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Ever since I was little, I wanted to be the bomb. Not a bomb. The. It wasn’t enough for my smile to light up every room, to be loved by my family, my friends. The day I was born, two planes crashed into New York City, killing thousands. The adults tried to hide it.
The two of us, myself and this man I did not know, sat at a table in a windowless white cell with an indefinite light source. I was afraid, as afraid as a human being can be. I remembered every step that had brought me here and I did not consider this a place of safety.
We lost because we fought. In the beginning, everyone thought it was irresistible, the violence. No research had been done yet; no autopsies undergone. The news about these strangers from the stars didn’t even break nationally.
“Is there a problem, officer?” “We’re not the police.” My partner, Enrico, places his palm against the door, ready to test the old man’s resolve. I tap my finger against my thumb and SNAPbeam the warrant to the old man’s synaptic cache. “We’re EPF.”
How did we end up here? The humans before me had the same physiological traits as I did, yet still we had no means of communicating with one another. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Words and phrases spilled from their mouths, a torrent of sounds bleeding into one another, syllables pouring out in a drum roll, unending and uninterrupted.
I was sorry even before I got caught. The first inkling that we were not going to get away with it came when we were messing with the AI art generator app. You know, the kind where you put some words in and out comes a trippy image. I typed in: Gothic lemon pie running away from the sun. I was expecting something yellow with an errant eyeball.
Warning! This review contains spoilers. To answer the question on everybody’s mind: No, controversial filmmaker Manuela Riviera’s new documentary The Reunion of the Survivors of Sigrún 7 doesn’t reveal what happened during the forty-five days the spaceship went missing on its way to Mars or how mission commander Ruben Corto died.
If you’re reading this, in a self-destructing DM, on the reverse strand of a plasmid, in the recipe binder you found in a deported neighbor’s belongings dumped on the curb, you’re no longer angry. You’re hungry. Your last co-op got raided by the Department of Homeland Biosecurity, hunting for pharmaceuticals “dangerous” to those at risk of getting pregnant.
When I was five years old, my mother left for Europa as part of the expedition that discovered the Europan Pseudocephalopods, which have a superficial resemblance to squid. My mother wanted to call them Icypods but was overruled.
Every Teshiarr metropolis, town, and hamlet had featured an agora, the community centerpiece for shopping, conversing, and joining. It was where one received their daily meals, heard news from leaders, and reported to communal soul alcoves.
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