Szkazy forced her attention back to the candle, the flame weak and flickering in the breeze from the ship’s air duct. Somewhere in the computer bowels, the clock was ticking away her allotted minutes for kindling an open flame. She’d had the dispensation renewed last month—and yet it still felt as if the ship itself […]

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The protestors are the same crew as yesterday and the day before. Ava doesn’t know any of their names, of course. She doesn’t know what happened in their pasts to make them so energized about keeping people from eating the food at Mythique, so wound up with vengeance as to embarrass people every single morning […]

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1. “Hey sexy! Give us a smile!” Danyor had a handful of seconds to decide: a close-mouthed smile, and feel dirty all day; flash pearly white, hope against citizen arrest, and feel dirty all day; ignore, and feel dirty all day. She tongued her broken eye tooth, pressed her lips together, set eyes forward, and […]

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It had taken me six years to grow my hair to my waist, where decent women kept it, but only five minutes for Lia to cut it, and now it lay scattered around her brother Mazi’s house like straw on a stable floor. “Let me get a look at you, Ari.” Lia walked around me […]

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Chani sat on the women’s balcony, racing through her prayers at the usual breakneck speed of the Orthodox. She was bored. She knew there was a Chasidic position that prayer should be as fast as possible, to prevent the yetzer hara, the evil inclination from getting a few thoughts in edgewise between the words. But […]

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We fucked up. We all know it, despite the fact that the others don’t want to admit it. The whole night was a series of fuck-ups, starting with Kerby and his stupid bottle of Latvian tequila – it didn’t occur to him to wonder why the stuff was in the discount bin, did it? (Dumber […]

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The priest finished his elegy with the usual pronouncements, then added a turn of phrase Elo hadn’t ever heard a priest use. “Gods and the Destroyer be merciful,” the old man had said. Just like any man of the troop might have, with Destroyer and Gods in the same sentence. Elo looked around the bowed […]

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Nurzanah found him in the dust-eaten ruins of the library, seated before a broken writing desk. He was thinner than she’d ever seen him, the bones in his wrist showing clearly under the long sleeves of his kurta, and as she hesitated in the doorway he set his head against his hands, fingers pressed into […]

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Today was a perfect day, with three flaws. It was snowing here in Miami, one of her brides had trouble recognizing her, and her cummerbund wouldn’t stay up. The cummerbund was the only problem Mel could fix. She brushed ashes off the church office’s desk and rummaged around for safety pins. She found typed notes […]

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