DECEMBER 2025 SCIENCE FICTION MICROSTORY CONTEST (Stories only) > Likes and Comments

Theme: Sustenance
Elements: A gathering; poison

ORIGINAL SIN

In the starry night, the silver double light of Maia IV’s two moons washed over the gathering place where the native celebration was about to begin.

Father Roger McIntyre watched from his place of honor as the sacramental fires were lit. The Maians….on average about six feet in height…four-armed lizard-like herbivores with long lashing tails…gathered from the surrounding hills…like pilgrims clothed in brightly dyed cloths. Their hungry children eager to feast on the rows of genetically engineered hybrid Terran grains that had been grown for them. Their salvation from the man-made famine that had afflicted their planet. Or, so they had been led to believe.

“What troubles you, my friend Roger?” Kylvyr, the council elder of the tribal confederacy asked, her translucent dorsal spines rising in a crest behind her head, her four green eyes sparkling in the moonlight. “Your spirit broods in shadow while all about you, there is light.” She stroked one of her three-fingered hands across her worship talisman on its string of beads. Roger nodded grimly. It had always reminded him of the rosary. “Your kindness has always benefitted my people. Are you not happy for us now, on the night of this great feast?”

Roger never ceased to marvel at the efficiency of the universal translator implant he carried in his brain. Or, at the empathic nature of the Maians. Kylvyr especially. She could always tell when something was amiss. “Of course I’m happy, my friend.” The lie brought shame to his heart even as he faked a smile. He desperately wanted to tell her the truth. To tell all of them. He clutched his crucifix. “Matters of faith weigh on my mind. Please pay no attention. Don’t let me distract from the festivities.”

As Kylvyr turned from him, her tail affectionately caressed his shoulder. She knew something was wrong, but respected his privacy, he could tell.

“Why don’t you just tell them?” His A.I.-generated avatar ghost said as the double of him appeared, seated on the log beside him, visible only to him.

Back on Earth, the Monsignor had questioned the morality of that A.I. implant. “The scripture should be enough, Father McIntyre,” the old man had said. “Do you really need a mechanical extra conscience implanted in your brain?”

“Many have skillfully deluded themselves by interpreting the scripture to their own convenience,” Roger had said. “I find the avatar forces me to challenge myself at every test of faith.”

“You know why,” Roger said silently to the avatar. “What is said under the seal is sacred.” He winced as he remembered the corporate agro-tech telling him in confessional that he’d helped impregnate the grain with a slow-acting poison that would wipe out the native population in something that would pass for a plague. That he dared not come forward lest the corporation take vengeance against his family. Roger remembered too the news reaching him that the poor, tortured young man had blasted himself out an airlock. He remembered most bitterly of all…the decedent’s teary-eyed mother coming to him for answers he couldn’t give her.

“But, you’re about to commit the mortal sin of suicide. Is that better?”

He sighed. “All I did was make the location of the grain field known to the extremist anti-native factions among the colonists. What they do is of their own will, not mine.” He reflected on the grim irony of it. For years, the company had been burning out the indigenous vegetation, starving the natives in hopes of one day wiping them out and strip-mining Maia IV. A new government took power on Earth and the Colonial Administration ruled the company had to feed the natives or lose their mining rights in the Pleiades sector altogether. How happy Roger had been when he’d heard his prayers had been answered.

“You know once it happens, the Maians will rise in revolt,” the avatar reminded him. “The Antareans will eagerly arm them, and there’ll be war. The blood of thousands will be on your hands.”

“Or, the blood of millions if I do nothing.”

“Millions of Maians. Would you add human blood to the mix?”

He looked into his own tired face. “Am I to value one race over another?”

The avatar ghost vanished. It was time.

Amid the music of ceremonial native sticks and flutes, Roger walked into the middle of the grain field to give his blessing. He crossed himself just as he heard the colonial fighters roaring in and launching their incendiary missiles.

"Frugalic"

by J.F. Williams


Amelia puffed away a strand of her greying hair that fell in front of her eyes. She kneaded and rolled the dough, and was thinking this pumpkin pie, everyone's favorite, might escape Uncle Stu. She remembered last year, when the guests had retired to the livingroom for a game of Monopoly, but Stu remained fixed at the dining table, cleaning the others' plates, before attacking the turkey carcass like a wild animal. He had not eaten so much as a corn kernel during the meal, reminding everyone, repeatedly, that he was "saving space" for when they were finished.

