This piece was originally published in Intergalactic Medicine Show in July 2016.
November, 2065 - Gayatri
The plural for meeting, thought Gayatri, ought to be headache. And even for a surface stint, where meetings always played a heavy role, she'd had a lot of headaches since the announcement that pieces of their fragmented sister planet would likely crash into Earth in five months' time.
The angle was wrong, it made Gus look like a shepherd when there was much more pit in him. You could tell it in the eyes. The photo Liv took was all mouth, his eyes barely registered. He looked like someone else’s dog, not Gus. The xerox only made it worse. Les had searched his trailer before he left for the Kinkos, this old photo was all he could find. He looked for a spot on the telephone pole. Nails and staples rusted up every inch. He was bound to get tetanus if he wasn’t careful. Les couldn’t remember if he was up on his shots.
The faint sound of music filtered through gauzy curtains and into the reception hall. As far as Rezin was concerned, it could just filter right on out again, through the gracefully arched windows and over the soft green lawn to the shimmering lake in the distance. And take that damnable crowd with it.
Content warning: Sexual assault
This story was previously published in The Broken Teacup
Feeling bored, Jennifer thumbed through the pages of Cosmo, skipping past the article suggesting, The Sexiest Way to Eat an Ice Cream Cone in Front of Him and spotted it in the back, buried among the other ads which promised the latest transforming overnight moisturizer and jeans that will make any woman instantly appear twenty pounds skinnier. It read:
That first night, he dreamed of spiders.
There was a depression in the land. A bowl surrounded by rolling hills. At the bottom of the bowl were the shattered prefabs of a battered town. Old people and children in tattered clothes huddled around a smoldering fire at the town center. The lip of the bowl was a snaking line of earthworks. Men and women were there with pulseguns and mortars, rifles and pickaxes, shotguns and knives. They watched the hills.
The hills were moving. The hills were alive.
The forecast had been for 'Intermittent' this morning, but it was already nearly lunch with no sign of letting up. Michia didn't know why she even bothered with the official forecast—it was always useless.
Please god, it has to let up by music period.
“Kris, wake up, honey.”
Kris slowly opened her eyes. Above her, the cerulean sky was bright and cloudless. A flawless porcelain bowl upended over the world. She felt confused and disoriented as she sat up and took everything in. Brian was sitting near her with a wistful smile, the breeze playing with his brown hair. A pair of sunglasses perched on his nose hid his emerald-green eyes. Beyond him, the ocean stretched to infinity, the waves sparkling in the sunlight as if they held diamonds.
“The beach. I love the beach,” she said with pleasure.
My official title is “Ethics Manager,” yet lately all I do is piss people off. Yet again, I have to break another promise to Nico. I had to pull an all-nighter on my last case, causing me to miss her seventeenth birthday last month. This time, I was missing her act as Abigail in The Crucible—a role she’s talked about nonstop for the last few weeks. Instead, I’m sitting in a Vancouver cafe, preparing for my latest mark to come in. I try to write notes on my phone, but Nico’s stinging words from our conversation earlier distract me.
Slay Red Kween was emblazoned across the sky. Alice rolled her eyes as her hoverboard zipped past a line of skyscrapers. Her ex’s face flickered into view in front of her helmet. Incoming call from Iracebeth. Incoming call from Iracebeth. “Ignore,” Alice said firmly, taking a sharp turn down a cramped alley.
Image Dating Online, Ltd. (IDOL) Standard #1: If you can market yourself, you can market anything.
Dan turned around, shivering in the chill air despite wearing his thickest overcoat and gloves. A young Asian woman, slim and petite with shimmery shoulder-length jet-black hair, stood before him, wearing a black leather jacket and blue jeans. “Yup. Are you May?”
“Your last name’s Green?” Dan chuckled, puffs of foggy air escaping his lips. “Not what I expected.”