Author
Mary E. Lowd
Birthday Party at the Prehistory Zoo
Dr. Miriam Loxley felt weird attending the birthday party of an eight-year-old child she'd never met before. She didn't have a lot of experience with children, and so their chaotic running, shouting, squabbling, cheering, tumbling and general antics whirled around her like a…
Tiny Cartoon Dinosaurs
Dr. Miriam Loxley was waiting for her wife in a computer lab that looked like it could have been part of any college campus or tech startup. Rows of computers sat on desks decorated by empty pop cans and various fidget toys. If she hadn't known she was in the middle of a…
Herding the Brachiosauruses
"Look, you're overreacting," Angie Cartwright said to her wife, Dr. Miriam Loxley, as she drove the two of them across the beautiful stretch of golden savannah on the west side of Hali'corra Island. Warm air flowed through the open top of her company jeep, and she could hear the…
Comfort Animal
The wide timber frame arch rose high above Dr. Miriam Loxley's head, presaging the size of the animals kept in the enclosure. All the movies, books, and games came rushing back to her--she'd grown up with the Jurassic Park franchise. She knew all of the paleontologists and…
Where Have All the Mousies Gone
Does it matter what your last thoughts are when you die? If you could choose them--they would be hope, wouldn't they? A bright future. Waiting. Ready. And you're going to miss it, but wouldn't you rather die looking out on a shining expanse of golden sunlight, reflecting off…
Twelve Days of Snow on Crossroads Station
When the snow began falling inside Crossroads Space Station, all of the aliens stopped what they were doing and held very still. The snowflakes caught on long fuzzy manes and feathered wings; they pinged lightly against hard insectile carapaces and shimmering reptilian scales.…
Too Cuddly
"Where did your plush exterior go?" "I stripped it off." Anxlo7's shiny metal interior gleamed, skeletal and mechanical, without the cinnamon brown teddy bear fur that usually covered her. "But now you look... scary," Maradia said to the robot she'd designed for Crossroads…
Prototype Dino 1
Maradia's fingers flew over her keyboard as she uploaded the reservoir of files that collectively were Wisper, an AI program she'd been writing over the last several months, to Prototype Body 1. She ran a quick check to make sure the files had uploaded properly, and then she…
Prototype Dino 1
Maradia's fingers flew over her keyboard as she uploaded the reservoir of files that collectively were Wisper, an AI program she'd been writing over the last several months, to Prototype Body 1. She ran a quick check to make sure the files had uploaded properly, and then she…
Paper Horn
The paper cone I'd taped together from an old piece of algebra homework slipped off the pony's forehead and landed in the clover at her hooved feet. Mallory laughed derisively and said, "What were you trying to do? Play unicorn?" The pony, Tulip, turned her head away, abashed,…
The Were-Raptor and the Seamstress Robot
Angie and Tyler's hands touched the green-gold brass of the magic lamp at the same time. The metal was slick with creek water and they had to dig away the mud and wet moss that had half buried the lamp using their bare hands. Their fingers smeared the mud, leaving their hands…
Fish Heart
The surface of the decorative pond in the neighbor's yard shone like a mirror, smooth and bright, reflecting the overcast sky in shades of pale gray and silver. Cora wanted to know what was hidden underneath the mirror, so she jumped down from the fence and stalked over to the…
Catacomb's Orchestra
Catacomb laid her paw across the tiny heaving belly of the almost drowned mouse. The poor thing was frightened out of its mind; she could feel its fright through her paw, prickly and tingly. Mouse emotions were so funny. "I saved you from the koi pond, Little One," Catacomb…
The Fog Comes On Little Cat Feet
Edgar Allen was a grumpy cat. He had the sleek black fur you'd expect from a cat named Edgar Allen, but his whiskers shone like slivers of moonlight. He wasn't grumpy about his black fur or his shining whiskers. When he thought about them, he was rightly proud to be such a fine…
The Fire In Her Claws
