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When Amy begins to flay herself during office hours, you aren’t quite sure what to do. You hate office hours. You used to enjoy them, actually, back before the flayings started. Sure, it’s hard sharing your office with three other postdocs, and sure, you could spend these hours more efficiently without constant interruptions from shy undergraduates with a dozen questions already answered on the syllabus.
Today, like every other day, I wake up expecting to die before night comes. No, I’m not suicidal and I don’t have a death wish. I am just a Hunter. The life expectancy of the average Hunter in the Second Quadrant is ten years, and even that is if they are exceptionally lucky. There are too many ways to die in this line of work; so much that not even the few old-timers like myself and Jess can remember all the deaths we’ve experienced.
When she decided to wander through the woods in search of poppy fields and prowling houses, the stepmothers and grandmothers scoffed.
“You’ll be looking for love potions and beauty serums, then. Shallow. I always knew you were an insecure girl.”
“She wants slimmer thighs.”
“She craves wider hips.”
“She knows the boys don’t look twice at her, that she’ll never marry. Sad.”
“Once upon a time,” outputted the algorithm, “there was an AI.
“It generated recipes and ingredient descriptions for an online grocery store. The website said that this recipe was not just a squash soup recipe, but it also was a good diet recipe / keto recipe / recipe for autumn nights / five ingredient recipe / easy beginner recipe / recipe to impress your date.
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.
High above the Amazon Rainforest, Hynd circled, her massive wingspan only visible by the shadow she cast on the battlefield below. She felt the wind pass across her wings, whispering of torrential rain coming; not her concern, so far above the clouds, but she packaged the data and shot it down to the comms base at ground level so the grunts would know what was coming.
Rat was sure the silent, four-eyed skull of a dead god was staring at him. He followed the crowd off the train toward a rickety stand with the word Orientation painted on the front. But he couldn’t stop looking into the giant god’s eyes. Every dead person Rat had seen had eyes like that. Unseeing. […]
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.”
It is with great delight that I welcome you to Hexagon, the great hub of Ile-Ife. I know a majority of you traveled from distant planets inhabited in one of the Milky Way spiral arms. Let me inform you that your yacht, carrier, molue, shuttle-hiace, and other transport machines are safely parked in our garage.
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