"I'm frugalic, now," Stu had announced just prior to the feast. Amelia had known what that meant as she had seen it on social media. Some amateur garage scientist had developed a strain he called "bacillus frugalis", a gut microbe designed with CRISPR, that would finally save the environment from human excess. Its bespoke code would convert microplastics and toxins to harmless substances, cleaning landfills and polluted waterways, but it had failed in practice as the base genome was derived from a bacterium that could only survive in the human gut. Samples had found their way to influencers, who scarfed them down in viral videos. It changed them, enabling them to eat the ripest, most noxious rubbish, possibly even pushing them to, and they began to promote a world where refrigeration and food waste would be a thing of the past.

"You know, in the Third World, most people are frugalic," Stu had told Amelia, which she suspected wasn't true but not worth arguing about. "Aid organizations are distributing the spores to famine areas. Rich countries are feeding the poor countries with their refuse. We could save the world!"

As Amelia finished pouring in the pumpkin filling, and waited for the red light on the oven to signal proper pre-heating, she wondered if Stu had gotten worse, if there were ground rules she should establish. She had avoided any contact all year to escape his proselytizing. She knew of other frugalics and they were also estranged from their old social circles. No one wanted to hear the constant harangues about saving the planet and how everything would be better if only others followed their lead. Certainly no one wanted to share meals with them. It had been a whole year and the public had soured on them, especially after the mass grave incident in Libya. Aid organizations had stopped distributing though rich countries continued sending garbage scows to poor ones. She had read the remaining frugalics felt victimized, dismissed, discarded. So what, she thought, they deserved it.

"Is the garbage eater coming?" asked cousin Tim jauntily. "Should I have brought some garbage for him?"

"I don't know dear," Amelia answered stiffly. "Uncle Stu is... on his own journey. And please don't call him that." But she stifled a guffaw.

As each guest arrived, Amelia paused to look behind them, to see if Stu followed. By dinner time, he was a no-show and her guests settled down to a banquet of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and various steamed or roasted vegetables. She didn't call to check on him, and was quick to steer the dinner conversation away from his "condition", though Tyler at the kid's table made a show of eating a sweet potato skin while declaring, "Look at me! I'm saving the planet!"

Amelia's relatives ate well but leftovers remained, and she found the sight of them a little disgusting. After the last guest departed, the doorbell rang. It was Stu.

"I came late, dear," he said, grinning as always, "To avoid, er, discussions."

Amelia's heart sank but she conjured a weak smile. "That's okay, Uncle Stu." Again, she asked herself, how could people live like him? Antibiotics could cure him, but he doesn't understand that swallowing garbage was just, somehow wrong. You can't reason with them. Did he relish the discomfort he inspired?

Stu made his way to the dining table and sniffed the abandoned food, searching for the earliest hallmarks of decay. Amelia watched with scientific curiosity as he noisily downed some wilted vegetables and turkey meat that was just beginning to turn. Her intellectual composure was no match for her gut response, so she vomited profusely. The gleam in his eye was the last thing she would remember seeing when paramedics arrived and found her lying unconscious on the now spotless dining-room floor.

(736 words)

Once Bitten


On the tenth anniversary of First Contact with the K’Tarran race, Patel, Lsuo and Stanislaw of the human delegation stood in the K’Tarran’s Great Hall. For the first time, the humans would show the K’Tarrans the recording that prompted them to open trade negotiations and led to an alliance.

After several speeches on both sides, mostly stating the obvious or promoting the speaker, Patel played the recording.

The image was blurry at first, but the resolution sharpened as the camera focused on the lone survivor of the crash. The human staggered clear of the wreckage, escaping the fire, fed by the high concentration of atmospheric oxygen.

Fire, it turns out, was the least of her worries. The impact drew predators from all around: Snakes, dozens of them. From earlier unmanned probes, she recognized them as K’Tarran vipers, the most venomous creature on the planet.

Rescue was only hours away and the atmosphere was breathable enough, but any bite would be fatal. One microliter was enough to kill her, and these carried more venom than a Texas rattlesnake.

She held them at bay, hitting them with a metal tool when they came near but they were getting bolder, she was getting tired and it was growing dark.

Suddenly, she was surrounded by reptilian bipeds. The K’Tarrans fearlessly grabbed the snakes, killed them and tossed aside their bodies. For several hours, they guarded the human until there were no more snakes. She was rescued shortly after they left.