Apricot dozed in her cat-carrier, enjoying the warmth of the sunlight pouring through the car window and down through the grated metal top of her carrier. She had an old, rough towel to sleep on, and she was extremely comfortable. The occasional bump in the road roused her out…
Home Remodeling
A spaceship crashed down at the end of my street this morning. Its inertial dampeners and camouflage shield must still be in working order, because it looked like nothing more than a parabola of blue light followed by a puffy white clump of cumulonimbus cloud streaking down from…
Shiny Red Chassis
Reeree3 was an assistant robot; a prototype with a complex combination of scarab-like jointed legs and little wheels on a tread. Right now, she looked like a cross between a sad ladybug and a frightened wheelchair. Her shiny red carapace was blotched with rough orange patches of…
The Fisherman's Robot
Sebas7 opened her mechanical eyes to see limpid human eyes staring at her. She recognized them as human eyes by using a pattern-matching algorithm on her massive internal database of labeled images. "Hello, friend. Don't worry, you're perfectly safe." The words had meaning in…
Salvador Dali Smile
"My brain isn't working right." Roia378--gleaming and silver, everything a robot should be, strong, aesthetically pleasing, a sculpted work of art that could build a stone castle with her bare metal hands--clutched her head, as if it ached, but she was not designed for pain or…
The Emperor's New Bird
The ruby-throated avian twirled, emerald wings beating in a blur, frothing the air with graceful gusts of wind that swept through the emperor's branches and leaves, delighting his eye-petals with the sight of the frenzied dance. "A marvel of genetic engineering!" the emperor…
Clever Hansel 2000
Engleine paced nervously, her hooved hind feet echoing on the metal floor. Usually, the sound soothed her--it made her feel light and cosmic, reminding her that she lived on Crossroads Station and no longer a backwards dirtball of a world. There were stars beneath the metal…
The Words in Frosting
Gary was a humanoid android, programmed to experience the complete range of human emotions. Right now, he was sad. His broad shoulders slouched, and his head hung, framing his handsome face with his beautiful raven hair. He had been designed to be beautiful. Chirri wasn't sure…
Jetpack and Cyborg Wings
Lee-a-lei and her clone-daughter Am-lei perched in the Crossroads Station recreational airlock with their long spindly legs folded. The two lepidopterans exchanged a glance with glittering, multi-faceted eyes. Lee-a-lei was nervous and kept flapping her mechanical wings, but her…
Wing Day
Lee-a-lei had never been to a Wing Day party, much less thrown one herself. The butterfly-like alien crossed her uppermost pair of fuzzy exoskeletal arms and watched her clone-daughter scurry around their quarters, excited, sugar-crazed, and impatient for the guests to arrive.…
The Oldest One
Anno watched her mother tuck in each of her siblings to their differently shaped beds. Lut folded his feathered wings into his nest-bed; T'reska stretched out her scaly-green back on her heated bed of rocks; and Iko cradled her primatoid body, swinging lightly, in her hammock.…
Veins of Black, Dust of Gold
Am-lei had been growing stiffer by the day. Her long, green, tubular body was usually lithe and flexible. She could twist her way through the grav-bubble obstacle courses on the Crossroads Space Station playground better than any Heffen children in her class. Their canine bodies…
Hypercrystal Wish
Jeko coiled her long nose around one of the glittering hypercrystals. They weren't really hypercrystals. Just shiny bits of polished, angular glass. Spiky, colorful shapes. But Jeko liked to pretend. She liked to pretend that they were hypercrystals and could grant wishes. She…
Heart of the Gas Giant
The heart of the gas giant was the key. Arellnor had traveled from one star system to another; at every stop, she'd traded her vehicle--first her trusty shuttle for a star-hopper, then that for a space mecha-suit and finally back to another shuttle. She'd altered her appearance,…
Of Starwhals and Spaceships
A metal behemoth cruised through the nebula, cool and casual, like it didn't care about any of the frolicking younglings and their singsong radio waves or the older starwhals jockeying for territory, rearranging the ambient dust into moats and walls. The attitude of the metal…
