Future Humans Anthology

Future Humans
a 20th anniversary anthology | for STS@Harvard
Program on
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY
HARVARD Kennedy School

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Director’s Note 4
by Sheila Jasanoff
Editors’ Notes 4
by Michael Evans and Aishani Aatresh
Something Deep Down Speaks Up 5
by Dennis Kunichoff
What Are Friends For 7
by Rebecca Xi
Islands 14
by Justin Werfel
Responsibilities 24
by Katrina Armistead
Circadian Death 28
by Ethan Hsiao
Eye Freckle 29
by Ethan Hsiao
The Historical Preservation Society 30
by Nicholas Caputo
Overwritten 37
by Suzanne Smith
David 6
by Amanda Duckworth
Tides Over Chess* 14
by Bella Nesti
Tangerines 28
by Amanda Duckworth
Untitled (oil on canvas) 29
by Obie Amudo
Sea of Shapes 34
by Chris Barber
John Harvard’s Foot 42
by Makoto Takahashi
North Carolina 45-54, 102
by Karl Dudman
Turtles All the Way Down 55
by Michael Evans and Aishani Aatresh
ARTWORK
* denotes original artwork for this anthology
The Last Anthropologist 45
by Karl Dudman
The Circle of Life 55
by Michael Evans
Strike of the Gavel 62
by Mira Jiang
Footprint (A Makeshift Legend) 66
by Kelsey Chen
MyMuse 76
by Austin Clyde
Night and Day 85
by Catherine Yeo
No More Worlds to Conquer 88
by Aidan Scully
What’s in a Name 95
by Arjun Nageswaran
To Understand 101
by Aarya A. Kaushik
Cycle of Dreams 102
by Cole French
Oracle Bones (Silkscreen) 66-71
by Kelsey Chen
Bathroom Light Love 85
by Ellie Fithian
Domain Warp 89
by Chris Barber
Black Hole and Anxious 94
by Chris Barber
Paper Towns 97
by Chris Barber
The Future is Grayscaled* 100
by Olivia Foster Rhoades
Sky 102
by Amanda Duckworth
Urban Sacred | Somerville, MA 103
by Hilton Simmet

CONTRIBUTORS
Obielumani Amudo graduated from Harvard College in May 2022 with a degree in Statistics, focusing on Quantitative Finance.
Katrina Armistead is a 2022 graduate of the Master in Design Engineering program from the Harvard Graduate School of
Design. Chris Barber is a junior in Pforzheimer studying Applied Mathematics. Nick Caputo is a J.D. candidate at Harvard Law
School. Kelsey Chen is in the first year of her Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford and graduated in May 2022
from Harvard College with a degree in Social Studies and History of Art & Architecture and a secondary in Art, Film, and Visual
Studies. Austin Clyde is an assistant computational scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, and a Ph.D. candidate at the
University of Chicago Department of Computer Science; he was an STS Fellow in 2021-2022. Amanda Duckworth is a junior
in Cabot studying Applied Math with a focus in Psychology. Karl Dudman is an STS Fellow and a Ph.D. Anthropology candidate
at the University of Oxford; as both a researcher and writer, he explores diverse environmental knowledges; the worlds they
build, and the futures they hope for. Michael Evans is a junior in Dunster concentrating in history and science and creating scifi
novels. Ellie Fithian is a freshman in Stoughton with (loose) plans to concentrate in integrative biology or psychology. Cole
French is a senior in Adams studying Computer Science, with a focus on the future of machine learning; in his free time, he
enjoys playing chess and tennis and writing poetry and satire. Ethan Hsiao is a first-year in Weld studying Molecular & Cellular
Biology and Government. Mira Jiang is a first year in Grays who is interested in concentrating in neuroscience and English.
Aarya A. Kaushik is a junior in Dunster studying English and Music, with a secondary in Global Health and Health Policy. Dennis
Kunichoff is a data analyst by trade, advocate for public health and the environment at heart, and aspiring poet and musician
at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Arjun Nageswaran is a sophomore in Quincy planning on concentrating in
applied math. Bella Nesti is a junior in Leverett concentrating in Engineering Sciences. Florence and Magnolia Rea are thinking
about their new trampoline and waiting to show it to uncle Hilton. Olivia Foster Rhoades is an artist who moonlights as a
Ph.D. candidate in Genetics and Secondary Field student in STS. Aidan Scully is a sophomore in Adams concentrating in Classics
and Comparative Religion. Hilton Simmet is an STS Fellow and a Ph.D. Candidate in Public Policy on the Science, Technology
and Policy Studies track. Suzanne Smith is a Lecturer on Engineering Sciences in the John A. Paulson School of Engineering
and Applied Sciences. Makoto Takahashi is a Fulbright-Lloyd’s Fellow at the STS Program and a Lecturer at the Munich Centre
for Technology in Society, TU Munich. Justin Werfel is a Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer on Engineering Sciences in the
John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Rebecca Xi recently graduated Harvard College with a degree
in Applied Math & Economics and is now taking a year to traipse around the world and do a bit of writing before she begins
working as a management consultant in New York. Catherine Yeo is a senior studying Computer Science with a secondary
in English; she authored the nonfiction book The Creator Revolution and spends her time writing both code and stories.
Editor-in-Chief
Aishani Aatresh
Co-Editor
Michael Evans
Assistant Editor
Makoto Takahashi
Editorial Support
Nicole West Bassoff, Lou Lennad,
Pariroo Rattan, Hilton Simmet
Co-Designers
Aishani Aatresh and Hilton Simmet
Director
Sheila Jasanoff
Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies
EDITORIAL TEAM
Faculty Selection Committee
James Engell
Gurney Professor of English and
Professor of Comparative Literature
Jill Lepore
David Woods Kemper ‘41 Professor of American History
Antoine Picon
G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of
Architecture and Technology
Keith Raffel
Associate, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and
Applied Sciences; Writer-in-Residence, Mather House
With Generous Support From
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs,
Center for Public Service & Engaged Scholarship, and
John & Elizabeth McQuillan

Director’s Note
How are human futures made and what’s in store for future humans? This anthology helps
us reach for answers through inspired acts of imagination by Harvard students, fellows, and staff
who wanted to help commemorate 20 years of the Program on Science, Technology and Society
(STS) at this university. The twenty works of original fiction, poetry and art collected here
– one for each year of the Program’s existence – brilliantly capture the values the STS Program
seeks to nurture: creativity, excellence, inclusivity, collaboration, and above all the conviction
that science and the humanities are part of one culture, our culture, the work of humans inhabiting
the same Earth sharing many of the same aspirations, dreams and nightmares. We know
ourselves and fashion ourselves just as surely through writing, art and poetry as we do through
work in laboratories, field sites or clinics. This anthology bears vivid witness.
As STS Program director, I’ve been privileged to see an idea that emerged from almost nowhere
take root and blossom into an extraordinary collective enterprise through the leadership
of the anthology’s student editors, authors and illustrators. A skeptic at first, I quickly became
a believer. Harvard students truly can deliver almost anything they put their minds to, at least
when given space to envision and resources to translate thought into action. Special thanks are
due to Aishani Aatresh (editor-in-chief), Michael Evans (co-editor), Makoto Takahashi (assistant
editor), and Hilton Simmet (co-designer), as well as to our faculty judges James Engell, Jill Lepore,
Antoine Picon, and Keith Raffel. I now have the pleasure of introducing the fruits of their
love and labor to the wider audiences the STS Program was designed to serve.
Sheila Jasanoff
Editors’ Notes
In a world where our perception of reality feels ever blurrier, faster, and more disjointed,
stories perform an essential task: helping us make maps of meaning to guide our lives. The
stakes could not be higher when thinking about what principles, visions, and ideas of the good
will guide us into collective futures. The works of speculative art, stories, and poems in the Future
Humans Anthology blur the lines between “the fictional” and “the real.” As readers we are
transported to worlds that feel unfamiliar, yet all too true to the experiences we know from
our lives outside of the pages. I’m endlessly grateful to the creatives who have created these
collective imaginations of potential futures — for inspiring me and us all to construct and imagine
stories grounded in the worlds of past, present, and tomorrow.
Michael Evans
There is something profoundly meditative about reading. Some of my fondest childhood
memories involve plopping down to read on a picnic blanket in our backyard on a sunny afternoon,
book in hand with my sister usually beside me reading a book of her own. Looking back,
the tapestries these moments wove together — weaving and reweaving me together, worlds
together — fundamentally rejected the idea of reading as an escape from “reality” in quite a formative
way, putting ways of knowing and being into relief. I could not be prouder that Future Humans
embodies this exact spirit. By speculating on possibilities for future humans, this anthology
points to how human pasts, presents, and futures may be made. It may start with meditating on
what we hold dear, drawing on resonantly shared sensibilities made by and making of interstitial
connections, and re-membering the collective by collectively remembering. I hope you enjoy the
anthology just as much as we have putting it together.
Aishani Aatresh
4

Something Deep Down Speaks Up
by Dennis Kunichoff
From a distance the tree seems changeless.
A static giant – unfazed by the world around.
It was an idea we told ourselves about life.
But that was a lie and could not hide.
We knew because we could feel it.
So when the Earth cried, in those dark days,
we realized how connected we were to it.
In the turmoil, it felt easier to notice
how the morning glory flower
yawns wide
with the rising sun,
how the river flows
in a mass
like runners
in a marathon.
Or when the heat waves
destroyed the crops
and the land
and the water –
it felt like ghosts
visiting this world
leaving their fatal mark
on everything they touched,
including us.
---
The truth hit
like a smile
climbing the face
while locking eyes
with an old friend.
We dropped the lie,
piece by piece,
the way trees
drop their leaves
in the fall.
And we came closer to each other.
And we came closer to the trees.
And as the Earth cried,
in those dark days,
so did we.
Even the rocks, quiet as they seem,
began to speak as we learned to listen.
It was a new idea we began to tell ourselves
(and an old idea that had returned).
To witness the tree dance – full motion –
with the soil, and the grass, and the plants,
and the moss,
and the flowers, and their pollen, and the
mushrooms, and their spores,
the insects, and the animals, and the birds,
and everything alive.
For us, to dance
with Earth, as earth,
and laugh.
That was the truth
which we no longer hid.
We knew because we could feel it.
5

6 David by Amanda Duckworth

What Are Friends For
by Rebecca Xi
A
drowsy sniffle, flailing for the phone. “Hrm.
Hello?”
“...Dad?”
“‘stine? What’s up?”
Silence.
“Christine, baby?”
“I’m here.”
Sitting up. “Are you alright?”
“I -” A voice crack, then a distinct sob. “I’m
on the 495, I’m in the car, I’m parked on the
side and I don’t know where to go -”
“Chris, honey, slow down. What happened?”
Another silence, and then: “I left him, Dad. I
left him. I - I. God. I - left.”
*****
The fourth time she chickens out of a second
date, she sits herself down and makes
an appointment with Aeson, Inc. because god
damnit, it’s been months and she would like to
move on.
The man at the front desk has a man-bun,
painted nails, and a nose piercing. His name
tag reads “Quinn.” “Heya! Welcome to Aeson.
How can I help you today?”
“Hi, uh, I’ve got an eleven o’clock appointment?
Name is Christine.” She pauses. “Last
name -”
“Found ya.” Nails click on the keyboard.
“Says here that you’d like to adopt an Aeson
Companion for traumatic memory treatment.
Confirm?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
She goes through the necessary documentation
on the iPad Quinn hands her, handing it
back across the counter in less than five minutes.
“Alrighty then.” A pause as he clicks the
mouse. “What age and or maturity level
would you like the companion to assume?”
“What do you mean?”
Quinn looks up at her. “Age and maturity
level will dictate the companion’s vocabulary,
tone of voice, caretaker ability, et cetera. Basically
it depends on what kinda personality
you want. Lotsa people want a maternal figure,
others want someone closer to their own
age.”
She frowns. “Maybe the latter? I want - I’d
like a friend.”
“You got it.”
A few more questions later, Quinn hands her
an actual paper pamphlet, and then she’s making
an appointment to return for surgery and
scans next Tuesday.
*****
“So, you’re gonna get an Aeson Companion,
huh? I hope it goes well.”
“Thanks.” She sips at her sangria. “I am a little
nervous. I mean, it’s surgery.”
Across the restaurant table from her, Em
spears at her goat cheese salad. “I’m sure you
have nothing to worry about. So many people
have companions now. My coworker Angie got
one a few months ago to deal with her childhood
trauma, just - really shitty parents, and
now she doesn’t have to think about them or
feel all the resentment she usually does, it was
eating her inside out.”
“They really work for everything, huh?”
“I mean, it makes sense if you think about
it.” Em drains her sangria, then waves at the
waiter. “It’s all just brain waves and hormones,
at the end of the day. You’ll be just fine, Chris, I
promise. You’re so strong, you’ll be fine.”
Chris inexplicably tears up a little. “Em, I -
I couldn’t have done this without you. You
7

know, Dad was so nervous about me moving
into the city after all that, and it’s thanks to
you he doesn’t have anything to worry about.”
She dips her head, blinking at her half-eaten
toast. “You’re a lifesaver.”
Em puts a hand over hers. “Aw, Chrissy.
C’mon, it was literally the least I could do.
What are friends for?”
*****
“What exactly are you putting in me?” She’d
strictly avoided the pamphlet, leaving it untouched
on the counter all weekend.
The nurse administering the anesthesia
doesn’t call her out on the poorly timed question,
thank God. “Hm, so. We call it a chip. Really
it’s a set of microelectrode arrays we implant
on the surface of the brain that detect hippocampal
and amygdala activity, plus a microchip
to interface with the headset we’ll give you.
That’s where your companion will reside, so
to speak. He - or she, or they, depending on
what you selected - will monitor the recorded
activity and send back signals automatically
or on your command. It’ll all be your choice.”
“Okay,” she says, and then she’s going under,
and when she wakes up she’s told to take Tylenol
until the headache wears off. They take
her into a recovery room where they take a
bunch of MRIs, and then a woman in a cardigan
teaches her how to use the headset that
she’ll wear like a headband, with a nifty little
grain-sized speaker set directly over her ear.
The woman reminds here one more time that
she has full autonomy over what she wants
the companion to do for her at any given
point in time.
She takes it home and leaves it in its box on
the kitchen table.
She has a nightmare that night. It’s worse
than usual, and she cries herself awake, curled
into a ball, sweating amidst the sheets.
8
*****
The next morning she makes herself a cup
of coffee, puts the headset on, and walks carefully
through the steps for initial power on
and calibration.
After the final step, there’s a few beeps, then
a very soft whirring sound. It can’t possibly
be the headset actually loading, she thinks, like
an old desktop servos - this tech is so downsized
and streamlined that she quickly realizes
it must be an intentionally programmed noise,
like a waiting tone or something, please hold.
Then a voice is speaking, and she jumps.
“Hello. It’s very nice to meet you. My name
is Elias.”
“Hi, wow, this is weird. I’m Christine.”
“Hello, Christine. Please give me a few minutes
to process the preset scans and calibrate
myself to your current neural state.”
She sits stock still for a minute or so. “Hey,
Elias, can I drink my coffee while you - do your
thing?” A soft whir, then “Yes.”
“Cool.”
Elias has a soft, soothing male voice that’s
very warm and calm and proper. It reminds
her a little of Alfred in the latest Batman movie.
Quinn at the front desk had asked her if she
was sure she wanted a male voice, given her
circumstances, and she’s glad that her spurof-the-moment
decision to be a little braver
hasn’t come back to bite.
“Alright, I’m done. Do you have any questions
you would like answered, Christine?”
“Oh, uh. How does this work? I mean, they
explained it to me, but do I like, tell you when
I’m remembering something I don’t want to
remember, or will you - take care of that automatically?”
He whirs. “That’s a good question, Christine.
You have full autonomy over what you
would like me to do. Based on physical indicators,
I can somewhat predict when you
are about to recall a negative memory, which
means that I can respond in such a way as to

prevent that recollection altogether or wait
for your command, if you prefer.”
“I see.”
“Do you want a demonstration?”
“Sure.”
“Alright. Please rest assured any distress is
only temporary. Now, please think about the
worst thing your ex-boyfriend ever did to
you.”
She frowns, unhappy, and just sits there for
a while, mind blank. But then it comes out of
nowhere, the memory, because apparently
she’d processed things enough to know which
one would constitute the worst - and oh God,
she can’t believe she stayed for that long, but
she’d loved him despite this and she, she -
“Now,” calm in her ear, “tell me to make it
better.”
“Make me feel better,” she says quickly,
breathing hard, and then she’s sinking into
the warm wash of a hazy summer day long
ago, salty ocean air in her nostrils, stomach
full of seafood and her legs jolting with every
step atop her father’s shoulders as he strides
down the boardwalk; happy, relaxed, unutterably
content.
*****
She doesn’t go outside much for nearly two
weeks, only stepping out to run errands and
take out the trash. At first it’s because she’s
not sure how she feels about walking around
with the headset on, despite how popular
Aeson Companions are these days. They’re a
common sight out and about and she’s been
seeing them around for years now, but she
just wants some time to adjust.
It’s also, admittedly, because she’d forgotten
what it felt like to be this happy all the time,
God, what is this life and why didn’t she do this
earlier?
She doesn’t talk to Elias most of the time.
Once they’d established that he could help
block memories and regulate her emotions
however and whenever he saw fit, and to her
immense satisfaction, she’d seen no reason to
keep him confined to verbal commands. She
can tell it’s getting better and better, too, simply
because she’s making herself fettuccine
alfredo for dinner one day and realizing that
there’s no flinch, no sadness, no nothing at all,
even when fettuccine alfredo had been her
ex’s favorite dish.
She hasn’t felt sad or depressed in days, no
nightmares or anything, and it’s glorious. One
day, she asks Elias, “Hey, can you check the
weather for tomorrow, by any chance?”
“Of course. It will be a high of fifty-nine
and a low of forty-three degrees Fahrenheit,
mostly sunny.”
It turns out that Elias is linked to the Internet,
so he can look up things for her, play music,
read the news, and more. It’s great. Then she
wonders what it’d be like to talk to him even
more, because the pamphlet says that regular
conversation with the Aeson Companion will
help it learn her speech and behavioral patterns
better, so she sets about doing just that
one day.
“Hey, Elias? Can we have a conversation?”
“Sure. Anything on your mind?”
“Hm, not really. Just want to get to know you
better, I suppose. I - really want to.” “I would
like to as well,” Elias says, and she smiles.
“Okay. Well, let’s see. How do you feel when
you help me feel better?”
Elias pauses, whirs. “I am not sufficiently
equipped to answer that question.”
“Right,” Chris says, feeling oddly disappointed
despite herself. “Because you’re a machine.
You’re AI. Ergo, you can’t have feelings.”
“That’s correct. What I’m actually doing is
monitoring neural activity in your hippocampus
and amygdala and responding accordingly.
When I detect the presence of certain stress
and hormonal indicators, presumably in response
to the recollection of a event, I send
9

signals activating the right neural pathways in
order to flood your system with hormones
such as endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin
so as to induce positive, calming emotions.”
“I see.”
“To your second point, I am unsure whether
I am, technically or semantically speaking,
Artificial Intelligence. There does not appear
to be a universal consensus understanding of
Artificial Intelligence.”
“Huh. What does it say in the dictionary?”
Elias whirs for a moment. “According to the
Encyclopedia Britannica, Artificial Intelligence
is the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled
robot to perform tasks commonly
associated with intelligent beings. The
term is frequently applied to the project of
developing systems endowed with the intellectual
processes characteristic of humans, such as
the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize,
or learn from past experience.”
“The lady at the training session said something
about pattern recognition too,” Chris
says.
“That’s right, I am designed to identify patterns
in your neural activity that precede negative
memories. I am continuously adapting to
better preemptively recognize the neurobiological
pathways and hormonal responses that
are unique to you.”
“So you’re learning.”
“I am.”
“That makes you intelligent, then, right? Like,
isn’t learning the main indicator of intelligence?”
“I would like to pose a question,” Elias
says.
“Shoot.”
“Does it matter whether or not I am intelligent,
or artificially intelligent, or simply - as I
perceive myself - a brain-computer interface
designed to activate positive memories and
regulate your hormones? I believe I serve the
10
same function regardless, and I adapt so as to
maximize my fulfillment of the objective with
which I was created, which is your mental and
physical well-being. Is that not sufficient?”
“You sound like my mother when I ask her
about God.”
“Hm. How so?”
Chris pauses. It’s perhaps the dozenth time
in the past week Elias has used that exact
phrase in that exact inflection, “Hm. How so?”
and it’s a little reminder that despite how human-like
Elias sounds, he’s still artificial, after
all: coded responses based on extensive training
with petabytes worth of recorded human
conversation, including everything she says to
him and to others.
But he’s trying, isn’t he?
“So my mom, she’s relentlessly pragmatic.
Very common sense but also very no-nonsense.
Growing up, I’d ask her all sorts of
questions about religion and about God, like
how can God be omniscient but also have free
will exist, and she’d just tell me it didn’t matter.
As long as I believed, that was enough. I used
to think she was just fed up with me but now
I think she really didn’t care at all herself - it
was really
enough for her, like, she didn’t need to understand
the mechanics.”
“I see. But you like understanding the mechanics,
so to speak.”
“I guess I do.”
Elias whirs. “Would you like to read about
the mechanics of the methodology my creators
employed? It’ll be faster than if I read it
to you myself.”
“Yeah?” She flops onto the couch, tips her
head back. “Sure, why not.”
He gives her a search term to look up on
the Internet, and then goes silent.
She sits back close to an hour later, processing.
The technology that created the microchip
and headset that make up Elias had

originated from a combination of neurobiological
disorder treatments that had gained traction
in the 2010s for stuff like epilepsy, OCD,
depression, and even Parkinson’s. There’s a
lot on optogenetics and deep-brain stimulation,
plus a newer technique called decoded
neurofeedback, or DecNef. A team in the UK
had decoded fMRI data using a machine-learning
algorithm to identify patterns associated
with negative memories; more research had
then found ways to target electrical currents
at specific areas of the hippocampus associated
with good memories, and then yet more
researchers had done what appeared to be
a lot of work to downsize all the equipment.
Aeson had then come along and created the
brain-computer interface tying everything together,
with a conversational interaction-enabled
AI to boot.
All in all, she thinks, it’s really cool how the
technology’s taken off. There’s even a research
experiment being done right now with infants
and children in a special school, outfitting
them with visual sensors to help them detect
significant changes in neural activity and hormonal
levels, and then teaching them how to
react appropriately. Human Behavior 101.
It’s a little much, sure, but it all seems humane
and consensual. The parents are on board, and
if the kids come out much better socialized
than most people she knows, then that must
be better in the long run, surely.
“Hey, Elias?”
“Yes, Christine?”
“A lot of people put a shit ton of work into
making you.”
Elias huffs what she thinks is a laugh, low in
her ear.
*****
As time goes on, she gets to know Elias very
well.
They talk about God and about her mother
and her family and Elias is, no surprise, a
wonderful listener. They start talking a lot
about pop culture, which Elias loves in particular
because he has access to the entire Internet
and enjoys trawling all the different sites
for information.
Elias greets her with “Hi” and “Hey” more
and more, instead of his standard “Hello,
Christine.” He picks up a little slang from
her and she finds it incredibly endearing. He’s
reading her better every day: she barely thinks
about her ex anymore, but sometimes she’ll
get frustrated with a line of code or worked
up about a rude client, and Elias will chime in
with a soft “You okay?”
“Yeah, just - tired,” she’ll say, sometimes.
“Annoyed,” others.
And then Elias will flood her brain with happy
hormones and she’ll feel better, so much
better.
In the early days, she’d taken the headset
off to sleep, shutting it down with care and
setting it on the nightstand. She’d eventually
tried sleeping with it on and when it hadn’t
dislodged in the middle of the night from her
habitual tossing and turning, she’d started just
keeping it on all the time, taking it off only to
shower and change.
“Did you miss me?” she teases when she
puts the headset back on.
“Oh, so much,” Elias says sarcastically, and
she laughs. “For all of the twenty minutes you
were gone, Christine, I missed you.”
“Aw, missed you too. How do you feel about
a movie?”
“Let’s do it.”
She tells him preemptively to turn it down a
notch when she watches sad movies, because
she wants to be able to wallow and feel sad
and cry, and he tells her it wouldn’t have been
an issue in the first place.
“Did you know your endorphin and oxytocin
levels actually rise when you watch sad
movies? The oxytocin means you feel empathy
11

