An e-zine about spaceships, aliens, science, memory, motherhood, magic, and cats.
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Daily Science Fiction, September 2018
Anno watched her mother tuck in each of her siblings to their differently shaped beds. Lut folded his feathered wings into his nest-bed; T’reska stretched out her scaly-green back on her heated bed of rocks; and Iko cradled her primatoid body, swinging lightly, in her hammock. And that was just in this room. The younger ones had been put to bed in their own room an hour ago. Continue reading “The Oldest One”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Daily Science Fiction, June 2017
Chorif’s round feathered face stared down at the contents of the cryo-pod, and her wide copper eyes narrowed. She had been expecting to find valuable cargo for salvage; instead, all she saw was a squirmy green-fleshed larva, about the length of Chorif’s upper wing.
“Anything in there?” Amy called out. She was another space-wreck scavenger. Continue reading “One Alien’s Wreckage”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Daily Science Fiction, April 2020
Edgar Allen was a grumpy cat. He had the sleek black fur you’d expect from a cat named Edgar Allen, but his whiskers shone like slivers of moonlight.
He wasn’t grumpy about his black fur or his shining whiskers. When he thought about them, he was rightly proud to be such a fine feline specimen. Humans who saw him lounging on the warm pavement on the street in front of the house where he lived invariably called out to him, begging for a chance to pet him. He rarely obliged. Though he would sometimes flirt with younger children, trying to lure them into dashing off of the sidewalk in hopes of reaching him. He never let them reach him. But he did enjoy listening to them get scolded by their parents. “Stay out of the street! It’s dangerous!” Continue reading “The Fog Comes On Little Cat Feet”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Daily Science Fiction, July 2019
Engleine paced nervously, her hooved hind feet echoing on the metal floor. Usually, the sound soothed her — it made her feel light and cosmic, reminding her that she lived on Crossroads Station and no longer a backwards dirtball of a world. There were stars beneath the metal under her hooves. And there were stars above the metal over her pointed ears. There were stars all around, and when she danced here, she was dancing in the cosmos.
Continue reading “Clever Hansel 2000”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Typewriter Emergencies: A Journal of Furry Lit, May 2017
Argelnox hunched her shoulders inside her mechanical shell. The metal casing chafed against her soft, wrinkly green skin. She’d been traveling for months, solo-zipping from one planet to the next, skimming only deep enough into each planet’s atmosphere to replenish her oxygen and basic nutrients, soaking them into her suit’s mechanical gills before sling-shotting towards the next.
Continue reading “True Feast”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Daily Science Fiction, April 2020
The surface of the decorative pond in the neighbor’s yard shone like a mirror, smooth and bright, reflecting the overcast sky in shades of pale gray and silver. Cora wanted to know what was hidden underneath the mirror, so she jumped down from the fence and stalked over to the stone ledge around the pond, tail lashing behind her.
Keeping her paws braced carefully on the stone ledge, Cora lowered her head towards the water, sniffing. The angle changed, and suddenly the reflection of the sky and her own orange and black splotched face disappeared. The calico cat could see directly into the underworld of water as clearly as through a pane of window glass. Green, silty, and mysterious. Continue reading “Fish Heart”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in The Lorelei Signal, January 2021
The binary black hole sucked all the glittering starlight around into its twin maws. It stared at the viewscreen like two dark eyes, windows into the void.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Clarity said, twisting her dyed-green hair nervously around her fingers. “We can’t fly between those things.”
The pilot of the small starhopper, a red-furred canid, stared right back at the pair of black holes, orbiting each other in a mad, spiraling dance that would end in eventual merging. Centuries from now. “Dead serious,” he said, triangular ears laying back flat against his head. Continue reading “Between the Black Holes”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Daily Science Fiction, August 2019
Reeree3 had been blessed with a shining red carapace by her creator, but it was blotched with rough orange patches of rust now. She’d been taken on a joyride through Crossroads Station’s plumbing system, like a common toy being raced for fun, and she hadn’t been given a chance to properly dry out. So, she was hiding under one of the food carts in the Merchant Quarter, watching the crowds of organic creatures of all species pass by. Continue reading “Shiny Red Chassis”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Daily Science Fiction, July 2019
Sebas7 opened her mechanical eyes to see limpid human eyes staring at her. She recognized them as human eyes from using a pattern matching algorithm on her massive internal database of labelled images.
“Hello, friend. Don’t worry, you’re perfectly safe.” Continue reading “The Fisherman’s Robot”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Daily Science Fiction, July 2019
“My brain isn’t working right.” Roia378 — gleaming and silver, everything a robot should be, strong, aesthetically pleasing, a sculpted work of art that could build a stone castle with her bare metal hands — clutched her head, as if it ached, but she was not designed for pain or headaches. Pain of any sort was useless; a mere note in her electro-net brain logs mentioning that a part of her mechanical body wasn’t in proper working order served the same purpose and easily sufficed. No need for anything as dramatic as pain. Continue reading “Salvador Dalí Smile”