Journal

My name is Aaron Pace, and I’m writing this by hand in a spiral-bound, college-ruled notebook that I found in a student’s backpack inside of an abandoned school bus. All three—the notebook, the backpack, and the school bus—have seen better days. For that matter, so have I.

Emily stood in the doorway to the Rio Cafe and looked around, half–convinced she had the wrong place. The word “cabaret” had conjured up visions of illicit underground doings populated by white–faced pianists in dark, shabby suits, coaxing notes of tragic joy from their instruments. But this was just a really nice pub, full of comfortable, brightly coloured wooden booths perpendicular to a long bar. There were some smaller tables and chairs to the right and back of it, blackboards with specials written on them, and nothing that looked like it could be turned into a stage.

The cocktails there had always been dangerous, but now they were poison. We got the call in at the precinct, and none of us were surprised. We all knew the place was no good, never mind that we’d also all spent some time there. These days we stayed away, or not, depending on how our marriages were going, and how much cash we had in the glove box. There were no trains nearby, and if you ended up out too long, you were staying out. The suburbs were a dream, and you weren’t sleeping.

Paying It Forward A Hugo Award-Nominated Short Story by Michael A. Burstein I'm dying. No one knows it yet. Having...

The man smiled. “I asked, given the fact that your grandfather, who lived a long and healthy life, is now on his deathbed, why does your family feel the need to perpetuate the hoax of the Holocaust?”

The future was glorious once. It was filled with sleek silver spaceships, lunar colonies, and galactic empires. The horizon seemed within reach; we could almost grasp the stars if we would but try.