Communion          Alyssa Cherise

You were never meant to be alone. Drayton Baxter is a man with nothing left to lose. Depressed and drowning in a mouldering apartment after his mother’s death, he is offered a radical escape from his crushing isolation: Communion, a revolutionary biotech company promising an end to the epidemic of isolation through a biological, mycelial bond. One pill connects you to a network of minds where grief is a shared thing, every joyful feeling is amplified, and loneliness is effectively extinct. But as the threads of the collective consciousness tighten, Drayton discovers that a life without pain may mean a life without a self. In a place where every thought is public and every dissent is "smoothed" away, Drayton must decide if the warmth of the community is worth the price of his identity, especially when he discovers that the woman he loves might have been silenced for knowing the truth. 

Backup          Aspen Noble

In a near future where neural implants quietly record lives and memory backups make survival routine, Rachel Martens wakes from a nearly fatal accident restored from a version of herself six months out of date. On paper, she’s thriving. She’s left a long, stagnant relationship, abandoned a stable career, and enrolled in a degree program she once dismissed as impractical. Everyone around her assures her these changes were necessary, even overdue. But as Rachel moves through her apartment, her classes, and the fragments of a life she doesn’t remember choosing, everything feels subtly wrong. Notes in her own handwriting read like instructions from a stranger. Familiar places feel staged. The partner she once built her life around is conspicuously absent, and no one seems eager to explain why. As pressure mounts to restore the missing months and make her “whole,” Rachel begins to question whether continuity is the same as identity, and whether accepting the version of herself she’s been returned to would be an act of healing or surrender. 

Blight          I.S. Fergus

Our world is not what it once was. Decades ago, an epidemic took out sixty percent of all human life… and changed another twenty percent to something different. Something not human. Now, years later, in a sparsely populated, post apocalyptic Earth, a traveler ventures through the thick woods of what was once Northern Canada. After triggering a trap, the traveler finds themself injured and at the mercy of the man who set it.  The stranger allows the traveler to stay with him while their injured leg heals, but during this time the intentions of both parties are called into question. While the two must face what the surrounding wilderness brings to their doorstep, they must also work through their differences to get an understanding of the real source of their fears.

 Dream Job          John Ward

A desperate young actor uses new technology that allows her to work in a virtual world while she sleeps. But when one of her virtual co-workers is murdered, and all the evidence points to her guilt, she’s forced to go on the run. Discovering the truth about the technology and the murder, she must play a new role in order to infiltrate the tech company and clear her name. However, her new job forces her to confront terrible truths about the world, the company, and ultimately herself.

Split Identity       Nathan Falde

Two individuals, Gordon and Howard, are on a hiking trip while vacationing near Geneva, Switzerland in 2035. At the same time, there is a secret experiment happening in a laboratory deep underground that has gone critically wrong. This unfortunate coincidence causes the two hikers to be sent back in time. 
Howard is now lost and alone in a strange world, and separated from Gordon who vanished after the time dislocation event occurred.  People are scarce, social interactions are strange, and he is left to piece together the events that sent him there. Can Howard find Gordon and bring them back to their proper time? 

Existential             The Artist & The Person II                        Marlo Browne

To open and close out this anthology are two poems that encompass the themes and emotions of these stories. An introduction to the stories to help bring a thoughtful wonder into your read. Then a finale, words to ruminate over the tales you just consumed.