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In Salemo, virtually the entire populace is kept in drudgery and toil. There are no public parks, nor libraries, nor song, nor wine, nor holidays. People slave away in seventy-two -hour workweeks, sustained by unnourishing meals of corn meal and grease, returning home to their miserable hovels at the end of each day to collapse on their stinking cots.
The grow pods clung to a red, humped ridge about a twenty-minute hike west from the habitats. Inside one of their plastic domes, a farmer named Oliver Judd nestled potato starts in the ground with nimble hands. It was tricky work in a forty-pound outside suit.
Mom still has good days, some days. Those days, when I visit her at Alpine Rest, she knows who I am and asks how her grandson Jack is. On her not-so-good days, she tries to summon the Fire Cosmic and screams that I’m in league with Professor Incalculable.
It had been a long day of convention. All I wanted was a quiet drink in the hotel bar and quality time in my room with a romance novel. The utter cad from Planetary Industries was an unanticipated bubble in the fuel line.
Sparrow retired from the battlefield at the height of her powers and couldn’t be persuaded to change her mind. She was done with fighting, armies, blood, death, and taking orders. Now, she ran a salon at the edge of Florelia, Tira City’s entertainment district.
See now the misfortune of the thinking tenax. It is alone. The other tenaces have been chased away. Their gore stains the thinking tenax’s mandibles, and its roar drives them further back. Their flickering eyes peer out from behind feldspathic spires.
When the Faerie King takes his tour of the human realm, he becomes—of course—a viral hit. The first posts and videos stream out from Shanghai, just after the New Year. He’s seen waiting patiently in line at a popular dumpling stall.
The city of Nan Rhok stands on the ridge of a great mountain, where a gullet of steaming water flows from volcanic hot springs. The ridge is narrow and the mountain chill, so the city hews close to the spring, building high its granite towers. The name of Nan Rhok is known for many leagues.
We lost so many souls today. Reports stream in across five continents; icons bloom on the map like blood spatters. Broken filters, zero latency, bandwidth that somehow blew through the roof when no one was looking. The hardware plays catch-up as best it can.
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.
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