It is January 18th. At 16:25:15, Senior Engineer Robert Brandt asks me to sit on a lab bench inside Examination Room 2 and “get comfortable.” I do not understand how to comply. The sensors implanted in my titanium casing, which covers my organic torso and legs, are not calibrated to sense minute changes in pressure; […]
I wanted to tell you, in case opportunity absents itself forever, that it doesn’t matter. That your magic is algorithmic, that mine is an abstraction of reality. That yours demands cartographic soliloquies, every verse a phrase and a phase of mathematics and momentum, every word you speak a part of the map, and you build […]
The most interesting thing about ghost stories is that almost everyone has one. The other really interesting thing, to me, is that they’re nearly all terrible stories if you try to take them as stories. A good story has a beginning, some buildup, and then a resolution or a twist or something at the end. […]
There was a land of elven halls and hollows, of fairy mounds and great cathedrals underground. Hapless mortals went in and danced until their feet gave out, and sometimes they came out again. But far beyond the merriment and the music and the trapped mortals, there was a campfire, and around it sat a half-dozen […]
1. An Account of the Land of Witches I arrived in the Land of Witches at the end of the season of furs. The sun shone, banks of chilly foam lay piled up in the streets, and the river emitted groans day and night as the ice broke into pieces, setting free the witches’ colorful […]
“I want to know the fires your hands bring—” “Having Been Cast, Eve Implores” by Barbara Jane Reyes Tonight, as in every night, she smiles when the door opens. Her arms loop over your neck; she leans in and rests her head against your cheek. She looks down at the basket between you. “Is this […]
Would you believe me if I told you that they all live together in a house by the sea? It would only be fair, if they did. They can’t live in the City, of course. Can you imagine? You’d be walking somewhere, maybe proceeding past the parks and public buildings, perhaps accompanied by a clamor […]
Under cover of night, our village moves across the steppe. Aliya leads the way. Her whistle is high and in harmony with the wind, so an untrained ear would ignore the sound. But we, the hushed and listening herd, heed the falconer’s call for what it is. Aliya trained golden eagles long before the invaders […]
The talk. The sex. Somebody to trust… Before the Grigsby Process my life was like a series of ads being skipped. I blacked out a lot. Had lots of seizures. So many that sometimes my learning software obsolesced before I could complete a semester. At home I avoided clothes—they’d just get peed in or tangle […]
I got sick. This will not happen to you. They have an antifungal now. They know how to kill all the little spores when they start to creep into your tissues, your lungs, your eyeballs, your liver. I didn’t know quite what was happening to me. This will not happen to you. All the signs […]