“I have a song for you,” the girl said, appearing in Anj’s study unannounced. The two bluetails in the cage by the window trilled a welcome. Anj looked past the girl to the outer chamber. Where was Shen? He was supposed to keep things like this from happening. “Your servant is striking a bargain to […]

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Thursday 1 January 2601 (Earth Relative Time) Ensign Darlene Charles took a deep breath to quell her nerves. This is my last chance to make a good impression. Because a third strike would not be a good career move in the Unified Star Fleet. As she picked her way through the dimly lit mess littering […]

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The second week, Emma discovered a tattoo parlor down an alley off the main square. The young man behind the counter took one look at her and said, in careful English, “You are too young for a tattoo.” “I don’t want a tattoo. I don’t think I do. My brother does.” He is thinking about […]

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Mother doesn’t trust us anymore. She won’t let us leave the house. You just stay there where I can keep an eye on you, she says. No, you can’t go play in the yard. Don’t you move. We’d noticed her starting to change a while ago. It worried us. When had she become different? Bicky […]

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The house stood back from the road in an orchard. In the orchard, monitor lizards the length of a man’s arm stalked the branches of rambutan trees like tigers on the hunt. Behind the house was an abandoned rubber tree plantation, so proliferant with monkeys and leeches and spirits that it might as well have […]

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“The sauerkraut is what makes us special,” Lizzie explained as she opened up the plastic door to show Themba the hydroponic units.  She scooped a pale green head of cabbage from the moist sand and placed it gently into Themba’s cupped hands. She held her breath as Themba cradled it in his palm, hoping: Please.  Please […]

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I don’t need a name, a past, a history, to draw a crowd. I’m nobody, and they watch to see me fail–but I don’t, and I laugh from the joy of it. I flash the bottles from hand to hand in the hot dawn, flash and catch, throw. Street jinks aren’t allowed to work the […]

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I While everyone else in the school van chatted or sang along to the radio, Mac stared out the window, thinking about a girl who’d said hello to him during the academic bowl. In the darkness, he studied his faint reflection in the glass. How did he look to girls? he wondered. He pressed his […]

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1 Georgina met Death when she was ten. The first time she saw him she was reading by her grandmother’s bedside. As Georgina tried to pronounce a difficult word, she heard her grandmother groan and looked up. There was a bearded man in a top hat standing by the bed. He wore an orange flower […]

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The inexorable pull to move south grows. The sun hums to me all day long that it’s time to go, go, go. The night sky is even more persistent–every constellation in the big Montana sky makes arrows pointing south. My appetite increases and I develop a layer of fat on my belly. My senses grow […]

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