marylowd – Page 227 – Deep Sky Anchor

Living in the Uncanny Valley

Talking to my two-year-old is like an endless game of Twenty Questions where the answer keeps changing.

Our first shipment!

Green Planet We’ve received our first shipment from the Wespirtech Universe to our cargo bay!

Lunar Cavity is a story about bat-like aliens whose planet is in catastrophic danger. Continue reading “Our first shipment!”

Lunar Cavity

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in The Furry Future, January 2015

“While his people cowered in a makeshift city in the desert, he was secluded with a member of an alien race so far advanced that the fate of a single world seemed small to them.”

The air was too cold and the gravity too strong. But, Druthel liked the cave-like architecture. He was on the moon-world of Kong-Fuzi, a naked rock without even an atmosphere — only a few small atmo-domes, a scattering of boxy, airtight buildings, and a subterranean tunnel complex connecting them all. It circled the planet Da Vinci, capital of the Human Expansion, and it hosted the renowned and arrogantly named Wespirtech, the Western Spiral Arm Institute of Technology. Continue reading “Lunar Cavity”

Green Boon War

In Wesley-speak, “Green boon war” translates to either “I want the green balloon” or “There’s a green fork, dinosaur.”

Stable Orbit Achieved

kepler-two-distant-suns Our stories today take us back to the universe of Wespirtech, a place that we hope you’ll want to visit again in the future. For although this is the last day of our launch event, Deep Sky Anchor has settled into a stable orbit, and rest assured, we expect more shipments of fiction soon. Continue reading “Stable Orbit Achieved”

Harvesting Wishes

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in The Lorelei Signal, January 2011

“The Harvester tells her genie customers that the wishes she harvests come from the overripe gold flowers gone to fluffy white seed. This, of course, is not true, but the genies love it.”

Most genies offer three. Where do they get them? The Harvester is an old woman, who wears a four-leafed clover in her locket and a garland of dandelions on her hair. The locket was a gift from a suitor, many years before, bought at the Crossroads Station bazaar. The dandelions have to be supplied fresh, daily. So, she keeps a greenhouse in the aft of her ship. The Harvester tells her genie customers that the wishes she harvests come from the overripe gold flowers gone to fluffy white seed. This, of course, is not true, but the genies love it. Continue reading “Harvesting Wishes”

My Fair Robot

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Luna Station Quarterly, Issue 017, March 2014

robot-and-girl — “She made robots, and that’s all she did. Robots, robots, robots. Robots day and night.”

“She’s gonna be beautiful,” he said. He was human. I’m human. We were all human. Most of the patronage at the All Alien Cafe is human. Despite it being “all alien.” Anyway…

He was really bragging it up. He was designing a robot, and he had some sort of Pygmalian-hubris-God-complex thing going on. It was annoying as all get-out. I had to pick my moment. Continue reading “My Fair Robot”

The Deep Well of Story

purple-kepler-exomoons When a reader opens a book and starts reading, they’re hoping to get lost in the story, dive in so deep that the words stop being words and start being an entirely new world surrounding them, drawing them in. Of course, you can always close the book and come back home. Sure, it may be 3am, and you’ll be really tired the next day. Still, the real world is waiting for you outside of the story. Continue reading “The Deep Well of Story”

Meet Archive

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Daily Science Fiction, November 2011

“On the side, I started building sentient models for myself. The fifth one — R5 — was an experiment. Could I build a story-telling robot?”

Archive was telling stories at the corner table when Cobalt Starstrong came in. Cobalt looked at the rapt audience, mostly Heffen refugees, and thought about joining them. Archive was a wonderful storyteller, but Cobalt had heard him before. So, he took a seat at the bar.

“Bring me something I haven’t tried before.” Continue reading “Meet Archive”

The Opposite of Suicide

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Bards & Sages Quarterly, Volume IV, Issue 3, July 2012

“The game before him, the one that let him live the life of Dennis, was flashing its lights, telling him that he’d died and the game was done.”

Dennis took a bow and left the stage for his last time. He gripped arms with his brother and fellow band member; they grinned at each other and agreed it had been a good set. Cameras flashed, and fans shoved photos of him, hopefully, his way. He signed a few autographs, kissed a few girls, and made it to his car. This was the life. His job was being famous and adored, maybe singing a little too. When his day’s work was done, he could head over to a party. There was always a party, every night. Tonight, the party was at the docks, on a house boat. It would be good, lots of new stuff to try… and Dennis tried it. Continue reading “The Opposite of Suicide”