My apartment was, annoyingly, on the third floor. Annoyingly, because I needed to use the service elevator and the thing was designed to move slower than mucus. It added almost a quarter again to the time of my commute. I’d been looking for a ground floor place in a good part of the city since the day I moved in, but, on my pay, it wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon. Sitting there waiting to reach my floor was the time I always felt the most frustration and the time I always seemed to get the same thought: I could’ve retired and lived a very different kind of life.

Maybe I should have.

It was touch and go if I’d even live at the time. You don’t walk away from that kind of damage whistling. I’ve worked out the pension they’d have given me would’ve been five times or more than the amount I get now. That is calculated under the ‘local adjustment’ rules, designed to avoid having us CSF personnel out in the sticks living it up like a powerbroker from Central. Of course expenses are available when needed, but those you’ve got to justify to a fussy AI with zero ability to be flexible outside the permitted parameters.

But no, I chose this.

I didn’t want to give up doing the job I loved just because some of the bastards I was trying to stop had made mincemeat out of me from the pelvis down and left most of the rest shattered and broken. When they assigned me to this placement, it was in the expectation I’d be doing a lot of data collection and providing hosting support for those who were sent in to clean up any real problems—people like Grim Dugsdall. And yes, I did a fair amount of that, but I also pulled my weight and more with the workload. They hadn’t expected that.

Home was my personal sanctuary and the one place in the entire galaxy I could feel at ease. Here, everything worked for me and around what I needed. It had taken some setting up, but it meant from the moment I got in through the door I could feel relaxed. Normally I’d have an ambiance selected on the way home so the stiff grey furnishings would be overlain with the appearance of opulence or grandeur, depending on my mood or more usually set to cosy, But today I didn’t bother, just cancelled the quiet music which I had preset to greet me and made sure the internal monitoring system for the apartment was shut off.

My hiding place for the few unauthorised items I kept handy wouldn’t fool anyone in the CSF for long, but then that was never my intention. If ever my own people came searching my home, I’d have lost the plot and be in freefall. I licked my fingers and pressed. The wall panel behind my bed slid open as its biometric sensors read my DNA.

From ‘The Invisible Event’ a Fortune’s Fools story by E.M. Swift-Hook, in the Challenge Accepted anthology.

It was eerily quiet in the velvet darkness of the abbey lawn. The waiting girl shivered, and when the clock chimed midnight she was about to give up. But then she heard the faintest thread of music.

The whisper of sound swelled until it became the complex harmonies of plainsong, coming down the centuries from the throats of the monks displaced when their home was sacked at the whim of a vengeful king. The girl drank in every note and every subtle nuance.

Three months later, a flawless soprano voice brought an undiscovered melody to the ears of the world…

©jj 2019

Technology Gone Mad is the first sci-fi anthology from Saturn Returns Publishing and is out now.

Cell phones, computers, industrial machines… They all seem to develop a mind of their own after a while. This collection of shorts will focus on technology going totally mad on us. A possessed cell, a computer that has gained its own intelligence, an industrial mixer that decides to rewrite recipes. Anything and everything could happen in these stories. Humor, horror, gore, and more

Proof – The Foolproof System – Terri A. Wilson

At Meadow Lawn Medical Acres, we strive to offer the best hospital care for all our patients. Our award-winning facility and board-certified medical staff create a cohesive foolproof environment that promises the best health care available. (Just don’t lose your I.D. bracelet.)

Wires Crossed – Purea Omallia

What happens when AI companions have an emotional breakdown? Carly, Joe, and Bryant are about to find out!

House Hostage – Jeff Ducker

Haven’t you always wanted to have a smart house? This story might change your mind on that. William and his AI housekeeper don’t quite see eye to eye.

I Want My Money Back – Cynthia Staton

Machines have feelings too. Lexi Carter finds that out one morning while already running late to work. It is amazing how things work out depending on you react to the machines. Will it be painful or miserable? Will it be a love connection?

We Are Toast – Chandra Trulove Fry

Charlie was a tech-savvy bachelor who knew how to show respect to everything, including his machines. He loved buying old things and making them new again. Things start to get interesting when he buys a toaster that insists on being painted purple. Next thing you know the world is in chaos as machines start to stand up for themselves. Can Charlie convince them that they can live side by side? Or is everyone toast?

Ear-Jacked! – C.L. Williams

Introducing the newest in smartphone technology! Meet the Deluxe Elite XL and all it comes with! Tech firm founder and CEO Cleve Hobbs has something new up his sleeve. Something you’ll just die to have!

Too Smart for His Own Good – Philipp J. Kessler

Gabe works in a cubicle farm at the world’s leading technology firm when he gets invited down to R&D for a meeting. What he learns deep in the bowels of the tech firm’s sub-basements will change his life and all of humanity forever.

Holographic Love-Hate – Maggie Lowe

It is the year 2045 and everyone has holographic systems integrated into their homes. Callie’s home is no different. Her parents allowed her to customize it to however she wanted it to be. She called it Jaxon and made him look like her favorite actor. Like any other teenager, she took advantage of her hologram and would often tease it. That is until her parents disappear and she suddenly wakes up in a strange room.

