Beyond The Spectrum

2025-2026 Apprentice group, anthology

This is the anthology of the 2025-2026 Beyond the Spectrum, Apprentice Group led by Nell Osborne (lead writer) and Careese Hutchinson (shadow writer). Thank you, Nell and Careese for your support and inspiration.

Thank, as well, Beyond the Spectrum team; Rebecca, Sophie and Pippa, your work behind the scenes goes often unnoticed but we know you are there to support us.

Finally, an enormous thank you to every attendee of this group, for creating a secure community, allowing our creativity to flourish.

An Underdog’s Code

They say if you can’t explain it to a pup,
you don’t get it yourself.

That it’s not the size of the dog in the fight;

It’s the size of the fight in the dog.

For big dogs don’t bark.

And a wolf doesn’t need to howl
to prove it’s a wolf.

When you’re going through heck,
keep going quietly.

No one ever dies from a loud bark.

Roam from town to town,
face the bullies.

Every quiet dog
still has teeth.

By Gray Rogers

Do Humans Dream of AI Art?

You wake up screaming.

Was this reality, or a dream?

Was your mum’s legs melting?
Or did you just never notice that mole at a young age?

After that, it came and went, on and off.
Nightmares are terrifyingly real.
Things are going disastrously wrong.

The more you tried to do “right” in the real world,
the more vivid the nightmares became.

Surely, they had meaning.
Why else did you buy that dreamguide?

The worst dreams:
hearing a bomb go off,
and waking up,
unable to move from the spot.

Now, you spend days looking at AI art,

both repulsed and intrigued.

AI was once a dream.
Now it manifests in art.

The dreams are vivid, colourful —
The next step must be to record them somehow.

A 3AM wide-a-awaker now.
Always on the dot,
or every two hours.

They say dreamers used to use this time productively.
A quick sonnet,
a sketch that enchanted billions.

If you lived alone, you probably would.
But you spend it trying to prove to yourself
there is nothing in the dark,
nothing hiding in the hallway,
nothing standing outside.

A light helps.
…From what you remember,
It always helps.

By Gray Rogers

Night of the Space Rain

Originally published in Snoozine Vol 2. Dream Cosmos Dec 2024

They have been around since the sun.

The inspiration behind fairies and flying saucers.

In a photo, you’d think it was rain.

Now scientists know the truth. “Space rain” exists.

A rare natural event,

similar to the northern lights, also a blessing to have witnessed.

Like snow it needs the right conditions.

Still, I was there.

As I stood outside that night,

I saw stars in the sky,

although it was too cloudy.

Soon it’s like a billion tiny dots zizzing in zigzaggery yonder.

Falling, when under the streetlights, they shine brighter,

moving slower than snowflakes, more steady then leaves.

They are upon me now. With nervous jitters I reached up for one,

But, like a glowworm it sought me out.

Into my palm,

warm like a candle light,

yet no pain nor poisoning.

I look into it,

realising this, is a light not made by man. A gift from the universe in my very hand.

But it is not mine to own. I reach up and it flitters away,

to “home.” I don’t care where.

I feel peace,

and I call it love and pride,

while scientists call it a “Xenology phenomenon.”

By Gray Rogers

The Architecture of Overflow

I entered the world excited
to see it all,
to feel it all,
wanted to live it all,
this delicious buffet of life.
I was born with a mind that runs
as fast as it can,
searching with greedy hands
for the joy of it all,
bursting with every piece I find.
But I was also born with a mind
where I persistently lose —
lose my grip,
forget,
have no span
to hold it all.

My mind runs faster than I can speak
until words fall muddled,
smudged on the floor
to be cleaned up
if I can find a mop.
Mop up the shame
of too much.
No brakes on the motor —
it spins, churns, whirls me sick.
Signals too slow
for the conveyor belt —
everything falls off.
I hold tight to be polite
I want to please
but the pause doesn’t exist on this keyboard
so I have to reboot over and over to stop
and I lose the files I forgot to save.

“I’m sorry — what did you say?”
Until no one is left
for the pauses I cannot find.
Please —
I wish I could stop.
STOP.
Shutdown.
No reboot this time.
Down
to nothing.
To stop.
Am I dead again?
Again and again I die
live too fast
to catch it
to the burning ground
that melts me to its feet.
If I revive
will I be right this time?
Tired of the zigzag —
no destination,
can’t find the pattern to this road
I chaos trip upon.
I don’t know how to walk straight,
talk straight,
live straight
in a ruler-straight world
I fail.
Wrong shape.
I lose me.
How can I know who I am
if I don’t know my yesterday, today?
Learn from mistakes
if I cannot remember the lessons?
Everything slips.

