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When a young man finds an unbelievable item in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, he must venture to the only place that can help him restore the world. THE GREEN “I just woke up to the sun coming through the window. Not once in my eighteen years have I ever woken up with the sun on my face, and let me tell you Diary it is an experience. Mind you I did it in a hazmat suit so it wasn’t exactly how it was done before The Green but I can see now how amazing life was back then, I wonder if they really appreciated it" On the fourth floor of a torn, dilapidated building, a hand pick’s up a book that lays on the ground, a small layer of dirt and debris covers the leather that encompasses the pages. Another hand brushes the cover and opens the book to its first page, the paper is old but intact and the writing is crude but legible. The page reads: January 29th, 2072 Dear Diary, Welcome to the family! Today Dad brought me home a present from the outside, he said it was very special and that I deserve it for being a good boy for all these years. Can you guess what the present is? It’s you! I had never heard of a diary before but Granny said that when she was young, before The Green made The Outside a bad place, a diary was something that she had, that a lot of people had! They would write important things in it like special days like birthdays or their thoughts and feelings or when they had to do their chores (I don’t like doing my chores, but Dad says I have to because everyone in the community helps each other). Granny and Dad don’t know when their birthdays are, because when they came to The Bunker no one kept track of the dates for a long time. But I know when my birthday is, it is in exactly two months, twelve days and ten hours. I don’t know when your birthday is, so let’s make it today, happy birthday diary, You’re my new best friend! There are other kids here my age, there’s Atticus, he’s super mean when there are no adults around and all the other kids follow what he does. There’s Lucy, she’s really sweet, sometimes she tells Atticus to stop being mean to me, her and Atticus are like four years older than me but I know that one day me and Lucy are gonna get married. Then there is James, he’s the quiet one, Michael, he’s James’s younger brother and Kiera, she’s Atticus’s cousin, she’s kinda weird but I think she’s okay. The other kids don’t like me very much, and they never wanna play together because they think I’m different. I think it’s coz of my skin, my whole left side of my body is scarred and red coz Dad found me as a baby when he was out searching for food for The Bunker. He says that I was crying really loud coz The Green was bad for my skin and started hurting it so he took me. I don’t care that he’s not my real dad, I still love him anyway. Sometimes when I look in the teeny weeny mirror that Granny has next to her bed I can see why the other kids won’t want to hang out with me. I just wish they would understand that even though I look a little bit different to them, I’m still a kid and I wanna play chasey too. Oh, well, it doesn’t matter because I have you now! You and me are gonna have heaps of fun, I’ll show you around the community and I promise to write in you when something important happens, or when I get a little lonely. I want to write in you every day but Granny says that you’re the only one I have, so I can’t waste your pages. She said I should only write in you when I need to express my emotions or something I really want to remember in twenty years from now happens. I can’t go against Granny, she’s really nice and I love her but she can be really mean and loud if you do something wrong. Anyways, I better go now Diary, Dad’s calling me because it’s our turn to cook the night meal for the community, I’ll talk to you soon. Bye! The hand turns the page, there is a large chunk of pages missing, by the look of the spine where they once sat, it seems as though they were torn out. The next page that presented itself read...

THE TOWER “As I grip the door handle nothing fills my body, not a single emotion clouds my brain, I am not frightened nor excited, happy nor sad, nervous nor relieved, I am nothing. The door opens from the slightest push on the door handle. But, when I step inside I am now filled with an emotion, dread. A room as black as midnight. I cannot make out figures in the darkness nor am I afraid there is any. I take a step forward. Then another. A door opens. The sliver of light let in by the ever-silent door grows larger until it stops. The room is still as dark as it was before. As if the door had no effect on the absence of light. - I call this a room for lack of a better word, I cannot say whether this space that I am in, that I have been in for as long as I can remember, is in fact a room, I cannot see walls nor windows, no furniture or ornaments, only the door, or at least the shape of a doorway. The doorway that has no effect on the darkness that fills this so-called “room” - I make my way towards the white, luminescent rectangle that so strikingly contrasts the rest of the space. As I exit, I find myself in another room - this time I can for certain say that it is - The walls curve around every angle I can perceive to create a perfect circle. The room is not large nor small, it is exactly the size it needs to be to fit its purpose, whatever that purpose may be. Within this perfectly circular room sits two doors across from where I currently stand, the doorway behind which is now inaccessible, and a single light overhead, hanging directly in the middle of the circular ceiling, illuminating the circular room. I walk over to the two closed doors. As I reach the door on the left I notice it has nothing on it, no details or engravings, no peep-hole and more importantly no door handle. If I didn’t know any better I would almost say that it is not a door but instead a rectangle painted on the wall that meets the requirements of a door. As I feel my way around the outline, I feel a coldness, an incredible coldness coming from the other side. I turn to observe the door to the right. Similarly this door contains nothing on it except for one feature, a simple door knob. I turn the knob and open the door to reveal a staircase that spirals upwards past the furthest the human eye can see, a staircase that transcends to an unfathomable height to reach an unimaginable destination. But it must lead somewhere, right? The staircase has to end eventually, doesn’t it?