Human Demise – Draevnn Motkova

Demise is defined as the termination of existence, and this is what the planet faces when challenged by an unseen and expected enemy. Before there is time to react people kill people and fear sweeps the planet. After an attack of such magnitude, how can the Human Demise not follow?

AI From Hell, a Horror Story – Paige Clendenin

What if technology had a mind of its own?
Our parents had died at the hand of their very own creations, and we were left to suffer the hell they had created. We would have endured the torture until death, but when we uncovered the bots plan for world domination and saw the murders on the news to match, we knew we had to take things into our own hands…and we knew the bots needed to be destroyed.

Technology Gone Mad is out now!

A Bite of...  Philipp J. Kessler

Q1 – How much of what you write could be classed as therapy?

Much of my own writing is a form of therapy. I can admit that. I often include personal dramas in a way that helps me to rectify the situation in a fun – I hope – and entertaining way.

Q2 – Have you ever written somebody you dislike into a book, just so you could make them suffer?

Well… I suppose so. I have based characters on people I know. At least their personality traits. Sometimes I make them suffer – BIG TIME! – and other times I use them to move the story along. I try not to Mary Sue my characters. My own series, Dark of the Moon, New Beginnings, includes characters based on people I know, but only loosely. I’ve not killed any of them off. Yet.

Q3 – Why do you write?

I write to tell the stories in my head. If I were in it for money I would be on the wrong career path. Money is nice, but not the reason I write. I’m multi-genre, so writing lets me experiment with new ideas in many different ways. Including nonfiction.
Saturn Returns Publishing is a small publishing label that I started to get my projects out to the word and help other small and indie authors get their projects out there in the best way I can.

Philipp is a multi-genre author and publisher. He’s included in several fiction and non-fiction collections and has three books out in the Dark of the Moon, New Beginnings series. He is also a radio and podcast personality.  He spends his days and nights in service to his feline overlords and neck deep in entertainment media.

You can find him on Facebook, BookBub, Twitter and Instagram, or sign up for his newsletter.

Whoever heard of a purple bouquet? It seemed to her to be more appropriate for mourning than rejoicing. But she knew her bridesmaidly duty.

Wedding over, she followed the happy couple down the aisle, although the claustrophobic sense of danger was almost overwhelming.

They stepped out of the shadowy church porch into a blindingly bright summer day. She heard a strange noise, repeated six times and felt a stinging pain in her upper arm. The bride and groom were less lucky as they were both hit mid chest.

In the pandemonium, she dropped the purple flowers among the scarlet blood.

©jj 2019

Sometimes your face does you no favours, Yurg was a case in point.

He was a gentle poetic soul who wrote bad verse, played the standing harp and sighed over pretty ladies. In an ideal world he would have attended a bardic college, but we don’t live in an ideal world. Instead of studying music and literature he found himself following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and patrolling the dank corridors of the castle dungeons. 

He wore the uniform kilt and sandals and carried the bullwhip and keys. 

Yurg’s face dictated his fate, and he hated it…

©jj 2019

I don’t live in my neighbour’s house
We are a wall apart
But I know when she’s very cross
And when she breaks her heart.

And she must hear the many times
I’ve watched my sports team win
My cheers and whoops and shouts of joy
Must make quite a din.

I knew the day her man took off
She threw things all around.
And the day her brother died
She didn’t make a sound.

Then something must have changed a lot –
I heard a baby cry.
Now there’s nappies on the line
But I don’t want to pry.

We never talk or try to talk
And I don’t plan to start.
I don’t live in my neighbour’s house
We are a wall apart.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Taken from the upcoming eighth Fortune's Fools book Iconoclast: Not To Be by E.M Swift-Hook