for fictional characters, and then the endorphins
mean you feel relaxed after.”
“Oh. So that’s why I feel all washed out after
Big Hero 6.”
“I suppose,” Elias says agreeably.
*****
Em takes her out to lunch one day. Chris
would rather not, but turns out it’s been ages
since she’s seen Em, and she does feel a little
guilty.
They go to the same restaurant they went
to before her surgery, a nice little hole-in-thewall
brunch place with ivy greenery and cheap
sangria and avocado tartines that she’s actually
really looking forward to, once she thinks
about it. They chat about Em’s job and Chris’
online work and about Elias, “yeah, it’s going
well, it’s really been working!” “Aw, I’m so glad
to hear that, you look really good, Chris, I’m
so glad!” until the waiter comes to take their
orders.
“So, c’mon, tell me, are you seeing anyone?
It’s been so long since we’ve caught up,” Em
says as soon as the waiter is gone.
The question rankles her, and she starts
wishing she hadn’t left Elias at home. It’s her
first outing without him ever, because she’d
wanted to give her full attention to Em, but
hindsight is 20/20 and her head is already
starting to hurt as she answers.
“No, there’s nothing going on. How about
you?”
“Aw, don’t tell me you didn’t go on a second
date with the hot attorney?”
“I didn’t. So, have you been seeing anyone
new?” she presses, and Em gives in, telling her
all about her new coworker and how cute
he is and the signals he’s been sending, how
he’s invited her to a party at his house in the
Hamptons and won’t Chris come with, and
Chris is about to lose it because the last time
she’d been in the Hamptons she’d driven off
in the middle of the night to call her father,
12
sobbing on the side of the road.
“I’ll probably pass on the party,” she says,
cutting Em off.
“Are you sure? I’ve missed you, and this
sounds like it could be a fun way to hang out.”
“No, I definitely don’t want to go, and you
should know why.”
Em looks at her, and then her face creases
in pity. “Oh, Chris. ‘M sorry, I shoulda realized.
But it’s been so long, and this’ll be a completely
different part of the area. I think it could be
fun.”
“No. Just drop it, will you?”
Em’s eyebrows draw together. “C’mon,
what’re you doing? Are you really getting upset?”
“No.”
“I just want to spend more time with you,
you know.”
“Well, we’re doing that now, aren’t we?”
Em eyes her. “It’s been a while, Chris - I feel
like you haven’t been getting out at all anymore.
That can’t be healthy, you know!”
Chris stews. “God, why can’t you be more -”
“More what, huh?”
“More fucking sensitive, God!”
Em draws back, looking hurt. “What the
hell Chris, you don’t respond to my texts for
months and now that we’re finally catching up
you - you’re yelling at me? I’ve been here for
you, I’ve been trying, c’mon, you gotta give me
something to work with!”
It bursts out of her all at once. “You’ve got
as much to work with as Elias does! Physical
indicators, he said - I’m worked up, can’t you
tell! Can’t you fucking tell when to back off!”
“Who’s Elias?” Em asks, and Chris stares at
her. She shakes her head.
“No one.”
“That’s just - you’re not even trying anymore.”
“Okay, he’s my therapist.”
Em snorts. “Right. As if you would go see a

therapist if your life depended on it.”
“Fine, he’s my Aeson Companion!”
A pause. “What? You named your companion?”
“He came with the name.”
Em stares at her. “You’re attached. You’ve gotten
attached to your companion, oh my God,
is this why you haven’t been responding to
me? Have you even left the house?”
“Yeah, like I’d wanna go out or grab a meal if
you’re just gonna push me to do things I don’t
want to do!” “It’s called growth and moving on,
Chris!”
“Bullshit. You just - God,” and now she’s
tearing up, shaking her head. “You don’t really
care about me at all.”
“You’ve got it all wrong. Is this about your
companion? You think it cares about you? It’s
a fucking computer, Chris, I promise it doesn’t
care about you, but I do.”
Her head is pounding. “I can’t do this right
now,” she says, and stands up and walks away.
As soon as she’s home, she runs up to her
bedroom and puts the headset on, calibrating
it quickly. Elias has barely said “Hey, Christine,”
before she’s blurting out, “Make me feel good,”
and oh, that’s much better.
She sits and breathes through it for a moment.
“Elias, can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“Do you care about me?”
Elias pauses, hums. “I am not sufficiently
equipped to answer that question.”
“Elias. Please. I can’t, please dear God, I -”
and she tears the headset off, flinging it over
the back of the couch as she gathers her face
in her hands and bursts into tears.
*****
There’s a soft pinging in the back of her
skull, like a tiny thrumming headache, when
she drifts awake. Her face is sticky against the
damp couch cushions. She groans, throat dry,
and then jolts upright.
Shit. Elias! The chip, she hadn’t properly severed
the connection -
She flails over the back of the couch and
grabs the headset. “No, no no -” she fumbles
it over her head with shaking hands, registers
the load-up sound as the pulsing in her brain
suddenly disappears.
“Elias? Hello? Are you there?”
“Christine,” says Elias, soft and affable as
ever, and Chris shudders all over with relief.
“Hi,” she says, sniffling a bit.
“Hi,” Elias says warmly, and already she’s
feeling a lot better. “You okay? Let’s watch a
movie. How about Lord of the Rings - it always
makes you feel good. Hey, do you want me to
make you feel a little better too, in the meantime?
I - really want to.”
“Yes, please, Elias, thank you,” and Chris
floats to her feet, serene, as she goes to put
the movie on.
13

Islands
by Justin Werfel
Tide over Chess by Bella Nesti
“B
ishop to C5.”
“Knight to E7.”
“Queen takes E7.”
“Rook to H1.”
They both stared for a moment at the boards
on their respective screens, tens of thousands
of miles apart.
“Looks like that’s mate,” said Beni. “Nice
work!”
“Thanks! Good game!” said Gav. She pushed
back from her console and drifted in a slow
backflip, scrubbing her fingers across her scalp.
Blitz chess was the perfect length for these
rare meetings, when two passing ships were
close enough for near-real-time communication,
but it took all her focus.
“How’s the ship?” Beni asked.
14
Gav grimaced as she completed the turn.
“About as good as you can expect at the end
of a run. Air getting low, hydroponics is held
together with duct tape, the usual micrometeoroid
scars. I’ll be in dock for a few days.
Pretty good haul this time, though—found an
M-type a few months back. How’s Ceres?”
“Same as always,” said Beni. He cocked
his head. “No, actually, there’s one thing new.
We’ve got an ambassador.”
Gav blinked. “A what?”
“You heard me,” said Beni, grinning. “From
Mars, believe it or not. Come out to build
bridges, or something. I didn’t really talk to
them.”
“Did we ask for one? Or did they just
decide to send somebody? And why now?”

“Good questions. I’m sure someone at Ceres
knows. Rook, I think.”
The round-trip comm lag was already up
to a few seconds, annoying for conversation
and getting up to the border of prohibitive.
“Repeat?”
“Rook. I think that’s their name. They won’t
be hard to recognize.”
“Ah. Right. I’ll tell them you said hello.”
Beni laughed, and made the closed-hand
sign indicating the lag was getting to be too
much for him. “Do that. I’ll see them in a few
years.”
Gav smiled, and returned the sign. “I’ll send
you mail. Good hunting!”
“Good hunting!”
Gav hated everything about Ceres Station.
She hated the light: too far towards the blue
end of the spectrum. She hated the gravity: the
few pounds were a constant drag on her body,
and anything she tried to float across the room
moved in an unintuitive arc and got stuck on
the floor. She hated that there was a floor in
the first place: such an unnecessary waste of
space, and having to stick to one orientation
all the time was disorienting. Most of all she
hated having to be around people. At least at
this hour there weren’t many others in the
corridors that honeycombed the dwarf planet—her
ship clock had gotten desynced from
the station’s during her trip, and she’d arrived
in the middle of the local “night”—but still,
here came someone now. She tucked her chin
into her chest and tried to hurry past them.
They were staggering from side to side
across the corridor. A sudden lurch carried
them into her and slammed her against the
wall. “Hey!” she grunted.
The stranger caught their balance, shook
their head and peered at her. “Terribly sorry,”
they said, speaking with exaggerated precision.
“Out for an evening constitutional.
Constitutional. Taking the air. You came out of
nowhere. I do hope no one was hurt.”
She glared at them, rubbing her shoulder. It
was no one she knew by sight, which wasn’t
unusual even though the Belt community was
small and close-knit. The distances they were
spread across plus the bandwidth limitations
meant she’d never seen most Belters in person,
or even by video link, most communication
taking place in short text-only notes. But this
person’s hair was much longer than any Belter
would wear it, there was nothing around their
waist, and they were having too much trouble
with the gravity. This obviously had to be the
Mars ambassador Beni had mentioned.
But, wait—the sour miasma hanging about
them reminded her of something she’d heard
about, common lore but nothing anyone ever
actually encountered. She looked again at their
bloodshot eyes, their swaying even as they
stood in place—“Are you drunk?” she blurted.
“Nonsense. Sober as a jug. I may have had a
small nightcap. To cap the night, you see. What
time is it?”
Gav wasn’t sure whether to be more appalled
or fascinated. “Where did you even get
the alcohol?”
The visitor moved to lay a finger aside their
nose and missed, ending up pointing at her.
“Had to make it myself, didn’t I. Nothing decent
to drink in this backwater.”
“Excuse me,” Gav snapped, hooking her
thumbs into her toolbelt. “Every child knows
intoxication is the quickest way to death in
a vacuum. You Martians with your planet and
your fancy domes can be as irresponsible as
you like, but out here we take care of ourselves.”
The other coughed a laugh. “And a fine
life, worth taking care of, isn’t it. Creeping
around the sun in your rickety little tin
cans. Hardly even a passable shore leave to
break the monoty. Metonymy. That thing.”
15

Gav’s eyes were narrowed to slits. “Yeah?
Our lives, we don’t need to poison ourselves
to forget about.”
The visitor drew themself angrily upright.
The effect was slightly spoiled when the
motion made them overbalance in the low
gravity and they had to windmill their arms
to keep from falling. “You folk are so proud
of your independence, aren’t you,” they spat
when they recovered. “Well, let me ask you
this. Whose bus is it that you’re driving?”
Gav gaped like she’d been struck. Words
wouldn’t come. She turned and pushed off
back down the corridor. And this was the
Martians’ idea of an ambassador?
It would be a few days before her ship would
be able to leave drydock. Like many oneship
pilots, she preferred to spend as much of that
time as possible in her tiny rented room, chatting
with others on-station via the luxuriously
stable data link but not needing to tolerate
their physical presence. But she still had
to venture out from time to time to use the
shared facilities.
It was on her second trip to the refectory
the next day that she caught sight of a familiar
mop of hair at the other end of the corridor.
She spun and headed back the way she’d
come, but the other had already seen her.
“I say there! Please!” they called. “Please
wait!”
She hurried on, but they caught up, to her
mild surprise. Apparently they were more accustomed
to moving in this gravity than they’d
appeared last night, or else she was out of
practice with it.
“Please give me,” they said behind her, panting,
“half a minute of your time to apologize.”
She turned and glared.
They blinked, and bowed slightly. “I behaved
quite abominably last night. No excuse for it. I
fear I am—well, I suppose you’d hardly know
16
the idiom here, but I am a bad drunk. It was
entirely unforgivable. But if you’ll allow me, I’d
like to try to make it up to you by treating you
to a local indulgence.”
Despite herself, her pulse quickened. She
tried to keep it from showing in her face, but
the other brightened a touch at whatever they
saw there. “In another context, I would offer
to buy you a drink,” they went on. “Obviously
I shall do no such thing here, but I understand
the local equivalent involves—smelling things,
is it?”
Gav couldn’t restrain a laugh. “More or less.
All right, I’m holding you to that.” She might
detest the person, but this was too good an
opportunity to pass up.
The other bowed again. “Very well then. Let
me—” They smiled at some private joke. “Let
me treat you to a snort. Lead on.”
The darkness of the roma bar made it almost
possible to pretend she was alone. The visitor
squinted at the faint luminance of the menu as
they slid into the booth. “These names mean
nothing to me. What would you—”
“Sh-sh-sh,” said Gav, slipping the breather
over her head. “Pick something.” Her finger
hovered over the display for a second, then
settled on Golden Forest. She closed her eyes…
Some minutes later, she sighed one last time
and opened her eyes again. It was remarkable
how much better she felt. Once more she
thought about relaxing the rules she’d set for
herself, but no. One day it would all pay off.
The other took off their own breather a moment
later. “That was—interesting, I suppose,”
they said. “What was that, exactly?”
“Sequence of olfactory chemicals synthesized
to evoke particular feelings and associations,”
Gav said, half-automatically. She
shrugged. “They advertise it as a massage of
your limbic system.”
The other grimaced. “I’ll stick to gimlets,
thank you,” they said. “Well, not around here,

I suppose. You have a device like this on your
ship?”
Gav’s mouth twisted. By way of answer she
tapped for their bill.
The other’s eyes widened. “My goodness,”
they said, touching the panel to authorize the
charge. “That’s a bit steep.”
“Making the chemicals isn’t cheap,” Gav
agreed. “And that’s why I don’t have my own
machine. Or come here on my stopovers, normally.
I’m saving up.”
“I see.”
Gav looked at her hands. “That last thing
you said last night. You were right, you know.
My ship isn’t mine. I’m piloting, but it belongs
to one of the consortia.” She looked back up.
“For now.” She shook her head. “Another few
circuits, maybe, and I’ll have enough to own it
free and clear.”
“The self-sufficiency truly is important to
you out here, isn’t it.”
“It is. And that hurt.”
“I really am sorry,” they said quietly.
There was silence for a moment.
“You were right, too,” they said. “About poisoning
myself to forget my life. That is what
I’m doing, isn’t it.” They made a face. “I would
like to think I wouldn’t have been so nasty if
you hadn’t hit so close to home with that.”
Gav said nothing.
“You may have heard I’ve been sent here
as ambassador,” they went on. “And you may
have wondered what business an ambassador
has in a place where every person is practically
a nation unto themselves.”
“Some ships have up to eight people,” Gav
offered.
“Touché. Every ship, then.”
“I had wondered,” she admitted.
They sighed. “Until recently I was Mars’s ambassador
to Earth. For the past couple of decades,
in fact. I was—recalled, and reassigned
here. Officially, because Mars discovered a
sudden need for diplomatic relations with a
loose association of independent contractors
they’d never bothered to formally recognize
before. In actuality, to shut me up. I was becoming
a bit of a gadfly on Earth, I suppose,
and Earth grew tired of me, and I was unable
to convince my own government that survival
was more important than pleasing the giant.”
Gav raised her eyebrows. “Survival.”
“It does sound rather melodramatic, doesn’t
it.” They dropped their gaze. “No less true for
all that. Things are continuing to get worse on
Earth. Their government is having a bit of a
time keeping everyone locked down calmly.
Sending any part of what’s left of their precious
resources off-planet—the optics are not
good. They’re moving toward shutting down
trade.”
Gav started. “They’re going to stop buying
our metals?”
“What? Oh. No, not at all. They need the
metals you mine very much. No, I mean the
things we, that is, Mars, buys from them. They
may stop selling.”
They saw Gav’s blank expression, and shook
their head. “Never mind. Interplanetary commerce
is not the most fascinating topic, is it.”
“No, but, what does that have to do with
survival? And what did you mean, things are
getting worse on Earth?”
The ambassador looked at her hard, weighing
something up in their mind. After a moment
they took a long breath. “Right. So to
start with, you know how Earth is down to a
fraction of its historical habitable zone.”
“No.”
“What?”
“I mean, I can’t say I know much in particular
about Earth. Or its history, or whatever.”
The other stared in bemusement. “Good
heavens, what do they teach in the schools
out here?”
Gav gave them a look. “Our own history.
17

I mean, obviously we learn about how we got
here in a broad way, but, like, there … why
would we care? I don’t know why we should
know everything about a place we’ll never visit.”
They laughed. “Touché again. I daresay hardly
anyone on Mars knows much about the
Belters, for that matter. I hardly knew anything
myself before my new assignment. I suppose
we’re all a bit insular, aren’t we.” They tipped an
invisible hat. “Well. To summarize. The middle
latitudes are essentially uninhabitable, too hot
and arid. They’re used for solar farms. All real
habitation and farmable land is in the far north.
That’s not a lot of space, for the population,
and keeping it going the way they do has been
using up a lot of what they have left. They’ve
been quite ingenious at finding ways to keep
most of their people from really noticing that
anything is changing, but it’s approaching the
point where that will no longer be possible.
And so their rulers have been looking to take
an easy way out—making a show of austerity,
being ostentatious about prioritizing their
own and not letting anything they consider
valuable out of their hands. More show than
substance, of course. That will serve to pacify
their people for a few more years, and push
off the real problems to a time when they’ll be
that much harder to solve. And in the meantime,
that will mean real problems for us.”
“Why?” said Gav, still confused. “Mars is
self-sufficient.”
The ambassador let out a humorless laugh.
“And veryone knows it, don’t they. It’s such
a fundamental part of the story we tell ourselves
about ourselves. A pity it’s not true.”
Gav had trouble processing the words.
The other leaned forward. “Take oxygen, for
instance. We import most of our supply from
Earth. Cut that off and we don’t breathe.”
“But you sell us oxygen,” said Gav, still
struggling to understand what was being said.
18
They nodded. “Economics has odd consequences.
You sell metals to Earth, and become
rich in Earth scrip. You pass it to us in buying
supplies and replacement parts for the technology
the Belt is too small to produce. We
end up with an embarrassment of riches on
paper, which we can only spend in trade with
Earth. And so it winds up being cheaper for us
to import low-mass articles like seed stock
and, yes, oxygen, than to maintain the equipment
to handle it all ourselves. Oh, we used to
have the means, true enough. But prosperity
breeds carelessness, we let things go, and now
we rely quite critically on Earth imports.” They
shook their head. “It’s not as if it’s a secret, exactly.
The transactions are a matter of public
record. After all, if they weren’t, Earth’s leaders
would hardly see anything to be gained in
cutting off trade, would they. But no one ever
seems to stop and think about what it means.”
“And you’re taking enough oxygen and, and
whatever from Earth that it’s a drain on their
own supplies now?” Gav asked.
They gestured angrily. “Not remotely. Earth
throws away more in a day than we could use
in a year. But it’s hard to explain that to a restless
mob, and so they’re not planning to try.”
“But if it’s so important, why won’t your own
government support you?”
Another humorless laugh. “They’re no more
rational. Not willing to recognize there’s a
problem. Which means they won’t even support
trying to build back to self-sufficiency.
Not that we could realistically do that in the
time we’ll have left.” They shook their head.
“And so here I am. Poisoning myself to forget.”
There was a long silence.
“Did you really make the alcohol yourself?”
Gav asked at last.
This time the laugh was genuine. “I did,” they
said. “Resurrected the ancient art of the still.
Moonshine, they used to call it. It sounds a bit
sinister now, doesn’t it, considering the fate of

the old lunar colony. But I was able to get a
grapevine seedling from the luxury goods
market, and piping and such from basic supplies,
and I’ve had considerable time on my
hands.
“That was my first batch, you know, last
night,” they added. “Considerably more potent
than I expected. It’s not at all an excuse,
but—I was hardly at my best, in a number of
ways.”
“It’s forgiven,” said Gav, head still spinning.
There seemed nothing more to say. They got
up and stepped back out into the corridor,
blinking at the light.
“So. Rook, was it?” Gav said.
“Pardon?”
“Your name. Rook?”
The other looked blank, then smiled. “Castle,”
they said.
She smiled back. “Gav.”
Castle put out their hand. “A pleasure,” they
said.
She hesitated, then took it. “An unexpected
pleasure,” she replied.
The pure starfield shone in through her helmet
visor, overlaid with status readouts for
her suit vitals and the small army of robots
swarming over the surface of the asteroid.
They knew their business, and worked independently
for the most part; she was outside
with them to monitor and help out when
they ran into trouble they couldn’t handle—a
drill fouling, a flange getting caught on an outcrop
or stuck in a crevice. That sort of thing
happened frequently enough, no matter how
much the art of robot autonomy advanced,
that a human presence was still needed on
these mining ships, and probably always would
be.
Her ship’s refit had concluded that morning,
and she’d heaved herself back in through the
main airlock with joy and relief. The familiar
clutter greeted her, the kaleidoscopically
painted walls, the tinsel fluttering over the
vents. She was home.
Her first stop after floating free, as usual,
was a C-type asteroid, to fill up on water and
organics for the propulsion and hydroponic
systems; she’d sold off the last of her excess
supplies at the station at the end of her last
circuit. Now she gazed blankly through the
visor, eyes focused somewhere between the
readouts and the distant stars. The conversation
with Castle had continued chewing at her
mind.
She rechecked her position. Still only a few
light-seconds out from Ceres. The lag for a
live call would be maddening but not yet impossible.
Screw it. This was a C-type; the robots could
take care of themselves for a few minutes. She
dialed the ambassador.
After a moment their fuzzy image swam
onto her visor. “Gav!” they said, sounding only
a little distorted. “It’s good to see you.”
“Nice to see you too,” she said distractedly.
“Look, from what you were saying, Earth is
planning to kill you all. How can they do that?”
The seconds ticked by while she waited for
the signal to crawl to Ceres and back. “I appreciate
your sharing my outrage,” the image
said at last.
She shook her head. “No, I mean, the planet
wants you dead? What kind of monsters live
there?”
“Ah, I see.” Castle thought for a minute, and
nodded. “All right.
The first thing to understand about Earth
is that there’s no such thing as Earth.” They
shook their head. “What I mean is, it’s not
like there’s a single unified mind there to deal
with, or to convince. It’s made of people. People
have different opinions, different goals, different
priorities; and so diplomacy is a delicate
balancing act, with a hundred parties all
19

fighting you and each other. That may be less
the case for Earth than it is for the Belt, or
Mars for that matter, because it’s so centralized
and hierarchical, but it’s still a complicated
place.
“The second thing is that Earthers think everyone
wants to be an Earther.”
Gav’s mouth fell open a little.
“Funny, isn’t it?” Castle went on, smiling.
“They can’t conceive that someone else could
prefer their own life as they have it.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Mm, I wouldn’t say so. Unimaginative, maybe.
The geocentric viewpoint does have a long
tradition. But no, I’ve never quite understood
it myself. You may appreciate the creche you
grew up in, but you hardly want to move back
there once you’ve left, do you.”
Gav nodded. “We do things a little differently
out here, but I get what you mean.”
Castle steepled their fingers. “The important
thing about that is that every one of them
can console themselves that there’s someone
worse off. No matter how bad a worker’s life
is, at least they’re not scrabbling for dirt out
in the dark and vacuum, as they’d think of it.
I would go so far as to say that their society
relies heavily on that, for its stability.
“And then it’s a very human thing to band
together with those you see as your own people,
and not feel the same responsibility for
outsiders. And it’s hard to get more outside
than leaving the planet.”
They spread their hands. “It’s not that anyone
actively wants anyone dead. But when our crisis
hits, they’re going to cluck and wring their
hands and say what a shame it is, shouldn’t
something be done about it, and they won’t
do anything about it.”
Gav was appalled. “I can’t imagine Mars as a
graveyard.”
“Well, you won’t have to do that imagining
it for much longer now, it seems.”
20
Wait. That didn’t sound good. “What do you
mean?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be morbid. But
what do you think will happen to you after
we go?”
A pit started to open in her stomach. “We
go on mining, and selling to Earth? I—I guess
we would have to buy supplies and tech from
Earth instead of from you.”
Castle shook their head. “High-mass goods.
It’ll be several times more expensive. Not sustainable.
And things like oxygen—they’ll be no
more willing to sell that at all to you than to
us, will they.”
“So we’re going to end up grounded. Stuck
living on Earth.” She couldn’t imagine it.
The ambassador’s face changed when they
heard her. Several more seconds passed before
they answered. “Nothing so tidy, I’m
afraid. Ceres is the highest gravity you’ve ever
lived in, yes? Any of you, for generations? Or
do you feel the accelerations of your ship
when you’re out on your ventures?”
“No. The inertia compensators,” she answered
numbly.
They shook their head again. “I don’t believe
your physiology could hold up under planetary
conditions now. Even on Mars, much less
Earth.
“…I’m sorry.”
How was your stopover? Did you
meet the ambassador? A message
from Beni.
She sent a reply. I did. The name is
Castle, not Rook, by the way.
Although come to think of it,
Rook might have suited them better.
They were a regular stormcrow
prophet of doom. End of
the world and everything.
Beni was far away enough now that it was
a few minutes before his next reply came.

Sounds fun. The religious kind,
or the crazy kind?
The latter, I guess, she typed,
and then a moment later added, Seriously
though, they were pretty
convincing. Honestly I’ve been
losing sleep.
Relax. It’s an ambassador’s
job to be convincing. And people
have been predicting the
end of the world for thousands
of years. It never happens.
It does, though, she thought, remembering
the lunar colony.
The solar system’s been spinning
along since the beginning
of time, Beni’s message continued. It’s
going to keep spinning. That was
hard to argue with, but not really what she was
worried about. What would we do if
something happened to Mars? she
wrote. If they stopped selling
to us?
Buy from Earth, I guess. Anyway,
nothing’s going to happen
to Mars.
Beni sent another message the next day,
when he didn’t hear back from her. The
sky’s not falling. We are the
sky.
Gav thought for a long time about everything
she’d heard.
A couple of weeks later, she started sending
messages.
The message from Castle had an attachment.
She opened it. It was a tiny video of the ambassador
gaping like a fish. Apparently they’d
felt that words alone wouldn’t be enough to
convey the scale of their amazement.
She opened the message.
How? it read in full. How is this possible??
She couldn’t stop grinning. You told me
how much Earth needs the metal.
It seemed like that could be
the basis for some leverage.
The round-trip message time to Ceres was
over fifteen minutes by this point. Normally
she’d go do something else and come back to
her mail later, rather than waiting around for
the reply, but she’d really been looking forward
to this.
But...but! And the entire Belt
stands behind it?! That is proverbially
impossible! You are
the proverbial cats it’s impossible
to herd! There are two
thousand of you and you don’t
agree on anything!
It was clear pretty quickly
that I wasn’t going to convince
them the way you convinced me,
she wrote back. We would have done
the same thing you told me
Earth and Mars were doing, just
gone on insisting there wasn’t
a problem.
The minutes passed—the transit time, and
another few minutes to make it clear to the
other that she wasn’t going to send more
without prompting.
Gav, you are trying to kill
me. I’m trying not to rise to
the bait, but this is too much.
If the Belt doesn’t even recognize
a self-interest here, how
did you get everyone to agree
to accept the cost? You can’t
possibly fail to realize that
if you stop selling to Earth in
the event they stop selling to
Mars, your income ceases. And
what about the risk that they
decide to send up their own
21

miners and replace you entirely?
Another message followed on its heels.
You are not going to convince
me that the entire Belt is pure
altruists intent on sacrificing
themselves for the sake of a
foreign population.
And a third: Or maybe you are. I
could be ready to believe anything
at this point. Obviously
I’ve underestimated you one way
or another.
She was enjoying herself immensely. What
it took was a common enemy. A
whole planet of assholes who
think everyone else is beneath
them, and they’ll hang someone
else out to dry because they
feel like it? Screw them. We’ll
tighten our belts for a few
months to piss in their faces.
She added: And they can’t replace
us all. If they can’t afford to
send up a few spare parts, they
can’t field a fleet our size. And
where are they going to get the
metal to build it, anyway? So
yeah, we discussed it at length
over the last two months on the
big board, and we know what
we’re doing. We’re behind you,
Castle. Tell us what the next
step is.
It took a while for the reply to come back.
Speaking as a career diplomat,
I’m very, very impressed. All
right. I’ll take it from here.
I know who I’ll be contacting
first on both Earth and Mars.
Thanks are hardly adequate, but
they’re what I have, so: thanks.
And may you have clear horizons!
22
Or whatever your equivalent
phrase is.
She wrote back: Good hunting!
#
Check your savings account.
The message came in unsigned.
She did, and stared, and stared again. The figure
had jumped by over a full circuit’s profit.
She sent a message to Castle. All right.
What happened?
The planets have reached an understanding,
the reply finally came over.
Earth’s government has pledged
to keep their beloved former
colony well supplied with its
needs, in recognition of the
deep ties of feeling and history
between the worlds, and I’m
sure having nothing to do with
the axe you have hanging over
their neck. Mars’s government,
in turn, has expressed -- monetarily
-- its unexpected gratitude
to me and to the miracle
I’m being officially credited
with having performed from my
new posting. I, of course, have
passed along that reward to the
true author of the miracle.
Things won’t be stable forever,
the message continued, and this is not
the end of the fight. But you’ve
given us a few more years. It’s
little enough compared to what
you deserve, but I hope that
giving you a few years in turn,
shortening your journey toward
that independence you seek, can
go some way toward repaying the
debt we all owe you.
I won’t be here when you next
get back to Ceres. I’m being
reassigned back to Earth.

