he whispered to his baby, “You are going to run this place one day.” The boy burbled in his arms, too young to recognize the small and varied ways life was contriving to keep him put.
When he was seven, the healed tissue rippled down the side of his palm like a troubled river. He was happy to show the other children the mark when he was asked, and he giggled as they stroked the skin with furrowed brows, at once impressed and unnerved by its texture. Some children called him cursed; those were the children who learned from their parents to distrust the unusual.
Each note she played on her flute made the bonfire ahead of them dance, or maybe it was the fire that was influencing the music, or the stars, or all of it, working in concert, together. The song was the night itself. It was in his people’s laughter as they danced by the fire, and it was in the smell of fruit and smoke in the air; it was in the light, caught in the beads of sweat on her collarbone.
she looked down at him with the smile that only adults were capable of—one both happy and sad—and
“You’re going to run this place one day.” It occurred to Kaeda under his father’s smothering kisses that all these good omens were always in some distant point in the future, never now.
He wanted to warn these children that time was not their friend; that though today might seem special, there would be a tomorrow, and a day after that; that the best-case scenario of a well-spent life was the slow and steady unraveling of the heart’s knot.
But with the white noise now came the music, and she soon found she could not phase it out, for unlike the step and clatter of the crew, the music had shape, and story.
she earned her PhD in aerospace engineering—the field most bright minds were funneled toward as Earth was becoming a less viable home with each passing year, despite the solar-panel fields, the gullies stuffed with banned diesel vehicles, and the dirigibles that were always overhead, everywhere, spitting vapor coolant into the too-warm air.
Every day there was a new viral, billions of people pumping their PrivateEye stories into the Feed, to the point where it was impossible for anyone to remember the contemporary folklore for too long unless the subject of the viral made an effort to remain under the spotlight, which Fumiko refused to do.
“I was born here. For better or for worse, this is my world, a world I’d have a hard time saying goodbye to.” She shrugged with just her left shoulder. “Besides, who else is going to build those solar farms and lightbulbs if not me?”
estimate—twenty percent have the means to leave. Eighty percent have to stay behind. They’re going to be trapped in hell until the Arks return for a second pickup—if there’s a second pickup, and even if there is, there’s still billions left over. Maybe by then more Arks will have been built. The numbers go down but we’re still in the billions, and the odds are they won’t make it that long—will live underground for a few decades while the surface cooks, and all they’ll have left is the moisture that collects on the walls of their caves. Not everyone gets to leave. The least I can do is give them some working lights to read
However acute Dana’s pain was, Fumiko was unpracticed in the ways of long-distance empathy; aside from the clumsy reconstructions she created of her in virtual space, it was difficult to spare a thought for her as her responsibilities fractaled every week and demanded more of her attention.
before he tries it out on his own; smiling over the syllables, the sound like a sweet on his tongue, rhyming with the word of his soul; a discovery of not only his new name, but a guiding philosophy on life. That this is how everyone should be named: a hand, thrown into a bag of words, in search of that singular & fitting shape.
The captain & I sat on the common room sofa as we discussed the plot, the difficult choices Faydra Faneuil had to make between her greater responsibilities & the men & women she loved.
Almost. Apart from the captain, none of us have ever traveled outside Allied Space. This is our first opportunity to see how the fringe-dwellers lived with visions unclouded by company bias.
Occurred to me during our long walk through this Styx that, in all my life in the Allied territories, I have never been lost before—that I was a stranger to that dread sensation of not knowing where the next street will lead.
But I know all too well that one has to actually experience the phenomenon for oneself to understand how quick it all goes—how like days spent in delirious illness, you turn your head, for but a moment, & realize that a whole period of your life has gone. Like that.
“When they refused the offer, the company went the long way around. Ariadne lived on trade, the food that was brought in from offworld, the tools for repair. So the company took away trade. They diverted the trade route that ran through here. Flooded the market with cheap duplicate works ‘inspired’ by the original creations. Started rumors of crime and infestation. Bribed big-name traders to take their business elsewhere. Slowed things down to a trickle over twenty years while one of their representatives whispered in the ears of Ariadne’s governing body. Told them it wasn’t worth the holdout. And then they left, along with everyone else.”
This was the first traveler. “History is context,” he exclaimed. “We understand only through context!”
But he came to know the fringe. It was rock and sea, and unending desert. Boundless space punctuated by exclamations of people. It was outposts and rare cities that bloomed like wild gardens on the other side of black mountains.
He chuckled. “Whatever you might think, I am but a mere mortal, and it is startling how easy it is for mortals to be cruel when they are afraid.”
One day, his memory of these first visitors would evaporate, and he would believe that they had always been there; that of course they would march through the stalks, disturbing the soil, to ask one of the startled farmers if they could try a swing of her machete. That was what they did.
They never told him the reason for this rule, but there were times when he thought he got it—when he
He never understood why they would forbid him from speaking in Station Standard when they sat down to eat. They never told him the reason for this rule, but there were times when he thought he got it—when he saw his father look at him as if he were a stranger.