School Exchange to Mars

Published by Janet Johnson on June 17, 2025

By Janet

Mars – Day 1

Hi Mum.

Greetings from Mars!

Yes, we’ve finally arrived and thank God for that. I don’t think I could’ve spent another minute on that shuttle, if you paid me. Two months with six of us cooped up in a space the size of our back bedroom and you can imagine that tempers frayed, not to mention the smell. No wonder they made us strip off and walk through a disinfection chamber on landing. Honestly, I don’t blame them as we stank to high heaven. It was quite embarrassing though but I don’t think Martians are as self-conscious as Humans. It’s interesting how much you learn about people when you can’t escape them. For example, Ginny talks in her sleep and Ryan snores like a warthog, two things I would rather have not known. They of course swore they didn’t, but a little secret recording settled that dispute. Food wasn’t too bad until a couple of weeks before we landed and there was no fresh food left. Dehydrated spag bol sounds OK but, trust me, it isn’t. Think very soft slimy tinned spaghetti strands interspersed with grit, and you get the picture. The flight was so boring too. The trouble with space is that the view out of the window is quite samey, day after day, not like the journey from Swansea to Cardiff. Imagine month after month of mainly darkness. We managed to keep ourselves busy though. Joe ran a daily morning fitness class of squats, lunges, press ups, sit ups and the plank and Cary ended the day with a yoga class. As you know, I’m no fitness fanatic but I think it’s done me good. That, along with reading, puzzles, listening to music and the occasional makeshift karaoke, initiated by Rob, helped pass the time. I bet you didn’t know that Rob’s DJ’ed at Clwb Ifor Bach. Admit it, you don’t know where that is, but it’s a club in Cardiff so that’s really cool.

Anyway, enough for now. I’ve arrived safe and sound and I’ll message again when I’ve met my exchange family. Say hi to Dad and Jen for me and give Luna a big tummy tickle.

Cariad mawr,

xxxx

Death of the Emissary

Published by Jason Davies-Redgrave on June 17, 2025

By Jason

You realise darling, I am older than I ever thought I would be. This is a fact that amazes me even now. I have outlived the Five Mothers, the Bahamut who ventured out onto the Celestial Ocean to contact you, forging this universe as they travelled.

I doubt they would recognise me now.

If they saw me now, what would they think?

I am not one of them. Not now. I have changed. Some would say I have evolved; others would be less kind. I think they would be afraid of me. I am so different now. Old, decrepit, deformed. An alien to their eyes. Maybe even an abomination… Before I touched your Artefact, as I watched the pod mothers swim in circles around it, I knew what exactly would happen. I sensed the possibility with every atom in my being. The greater part of me wanted it, ached for it. It pushed me toward change, recognising the importance of the process. I am still surprised by exactly how much I wanted this though. Surprised at how important it was to me back then and how stupid I must have seemed to my pod sisters. Not stupid in wanting to grow and see and develop. But, stupid in that ultimately it won’t have made any difference.

You are dying.

I have seen your end. I feel it. I know it and I hate it.

I still think you beautiful.

Wise.

Even now you seek to comfort me. Trying to prepare me for the time when…

Seeds of Death V1.1

Published by Martyn Winters on June 16, 2025

by Martyn

This is an expanded version of a story I wrote for Further Adventures in SciFi & F. I’m considering using this longer version for my current course.

Things to consider:

Is there sufficient emotional content
Is the dialogue realistic
Are the descriptions adequate
Is there too much telling
Is the story engaging?

The tall, black-clad figure of Zinnai Savita Ké coalesced into corporeality with a sigh of expanding vapour and a shower of portal radiation overspill. The air, carrying a faint scent of ozone, rippled as her mass displaced it. Zac, her e-familiar—a sleek, obsidian drone —hummed into existence beside her, hovering resolutely near her shoulders. Its sensors rotated, making a swift threat level assessment, which, finding none, released it from its station to hover near the ceiling.

“Are you doing menacing?” she asked, a wry smile trying to break free as she looked up at Zac.

