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In the pre-dawn light she lies in bed, gazing through the window at graceful trees silhouetted against a turquoise sky. The air is still, the pretty room orderly and calm. She lies motionless except for her eyes, the soft blue quilt rising and falling with her breath. At a hundred years old, breath is shallow. It will not be long now. I am remembering for her, vivid visions linked to her mind through implants and nanos and software.
A decade since the Fivefold Church conquered the mile-high godpines and hanged their priests, settlements picked at the trunks like termites. Each godpine’s felling had shivered faraway cities to their foundations: small wonder that whole kingdoms hungered for lumber now. Or perhaps folk just liked the thought of chopping up a god for outhouses and chicken coops. Ander Carmora hated the noise—endless sawmills, axes, oxen.
I didn’t die when I fell into the candy river, you know. That mean girl didn’t die when she got flushed down the fake novelty toilet. Neither did the other one, the one who ate so much jelly that they rolled her away to pump her stomach. I think she set the record for the highest ever blood glucose level, but she’s alive. We write sometimes.
“Steve, over here! Turn to your right. Can we get a smile?” He falls back on his training easily enough, turns to the cameras, gives them his famous crooked smile, tilts his head just so as the flashes go off so they can capture the smoulder that highlights his cheekbones. The one he’s practiced countless times with his manager, Ethel.
Everyone believes they’ll be the one to crack the curse. It’s that very belief that assures their doom. Arrogance has always been one of the currencies of the brilliant. Students, especially those from the Society of Myriad Mysteries, are rich with it; they spend it without knowing, in the arch of a skeptic’s eyebrow or the scoff of hearty denial. These luminous youths have not been taught to be misers with such a precious resource.
As dead bodies floated down the Mississippi, Mrs. Graves couldn’t shake the urge to dance. It was ingrained in her bones, dancing. Growing up in New Orleans, death was once celebrated—a spirited second line surging through Treme to the blare of trumpets and rumble of drums. But that was before the levees broke, before the waters rose, before the music stopped. “Honey, I’m home,” Mrs. Graves said, poking her head into their rundown trailer. “I found one.”
You are what blooms between my thoughts. Relentless, like the roots of a poplar, or the mold swelling from neglected corners of a home echoing with silent disharmony. You slink through my star-ridden veins, haunt my magma gut, occupy the warmth I carry for the denizens that trawl my skin. I cannot shake you, cannot fathom a sunrise without picturing you basking in its crimson glow.
In 23762, the Interstellar Community of Planetary Systems began its campaign to add a new member: a distant, isolated planet called Rth. It would be an understatement to say that the annexation of Rth did not go well. In fact, it went so poorly, a popular phrase entered the vernacular almost immediately: Rthing it up.
Driving alone through the Sahara blew Sarah-Beth’s mind. She woke up in the back of the Jeep, smoked a joint, popped a Black Beauty, and revved her engine full of thoughts and plans. She’d imagined driving with her head empty, like she’d thought the desert would be, but everything was full: palm trees, all sorts of scrub brush she couldn’t identify.
Thanks, everyone, for coming. My name is Tandy. I’m here to talk about how I used my Otherworld goggles to become a better version of myself, but first—here is a partial list of questions I will not be answering tonight: What is consciousness? Is reality real? Does the AR I see in my Otherworld goggles represent an actual parallel universe that exists or is it just a computer simulation?
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