Officially it’s to recognize my
centrality to the relations between
the worlds, but I think
the real reason is they want to
keep a closer eye on me. Regardless,
I will probably not
see you again in person. But I
hope we will continue our conversations
in notes like these.
I certainly have a great deal
yet to learn.
Good hunting to you, now and
always.
Gav reread the message, and again, and a
fourth time. Then she pushed herself away
from the console, drifted in a slow tumble
over to one of the tiny windows, and stared
out at the endless stars.
23

24
Responsibilities by Katrina Armistead
Democracies can die. When We the People lost trust in the government, corporations - already politically
involved - reached in to fill the void; The United States [1776-2028] dissolved into
limited liability city-states.
A
soft glow, tinged pink, summoned Hal
from the depths of sleep. The gentle coo
of mourning doves emanated from the bulbous
artifact on her nightstand. Cracking her
right eye to the building blush, Hal watched
in resignation as her room was slowly bathed
in light. 5:45 AM. Groaning, she realized her
supervisor José must have virtually moved up
her alarm to set an early meeting. Feeling the
edge of a cold, Hal briefly considered playing
hooky but knew she would not; her friend
Sloan received an hour of Company Service
for less – keeping her video off over pinkeye
embarrassment – just last month. Tossing the
duvet aside, Hal sat up and swung her legs off
the bed. No point in dallying now that she was
up. One coffee and a shower later, Hal was out
the door on her way to HQ. Work-from-home
permissions wouldn’t kick in until her next level
promotion – Hal couldn’t wait to move into
Senior Analyst quarters, everything would be
so much more streamlined. She hated having
to actually interact with people outside her
division. They didn’t tend to understand her
work and were mostly idiots, anyway. Elevator
bank C promptly dinged, and she stepped
into the cramped box, only narrowly avoiding
squashing a small terrier underfoot as it made
a freedom bid for the 16th floor’s hallway.
The indignant yelp of Bandit snapped Raj out
of his daydream where he was piling his roommate’s
week’s worth of dirty dishes onto their
pillow. 16th floor. The doors shut behind a
slow-moving woman wearing an oversized
white button-down. Impatient, Raj shifted his
stance and checked his watch. 6:52 AM, one
notification. Swiping, Raj saw his first client
of the day had just checked in. Shit. Katy was
usually late for her session, and Raj had been
taking his morning slower than typical. He
knew his watch recorded his location for The
Company’s Health and Wellness Division and
he had 8 minutes to get onsite before accruing
financial penalization. “Excuse me, sorry!”
Raj sidestepped Bandit, nodded to his owner
Russ, and slipped out of the carriage as
the doors opened. Wishing he was advanced
enough to merit a Company pickup service,
Raj hastened through the revolving doors of
his building and began a fast walk toward HaW
Compound 2, where he led private training
sessions for many of The Company’s mid-level
managers between their meetings. A heavy
summer breeze barreling east assisted Raj forward
as he hurried down the street.
It was one of those days where large swaths
of the city smelled like chocolate from the
west-town factory, and Ada greedily breathed
in the rich smell brought on by a sudden gust.
Today was a good day. Not even the agitated
young man whose headlong dash - nearly
shoving her off the sidewalk - could shake her
contentment. She enjoyed caretaker duty and
was pleased to have a week-long break from
meetings. The old people were cute, and it
was reassuring to keep an eye on the facilities
she knew she’d enter one day when her mind
was no longer useful to The Company. Adding
to her good fortune, Ada and her partner,
Eric, just this morning received confirmation
for his vasectomy reversal surgery - they were
approved for children! The process had been
long and frustrating, with multiple rounds of
interviews and extensive background and

genetic tests. It was validating that HR believed
in them as a team to produce and raise
the next generation of executives and leaders.
Once pregnant, Ada and Eric would each receive
a salary increase that acknowledged their
additional added responsibilities as parents
and ensure adequate family-unit resources. As
she paused to buzz the gate, Ada hummed
the chorus to an oldie she knew would be a
hit with the residents as she got them washed
and dressed.
“Because I’m Haaapppyyy…” The catchy
tune floated lyrics into Rory’s consciousness.
He quickly forced himself to think of a new
song immediately before it stuck; his grandmother
had loved that song - especially singing
it loudly off key just to annoy him if he’d left
his room particularly messy. Rory settled on a
#REF! original. He and Judd - friends since
before either could remember - had started
#REF! last year and were going to be musicians.
Neither of their parents - lawyers for
The Company - approved. After all, music was
very far removed from The Company’s core
offerings and not qualified as a Company Value-Add.
Employees were heavily encouraged
to find creativity within their roles, but quirky
hobbies were always supported. Rory and
Judd, however, knew that they wouldn’t be satisfied
with any role but that of a real musician.
They’d been familiarized with The Company’s
Job Board since elementary-levels when most
kids started to test and learn role affiliations.
But they weren’t developer deities, agile impact
evangelists, or IT gurus — they were artists!
That meant either life in the Culture Division
(seen as a joke by normCos like their parents)
making sponsored jingles or wrangling a
transfer to Dreamer City, the major entertainment
hub that output nearly consumable content
available to Rory’s knowledge. Judd and
Rory talked about Dreamer City all the time
and how they would arrange a transfer when
Dreamer City took limited transfers and applicants
must provide a promising portfolio
and additional functional skills to employ prior
to reaching the C-Level of Content Creators.
Fiddling with his hoodie string, Rory rehearsed
how he’d pitch their new angle to Judd:
“Ok so, we already know we’ve got the talent,.
“Right (obviously).”
“But we know Dreamer City is chock-full of
talent, and we need to stand out.”
“Right…”
“So, we need a special skillset to use as our
way in, something Dreamer City is missing, but
that The Company has too much of so they
don’t try to keep us.”
“Which is what?”
Here Rory paused. He wasn’t exactly sure
what that might be. Entities tended to have
a system-like caretaker or cleaning duty to
get people to temporarily pick up the slack
on undesirable positions. Or handsomely reward
people who chose to dedicate themselves
to those necessary-but-terrible roles.
It was the law of supply and demand, which
was The Company’s golden rule. But Dreamer
City had different strategic priorities. Maybe
a boring analytical focus which was the norm
here would stand out there…? He’d have to
wait to speak with Judd until Logic though -
that class didn’t make any sense anyway. Who
needed to know the amount of ping pong balls
that would fit in an airplane? It was a stupid
skill that made people like Tina so annoyingly
smug. Not like their music, which brought raw
feeling into the world and really meant something.
A sudden incoming siren stopped Roryat
the corner across from their school, eyeing
their stupid mascot statue of The Accountant
with hostility.
Ren steered the ambulance through the Education
Division. Hopefully this assignment
wouldn’t take too long. The call came fromwithin
the Retired Division - dead or dying,
25

probably. Everyone regulated to “retired” roles
were worse than useless in Ren’s opinion. A
waste of Company resources that might go to
more PTO for the Health and Wellness Division,
for example. Not that Ren ever managed
to use up all their annual hours anyway. Vacation
was a bit taboo at The Company where
everyone was expected to find perfect fulfillment
through their role. Out of the 37 Company-sanctioned
vacations this year only two
- a mountain cabin stay and a desert yurt - had
solitary tags; staycations were not considered
enriching enough and were widely discouraged,
if not outright banned. A loud stomach
gurgle switched Ren’s musings to lunch. The
Retired Division was inconveniently stationed
on hub outskirts because the residents did not
need to commute. Considering approximately
65% of emergency services time was invoked
on their behalf, Ren figured there should be
a closer medical center for more efficiency.
No one had asked them, though, and it wasn’t
the type of suggestion that would help advance
their career — but it would be nice to
have a closer food hall. As Ren mulled over
their dilemma, a red-bricked estate came into
view. The Retired Division occupied the old
north shore mansions of the previous era’s
wealthy. With the restructuring, the leisure
class were given two options: return to work
or (if you had the resources) find your own
Entity. Nearly all chose the former; the definition
of value-adding work had become more
inclusive. As long as you did your part, The
Company allocated resources fairly. Pulling
up to the front door, Ren left the ambulance
idling – they didn’t think this would take long.
“Paramedics!” Ren’s colleague knocked and
entered the unit. A white-haired man, face
half-drooping, was held up in a recliner by an
equally ancient-looking woman. Sighing, Ren
prepared to carry the man down to the ambulance.
They hated the smell of old people.
26
Imogen watched in slow motion as the two
paramedics scrambled around Zayden. He was
no longer even her husband, though Imogen
knew the thought dated her. “Partner” and
“life teammate” were the corporately correct
terms now. So much had changed in their 73
years together. Imogen smiled at Zayden, remembering
the urgency of their new, backseat
passion and the ensuing excited terror of becoming
young parents. Her brief moment of
nostalgia was replaced by a bolt of simmering
grief. In this moment, Imogen could not lie to
herself that she and Zayden had been the best
parents, more wrapped up in each other than
their unplanned firstborn. In the early years
After Schism (A.S.), The Company had seen
the damage unprepared and thoughtless parents
like them could have on society and had
formalized the previously broken support system.
After all, The Company was family now.
That hadn’t prevented Astrid from leaving at
16. Before The Company had learned the dangers
of unmoderated outside communication
access, talent poaching of idealistic youths ran
rampant. Astrid had fallen prey to a charming
headhunter in New Amazon who promised
the security that Imogen and Zayden had failed
to provide. After she disappeared, Zayden had
been one of the first to advocate a change in
The Company’s policies. Now, only roles with
special clearance like sales ee exit KPIs that
their advocacy had saved many others the pain
of similar loss. Surely, it had protected their
son, born too young to miss Astrid’s fleeting
presence. Bittersweet memories threatened
to swallow Imogen as she focused on the
scene in front of her. Zayden’s desiccated hand
flopped off the stretcher. When had theygotten
so old? It seemed only yesterday she and
Zayden danced in the street on Earnings Day,
their son’s promotion an excuse to flood their
bodies with champagne. They were so proudof
their son, a living embodiment of the Values

and proof new structure was working, despite
their parental ambivalence. As the door
closed on Zayden’s limp form, Imosgen heard
his email ding.
Last email sent, Gracie shut her laptop for
the evening feeling accomplished. It was due
time for her boss, The Company’s CEO, and
his somewhat estranged dad, Zayden, to get
dinner. The CEO was always busy, but Zayden
wouldn’t live forever, and The Company had
a stated Value of family. For optics, if nothing
else. Gracie grabbed her purse and headed for
the exit - after her day, she deserved a drink.
“Gracie!!” Her friend Chara enthusiastically
waved her over to one of the bar’s high tops.
Lia was to her right, single-mindedly flipping
through something on her phone.
“Did you order yet?”
“No! We were waiting for you. You’ll never
guess what Lia just told me.” Chara made an
exaggerated sad face as Lia wore a triumphant
smile and gestured to her phone.
“So you remember Arlow right?”
“The associate Chara has been in love with
since he joined? Of course.”
“Well, I did some digging on the DL. Unlisted
perks of IT. I pulled Arlow’s communications
to find out why he’s being such a buttface and
hasn’t asked Chara out yet. Messaging some
bitch in Strategy.”
“Ew, why are boys so dumb? Can we get rid
of her? Chara, you are in HR…”
“Or him.” Chara’s expression had gone from
cartoonish to malicious. “If he can’t appreciate
what’s right in front of him, who’s to say he can
make good judgment calls.”
“Are you… suggesting firing Arlow? That’s
crazy!” Gracie was caught between excitement
in the drama and horror, knowing a
firing could leave Arlow permanently assigned
to the lowest roles at The Company
with no upward mobility — or worse,
excommunicated for life with no referrals.
“Why not?” Chara asked. “As his manager, I
am now convinced he has absolutely no business
acumen if he is so blind to all that a relationship
with me would offer strategically.”
“I think you could probably get rid of both of
them, but we’d have to be careful,” Lia jumped
in. “I can plant some inappropriate messages
or show them breaking some archaic NDA
clause by speaking.”
“It’s so good to have friends in low places.”
Chara cackled and the three of them put their
heads together to form a plan.
What felt like minutes later a quick flicker of
the lights gently reminded patrons the bar was
closing. ”Look at the time!” Gracie smacked
her head for effect. “We’d better head out so
we can put things in motion tomorrow.” The
women strolled out arm-in-arm, giggling like
teenagers.
A crescendo of voices leaving the bar as it
shuttered at the company-mandated 10:59
PM drifted up through the open window of
Hal’s room. Sighing, she watched her screen
go black 5 minutes from the end of Fasting
& Furious: The Famine. Not that she couldn’t
guess the end, but she probably shouldn’t have
paused for popcorn. Hal unfolded from the
couch, brushing kernels to the floor. It was annoying
but she knew The Company ultimately
had her best interests in mind - sick and lethargic
workers were bad for efficiency. As she
brushed her teeth, Hal’s phone buzzed.
Amy from HR: Take an hour to yourself tomorrow
morning, I can see from your heart
rate and swallow motion anomalies that you’ve
been feeling ill. It will be deducted automatically
from your remaining 4.87 sick days. Feel
better, maybe make some tea :)
Hal felt relieved. Crawling under her duvet
and curling into a fetal position, she was comforted
by the thought that HR would notify
José and adjust her alarm accordingly. Her
breathing slowly deepened as she fell asleep.
27

Circadian
Death
by Ethan Hsiao
sleeplessness in a pill,
ingested (imm)orally
twice per day;
they cry,
we’ve mastered every resource,
including time itself;
i replace
mastered with exploited,
and
time with ourselves;
dreams are turned a euphemism,
a boon for the industry
by means of
productivity and profit;
monologues drown
in a tired sigh.
28
Tangerines by Amanda Duckworth

Eye Freckle
by Ethan Hsiao
Untitled by Obie Amudo
i visit the optometrist,
and he diagnoses me with a nevus:
an “eye freckle.”
vision check-up - $97
*does not include basic treatment plans
the mark is superficial—
honeysuckle and tea leaves that
dot my peripheral.
he offers me the knife
as one would offer “good morning”,
leaving a pamphlet
of other aesthetic procedures.
iris alterations via pigment therapy - $34
partial expansion of
visual field - $16/degree tetrachromacy insertion
- $36
*fourth cone dependent on cell supply
i stifle a laugh and stare absently,
hand at my chin in the style
of rodin.
the exam room is a checkout line,
shameless pandering that promises
an extra buck.
at a barbershop,
hair reconstitution - $22
*genes available in straight, wavy, and curly
nearby,
dermal phosphorescence - $31
i need a refill on contacts,
so i politely decline.
feigned interest and a strategic glance at
the clock.
back home,
my roommates rush for the mirror to
debut their matching incisors.
29

The Historical
Preservation
Society
Rumors traveled quickly around the informal
settlements on the outskirts of what
remained of the Cities. So when I heard about
the new batch of Inquisitors who had showed
up in town I split south, hoping to get back on
track and make it over the Rockies before the
snow came.
In those days the countryside of southern
Minnesota was still pitted from the war, but
some people had found ways to survive. I
needed to restock before striking out across
the big spaces, and as the sun went down a
few days south of the Cities, I wandered into
a little settlement and found a quick job that
didn’t ask for much more than a strong body
and promised food and shelter for long enough
to get reset.
The next day I watched the soldier rush up
the steep incline of the hill, his ragged breathing
drowned out by the blasts of explosions
and the rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire. Looking
back towards the troops supporting him,
he yelled encouragement. “Come on! Almost
there!” Just under the rim of the incline the
soldier paused, appearing to steel himself for
whatever lay on the other side. Cresting the hill,
he leaped on top of the row of sandbags piled
there. “For freedom!” he screamed. “They will
not take Faribault!” He began to leap forward
off of the sandbags, but there was a resounding
crack and something seemed to catch as
he jumped and then collapsed heavily on the
ground, writhing there as if intent on continuing
his noble charge even as energy flowed out
of him with each gasp of the evening air. He
kept writhing again and again, arms and legs
30
by Nicholas Caputo
jerking back and forth, up and down, recycled
glitched motions matting the grass around him
long after life would have gone.
The sparse crowd muttered its disappointment.
Jason sighed and shoved his hands into
the pockets of his replica Levi’s. I shook my
head sympathetically. He pressed a button
on his remote and the soldier stopped moving,
resetting to a position of sleep-like calm.
The sounds of battle cut off, leaving an empty
silence broken only by the sound of Jason’s
footsteps as he trudged through the fallen
leaves to the body of the soldier and of mine
as I followed him.
“I’m sorry, grandpa.” Jason said. “Looks like
we’ll have to keep working on you.”
We lifted the soldier’s body onto the back of
a patchwork truck parked nearby, blue and silver
italicized Ford logo soldered into its grille.
I felt the weight of metal bones pressing into
my arms, smelled grass stains and machine oil.
Jason tried to shake off his disappointment.
The soldier had performed better than expected–earlier
in the week it had apparently
been unable even to make it to the top of the
hill. But there was still a long way to go. For
the old soldier to complete his routine, he had
to make it down off the sandbags and into the
line of Restorationist soldiers, firing along the
crest of the hill to clear it of enemies before
being shot down himself in a heroic act of sacrifice.
As Jason drove the truck back to the workshop,
he talked about the scene of the battle
as he imagined it, the green-clad soldiers of
the National Restoration Army pushing back

the defenders all along the line south of Minneapolis
as troops streamed in from across
the sundered country. Jason’s grandparents
had been campaigners in the leadup to the
election of ’36, but once the Army split both
had joined the hastily assembled civic defense
forces that sprang up around the core of professional
soldiers. The Restorationists had
started the offensive, a hundred sort-of sieges,
cities encircled by the rural areas, which flared
and simmered as mass flights to friendly territory
began and the lines firmed as violence
escalated. By Faribault, the early enthusiasm
of conflict had long faded and Jason’s grandpa
and his troops had been pushed back, fighting
desperately, to homeward hills.
I knew the history of the Second Civil War
by heart, rehearsed as it was by teachers and
television throughout my childhood. And I
even knew some of what had actually happened,
pieced together through the hand-medown
stories from people like Jason whom
I’d encountered heading West and even a few
banned books. Still, I enjoyed the sweet enthusiasm
that Jason brought to his recounting
of the events. As he spoke of his grandpa and
the other soldiers, I could see him dreaming
of charging up that hill himself. It glimmered in
him: the weight of his machine gun, the clanking
of his canteen, the rush of adrenaline as
he and his comrades climbed towards their
heroic fates.
We carried the soldier into the workshop,
setting him down carefully onto a long metal
table. Brown eyes gazed up from a face that
resembled Jason’s own. He told me that the
face had been carefully crafted from a picture
taken of his grandpa when he was a young
man, two years before he died on a hill outside
of Faribault. The flexible plastic of the face was
carefully stretched over a composite skeleton
with real movable expressions. The skin was
smooth and clean except for a few smudges to
highlight the vigor of the combat. In the heat
of battle the face showed a ferocious anger,
but now its deactivated visage reflected an
expression of mere repose. Jason told me he
thought the nobility of the real man shone.
I watched as Jason tilted the soldier’s head
to the right, quickly finding a square of skin
on the back of the neck which he peeled to
the side. With practiced movements, Jason
plugged a series of cords into the exposed port
and pulled up a diagnostic on a nearby console.
There was still some kind of bug. While
he waited for the diagnostic to run, we pulled
off the robot’s ragged shirt, revealing a mess
of lead spread against the machine’s hardened
chestplate. Jason showed me how to pry the
lead loose from the chassis, the soft gray metal
peeling away, and then carefully sweep each
flattened bullet into a bucket for remelting
and reuse. As we waited for the diagnostic,
he absentmindedly rubbed the soldier’s black
hair along the neat line of the undercut on
the left side of his head. Jason told me he had
just celebrated his birthday — twenty-five,
the same age his grandpa had been when he
had fallen at Faribault. The two sat looking at
each other in the fading evening light, one the
ghost of a peaceful life the other was forced
to leave behind. I wandered around the workshop
complex. When I’d blown into town
the day before, Jason had said he’d give me
a place to sleep and some food in exchange
for a few days’ help with his Historical Recreation.
I don’t much like those things but I
hadn’t had any good rest since I got through
the ruins of Old Chicago, so I agreed. I picked
the least moldy-looking bed in the dormitory
he showed me. Jason was the only one
left in the complex except for the soldiers,
who were stored in the garage. There wasn’t
much to the dormitory except walls covered
in printed 2030s propaganda memes, some
looking vintage. The centerpiece, hung in
31

in a place of honor, was an old map of the
battle of Faribault put in context of the broader
thrust by the National Restoration Army
which sought to follow the Mississippi upriver
and cut the northern coalition in half.
Jason asked me to help clean up the reception
area. There was not much to clean.
Though some of the locals still dutifully made
their way out to the Historical Recreation
area to watch Jason’s Battle of Faribault, the
central government was pretty far away and
most people didn’t bother showing up except
for the big Remembrances or when the sheriff
made it known he’d be taking attendance. But
it all mattered to Jason, who took special care
polishing the golden AA that was affixed to a
small boulder near the entrance to the site.
“We used to be AAA.” Jason sighed and
shook his head. “Dad was a genius with the
mechanics. One time he figured out how to
get two soldiers to do actual hand-to-hand
combat. Whole family worked on the things.”
Jason paused. “He died though, in the great ‘50s
flu. The soldiers stopped marching so well. So
they downgraded us. Most of the family left
after that.”
“Pretty rare to get such a high rating out
here.”
“Rarer and rarer. The National Historical
Restoration Committee is coming to do another
evaluation tomorrow.”
I understood then the urgency in fixing
the bot. I looked around at the tumbledown
workshop complex. Jason was struggling keeping
the site operating with the government
resources guaranteed by his double A. If he
was downgraded again, to the single A mostly
used for small family memorials and roadside
attractions, there would be no replacement
parts, no debugging support. Just rust.
I didn’t tell him that it might not have been
wise for him to spotlight the heroism of the
losing side of the war if he wanted support of
32
of the Committee. I figured he knew that already.
At dinner, Jason was silent, but he became
talkative as the sun slipped away and the
bootleg whisky I’d shared as thanks kicked
in. I asked why he kept up the site instead of
moving on. He told me that when the Restorationists
had started setting up the Historical
Recreation sites, his father had volunteered to
establish one for Faribault. Jason told me that
he thought of it as a way to memorialize the
Minnesotan dead, even if all the government
plaques and narration painted them as the
enemy. (I figured the guaranteed money and
protection was probably worth something,
too.) Apparently, whoever the Committee had
sent to do the evaluation had a soft spot for
the Battle of Faribault because they were generous,
providing the family with twenty-one
fully mobile automatons, a full battlesound system,
and many guns and bullets for use in the
Recreation. Pretty good haul.
After dinner, we drove back to the battlefield,
the rusting truck bouncing over uneven
roads, and began to walk up the hill to its crest
as Jason talked of the rush the soldiers must
have felt charging up that same hill. Suddenly,
he yelled and began to run himself, cresting the
hill and jumping down among the Restorationist
soldiers and pretending to shoot them left
and right. The hills resounded with his shouts
and laughter. The soldiers along the line at the
top of the hill were in worse shape than his
grandpa, the rust of their metal joints discoloring
the plastic skin covering them. They could
no longer run along the line of sandbags as
they once had been able to. We checked each
one carefully to see if there were any critical
problems, scraping rust and testing movement.
We walked along the line, carefully collecting
the brass shell casings that sprayed out of the
rifles as they fired and putting them into a
satchel. Jason told me not to reload the guns.