“It’s my go-to pose, boss,” Zac replied. “It goes nicely with the multi-terajoule directed energy array I’m wearing.”

Ké favoured making solitude a stranger, at least since the Insight Agency claimed her from the orphanage in which she grew up, but her hit-and-miss relations with other humans meant she never travelled without the irascible but likeable drone. The upside of this is drones never forget anything. This is also the downside, but Ké liked the constraints of always being on her mettle, especially when her witness was a combat-enabled drone with no firmware interdiction of human casualties.

There she lay

Published by Sandra Lloyd Lewis on May 27, 2025

By Sandra

There she lay, under the pink eiderdown, her face slack, cheekbones hollowed, mouth open. For a long moment Amy thought she’d arrived too late, but then she saw the almost imperceptible rise and fall of the chest. Still alive, then. Leo had said she’d be too late if she left it any longer, but no, the old bag was still going and would probably keep them all waiting on her, if history was anything to go by.

Well, Amy wasn’t going to wait on her; she had made that decision an age ago and the small matter of her death was no reason to change that in her mind. Amy tapped her fingers on her leg and sighed, ‘Well. I came, I saw and all that. I’m off.’ Leo turned from the bed, her face showing the shock she plainly felt, ‘Amy, you only just got here.’ She stood up and crossed the small bedroom, her long floral dress and white cardigan, fitting in seamlessly with the flowered wallpaper, and Lladro ornaments on the bedside table.

She took Amy’s arm and gently ushered her out the door. In a soft voice, she said, ‘Mum is dying, Amy. I know you had your differences, but…’ she began.

‘Differences,’ Amy said, and gave a broken laugh, her voice mocking, ‘is that what we are calling it? It’s called narcissism in my book. Not exactly mother of the year, was she?’ She flung her arms up, frustrated as always whenever the subject of Sherri -she didn’t deserve the moniker mum or mother– came up.

The Missing and Found – Part 2 ish

Published by Janet Johnson on May 27, 2025

By Janet

The terrified girls clung to each other until the dazzling, bright light disappeared, and blackness surrounded them. As their eyes grew accustomed to the dark, they made out the shapes of stone structures emerging from a vast, open rocky landscape of dry scrub bushes and dusty, sandy soil. Overhead, the ink-black sky was filled with twinkling stars, and a white moon loomed large and round. All was quiet, apart from the occasional high-pitched howling sound of a wild animal in the distance and the rustling of insects, which unsettled them.

“Where are we?” Jess whispered panickily.

“I don’t know,” Hannah replied, trying to be calm, suppressing her own panic to reassure the younger girl, “but we need to find somewhere safe to wait until morning.”

Keeping close, the girls moved slowly and quietly towards the skeleton of a house, careful not to draw attention to themselves; they didn’t know what was out there watching them.

“We’ll shelter here until light,” Hannah said, “hopefully, we’ll be able to get a better idea of where we are by then.”

Inside the derelict structure, crouched into a sheltered corner, they huddled together, wrapping their waterproofs around them to keep out the cold. Like this, they slept fitfully until the first rays of sunshine penetrated through the open roof of the house, gradually warming them.

**********************************************************************************

Some Peck & Noah Scenes

Published by Jason Davies-Redgrave on May 27, 2025

By Jason

Scene 1: This scene is from the start of the story – we’ve meet Peck and Jynn for the first time and this is a memory/flashback scene of Peck in school where she first experiments with tainted/atonal music.

Scene 2: Peck is unconscious after the clock shop attack, this a dream sequence where she speaks to The Many.

Scene 3: Peck is in the Circle, S’Uba is holding court. We have had a scene with Emyr’s point of view in the Circle, this is Peck’s turn…

Come Home, Mister Amlos

Published by Martyn Winters on May 23, 2025

by Martyn Winters

Part 1

Landing Town looks shabbier than usual today: worn name-hoardings over the shops, and a wash of baked soil across the walkboards, which kicks up into dust with each footfall as I amble up Main Street, thinking to myself I need a good steak and a beer to rid me of the taste of the farm. And that, for the time being, is my plan.

