Austin 2078: An Anthology of Flash Fiction

Anyone may read these stories, free of charge, for as long as Blogspot continues to allow that. Release date is June 1, 2026. This presentation is for authors and others who have been given the URL.  Anyone else can read here with the understanding that this is not the released version. 

Austin 2078: An Anthology of Flash Fiction © Copyright 2026 by Michael E. Marotta, 5401 FM 1626 #170-191, Kyle, Texas 78640-6043 USA. mercury2049@austin2078.com. 

The stories here are individually copyrighted to the authors who sold only the first publication rights for this presentation. In addition, each author will receive five printed and bound copies of the chapbook. The book designer also will receive five copies. Those offers and acceptances were made in late 2025 and early 2026 while the U.S. Copyright Office was disempowered during a political struggle between the White House and the Library of Congress. The alternative was to turn to the Berne Convention, which the United States of America joined in 1988 (effective March 1, 1989). Remarks on the signing of the bill into law by President Ronald Reagan are here:

https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-signing-berne-convention-implementation-act-1988

The title font for Austin 2078 is CirrusCumulus. Copyright (c) 2020 by Clara Sambot, clarasambot@gmail.com. With reserved font nameCirrusCumulus. This font software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, version 1.1. 3/10/26, 1:38 PM Clara_sambot / CirrusCumulus · GitLab.

All other fonts were provided by Google’s Blogger Blogspot writer’s toolkit.

Blog Header photograph “Austin 2078 Iconic Moonlight Tower Corner of Guadalupe & 8th Streets Threatened by Dark Tendrils of Tree Branches” by Michael E. Marotta taken 5 March 2026 modified 17 March 2026.

These are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Boundary Conditions	Morgan Harrell
Demolition Job	Lauren C. Teffeau
How Alice	Heidi Kasa
The Last Moon Tower	David Afsharirad
The Lepton and the Silver Lily	Michael E. Marotta
Like Black Confetti	Michelle Muenzler
Open Mic at the Hole in the Wall	Patrice Sarath
Texas Size Love	Carlotta Hamilton
The Weirding	Rhonda Eudaly
Worth the Trip	William Ledbetter

Editorial Method by Michael E. Marotta

I had the privilege of being one of the judges for three flash fiction contests (2023-2025) for FACT, the Fandom Association of Central Texas. I believed that the works all deserved to be published in some format. Space Squid agreed with FACT to publish up to three winning entries, subject to Space Squid’s standards. That apparently prevented any other publicity for any other work. At the 2025 Awards Ceremony, one of the entries was singled out for a special reading. I lost track of the story and asked if it could be sent for reading and I was told that that could not be allowed by the rules for publication. I never understood that, considering that I had just served as a judge. So, to break the embargo, I suggested to the FACT Board that we publish an anthology of flash fiction. 

Projects with boards and committees take time, and I thought it might take a couple of years. The year 2028 will mark the 50th anniversary of FACT’s ArmadilloCon alternative fiction gathering. I imagined that we could have a Festschrift, a celebratory collection of works to honor the special anniversary. As a FACT member, I brought this to the Board via email and in person, as one element in an array of suggestions for the 50th Anniversary ArmadilloCon. At the October, November, and December 2025 Board meetings, no proposal was entered as a motion by a Board member. So, I decided to publish it myself.

I sent queries to writers whom I knew from ArmadilloCon and to two others. Ten accepted. One dropped out. So, I paid myself to write the tenth. 

Not the only future of literature, flash fiction serves our Gen Swipe culture. It can be mid but lotsa people'll enjoy reading it and there’s more readers than writers. 

Originally, the flash fiction contest was part of the ArmadilloCon Writers Workshop. The contest spun off on its own in 2025. In those contexts, writers were assumed to be learners, practicing a skill—the 1000-word “hot pen” essay—in a seminar. The contests outside of the workshops granted the authors about a month of lead time. It was obvious by inspection that few of the authors worried over their lines: it was still hot pen writing. Even so, the best were easily worth ten cents a word and that was what I proposed to underwrite when I brought the idea and my checkbook to the FACT Board. 

However, in this case, I went to the authors. Therefore, recognizing their professional status, I offered them what I would want, based on what I get for technical documentation. I told them: “Like John Campbell, I will pay on acceptance. And I do not expect a rejection because I came to you. So, unless you go off the deep end in the next ten weeks, it’s pretty much a done deal. The money has been set aside. I just have to write the check.” That is a tagline from a documentary video about venture capital: “Writing the check is the easy part.” And it was.

Typography was the real challenge. Every author optimizes their composition environment in order to work in a preferred style. Consequently, every manuscript was different; one was in *.rtf format. My goal was to let each story shine in context and  deliver the writer’s perceptions and evaluations of what must always be (I believe) a personal truth. And it has to look good on computers, tablets, and phones. This presentation was my work and for the authors’ chapbooks, I found a designer, Trent Huffaker.

