"I'm not going to say this twice, so listen hard." The drill sergeant took a deep breath and rattled off. "Throw a counter straight into the belly, take a half-step back then knock him over with your legs, punch three and a half times on the feet and avoid all the spikes. Now go!

I watched as the automaton swiped the quill across the page with mechanical grace, adding an inky flourish to the last of my personal details. A single dotted line remained empty. The gears whirred as the bronze eyes turned to scan my blank face. "So, why do you want to live?"

Ash pasted the Zoom link in the group email and hit “send.” As he waited for boxes to appear on his laptop screen, he popped open his beer can and fired up a playlist on his phone. New Year’s Eve wasn’t going to be a rager, but it would be good to spend the last minutes of 2020

What no one warned the crew was that once they went faster than light, the air changed, and they lost the ability to speak out loud without a headset. At first, they kept them on, but after two weeks—once each crewmember got into enough of a routine with their job—they stopped,

With a sledgehammer and a smile. That’s how it happened. She had thought of other ways but they cost more than her job at Mongus Music Store permitted.

Equipment is being loaded onto Shuttle 01B. There are 8 of us plus the equipment. Sitting there in those hard seats, I was really missing my SUV back on Earth. I couldn’t help but think the the people back on Earth could have built these shuttles just a little more roomier.

If I had a chance to do it all over again, I definitely would not have asked for the “mystery” topping on my pizza.

Jerry glanced down at the photograph in his hand, then back up again at the woman sitting alone at the back of the cafe.