Queen of the May
She wears a fox’s face—sly, and only dripping a little blood down the sides of its muzzle—as she emerges into the allotments from between gorse bushes where the path used to run. In a potting shed, brewing tea, a gardener sets out another cup thinking his friend’s arrived. If she’d asked he’d have told her […]
The Last Stand
A thirty-foot wave of flame roars toward us over the grassy plain. We stand our ground. We were soldiers once. Behind us loom the titans of California Redwood Emergency Preserve. Sequoia sempervirens. The world’s tallest trees. Their foliage trembles in the wind like frightened fingers. Our assignment is to keep them alive. In years past, […]
GAC ATG ATT ACA
Erika liked to think of herself as a gene artist. That was how she kept the despair at bay in the claustrophobic bunker deep under the ground. She had never stood on the earth’s surface; neither had her mother, grandmother, or many generations before them. Instead, she worked to keep the gene pool viable in […]
Trivalent
Some days I think we should just let the viruses win. Viruses are simple. Viruses are easy. Sure, they might mutate in the blink of an eye and wipe out our species, but at least they don’t have feelings. But no, survival instinct is stronger than misanthropy and so I kept working, trying to save […]
In the Teeth of the Gale
I pressed the last hydrocorn shoot into its eyelet and secured the completed tray to the floating platform. Standing up, I swelled with pride looking at the swaying corn, and its canopy of oversized leaves. I marvelled at the ingenuity that turned the fragile corn of old into a crop that not only survived in […]
At Climate Court
Two crisply uniformed young guards pushed Jill’s grandfather into the courtroom in a wheelchair. It hurt her to see him so frail. She remembered him standing tall, proud, and vigourous at her side when she married Susannah. When Jill was growing up, her grandfather had headed a billion-dollar petroleum company. He would call her on […]
From Advanced Human Biology, 2nd Edition
When the changes first manifested, humanity called it a disease. The first change affected blood. While the pH of human blood at the time was usually maintained at roughly 7.4, many people began to show a long-term blood pH of higher than 7.6. These people, remarkably, did not suffer the symptoms commonly associated with alkalemia: […]
Dilemma, with Omnivore
Trust me, you do not want to go shopping with my mother. Mom has this passion for curiosities. Every shopping expedition is weird, whether in Dallas or Dar es Salaam or Delhi—like this time. (My mom’s a diplomat, so we get around.) • • • On a hot Saturday afternoon in New Delhi, we’re walking along the […]
The Colours of Europa, The Colours of Home
In the sea beneath Europa’s thick and jagged layer of ice, all colours faded to a blue that was almost black. There was no green, no white, no blood-red stain of life ill spent. Nothing to remind Yihan of what she’d lost. She stayed as long as she could in the submersible’s remote interface, hunting […]
Invasive Alien Species
In the diverse crowd all skin colours and sexes squeezed around one another to fill every inch of the seminar hall. Unblinking eyes shimmered in moist expectation as the professor took the stage. Known for his eccentricity as much as his vast intellect, he began by extracting a pair of extinct spectacles from the age […]
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