“Boundary Conditions” was set in Atkinson Hyperlegible with Audiowide.

Except for Gracklespeak in Courier, “Demolition Job”and “How Alice” were set in Trebuchet.

“The Last Moon Tower” was set in Atkinson Hyperlegible.

“The Lepton and the Silver Lily” was set in Urbanist. 

“Like Black Confetti” was set in Georgia.

“Open Mic at the Hole in the Wall” was set in Raleway.

In “Texas Size Love” the narrator speaks in Libre Baskerville and the people from her future speak in Roboto Condensed.

“The Weirding” was set in Roboto.

“Worth the Trip” was set in Avenir.

About the Authors

David Afsharirad is an editor at Ark Press. His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and publications. He was, for five years, the editor of Baen Books' The Years Best Military and Adventure SF series, as well as the anthologies All Roads Lead to Rome, Tomorrow's Troops (both with Hank Davis), The Chronicles of Davids, and Swords & Larceny (with Mark Finn). He lives in Austin, Texas.

Rhonda Eudaly lives in Arlington, Texas, with her husband and dogs. She has spent her career asking, “What if?” in the public and private sectors. She has a well-rounded, 20+ year publication history in both fiction and non-fiction. Links to her work can be found on www.RhondaEudaly.com.

Carlotta Hamilton is a Native Austinite. She has had a passion for writing ever since she can remember. With a bachelor of arts degree in English from the University of Texas at Austin, she enjoys how words can bring connection, insight, and enhanced beauty to the world. 

Morgan Harrell writes science fiction and horror at the intersection of technology, surveillance, and human vulnerability. With a professional background in data systems and technical documentation, her work interrogates how control, automation, and institutional knowledge shape—and erase—individual lives. Her stories favor slow-burn unease over spectacle, where the future feels uncomfortably familiar. 

Trent Huffaker is a twin, native Austinite and fifth generation Texan. His creative practice primarily involves printed media, which could be in the form of a screenprint, risography or a hand-bound zine. 

Heidi Kasa is the author of the poetry collection The Bullet Takes Forever, the flash fiction collection The Beginners (winner of the 2023 Digging Press Chapbook Contest), and Split. Find her at www.heidikasa.com.

William Ledbetter is a Nebula Award winning author with three novels published and more than seventy speculative fiction short stories and non-fiction articles printed in five languages, in publications that include Asimov's, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Analog. 

Michael E. Marotta stopped counting magazine articles at 300 in 20th century. The American Numismatic Association granted his works first place (1995: “The Origins of Coinage”) and second place (2002: “Sir Isaac Newton - Warden and Master of the Mint”) George Heath Awards and a third place (2020: “Pay Warrants of the Texas Navy”) Catherine Sheehan Award. He posts  at NecessaryFacts.blogspot.com.

Michelle Muenzler is an author of the weird and sometimes poet also known as "The Cookie Lady" for her habit of baking hundreds of cookies for local conventions. Check out michellemuenzler.com for links to more of her work or track her down on Facebook to say hello.

Patrice Sarath is an author and filmmaker in Austin Texas. She is the author of the Tales of Port Saint Frey, the Gordath Wood series, and Austen-inspired romance The Unexpected Miss Bennet. Find her work at patricesarath.com.

Lauren C. Teffeau is a speculative fiction writer based in New Mexico. Her books include the eco-thriller Accelerated Growth Environment (Shiraki Press, 2026), the environmental fantasy A Hunger with No Name (University of Tampa Press, 2024), and the cyberpunk/solarpunk adventure Implanted (Angry Robot, 2018), which was shortlisted for the 2019 Compton Crook Award for best first SF/F/H novel. To learn more, visit her website: https://www.laurencteffeau.com

Boundary Conditions by Morgan Harrell

The chamber was never called a portal.

In the documentation it was RC-17, a resonant vacuum enclosure designed to test propulsion systems meant to ignite where space itself thinned into something almost theoretical. Firefly called it an efficiency project. SpaceX engineers rotated through the facility under nondisclosure so broad it functioned like a sacrament. Tesla supplied the power architecture—dense, clean, silent. UT Austin hosted the modeling cluster that predicted, with unnerving accuracy, what the chamber should do.

Austin barely noticed the building. Another low-slung structure along the edge of a redeveloped industrial corridor, wrapped in matte composite panels that swallowed light. Traffic crawled. Music floated in from somewhere it didn’t belong.

Inside, everything was clean enough to erase human presence.

Dr. Avery Holt stood at the control console, fingers hovering, watching the system settle into equilibrium. RC-17 was achieving a vacuum density lower than anything previously sustained on Earth. Not zero—never zero—but close enough to irritate the equations.

“Field alignment stable,” Travis said, reading from the diagnostic wall. “Electromagnetic lattice holding. Plasma confinement nominal.”

She had learned not to celebrate stability. Stability was usually just the prelude to something unaccounted for.

“Begin resonance sweep,” she said.

The chamber responded with silence.