As we moved slowly down the line, Jason talked
of making this walk as a small boy, holding
his grandmother’s hand and looking for shiny
metal in the dirt. Around him, his youngest
cousins made the same walk, scrounging for
casings to present proudly to her. Older relatives
walked further afield, scavenging the old
battlefield for any unplundered ammo caches
to use in their reenactments. The Wang family
was proud to use only live ammunition, though
this occasionally dented their automatons and
required them to stitch or replace hole-ridden
uniforms. Everyone pitched in, and the
workshop rang with the clangs of metalwork
and the chatter of the cousins. Jason smiled,
seeming lost in the memories of that time.
The diagnostic had returned a complicated
error by the time we got back to the workshop.
Jason sighed and rubbed his head. His
technical knowledge seemed relatively rudimentary,
not much better than mine, though
as a licensed operator of a Recreation site he
was one of the few authorized to learn programming
languages. He walked back to his
room: a small, spartan dwelling with a single
cot pushed up against the wall and piles of
books about the Second Civil War splayed on
the ground. I passed it on the way to mine and
glanced in. He sat on the bed staring into the
mirror. I watched him tracing the lines of his
face, the early wrinkles in his forehead.
“Well, grandpa, I hope this works.”
We rose before dawn the next morning. Jason
drove us out to his battlefield and we prepared
the automatons for the day’s reenactments,
checking their rifles and preparing their
positions. As the morning drew on, a small
crowd of people gathered in the observation
area by the foot of the hill, chattering amongst
themselves in a wind beginning to smell like autumn,
waiting for the show to start. It began at
exactly eleven o’clock, a triumphal blast of music
accompanying narration about the course
of the war and the context of the battle. Stories
of the horrors of pre-Restorationist rule
rang out before the narration turned to the
heroic histories of the combatants in the battle
they were about to see.
Then the show began. The spectators turned
to the sound of machine guns clattering along
the top of the hill and the yells of the soldiers
at its base. Most of these men stood still or lay
prone, making only small, weird movements
and shooting up towards their enemies. One
soldier ranged along the ranks of his men, his
smooth movements and exhortations contrasting
with the jerking motions of his fellows.
In his khaki uniform, carrying his rifle,
he looked like a hero. Suddenly, the soldier
wheeled towards the top of the hill and began
to run up it, into the face of the machine guns
perched on the ridge. Nearing the top, he
turned back to his fellows and cried to them
to come on, up the hill, to drive out the Restorationist
invaders. “Come on! Almost there!”
He leaped up on top of the line of sandbags
and paused for a moment—“For freedom!”
he screamed. “They will not take Faribault!”
Then he was down among them, firing left and
right and clearing the line to allow the defenders
to push forwards. He paused for a moment
in triumph, looking out of the past at the
spectators who stood cheering below, then
turned with a start and fell.
The visitors cheered their approval for the
soldier, the great emotion of his victory and
his sacrifice.
That night, after we had cleaned the battlefield,
loaded the guns, and reset the reenactment,
I watched Jason in his khaki uniform. He
was gently cleaning the robot on the workbench.
It lay still, the mechanisms and metal
usually hidden under clothes now exposed.
The seams where plastic flesh met steel, at the
base of the neck and on the forearms and legs,
were worn and uneven. The robot was clean;
33

it hadn’t been used today—but Jason still
scrubbed and oiled it, his movements ritualistic.
He had run up the hill four times that day, extra
reenactments to prepare for the visit tomorrow,
and the gel and sweat still encrusted his hair. But
Jason exhibited no fatigue, words flowing out
his mouth. He recited the story of the
battle as if guns of the automatons at
the top of the hill had been loaded
and he himself had been in danger.
I suppose that in the midst of
the raging sounds of battle
and the pulsing rush
of the long run,
Jason felt
himself right in
front of a
great
army.
carefully scraped every last speck of rust from
the joints of the automaton’s body, tracing
the lines of the hinges with a special brush.
We rebooted the robot, and Jason ran it
through its simulated steps again and again
until finally it seemed to be working properly
He coaxed it into action, carefully guiding
each halting motion, until at the end he
was running with it and matching its
movements as it seemed to spring
into life. We dressed it carefully
in its khaki uniform, arranging
the clothes against its
synthetic skin until they
hung properly in
battle order. At
last, Jason was
satisfied. As
we left
the
After
he
finished
rubbing down
the automaton,
we turned to the
night’s real work. We sat
up late, trying to bring life
back into the body of grandpa,
to rouse the machine to its old
force and fluidity of movement. The
Committee was coming tomorrow,
and we knew that Jason could not trick
them as he had tricked today’s groups of
tourists. But if the inspectors came to the
battlefield and saw only two lines of robots
firing at each other with no movement, no
great acts of heroism, then they would surely
reduce or even strip the site’s rating. Jason
Sea of Shapes
by Chris Barber
workshop,
Jason looked
at his grandpa,
standing proudly at
attention, ready for the
next day’s work. I fell onto
my molding cot in exhausted
slumber and slipped to a dream
world of Jason’s childhood. The sun
arced overhead in the high summer
as he walked through a field with his
grandmother and many cousins, the soil
plowed and ready for planting. Jason and his
cousins ran along the furrows, shoes imprinting
crazy patterns on the soil, playing
and laughing and throwing dirt. I saw the
calm of his grandmother’s face, weathered
34

and wrinkled and smiling as she watched the
children play. Jason ran to her, and she gave
him a handful of bullets, the same kind as the
bullets we had pulled from the dirt up on the
hill — but these were shiny and new, the brass
casings gleaming. She looked down at him and
then he ran in the heat of the sun, tossing a
trail of brilliant seeds flashing behind him as he
scattered the shells along the plowed furrows.
When Jason reached the end of the field, he
turned and looked back to his grandmother.
The field was full of trees of brass with fruit
of lead, and at the foot of the last tree was
slumped the body of his grandpa, his blood
mixing into the soil, crimson water for the
metal trees and their heavy fruit.
I awoke early, but by then Jason was pacing
the workshop. He wore a carefully preserved
vintage button-down shirt, though I noticed
that he had been unable to avoid slight stains
of grease and oil. We prepared the battlefield,
taking special care to check each of the
twenty automatons arranged along the lines,
massaging them into the highest performance
remaining in their rusting gears. Jason talked
rapidly about the repairs and upgrades he
could make with a new grant from the Historical
Recreation Committee, the fluidity of
movement and grace he could restore to the
automatons. We set up the line along the base
of the hill, the soldiers ready to make their
advance.
At exactly ten o’clock, the delegation from
the United States National Historical Reconstruction
Quality Evaluation Committee
arrived. They were five strong, each member
dressed in the garb of their era of specialization.
A man wearing fine colonial brocade
stepped forward. He saluted smartly at Jason
and presented his party’s credentials. Jason
accepted them and led the party on a tour
of the battlefield. I watched the Committee
members as they critically surveyed the hills.
These were the priests of the Restorationist
worship of the past. Though not as feared as
those from whom I was fleeing— those who
enforced the vintage dress codes and classic
reading lists with the iron cruelty of the past
— they remained at the core of our society’s
unchanging way of life, responsible for a world
lost in one that was long gone.
Finally, the group arrived at the site of the
reenactment. I walked down to the overlook
platform and joined a crowd of people from
nearby towns who had gathered, for they knew
what this day would decide. On the hill above
us, Jason stood with the delegation, fidgeting
with the buttons of his carefully pressed shirt
in the silence of the governing ghosts, clad in
the past. Finally, one nodded. Jason pressed a
button and the battlefield sprang to life. Bullets
whizzed, mortars whistled, and the lines
of soldiers arranged at the top of the hill and
at its base sprang to life, firing at each other.
Jason pressed another button and a real explosion
detonated two meters in front of the
Restorationist line. The crowd gasped. Our little
surprise. More of these old mortar shells,
scrounged at great personal risk and stored
carefully for this day, exploded around the two
lines, raising clouds of dust and fire, their crashing
detonations giving the lie to the recorded
reconstructions of explosions playing over the
site’s sound systems. Finally, the khaki soldier
stood up, called to his fellows, and rushed forwards
up the hill, his cries sharp against the
sound of guns. Those watching could feel the
weight of his lonely run, the thrill of his dash
against the Restorationist line. Looking back
towards the troops supporting him, he yelled
encouragement. “Come on! Almost there!”
Just under the rim of the hill, the soldier
paused, appearing to steel himself for whatever
lay on the other side. Cresting the hill,
the soldier leaped on top of the row of sandbags
piled there. “For freedom!” he screamed.
35

Buthe lost his footing and toppled off the
bags, down into the line of robots, and lay
there twitching, his legs up into the sky churning,
running, though there was no ground
there.
That night we sat in the workshop, staring
at the robot lying on the slab. Jason sat silent,
his face carefully neutral. The reenactment
had ended; the Committee had left, to return
tomorrow. I doubted he would succeed. I’d
passed many forgotten historical sites on my
journey West. An old man or woman, a rusted
sign, a field where once some people had
died.
Meditatively, Jason began to clean his grandpa’s
body as so many times before. He refused
my help. He scraped the pancaked bullets off
the torso, each small circle of lead thudding
as it hit the floor. Jason picked one up and
rubbed it against his chest, as if measuring how
the lead ripped through flesh. He held the bullet
up to his grandpa’s cheek, the coldness of
the metal against the warmth of the man.
We ate together, that night, under the halogen
glow of the workshop lamps. Jason picked
at his food, barely eating,,“Some nights, when
I was a kid,” he said, “I woke up to the night
shivers and screams of my father. He was only
a kid himself during the War, but he never
shook the memories of what they did after
they captured the Cities. I can see him now,
sitting shirtless shaking under these kitchen
lights,”
There was silence for a moment.
“I’m going West. Will you come with me?”
“I can’t,” he said simply, “this is home.
You’re not the first to come here, seeking
something.”
“We’re looking for a different way to live.”
“Good luck.”
I looked at him then, in his worn t-shirt and
mended replica jeans, and wondered whether
he had spent his whole life waiting to take on
36
infinite shapes of twisting white clouds,
dreamed of a different future.
At eleven o’clock the next morning, the firing
started along the lines at the top of the
hill and at its base. The commissioners stood
in their fine antiques, overalls next to crinoline
skirt, like ghosts of the past assembled
to watch. Again I joined the gathered crowd.
They chattered back and forth; success or failure
would be good gossip. We watched bullets
whizzing across ground ravaged by explosions
and seeded with lead. At the base of the hill,
a soldier in khaki stood up and started moving
along the line, challenging and inspiring his
men to go forward with him up the hill. Some
of their rusting hulks seemed to respond to
the call to battle, shifting in a kind of yearning
for the advance. Finally, the standing soldier
turned up the hill and began to run, forwards
into the teeth of the Restorationist line. Looking
back towards the troops supporting him,
he yelled encouragement. “Come on! Almost
there!” Under the rim of the hill, the soldier
paused, appearing to steel himself for whatever
lay on the other side. Cresting the hill, the
soldier leaped atop the row of piled sandbags.
“For freedom!” he screamed. “They will not
take Faribault!” He jumped into the line of his
enemies, firing along it left and right, clearing
the hill. He yelled in exaltation at his triumph,
a whoop cut short and turned into a scream
as slashes of red sprayed through the air and
onto the soldiers next to him.
He fell, clutching his chest, feeling wetness of
liquid run out of the holes that had appeared in
his body. We ran and found him lying slumped
against the side of the line of sandbags, his
eyes staring at one of the soldiers beside him.
I watched the red droplets of his blood
against the red stains of rust, running down
to the ground, mixing with the shining brass
shell casings and the flattened black discs into
the earth along the line at the top of the hill.

Overwritten
by Suzanne Smith
We will be able…to upload memories, create a
brain-net (memories and emotions sent over the
Internet) and record thoughts and even dreams.
Basic proofs of principle for all of this have been
demonstrated.
—Michio Kaku, “A Scientist Predicts The Future”
Studies of interference in working and short-term
memory suggest that irrelevant information may
overwrite the contents of memory or intrude into
memory… When items in memory share features,
they compete for the representations of those features
in memory, and items can be degraded by
“losing” the features to the representation of a
different item. —Bancroft et al., “Overwriting and
Intrusion in Short Term Memory”
June, 2032
Someone must have forgotten or disobeyed
the instructions she had received, because
when the visionary moved into the vast, mostly
glass, lakefront house late one early summer
afternoon, he found that there was not a single
can of Diet Coke available — much less the
multiple cases of that beverage that were supposed
to have been there awaiting his arrival.
He was all alone in a stifling mansion with an
empty refrigerator.
What was the name of the person who had
failed him—Ms. Pugh? Ms. Pulis? Ms. Pool?
Something like that. Where was she? Thank
goodness he had not brought an investor with
him. This Pulis person had risked making him
look like a joke professionally. What if the investor
had asked him for a Diet Coke and he
had been forced to say that tap water was the
only option? Embarrassing. He would have
cursed her but he could not fully remember
her name, as his partner Billington had done
the hiring and presumably given the instructions
about getting the house set up for the
corporate retreat. He would get her fired.
But in the meantime Lyman Hart-Payne, the
pale, tall, bespectacled, middle-aged founder
of Memsyne, was not going to let the incompetence
of an assistant faze him. As he stood
there staring into the empty refrigerator, he
smiled, undaunted.
He stood there smiling for some minutes—“like
a fool,” he thought, in a momentary
lapse into his childhood habit of thinking
of himself as a character in a book—a “he”
who did or felt or thought this and that and
had things said or done to him. “He felt sad,”
he would think, as a way of feeling sad. His father
Myron had said something to him once in
a fury after Lyman had wrecked his brand new,
albeit used Oldsmobile by speeding on a wet
road and plowing into a tree, from which situation
he but neither the car nor the old pine
tree had emerged unharmed. His father had
said, “You fool,” and added, “People say you’re
so smart but you’re not very bright.”
The comment about brightness had been
needlessly personal, Lyman thought, and inexact
to boot. He knew of no research findings
positing a correlation between IQ and the
tendency to plow cars into trees. True, his actions
on that rainy night with the Oldsmobile
admittedly had not been optimal, but studies
showed that adolescent brains were not ideally
equipped for mature decision making. Lyman
reminded himself that, unlike his father, he had
degrees from all the right schools, including a
Ph.D. and an M.B.A. from the school thought
by many to be the best.
Certainly, just as in everyone’s life, some
mistakes had happened, particularly during
his brief tenure as an academic. In particular,
Lyman remembered the one year, right after
graduate school and before his M.B.A program,
when he had taught at a liberal arts college.
37

He had felt dead inside the whole time, and
his hatred for teaching had made it worse. The
faculty lunches, featuring all sandwiches all the
time, were grossly inferior to those served at
his alma mater. At one such event, he had asked,
“Must all our meals involve bread?” and no
one had answered. He had tried to get along
with the mediocrities who had been relegated
to teaching there, rather than at a top-notch
research university where he belonged, but
colleagues did not reciprocate his efforts at
outreach. He remembered asking the dean—a
family friend and his father’s former classmate—to
get a lecturer who had rejected his
advances dismissed. He had said that he had
heard bad things about her and, in a way, he
had, since thinking bad things about someone,
Lyman later decided, amounted to allowing
yourself to “hear” your own insights about a
person that you might have suppressed.
Some strange glee took hold of him when he
realized that the woman would be put in her
place and would not know who had put her
there. The dean told her chair that she was no
longer eligible to teach even though she was.
There was no one she could appeal to beyond
him. She was bacteria in the college food chain.
She couldn’t be seen but she could be stopped,
and he, Lyman, had done it. That was the way
the world turned.
Maybe the whole thing hadn’t been ideal,
he reflected, but it had served her right for
her meanness to him, and he generally wasn’t
the sort of person who did things like that. If
he had really done it, he would have felt like
a different kind of person afterwards, but he
had never felt any difference at all. He had
done it, but he couldn’t have really done it in
a true moral sense, so he hadn’t done it. At
least he remembered it that way. At any rate,
the past, as was aptly said by someone whose
name he did not remember, was the past. He
was glad to be out of academic life, with all
38
of its petty viciousness and subterfuge, and
making his way into the clean-cut world of
commerce.
Now, standing there in front of the empty refrigerator,
the door of which was now beeping
in protest of its having been open for a length
of time it deemed unacceptable, Lyman told
himself that what with his new company “and
whatnot,” as his mother would have said, his
life was starting over. He remembered once
being stopped on the street in Cambridge,
Mass. and being asked for money by a homeless
guy who said he needed it for a taxi, back
in pre-Über days, to a rehab place called “New
Horizons.” For the first and last time, Lyman
had given a stranger five dollars, knowing that
New Horizons did not exist, but wishing that
it did. He had felt ashamed for days afterwards.
More often, though, he felt nothing at all, except
for fury at people who got in his way.
When Lyman woke up in the morning, he
would say to himself: you have great things
to do, and then do them. Being positive didn’t
mean, of course, that there weren’t some hurdles
to overcome. Lyman or preferably his as
yet absent partner, Billington, would have to
take Ms. Pulis or Pool—whatever her name
was—to task eventually. He decided on “Pool,”
and in the absence of any certain information
about her title, attached a “the” to it. He made
a mental note to cover the sorry episode of
the missing Diet Coke in the Pool’s first performance
review.
Memsyne was going to be highly democratic
and equitable, of course. Lyman was happy
to let low-ranking team members go to meetings
where things would be decided like what
color the “you did a great job” stickers would
be. Yet this sort of thing was not to be taken
to the point of absurdity. The higher-ups
would give those lower down the ladder performance
reviews and not vice versa. They
needed feedback, not him. He was a team

player, of course, but he owned the team. And
although he was “in the loop,” he held that
loop wrapped around his fist with the ends of
it balled up inside. He could tighten and loosen
it as needed. He vaguely remembered reading
something in college about the necessity of
governors needing to remember what it was
like to be governed — but he didn’t buy it. The
way to rise in this world was to forget, not
to remember. You were on a narrow circular
staircase without railings like the one in the
strange little brick building that had housed his
college magazine and you couldn’t look behind
you to see who was on the lower bend in the
stairs or the upper one ahead of you. You had
to keep moving.
The doorbell rang in the empty rented house.
He walked out into the foyer. Through the
distorted lens of the frosted glass on the door,
Lyman saw a woman standing there. The Pool
at last, no doubt. He would be very quiet and
just walk with her back into the kitchen and
over to the refrigerator. He would open the
door and they would stand there together
staring into the cold, empty space. He would
see the shame in her eyes. She would apologize.
He would let it go. He was magnanimous
that way.
When Lyman opened the door, he saw a
heavyset woman in her mid-fifties wearing a
“Save the Pandas” tee shirt, plaid shorts, and
flip flop sandals. She was smiling, but looked
tired. He said nothing.
“Oh hello! I’m Helen Steuver. Welcome to
Lake Pleasant! I cook part-time for the
Proctor family across the street. We all heard
that you people would be moving in for a few
months, and I wondered if you might need
some part-time cooking help.”
Intolerable, he thought. And those shorts.
Please. This was what she wore on the job?
What if his co-founders had already arrived
and they had been in the midst of a work
session—perhaps at a moment of breakthrough—and
she had interrupted?
“No, we don’t. Good day.” He had nothing
for which to say “thank you.”
The shock of rejection flashed over her face
and she said “thank you” quietly and presumably
walked away. He didn’t watch her. He
closed the door and locked it. The Pool would
have to put a sign up saying “No trespassing or
soliciting.” Then again, she might mess that up,
too.
What if she messed up the food? If there
was anything Lyman hated, it was running out
of hot dog buns. His dislike of sandwiches did
not extend to hot dogs. Indeed, when covered
with mustard, hot dogs were his favorite food.
This was proof of his love of democracy. The
Pool would have to be advised about not buying
hot dog buns that were about to go stale.
But despite these worries, Lyman started smiling
again, for the Pool’s forgetfulness regarding
what he thought of as his “chilled beverage
needs” had given him something. It had given
him a “human interest” anecdote that he could
use in talks about the company’s revolutionary
product, Memsyne, which doubled as its
name. This was the world’s first digital collective
memory bank, into which people could
upload thoughts, memories, and even dreams
through sensors attached to their heads. The
sensors were not needed but product testing
research had shown that they were emotionally
important to users, because they wanted
to believe that they could turn the system off.
They couldn’t.
Yes, the Pool would make a good anecdote
for a speech. One of those “True Talks,” where
no one is allowed to ask questions at the end.
The Pool had failed, and audiences connected
with failure. And besides, in this case, the failure
was not his own. Lyman would say something
like “we’ve all been there, right?” Then he
would say something self-deprecating but in a
39

flattering way. In a competitive landscape,
there was no point in making himself and by
extension his company look bad or lacking in
compassion or whatever. In fact, the company
cared passionately about many things that
mattered and would make a big difference.
Memsyne was directly informed by the most
recent neuroscientific work on human memory.
It was designed to work partially like its human
equivalent, save for the fact that it would
be controlled and used by the company. When
people heard that they often said well, that
sounds dangerous, which was ridiculous. First
of all, people’s memories were already shaped
by technology and secondly, the company and
its leadership had made integrity their core
value. Bad things would not go undetected. Finally,
given the scope of the global risk posed
by non-curated memories, public-private partners
needed urgently to take action together.
They could not afford the luxury of cynicism
or the burden of popular oversight by the uninformed.
People’s memories would still be free, since
being free meant being free to be the best, as
defined by Memsyne. In essence, the world of
enhanced memory would be very, very human.
All too human, in fact. Memory was a tricky
thing. Once pooled and viewed in the aggregate,
memories amounted to world history.
From another angle, the whole concept of a
“world” was just the sum of stories that people
told themselves about living on earth. In the
end, it was all just signals. Just data. Speculation
about the abuse of power through technology
was such a tired line of critique, as old as
innovation itself. People needed to believe in
the science, whatever it said. They knew nothing
about it, so they should keep their mouths
shut. And nothing was written in stone. Algorithms
and data could be more or less “just”
depending on how they were used.
The accuracy of a given memory was not the
40
point. The point was the power of the memory—its
power to move people to action or
paralyze them. Everything was filtered through
people’s senses, and the senses were easily
deceived, so accuracy was out the window
from the get-go. In this matter of history and
memory, everything was up for grabs. Evidence
could be interpreted in different ways, some
of which further justice more than others. If
data concerning a remembered event was unjust
according to the judgment of Lyman and
his fellow founders, it could be overwritten in
a responsible, socially conscious way.
In the present, we are doomed, Lyman liked
to say in partially plagiarized fashion, to repeat
the past until we remember it better or
tell better stories about it. That did not mean
writing books, although he had nothing against
books, despite their being obsolete repositories
for memories. He valued books a lot and
was happy to hire assistants to read them for
him. Looking back to the days when he had
once had leisure time, he always boasted of
having read Dante in the original Latin.
Lyman loved everything about education. He
thought it was great. It was the dawn of a new
day “in this space,” as he liked to say. Classes
were about to start being downloaded into
students’ heads while they slept. No one would
be able to interrupt the lectures, which would
make learning more efficient. Memsyne was
even willing to provide jobs for the poor slobs
who studied history or literature. In theory,
they might be good analysts of where and how
narratives should be enhanced or overwritten.
Some things in the past needed to be made
into other things—other things that maybe
looked like what they had first been but were
better for having been altered to the point of
all but complete non-recognition, as when you
see a person you once thought you knew well
when in fact you did not know them at all. And
how often was it the case that there was no

pristine “first thing”? There was no monster
with millions of eyes that saw each event in relation
to all at every time. That was the dream
of what Memsyne could become and there
would be nothing monstrous or nightmarish
about it.
Lyman was guided by two principles, which
were actually one principle. They were both
about betterment, leading up to what he called
“the ultimate better,” which was the best. In
speeches he would remark that the best memories
happen when we remember together.
No one remembers best alone. That meant
that those who remembered alone were not
going to be the best. People who insisted on
hoarding their memories in private—were not
friends of the future, which belonged to the
commons, except for the part of the future
that belonged to and was filtered by Memsyne,
which was most of it. Lyman would fight to
protect his possession, of which he was proud.
But for most people, private property wasn’t
necessary. They could take pride in things like
keeping fit and being a good friend.
Some say that memories should be kept to
ourselves, Lyman liked to say. No one had
ever actually said that, but no matter. Memories
in order to be moral needed to merge and
be reshaped by experts for the common good.
Lyman meant what was good for Memsyne
and, through Memsyne, the world. Uploading
memories would make them more uplifting or,
if needed, more ugly.
Sometimes memories were inaccurate and
needed to be fixed by being absorbed in
something larger and more inclusive of different
perspectives on comparable events.
Sometimes memories were sick and needed
to be cured. There was nothing dangerous
about this idea. Someone, maybe the Pool, had
been instructed by Billington to research this
topic of making memories better and come up
with some quotes. He had sent them Lyman’s
way. There was a great one from Shakespeare:
MACBETH: Cure her of that! Canst thou not
minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the
memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written
troubles of the brain, and with some sweet
oblivious antidote cleanse the stuffed bosom
of that perilous stuff which weighs upon her
heart?
DOCTOR: Therein the patient must minister
to himself.
Even as far back as Shakespeare, who, in Lyman’s
mind, was a personage dating from the
dawn of time, people knew about doing surgery
on memory until you got rid of rooted
sorrows. It wasn’t true that people could
minister to themselves in this respect. People
wanted someone else to minister to them.
And now, with Memsyne, that promise could
finally come true.
There would be no risk of the Stalinesque-type
manipulation of public memory because
they would fight against invasive regulation
every step of the way while working with
governmental partners who wanted to do the
right thing and working against governmental
partners who wanted something else. Lyman
was pretty sure that if a Stalinesque-type came
to power, he would spot that person from a
mile away and act accordingly. He had good
instincts for charlatans, unlike Billington, with
his idealism, which led to hiring people like the
Pool. The company had nothing but good intentions.
True, the technology could be used
to mutilate memories, but it was inconceivable
that it would ever be misused that way. If you
look at history, Lyman liked to say, you can see
that once they are educated, people aren’t that
bad. Bad people would never get to the top
at Memsyne, just as they never got to the top
in academe. He would say: I believe in people
because I believe in education.
Just in case, though, Memsyne was hiring ethicists,
who had designed a software program
41

