

His greatest triumph, although successful, would come undone as the armies of the multiverse poured through the gate…


Written for Six Sentence Stories #196 at GirlieOnTheEdge
Word Prompt: wear
Note: Used in the post in context to nautical terminology.

Written for Fandango’s One Word Challenge at
This, That, and the Other
Words: dogged (2022/01/23) and handbook (2022/01/24)

Artwork: Sam Del Russi
Copyright 2022 Greg Glazebrook, All Rights Reserved.

New Hope

Adam awoke from cryostasis; Eva and their children had not survived the journey.

Eight centuries and sixty-seven years had passed since New Hope catapulted into the cold vacuum of space, towards a new home.

Humanity lost, Adam walked to the edge of Canis Major, the Great Dog Sea, and undeniably knew what it meant to be alone.

Written for Week 306 of Sonya’s Three Line Tales challenge. Photo credit: Joshua Earle via Unsplash.
Copyright 2021 Greg Glazebrook, All Rights Reserved.