Demeter Seeks Persephone in the Year 2210
1. OVERWORLD We, the chorus, welcome you to today’s stage, a patch in the rocky landscape once known as Attica. Close your eyes and inhale the subtle sweetness of sun-warmed grass. Hear the soft rustle of dresses, giggling young women whose whispers counterpoint the chirping birds. Soon you realize there’s no variation in the birdsong, […]
An Intersection of Parallel Lives
“You don’t need a reason to save people,” I argue to the boss. But apparently, if I’m flying on her dime, I do. In the end, it’s the chickens that win her over. The records I uncovered deep in the archives state that two centuries ago, when the Novus and its passengers departed to colonize […]
What's A Penguin?
Michael stares at the seagull sitting on the ship’s railing; the bird, in turn, watches the half-eaten protein bar in the teenager’s hand. These pests are everywhere, always on the lookout for an easy meal since most of the fish disappeared. Michael crumbles the plastic wrapper and tosses it at the bird. The seagull takes […]
The Long Night
I’m alone now, except for Mother’s whispered reassurances that this is what’s best for us all. The long night brings with it many memories: the sunlit park, the clouds bullied from the sky, leaving nothing but uncluttered blue and my true love. “I’m leaving you.” She sat next to me on a park bench in […]
The Trials of the Thorsten Haugen
Captain Matt Peasley paced the bridge of the bulk carrier Thorsten Haugen, his low-top hard-sole shoes wearing a path on the painted deck. The relative quiet of his ship, compared to times when its engines ran at full throttle, unnerved him. Speed mattered in the shipping business, and in the past, the thrumming of the […]
A Sea of Plastic
The sun was barely up over the plastic sea, but it was already stifling hot. The almost horizontal rays bounced off the bleached, matted remnants of last century’s excesses. The great raft housing the plastic reclamation factory chewed slowly but steadily through them. Phlox checked her diving gear. If she dove off the back, she […]
Cetacean Reprocessors, Inc.
“Can you understand me?” I call through my underwater translator over the gentle slap of cold, oily blue-green water. The massive smoky-grey Bryde’s whale next to the boat doesn’t react. I look timidly up to the top of their open mouth, jutting from the water like a giant white arrowhead, trap collecting their assigned section […]
Forward Momentum and a Parallel Toss
On the marching-band field, everything echoes of Alex. Lacey’s students spread across the sideline and cue their robots, and Lacey sees herself as a teenager in a giant sweatshirt, Alex next to her, looks at the bots and remembers Alex’s head on hers when she curled up around him in the last row of the […]
The Fisherwoman
This is your fourth visit to the botanical biosphere. Something always draws you back here, even though you have only one hour of leisure time. You scan your wristband and enter the glass dome. The biospheres are teeming with healthy plants and trees. Mechanical bees flit between the groups of coloured flowers. Today, you’ve come […]
The Inevitablist
It was called Moon Base Daintree, but it was less a base than a tube. A long, subway-car-sized tube, with a hatch at either end. Inside was a conference table, life support, and a fridge filled with refreshments—in case the alien was humanoid. Preston Jorgenson paced his end of the tube as the alien ship […]