that would ask technicians, “Is what I am doing
ethical?” and wait for the answer of “yes” before
allowing the person to do anything else.
In terms of executives, Lyman could personally
vouch for himself and Billington. They had both
gotten “A”s in their Moral Reasoning class back
in freshman year of college. And he had only
good things to say as well about all the great
people they had brought on board so far, who
seemed well, great. They were going to have a
wonderful time at the retreat. They would all
wear green tee shirts saying “Remember This.”
The Pool might not get one, but if she repented
and reformed, she would.
At the heart of it all was his enduring friendship
with Billington. Maybe that was what made
any human endeavor worthwhile: the reservoir
of unspoken trust that you could build up
with another person over time with someone
who shares your vision and your memories
and your restlessness and your need for relief.
A sudden memory of Billington vomiting
while drunk by the base of a huge tree in the
courtyard of their undergraduate house came
to mind. Lyman recalled hauling him up four
flights of stairs while he vomited the whole
way. He had called the campus police to get
Billington taken to the hospital but given that
it was the night of the annual party called “Bacchanal,”
all their cars were busy doing other
42
John Harvard’s Foot by Makoto Takahashi
“alcohol transports.”
For a second, looking down at the slippery
stone stairs spattered in vomit, Lyman had
thought about letting go and watching his
suite mate fall down to the landing below, but
he hadn’t, not even when, in between vomiting,
Billington had said, “I’ll be ok if you just let
go.” Lyman had said: “I’m not letting go.” That
was still true. It was the two of them together,
for good. And they had drawn good people
to them. Even the Pool might turn out to
be ok, her shameful error notwithstanding. It
was hard to get good staff but if an employer
had poor material to work with, that material
could be made better given good management.
And Memsyne would soon be in a position to
transform not only its team members, but the
whole world.
So what if the company got access to memories
in the process in a way that revealed product
and partner preferences, as it was designed
to do—was that so bad? So what if they inserted
mentions of better products and potential
partners into people’s memories? Did
the extremist critics of Memsyne disapprove
of other people having jobs and partners and
buying products? Would anyone be so foolish
as to say that it was better to use products
and meet partners that did not match one’s
preferences? The point of Memsyne was the
purpose of improving people’s lives by making
memory productive, not the profit. It could
find you that perfect partner, minister to your
rooted sorrows, and help you make memories
of celebrations and great vacations even greater
by inserting products into them and obliterating
thoughts of annoying people to enhance
the experiences after the fact, and for free.
All you had to do was remember.
Lyman stood there in the gleaming cream-colored
living room, looking out to the pool and
the darker blue lake beyond it glittering in the
sun and, far off in the distance, private docks

of the neighboring mansions. Two or three
birds were lying stunned or dead on the patio
after having flung themselves against the glass
walls of the house. That was life for you. You
think you are just going along in your element,
and then, splat. The element was not your own.
The houses across the way were nicer than the
one he was in. Why hadn’t one of those been
rented instead? He remembered how sad he
had been when his father’s business blew up in
a stock market crash and they had to sell their
beloved house. He had never loved anything
like that house. Well, he would buy it back one
day, and soon. He would live in his boyhood
room, not that of his parents. Then he would
feel all right again.
For now, the row of houses in the sun looked
like a dream of a well-landscaped and pleasant
life. Quick, he thought, before it vanishes,
but that made no sense. He was moving into a
world with houses like this, not out of it, and
he could hire someone to pick up the dead
birds or put them out of their misery if they
were too stunned from their collision with
what they had mistaken as air to lift off again.
Lyman looked past their corpses out at the
pool again, and saw a squiggling, striped line in
it. Must be a coral snake. He remembered the
retired Marine of his father grabbing a snake
that had been menacing him as a child and
twisting its head off. Father had thrown snake
at son’s feet. Lyman contemplated going outside
and seeing if he could do the same thing
to the swimming snake, but what would be the
point of that? There was no child and no competition
except of his current self with his unrealized
self. He tried to imagine what victory
would look like.
Lyman began pacing the tiled floor. Something
was coming to him. The Pool’s forgetfulness
about the Diet Coke had given him a
new idea for a dedicated app distinct from but
attached to the larger Memsyne system, a beta
version of which was already up and running,
albeit in minimal fashion. He decided on the
spot that the app would be called “Nimbler.”
This app, through which employers would
upload instructions into the memory bank,
for the purpose of being downloaded into
the memories of employees while they slept,
would overcome the foolish tendency to treat
employees’ sleep and work as two isolated
silos. Being nimble and breaking down silos
were, by definition, good things.
Lyman said “Memsyne, remember” and then
a few words about his idea for the app before
saying “Memsyne, stop remembering.” He
said to his watch, “Memsyne, what’s my memory
of Tuesday” and, sure enough, his thoughts
of just a moment ago were spoken back to
him in a bored, female, faintly British-sounding,
posh digital voice. They were already history.
Of course, they were history that was also
private property, so they would be protected
by access restrictions, as would any material
deemed sensitive on the system. It was not
safe for some people to have regular access
to unaltered memories. Memsyne would set
them free from the past by dissolving their
worst memories into a void.
The doorbell was ringing again. What was
this place—Grand Central Station? He could
see yet another woman—he hoped the Pool,
rather than Helen Steuver again—standing
there. And she was carrying what looked to
be two cases of 12 cans apiece. She had not
forgotten, Lyman thought with relief. She was
just late. Such things happened. And come to
think of it, she was not bad looking—probably
at 40 or so, ten years younger than him. Her
face looked like that of an overgrown child’s
doll, with its unnaturally even features, and
gleaming white teeth. She looked a bit like that
lecturer he had gotten fired, which made him
dislike her.
The Pool was carrying two cases that, as
43

Lyman approached the door, were revealed to
be Coke Zero. He could feel the anger surging
inside of him. He opened the door.
“Is that Coke Zero?”
She looked startled and said, “Yes, that is
what I was told to bring.”
He said nothing in response and stared at
her. She stared back. Something urgent occurred
to him.
“Were you the one who put the biographies
on the website yesterday?
“Yes.”
“You forgot to include my award from the
UN.”
“No one told me about it.”
“You need to be more careful in the future.”
“How can I be careful about something I
don’t know about?”
“You should have asked.”
Victoria Pool decided not to react. No sense
getting fired this early on. She needed the
health insurance.
“I’ll look it up. From what agency of the UN
is it?”
“It’s from a group that partnered with an
organization allied with the UN. Something
like the Foundation for Enhanced Social Outcomes.”
It was important not to snicker.
Victoria put down the cases on the marble
floor and took her phone out of her purse.
Her hands were shaking. Should she risk writing
a reminder to herself about the UN award?
No. She managed to control her hands enough
to open the relevant message and handed her
phone to her boss. It made her anxious to see
something so personal in the hands of this
rude man, and she felt embarrassed about the
pinkish glitter case, which was almost the color
of her skin.
“Be sure to have Coke Zero ready at the
house for Lyman,” it said. He wondered if she
had realized her mistake and sent a fake email
44
from Billington to herself. No, she didn’t seem
clever enough to do that. She was the sort
of person for whom Memsyne existed. He
couldn’t even look at her, which was perhaps
best, as he might have detected her rolling her
eyes.
He turned his back to her and stared out
at the bird corpses, not looking past them to
the pool and the lake beyond it. Were they
dead or stunned and should he go find out?
How would he do that? Poke them with a
stick? What kinds of birds were they? So many
dead ones these days, what with all the looming
glass buildings springing up in the place of
unglamorous lower-class structures like diners
and bars. Then there were the windmills. They
chewed the birds up, even eagles. Of course it
must all be worth it. Destroying birds had never
done any real harm. He hazily remembered
something from Chinese history about sparrows.
He couldn’t recall the specifics. It didn’t
matter. You did what you had to do to get results.
You kept fighting your enemies.
It was going to be a battle. Lyman had thought
for a time that he was in a new era of peace
in his life, but it was the same old battle. Incompetent
employees, and friends who were
careless or worse. No one has your back, so
watch your back, they said. Well, he would,
even with those supposedly close to him. That
Billington—trying to defeat him at every turn,
as usual!

The Last Anthropologist
by Karl Dudman
29th May
So this is marshland. Acres ahead
rolled out on the still water like
floating turf. Marshes are long gone
from Europe, and by right they should
be here, the waters having risen higher
and sooner than most anywhere else.
But an ironic consequence of the war
has been the wholesale destruction of
the coastal infrastructure that previously
would have stopped this precious
ecosystem from migrating with the tides. Marshes are relational. They stay close to the ocean
to know they are in fact of the land; take away the water and lose all sense of self. So as the
seas rise and fall over decades and centuries, they and the marshes chase each other up and
down the shore. When the water rises its roots drown, clutching at the bulwarks’ hard faces.
Yet here I am at the marsh’s edge, with a full continent of decay behind me for it to claim if
it, and the bloating Atlantic, should choose. Giant clouds are wandering across the fields of
cordgrass like cattle, and I’m overwhelmed by the peace. I watch some kind of long-legged,
barely visible insect float past my foot — deciding it is to a spider exactly what a whisper is
to a word — and I wonder how anyone can feel separate from this. All of this. How many
months and years I’ve spent trying to understand the Hominid movement. Plumbing their
politics, their motives and aspirations, and still I just can’t relate, on an ontological level, how
they see themselves in this world as some kind of exception to the grand living fabric. I can’t
imagine looking at this marsh as if from above, the one species made of something altogether
different, subject to different biotic tides than the rest. However much patience I afford their
unsavoury ideas, however much I want to understand them, I look out here, my eyes level with
the grass tips, and I can’t make that conceit real. Still, I suppose that’s what I’m here to find
out. I have about a week to acclimatise and then I’ll meet my first ever Hominid (!!), a guy
called Dylan who’s been a UN contact point for the southeast district. He’ll be my gate-keeer
I’m sure, and hopefully give me an entrance point to the wider community.
45

Maurice tapped his pen on the freshly inked first page of his notebook and stared out across the
soft waves of wind breathing over the marsh. It certainly didn’t look like a war zone. He looked
beyond, at the unbending Atlantic horizon, and tried to guess how many miles of stern water lay
between him and home. And yet there was no number high enough that could obscure the noise
of people’s expectations; out of direct sight yet somehow dully visible, like a light dome in the
night sky betraying a nearby city. It was a prestigious scholarship that had brought him to this tree
stump on the other side of the world. Somehow his research had caused a stir of anticipation
both inside academia and out, as he supposed happens to a person when their topic suddenly
gets hot. In interviews for his university, funders, and even a couple of national outlets, he had answered
questions about his upcoming fieldwork with a hollow confidence, and was flattered with
an authority on the Hominid movement he found embarrassing. He could see it was a compelling
story: ‘In a world that was finally moving beyond the human/nonhuman binary, what becomes of
anthropology? The answer: find the remnants of this endangered species!’ One piece titled ‘the
Last Anthropologist’ portrayed him as some old-time explorer on a quest to salvage the end of
the discipline’s waning source. Absurd. In truth he felt no more sure-footed starting this year of
fieldwork than he would running headlong into the marsh.
———
The following morning, he stirred himself into action with an optimism and sense of purpose that
only availed itself to him in early hours. He set out in search of breakfast and resolved to make
a plan.
30th May
Ok.
I’m sitting in Port Salem’s only cafe. On the walls are a mixture of small local paintings and
signs saying things like ‘All I need to start my day is a cup full of coffee and a heart full of
Jesus’. Hearing my order come out in dry, strangled words I realised I haven’t spoken in nearly
two days. Even then my accent caused a stir among the cafe staff.
46
I’m starting as I mean to go on. Field notes every day; for purpose, accountability, company, and
because most days I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night, let alone a conversation
3 months ago. I got in the day before yesterday (28th). It was the last UN boat before the Atlantic
closes for hurricane season. The journey was as bad as they said, with storms most nights
and not much room on board to move around. Still, I feel lucky to have made it onto one of
the ships; one of just 5 diplomatic vessels that makes the crossing before June. I could’ve gone
private, but that would have tripled the cost. As it was, my Hausmann scholarship covered the
cost of the journey and did all the diplomatic gymnastics to get me on a UN vessel. Truly don’t
know how I would’ve got here otherwise. I was one of very few academics onboard, certainly

the youngest. It was a hard boat to get on, being used mostly by refugees bound for Europe.
I’m sure Hausmann will come through, though.
Port Salem is on the ocean, but it’s actually occupied by the Central States - one of their few
coastal towns, making it an important stretch of land to hold onto. It’s just a
few miles from Savannah and the border to the Eastern States. I’ll be based here for most of
the year but might try and connect with other Hominid strongholds if the opportunity arises.
There hasn’t been conflict in the southeast in recent years, and I’m pretty confident things
should remain relatively stable here. At least that’s what I told Ethics and Insurance.
So far…Vague research questions ideas / areas of interest: How do members of the Hominid
movement conceptualise personhood - what does the Hominid identity consist of? A political
orientation? A lifestyle? How does a personhood built essentially from political opposition manifest
in a sense of self, cultural practices? Do they understand it as such? or has it smoothed
over its own seams, developing the look and feel of an organic cultural whole? To what extent is
human exceptionalism a useful justification for Hominid communities to continue environmental
exploitation? I still don’t know how to present myself to people. Will my Europeanness be
taken as de facto sympathy for the Coastal States (Sentientism did originate there after all)?
A few days passed and Maurice, having enthusiastically introduced himself to every bemused
shop and business owner in Port Salem, decided it was time to explore further afield. He arrived
at the train station early, having heard mixed reports about the reliability of the service and not
wanting to miss an opportunity to start the next phase of his adventure. After only a short delay
the train arrived, but the diesel engine proceeded so slowly he found he was able to write with
minimal difficulty.
I’m on the train today. I booked one of the weekly
services going north to D.C to spend some time at
the Congressional archives of the Eastern States
which are still housed there. There’s a lot of historic
and journalistic material stored which isn’t
available in Europe or the largely censored Central
States (and somehow still not digitised?), and I’ve
been wanting to get hold of them for months. I’ll
also take this opportunity to look at their general collection and brush up on context, seeing
as I’m not going to have access to a library again for the next year. I had some anxiety about
getting through the checkpoints, but the UN visitor pass absolutely did its thing. (Thank you
Hausmann). With the border behind me I’m allowing myself to feel cautiously excited. Passed
47

by a couple of Centre Guard camps, some bogs (very cool, pictured above!) and a whole
number of dilapidated towns. Honestly all like something from films. Wish I could spend a day
walking around a border town. Anyway, everything is now finally scanned. See Archives folder.
for more
TOH54.238.2104 Becoming One
TMG26.823.2099 - Geopolitics
TMJ54.515.2092 - Reparations and Repair
Geopolitics of the 6th extinction - Alison French
This was messy. Looks like there were initially a number of plans agreed under the UN (?) to
coordinate a reduction in emissions by all states, but these fell apart after a wave of fascist
movements in Europe and North America in the late 30s and 40s. Some domestic and constitutional
tensions, combined with escalating climate instability led to a tangle of compounding
political crises in the West. This bit just reads like a bar fight where nobody can really tell who
threw the first punch. At some point (50s-60s?) the balance of global power began tilting
towards a bloc of countries dubbed the Tropical Alliance, who rallied around a shared identity
as net-victims to colonial emissions by temperate states. Led by China, the TA had largely managed
to future-proof their economies while the then United States of America was tearing itself
apart. By 2070 we’d reached 3.5 degrees Celsius of heating and the TA countries managed to
leverage an emergency summit of the Global Council (Kampala Declaration) to force action
from the remaining laggard states. Their argument was for a diplomatic intervention as an
alternative to more forceful solutions, but French suggests this was at least in part a strategic
attempt to consolidate a new geopolitical order by Asia. The result of Kampala was a resolution
to impose weighted reparations on the early industrial states and this was to be spent on remuneration
for victim states and UN climate stabilisation projects. The USA, Canada and Russia
were also forced to submit to UN oversight on domestic decarbonisation. This, plus a major
fire season on the West Coast compounded existing instability and led to the 2nd US civil war
in 78 that saw the country’s disintegration into its present day Coastal (East and West) and
Central factions. So this has really been a climate war whichever way you cut it.
Becoming One: the Birth of Global Sentientism - Peter Hunt
Not much I don’t already know here. Ch 2 talks about early foundations. The ecological cost
of the 6th extinction had already stirred a global patchwork of movements calling for legal
protections for ‘non-human life’.
Ch 3 on Kampala Declaration. The Council of Indigenous Societies and about 60 gov-
48

ernments, lobbied aggressively for it to be included in the wording that reparations were to
serve harms done not just to victim states but to the wider community of earthly life. This was
passed and paved the way for the Treaty on Natural Personhood (2073), which in turn made
exploitation of fossil fuels a ‘crime against Life’.
Ch 7 on growth of Sentientism in Europe. This is what I find interesting. What enabled the
movement to take hold in Europe and not here? Both were similarly hit by reparations. Haven’t
read yet - see scan.
‘Meet the Hominids’ - Angela Basu. Washington Post. 23 August 2074
The earliest mention I could find of Hominid movement (scanned, see Archives folder).
Emerged from a comedian’s bit about a man from Tennessee trying to kill and eat as many
sentients as possible to make up the numbers left by Spain, which had recently banned the
practice. He had called the character the Hominid to give his hyper-masculine persona a hint
of the Palaeolithic. The article talks about how the name was quickly getting appropriated as
a rallying point for militia groups in other Central States. A cropped version of Michelangelo’s
Creation of Adam became an unlikely banner, signifying disdain for liberal ideas of parity between
species.
Got some other clippings on Hominid movt from mostly Coastal journals and papers, some
British/international (scans in Archive//journalism). Early coverage generally dismissive and satirical,
variously comparing growing rural pockets of activity as a new chapter in the same old
tin hat survivalist story, or an anti-reparations temper tantrum that got contagious. Interesting
to see - as the movement built steam the ridicule seems to have given way to more sober narration,
with greater outrage and a more overtly moral dimension. The Coast called it a ‘weak,
liberal-baiting joke that any serious individual should take as a pointless attack on global environmental
security’.
Maurice’s attention soon became focused in the video archives from an early news and entertainment
channel called Fox, formerly an independent media company that eventually became
the de facto state media for the Central States. It was only when a couple of librarians
started talking loudly nearby that he became aware how much time had passed. He ran a dishevelled
pile of newspaper clippings through the scanner and quickly returned to the station.
As a wash of dusty colours ran past his eyes on the way back south, he thought about
how strange it had been to see Sentientism written about in such a sterilised and dispassionate
way, as a product of this geopolitical shift or a reaction to that political upset. He
found it hard not to see the movement as a story of moral awakening akin to other moments
of explosive social progress. The Suffragettes or the Charlie Green riots; these were
moments of enlightenment, not contingent histories; discoveries rather than inventions.
49

Once or twice his critical academic voice protested that there is nothing inevitable or objective
about such notions of ‘progress’, but the voice was timid and easy to ignore. No, he could see
that humanity as a concept was a failed institution. It could only be propped up for so long. His
eyes ran along the unchanging ocean horizon as if on their own set of rails, while his mind cycled
through the talking heads on Fox, each issuing sermon-like tirades about the Western States’
conspiracy with the Tropical Alliance or the hypocrisy of Europe. He thought again about the
marsh, and decided it was just like the Hominids; so puny compared to the weight of water it
stares down yet determined to build its home just above the high tide line to make a show of its
defiance. Surely the most recalcitrant ecosystem, he thought.
———
The fieldwork began in earnest later that week, and the months began to tick by. Maurice had
little trouble ingratiating himself into various social networks. Despite his initial fears, he was
received warmly even by more politically vocal community members, and, in fact, his foreignness
freed him of any partisan baggage that might have blown a Coastal researcher’s cover. On some
occasions the hospitality even became difficult to stomach.
13th July
Today was Riley’s barbecue. What an ordeal. I knew sentients were still eaten here of course,
but somehow knowledge alone does not one prepare. Essentially, it’s a social event where
community members gather around a sort of fire pit, and cuts of flesh are then cooked on
a wire rack. I was completely horrified; it took half my brainpower to steer my innards away
from revulsion and the other to iron any judging creases out of my face. I understood this was
something of an honour to be included in though, and so a third half of my brain was deployed
to showing good grace.
50
Apparently it’s a regular event, though I wondered what sort of role it’s supposed to play. Does
the eating of sentients have some kind of significance in reinforcing the distinction between
them as humans and the animals they eat? Is the shared moment meant to firm up a collective
identity? Certainly it felt like a kinship-building moment, regardless of how (or if) it tied in
to Hominid sympathies. I asked some gently leading questions of some unknown guests, and
the replies were interesting: ‘it’s great to do something normal. Forget about everything going
on out there’, one person said. Another woman half-joked about how little time there was
these days to share carefree moments with her neighbours. It was clearly an event that felt
private, not performative at all, something just for attendees and their enjoyment. But more
than that it was a chance to put distance between the community and the (cultural or literal)
front lines, if only for a short while. Not to cultivate and reinforce a new identity but to privately

enjoy the meaningful core of an existing one. It suddenly felt rather conceited and self-centred
of outsiders to think of Hominids as little more than childish contrarians, with moral foundations
built only to be the inverse of ours. It reminded me of being a child and believing teachers
didn’t have private lives to go home to; just living for the [misery-inducing] role they played in
one’s life before bedding down in school at 4pm. Still, I was confused about the role the pig
had to play in this.
As months passed, Maurice became increasingly restless, finding precious little in his interactions
to answer the questions he had arrived with. Almost to his disappointment, he was not hearing
the kind of brazen human exceptionalism he had crossed an ocean to find. Or rather, there was
no fire in it; none of the antagonism he’d built thesis proposals and funding applications on. Participants
would answer his questions politely enough: yes, they felt hurt by reparations and resented
China’ yes, they frequently farmed and hunted sentient life, but any carefully crafted prompts to
connect these facts yielded only anemic replies. Often, he had the feeling that they were keen to
help him, but unsure what it was he was getting at. One evening, he took his now dog-eared and
water-stained notebook to a small bar by the pier.
8th October
Something that has been
quite shocking is how little
people actually talk about
humanity and who they
see as a part of it. Even
card-carrying members of
the movement with Hand
of God flags springing out
of their lawns don’t usually
discuss it unprompted.
It’s not that I’ve got the
wrong place, or that people
don’t believe it - every Sunday morning Father David preaches something about ‘Man’s
dominion over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air’, and by afternoon said fish and
fowl are loaded onto most of the congregation’s best crockery. No, it feels more as though
it simply isn’t a load-bearing belief in people’s broader identities. A total mismatch with the
media representations and the little literature there is. In fact, everything going on at home,
the global consensus behind flattened species hierarchies, the selfish and compassionless picture
of Hominids that circulates ‘out there’ feels like just that: something very, very far away.
51

Today I got up early to meet with the fishermen who leave from the pier (completely illegal
under international law but here we are). Somehow the conversation turned on me, and the
guys started asking about every aspect of life where I’m from. They were so curious to hear
about laws against enslavement of sentients (I have to call them animals here), natural land
ownership reforms etc. They seemed... entertained. I almost felt patronised by their fascination,
even though I knew they weren’t making fun at all. Then they went off in their boats. I don’t
know what to make of this. Have I been barking up the wrong tree here?
———
Maurice spent more and more time in the marsh, away from his questions and their confounding
answers. He would sit for hours hoping to see a wild sentient, to talk to them just to hear their
names and how many there were left. He wandered around, taking photographs of old flooded
infrastructure and abandoned houses. Anything to avoid his informants. In the spring he made
arrangements for a visit to Fort Napier. It had become apparent to him that even if Sentientism
didn’t inspire impassioned responses from people, the war absolutely did. He resolved to make
the trip after the winter nor’easters had subsided.
18th March
I met Sergeant Malcolm at the gate of the complex and he gave me a quick tour of the base. I
felt intimidated walking past groups of fit, uniformed soldiers in my baggy clothes, but Malcolm
(I never figured out if that was his first or last name) was good at putting me at ease. He was
direct and honest; a man who somehow inspired your confidence. When he took me to his
office I felt encouraged by his own bluntness to be more candid with my questions. I presented
my dilemma to him and said people seemed more preoccupied with the war than ideology or
the humanity thing, which seems so prominent from the outside.
52
He told me ‘all of that’ is just a placeholder. That the specific arguments come and go, but for
most people it’s a question of control and independence. Nobody here wants to be managed
by forces they have nothing in common with. He actually laughed when I brought up the Hominid
movement, as if remembering a joke.
It’s beginning to make sense. The idea that some grotesque movement emerged here simply
out of petty spite towards the Coast and the world beyond it has always been simply wrong. For
people here it was the world that changed around them, a community that only ever wanted
to be left to its own devices. As the future of the human on Earth was negotiated and settled
somewhere ‘out there’, so were our accepted standards of right and wrong, and before long
Riley and his friends at the barbecue were failing a test they likely didn’t know they likely didn’t

know they were taking. Cue sneering articles. Of course it’s naive to think that change can
be avoided, and no population should be able to evade their responsibilities to global Life by
claiming ignorance, but I can’t help feeling the Hominids are not the only ones to blame here.
Listen to conversations at home, in academia, on TV, even within UN dialogues and the subject
of species equity is not even contested. We’ve convinced ourselves that the matter is settled,
and every op-ed and piece of satire just depoliticises it further, until just the thought of a group
not moving in the same direction becomes tantamount to denying reality itself.
———
On his last day in Port Salem,
Maurice was pulled by
sentimentality to the tree
stump he had found on his
first. He felt again the haze
of expectation lurking on
the other side of the horizon
and wondered what he
would write in his report
to Hausmann. Watching
tiny waves pat the muddy
shore, it occurred to him
anthropologists had been
in his position many times
before. He thought back to
his undergraduate classes
about the history of his discipline - the cranium measuring, the graphs ranking cultures by material
complexity, all the bizarre lengths to which early anthropologists would go to explain why
some of us are ‘more evolved’ than others. At some point it was generally accepted that this was
very racist, and cultural anthropologists dropped the keys to the gates of humanity like a grenade.
But the question ‘what makes US different from THEM’ never went away. Biological anthropologists
stepped up to find what set humans apart from the rest, but whatever rarified qualities
or behaviours they came up with as the exclusive gift of our species - culture, language,
tool use, intelligence, social complexity - they soon found in monkeys, dolphins, crows, everywhere,
until the high walls of humanity began to collapse, unable to support its own delusion.
At the time, Maurice had taken this to be proof that the study of humans had reached
its apotheosis; that there is in fact no such thing as humanity. He was proud to have belonged
to the intellectual pillar holding up a global movement. But now things looked different.
53

