Vote on winner for Open Your Eyes ARC!

Now it’s time to vote!  This poll will be online until the 10th. Most votes gets an ARC of Open You Eyes.  Enjoy!

Michelle Muenzler
The only really good thing about Tegatha V is the hurricanes. An annual planet-wide shitstorm of acid rain that makes a gooey mess of most everything, including those damn space sprites before they can hatch. Nasty things, space sprites. They’ll bore a bunch of one-inch holes through a ship hull, depressurize the whole thing before you even know you’re in a swarm. They love to swing about in orbit, hibernating in those damn shells of theirs, waiting on some signal to hit the surface again and shoot out a whole new generation faster than you can shove yourself out an airlock. A couple of federation-sanctioned miners have managed to dig in at the polar caps, but folk don’t last too long in them. Something in those razor winds drives a man mad, even hunkered behind three layers of buffered titanium and all the booze a man could want. But the ice–you don’t find ice like that anywhere else. Dig it up right, keep it cold, and it’ll sing like nothing else. So I’ve heard. Knew a guy who said it was like angels. Fuckin’ angels. Hung himself a few days later. Doesn’t seem particularly useful if you ask me, but what do I know? Whether it sounds like angels or is just some hyped up attempt to get something good out of that damned hellhole, I do know a man or two who’d kill for something larger than the fist-sized chunks they ship out to the federation labs. You interested in a cut?

R. Schuyler Devin
Axacellan, the discarded planet, the writhing sphere; a entomological monument to the folly of man. On the edge of a dying solar system, circling a decaying star; the only humans left are the poor, the ones without means to escape to the stars. Insect species purged from nine worlds thrive and ruin, conquer and decimate all that once made Axacellan unique, all that made her beautiful. Abandoned to the cold of space when her resources were exhausted, becoming a dumping ground for unsavory species, dangerous species that frightened, disgusted, and destroyed. Though Axacellan is a domain of danger and staggering death, it is also a testament to life: foreign species prosper and spread like plague, threatening all indigenous life and man. Forgotten world, life–exquisite and abominable, shall flourish in your ruins as planets slowly die. Ecologies crumble, symptomatic of what was taken away, and can now be found creeping through the dust of Axacellan

Jesse Bullington
When Tetrapous was freshly born from its synthetic sunwomb, the acidic seas were diligently supplied by the denizens with all the nutrients necessary to feed the planet and thus sustain both the atmosphere and the life-enabling it gases kept sealed within. As civilization ran its course, however, the Star Gods either moved on to new and distant systems or became simple Star Queens, and then, eventually and irrevocably, mundane royalty upon the planet their ancestors had bred. The myriad sentient races they had populated it with to fulfill a variety of functions began to change in ways their long-since devolved creators had not envisioned, and wars began to spread across the fleshy, porous continents even as new technology eclipsed the forgotten lore that created the planet. Now, even as an amphibious race of burgeoning astronauts take to the stars, an alliance between the royal family and the intelligent species they most resemble-—save for being bipedal and lacking fur—-strive to restore order by descending beneath the surface and locating the brain hidden at the planet’s core. With the proper surgery, the scientists claim, the planet itself could be easily controlled—-meaning balmy climes for the faithful, tidal waves and tempests for the rebellious. But the world has suffered much already, its mountain-bones mined to the marrow and its vein-canals choked with toxic refuse, and the bruising, sickened planet screams its hurt out to the stars in hopes its mothers may yet hear its cry and return to heal it…

Bernard
TERROR PLANET 666666.666666 an cliche evil forboding hums on anyones deepspace sonar (sonar? radar? what century are we in man, the five hundred and sixth century!) telling anyone so foolish as to approach that here is a blasted space, filled with the remnants from a thousand dead religions and their thousand forked tongue/multi-horned/leaking eyes devils and demons. billions of now out-of-work evil spirits, their former religions blown away by the all-reaching ever knowing gods of the new truth. devils, demons, satans methusalahs and all their kind slowly found themselves to be without terror, former priests and worshippers had abandoned their old faiths and old gods, and with them went their evils, all to terror planet 666. if you want to feel guilty, set a time-warper-drive to their radar sonar sector and pray the new truth doesn’t skin you alive.

Willow Fagan

The sky of Snake’s Heart is a green writhing tapestry of shimmery serpents. Everyone in that world has three faces, and the sons and daughters of the Great Houses are renowned across many worlds as seers and finders of secrets. It is said they can not only see into past, present and future simultaneously but also hold within their minds multiple perspectives at once, as easily as those with two hands hold multiple objects in their grasp. The most skilled in such matters easily pick their way through the curved streets of Serpentarius City and are granted seats in the Temple of Signs and Crossroads. There, they dreamburrow their way deep into the earth, seeking the tangled shape coiled at the center of Snake’s Heart, the shape that holds the world together and promises to answer any riddle. But the promises of Snake’s Heart, and the children of Snake’s Heart, are not to be trusted.

Natania

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