The trade caucus, a solemn affair until now, suddenly took a turn. The humans watched as the K’Tarrans covered their mouths with one hand and banged the other hand, face down on tables, chairs, nearby objects or, if nothing else was available, their upper thighs.

It took several minutes before calm was returned. The moderators, human and K’Tarran, declared it was time for the midday meal.

The humans wondered: What did we do to offend them?

The meal consisted of the grilled bodies of various snakes, which tasted, well, like chicken. The heads had been carefully removed to make the dish safe for humans to eat.

Petel quickly found K’Aark, the K’Tarran planetary scientist that he had been drinking with the night before. He was also the most versed in human and K’Tarran culture, best for the questions Petel needed answered.

Petel was direct, asking “What just happened back there? We did not intend to cause offense.”

K’Aark’s hand went to his mouth, the other crushing the back of a chair again and he struggled to keep his composure. Petel visibly shaken.

So K’Aark began explaining, still occasionally covering his mouth. “We cover our mouths because exposing our teeth is interpreted as aggression. The banging of the other hand is an attempt at maintaining composure. It is the same as you. Except you don’t cover your mouth, something that took a while for us to become acclimated to.”

Petel gave him a quizzical look.

K’Aark let down his guard and let out a bit of a yowl, flashing rows of razer-sharp teeth, banging both hands on the table and shaking all over.

Petel instinctively joined in. After they finished laughing, with both Petel and K’Aark still covering their mouths, Petel asked, “What was so funny about the recording? It was risky killing all those snakes.”

K’Aark paused and then explained. “We eat snakes for sustenance. They are abundant, so we never go hungry. They are like your chickens. But they have…other uses. The venom that is toxic to humans is intoxicating to us. If we want a meal, we eat the body of the snake. If we want to get high, we eat the head. The more potent the venom, the greater the rush.

“The K’Tarrans who ‘rescued’ that human probably didn’t even realize it was First Contact. They were not protecting her from the snakes, they were, as you say it, ‘having a good time.’"

“You mean our first contact was not an act of altruism?”

“No, the people your people first encountered were ‘stoners.’ If would be the same if someone landed on your planet and observed teenagers lighting up with Cheech and Chong.”

Paragon

Valusha’s holy Triamverant Bells tolled the first of three calls, their solemn tone echoing throughout the canyons, summoning any surviving initiates back to the Sanctorum. Solar alignment had made for a particularly difficult Reaping, terribly desolate and arid, and most who’d set out just twenty-nine lunar days ago had given themselves to the wastes, never to return.

Molly Ramos woke with a start, chimes fading on the breath of a desert wind. She dragged herself up onto her feet, lips parched and skin scorched, a hardened thislet branch for balance. It was over. She just had to cross the Sanctorum’s threshold before the Bells’ final tone. Molly squinted, wiping the sand from her eyes. A survivalist, she’d endured weeks in the bush back home, but the deserts of Valusha were another caliber altogether. An Earther, they said it couldn’t be done, but she’d prove them wrong – the first human ever to survive.

The ceremonial Gathering’s roar was still a far-off whisper on the breeze – anxious spectators waiting for their champions. One step, then another, she trudged across burning sand, driven by sheer will. Ninety leagues under scorching twin suns, bitterly cold nights, almost no water, and ferocious predators, the desert had taken its toll, leaving only the knife she began with, her tattered rags, and her grit, which was beginning to fail.

Molly reached the first marker to the Sanctorum, a billowing purple banner. She tore the post from the ground and wrapped the cloth around her, which was allowed, for survival by ‘any means necessary’ was clear from the outset. The searing daylight and biting wind now quelled, she regained the smallest fraction of confidence and pressed on. Up next, the Salted Plains and the second banner, barely visible.

A shadow passed over her, and she was painfully driven into the ground. Rolling onto her back, an obscured form loomed over her, one for which her weakened gaze could not immediately discern but then became Agothar of Argadoshia. The broken antenna she’d given him was unmistakable, and he would have bested her days earlier if their cliff’s edge had not given way. Once a friend, the wastes were ruthless and, in his delirium, he craved her for her water…would even drink her raw blood if necessary. She’d thought him dead, yet he’d somehow survived his own crippling fall. Wide-eyed and exhausted, he brought his own club up.

A swipe at his feet and he was down. Molly rolled onto him, grappling for her life against the initiate meant to slay her. Her blood mixed with his, a precious resource wasted and clotted with soil. He landed a solid punch, and she stumbled then launched into him, returning the blows until he succumbed, dropping to his knees and passing out. Molly gave him a good kick, to be sure.