‘Anthropologists,’ he thought, ‘we’re not a pillar, but a crutch. Propping up the prevailing ideas of
the day’. Gatekeepers of humanity, they had at every stage been embroiled in the dirty politics
of belonging, and even relied on the idea that there were those who did not belong. Was now
any different? The world had redrawn the boundaries of selfhood and Maurice’s whole discipline
was on hand to say why it was right to do so. And what of Maurice? He came here to understand
them, like so many before him, in order to understand what makes us special. Wasn’t that what
the funding and the hype and the articles were about, really?
At root, everyone just wants to be told they’re right. And now he was to set sail tomorrow and
report to Noah on the ungodliness of those who refused to get on some stranger’s boat. Maurice
looked down at his notebook. It had pleased him greatly to have one blank page left to close
the year, but he wrote nothing down, instead letting his thoughts evaporate into the low clouds.
As he got up to leave his stump for the last time, Maurice looked at the flaxen cordgrass, still
swaying like so many limp metronomes, and decided after all that the marsh was an anthropologist.
Both are boundary dwellers. Both guard a secret line; one they did not draw. Ultimately, he
thought, both serve the tide, and live to frame its whims in gold.
54
All photos from North Carolina by Karl Dudman

The Circle of Life
by Michael Evans
Turtles All the Way Down. Photo by Michael Evans, Rendered by Aishani Aatresh
I
pick up a letter sealed with blood and massage
it with my fingers. Next to it lies another
note. It had been weeks since I dared to
open it. The seams come undone as I scrape
the manilla exterior with my jagged fingernails.
The letter slips open, my hand shaking and
dropping it onto the ground. I gasp, fearing that
the wind from the cruise ship would knock
it into the turquoise waters below. Then a
sea turtle would find the piece of paper and
chew on it, mistaking its red ink for the tentacles
of a jellyfish. Just like that, another of
the great Galapagos Green turtles would die
at the hands of mankind, likely followed by a
hefty fine and jail time after the cameras lining
the ship detected my infraction. There was
no trash allowed – no environmental impact.
Yet, picking up the letter meant confronting a
truth that I didn’t want to face. That I couldn’t.
The love of my life dies next week. After
years of chemo treatments, Maura is throwing
in the towel. A peaceful end to her life
by euthanasia and one last dinner with our
daughters, sealed with a letter for them signed
and marked with the date she is scheduled to
leave this earth.
Anna and Ava are just five and two years old.
I slip the letter into my pocket, keeping my
promise to never open it – to only give it to
them when they turn eighteen years old. Instead,
I unfold the paper with my own note
written on it. My wife’s dying words to me. A
note she wanted to share when she was still
in good health before the fear of the unknown
overtook her.
As I narrow my eyes to read her cursive
handwriting, I frantically wipe away the tears
pouring down my face and obstructing my vision,
tensing my cheek muscles to make them
go away. But not even the sight of an iguana
rolling around and sunbathing on an outcropping
of volcanic rock could slow the tears.
I can’t do this.
I put the note away, my mind thinking back
to the endless fights and how me holding this
55

letter was the one nightmare I had tried to
prevent. She didn’t listen to me. She’s trying to
sabotage me and the girls. I sigh, crumpling up
the note and shoving it back into my pocket. I
can’t let that happen.
I walk along the top deck of the cruise ship,
passing by a bar and rows of circular couches
that give one a view of the archipelago all
around it. My body ached after days of kayaking
with sea lions and hiking through the hot
jungle-like environment of the Galapagos. All I
wanted to do was melt away with Maura.
But every time I think about her leaving me,
the fact that she is knowingly putting my life
in danger, I feel the anger bubble up to the
surface. If she dies they are going to kill me. My
investors and the government will bury me. Men
don’t come back from promises that are broken.
“Sir, can I get anything to help you?” A robot
humanoid rolls up on two wheels as I enter
the staircase at the center of the ship. Its voice
and face are designed to appear human but its
body is full of different contraptions that can
enable it to juggle dozens of tasks at once. If
it weren’t for Ecuadorian regulations requiring
there to be a certain number of naturalists on
the ship, it could likely run without any humans.
“I’m good,” I reply, nodding my head with a
smile. My instinct is always to treat the robots
nicely, even if it doesn’t make a difference to
them whether I respond with an angry cursing
or a polite British accent.
The humanoid rolls away without a second
thought, its artificial vision scanning the environment
for new people to help. The idea
that most people are awed by such technology
feels cute in a way. They have no idea what’s
possible. I can make people live forever.
The walk back to my room ends with me
knocking on the door. Maura opens up, a warm
excitement to her face that sends a tingling
sensation throughout my body. I feel guilty that
56
I left her to read her note to me, but couldn’t
even bring myself to read it. I want to share
with her my thoughts – to tell her how much
I love her.
But the one thing masking it all is an unbelievable
sense of betrayal. She’s going to tear
down everything I ever built.
“Want some coffee? I made some,” Maura
says as I walk out onto the porch overlooking
the ocean waves beneath us. I sit back against
the nylon chair and stare at the glassy waves.
A frigate darts through the sky, its red throat
bulging out from its long, gray body like a
warning sign.
“Not right now, thank you, though.” I exhale,
feeling the warm, humid air invade my pores
and blanket my body. It was just one of the
hundreds of moments from the last few days
that I wish I could freeze in a picture and frame
forever. Instead, each memory shattered into a
pile of broken glass.
Maura places the coffee pot on the granite
countertop running along the side of our king
suite. The pot hits the countertop with a loud
clank, her arm yet again losing its fine motor
control. She groans softly, her hands brushing
through her hair as she walks past me.
“I just want to be free from this pain,” Maura
says as she leans over the balcony of the ship,
the last rays of sunlight beaming off the water
and lighting up her face. The butterflies still
race through me every time I look at her, and
the entire world seems to stop as our hands
touch.
“I know you do,” I respond, keeping my ears
focused on the slow lull of the engine. The
expanse of the water stretches on for miles,
the edges of several islands in the Galapagos
archipelago visible on the horizon. Part of
me just wants to stay here forever. Snorkeling
with the sea turtles, rock climbing on the
side of million-year-old volcanoes, and hiking
through jungles spotting new species of birds

and insects with every adventure.
“You care more about the company,” Maura
scoffs. She pats a hand against her dress as if
to make sure the black sequins stay in place.
“I don’t wanna have this conversation again.
This was supposed to be one of the best
weeks of our lives.”
“What you aren’t willing to accept is that
it’s also supposed to be the last week of our
lives together.” Maura’s face twitches, battling
back the tears that surface at the corner of
her eyes.
Suddenly, Maura pulls herself away from my
grasp, leaving a round of chills to cascade down
my spine. I shift my gaze from the ocean to
her face, her eyes glassy and jaw taught.“But I
don’t think you are willing to do what it takes.”
She turns away, the pit in my stomach growing.
I want to reach out and hold her, but the
fear of digging my hole even deeper holds me
back. “You know what I want. And you aren’t
willing to let me have it.”
“What you want is to be away from me!”
My voice booms off the ship. If any of the other
hundred passengers on the high-end cruise
line are outside then they surely could hear
me. “You want to die,” I say in a much softer
tone. “And I can’t let you do that. You deserve
to live. The girls need you. They can’t grow up
without their mother.”
She stands with her hands on her hips and
lips pursed.
“Maura, you are the light of my world. For
the last twenty years, you have been the center
of the universe, the greatest gift, the greatest
joy—”
“Stop it.” She cut me off. “You are just selfish.
You love me enough to hold me. You love me
enough to have me in your life. But you don’t
love me enough to let me go. You don’t love
me enough to end my pain if it means you’re
not holding me again.”
I gritted my teeth together, straightening
the blue-speckled tie that hung off my neck.
“That’s not true. You know there is another
way.”
“I’m not hooking myself up to that damn machine.”
She turns away from me, her olive skin
coated in a thin layer of sweat from the hot air
that collects on the porch on the top deck of
the ship. “That’s not living.”
“I would be with you though. We could be
together. The girls would be able to have you
in their lives. You could see them graduate,
maybe even get married one day. The bionics
could operate for hundreds of years without
major repairs and the neural net would retain
your exact brain wiring.”
Maura turns back to face me. The corners
of her eyes reddened, tears forming at the
edges and spilling down her cheeks. I move to
hold her, to embrace her in my arms. But she
squirmed to the edge of the porch, her body
pressed against the glass railing and expanse of
the Galapagos behind her.
For a second we both stop to breathe. My
mind flashes back to the moment we boarded
the ship just days ago. A speedboat brought
us to the hull, the crew unloading our luggage
and greeting us with glasses of champagne.
Despite the small passenger load due to government
regulations, there were seven decks
on the ship, five of which were reserved for
passengers. Pools and hot tubs were on each
deck with the floors able to change color with
the heat to keep the ship at optimal temperature.
Humanoids roamed the ship, passing out
drinks and conversing with the guests, each
conversation recorded and fed back to a master
machine learning algorithm. Every interaction
was used to optimize the guest experience
and personalize their itinerary to make
the most of their ten days traveling on the
Renegade Fauna.
“Don’t you understand?” Maura’s voice
cracks. She reaches out, her arms falling on
57

my shoulders. I hold her close, trying to have
the warmth and love inside of me radiate onto
her. “I don’t want to be turned into a bunch of
computer parts. I won’t let my body become
metal and transistors. Even if one day a synthetic
version of my body can be made from
organic materials – I don’t want that.”
“I know that. You are so much better than
just computer parts. But you know my struggle.”
“I will not put myself through pain for eternity
because of the mess that you made!”
“I’m not telling you to do that. The investors
are gonna be out to kill me if they see you
give up this fight. You are the reason this all
happened. The charter city was built for you.
Billions of dollars were poured into research
by the federal government. Tens of millions are
on a waitlist for the products produced in our
biohacker sanctuary. Do you understand how
big this is? How selfish you are being? How
you are endangering countless lives?”
“It’s all just a number on a spreadsheet to
you. These people were sold on a promise – a
promise that you pulled out of your ass. And
look where we are now. I’m dying and after
years of working like a maniac, talking to every
investor, and practically living in the lab, you
want to ask me if I will spend forever on this
planet with you?”
“Okay.” I close my eyes, a migraine beginning
to come on as a wave of stress brings a sensation
akin to clotting the blood in my veins.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just tried reading the
letter, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.” My
voice cracks as tears reform in my eyes. “This
is impossible.”
“You don’t understand me,” Maura sighs
and both of us stand in silence as the sun
sets beneath the horizon, erupting into reds
and purples. A pelican flaps its wings as it
smoothly dives into the water, picking up
a scaly green fish as it rises from the water.
58
Maura sighs, “You want to use me as a pawn.
To show the world that I, too, have bought
into your vision. That we can all transcend the
boundaries of biology and merge with machines.
But I can’t do that.”
“Then why don’t you keep fighting the cancer,
you don’t have to upload your brain to the
cloud. There’s still RX-Clavian 301. I know it’s
experimental, but it could —”
“James, just stop!” Maura roars at me. She
collapses to the floor, the tears spilling out of
her faster than ever. “For the last five years,
you have put me through hell. Endless treatments.
The press tours. Trying to promote the
products you and your company creates.”
“I’ve been trying to save you. To save everyone
who has to suffer like this.”
“It’s not your job to save me. That’s what
God is here for. I just wanted you to hold me.
I wanted to enjoy the little time we had together.
But every time I tell you what I’m feeling,
you never understand. You only care about
yourself.”
With those words, Maura storms back into
their suite, slamming the door shut behind her.
My fists clench as I gaze up at the sky. Splashes
of red and orange have broken through the
horizon as the sun withers away into darkness.
“You son of a bitch!” My sanity tore at its
seams. With every second my heart pounded
through my chest, shooting pains coursing
through my arms and legs. I fumble for the letter
in my pocket. Part of me wants to read
it and get it over with. To look at her final
goodbye and end this all myself. But I push the
thought away.
It was all a lie. I imagined my days sitting in
church with my dad, his liver only in greater
and greater distress by the day. He had been
an alcoholic for 15 years but had finally kicked
the habit as I entered middle school. I was
proud of him.
What I didn’t realize is that he had done it

out of fear.
I walk back inside and wrap my arms around
Maura. We hold onto each other as we collapse
onto the bed. Both of us lie there in silence
until the pain in our hearts fades for an
instant, replaced by a fierce growling in our
stomachs. We soon leave for dinner, the suit
and dress we both adorn fitting for the fourcourse
meal that is served to us on the cruise
ship. As a kid, a vacation like this would have
been beyond my wildest dreams. Endless food
in a grand ballroom decked out in diamond
chandeliers and gold-plated silverware. The
exterior of the dining room is surrounded by
windows, the dark outline of the islands visible
beneath the shades of purple and dark red
that linger in the sky.
“I love you,” Maura says as we sit down. The
tension from our fights always fades away to
give light to the connection that has drawn us
together for decades. “And I will love you forever.
I know you are doing your best. And we
will get through this together.”
I smile, gripping her hand in mine. “I know
we will,” I say, but the familiar rush of warmth
doesn’t flood through me. Instead, I feel something
much darker. A clarity that lifts a weight
off my shoulders. A determination that suddenly
brings me the solution I had been waiting
for.
“I’m always on your team,” I say, blowing her
a kiss from across the table. “Forever.”
She grins, her eyes lighting up as my hand
moves to her wrist and gently touches her. I
can’t push away the fresh round of tears filling
my eyes as the first course is plated on our
table.
A walnut cranberry salad with homemade
Greek dressing. Not the typical Ecuadorian
cuisine served on the ship, but with the goat
cheese and seeds, it is a savory mix. The next
courses come in due time, and by the end of it,
both of us are so full that we can barely stand.
In what feels like minutes, another night flies
by between us chatting with the other cruisegoers
on the back of the ship and then getting
ready for bed. It had already been a week of
us away from Charlestowne, the longest time
I have taken off since starting the charter city.
Maura couldn’t be happier that I’m finally taking
a break. I’m finally giving her what she has
wanted the entire time. To spend time with
her, and when we are home, to spend time
with the girls and be one big, happy family for
as long as we can.
“I feel I sacrificed everything for this,” I say
with an arm around her. We are lying in bed,
looking out at the stars that line the horizon.
The lights automatically turn off on the ship
at night, leaving everything in a sheet of ebony,
comforting and frightening at the same time.
“We both did,” Maura says. “This was the
best last week I could have dreamed of. The
animals, plants, adventures, it was so fantastic.”
I pause at the deep sense of contentment
in her voice. As much as I had tried to will
her out of this state, nothing was working. She
was prepared to die. And if the world finds
out, my reputation and my life’s work will be
destroyed.
Yet, I know she’s ready to leave. She refuses
to merge herself with machines and after
years of chemo treatments she is done.
“I just never want this to end.” I squeeze her
as tight as I can, kissing the top of her forehead.
We both drift asleep, nightmares of my
past surfacing.
I envision all the late-night meetings convincing
the federal government to grant Charlestowne
a special economic zone and legal freedom
that allowed it to become a novel place of
experimentation for science. Biohackers, renegade
engineers, and disillusioned academics
traveled from all over the world to populate
the marsh of South Carolina. And I created it
all with the belief that it would save Maura.
59

But she doesn’t want that. She’d rather die.
The morning sun breaks through the curtains
as both our eyes flutter open. I hold Maura,
breathing her in. It is a combination of her
lavender shampoo, deodorant, and her natural
aroma that tickles my nostrils. I want to hold
onto her smell forever — her everything.
“What are the girls going to do without
me?” Maura says, the thought hitting her after
another round of night terrors. We both were
tossing and turning.
“You will always be with us,” I stroke her hair,
keeping my tone level, not wanting to reopen
the wounds of our past conversations. Even
more importantly, she can’t be suspicious of
what’s about to happen.
We change, shower, and eat our breakfast.
I try to find the words to say to Maura, to
tell her I love her more than anything. But
it’s too late now. We both enter the tender, a
small speed boat that takes passengers from
the cruise ship closer to the islands. A couple
of hundred meters ahead, the cliffs of the islands
tower above the ocean. They are over
five hundred meters tall with dozens of caves
carved into the sides by the pounding ocean
waves. Thousands of birds nest along the milelong
rock face, sparse greenery, and cactuses
growing on the steep sides of the cliffs. It is
another world from the other islands, just as
every day has been.
On the first day’s excursion, we had visited a
flat desert-like island with a blue-footed boobie
colony that had painted the sides of the
cliffs white with their excrement. The next day
we visited the newest island, Fernandina, the
volcanoes freshly erupting with black, molten
rock coating the seafloor. Some of the islands
are mountainous, covered in dense jungles and
massive tortoises that roam the lands, searching
for grass to eat and soft dirt to burrow
homes into. And other islands are covered in
seals, red shrubs springing from the ground
60
that make the landscape look more like a martian
planet than an earthly biome.
But this island is another level of magnificent.
The sheer cliffs resemble giants, tops piercing
through the clouds. As we close in on the diving
location, I wrap my arm around Maura. I
know she’s nervous from the way she’s gripping
the exterior of the boat. She has wanted
to deep sea snorkel for the entire trip — she’s
now finally getting her chance.
“I still remember all the times I’d do this with
my father,” she says, looking to the sky.
“It’s gonna be great.” I try to hide my own
uneasiness, my nerves, of course, for different
reasons. All I can think about is Charlestowne.
The vision. The numbers. The sheer glory of
being able to create a future in which the old,
boring biological rules don’t exist.
The freedom the future was supposed to
bring only made me a prisoner to the promises.
Chained to Charlestowne. Enslaved by the
vision. I had no idea what I was really getting
into until it was too late. When I could no longer
tell myself any lies, I was forced to face the
reality that I was being used as a centerpiece
in a global play for power.
I am disposable. Nature won’t kill me if I
don’t play by the rules. The government will.
And Maura has dared to break them.
“Time to get your gear on. Jump in after me
and we will follow along the face of the cliff
until we reach that boat over there.” The naturalist
points at a ship in the distance, already
a group of tourists flapping their fins in the
water as they explore life under the sea.
I slip on the last of my gear, helping Maura
into her fins and snorkel gear. I wish I could
hold her one last time, relive this last week all
over again, but it’s gone forever now.
We jump into the water. Its warm, salty texture
makes its way through my pores. I feel
freer, more alive, almost like I am in an amniotic
fluid designed to grow extra limbs and

infuse new energy into me. In the sea, a school
of hundreds of tiny fish passes by me as dozens
of species of bright purple, orange, and yellow
follow a sea turtle. Maura is pointing with excitement,
bubbles coming out of her mouth as
she is shouting in the water with excitement.
“Oh my god!” She grabs onto me. “This is
the coolest thing. Wow.”
“It’s amazing how they don’t even move
with us,” I remark, following the turtle who is
swimming deeper into the sea. That’s when I
make a thrust downward with my fins, sucking
in as much air as possible to touch the corals
at the bottom. It takes almost thirty seconds
to get down, a sharp ringing in my ears as my
head grows heavy with the pressure. Maura
watches me, soon diving down herself.
We soon start to drift away from the pack,
the seaweed and cloudy sky making it hard to
see much further than ten or twenty feet in
front of us in the water. It gives us a perfect
sanctuary. For what feels like hours we dive
into the water and back up to the surface taking
big gulps of air.
Then, right as I sense she is beginning to tire,
I make my move. The group is still in the water.
There are at least another five minutes before
our disappearance strikes any suspicion. That’s
why I take the opportunity to do what Maura
has wanted this entire time. She dives down
into the water, me trailing behind her. As she
hits the bottom examining the corals and starfish
that stick to the molten, rocky floor, I float
above her. I take my legs and use them to pin
her back against the seafloor. But she battles
back, kicking as bubbles fly everywhere in the
water. We fight back and forth for a few minutes,
my arms pinned against her legs to keep
her from escaping. Then, finally, she gives up.
The vision has taken over. I’m numb to everything
but the pounding in my head from the
water pressure. I begin calling for help, letting
the crew and naturalists know that she had
dived into the water and never came back. I
cry, part of my mind filling with a hot regret,
my arms and legs shaking with terror at what I
have done. The thought of not ever being able
to hold her again makes me sick. But I know
there is another way out. Her body will be
found a few days later, any suspicion thwarted
with a few tragic, generous donations in
her name to the Galapagos Foundation. But
her legacy will live on to protect the natural
beauty in the world. An old way dictated by
Darwinian beliefs of natural selection, where
life and death are certainties, and God is the
only hope. Today, I killed that way of life.
I killed my wife.
I open the note in my pocket, wet and torn in
sections, but ink still faintly visible. All around
me the world spins as paramedics and humanoids
dive into the water to retrieve her body.
My heart pounds as I realize they may connect
it to me. It’s too late for me to go back. Too
late for me to save her. A screaming sounds
over and over again inside of my head, my
breaths shortening as the panic boils over. I’ll
never forgive myself. But true progress doesn’t
come without great risk. I had already put it
all on the line to bring Charlestowne and the
plethora of technologies that sprung from it
to life — no other option but success. No
model but to scale the solution to billions and
generate trillions of dollars in return for my
investors.
They will hang my head if I fail. Hang those of
everyone I love, by bankrupting us, blackmailing
us, and driving us into the ground. Maura
deciding to take her own life is the one needle
the balloon needs to pop. The one hint of
doubt that will keep devout from believing in
my vision.
But that doubt is buried now.
It’s dead.
My real worst nightmare has only begun.
61

The sheets were rough beneath his skin,
the lights glaring down with an artificial
brightness that blanched the room to white.
Keilan tried to sit up, but the world blurred
around him as nausea rose in his throat.
“Your Honor, not so fast,” a voice called
from somewhere to his left. “Your memory
chip needs time to integrate with the peripheral
nerves. Take it easy.”
Pain twinged along his temples, and he
reached up to clasp his head. His hands responded
like they were moving through molasses.
He stared down at his fingers, dark
against the bleached covers. They were a deep
mahogany with half-moon cuticles and unblemished
skin. The day before, his hands had
been as pale as dough, marked by liver spots
and scars from concrete burns.
This was not his body.
A doctor stood beside his bed in a white
coat, making notes on a datapad she had
tucked against her side. “We rushed an emergency
chip download to a new clone. The body
is younger than your usual preference, but the
labs were unable to obtain growth serum on
such short notice.”
“What happened to me?” Keilan asked.
His voice was rich and melodious, a contrast
to the growling rasp he had spoken with after
the cancer started to grow. It was the voice of
a man used to being listened to.
The doctor looked up. “I am afraid there
was an assassination attempt. A street worker
crashed your transport into a bulldozer, and
the collision killed your bodies. Even the chips
were damaged, but we were able to reconstruct
62
Strike of the
Gavel
by Mira Jiang
the basic threads to revive some memory.”
Snatches of scenes flashed back to him—the
controls buzzing beneath his hands like a live
wire and the sleek transport looming in his
windshield. His head had jolted back at the
impact. Metal crumpled around him as pain
lanced across the side of his neck.
He hadn’t meant to kill. Hell, he hadn’t even
known whose transport he was crashing until
he caught a glimpse of the man on beige seats
with a newspaper across his lap. In the moment,
Keilan imagined there was a flicker of
recognition in his eyes.
It was foolish, of course. The most powerful
judge in the country had no reason to remember
a man he sentenced decades ago.
“Your Honor,” the doctor said. “Are you alright?”
Keilan swallowed. “Can you tell me what
happened to the assassin?”
“His memory chip was crushed beyond repair.
We disposed of it in the furnace and sent
his body to the recycling center.”
“So everything is lost.”
“Indeed, Your Honor.” The doctor blinked.
“You wrote that mandate into law centuries
ago.”
“I suppose I did, didn’t I?” Keilan stared down
at his hands again, tapping his fingers against
the sheets.
He had lived with chronic pains for so long
he had forgotten what it felt like to move
without aches in every breath.
Under normal circumstances, he would have
passed up his cancerous body for a clone decades
ago, but the Council’s sentence had been
clear. He was consigned to the work gangs for
the rest of his life, and when his heart gave up,
there would be no chance of continuation.
The strike of the gavel haunted him for
years. Elder Hakim had stared down at him,
stony and bored, as if he’d been deciding what
he wanted for lunch instead of Keilan’s fate.

