The delicious hotness of 98.7-degree blood was like drinking a fine, expensive wine. Whatever they fed him, they made sure it tantalized our senses, too. Unlike most depictions, we didn’t ravage our food. Our constant reconditioning throughout schooling took care of that. We drank a good pint or two and that was enough to sustain us for a few days up to a week. It had been nine days since my last feeding.
Read MoreMessage in a Vessel
Ibrahima looked at him, and then away, back at the beam. Perhaps the Caliphate did get paid in return, perhaps the Caliph was sitting on velvet cushions drinking water teased from honey and dew. Perhaps. But the same way the tingling in his veins felt like he owned the world, he knew something more sinister was at play.
Read MoreThe Satellite Charmer
The ground beneath her feet surged upward like a wave. A hunk of siding from the craft towered above her, dripping mucus, like the gooey ribs of some great leviathan. She removed her stylus and poked into the ground until she felt resistance. Dug up the relic beneath.
Read MoreSky Boys
But our peace betrayed us, blinded us to the slow winding of the spindle, and when we saw it, it was too late. The end didn’t come quietly. When the earthquakes hit, three houses fell into a crack across the South River. For days, the ground heaved beneath us, and our dead moaned in their graves.
Read MoreAs the Sun Dies
The river is changing. You know this without knowing how, or why. Tatu doesn’t notice. She’s poking in the mud, digging for crabs. A black octopus climbs from the water’s surface. A mist that whispers a name. You understand it. You’re one with it, bopping your anticipation.
Read MoreSimbiyu and the Nameless
It was during his weeks of torment that something broke in Akachi. To be treated that way by those who were meant to protect and serve you, to know that they could kill you and nothing would happen, it does something to your mind. Pain can clarify things. He told me later that after hours of unrelenting terror and agony, he’d stopped fearing death, that he’d realized then that he’d been so focused on surviving the system that he hadn’t ever truly been alive, that he was doing nothing but dying slowly and had been doing so for a long time. He told me that when he was released, he’d resolved to ensure things changed.
Read MoreAn Arc of Electric Skin
It gave me a queer feeling—one I’ve never been able to fully shake. I know that’s a huge statement for something that must seem so trivial … but at the same time, please understand me when I say that I’m sure I read this story. My memory of its images—those I can recall, I mean—is as sharp in my mind as many of my own past experiences, and now it is sharper still, whetted by my subsequent mental self-interrogation.
Read MoreIn the Garden of Ibn Ghazi
How she had shrunk in such a short while, I couldn’t understand. I held her bony hand in mine, rubbing it on my cheek, desperate to feel something of her as I’d known her before. Her fingers were warm, and I felt a faint throbbing as she breathed laboriously from a cylinder by the side of the bed. Over the edges of the mask, her panicked eyelids fluttered, and I couldn’t tell if she knew I was there.
Read MoreO2 Arena
Black Edie was trying to restart the Benz. The old hermit kept turning the key and stomping on the gas pedal so hard she was bouncing on the driver’s seat. By way of a reply, the car she’d owned since Jesus was a toddler wheezed, smoked ... and died. The look of dazed resignation on Black Edie’s face infuriated Fitzsimmons even more.
Read MoreThresher of Men