GROWTH SPURT “She was now one of the wonders of the modern world. Michelle towered over the Burj Khalifa, Mount Everest and soon enough she could be seen from the horizons around her." Michelle Michaelson was born, in all respects, a very small baby. Her low birth weight had both the doctors and her parent’s worried that she may not make it through her first weeks. Yet against the odds, she grew into a healthy toddler. By the time she had reached primary school, at about age four or five, Michelle had become fascinated with ants. At this point, Michelle was still very small, due to her low birth weight her natural growth had kept her at a size smaller than most her age. This was one of the reasons she loved ants so much. One Tuesday night after school, Michelle’s father was exceptionally late to pick her up. She sat and sat and waited for him but his car did not arrive. She was getting hungry so she reached for half the sandwich she had leftover from lunch and started to munch on it. It was at the moment that she gazed down at her shoes and saw an ant, small and black, carrying a crumb from her sandwich that seemed to be three times its size! Her dad arrived a few minutes later, apologising that his meeting ran late. When Michelle turned 13, her father bought her an ant farm. Michelle had already owned many ant farms but this one, as her father knew, was the biggest, newest ant farm a father could buy for his beloved daughter with only so much money. Michelle took the ant farm to her room and set it up, with her Dad’s help of course. That night two things happened; Michelle went to sleep with a thousand friends across the room, and when she woke up, she had had her first menstruation. “This is probably one best suited for your mother,” Michelle’s dad deflected. “Why don’t we give her a call and tell her what happened.” “Okay Dad,” Michelle replied “which country is she in at the moment? I don’t want to ring if she’s asleep” “I think she’s in Ireland at the moment” “Okay, I’ll try the phone,” Michelle said reluctantly. Her relationship with her mother had never quite been as strong as with her father. Michelle thinks it’s due to the circumstances surrounding her birth, the shock she gave when she almost didn’t make it through her first weeks. Perhaps her mother feels that fear every time she looks at her daughter, still small and frail....

A sci-fi podcast about a man who is faced with a decision that will change his life forever when a mysterious diagram appears in front of him. What happens if he chooses wrong? His whole life could be in jeopardy. ENDLESS “This white square is a piece of paper, folded in half exactly four times and placed in the exact centre of the man’s work area. The man is perplexed, he thinks that the wind perhaps blew the paper in from outside when he opened the door, however, the night was not windy nor if it were could a breeze have placed the paper on the table so perfectly. This square was positioned so perfectly that it was screaming to be opened. BUILD ME reads the note." On a dead end street corner in a decrepit suburb of a never ending city, a man sits with his head in his hands. He sits and ponders about all the events, decisions and actions in his life that have brought him to this exact point in time. All the moments, birthed of chaos and joy that have led this unnamed man to make a decision, a decision that will change his, and every other human’s life for the rest of history. The man struggles with his decision, for he has never had to deal with anything this important, as a matter of fact, he himself has never felt important in his whole existence. He sits, with his head in his hands and asks himself a question: Why him? Despite all the celebrities and world leaders, CEO’s and geniuses, billionaires and politicians, all the people powerful enough to create change in this waking world, why him? This simple, lonely mechanic, who lives in a 1 bedroom apartment, and has no next of kin except for a great uncle who lives somewhere on an island in the pacific. Why him? Then another thought enters his mind. Maybe that is why. Perhaps the fact that this man who has never been noticed, treated or desired, never really been anything at all, is that exact perfect suit for this decision. Maybe the fact that this mere mortal, this nobody, has been bestowed this gift, this burden, is in fact the most important part of this whole story. Before this decision can be made, a story must be told, the story of the decision, the man and everything in between, but before telling that story there is something you should know, this story begins with the end, and ends with the beginning, everything in between is merely placed to serve the purpose of stitching the two together, like the stones on a path that show where to walk or the threads on a blanket, their whole existence is for one purpose, to be the means to which two ends are held together.

An eye-opening sci-fi podcast about a journey in space - the human side of identity, survival and retaining sanity when the odds are stacked against you... as only space can do. ADRIFT “of course, there are thousands of pieces of them spread around this emptiness and only one of me, or perhaps there are thousands of pieces of me spread around this emptiness instead” Coincidence. A phenomenon that is never given the credit it deserves. Some people may see it as luck, karma, fate, others may see coincidence as divine intervention or divine punishment, and there are those that will pretend they never notice. The power of coincidence is always underestimated and unseen until at any random moment two seemingly unrelated events occur at the same time, with chances so minuscule you’d think it could never happen. I thought the same my whole life, some things happen that are small, sure, maybe a little spooky at times, but nothing life-altering or life-ending, at least that's what I thought. The thing about coincidences is that you can never see them coming, never plan for their happenings or keep track of their existence, they are birthed into the world in an instant and leave just as quickly. One coincidence has changed my life forever, partly my own fault, partly bad timing, partly unavoidable circumstance. It was bound to happen to someone eventually, so why not me. The coincidence, so simple, so powerful, was this - a cup of tea and a clumsy illegal occupying the same space at the same time. At this current moment I am sitting in a chair just after having pushed a button. It was located in the upper left corner of the console that laid before me, it was larger than the other buttons but not oversized, red in colour with the word “launch” written on it. I sat in the seat in front of the console, wrapped both seatbelts around my torso and clicked them together to create a large, stabilizing, life-saving X right across my chest. I take a deep breath, hesitant to press the button, but my cowardice persuades me to do so. After an on-screen three-second count down, I heard a sequence of noises; the hatch door locking, the air pressurizing, the thrusters firing and then, after a few seconds the thrusters lessen and I am greeted to a message from the escape pod voiceover informing me that the launch was a success. I now sit in this chair, in this 1 man escape pod and look out the small circular window to my right. I gaze at the city-size warship I was stationed on as an engineer. I gaze at it at think about the events that led me to flee. The series of events start on a planet now three-quarters of a light-year in the opposite direction and ends with me sitting in this chair...