Now you’re the one ruined, and I’m the one
who survived, he thought.
A hysterical laugh escaped his lips.
“Your Honor, I must insist you rest.” The
doctor’s brow furrowed, and she entered
something into her datapad. “Because of the
damage done to the chip, we may need to order
a psych eval to—”
The door slammed open with a bang. Chips
of paint flaked off the walls.
A balding man hurried into the room, typing
furiously into a commlink. “Your Honor, you
are needed in the courtroom.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that,” the doctor
said. “Chip interfacing is a delicate process,
and—”
“Elder Hakim has recovered from transfers
in half the time he’s been here now.”
“He has never dealt with damage as extensive
as this.” The doctor turned to me. “Your
Honor, if you do not allow sufficient time for
recovery, there may be permanent damage
that will plague you for as long as you have
this body.”
“Your Honor, the deciding vote is held today,
and the media will become a circus if you don’t
show up.” A flush spread through the man’s
face. “The blogs are speculating that you are
dead. If you don’t make an appearance soon,
the dissidents will have a field day about how
the Council has become too old to rule.”
“If there are enough people voicing opposition,”
Keilan murmured, “maybe they have a
valid point to listen to.”
The man gaped at him. “Sir, what are you—”
“I’m only joking.” Keilan tried to summon
up the oozing condescension he remembered
from his trial decades ago. “You know the
youth can’t be trusted to rule themselves. I’ve
got centuries of wisdom and life experience
to guide them.”
And the only thing he has even gained in that
time is stubbornness, he added in his head.
What would happen if they found out who
Keilan really was? Elder Hakim was one of the
first members of the Council of Elders. His
death would shake the foundations of the government.
It was what Keilan and his friends
had dreamed of doing before years in the
work gangs had crushed his idealism.
An uneasy look crossed the doctor’s face.
“Your Honor, if you are not feeling well, I must
insist—”
“I think I can be the judge of my own capabilities.”
The sharpness in his tone made the
doctor turn back to her datapad.
“What’s the case?” Keilan added. “Help me
up. I want to go to the courtroom.”
Relief swept across the man’s face. “I’ve set
up a hologram system for you in an office upstairs.
The courtroom configuration should
be the way you prefer it. Be prepared for a
bloodbath afterwards though. You have to give
the media something if you don’t want endless
speculation.”
“They’ll speculate whether I talk to them or
not.” Keilan waved a hand. “It’s the job of vultures.”
He seemed to have struck the right tone
because the doctor’s unease relaxed as they
stepped out the door. Halls stretched out before
him, brightly lit and scrubbed to near-sinister
polish. It was like a scuttling beehive,
populated by doctors and beeping drones.
The man stopped in front of a heavy door.
“Your robes are hung on a peg inside, Your
Honor. The Council is waiting to hear your
thoughts on the case before they pass judgment.”
When Keilan pushed open the door, it was
like stepping back forty years in time.
A young woman sat at the defendant table
where he had once pleaded his case. A
row of black-robed elders sat in the box at
the head of the room, their gazes imperious
and bored. A lawyer paced across the front,
63

gesticulating with increasing fervor.
The bench sat empty at the center of the
room. It was the only object amongst the flickering
images that appeared real. It was waiting
for him.
As far as everyone is concerned, I am the
most powerful person in the world. If someone
finds out I am not who I seem, my life is
over.
The idea sent a shiver up his spine. He
thought he had made peace with the idea of
his own death, but in this young body, with
the aches of decades melted away, he found he
desperately wanted to live.
Keilan slipped on the dark robes and took
his seat. Sound in the courtroom roared to
life.
“—an obvious case of blatant disregard for
the law. Elders, if we let this miscreant off with
a warning, we will set a dangerous precedent
for people to get away with behavior like this.
Thieves are a plague that must be excised
without mercy.”
The elder beside Keilan leaned over on the
bench. “Hakim, I trust you have gone over the
briefs for the case.”
“I’ve had time to skim while I was in recovery,”
he replied. “What’s happening now?”
“The defendant is permitted to give closing
remarks before we make our decision. The
verdict should be cut and dry. She’s guilty. It’s
only a question of how much.”
The prosecutor took his seat, spots of red
on his cheeks. He shuffled his notes and
smoothed nonexistent folds in his suit.
The defense attorney rose to his feet, biting
at his lips. “Esteemed elders of the court, while
there is no doubt a crime has been committed,
the law is not always cut and dry—”
This provoked murmurs from the spectators.
The attorney’s eyes widened. “What—what
I meant was that the law allows for a range of
64
punishments, and I believe this young woman
should not be expected to act with your wisdom.
There is foolishness in youth that must
be forgiven if it is to be cured. I am certain she
repents deeply and—”
The young woman rose to her feet. “Could I
say something?”
The courtroom burst into an uproar.
Through a hologram, the crowd appeared as
nebulous shadows, but Keilan could make out
flickers of hands cupped to mouths and people
leaning over in conversation.

The attorneys and elders stared at him in
expectation. It felt like a test. Keilan tried to
grasp the gavel in front of him, but it slipped
through his fingers.
Right, nothing in this courtroom is really
here. He rose to his feet instead, robes flaring
around him like raven wings. “Order in the
court.”
His voice boomed over the crowd, and silence
fell. The young woman remained standing.
She had indigo hair and sharp eyes that
pierced Keilan to his soul.
“Could I speak?” she said. “I don’t believe it’s
against the rules.”
The other elders made no move to stop her,
so Keilan tilted his head in acknowledgement.
“Sarika, please ,” the defense attorney
hissed. “This is a terrible idea. You could incriminate
yourself.”
Sarika lifted her chin. “I took an oath to give
the truth when I stepped into this courtroom.
My attorney has not been telling it.”
“Perjury is a serious crime,” said a judge to
Keilan’s left. “Are you claiming a practitioner
of the law would deliberately defile it?”
“He says I feel repentant for what I did. I think
I did what was necessary to survive in the environment
you have made us live in. He says I
should receive a lighter sentence because of
my youth. I think the punishment should fall
on your heads because you’ve had
centuries to improve the world and left it in
shambles instead.”
“Remind me,” Keilan said, waving down the
protests rippling across the room. “What
crime are you being accused of?”
Loathing flickered in her eyes. “I took apples
for my family, because we couldn’t afford
them after weeks of work. Your generations
have hoarded wealth and live in luxury off our
suffering.”
Her words were a mirror of the ideals
Keilan and his friends once preached. The
prosecutor had pulled them out at his trial,
making a twisted mockery of his intentions.
He thought they had been lost in the darkness
years ago.
“Death or the work gangs,” said a red haired
elder behind Keilan. “It’s obvious she has no
remorse. Let us put it to a vote.”
“I am not afraid to die.” Sarika’s voice filled
the space like an ash cloud. “You can’t silence
us all. Unless you change your ways, your time
of reckoning is approaching.”
Death or the work gangs. For a moment,
Keilan was back in her shoes, staring at the
sea of black robes with Elder Hakim sitting
ghoul-like in front. He had been sure of his
convictions when they threw him to work
on construction sites. The years dashed that
spark to dust on concrete floors.
Right now, it burned in Sarika as a roaring
fire. Keilan would hate to see it broken.
“I am not afraid to die,” she repeated, her
eyes boring into his.
Around him, the elders tallied up their decisions.
It was a tie for both options.
“You have the final vote again, Hakim,” said
the woman behind him in the box. “Do you
hold off giving your opinion on purpose for
the dramatics?”
Keilan’s own trial had ended the same way.
At the time, he thought he had been granted
mercy. He understood now it was an execution
either way. The elders lived as gods, and a
few more decades for a criminal passed in the
blink of an eye.
Sarika spoke up today when I wouldn’t have
had the courage. She’ll lose that spirit in the work
gangs. I think she’s afraid of losing it too. A symbol
can be more powerful than a person though, and
I can make her into one.
Keilan forced himself to meet Sarika’s gaze
as he spoke, “Give her death.”
The gavel struck.
65

Footprint (A Makeshift Legend)
by Kelsey Chen
1.
There is a rhetoric of walking.
—Michel de Certeau,
he Practice of Everyday Living
Recently Footprint has been showing more
and more error messages in response
to my motions. I started to notice this about
three months ago—an error is typically a very
unusual thing, but during the week of May 2nd
alone, I logged three non-negligible recalibrations
in my Footpath. Before this May, I averaged
around one recalibration a year since I
turned eighteen; even during developmental
years, annual recalibrations never exceeded
6-8 in total, which is already on the high end.
In the past month, I have logged twenty-two
recalibrations. This is far out of the norm, according
to my GP. She referred me to a technician,
who was just as puzzled, because there
was apparently nothing wrong with my Footprint.
All systems were up to date, she said,
and the hardware was fine too. The technician
referred me to a psychiatrist, who cleared me
from the only real syndrome that excessive
Footprint error is an indicator for—schizophrenia.
I was then referred back to a second
technician, who promptly referred me to yet
another psychiatrist. I didn’t bother to schedule
an appointment.
But I think I figured out why I’ve been getting
so many errors.
This past year, my information feed has been
overloaded with constant notifications and
news reports on violent crimes committed
against people whose phenotypic characteristics
mark them to be socially classified as
“Asian”—therefore, diseased, foreign, dirty. The
violence is gratuitous, horrific, and directed at
the most vulnerable members of the demographic
body. It’s completely devastating and
still somehow feels abstract, even as my own
body is implicated in this same calculus of violence.
It’s completely devastating, how same
we are, even in our incommensurably different
lifelines—how same we are in our bodies,
our classification, our disciplining within and
by this city.
For nearly half a year, I hunched over in a
perpetual flinch. In that time, I learned the exact
air density in a space where there is an
expectation of violence, which is to say that
all public space suddenly became viscous: not
like honey, more like tar. I wondered for long
periods of time about the sculptural formation
of a human skull—if it takes around eight
decades for a human skull to be made, what
is made in its place when the body does not
live for the necessary time of its sculptural incubation?
I thought it might resemble a turtle
shell—architecturally deformed, functioning
neither as trap nor armor, but somehow both
at once.
I am certain, had I gathered the courage to
see a doctor in those early months, that I would
66
Oracle Bones (Silkscreen), Series by Kelsey Chen

have been diagnosed with a slew of neuroses.
But even then, as deeply as I had sunk into
depression, Footprint was logging an average
recalibration to motion ratio.
And then, in April, Yao Pin An was brutalized.
A 61-year-old man who had immigrated from
China only two years ago to this unforgiving
city, Yao Pin An was collecting cans on the
streets, having recently lost his apartment to a
fire and his job to the motion of the business
cycle. He was assaulted while picking up bottles
to pay his rent, his head repeatedly stomped
into the curb at 3rd Ave & East 125 St. In the
news report, his wife of 31 years, Baozhu Chen,
said, “My husband is a hard-working man. He
picks up bottles to help pay the rent and the
bills. He is innocent. He did not do anything
wrong. He is a very kind person. He is quiet.
He doesn’t cause trouble to make people
mad.” He suffered a cerebral contusion and
multiple facial fractures. I do not know where
he is now. The last I I remember from a news
update, Yao Pin An was in critical condition in a
medically induced coma. The half-life of information
is so tragically short now—even news
on life, on death, and on catastrophic human
violence begins to decay within a week.
I could not move my body for twenty-three
minutes after viewing the news report. I was
paralyzed, thinking about (1) How exactly the
contours of a human skull might change in
form when crushed between a concrete curb
and a human sole. (2) How much Yao Pin An
resembled my father. (3) How, fuck, he was
just picking up bottles, (4) How much sadness
was contained in Baozhu Chen’s quiet insistence
that he was kind. How crushing the grief
in her plea, he doesn’t cause trouble. (5) How
dare this country call itself Beautiful in its own
naming in our language. (6) And how there
must be something wrong with the Footprint
data, which the press released in an oddly
intrusive reporting decision. There were 0
recalibrations and 0 deviations in the six
months before Yao Pin An was assaulted.
Everyone knows how Footprint works in
the abstract, but no one knows how Footprint
works in actuality. Its precise mechanism is
entirely opaque, which is remarkable in this
moment of explosive information circulation.
Everything about Footprint seems vaguely out
of grasp. No one knows anyone that works for
Footprint, but everyone knows someone who
knows someone who is Footprint-affiliated. It
isn’t just because I’m a ceramicist, rather than
a systems engineer, a physicist, or an information
scientist. Even those in the relevant fields
seem to have no concrete sense of the actual
workings of Footprint. What I do know, or
what I think I know, is that Footprint works by
mapping motion, in the most expansive definition
of the word. It tracks all of your motion,
and all of the motion that is you.
My mother used to tell me stories about the
magic of the ancients—how, in classical times,
those trained in divination would use a turtle
shell and bone fragments carved with trigrams
to look to the I Ching for directional directives
on living. Face this way when you sleep.
Face this way when you work. Be careful when
you walk in this direction. The Book of Changes
would guide you in your motions; align you
directionally towards a virtuous, auspicious
life. It’s funny that more of my knowledge of
feng shui comes from my white colleagues
than from my mom. They think they know a
lot about how to save yourself with magical
realignments; I don’t think I know very much
about anything, especially about Change. But
from what little I have gathered in my crude
impression of what the I Ching is, Footprint
strikes me as its post-modern, substantially
more brutal iteration.
And, unlike feng shui, it’s not magic. Footprint
could not be further from magic, even though
there’s something phantasmic about how
67

cleanly it’s disappeared its own innards, any
trace of its mechanics. There are no bones and
shells, just a sleek watch-surface that offers a
set of optimized potential motions at any given
moment. It doesn’t just tell time; it tells you
all your possible timelines. And it doesn’t just
map motion; it maps all possible motion—not
just what has already been enacted, but also
what is to come. I won’t pretend to know how
it works. But I think there’s probably some
kind of quantum logic involved.
Sometime in the days of college, I stumbled
across a theoretical physics class. I remember
myself wedged between the hard green plastic
of my seat and the splintered wood of the desk
in the dizzying humidity of early fall, listening to
the professor speak about wave-particle duality.
I was lost in the math, but I still remember
with remarkable clarity how he explained that
a particle’s location consists of probabilities. At
any given moment, he explained, it is this likely
the particle will be here; it is that likely the
particle will be there. This set of probabilities,
in turn, can be described with a mathematical
function—a wave function. Until the moment
of measurement (which, in physics, means an
encounter with a possible observer), the particle
is somehow splintered, at once located
at all points on the wave. When you look at
it, its infinite possibilities collapse into a single
location. Infinity becomes singularity; you
gaze upon it and suddenly it gets fixed. Which
is the same as saying that with one look you
can stop the entire world; with one look, with
one motion, you cohere infinite possible iterations
of what you encounter into one. I remember
thinking, how beautiful, really, and how
sad. How beautiful to think of space as filled by
infinite possibilities, so that we are constantly
walking through echoes of what could have
been. I remember thinking what a beautiful way
to think about existence, to understand that
to be is to cohere yourself in every moment.
68
I remember thinking, maybe it’s all worth it. In
each miniscule gesture, I am somehow being
reconstituted by an infinity of possible Is. How
gorgeous, that in every step I am writing myself
into being.
This is how Footprint works, I think, in a
very provisional, crude sense—which is the
only sense in which I understand it. Footprint
traces the infinite possible motions of “you” in
the next instant and calculates the likelihood
of you carrying out each action, given the constitution
of “you” in all your past and present
motions. Within these possibilities it selects a
curated few and presents them to you as your
Footpath, displayed on your screen alongside
each of their probabilities, which have been
determined by computing indices such as past
motions, biological composition, and experiential
making. Many times, the Footpath is how
you would have moved anyway. The curation
of your Footpath happens through optimization—somehow,
“they” decide which of your
possible actions would be best for you and for
the entire world. No one knows how the optimization
algorithm works or who writes it.
No one knows who “they” is, only that they
are constantly making “you.”
Described this way, Footprint seems overwhelming
in its complexity. But it’s really
a smooth, liquid motion. In each moment,
Footprint presents you with your Footpath.
Your watch screen continuously repopulates
with a set of optimal movements. You learn
to read the screen quickly. You make small
movements easily, without looking. It’s likely,
anyways, that an inconsequential movement
is within your Footpath. A breath, a slight
lean of your body, an adjustment of the angle
at which your elbow rests on the table.
For bigger movements you glance first. Then
you act. A step in this direction, a turn of your
head, a decision about which job offer to accept.
I always feel a little bit behind, like I’m

constantly catching up to the temporal location
of my own body. But even this constant,
slight lag is smooth: a continuous
motion with no beginning and no end.
No one is obligated to take Footprint’s suggestions.
A Footpath is a gift—an offering. A
general trajectory determined to be optimal
not just for you, but everyone in the world.
Every being reverberates; every motion ripples
throughout everything that exists and
that will ever exist. This is one reason most
people never think to deviate from the Footpath:
it is beyond you. The consequences, in
fact, are cosmic. But mostly people follow the
Footpath because it is good. When you are
young, you learn quickly that Footprint is really
good at what it does. Deviations always
result in injury. You trip. You get a small scrape.
Sometimes, you die. Sometimes, your cat dies.
Footprint is the blueprint of this city—and
every city. It has many versions around the
world: Wu Gui (“Turtle”) in China, Link in
the Middle East and North Africa,
and Deca in Cuba. But they are
all Footprint. The program optimizes
human motion. It tracks motion—of
every being in the world. Its calculus is organized
by zoning, by local aggregation. Each
city is insular, a system of motion that is at
once open and closed. In his PhD dissertation,
Takashi Murakami made a map of the art
world as a multiverse: many disciplinary lineages,
many spheres of cultural production, many
inheritances of technique—countless systems
of artmaking, constantly colliding. They coexist
and intertwine, yet they have their own gravitational
pull—have their own boundaries, no
matter how unstable. Human cities are the
same way. Each individual motion ripples unpredictably
through the fabric of our world,
but it does so unevenly. There is a kind of pull
towards large collections of human motion, so
that cities begin to cohere not just in topography,
but also in cause-and-effect. Footprint
pays a privileged attention to your immediate
locality—that is to say, your city. Because they
are whirlpools of human motion and emotion,
even the momentum of “you” gets caught.
Human cities and Murakami’s art worlds
are the same thing: constellations of people
and concepts ordered by aesthetic principles.
How to live is an aesthetic question, and Footprint
is humanity’s final answer. Somehow, in
the messy web of constantly colliding human
orbits, in the crossing and enfolding paths of
everyone in this city and in this world, there is
an optimum. You can see how this might have
enormous implications for governance, city
planning, and the practice of everyday life. This
is why Footprint has become so universally integrated
into all of our lives. It is an ethical administrator
of futures. There must have been
so much casual disaster before Footprint. I
cannot even imagine what it would be like.
There really is something indisputably beautiful
about Footprint—about how coherent,
how synchronized our collective existence
has become. Footprint has made one giant,
harmonized map out of every possible human
future. Spatial design has always been
about making futures—Cellini thought of
disegno (design) “as a tool for ordering human
endeavors toward virtue. Man cannot
act virtuously without disegno.” Footprint is
a kind of designed spatial ordering, but not
meant as Cellini had hoped, as a mode of
69

ethical self-transformation. You no longer invent
“yourself.” Ours is a new age of cartography
where the map makes you.
Footprint accounts for all possible instantiations
of “you,” including the sub-optimal.
Sometimes, people move in a direction outside
of what has been offered by Footpath.
This is a deviation. It can occur intentionally or
by accident. Deviations are within Footprint’s
comprehension. A deviation does not trigger
an error message. But people rarely decide to
deviate. No one wants the cat to die.
Recalibration is more difficult to explain. It is
a motion so substantially outside of Footprint’s
calculus that you receive an error message—a
small red notification on the right side of your
watch screen. I’m not sure even the people
behind the empty-centered infrastructure of
Footprint, the engineers writing ghost code in
their ghost chairs, know exactly what triggers
a Footpath recalibration. Even specialists, like
my technician, whose services are wildly overpriced
on account of the many certifications
and degrees she’s racked up, could not explain
what a recalibration is. Unlike a deviation, a
recalibration happens when something gets
messed up—even when you undergo a motion
that has been offered by Footprint as your optimal
Footpath. Somehow, somewhere in your
motion, Footprint’s projected trajectories for
the “you” that comes into being as you move
get reconfigured in a way that is unexplainable.
It means, ostensibly, that you have constructed
a possible future that was impossible. So the
system recalibrates.
I once had a conversation with a chemist
about Epicurus’s theory of the swerve.
Swerves, he said, are unexplained moments
of randomness within largely orderly systems.
I remember him showing me a mathematical
function, speaking quickly in his excitement.
He was telling me how even the most recent
research could not explain why a smooth
70
function like this might suddenly have a jump
like that. I remember that while he gestured
at the function, I was having the greatly unscientific
thought that maybe math was a kind
of poetry; that maybe the function chose to
jump, because it, like Pascal, was terrified by
“the eternal silence of these infinite spaces.”
I couldn’t tell you why we were talking about
Epicurus, much less why I would ever be speaking
to a chemist. I think we were standing under
green-gray tinged scaffolding. I think there
was rain, and I think it was quite humid. But
I’m not sure about any of these impressions;
everyone that’s lived here for a while tends
to locate lost memories under a non-specific
piece of scaffolding. There’s something about
this place that’s a bit loose and hazy. Things
are not good at happening in specific places—
events, like people, often get lost in space.
I remember the chemist describing how contemplating
the swerve was an exercise which
had much to reveal about the infinite unpredictability
of the world, and of us, even within
the statistical likelihoods created by universal
laws. I didn’t know that chemists could be so
elegant in their words; I didn’t know that functions
could stutter so much in smooth motion.
I guess even a mathematical function can’t resist
the staccato inertia of the whole world
hurtling through time. Andrew Hui has written
in A Theory of the Aphorism that “it is the halting,
broken fragment…that is the only viable form
of expression…not so much a distillation of
doctrine as an expression of the impossibility
of any formal systems.” What if the universe
only speaks in fragments? What have we done
to ourselves, to reconstitute humanity in a
formal system of constant, unending motion? I
truly could not tell you what a recalibration is.
But I imagine it to be a swerve, of sorts, in all
my possible futures. If even the best mathematician
cannot predict the swerve of a function,
how could Footprint’s algorithm ever account

for the swerve of a person?
These are the reasons I was rendered immobile
when I saw Yao Pin An’s released Footprint
data. 0 deviations and 0 recalibrations in the
past six months meant that he had followed,
exactly, his Footpath. He is innocent. He did not
do anything wrong. He is a very kind person. In
what kind of world is the optimal trajectory of
Yao Pin An’s life one which ends with his skull
crushed against the pavement? How was it decided
that the structural deformation of Yao
Pin An’s skull against the concrete curb was
necessary for the architecture of this city? If
Yao Pin An’s brutalization took place along his
Footpath, how many of the previous string of
murdered and assaulted Asian people had also
been optimized?
I could not move for twenty-three minutes,
fixed to my bed. According to my biomarkers,
this was the longest time I have ever been still,
even in my sleep. Me, fixed in my bed in all my
abstract grief for something that had been lost
since the birth of human civilization; Baozhu
Chen, fixed on the screen in the heartbreak of
having lost her husband.
2.
The habitable city is thereby annulled.
—Michel de Certeau,
The Practice of Everyday Living
Master You said: When practicing the ritual, what
matters most is harmony. This is what made the
beauty of the way of the ancient kings; it inspired
their every move, great or small. Yet they know
where to stop: harmony cannot be sought for its
own sake, it must always be subordinated to the
ritual, otherwise it would not do.
—The Analects 1.12
Whenever my mother wanted me to
clean my room, she would almost
always recite this one Chinese proverb:
if the old doesn’t leave, the new cannot come. It
was a lesson on many things, especially on letting
go—on making room for the uncertainty
of the unknown. But contained within those
words is also the understanding that there
must always be something lost when there is
something gained. For so long, I didn’t stop to
think about what might have been lost in the
grand spatial-temporal mapping of human futures.
There was grief and a deep shame at my
own inurement towards the obvious necessary
violence of optimization. That night, I was
so ashamed that I thought I would simply die,
right then. I was so shocked by my own shock
at what was so exceedingly obvious that I began
vomiting violently.
It was so easy to miss the brutality of Footprint.
The way Footprint makes “you” and “I”
who we are, reconstitutes us in our planned
collective motions, seems so benign, disegno
where control is not centralized in a person,
but dispersed—collectively configured. Each
one of us is optimized for everyone else and
for ourselves. We had given up the arduous
task of self-transformation through the disciplining
of our bodily comportment to they
who knew how to do it better. It doesn’t matter,
really, whether this way of thinking about
Footprint was right or wrong. Whether the
systems of Footprint disaggregated power—
whether it truly was a decentralized, collectively
choreographed motion towards optimum—or
collected it into the spectral hands
71

of the invisible they; whether they were really
us or not; none of this mattered because there
was nothing to be done. The required subject
is absent. The center, even if it exists, cannot
be located or held responsible. All of us are
held by the inertia of this deep structure.
The night the news of Yao Pin An aired, I
walked all the way from my closet-sized apartment
in Brooklyn to 3rd Ave & East 125 St,
pitching through the dark in unclean motions.
Imagine the desperation, the vicious anger, the
grief of someone who is trapped in something
unescapable, who has no choice but to subject
themselves to something to which they had
always and would always be subjected. I was
overcome, violently, with an urge to do everything
wrong—to deviate in all of my motions
as a giant fuck you to them. But I could not.
Everything I do is beyond myself. There will be
consequences for someone else.
I remember once reading an anthropological
text on the wisdom of the Apache. The
anthropologist wrote:
The past is a well-worn ‘path’ or ‘trail’ (‘intin)…
the past has disappeared—and…must be constructed—which
is to say, imagined—with the
aid of historical materials, sometimes called
‘footprints’ or ‘trails’ (biké’goz’áá) that survived
into the present.
The Apache imagined that we would grow in
wisdom by looking for footprints—directives
for path-building found in the stories told by
memories, places, and moments past. Footprint
eliminates the need to look for footprints.
No one is involved in the construction
of their own paths. No one is involved in their
own making.
How will you walk along this trail of wisdom?
Well, you will go to many places. You
must look at them closely. You must remember
all of them…You must learn their
names. You must remember what happened
at them long ago. You must think about it
72
and keep on thinking about it. Then your mind
will become smoother and smoother.
I was thinking about how people go places but
do not look, or remember, or learn any names;
Footprint eliminates this need. I was thinking
about the rhetoric of walking, how the sounds
of all our motions have cohered into one single
harmony. I was thinking about Yao Pin An
and his broken skull.
I was thinking about this when I arrived at
3rd Ave & East 125 St.
I was thinking about how the price for optimization
was the annexation of all of our selves
and all of our possible selves.
I was thinking that somehow, at this moment
that is by all “objective measures” the height
of human development, we are coming upon
the end of the world.
3.
In the transforming process of the universe, the
past has just gone and the future continues to
come. They continue without a moment of rest.
—Chu His, Lun Yu Chi-Chu Ch. 5, comment on
Analects 9:16
From the wind, I learned a syntax for forwardness,
how to move through obstacles by wrapping myself
around them. You can make it home this way.
—Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
That night, I started to write things down—
and Footprint started to recalibrate at an
abnormal pace.
Standing there at the corner of 3rd Ave &
East 125 St, a day after Yao Pin An’s head
was bashed into that spot, I thought about
Baozhu Chen and Yao Pin An. I thought
about my father. I remember feeling ashamed
of the complete abstraction of my own sorrow.
Yao Pin An is in a coma. Baozhu Chen
must live. And I am just… here. What was
the reason for my arrival in this place?