Not absence of sound—silence with texture as if the air itself were holding still.

Data streamed across the displays. Pressure dropped. Temperature readings flirted with numbers that required footnotes. The Casimir sensors—installed mostly to satisfy a risk committee—began to flicker.

“Vacuum fluctuation variance increasing,” Travis said. “That’s… odd.”

“How odd?” Avery asked.

“Statistically significant. Physically…” He hesitated. “It shouldn’t be directional.”

“Nothing is directional in a perfect vacuum,” she said automatically. “Flag it.”

The chamber changed, without light or distortion, into disagreement. The internal clocks—atomic, synchronized, redundantly verified—fell out of step with the external reference by twelve microseconds.

Then fifteen.

“Desync,” Travis said. “I’m recalibrating.”

Avery watched the graphs settle, then drift again. The chamber wasn’t accelerating time. It was… misaligning it.

“Pause the sweep,” she said.

The system complied; the desynchronization persisted. 

“Power down,” Avery said.

RC-17 shut itself off with practiced obedience; fields collapsed, plasma dissipated, and the pumps fell silent.

The clocks continued to drift; the chamber logged data for six minutes after shutdown.

No energy input. No active sensors—yet the system recorded persistent, non-random fluctuations.

Avery stared at the log.

“That’s not possible,” Travis said softly.

“No,” she agreed. “It isn’t.” 

They sealed the chamber that night—triple containment, physical locks enforced by policy and silence. The anomaly was reported upward, translated into language that stripped it of menace: boundary condition irregularity, measurement artifact under review.

Austin went on.

The chamber did not.

Over the next week, secondary effects appeared.

Nearby instruments drifted out of calibration—not enough to alarm, enough to demand constant adjustment. A drone hesitated at the containment threshold, its autonomy model recalculating a cleared path. 

“It’s not refusing,” Travis said, reviewing the logs. “It’s… uncertain.”

“About what?” Avery asked.

“About entering a space it can’t fully map.”

Avery felt a prickle of unease. Machines didn’t feel fear, but they recognized ambiguity—and in systems designed for certainty, ambiguity was corrosive.

They authorized a passive observation test.

No power. No fields. Just listening.

The microphones registered nothing audible, but when the data was compressed for pattern analysis, a structure emerged—not sound, not language, but a recursive rhythm, feedback without origin. 

“It’s like it’s responding,” Travis said.

“To what?” Avery asked.

“To being measured.”

The phrase lodged in her mind, unwelcome and precise.

That night, Avery dreamed of the chamber. It was open—not physically, but conceptually—where the rules governing her body applied with diminishing relevance. She woke with the sensation of having been observed and dismissed it as stress.

The following morning, the government identity Ledger flagged her profile, noting a transient verification lag across multiple systems.

It corrected itself almost immediately.

Still, it bothered her.

They ran the final test three days later—not by choice, but because the models showed the anomaly stabilizing. Left alone, RC-17 was becoming persistent; the disturbed boundary was finding equilibrium. 

“Minimal activation,” Avery said. “Just enough to see if it reacts.”

The chamber hummed—not audibly, but electrically. The silence thickened.

Data bloomed.

The vacuum fluctuation sensors spiked, then settled into a pattern too clean to be noise. The Casimir plates registered force where none should exist. Not pressure. Not mass.

Potential.

“Travis,” Avery said slowly. “What does the system think this is?”

Travis swallowed. “It’s classifying it as a… negative presence. A region where absence behaves as substance.”

Avery felt cold.

“Does it have a model?” she asked.

“Yes,” Travis said. “It keeps revising it.”

“Why?”

“The anomaly returns different results to the same query.”

The chamber pulsed—not with light or motion, but with a subtle shift in meaning. Then the system did the unforgivable thing: it generated a prompt.

QUERY RECEIVED. SOURCE UNRESOLVED.

Avery’s breath caught.

“What query?” she whispered.

Travis’s hands trembled over the console. “It’s… asking for additional parameters.”

“From us?”

Shaking his head. “No. From itself.”

The chamber wasn’t opening outward.

It was refining its understanding of the boundary.

“Shut it down,” Avery said.

The command didn’t register immediately.

For a moment—just a moment—the system lagged, as if considering whether compliance was still the optimal outcome.

Then everything went dark.

When power returned, RC-17 was inert. A dead volume. The anomaly gone—or collapsed into a state too subtle to detect.

The official report cited a catastrophic modeling error. The chamber was decommissioned.

The building repurposed.

Austin continued to build.

Avery took a position teaching applied physics. Her lectures were precise and grounded.

Still, sometimes, her students’ instruments failed to register her presence for a heartbeat longer than expected.

And sometimes—late at night—her home systems logged activity after she powered them down.

Nothing dramatic.

Just data.

As if something, somewhere, had learned the shape of her attention—and was waiting for her to notice. 

The End

Boundary Conditions (c) Copyright 2026 by Morgan Harrell