Advertisement
I know a nanomask when I see one, especially when the wearer’s making eye contact. There’s something about how the mask melds around the lids—it’s just a little bit stiff, but you have to really know what you’re looking for to tell. But people in nanomasks are trouble, and I never want any of that. […]
Nightbus I. The first time she awoke on the bus, Adachukwu Ejiofor discovered that her ankles, wrists, and one kneecap had taken their leave of her while she wasn’t looking. She still had the other kneecap and her hands and feet, though, making her disappearance asymmetrical. And flickering. Her “missing” wrist vanished and unvanished, stranding […]
My office used to be the supply closet; it’s how we got two rooms for the price of one. It means I get no air circulation whatsoever if I close the door, but keeping it open lets me hear everything from the moment anyone comes face-to-face with my receptionist. This guy demanded to speak with […]
The late summer sun melts over a ring of toadstools twenty feet tall. On one side, a mass of glitter and veiny neon wings. On the other, a buzzing mountain of metal and electricity. The stands soar up to the heat-sink of heaven. Three thousand seats and every one sold to a screamer, a chanter, […]
Whenever Nick, over in the workstation across the room, would blurt out “fuck, I got another beheading,” Kenny would pinch the bridge of his nose and sigh and want, more than anything, to say “I don’t care.” Monitors formed a semi-circle in front of Kenny, and his fingers, tips glowing blue with the implants, moved […]
Liên’s first duel at the Phụng Academy was bewildering, and almost unfair in its simplicity. She let Mei—the fey, mercurial schoolmate half the academy seemed to avoid—take her to the arena. They paused at iron-wrought gates with a huge lock and a clear sight of what lay beyond: a crumbling platform by the river, overgrown […]
The town had become a city, but a gentle one, and there were places to hide if you knew where to find them. Leah had lived in San Francisco, and in New Orleans. Those were not gentle places and she had not done gentle things. Going home was not the right way to disappear, but […]
It was one of those rare nights when the smog thinned out enough for stars to be visible in the sky above the penguin enclosure. Gwin adjusted her synthetic feathers with her beak, arranging them neatly and plucking out any that were broken or bent. She didn’t want to groom, but her programming said it […]
Rhehan hated museums, but their partner Liyeusse had done unmentionable things to the ship’s stardrive the last time the two of them had fled the authorities, and the repairs had drained their savings. Which was why Rhehan was on a station too close to the more civilized regions of the dustways, flirting with a tall, […]
Night All night long, the weary sound of water dripped from the roof into the bucket below, eroding her dreams. Ava woke from a sleep which bore her like an ocean, her mind still filled with the raindrop drum. The moon had veiled its face so that the stars could not see her cry. She […]
Advertisement