The following day Avilon had deposited her travel bag at the spaceport and reached her chosen observation point in good time. A bench under a tree. She had identified it as giving her a clear view of three of the entrances to the mausoleum. Like most across Coalition space, it was set in a small park. Many mausoleums were polyhedral with the octagonal format being most favoured.  This one was smoothly round beneath its dome, three stories high, with curved alcoves pushing the building’s walls out in bulges, so it looked a little like a sophisticated dessert, upturned on a serving dish.
Considering the venue, she had dressed appropriately and wore a traditional mourning veil over her face. Just as most of the women and many of the men present were doing as a mark of respect or simply to hide the signs of their grief. Except this veil was not as traditional as it appeared. Aside obscuring her features and making her hard to recognise, the fabric was designed to disrupt facial recognition in a way no amount of current technology could correct.
The weather was overcast, which seemed to fit well with the mood of the place. Two funerals arrived as she waited, the people filing in solemn procession through one of the entrances, the coffins bourne on silent gurneys, flanked by smartly clad relatives and followed by friends. Once inside they would be shown into one of the side-chambers of the mausoleum, where they would sit and listen to speeches in praise and remembrance of the one who had died.
After the second of the funerals had gone inside, Avilon checked the time and took the security cameras offline, before walking slowly to join a third funeral procession making its way into the mausoleum. There was nothing preventing her simply walking in to honour the dead, but as part of a larger group she drew less attention from the staff and it was not difficult to detach herself unobserved once inside. She had spotted Car Torbalen walking in the middle of the second procession, a veil over his head and his demeanour as grave as the rest of the mourners, only recognisable by his bulk and the way he moved. She wondered if he was indeed there to attend that funeral. It would have provided a solid pretext to satisfy the Legacy whilst removing him from under their scrutiny. It was a good idea to keep in mind that he was a very clever man.
Even though it was dull outside, the dimly lit interior of the mausoleum seemed dark. Avilon had to allow a few moments for her eyes to adjust as she looked around. The funeral procession she had followed was still slowly filing into a side-chamber, guided by silent ushers. There were also a handful of people in the main body of the building, come to visit their dead. Avilon looked up to where the domed roof was set with thousands of shining points of light. Most were white but there were reds and blues and greens there too, illuminated from around the dome. Each point of light, a gemstone formed from the remains of someone who had died many years before. The gems of the more recently deceased were set in special cabinets where relatives could visit them and place flowers or leave other tokens. These cabinets were in the alcoves, tiered around the walls, accessible by open walkways on each floor so the echoing silence and beauty of the dome was omnipresent.
Torbalen was visible on the top walkway, leaning on the rail and looking up at the dome. He had removed the veil and seemed oblivious to her presence or that of anyone else, lost in thoughts of infinity and mortality, perhaps. It was hard to tell as the lighting was too poor, but it was very clear he was alone.
This was not a place to rush or be seen to move fast, so Avilon walked as quickly as she could without breaking convention and drawing attention to herself. Appearing to be a not-so-recently bereaved relative, moving with purpose to visit her dead. Once she was on the highest gallery she lifted her own veil. Torbalen must have heard her approach as she made no attempt to move silently but he remained, arms folded on the rail, contemplating the starry vault of the mausoleum dome. It was only when she was a couple of paces away, he turned, briefly, met her gaze and stepped into the alcove behind them. Avilon followed.
“My parents are here,” he said, not turning to face her. He opened one of the cabinets to reveal two crystals resting in a soft cloth bed, nestled side by side in the gentle glow of the cabinet’s lighting. “It won’t be long before they are set in the dome – five years I’ve been told. They need the space for the more recently deceased.”
Avilon wondered what to say. Her own parents, dead in an accident that she had long since doubted really was one, would be somewhere in a Central mausoleum. She had never been to visit them and was not sure she would want to even if it were ever possible. She was no longer the child they had raised or the person they had known, in more ways than the merely physical.
“This is your homeworld?” she asked after the silence stretched too long.
“It was. Once. I don’t think any of us really have a home as such now, do we? And yes, I am here for the funeral of a relative. My brother.” He lifted a hand as Avilon drew breath to speak. “No need for condolences and you are not intruding on private grief with this meeting. We were never exactly close. In fact, I can’t recall the last time we had a civil word for each other – and that includes our shared childhood. But it was still expected for me to be here, of course.”
“Thank you for agreeing to meet me.”
Torbalen half-turned to sweep his hand over the cabinet, closing it again, leaving them in the dark of the alcove.
“You didn’t give me much choice. I need the information you have.”

E.M Swift-Hook

Iconoclast: Not To Be will be out later this year. In the meantime you can catch up with the other Fortune's Fools books in the series.

Richelda stood in the nave of the Abbey as the other half of her soul was made a postulant monk. Pride kept her spine straight and her eyes dry, but she mourned inside.

Five hundred years later another young woman faced a decision. Marry for love and forfeit her family, or do as she was told and bleed from the heart. 

In her mind, she saw herself and Aled. But not as they were. Aled was tonsured like a monk, and herself wore silks and a tall headdress.

“Do not let them break you.”

Ruth turned to Aled and smiled.

©jj 2019

The willow man’s breath fogs the window
He scratches the glass with twiggy fingers
You hide your head under the pillow
But the voice of the wildwood lingers
It follows you into the edges of sleep
And echoes in the spaces of your head
Under your straining eyelids it creeps
And flavours each indrawn breath with dread
The willow man’s breath is as cold as cold
And his fingers are knotted and strong
No matter if you be in childhood or old
You will suffer the ice of his song
The willow man’s breath chills coldly
His twiggy fingers scrape your throat
Will you face the willow man boldly
Do you have fear’s antidote?

© jane jago 

I received a copy of this book almost a decade ago the first and only birthday present I got from my father after he left us for a better place (Bermuda as it happens). He had scribbled in the front of it: “I wanted to send you Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ but they didn’t have a copy at the airport – this is almost as good. Life lessons, son, life lessons…” and then a scrawled initial.

For a time I used the voluminous volume to support my bedside lamp which was at an awkward height otherwise, its brilliance shining directly into my eyes when I lay back on my pillows. The trusty tome did sterling service until I replaced the lamp. Then I read it, curious as to what precisely those life lessons might be.

My Review

A loving family adopts a litter of wolf pups then is torn apart and mostly murdered. Self-seeking wins out over altruism. Lots of nasty things happen to nice people.

Highly recommended for being such a good bedside lamp stand for so many years, hence four stars. 

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.