“Heya, Ianto,” calls a shrill voice. Tom O’Malley waves from a tub of muddy water sitting in his yard. His hair, a riot of ginger, is the only real colour to be found here, unless you count brown.

“Hey Tom,” I call back. “Goin’ down the square. Wanna come?”

“Nah. I’m going to keep cool here,” he says, splashing the brown water.

This is the most sensible thing someone of Tom’s colouring could do right after Spring-End Downpour. The next few weeks will be hot, as Visram’s star bakes the ground hard again. It’s too hot to work, but soon, as the summer rays fade behind the high clouds and fresh winds gust in from the ocean, I will be back in the fields, digging the ditches washed away by the rains. Old man McMichael will then haul out his planting machine and sow the crop of Steak-plant, which we harvest just as the rains start again. Then we’ll load up his old truck and haul the protein pods to the market.

Glass Memory by Sandra

Published by Sandra Lloyd Lewis on April 29, 2025

The cube was clear green grass, the smoke inside moving slowly. Now here was here, he was didn’t want to open it, but Mint was waiting by the door, huddled in her thick coat, and he could sense her impatience. He had come here after all, against her better judgement.

‘That’s why we put memories in boxes, Tor. So we can leave them behind.’ She had stroked his arms softly as she spoke, gentle movements that calmed him, but it wasn’t enough.

They had said the procedure was one hundred percent successful. In most cases. But in some, like him, the procedure left a sort of psychic residue. The online forums called it the Aftertaste and that was exactly what it was like, the unpleasant taste of something repeating on you. He couldn’t remember the memory itself – that part at least had worked – but there was a constant sense of disquiet, that he couldn’t shake off. His mind kept trying to work out why he felt it, and, like a newly removed tooth, he couldn’t help probing the missing hole.

The Missing and Found

Published by Janet Johnson on April 29, 2025

Sarah sipped her strong, black coffee and stared out of the kitchen window at the mizzle shrouding the garden. She hadn’t slept well, the black crows nesting in the large fir trees, waking her from her dark, fitful dreams in the early hours with their hoarse coos, caws, rattles and clicks. She’d always been suspicious of crows ever since her grandmother had told her that they were bringers of bad luck and death, shooing them away from her small cottage garden at every opportunity. A dark despair crept over her, reflecting the greyness of the clouds and the symbolism of the crows. She didn’t notice the police car at first until a slight movement caught her eye. She watched as a tall, black-suited man, followed by a young, immaculately uniformed female police officer, opened the gate and made their way to the front door, their faces serious with the news they were about to deliver. Finally, this must be it, Sarah thought to herself, the moment she had been dreading and anticipating in equal measure for the last five years. She hesitated at the sound of the doorbell, its cheery chime so inappropriate at that moment. Time slowed as she went to open the door, her legs dragging as if she was walking through quicksand.

Sirens on the Move.

Published by Jason Davies-Redgrave on April 29, 2025

Scene 1

The oldest music is birthed in the oceans, both earthly and celestial.

The sentient races of the universe knew that their oldest songs come from the ancient oceans. From the expanses of water that continuously shape each of their worlds and the vast celestial ocean that holds these worlds in their orbits. Even today, some of the women of these sentient races, the Sirens, can still hear these symphonies.

Symphonies that swell and blossom and grow in the cold depths. Shifting rhythms born where the masses of fresh water collide with the swirling salt waters of the far north. Melodies waxing and waning in the gravitational forces that pull at the very heart of the sea. Creatures from the depths find new chords and notes hurl them to the surface so they burst through and dazzle atop the churning waters like flecks of burning light.

The oldest songs are about crossing the sea. The Sirens have never lured sailors to their deaths. That’s just patriarchal nonsense. They have more important things to do than that. The Sirens are custodians. They herd the songs; they keep them alive and in motion. For a still song is a dead song and will soon be forgotten. Occasionally, if called to by the Five Families or some other need, the Sirens can add their own song to the tides…

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by Martyn