Kyle dropped his catfish when he found Tuesday’s muddy head on the floor. The lower half of the green and yellow robot, a quad runner, rested next to the guts of Tuesday’s hydrogen hybrid drive. One of his dismembered claws clutched a moss-covered pine branch.
Perhaps I wouldn’t, but I try, and I Remember things. Almost everything since the Destruction. I’m not sure when I started Remembering, or when I realized that not everyone did. I wasn’t that old when the world died, but I know more than a lot of the older kids. I don’t remember Before much, but when the others tell me things, I remember it all.
I’m soaring over the snow-tipped peaks, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my wings, when the call comes in from Andrew. It’s been three years, four months, seventeen days, five hours, forty-seven minutes and twelve seconds, simtime, since I last talked to him, so immediately I fork my consciousness and slow one of me down to realtime.
Dale looked up through the ribbed Lucite dome of Asteroid Cintas II, his eyes lit from within by thoughts of a bright future. “I never imagined,” he said, “I’d own a purebred house.”
Allow me the pleasure of beginning this story with its point: Thomas Edison is a being of pure and unimaginable evil. I loathe Thomas Alva Edison.
“Mr. Sergei,” said Jean Tom. “Poor Mr. Sergei. Victim of the Digital Age.”
I’m generally wary of medical professionals declaring things to be miracles. That’s the church’s job. But in the case of Nell Gabrielli, I find it hard to argue. And like most miracles, it comes at a high cost for the grantor.
Mr. Harris shrugs. The shrug is that of a man who is used to predicting what he does not know, controlling what he cannot predict, and ignoring what he cannot control.
A month after returning with DNA samples, Anna sat across from me, prepping burnt umber for her family’s portrait. With mortar and pestle, she mashed kidney organelles cultured from her brother. The smell, earthy and pungent, mingled with the fragrance she wore.
My breasts continued to throb as I took the subway home. I had finally admitted to Dr. Fremont that I had minor pain, and he told me that the pain was a side effect of the treatment. He said it should fade as my body became more adapted to “servicing the aliens,” his words. But it still put me in a crappy mood.
Sadie smoothes down her long brown hair, then fastens a choker around her neck. She stares at herself in the mirror. Today her father is taking her to work, and she must be perfect. There will be other girls there, other daughters brought to work by their fathers. But her father runs the company, and so she sets the example. All who look on her must see perfection–otherwise, her father will be shamed.
My eyes are dinosaur eggs. My tongue cracks like lightning. I been there, done that, drunk it, fucked it, lived it. I am the hole in the roof where the brains leak in. I eat jerks like you for breakfast. Behold: me! Behold: Skowt!
Blakenjel bilong mi is black like unlit coal. His open wings are like smokers’ lungs. His skin is taut and fine like expensive vellum that was blackened in flames. There are many blakenjels, but only one bilong mi. I follow him in the darkness.
“How do you want to do this?” Harry said. “You should load more rounds.”
“I’ll take the mother and baby.”
“With one bullet?”
I know an old lady who misused a teleportation chamber to merge her genetic structure with that of a fly. Perhaps she thought the compound eyes were desirable. Her true motives can never be known, as the replacement of her mouth with a proboscis rendered her completely incapable of speech. The total extent of the damage done is indeterminable. Her demise may occur soon.
Yesterday in the park, I fed the zombies, tossing bits of cadaver onto the cold cement as they fought each other like pigeons for the morsels. They’re not so different from pigeons when you think about it, driven as they are by a primal need to feed, to sustain.
Dick sees Jane. It is the same Jane.
Jane is not calm. Jane moves strangely. There is no smile on Jane’s face. “Jane,” says Dick.
“Something is wrong,” says Jane.
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