dreamszilla

An intergalactic delivery man spends decades in stasis with a robot looking after him, becoming increasingly detached from the beings he sees en route; by Joe Jablonski. Image generated with OpenAI ONE I wake up on a planet covered in fire. For the first few seconds I feel nothing. I see nothing. I'm all alone: a void floating within a void. It's everything I've always hoped death would be. My stasis pod opens with a hiss. I sit up using muscles that have been electroshocked into peak performance. The air is thin. Cold. There are so many beeps. I cough up oxygenated liquid from my lungs until nothing is left. A monitor on the far wall displaying the amount of time I was under flickers on. 76 years. Not that it matters. I'll be back in that thing within hours. "Welcome to Kepler 12," says a preprogrammed voice. It's my own, cut and pasted with all the proper syllables. A robot walks up as the words fade. I stand and snatch the cl...

Teenager Aodhán is shanghaied into the crew of a cruel pirate bent on stealing the treasures of the sea, in Spencer Sekulin's swashbuckling epic. Image generated with OpenAI Gravel scraped Aodhán's bare heels as the Sealord's men dragged him through the chaos of shouting, booming muskets, and the snap and flutter of wind in rigging and sail. "Let her go," Aodhán rasped, though he couldn't remember why. Blurs marred his vision, and his tongue felt ten sizes too large. Blood soaked his walnut hair and tickled down between his shoulder blades. "L-Let her go..." "The lad still thinks he's fighting," a drawling voice said, punctuated by the rhythmic clack of a scabbard against thigh. The other man clicked his tongue. "Course he does, after you rang him over the head. Mind I told you the Captain wants them alive and able?" "It was the only way to get him to drop the hatchet! Even with one eye you ought to hav...