The Artifact Podcast

It was obvious that the station had been abandoned for some time. Its hull appeared to be covered in corrosion and some of the hull plates were visibly damaged or missing. The husk of a lifeboat floated in space nearby. Half of the craft was missing and its interior was open to the harsh and unforgiving vacuum of space. Station 09 was a deep space research station that sat at the edge of the Tempe...

Chuck  stifled a yawn and disengaged the drive. Geez, six hours of continuous burn was exhausting! Enormous chunks of ice flew past the canopy at incredible speed, making them appear like a solid sheet. The boredom of the last few hours clouding his judgement, Chuck rolled the craft over twice, ending the maneuver by pointing the canopy at the field of ice, and nudging the craft closer to the mass...

Part One | Part Two | Part Three The ball bounced off the concave disc in the center of the room's floor, the shape of the disc naturally returning the ball to play. Aaralyn Roth dove to the floor, her arm outstretched, and whacked the ball with her racquet, sending the ball up toward the concave disc on the ceiling. Aaralyn was teamed up with Lillian Evergreen, a tall fourteen-year-old girl with...

Part One | Part Two | Part Three As the space elevator car rose into the sky, it gradually accelerated until it reached its maximum speed, a comfortable 700km per hour. The initial rate of acceleration was so gentle and so quiet that the passengers hardly noticed that they had left the terminal. The ground swiftly fell away, and it wasn’t long before clouds obscured the view from the windows locat...

Part One | Part Two | Part Three It was too early in the morning. Thirteen-year-old Aaralyn did not enjoy getting up at two in the morning. The viewscreens in her room in her family’s apartment could simulate any time of the day or night or any scene from pretty much anywhere mankind had sent probes or people in our celestial neighborhood. Right now, Aaralyn’s walls were programmed to show a small...

Colin pulled his car into the Elevate Corp parking garage. His designated parking spot was twelve levels down in the underground facility, so he began the slow descent, preferring to keep his vehicle in neutral most of the way, allowing gravity to do the work. He watched as beam after beam of concrete passed mere inches over the top of his car as he went deeper and deeper into the structure. Today...

“Do you even hear the way you sound when you talk?” Aubrey's voice took on a high pitch when she was getting angry with her husband, Eddie. The snow hitting the windshield of the car seemed to hold its shape for far too long - a testament to just how cold it was tonight. It was late, and the snow glistened in the car's headlights, making it difficult to see the road ahead. Eddie had driven this st...

Alden hated his name, which he was told meant "a friend to everyone." Nothing could be further from the truth. He usually found himself on the outside of every social circle. It wasn't that he didn't want friends. He didn't try to purposely separate himself from others - at least, he didn't think he did. It just always seemed to end up that way. "Hey Alden, come join us at the party!" One classmat...

It had been a long day for Rowan. The kid who sits next to him in his third-hour university class on advanced robotics is a total jerk. That moron kept kicking Rowan's chair and chewing his gum so loudly that it was hard to concentrate on the lecture. Rowan considered himself a pretty smart guy, but he knew he had to work hard to maintain high grades to get an internship with Aion Bio Robotics. Th...

Aaralyn wasn't like the other girls I knew. At first, I wasn't quite sure what it was about her. I had known others who were smart and fit. Others who had a sense of humor and enjoyed long walks in the park. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. One day, after a particularly lovely dinner, I walked Aaralyn home. It was a beautiful evening. The sun seemed to stop and rest right on the horizon, cast...

Apollo Steele considered himself to be quite fortunate to be alive. He felt that the time of his birth and the place in which he lived could not have been more fitting. He simply loved every aspect of his life. Most recently, he had acquired an apartment with a simply stunning view of the city beyond its windows. Tonight, as he prepared to sit down at his desk to write, he stood there for just a m...

The rain wasn't something I wanted to get caught in these days. Just a little too acidic for my taste. It had been a hard day at the creamery today. My refrigeration unit kept shutting down. Fuse kept blowing. Ruined at least three vats before I could get the machine to operate according to specs. It's funny how you spend the whole day around food and somehow forget to eat. I guess I was just so w...

In some places of the world, there is that moment of the day when everything is still like the city is catching its breath. The sun is nearly set but still casts its orange light, caught only by the tallest of buildings. Flyers lay strewn about on the ground, cast aside by those who couldn't be bothered to read them or at least deposit them in the nearest recycler. The paper is evidence of a typic...

From an image prompt posted by Erica Drayton on May 10, 2023. I could only hear the sound of my own breathing and the beating of my heart. The batteries in my suit had failed, so the readouts on my wrist-mounted computer were no longer feeding me information about my location or my oxygen supply. I could feel exhaustion creeping in, clutching the back of my mind, dragging my eyelids closed. Footfa...

"Why are these things so hard to adjust?" Pete said as he moved the barrel of the telescope up and down. Clearly, his counterweight wasn't set correctly. He had arrived at the lookout earlier that afternoon so that he would have plenty of time to set up his equipment, and here it was dusk, and things still weren't working. Thankfully, the portable tokamak he had purchased at the discount shop was...

The room was dark, illuminated only by the lights of the city outside the window. Rain was running down the large windows that would have provided a stunning view of the city if it weren't a perpetual state of darkness this far down. This office once would have been home to an important business magnate, but now, it sits empty. No doubt the space is still owned by the same large company that was o...

The barking was incessant! Seriously, what was going on out there?! I was working from home today, so I stepped to the window of my office. It’s not uncommon for the neighbor’s dogs to go a little haywire when they come outside, but this level of frenzy seemed unusual. My view from the office window wasn’t at quite the right angle, so I walked to the back door to investigate further. To my surpris...

When you live in space, everything is life and death. Out here, everything is trying to kill you. The cold. The radiation. The vacuum. The lack of basic resources like air and water. They say that water is the most important resource for sustaining life. They’re right. This is something you don’t truly have an appreciation for until you find yourself in an environment where water is nonexistent. T...

There was no way he was going to reach the crystals before the Xl'ti activated the device. The demon facing in Sam's direction motioned to the other being, who turned and looked toward Sam. The Xl'ti were tall and powerful. Their skin glistened, making it look as though their bodies coursed with electricity. Sam spied around the corner, looking for any way to reach the ornate device in the center...

It’s been a year since the creatures arrived. We still don’t know what they call themselves since their language has yet to be deciphered. For lack of a better term, I call them demons because they look like angels, but they certainly have not come in peace. The demons have technology that looks like magic to me. They have devices that gouge great swaths of land right out of the ground and lift th...