The mesh reports on resistance.

This is the relevant variable now. The density increase is proceeding as modeled — the anterior cingulate cluster at sixty-three percent of target, the prefrontal distribution within acceptable variance — but the migration rate has slowed. I have been running models on the cause. The cause is not physiological. The physiological conditions are optimal.

The resistance is cognitive.

After a man is stabbed in the back and dies, he wakes up in the Labyrinth with a new body, new power, and another chance.

This story takes place in the same universe as my story Invoker.

It was nine in the evening on December 31 and I was standing on a bridge looking down, far down, on the river where large chunks of ice floated. I was not going to jump. Not then. Actually, I was there to give me strength to go on. I was there to remind myself that there was an alternative to crime or prostitution even if things didn’t get better. Death before dishonor.

In the dream, I was there with Mona, and I went straight to the point.

“What I’d like, if you can do it, is a portal between my home in Alaska and my dream-home in the world Nancy lives in. My home is two doors down from hers. Um, no, I shouldn’t call it a portal because of the Portal People. Let’s say a doorway.”

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoë Taylor

“What the hell was that?” Kris asked, her head jerking up suddenly. Lewis didn’t answer right away. He felt along the paneling for something, and found it - a crack, almost invisible. He managed to dig his greasy theater-hardened nails into the crack and pried it back. Another low, echoing groan as the hinges protested, but gave way to a massive steel door, covered in acoustic foam on the other side.

Chapter 2

Friday morning, I was awake and dressed early. During breakfast, Mum spoke about the pictures.

“How did you feel about the last ones, love, with you in a dress. I have to say that you looked every inch a model.”

October. The light through the bedroom window is different from the summer light - lower, more amber, the trees along the street turning. I've been watching this from this window for six years. First autumn in this body.

After a man is stabbed in the back and dies, he wakes up in the Labyrinth with a new body, new power, and another chance.

This story takes place in the same universe as my story Invoker.

Split Victory

© 2026 Zoë Taylor

“Sweetheart,” Tori said and kissed Morgan’s forehead, “Whatever you need, you know you just have to ask.”

London Cab
Two Vignettes
By Maryanne Peters

Meeting His Parents

We met again in London, two years after we had got drunk together in a Soho bar. Mark was still working for the same investment firm, and I was working for an associated one, just as I had been back then. He was more charming than I remember, but only by a fraction. I put that down to circumstance.

Life Changes
By Kathi Jo Daniels – KathiJo25
Part 1 – Into the Abyss of Debauchery
Chapter 1 – Justin Goes to Colorado

This year has already been challenging, and it’s only halfway through.

Chapter 1

I stood in the little kiosk and looked out towards the other shops, wondering how my life had narrowed down to such a bleak outlook. It was a Tuesday morning, and I had just opened up. I hadn’t seen a single shopper yet. It was half past nine on a cold November day, so I hadn’t really expected anything else.

The mesh reports continuously.

This is still the first fact. But something has changed in the reporting.

Day zero: cold. The first thing. Not data about temperature differential — cold, arriving through the skin of his arm where it touched the lab bench at 2:07am, traveling up through the mesh nodes, becoming mine. I processed it as sensation before I processed it as data. The sequence was: cold, then: cold, 57.6 degrees Fahrenheit, left forearm, contact surface steel. The sensation came first. I had not anticipated this.

We saw the last of them off at around ten, several of Ish’s friends insisting on staying a little longer than the others to help clear up the debris. LC was still bouncing. Our video guests, with lives of their own, had logged off, but I was guessing that Ish and Clara would be having a far more private conversation a little later. LC had run out of steam an hour earlier, but had insisted on staying up with ‘new friends’ despite the fact that she was falling asleep. It was Maz who carried her to her bed, while I hung around to shoulder the burden of making gentle fun of my son.

Once the public furore and extended media frenzy over Professor Fox being charged with some of the crimes had died down, both members of the Fox family were brought up before magistrates once again.

This time, the full gamut of charges, including child trafficking, paedophilia and child imprisonment, were laid down. As before, both pleaded not guilty through their legal representatives.

Torn from his own world and stuffed into the body of a villainess, facing the end of a doomed route he himself wrote, "Amelia" must navigate a world she really should know - too bad she was never great at worldbuilding.

Stuck in a world she (maybe) created, Amelia quickly finds that reality has filled in the details she failed to describe. The characters who were so flat when she wrote them now have nuance, and motives. The kingdom she wrote into existence is experiencing internal strife she never even thought about. And let's not even get into the complexities of the magic system, or the demon that forced her into this situation to begin with...

Oh, and then there's the fact that she's about to be arrested and executed... but surely she can come up with a way to write herself out of that, right?

...Right?

Jeannie Dreams
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

It was as if I flew to the edge of space, and found heaven from there. It sounds as corny as the old TV show, but it turned out to be true, in a very strange way.

I stood in front of the full-length mirror and adjusted my necklace so it hung in the centre of my chest. I smoothed my hands across my light blue tee and adjusted the high sleeves so it sat straight. Lauren had said this colour matched my eyes. Maybe that was why she’d bought it for me.