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Specimen
The emotional core of this story is McKayla’s relationship with her father, and that comes through more powerfully than the larger science-fiction premise. I especially liked how the clinical observers gradually learn to recognize fear, grief, rage, and finally a smile, while McKayla is forced to experience those feelings all over again. Her anger at being resurrected only to die again feels believable, and the choice she makes to return to the memory of her father gives the ending real tenderness. The final image of the observers struggling to identify her smile is quietly heartbreaking and neatly completes the story’s central idea. The dialogue is intentionally repetitive and mechanical, which suits the setting, though some of the exposition about the future arrives a little heavily. Still, McKayla’s voice and emotional progression kept me invested.
Marcus Reed
Worker Bee
The slow shift from Casey’s excited, almost starstruck first day to the unsettling realization that something is deeply wrong at MBS worked really well for me. Hugh’s introduction was especially memorable: the pen appearing from his palm is a funny little party trick, but the human blinking, skin, warmth, and mysterious smile make it much creepier than a visibly robotic reveal would have been. I also liked how the odd details—employees never eating, dusty expired snacks, cars with cobwebs—quietly build into a much bigger unease. The ending cuts off at a brutal moment, but it definitely left me curious about what MBS is really doing and where Kelly fits into it.
Ethan Walker
Specimen
A wonderful science fiction story, really more of a novella than a short story. The notion of humans—intelligent biological beings, that is—deliberately choosing to abandon their emotions is admittedly hard to believe. But as a literary device, it works beautifully.
Viacheslav Sannikov