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Morning light scraped across the table, cold and thin. Naya set the ampoules down one by one, their glass walls warping the light into convolutions. Brittle hand-blown borosilicate, one slip away from shattering. Each neck sealed with spruce bark and resin wax, the air inside held trapped. Inside was breath—oxygen, nitrogen, and the volatile fringe […]

At 8:00 a.m., service bots inside Ultragrace Tower begin preening front desk flower arrangements and coating board rooms in jasmine-scented cleaning agents. By 8:45, water starts rushing through the sprawling network of plumbing in the megaspire—a building so tall it brings renewed relevance to the word skyscraper. White-collar brass file into cavernous bathrooms, flushing toilets […]

This home has everything a civilised person could want, but that stopped being a consolation long ago. With my wheelchair sideways, I twist to reach into the butler’s sink. Grasp the crystal tumbler. A wipe with the tea towel, then lift it up to the light. The cut glass is good at hiding errant drips, […]

The best part was always the name. There was a special kind of intimacy to claiming something so tied to a man’s sense of self, of sliding it over my tongue and between my teeth, swallowing it, owning it. In my younger days, it was a kind of addiction, that first crunch of biting into […]

Rachel had been buried less than four hours before Nelly escaped upstairs to her gaming rig. After the stragglers headed home from the wake, I stood in her bedroom doorway. The house was silent except for the click-clack of her joysticks. Nelly’s preteen body slumped against the rig’s contours, which were shaped like an ebony-black, […]

When he saw the relationship timer appear above Julie’s head, Cal almost started to cry. He’d really hoped she was the one. While he knew the concept of “the one” was a romantic fallacy created by pop culture, deep down, he’d still hoped. Everything had seemed perfect. They both liked hiking. They were compatible, sexually. […]

February 7, 2042 Glen Ellyn It’s a Friday afternoon, that last day. There’s over a foot of week-old snow on the ground. The last several days have been bright and sunny — too cold for snow — but today the sky is gray and heavy. Naomi and I are having a late lunch when the […]