Future Perfect: Tense in Space EXCERPTS

Effective Camouflage
by Ardis Moonlight
When the balloon floated over and was just a few inches above, she caught the string, and quickly released it, shouting, “Ow!”

Her twin rushed over with the dog close behind. “What happened, Judy?”

“I swear, Jane, the string shocked me!”

As the dog licked Judy’s hand, she felt the pain lessen. That was so weird, she thought. What kind of balloon was that?

Space Oddity
by Ginny Fleming

Have you ever wondered if there’s intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? Well, wonder no more. There’s life. Intelligence? That’s debatable.

Solo for Multiple Instruments
by Marian Allen
“With the network, you’re never alone with your thoughts, unless you want to be. Without the network, it’s just you and memory and imagination. All these haunted castles, moving around each other, each one with one living resident looking out, trying to catch a glimpse of another living resident.”

Soul Speak
by Glenda Mills
Your world and mine have crossed before. It happened about 400 Earth years ago, a couple of generations past for us Adians. It was the time of the Great Viral Plague on Adia and we were in danger of extinction.

Red
by Joy Kirchgessner
“What’s the surface like?” Casey inquired, as she took a look at the inside of his ear with a scope while a male nurse stood in as assistant.

Pauley grinned with pleasure at the question. “You just wouldn’t believe it. It’s covered in red flowers. You’d think it was out of a fairy tale. When we run the harvesters through it, there’s clouds of some kind of bug or more like butterflies pour out. Then just as sudden, they evaporate into the air. Just disappear.”

Quantum Toast
by Ginny Fleming
It all started with my morning toast.

Breakfast. The most important meal of the day. That day, my breakfast changed time. It freakin’ changed time. Looking back, I now wonder: What if, instead of a simple breakfast of toast, grape jam and juice, I’d chosen that day to waste my morning nutrition on a fat-filled serving of Mickey-D’s? I wonder, and I will wonder about this for the rest of my days . . . .

Universe time
by Bonnie Abraham
Time. What a nebulous thing it had become in those two weeks. The first week was spent with masses of data sheets, diagrams and mission reports. Ziggy learned the rudiments of correct time travel science and then the practical skills— what buttons did what and what not to wear when traveling to 16 AD.

Rebel
by Samantha Lopez
The sunlight coming through the shielded eco-bubble transmuted into a soft purplish hue, thanks to the iridescence of the dome. She squinted against the sunlight reflecting off the incoming helicopter as a sharp arc of pain shot through her head. Another migraine. The headaches had begun a few weeks earlier and were becoming more frequent. Today’s was bad enough the nurses had sent her back to her dorm to rest.

Vibes
by Jeannine Baumgartle
Energy always goes somewhere, always means something: the wordless cooing of infants, that turns people inside out with emotion, makes them have to reply in kind; the empty doggie bed of a lost pet, that fairly cries out for its return; the susurration of wind in the trees, that refreshes the spirit as well as the body. —Repressed energy from pain builds up, if there isn’t a moan to express it. And it was quite clear in his mind that rogue waves remain in an abandoned house where mean people have lived. He’d been inside such a house and the vibes were still there, years after the Simmons’ moved.

Mergers in Space
by Carl Page
That evening had occupied my thoughts virtually every waking hour during the past six months, though I had talked to no one outside my UFO club about it. How could I?—they’d have had me committed. They had to be talking about the same thing. They had to know. But how? And who were these guys?