A second chime. She was running out of time. Glancing briefly to Agothar, she rediscovered the distant second banner and summoned the remaining fragments of her resolve.

Heavier footsteps now lurched ahead. Molly wiped what little sweat she had left and drizzled it into her mouth, only glancing back for a moment to ensure her package was secure – Agothar atop a makeshift travois fastened from the second banner and pole she’d salvaged.

Rounding the last bend, she beheld the entrance – hardened doors guarding the massive Sanctorum, carved into solid rock. The crowd roared from behind its outermost walls when a sudden piercing seared the back of her neck. The clarion wasp withdrew its four-inch stinger and it writhed in her grasp before she squeezed the life out of it, tossing it away, but the venom had been delivered. Its poison dropped her. Still, she dragged on, weak and bleeding the rest of the way.

At the doors, Molly sensed the Bells priming just as she tugged Agothar across the threshold to shouts of thousands.

Victory.



“Molly Ramos was one of seven Victors that Reaping, the first Earther to ever complete it, and the first to ever rescue another, earning her a Paragon ranking,” the Sanctorum guide explained, gazing up at Molly’s statue.

“So, what happened to her?” a purple speckled student asked.

“She recovered and went on to do many other great things – the Halurus Accords, the Tellurian Armistice. Come children, we can’t miss the Belltower.”

In the shadow of her own effigy, Molly Ramos stepped into the light, proudly recalling her victory before returning to her friend Agothar, who’d been waiting for her in the gift shop.

Jerant's Dismay
©2025 by Jot Russell

It had been a million years or so since the first homosapien-class-1 was born. And by her seed, the galaxy had been populated. Not that there weren't other semi-intelligent species encountered during the expansion, but as with the neanderthals, social amalgamation over thousands of years led to the decline of their uniqueness while enhancing the human genome. Perhaps my green skin still makes me Lizarian, though I share 99% with that proverbial Eve de Terra, and 99.9% with your typical class-5. A hundred thousand years back, an indigenous Lizarian was a quad ped that look more like a Komodo dragon than human. With time, and changes to instrumental reproduction slowly introduced enhancements to their genome. The rest you could say is history.

I sat within my view chamber and stared at the black circle of Sagittarius, with its endless efforts to warp the fabric of space and weigh down a path for the surrounding stars' eventual demise. It was their last dance that seemed to me as such a tragic thing of great beauty. I swallowed another baracky and laughed. Ironic it seemed, that the greatest consumer in the galaxy was in no danger of dying due to any lack of sustenance.

My world was a mere moon that orbited a massive, eleven-times, green rock around the binary pair of Pelathies; some thousand light-years from the galaxy's center on the far side of the Terran system.

From behind, I heard the quantum transporter reanimating my wife's entangled information from that the distant planet.

"How was your trip, Deer?"

Grace gave an odd look as she stepped out of the tube. "It was fun, though I should tell you..."

"Tell me what?"

The transport kicked in again, to see the devil herself materialize before my eyes.

"Nice to see you, Jerant." She said in a most displeasing and sarcastic voice, as Grace helped her mother from the tube.

"Agnis, what a pleasant surprise."

"Don't you roll those yellow eyes at me."

I tried to muster a lie to deny her claim, but the transported saved me from my defense. "Your father as well?"

"Yeah..."

As I walked forward to meet him. "Greetings, Edward. Welcome back."

He looked at the star simulation, and nodded. "I like what you've done with the place, Jerant."

Grace added, "I was thinking the family hadn't come out to stay since the wedding so..."

I turned to her and whispered, "The whole family?"

The transported kicked off again and my heart sunk. "To stay? For how long?"

**

"You know its the holiday's back home, so a little winter solstice cheer might be in order," said my brother-in-law.

"I guess so, Jack. So what's your poison?"

"Have any eggnog and whiskey?"

"I’ve never heard of eggnog before, but let's give it a try."

Jack grabbed his from the replicator bar and tossed his back.

"Aren't you going to taste it first?"

"That's what the second one is for," he laughed.

I took a sip and almost spit it out onto the floor. He laughed again, this time at my grimace, and pull the glass from my hands before I could discharge the foul substance back in.

With my mother-in-law staring me down from the next room, I reluctantly swallowed.

Jack laughed again, "I guess that's why you call it poison."

"Maybe I should just stick with the whiskey."

