The Writing Lab of Axel Cushing

Solar Sports Illustrated Issue 23, 2130 CE Belting Out Rock Hits It's half obstacle course and half astrophysics problem. To thrill junkies, it's quaintly referred to as "skipping stones." And like all great challenges, it is deceptively simple in its premise. From a given platform, an individual plants their feet against the end of a solenoid activated ram and is launched out into the Asteroid Belt. A "skipper" squeezes into a specialized spacesuit, one which tries to strike the right balance between durability, life support endurance, and as little extra mass as possible. The goal is to reach a targeted platform on the far end of a course in the least amount of time. The suits have minimal thrusters and only a limited amount of fuel capacity. The challenge comes from trying to generate a series of gravitational slingshots around various asteroids to not only increase velocity, but also adjust one's orientation an...

"All right, last rounds of the bright turn, Geylo. You remember who we collect from?" The young Svethan family hood flashed a toothy smile at his superior. "All the businesses between Frame 20 and Frame 34." "No exceptions?" the older gangster asked diffidently. "No exceptions at all." "Wrong. We stay out of the El Diablo near Frame 23. Never business, only pleasure." "It's right in the middle of our turf, Vres!" Geylo protested. "Why aren't we getting our cut? Place is only run by a Terran." "Yeah, but which Terran?" Vres gave Geylo a hard and discouraging look. "You do know who runs that place, right? And how the bar got its name?" "No idea. To any of it." "Pay attention, grubber, and you might live long enough to pass the knowledge on." Vres walked down the station concourse, Geylo walking alongs...

The survey ship Appaloosa drifted in the interstellar void, its sensors straining for the whispers within the CMBR that hinted at intelligent life. Signal processors and computers danced around each other, comparing previous signatures against new data. And the dance came to a stop. "Captain, we've got a hit. G4 star, about forty light-years out." Tilda Vaughn's young eyes shone like miniature suns with excitement. "SERAPH reports high confidence for a K1 civilization!" Dylan Bridger looked to his left. "Does Xenology concur?" he asked mildly, already seeing the hammered iron mask falling over the expedition's xenologist. Horacio Durand looked over the markers, double checking the raw data at certain points. "Xenology concurs. High confidence for a K1 civilization," he said, his voice low and grinding. Vaughn had been on the Appaloosa for two years now, and she was no closer to understa...

3/18/2532 (Terran Standard Reckoning) Today was the first day I had breakfast with my foster family. I wasn't sure what it would be like. The smells that came from the kitchen were half-familiar, mixed with strange scents that seemed good. I came down carefully, dressed for school. My foster family smiled when I came into the kitchen, keeping their teeth hidden. "Morning, Krosa," my foster mother said cheerfully. "I managed to find some levo-sugar flour at the starport market. And some Cylagauto dairy product. Actually had to make butter by hand. It's maybe not quite like what you're used to, but I've got orders in for more supplies." She placed a stack of three baked discs with a cross-hatch pattern on them in front of me. The spaces between the lines held melted butter in them, and a small steel cup sat next to them. "I know your homeworld didn't have maple syrup, but I think this will...

"Fleetlord! Unidentified contact bearing 326 by 073!" Fleetlord Caol-dhin, Master of the Eighth Great Exploratory Armada, looked over at the tactical section. "Mass and energy readings?" He began to pick his teeth with a shard of an arm bone. "Small, Fleetlord. Comparable to a fast courier vessel of our own manufacture. Drive signature is completely different from any previously encountered vessel." Caol-dhin shifted in his chair slightly. Prior to the last planetfall, they had captured a small number of ships from the prey they now knew as "humans." If this ship was human in manufacture, might there have been a discrepancy? Perhaps a fundamental difference in design and construction priorities? "What is the contact doing?" "They're taking up a position at relative rest just off the bow. No indication of weapons or defensive systems." "Fleetlord, we're receiving a...

  Michelson jerked back a little as the pseudoarthropod thrust the bundle into his arms, chittering rapidly in what was obviously fear. The alien ran rapidly down the street, away from the mercenary squad currently holding the intersection. "Hey, wait!" he called out to the retreating form, prompting a chuckle from Papas as the squad's heavy weapons expert trained the tri-barrel down the opposite direction. Feeling deeply confused, Michelson looked down at the bundle as it started to squirm. The Kk'rth'tlln brought to mind a bizarre crossing of wood louse and brine shrimp to most humans. The small rounded face looking back up at Michelson with six bulbous eyes didn't fit any conventional standard of human beauty. Yet there was something inexplicably cute about the small alien. Michelson looked back up helplessly at the squad leader. "Sarge, what the hell do I do?" Nicollette Kuznetsova looked back at ...

    Everybody remembers where they were when it happened.  "Ash Friday," some call it.  "The Pyre" seems to be the more favored term.  May 4, 2029, over a half-million dead in the worst terrorist attack in history.  Period.  End of line.     But that wasn't the end of the things, was it?  Over 500,000 people, hit with what later turned out to be a bespoke chemical weapon.  Phoenix Downs, what used to be Chase Field, accounted for almost a tenth of the body count.  The Arizona Science Center, Phoenix Children's Museum, ASU, U of A Med School, every courthouse and government building downtown.  Hell, I was across the street from the Herberger Theatre having lunch.  Nobody could possibly hate the son of a bitch who cooked it up and executed it more than me.  Dying sucks.  And yet, here I am.     Just one percent of us died, then got better.  All of us who came back were changed....

Yeah, it's been a while. So, good news, of a sort.  For the last month or so, been working with Michael Dismuke as part of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) Mentorship program.  Still have a few months to go, but that's OK. As part of the process, and as an effort to show my work under other conditions, I'm going to start posting flash fiction and maybe even a short story or two here in the coming weeks.  My hope here is that it'll make the circuit, get out there, and maybe land in front of the right set of eyes.