by Keith Sicat

Aguirre wondered if these purple hints of violence on his knuckles matched better with his three-piece pin-stripe suit than his gaudy new belt buckle.  Coming from a brief black-site assignment outside of the Mega Manila Bio-Dome doing what used to be his favorite part of the job, he pondered if age was catching up with him.  

Roughing up dissidents was a young man’s game. Perhaps this was why the buckle was bothering him; the relentless reminder that he’s been downing too many premium off-world lagers.  No wonder he was eager to get his hands dirty again, catch a sniff of his former glory as a field agent.  Fisticuffs were fun!  Getting promoted to his glorified desk job meant the utter drag of wrapping your head around schemers and charlatans of all sorts.  The equations were so much simpler in the field; survive or die.  In this world of etiquette and fancy cutlery, you couldn’t assess whether you were actually surviving or being set up for your final meal.

Cesar Miguel “Miggy” Escaño loves playing all kinds of games: from videogames to boardgames and tabletop RPGs. He taught a subject called “Videogame Design and Theory” when he was a college teacher at the Ateneo de Manila. He’s a retro videogamer who pines for the old-school games he can never play again. He would like to believe that he was an expert in playing holen, shato, and sungka while growing up but it’s likely he wasn’t as good as he remembers. He’s always trying out new games for himself and his wife, for his children, and to play with his entire family.

Miggy first appeared in The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories Issue I Volume 3 in 2007 with his story “Tuko” that tackled bangungot or dying from a nightmare, and then returned in Philippine Genre Stories 2023 with a Muslim-Filipino futuristic world in  Sayf Al’Iiman.

by Cesar Miguel Escaño

Though he and his brother arrived early, Pedro felt he was late to the tournament. It was his first time to attend the National Sungka Championships, the most prestigious sungka competition in the country, though he had qualified for the turn-based game of strategy six years before. 

Better late than never, Pedro thought, as he surveyed the game tables and the competitors who had arrived before him. 

He counted 32 tables in total for 64 competitors, two competitors per table for a match. At this time before the tournament, the tables were empty. The sungkahan, the narrow wooden board used to play the game, would be distributed for each table twenty minutes before the start of the tournament to prevent players from tampering with any board before their match. 

Anne Carly Abad received the Poet of the Year Award in the 2017 Nick Joaquin Literary Awards. Her work has appeared in Apex, Mythic Delirium, and Strange Horizons, to name a few. Her first poetry collection, We’ve Been Here Before, is published by Aqueduct Press. Anne is also the sole proprietor of Art In Jewels and enjoys the aerial arts through Elite Aerial Arts.

by Anne Carly Abad

Webbed lines of electricity flitted across the Motherlode’s network of metal neurons. Evan thought it funny that despite all the rage about Live Vision, they were still using thumb drives to upload shows to Mother. He let his thoughts fly and tuned in to the broadcast, just to make sure the sound and video were good. The actors’ faces were clear. Volume was just right. No lag.

Okay, done. And he disconnected himself. The images dissipated into thin air. He handed back the thumb drive to Maia. He tried not to look at her face.

Maia took it from him, flinching at an accidental brush of their fingers. Their hearts raced in synch. I’m sorry! She apologized again, and again, and again, but never met his eyes. It was a mere touch. She didn’t need to act so guilty about it, thought Evan.

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