Why am I here
in this room,
this drawer,
this box…
…this life.
If you can’t hold something,
you lose it.
I lose everything.
Life — a series of mourning.
And I can’t stop crying.
Frustration
I wish I barely knew your name
as you drain me down the hole.
Chaos leaks
from a bouncy-ball brain.
Too many tabs open,
too many plugs —
screams that spark flames,
a mad woman that never grew up
out of the tantrums
or wore the beige laid out on the bed,
the colours clashed
and the house burnt down.
Too big — I shrink.
Too small — I explode.
Never right enough.
There’s no dial.
You say careless —
I am care-full to the brim.
Thinking threads are too many.
You say lazy —
I blister barefoot
through every knotted task.
I am the mirror of my mind.
You didn’t like the reflection,
so I painted a doll,
a den to hide behind.
Always last in the race.
Untidy inside and out —
a tangle of knots.
I am wound tight,
a jack-in-the-box
still ticking —
no pause key,
wild in a cage —
too small to hold me.

By Louise Hunt of the Purple

Had Luca been Whacked on the Head

Challenging her teacher with a triumphant smile, Ava’s jaw muscles ached as Ms Pippin gazed at her exercise book rather longer than expected, stunned and amazed. The corners of Ava’s mouth quivered, she wouldn’t be able to keep this up much longer. At least, she’d have an excuse to skip PE this afternoon – one muscle-cramp a day sufficed, thank you very much.

Ava shifted impatiently. Her grey plastic chair creaked, and the crack on her right snagged the skirt of her dark blue uniform. She tugged it free and gazed at the yellowed polystyrene ceiling tiles, then at the parchment walls and the jaundiced clock, its skinny third hand ticking away wasted seconds that’d never come back.

Tick, tick, tick.

She’d copied Ms Pippin’s precise, monospaced handwriting from the whiteboard into her exercise book. History of Medieval Britain, reduced to five hundred words.

Ms Pippin’s head shot up. Finally! She eyed Ava dumbstruck – to be expected given the amazing feat she’d pulled off. Ms Pippin was strict but fair (her own words) and a venerator (also her own words) of history, maths and geography. She held Ava in much lower esteem. Two months ago, she’d moved her to the front of the classroom, away from her best friend, Linda, in the back. All for asking a perfectly reasonable question, “Then why do we have mouths to speak?” after Ms Pippin told them, “We have eyes and ears to quietly watch and listen, boys and girls.”

Ms Pippin’s nostrils flared like a horse with a bug up its nose. She was about to explode – sneeze or lose her rag. Ava, who’d borne the brunt of both, leaned sideways, out of the path of decibels or snot and spittle.

Today’s homework had been to build a family tree, and Ms Pippin had promised a prize for the pupil who traced their ancestry back the furthest. Ms Pippin’s ancestors had been teachers. Four generations, moulding young minds, shaping their futures. Ava fount that Ms Pippin’s moulding and shaping pinched like a straitjacket.

Under the old oak in the schoolyard this morning, lineage had been a my-boots-are-bigger-than-yours contest. Many of Ava’s classmates got stuck at their grandparents. A select few gloated they’d traversed their family tree back hundreds of years, to great-great-great-whatevers. Marlies cooed, “I am related to the Queen of Denmark, you know.”

Belligerent, Linda had snapped at Marlies that she couldn’t be bothered for Pippin’s scrappy old sticker. But it wasn’t about a sticker, was it, for Linda. Linda had been fostered her entire life. Her birth parents showed no interest, still, they steadfast refused to give her up for adoption. Ms Pippin’s progenitor assignment, and Marlies’s bragging about her deep-rooted, sprawling family tree, was a gut-wrenching reminder of the lonely shoot that represented Linda.

Rather than provoke Ms Pippin’s ire, advising her teacher this was an unfair competition, Ava had gone rogue. No boasting about eminent ancestry – surely her farmer and traveling salesman gramps were as eminent as Danish royalty – and she’d share the sticker with Linda. She’d cut it in half, like those broken heart necklaces; sisters forever, thanks to one common ancestor.

4 billion years. That beat Marlies’s Queen of Denmark by 3,999,999,750.

Luca, short for Last Universal Common Ancestor, linked Ava to every other human, animal and plant on this planet. Neither male nor female, Luca would’ve been round or rod-shaped, tiny, micrometres at most. They’d have lived in the ocean, in a hydrothermal vent a hundred times hotter than boiling water. Eventually they’d have bubbled up to the surface and floated ashore. The sun warming its puny face, they’d have produced their landlubbering offspring. It’s progeny’s progeny subsequently transforming to bacterial, archaeal, eukaryotic, to mammal, to hominin, to human.

Ava had colour coded her family tree. Green: herself; red: Luca; blue: E. coli, her and Luca’s cousin many-many-times-removed. E. coli was a relation she wasn’t too fond of; that false-hearted creature had gifted her a bad tummy last summer. Some birthday present that had been.

Ms Pippin snorted, but didn’t reach for her hanky.

Still grinning victoriously, but slightly worried her teacher did not fully appreciate the science that underpinned her work, Ava held out her hand.

“May I have the prize, please, Ms?” It was hers, fair and square.

Ms Pippin snorted again, like a horse, but less friendly.

“Are we playing the clown, miss Green?” Ms Pippin’s voice dripped venom. “E-minus, and detention. Your parents will hear of this.”

Immured by the ash-grey walls of the detention room, interrupted only by bread-mould-grey doors and a grimy seven-foot-up letterbox window, Ava penned her lines: