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You’ve gotten a C-minus, and it isn’t your fault. It is also not your fault that your parents are anal, Pakistani immigrants who came to this country with nothing and think a C-minus in tenth grade spells life-long doom. It doesn’t help that your Auntie (your mother’s cousin three times removed) is staying over and caught you watching inappropriate content on your laptop.
Xylina
The first date had that delicious awkwardness that makes you self-conscious in the moment, but in retrospect seems endearing and makes you nostalgic for a more innocent and hopeful time. Adis suggested we meet in the Eloan sector of Gemini Station so I wouldn’t need an environment suit.
Hayley stands by the exit to the bookstore, eyeing the torrent coming down in sheets over the parking lot. Behind her, Matt hides the tiniest of fist pumps and says, “You don’t want to go out in that. Come on, let me buy us a couple of drinks at the café.” She takes a long look at the tempest outside, checks the time on her phone, and says, “I guess I have time for a cup of tea. I’ll get my own.”
In this universe, we fight because we can’t fuck. Call it Universe A, or One, the Golden Age where it all began. Though “began” is relative when your timeline is constantly rewritten, rebooted, shattered to bits. Call it the universe where we aren’t even supposed to show emotion, unless it’s anger, let alone kiss. Your fist skates over my jaw, bone against bone, skin brushing skin. I tie you up. Your muscles strain.
You always told her you’d give her the world if she wanted it. So it should have been no surprise, really, when she asked you for the Moon. You might have known something like this was coming; she’d been on her best behavior for a week, chores done without nagging, shoes lined up neatly in the hall closet.
Tilda stands at a crossroads just outside of town. It’s a place where worlds meet, and the perfect place to create a new person. The crescent moon glimmers through the oaks bent thick along the roadside. The cold-burning stars in the sky hold a sort of magic if you know how to swim in their light. Tilda spits in the dirt, turns a tight circle, and recites the incantation she learned as a child.
There wasn’t a lot of me left after the war.
I was in a skipship on my way to being deployed when the Drinzit attacked, and I got sucked into a hole in the ship’s wall before the patch system kicked in. My comrades put what was left of me in cryo, and we retreated to Known Space.
I heard you’re returning to our world again. What do you want here exactly, Orhija? The Earth is dying slowly. It’s losing its sheen and glow. The blackness of the soil that you used to say was as beautiful as mine has changed since you left. It’s redder than black. The air is tense and heavy with smoke. I doubt you can survive it.
The thaw comes early. Though I’ve been held here for dreams upon dreams, I am not ready. Shoals of us overwinter in the ice. As our bodies slow to quiescence, the ice resonates between us: signals that would be battered unintelligible by moving water.
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