Penelope tightened the last bolt, checked the wiring one last time then typed the coordinates into the typesetter. She watched the gyrosphere spin as the steam engine pumped the pistons faster and faster. The whirl of the spinning cogs reached fever pitch. She was tempted to pull the handle and let the machine kick in and take her off but at the last second, she pulled the Abort lever and let the machine slowly settle int...

The party was in full swing a grand celebration in a warm home, as a group of familiar friends and acquaintances gathered for food and drink, music and laughter, waiting and watching for Time to reboot itself, and another year, to be born with the rising of the sun, instead of just a new day or week. It was here, at this mundane gathering, when he approached the Veiled Woman with a drink in his hand. “You have a tear in y...

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900 *****  "The Queen is Dead! Long Live the King!" What more important change than the death of a sovereign. At least, for the nation. Perhaps not for individuals. The end of the Victorian Age. The beginning of the Edwardian period. Would this country continue to be successfully powerful, or would it pass into dust following past empi...

I started to run towards the only exit, my feet pounding against the metal sending out further ringing vibrations into the gloom. A swarming cloud of a thousand metallic red and yellow brass insects arose in front of me as I ran headlong into the buzzing horde each with its knife-like stinger aimed at my body. It would seem that everything in the universe was out to either crash into me or stick me with needles rather mak...

I came to the conclusion that the room must contain an Air Vent, after much searching I found it behind my bunk. I was able to wriggle my body inside, it was very tight and dark. Now that I had dealt with the Droid, I now just had to find a way out of my prison, and that would be easier said than done. Distant at the top of the air shaft was a faint light. I started to climb upwards. Towards my escape, hopefully towards s...

“We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.” Queen Victoria 1890. Tiredness overcame me and I drifted back towards the sullen inkiness of sleep. I knew then in my soul that something terrible had overcome the ship and its crew. Unless I found a way out of this grey room in which I had been confined for an uncertain period of time then the same fate would overcome me as well. I watched the Med...

The H.M.S Minerva Flashes of memory: hands pulling me from the wreckage. I dreamed of Queen Victoria floating in her cylinder of luminiferous ether, her black dress billowing slowly in the fluid. The fluid keeping her eternally alive. Her hands pressing against the glass, her mouth moving but her words made silent by the substantial dimension of the glass. Flashes of memory : distorted faces... When I awoke, I found mysel...

Her majesty’s martian colony -- New Victoria in the crown colony of Hellas -- 1917 My name is Gordon Arthur. My father was a well known importer and purveyor of Tea at New Victoria, where I was born. My grandfather was a miner and among the first colonists of Mars. During the original Nickel rush he managed to raise enough money to buy plots of land in Mare Serpentis which he made his fortune. I was sent at the age of six...