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I’m going to explain everything, I promise, but we don’t have much time. For now, you just have to trust me. In three seconds, I need you to raise your right hand. You know, like you’ve got a question in school. (Shouldn’t be too hard; I know you’ve got tons of questions.) Okay—wonderful. By now you must have raised your hand, or we’d both be gone already.
Gardener ladled dark-purple porridge into her primary digestion sac, staring absently out the viewport at black space and the distant smudge of the planet they had come to study. The simple meal and the gesture it represented soothed her after a long, thorny morning in a section of the growth bay that was in full flower and had needed hand pollinating. Though the other crew members around the mess made do with the usual break time assortment, Cook had steamed and spiced osard grains just for her before going off shift to nap in their rooms.
One time at a convention I ran across the Man of Flowers, the Superman of Daffodils, a long-haired guy, indestructible (of course), who slept in his car and drank a lot of cough syrup and didn’t really fight crime, unless the crimes were happening pretty close by. He was old by then, maybe fifty years old, but with stubble and green eyes and that ageless Tom Petty So-Cal face, and we’d gotten used to the idea that this particular ubermensch was more super-hero vibe than actuality.
Zan’s supervisor tossed the glass square onto their rusting desk. A glass-rendered construct of a silver ticket hovered in the air, text shimmering. Zan held their breath as they re-read it until they were sure their credentials were correct.
Savannah the Librarian, long of leg and short of temper, got out of the city to do some killing. As ever, she rode her sly, dependable white mule, Seldom. As ever, the invisible swikehead demon, Boy, crouched on her left shoulder.
Defense Attorney John Yurasov: Earlier you referred to this trial as a circus. Can you explain what you meant? Defendant Michaela Xiao: I don’t mean it was corrupt. Though that’s very possible. I just mean that the conclusion was always foregone.
Dad went out to get the milk and came back with two scars on his upper chin and a brand from the Druid King on his right thigh. He stumbled through the door like it was nothing; face scarred; eyes full of light.
Mum and Tega and I were eating dinner. We didn’t notice when he stepped through the door.
“Milk’s cold,” Mum said, not taking her eyes away from the TV. These days, she hardly seemed to care.
The buffet was infinite. It existed in a pocket dimension, via some sort of technological jiggering of the sort that you have heard about before and, unless you are totally anal, don’t want to hear about now.
What you need to know about the boy in this story is he is always hungry and the sun is always too hot for him, and he would save the world if he could. This is what he tells himself as he sits opposite the tailor’s shop, looking at the clothes sway in the breeze of the air conditioner within. Fawad would save the world, he would change fate itself.
Dispatch #1. [INAUDIBLE] . . . but hopefully I’ve got the recorder working now. This is Dr. Nathaniel Letheford, Director, Alliance for Military Neutralization and Eradication of Sensitive Incidents and Atrocities. I have been inserted into conflict zone W-924/B for sample collection.
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