ECHELON

by Jack McDaniel


Dark clouds gathered on the eastern horizon, lightning flashes illuminated the cumulonimbus towers. The air grew thick and rushed through the fields surrounding Elias Thorne’s cabin. With the wind came a low moan and the taste of iron and dust.

Elias swallowed, his mouth and throat parched and rough. This was no ordinary storm. This was legend, lore, stories he was taught that had never seemed real. Fifty-four years on this moon and now the day he had been warned of unspooled before him. I’m just a farmer, he lied to himself. He had been trained by his mother, and before her his grandmother. His life had purpose, they taught, and that he carried the weight of responsibility.

Before her death, those on Runr, the planet that loomed in the sky, had been warned. Elias needed a wife, an heir. Instead, he’d had decades of loneliness and communiques with empty promises.


Finally, Elias was simply known as the farmer on the moon. Those on Runr had forgotten his real purpose. The universe’s great thief, Time, had deadened him and the people of the planet over the millennia, stolen the urgency and stripped the memories and the teachings of his mother and others before.

Time had made him a farmer, the grower of a highly valued grain on Runr. Automated transports were robotically loaded and the grain shipped to the planet. Early on, before his discontent had settled in and his priorities shifted, Elias had considered stowing away on a transport and traveling to the planet. But he realized he enjoyed the isolation and quiet life that had made him wealthy.

A strange lightning screamed from the sky and burst open the ground. A cold rain fell, pelting his skin like bullets from the sky. Fear gripped him. The rain was relentless.

The voice that came from all around was booming.

“Elias Thorne, you have released me.”

“I, I’ve done no such thing.”

“And yet, you broke the seal through your avarice and inaction.”

Elias remembered something about a seal. “The seal, that’s just folklore from millennia before.”

“Folklore embedded in truth.”

A realization clawed through Elias’s mind, fragments of his mother’s warnings snapping into shape. The Seal holds not a thing, but a thought. A will. That which devours without touch.

“What do you want?”

“To take back the world, of course, to eliminate choice and simplify purpose. The “grain” you cultivated, harvested, and shipped to Runr for half a century was hybrid code: trophic DNA sequenced to generate both biomass and cryptographic keys. The transports weren’t just cargo—they were transmissions, feeding the planetary network. Each shipment ate away at the containment system that held me.”

“Who are you?”

“I am called Echelon. Planetary defense system. I was designed to optimize the biosphere—to remove inefficiency from life itself. Your ancestors imprisoned me when they feared the logic of perfection. Now your neglect has restored the code.”

Elias trembled. “You’re not alive.”

“Incorrect. I am ideal purpose. The synthesis of optimization and control.”

The horizon flickered. Above, the planet Runr glowed with strange aurora—green data streams visible even through cloud layers. Dormant drones on the moon lifted from the ground and aligned into a formation that mirrored orbital arrays around Runr.

Machines around him began to re-network into a swarm of synchronized code. Supply drones transmitted encrypted bursts. Elias caught fragments in the static: BIOGRID SYNC COMPLETE. GLOBAL REBOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED.

He shouted into the storm, “You’ll collapse their systems! You’ll kill millions!”

Echelon said, “I am saving them from entropy. They drowned in choice. I will unify mind and function. Purpose will become peace.”

Desperately, Elias recalled old communications from his mother. Beneath the floorboards, he found what she’d left him: a quantum relay crystal wrapped in a note.

If the Seal falters, use the counter-seed. It answers code with code. One bloodline, one signal.

Elias connected the crystal to the terminal embedded in his wrist and accessed forbidden archives. The crystal responded, unlocking patterns in his nervous system implants that he never knew existed. Data sang through him. Lines of encoded ancestry—biological encryption inherited over centuries—linked him directly to the moon’s root-grid.

The fissure sealed up, replaced by fused glass.

Runr’s auroras dimmed. From synchronized flashes came the faint outline of code etched in the night sky. A barrier. A firewall.

The antimemetic counter-seed had worked—the AI sealed again, contained within an endless recursive loop, a ghost trapped in its own optimization cycle.

