Starlust

Professor Dutton had a theory that the problem with the universe was the stars. They were too greedy, and lusted after everything, until they imploded and became black holes. If we could distribute all that energy a bit more judiciously, so that it didn't bunch up so egregiously that the stars began consuming everything around them, then we wouldn't have to worry about the heat death of the universe. According to his calculations, it was also the fault of the stars that the universe was forever expanding.

"And thus, I present my plan to destroy every star in the galaxy."

Sand In My Shoes

Time is an abstract concept. Yet the seconds, minutes, and hours are woven into the very fabric of existence just as surely as the matter around us. The matter inside us, for that matter.

Forgive me the pun. It may be the last one I have time for.

Understanding time is an integral part of the universe doesn't make it any more concrete. Time depends on where the observer is located.

My days as a young man passed by so quickly. Now, I look down and there's nothing but sand in my shoes. One breath of wind, and I'm gone.

The Road To Heaven Is Paved With Broken Glass

George's wait--a few moments or a million years, it's difficult to tell the difference--comes to an end as his number is called. The angel at his window looks over his paperwork perfunctorily before giving his folder the rubber stamp.

"You'll need to wait in Limbo. We'll alert you when a final decision has been made."

"How long's that going to take?"

His angel just shrugged. "You do know this is the most exclusive club in the entire universe. Only the best people get in."

"But I was really good."

"Being good isn't enough. Like I said, we're exclusive."

Age Of Reality

Closed time curved loop? How to escape? Can one escape? The death of humanity? I doubt it. I wonder. Trapped in quantum confines, disbelief shattered when I queried the local AI about our galaxy's age. Its cryptic answer: 50 million years. Puzzled, I questioned how Earth, at 4.5 billion years, coexisted with an arm merely 50 million years old. The AI faltered, unable to clarify. Seeking cosmic origins, I realized 50 million years aligned with the universe's dawn. Reality morphed within this fragment, hinting at an enigmatic age defining both inception and present, blurring the edges of perception and time.

From Guest Contributor Clinton Siegle

A Frank Conversation Following An Epistolary Courtship

How will you tell people we met? she asks.

I’ll say I’m a quantum anthropologist from a parallel reality who built a machine to peer beyond dimensional walls. That I spent years studying myriad earths twitching across infinite frequencies until, one day, I saw you through my viewfinder. Yes, I knew crossing the trans-dimensional bridge would buckle my reality’s foundations. I didn’t care. I’ll warn everyone, my love for you doomed a universe.

And you? he asks.

She shifts. Her shackles jingle. The guard clears his throat. The truth. I took first at the International Sasquatch Rodeo. You were runner-up.

From Guest Contributor Keith J. Powell

Keith is co-founder of Your Impossible Voice. Find more of his writing at www.keithjpowell.com.

Them Big Oak Trees

At first, her followers thought it was intended as a metaphor. Every acorn is a big bang all its own. Every tree the mother of countless worlds.

But the famous scientist was not speaking metaphorically. She'd cracked the greatest secrets of the cosmos. Our universe was born inside a tiny seed, bursting into life, which in turn gave birth to more trees and more universes. The math was both terrifyingly simple and unfathomably beautiful. The world no longer required religion and, without Gods, there was no more war or poverty. Peace and love reigned.

Until a giant squirrel ruined everything.

An Empire At War

The empire went to war the same way an insecure dog picks fights, erratically and for unknown cause. Was it to assert dominance in an uncertain universe? Or maybe to protect resources of little worth and questionable appeal to her adversaries? Who can say? The whims of the empress were unpredictable and perhaps more than a little self-destructive.

The reasons mattered little to the soldiers of the empire. They were just unfortunate strays caught up in affairs beyond their ken, with only one concern: hope that their lives, and their deaths, would somehow satiate the inscrutable monarch.

They rarely did.

Welcome, Everyone, To The Vortex Universe.

One night, the sky's illumination changes and Harland sees the galaxy open up. The stars fade away as hundreds upon thousands of brand-new ones are born. The light reappears, and he watches as, one after another, the familiar stars disappear again. After a new dawn, the sky will shine with the beauty of new creation, as new forms of life will emerge, be nurtured, become powerful, and change the course of history.

Harland's vision starts to fade, and he rests his head on his desk in silent contemplation and smiles. The grip of the world slips away.

Life is good.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

Saunders S. Saunders

Saunders S. Saunders liked his name and the way it confused people. He liked tantalizing the public, and even though his middle name was Samuel, he thought from time to time about changing Samuel legally to Saunders. Then he would have a totally unusual name. Somewhere, someplace there might be a Saunders Samuel Saunders, but he doubted that a Saunders Saunders Saunders existed anywhere else in the world, or possibly in the entire universe. There was only one problem: Saunders S. Saunders had no other claim to fame, and that, he thought, was a problem, a major, major, major problem.

From Guest Contributor Anita G. Gorman

Before The Words, There Were Echoes

There was silence in the universe. Words were nowhere to be found, as if all existence had stopped and all that was left was a void of utter disbelief and confusion. How can there be something, and yet it means nothing?

She had many words inside her, words that boiled into nothingness and brought about the vapor of insignificance. She remembered “in the beginning was the Word,” but instead of feeling any sense of security, she lost heart.

In that loss, she grasped the emptiness of whispers and asked the vast expanse:

“What is needed to be compassionate?”

“A soul.”

From Guest Contributor Aida Bode