Go High
Evban flapped her mechanical wings joyously, dipping and swooping through New Jupiter's soupy pink-and-gold clouds. Her whiskers tickled against the glassy bubble of her breathing helmet, and her long tail streamed out behind her. She'd drifted away from the flock of avian…
Waking up in the Genie Shop
Sloanee opened her eyes and felt her heart racing. What was she doing? Lying down? She was on the lam. She should be running or hiding. Nowhere was safe from the royal guards pursuing her. Queen Doripauli and her army of photosynthetic tumbleweed-like aliens would stop at…
Winged Folk Only
"You can't come on the voyage," the Ululu sneered, folding his wings in a very cross manner. "Winged folk only." Evben tried to object, but all the other avians lounging about the bar took up the Ululu's catchy cry: "That's right! Winged folk only!" The feathers around the…
Queen Doripauli and the Sproutlings
Sloanee's slick, sticky amphibioid fingers wrapped around one of Queen Doripauli's slender twigs. The queen's sea-green fronds uncurled, caressing the richer green skin of her amphibioid lover. Doripauli's yellow daisy-like petals brushed ever-so-lightly against Sloanee's face,…
Crescent Horns and Tall Ears
The little lapine aliens hopped into the bar, one after the other, noses twitching and long ears swiveling. Narchi had never seen their species in the All Alien Cafe before, and all of a sudden, here were a dozen. Narchi's heavy hunched shoulders straightened a little at the…
Inalienable Rights
Roscoe's long ears would not stand tall, no matter how he strained to hold them up. His reflection in the empty viewscreen looked haggard and scared, but he'd stared at it for long enough trying to compose himself. He would never be composed. He had to proceed anyway. With a…
Principles Over Profit
Chorif held out her upper wing, spreading her feathers to admire the rings and bracelets and pins she'd fastened among her pinions. Her wing glittered with gems from the ice asteroids around Tau Ceti and glowed with Erdidaniian opals. She looked like a queen, and she clacked her…
The Crowds on Crossroads Station
Roscoe's velvety nose twitched, but his long ears stood tall in spite of his jittery nerves. The view of Crossroads Station on the viewscreen was intimidating: three concentric wheels, rotating in alternating directions, each one lined with rows after row of glowing windows.…
One Alien's Wreckage
Chorif's round feathered face stared down at the contents of the cryo-pod, and her wide copper eyes narrowed. She had been expecting to find valuable cargo for salvage; instead, all she saw was a squirmy green-fleshed larva, about the length of Chorif's upper wing. "Anything in…
The Empty Empire
It took a hundred years to design and build the first planet. Multi-dimensional bulldozers and hyper-spatial cranes arranged the mountains, the icy spires, the cozy sea-green valleys in-between. Everything was perfect; ready for a feathered avian species to take roost in the…
Hidden Feelings
The spines on S'lisha's neck twitched, but she kept them from extending into a thorny display of her anger. The spaceship captain wanted the boxes of robot arms on his cargo deck rearranged yet again. If he'd explained himself clearly in the first place, it would have saved so…
FemCloud Inc.
Chloe lay on the table in the doctor's office, wearing a paper sheet over her legs and one of those weird gowns that opened in the back. She didn't want to be pregnant, but she didn't want to need an abortion. She couldn't help thinking about David--it had to be David--and what…
Pegacornus Rex
Marla realized that she'd left the 3-D printer running. She'd been up late synthesizing a chef-bot she'd found the pattern for online. Sure, she could have just baked the damn cake for Leia's tenth birthday party herself, but the chef-bot would do a better job. And it was…
The Most Complicated Avatar
It feels strange to me, deep in my stomach, that I can't find my ten-year-old girl in real life--but that, maybe, I can find her here. My hand shakes on the computer mouse as I log in to Second World, using one of the default avatars--a woman with straight blonde hair like a…
Meet Archive
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…