The bedroom door was closed. It was always closed, locked from the inside. Harry and Sarah glared at each other one last time before rearranging their faces into parental smiles. Not that Oliver would see them. Still, they had to try. They’d been trying for fourteen months.

Sarah rapped on the door. “Oliver, darling, won’t you come down for breakfast?”

“No, thank you,” Oliver called. “Can Mattie bring me the tray?”

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.

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.

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.

A tithe convoy of the Fivefold Church, in Ander Carmora’s sad experience, left three kinds of wakes. Armored wagons and oxen ripped lasting ruts in gravel roads, scarred them down to the mud. Tithe collectors gleaned their due from all and sundry, and left long swathes of land poorer than they’d found it. And the third wake: the bodies of any bandit crew daft enough to try its luck.

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.”