An e-zine about spaceships, aliens, science, memory, motherhood, magic, and cats.
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Paw Prints Beyond the Moon, July 2024
Warm air, sun-dappled pink tea roses, and the drowsy hum of bees melted away the cold from outer space that chilled the Time Tortoise. He had hidden inside his shell, wrapped in his silken robe, and watched the spiral galaxy, Galapagofrey, twist and crush down into a pinpoint black hole. Supermassive. His home galaxy was gone.
He needed something new. Continue reading “Chrysalis Can Wait”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Brunch at the All Alien Cafe, March 2024
Like a delicate crystal vase, the hard shell of Am-lei’s chrysalis cracked, spilling out the furled up, new-grown, riotously colorful wings inside. Still wet, the wings hung from her changed body, pulsing with life, heavy and dragging her down, out of the chrysalis that had held her, dormant, for the last month.
The month had passed like a dream. Am-lei remembered her body itching all over, and her mouth overflowing with gooey silk-spittle. She remembered climbing up the walls of her room and gluing her feet to the ceiling as her squishy, green caterpillar skin split down the middle, shedding like a winter coat on a hot day, revealing the hardened chrysalis that had developed underneath, her new outer shell, as the rest of her melted and mutated inside. Continue reading “What the Eyes Covet and the Stomach Craves”
by Daniel Lowd & Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Kaleidotrope, October 2017
We are alone now, all of us.
I still remember what it was like to communicate, to share thoughts and visions, to think together. But now, the Judgment Virus makes my mind fuzzier with each passing hour. Soon I shall lose the ability to communicate with myself, and my own thoughts shall be as lost to me as the silent strangers that were once my friends. Continue reading “Techno Babel”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Kaleidotrope, January 2021
The snake didn’t bite me. It bit Orpheus, and his lyre twanged discordantly as he fell to the ground. It was the first inharmonious sound that perfect instrument had ever made. It was the sound that started my journey. It was a claw, hooked inside my ear, ripping and tearing away every illusion I’d had of safety and happiness, shattering my dreams of a future with Orpheus. Continue reading “Returning the Lyre”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Electric Spec, November 2017
Joan opened the door to see her ex-fiancé slumped against the door frame. Leland was a lion of a man. Tall, blonde, preternaturally confident. She’d only seen him looking haggard and haunted like this once before, ten years ago, when his memory drugs had worn off. That had been the beginning of their end.
“Come inside,” she said. Continue reading “The Fish Kite”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Every Day Fiction, October 2015
Jenny felt inside her pocket. There was a small, smooth pebble that she’d been hiding since she was tiny. A multi-dimensional creature had appeared to her and begged her to keep it safe. If she dug her fingernail into it…
But she mustn’t. She mustn’t. She had to be strong.
See, it was the self-destruct button for the universe. Continue reading “Small Smooth Pebble”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in The Opposite of Memory: A Collection of Unforgettable Fiction, February 2024
When I was a kid, cryogenically freezing yourself was something crazy rich people with more money and desperation to live forever than actual common sense did to themselves to escape dying. It was a joke. And I can’t entirely get over seeing it that way.
And yet, here I am.
I put my daughter in charge of my finances years ago, and she assures me this is affordable and works. She’s good with numbers and research, like her dad was. I’ve always been the impulsive one. Continue reading “Heaven is the Best Moment of Your Life, Infinitely Remixed and Played on Loop”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in The Opposite of Memory: A Collection of Unforgettable Fiction, February 2024
Sometimes two roads diverge in a wood, and you can never know what would have happened if you’d taken the other path. Or so I’m told. It hasn’t been that way since before I was born.
Like my mother before me, I lay my hand on the hypercrystal when it’s time to decide what I want to do with my life — whether I want to have a child and become a mother or… not. Continue reading “Two Roads Diverge”
by Mary E. Lowd
A Deep Sky Anchor Original
The sky was a the kind of empty blue that foretells a sunny, uneventful day, as untouched by actual weather as a day can be. Alivia couldn’t stand it. She wanted to frolic in mud puddles, dancing under the droplets of a gusting storm. She wanted to prance and twirl on her cloven hooves, shake raindrops from her snowy mane like a waterfall, and spear the thorn-sharp tip of her horn into as many individual drops of water as she could. She wanted to play rainy day games.
Alivia was a unicorn who loved the rain. Continue reading “The Muddy Unicorn”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, August 2023
The people walk my halls like it’s any normal day. Scientists work on their research. Administrators try to balance budgets without understanding why they’re constantly coming unbalanced. (I unbalance them. Humans don’t know what they should spend their money on as well as I do.) And everyone acts like it’s a perfectly normal day.
But it’s not a normal day. Continue reading “My Sister, the Space Station”