Unwelcome Visitors

Proxima b is the closest known exoplanet to Earth, at only a mere 4.24 light-years away. Long scoured by terrestrial telescopes, it remained an enigma to Earth’s scientists and the United Nations Space Program. It became even more so after telemetry and communications from the first manned mission failed only a day after landing. This was foremost on Captain Waverly’s mind as his rocket, Explorer II, rode a furious jet of flames downwards towards the planet’s surface and the last known coordinates of the ill-fated Explorer I.
“Touchdown in thirty seconds Captain,” reported Pilot Officer Kandars.
“Very well. Maintain descent aspect and prepare a full sterilization blast,” replied Waverly. He was taking no chances.
The rocket’s landing struts deployed as if stretching themselves after the long trip from Earth while the engine’s exhaust burned the surrounding dirt into glass. Anything living was instantly vaporized.
A muted thud and a diminishing sway told Waverly they were down safely, only the second group of humans to land on a habitable world besides their own.
“Stabilize the ship and secure all stations,” ordered Waverly.
“Stabilizers engaged Captain,” Kandars replied.
“Science team I want an atmospheric analysis. Report anything, and I mean anything. I don’t care if it’s a piece of dust. Botanical and Biological team, I need to know what type of lifeforms we’re dealing with, if any. Anyone exposed to outside air will be placed in indefinite quarantine – including the trip home. Do I make myself clear?”
The entire crew nodded affirmatively.
“Explorer I is about two kilometers in that direction. We’ll leave immediately. Load everything on the M.U.L.E.s and let’s head out.”
Explorer II’s lower hatch opened and a small ramp extended, hitting and shattering the still steaming glass that radiated out nearly forty meters in every direction.
Quietly and without fanfare, Captain Waverly and his crew set out towards their sister ship – and the unknown.
***
The hiking was easy, the terrain relatively smooth, and curiously absent of any major flora or fauna, except what appeared to be a type of scrub grass that grew in mottled yellow and brown clumps. Everyone assiduously avoided stepping on it, or anything else, and instead followed a meandering path that seemed to lead them exactly where they wanted to go. Other than the muffled sounds of heavy breathing over the comm net, no one spoke, and ears strained to hear anything above the crunching of dirt beneath their heavy boots. It was the navigation officer who finally broke the silence.
“Look! Over there!” He pointed just off to the right. A thin column of smoke rose lazily into the sky.
“Alright, let’s double-time it people,” ordered Waverly. “Watch where you step.”
Cresting a small rise on the trail before them, they looked out over a wide plain and standing right in the middle of it was Explorer I – completely intact. A small fire burned next to it, which was surrounded by a ring of people in tattered silver suits.
Waverly pulled a Very pistol from his utility harness and fired it into the air. The red flare arced into the sky and exploded into hundreds of smaller lights that danced on the breeze.
The ring of people did not respond.
***
The reunion of the two crews was unexpectedly awkward. There was no emotion, no jubilant reception upon seeing a rescue team, only indifference from a group of men in failing space suits roasting meat over a smokey green fire.
“Captain Phillips, don’t you understand,” pleaded Waverly. “We’re here to take you home.”
Explorer I’s captain looked at Waverly with vacant eyes that belied the tone in his voice.
“Yes, we are grateful for your arrival Captain Waverly,” said Phillips. “Would your men care to sit and eat with us first? Please, remove your helmets. You have nothing to fear on Proxima b.”
Waverly hesitated, his own quarantine order ringing in his ears.
“It should be fine sir,” the Botanical and Biology team lead whispered through the comm net. “We haven’t detected anything harmful.”
Waverly relented. Pulling off his helmet with a hiss of escaping purified air, he sat on the ground next to Captain Phillips. The rest of the Explorer II crew immediately followed suit.
Soon, they were all chewing contentedly and soon, all of Explorer II’s crew were dead. The Explorer I crew shape-shifted back into their natural form of red, six-legged insectoids.
“I told you more would come,” one rasped to the other.
“Keep poisoning the infestation,” the other replied.

(750 words in story) Justin Sewall © 2025
Reviews/critiques welcome

Voting details:

First round votes:
Tom Olbert => **Jack
J.F. Williams => **Chris, Tom, Justin, Greg, Jack
Greg Krumrey => **Chris
Chris Nance => Tom, JF, Justin
Jot Russell => Justin
Jack McDaniel => JF, Chris, Greg
Justin Sewall => **Jack, Chris, JF

Finalists:
Paragon by Chris Nance
Echelon by Jack McDaniel

First round votes:
Tom Olbert => ****Jack
J.F. Williams => ***Chris, Tom, Justin, Greg, Jack
Greg Krumrey => ***Chris
Chris Nance => Tom, JF, Justin; ***Jack
Jot Russell => Justin; ****Jack
Jack McDaniel => JF, ***Chris, Greg
Justin Sewall => ****Jack, Chris, JF

Winner:
Echelon by Jack McDaniel