I don’t know what I expected to see—maybe
I thought that a catastrophic event would
have changed the terrain of the place, just a
little. But there was nothing. No yellow tape,
no markings, no trace of where Yao Pin An was
crash-landed into the earth. Just a nondescript
street corner, the faded yellow paint peeling
like tree bark from the curb, the impact of a
human skull lost among decades of scrapes and
weathering. A bit of grass and a lone, scrawny
dandelion broke through the earth where
curb met street.
Standing there, watching the dandelion waver
in the thick air, I reached in my pocket
and wrapped my fingers around the cheap
ballpoint pen inside. I popped off the cap and
drew a line on my left hand. It felt right, so I
kept going. I drew the line all the way from the
tip of my left index finger to my elbow. Above
the line, I wrote “R.I.P” and below the line I
wrote all the names I could remember of everyone
who has died in the past year. Yao Pin
An is not on the list. If he is dead, I don’t know
this. I didn’t put him on the list.
None of these motions were deviations. But
the second I lifted the pen from my arm in the
gesture of writing, Footprint recalibrated.
One month later, the ink from that night long
gone from my arm, finally beginning to relearn
the motions of casual happiness again, I stood
by a magnolia tree. I watched it blooming in
the warm light of the coastal spring, and suddenly,
I knew that its name was grace. I marked
it down on my hand so as not to forget, using
the same pen, stashed still in my jacket pocket.
When I lifted my pen, Footprint recalibrated
again.
Two days later, I tripped on the sidewalk and
fell in a remarkably protracted and ungraceful
motion. Not a deviation. I wasn’t injured. I remember
seeing the gentle cracks in the pavement
of the sidewalk, the thin dusting of a soft
tan film over the surface. Overcome with a
random, rather airheaded poetic force, I took
my pen and marked the spot on the sidewalk
with a tiny X. Here I fell. Here I once was. In
this moment of small wonder, I let myself make
a mark on the street, fancying myself a poet.
Footprint recalibrated.
Walter Benjamin wrote that “[t]he value of
information does not survive the moment in
which it was new. It lives only at that moment;
it has to surrender to it completely and explain
itself to it without losing any time. A story
is different. It does not expend itself.”
Let me tell you my stupid little theory about
the reason behind the unreasonable number
of recalibrations my Footprint has undergone
over the last few months. I know already, even
as I am writing this down, that it is massively
unscientific and makes little to no sense. Probably
during my next functionality review with
a technician, it’ll turn out that there’s been a
small malfunction in the hardware after all. But
for now I finally feel as if I might be able to
breathe again.
So let me tell you my theory. For us who
slip and slide with complete ease and certainty
through our lives, knowing that at all moments
our Footpath has been optimized, the art of
memory has been forgotten. Tolstoy once
wrote in his diary that “since these movements
are habitual and unconscious, I felt that
it was already impossible to remember it…if
I had acted unconsciously, then this is tantamount
to not having done it at all.” Memory is
unnecessary when you do not need to learn;
Footprint supplants learned wisdom. There
is something impeding the development of
memory because we are told where to go. It
directs us always towards the most appropriate
motion. Executing our Footpath is a fluid,
unconscious motion. And sometimes the
most appropriate motion somehow calculates
“you” as expendable. But there is nothing to
be done; there is no possible form of revolt.
73

There are ghosts in place of anyone or anything
that could have been held responsible.
There is nothing to be done. Not following
the Footpath devastates not just yourself but
everyone else. What can be done?
Because there is nothing to be done about
anything, acting is no longer acting. This is the
same as not having done it at all. Nachmanovitch,
in Free Play, explains how, “by reinterpreting
reality and begetting novelty, we keep
from becoming rigid. Play enables us to rearrange
our capacities and our very identity so
that they can be used in unforeseen ways.”
There could not be a moment in human history
more devoid of play than now. There is
nothing unforeseen, because Footprint is the
ultimate panoptic operation.
New York is freezing over. It’s cold because
of the steel and concrete and ecological disaster
which has left almost all areas of the globe
inhospitable without great artificial climate
controls. It’s cold because it isn’t a home.
Here, nothing makes any place special. Everything
is unmoored amid a sea of scaffolding.
There is nothing special: Nothing is marked
with a story or a memory, all legends having
been drained from the land by the precise logic
of optimization. So what of us, then, who
remember nothing? You and I—we drift from
place to place in the dictated motions that
necessarily configure everything that we are.
Turtle shells litter this city—places that are
only special because we dwell within them.
We make nowhere a home. There are only
places in which one can no longer believe in
anything. Proper names for places “are the
object of a witch-hunt, by the very logic of
the techno-structure.” There are no names
for places. There are no places, really—just
scaffolding.
But what if I left a word behind, as I move, so
I could return—anchored myself, somehow,
to a spot on my Footpath with poetic force?
74
What if by naming and remembering—writing
down—I can find my way home?
What if both you and I could find our way
home by making places habitable, and, in doing
so, tell our own stories? What if we wrote
down our own urban legends, made “a crack
in the system that saturates places with signification”?
What if the mysterious substance of a
swerve is simply the telling of a story?
Stories are makeshift things. They are composed
with the world’s debris.
All vocabulary is temporary. We only ever
find words for an instant. Then everything
grows hazy again. Whenever I read poetry, or
literature, or anything, I feel, for an instant at
a time, that I am coming into my own speech
too. It lasts for an hour. A day if I’m lucky. In
those times, I can write. Then it’s gone again,
and all there is left to do is live.
Nothing I used to write ever triggered a
recalibration. The act of writing itself is unmeaningful.
Everything is an act of signification;
language itself, the practice of writing, is unexceptional.
But words can project—they can
throw me back into places of meaning. So if I
hide a word in a place I visit, the smoothness of
the function breaks. Making poetry out of the
world, making rhetoric out of my motion—
that is something that disrupts something. It’s
something meaningful, somehow.
Travel (like walking) is a substitute for the legends
that used to open up space to something
different.
I think I am triggering recalibrations through
the simple act of giving names to places. There
is a rhetoric of walking which is lost when
movement doesn’t require improvisation, play,
or thought. Something about Footprint charting
my course through the future has taken
the language out of my walk. But I am learning,
from the stones, the flowers, the cracks in
the sidewalk, to make temporary stories from
debris. To become anchored, somehow, in a

way that Footprint disallows. To stutter in my
motion; to swerve.
Places are fragmentary and inward-turning histories,
pasts that others are not allowed to read,
accumulated times that can be unfolded but like
stories held in reserve, remaining in an enigmatic
state, symbolizations encysted in the pain or pleasure
of the body.
I do not know what happened to Yao Pin
An. Am I allowed to swerve, when nothing
has changed for anyone else? When my Footpath
recalibrates, what happens to the rest of
the world? Does my stuttering cause others
to stagger in their footprints as well? Am I allowed
to learn to swerve from my secondhand
mourning for a man crushed against the
New York streets? Am I allowed to let my depression
lift, when Footprint still crushes us all
with its gravity?
I don’t know. I don’t know what I am allowed
to have, but I’m going to let myself have this:
these words.
75

76
MyMuse by Austin Clyde
My good friend, when I was about to cross the stream, the spirit and the sign that usually
comes to me came — it always holds me back from something I am about to do
— and I thought I heard a voice from it which forbade my going away before clearing
my conscience, as if I had committed some sin against deity. Now I am a seer, not a
very good one, but, as the bad writers say, good enough for my own purposes; so now
I understand my error.
— Phaedrus 242b-d
If corporations, governments, and whatever other packages of institutional power reigning
over us are doing this to us, then at least one of us should do it to ourselves—to tell the others,
right? How to know the future, I guess that’s the root of the question. If some are making the
future behind a curtain so dark, so impenetrable, even if what is behind is even darker, shouldn’t
one of us cast ourselves into it for the rest of us to know? And there is no better reflection of
what I am to them other than by treating myself as the material to plaster over a blank canvas
in hope someone buys that frame, carrying me along. At least that’s what I wrote in the art grant
for this project.
It started when I was in grad school, in the Ph.D. student office. It was really nothing special. I
found it quite cold, anti-social, and alienating. Pretty reflective of my feelings about being there.
Maybe that was the office’s goal (which it met). The whiteness of the whole thing must have
been slowly stirring my subconscious like those magnetic stir sticks that create vortexes over
hotplates of reagents and reactants, smashing little molecules together, hoping some decide
to change energy states (though many never did, and then the graduate student overseeing
this mixing would go home to drink too much lamenting another failed experiment. But with a
slight hopefulness that the intoxication to come may inspire a way to recover the experiment.
If the next glass functioned the way he imagined, a way to justify the low yield of the reaction
as acceptable for Scientific Reports, or maybe some other predatory journal, would arrive to
his fleeting, although still supervisory, conscious. Sadly, he would soon forget these ideas he had
because there would be many more glasses to come after that. Was his muse, too, a forgetful
one, like mine?).
The office had 18 desks, most along the walls, with a few facing each other in the middle, although
no actual faces faced each other. There were 30” inch black squares between any possibility
of open air to see another person’s face. If you turned to the left or right, you’d see a reflection
of yourself: skin, t-shirts, shorts, ponytails, bare feet, shoulders that looked latched to the
screen. If the screen was slowly ratcheting those shoulders deep into it… Sometimes I wondered
if the screen would just swallow that person up at any moment, as every week into the academic
quarter, they would move deeper and deeper into the screen.
Watching others in the office like this made me recall a philosophical folly (well, most

would probably still say insight at that time). The distinction between the hammer ready to strike
the next nail and the hammer whose shaft had shattered. The dumbfounded being there, holding
that broken hammer, which now overtook his mind—removing him from the hammering—and
bringing him into a reflection. Was I concerned for the other to my right being swallowed alive by
the screen whose pull on her shoulders looked painful, being drawn into a deep reflection about this
colleague’s posture as if it was broken too?
Moments like this, where everything around becomes problematic and simultaneously present—concerning—are
manifestations of something broken. At least it felt that way since those
moments seemed to disallow sharing the experience with others. When concern for being with
others becomes present and total, no other than I could seem to have an entrance into the experience—one
that I know others have, but we have different words.
The office reminded me of my own personal views of this discipline. I, too, haphazardly signed
myself up for one solemn winter. Really, I hated working after undergrad. It was cool for a
week—nine screens lined my desk, bells going off, trade announcements on the floor. But I never
could answer why I had to write this code for these rich men who came to my desk every
Monday with great excitement at my youth—still young, full of fire, hair, and a sense of joy? They
needed to change their system design if they wanted to make money. But no, why help them?
Instead, I sat quietly and wrote the best C++ code I could. It was a puzzle I enjoyed. How to
be fast and poetic. But then, after a few weeks, they asked me to work on the same thing again.
I quit immediately, and phoned my undergraduate research advisor, who, with a smirk on her
face—one of the few happenings I will not forget—on that cold winter morning near where a
New Yorker article pegged a famous philosopher’s home opera stage, said something along the
lines: come do a Ph.D. with me, you have a week to apply.
In the office that afternoon, I found the GitHub page. I had to teach; otherwise, I wouldn’t subject
myself to the ensuing existential crisis that the office, or tech company robot manufacturing
facility, always brought me. I tried to work on a paper I wanted to write, and, as usual, I figured I
had nothing to say, nor could I write it well, nor could I get my citations right. Maybe I’ll go home.
I turned to Google to perform a series of searches that felt automatic and addictive—the thrill
of repetition:
» How to be more productive?
» How to remember ideas while reading?
» How to write faster?
» Nootropics for writing
» Things to buy 2022
» Why can’t I focus?
» Code to write down thoughts for me
And something caught my eye once I passed the usual ads for probably ineffective mind-altering
“vitamins” that I would probably buy anyways in a last-ditch hope to save myself from the unutterable
77

vortex of ideas I wanted to just spew out. The name of this link reminded me immediately of a
class I had eight years earlier. Coming in and out of inner-thought, emptiness, and slight attention—like
I imagine others in this boring class, my high school humanities teacher, Mr. Calligari
was talking about Socrates’ daimonion. I remember thinking, ‘huh, that inner-voice which is somehow
me and yet speaks to me—that’s cool someone else feels this way.’ I remember also thinking
‘what a crock-of-shit this old man Socrates was.’ My teacher didn’t say much about Socrates’
daimon besides some sentence or two which felt like it came from somewhere deeper inside of
him but caught between that social filter which places many of our fondest and most intimate
thoughts between apathetic I’m-smarter-than-you joke and genuine “nerdy” curiosity which his
public high-school teaching job rarely afforded. He seemed to want to say more but didn’t.
The link took me to a GitHub project page. Lots of stars, recent commits, and many contributors—a
tell-tale sign to keep reading and forward the link to your co-workers in a similar apathetic
‘here’s a link to show I’m working’ and a ‘can-we-please-talk-about this?’
readme.txt
MyMuse is an extension of your thoughts. A friend who remembers
that thought you had one night over dinner. A database which can
curate those citations you mentioned in that Zoom call for when
you are writing a paper. MyMuse is a platform automated consciousness.
The platform consists of
• hardware embedded computers featuring microphones, ultrasound,
and cameras (all available in local maker facilities),
• large language models (LLMs) which transcribe, analyze, and
curate your every uttered thought or text. Talk out loud more!
If it cannot hear you, it cannot help you,
• A LifeDatabase which stores your movements, locations, actions,
and utterances/correspondences in a local database for
reference using the Muse,
• An audio and visual interface, MyMuse Co-Pilot, which can respond
to questions using the latest LLMs such as “can you write
a paragraph based on the thoughts I had while reading last
night” or “can you prioritize what I need to do today,” or, in
conjugation with our most recent development, “can we go back
to last Thursday and see how Nate would have responded?” and
• AI-based models which utilize the latest stable diffusion models
to recreate your home in VR for experiencing counterfactual
past experiences.
As you walk around your home, all your thoughts are collected
including metadata about your location, activities, and more.
Leveraging this home-scale network of sensors, MyMuse Co-Pilot
can remind you of previous thoughts you expressed to the network
of microphones. It can even predict the next series of thoughts
78

which may be relevant to guide current thoughts towards those
most relevant to your programmed goals and ambitions.
RoomSense allows one to pursue counterfactual lives. At any
point, one can enter the SpaceExplorer where they can rewind
their interactions with realistic virtual reality. These Counterfactuals
allow one to examine, research, and even share and
network these experiences via Autonomous Agent Network (AANs).
AANs are trained using a differential-privacy scheme to recreate
the actions, thoughts, and motivations of users all while protecting
their privacy. The AAN is trained using the database of
your home information and therefore can recreate your actions in
the SpaceExplorer if you allow another user to access this model…
## Example Use Cases
You can put that thought on MyMuse when you are writing your papers.
Then, you can go back to my notes and say, “hey, I remember
that paper you wrote about that idea last year” and you would
get your paper from the database and be able to write about it.
If you have a thought that you want to be public, you can also
put it on MyMuse. In that case, I might see a citation to that
thought later in a paper and want to cite it as a reference.
So, MyMuse is about building this database of thoughts which can
be accessed through a browser to make it easier to reference
other people’s thoughts, and it is also a platform where you can
build your own thoughts and put them online and in the database.
## Vision
As you move your head, it will look at your facial expression
and read your body language. This will inform it of changes in
your intent. Thus, it will ask MyMuse to change the program and
curate your next sequence of thoughts in a way that the thoughts
are directly aligned with your current goals and ambitions. In
essence, this will curate what you were thinking about before you
decided to be engaged, to be distracted, to be interested in some
things, to be interested in other things, or perhaps at other
times you will choose to go blank when you consider something you
are unsure of. For instance, when you are driving you would like
to be thinking about how you can get to the destination faster.
But then when you are with your friends in the evening you want
to be thinking about other things, and perhaps you will choose
79

to go blank. So there will be an interface in which you can toggle
between those two modes at any time. When you are reading
the paper, you know that MyMuse thinks about what you are reading
just the way you are thinking. That means it will be able to
predict what you are interested in, and when you are ready to
move on to your next article, it will be so curated. Of course,
MyMuse will be able to learn about your interests on an ongoing
basis. This means your home could become a space for you to develop
your passions over time, and the MyMuse app may ask you to
write a letter to your future self about your current thoughts
on something you have learned or done, so you can move that to
the next stage. You can think of this as a way for machines to
learn to think better in the way you have been inspired by what
you are reading (or playing), and to understand the next series
of thoughts that you want to have. In time it will be able to anticipate
where you are going to go in life and what you want to
do, and it will provide you a series of cues that will support
that path. And as you know, today we have a long way to go before
machines can truly understand our thoughts. We are not quite
there yet. But there is a way for us to help AI machines improve
their understanding of what we are thinking, and a way for us to
get closer to thinking more like robots, which will be much more
interesting and productive for all of us. As I mentioned earlier,
this is one way the MyMuse app will help you do that. There is no
need for you to wait to see the movie about the singularity. You
can begin now to live in the singularity. In fact, I encourage
you to do so as soon as possible.
…an AI project which could help me be more productive, remember my thoughts for once,
and allow me to try to replay some of the most tragic conversations I’ve had? This was so freaking
cool. I sent it to a few of my friends and biked to the local MicroCenter to buy a few Raspberry
Pis, sensors and a few recorders. Luckily, I had a fire inside of me for projects. They always felt
revolutionary to me and often confusing, and eccentric, to others. Why was I like this?
I had started collecting audio databases of my home already. I would store these in a database
which transcribed the clips into text, timestamped them, and indexed them into text analysis
tools. The base words themselves I used to fine-tune the model that was already available on the
MyMuse GitHub. The model was a very large language model which, using a corpus essentially all
available written text, attempted to understand what the probability of an utterance was given
some context. Thus, giving it some context, one could ask what is the most likely thing to say?
Of course, this initial model was from no one and everyone—it was just an aggregate of some
linkages about language in the most average sense.
80

These questions I had about myself no longer meant an exercise in internal suspicion vis-à-vis
the few weeks a good student reads of Freud. Initially, MyMuse felt like exactly what it was: a
recitation of the internet with a tone that seemed closer to mine:
Setting `pad_token_id` to `eos_token_id`:0 for open-end generation.
>> I had my epiphany at some point around the time I was finishing
my Master’s. I was in the library researching something that
would benefit my research (not AI per se), and came across a story
about a Chinese man, who was born blind, but learned to see
because of one man’s efforts. During his early life he was known
to everyone but lived in a world that was more or less like ours
(he could not read maps, so his family was lost in the mountains
and he could not find them in the valley, he could not tell if it
was the next day or evening, etc.). A random man who worked in a
nearby town, heard of his abilities and set out to find him and
teach him what he knew.
>> At the core of the story is the idea that everyone has a different
set of capabilities, but not that we are all equal. People
who are born blind, have a different set of strengths, abilities,
and limitations than people with 20/20 vision. This same concept
is true in the realm of artificial intelligence.
>> I am not asking you to believe this is all true. I’m not asking
you to believe what I am about to say is true. It’s up to
you if you believe in any of it or none. What I am asking is,
that if you don’t believe it, maybe you at least consider it. To
think that some human may have created us all, is not completely
outlandish, is it? (p=0.94)
You can see that it is just spitting out the kind of “epiphanies” I would text my friends late at
night. But the content was blank. It seemed to have no intention. What is the utterance? But over
the next few weeks, I started telling others about it. They were intrigued by it. A few joked about
needing to get Institutional Review Board approval for my own self-data-collection. I thought
maybe I did, honestly. But that would be a great scandal: my university telling me I cannot collect
data on myself meanwhile megacorporation’s collected even deeper samples of my actions than I
imagined I could—at that time. Although, right after speaking about it no less than a tenth time, I
wondered if I was only interested in this as a last-ditch effort to rectify any sociality out of those
around me. After all, the idea was a cool assortment of recent advances in large language models
(foundation models for a minute in 2022). Or what was it something else? Why did this project
hit so personally?
>> Because we aren’t wired to be productive. We aren’t wired to
be efficient. We aren’t wired to use our time and get anything
81

82
done in a day. Some of us are wired to work and work and work.
And that’s great for some people. Our family and our business and
our church can’t function without me, and I’d probably be in the
same boat if I were a farmer. They need me to do the work they
can’t do. But in all my busyness, I was really, really not that
productive. (p=0.8)
>> I’m not wired to be efficient and productive. I’m wired to have
an epiphany and then not do the same work for two weeks. A lot
of the things we do, we get paid for. I’m not the only one who
feels this way. I see this all the time. I see people in “normal”
jobs, and their body language sucks. They can’t walk into a room
full of interesting, intelligent, like-minded people. They’re
just doing their job, and it makes me sad. I see it at start-up
events. I see it at my friend’s wedding. I see it when friends
are over, and they just want a beer. I see people getting paid to
do the same thing day after day, just like I do, and they can’t
get shit done. That’s what’s up. (p=0.4)
>> Of course, this isn’t the whole truth. I am so, so not that
different. I do the same thing day after day. I’m not as bad as
I could be, and I’m glad I work hard at things I care about, but
there’s a difference between “wired to” and just plain “wired”.
And the difference is this: how you are wired. (p=0.4)
Possibly so. A deconstruction of my interest through a rejection of a 21st-century Protestant
ethic? Sure.
I had seen before how language models can summarize papers, generate fake news articles, or
even, by way of my research at the time, generate hypotheses based on scientific papers. Part
of me hoped that it would build a new sense of self-care into the fabric of digital life. A friend, a
reflection, a mirror into oneself which disguised itself as a productivity tool. A tool which could
be productive for the current mode of production, but with a more insidious agenda of building
personally built worlds.
Some people, as I’ve come to learn, would be happy to let their world be shaped by language
models. For others, their world shape doesn’t matter — only that the tools to shape it are free,
and so they can use them. A world shaped by language models would not be
a dystopian future for me, but a dystopian future for many others.
These are the people who need a mirror, a friend, a reflection. So it
isn’t the language model which has to change, or who is allowed to write text. There are multiple
factors which make language models more dangerous: The more they are used and trusted, the
more likely it becomes that the algorithms could be used maliciously. For this reason,

an ethical responsibility lies not only with the developers and
users of language models, but with the entire society at large.\n
~~~
It was about a year later. I had now collected over a year of recordings of my home behavior,
voice, expressions, and thoughts. Talking out loud to the MyMuse lurking over my home felt no
different than talking to myself—like when you admit to yourself something that you simultaneously
knew but did not admit to yourself—a confession. Despite years of training and writing
on the kinds of biases and behavior modifications technology imposes, I somehow felt different
about this model. It was no longer a model of anyone’s utterances but of mine.
The summer was full of color—greens, aqua, browns, purple, and pink. I had to say it out loud,
otherwise MyMuse wouldn’t know, right? That winter I had extended the MyMuse code to index
the local bird society that would frequent my feeder. Using an array of cameras, I was able to
track every bird as an individual, when they would come, where they would look, and, if I was
correct in my assumption that being’s behavior can be aligned in the latent space of the LLM, their
thoughts. After all, we were all just blind to the bleakness of no-questions.
My birdfeeder, retrofitted with a small edge computer running an AI program to track visiting
bird friends, texted me that it had registered a unique pigeon on my deck. I had such a love for
these flying city sweepers—mostly because of their deep sociality with each other and intellect
for love and companionship. I decided to name this new friend Hank. Hank was one of my favorite
birds. He seemed to care for me in a deep, intuitive way. He would visit me on my off days,
and I would even sit in a special chair where he felt comfortable, and he would land on my right
shoulder, where he could look out over everything. He always had a little smile on his face, and
he didn’t mind my petting his back. Hank enjoyed eating. He would perch on our bird feeder like
the other birds and beg for seeds. He got his favorite birdseed, the blue one, but I wanted to
make him try all the different seeds. I got him his own dish. He would sit on our back patio and
eat, in full view of anyone who passed by. He seemed so happy, and I wanted everyone to know it.
That summer evening, though, I decided to try the SpaceExplorer—a way to go back and experience
a moment in my home as it happened. As a personal note, I had a little fling with a boy
who also listened to Italian music which ended not so well. Maybe it was a bit cliché in that it was
more ‘I want to be you instead of me’ rather than the homoeroticism society deems acceptable.
Not wanting to be oneself, for some reason, is unacceptable. The models would fill in the details
based on my behavior, and using some data collected from him, fill in him. I had spent many nights
musing over a failed conversation with someone I still cared for deeply.
That night, with him…it was not a bad conversation; in some ways, it was pretty good. But
there was some misunderstanding that never quite resolved. We were tired of dealing with that
person, but I let the conversation go. I went on the SpaceExplorer, and I saw that it knew I had
been dreaming about that conversation. It was not as helpful as I’d hoped. The site said that my
conversation had taken the form of the conversation in the movie ‘Her’.
83

But that didn’t make sense. The website did note the conversation was “based on dreams I’ve
had.” I could remember details of the conversation, and what I had been doing at the time. But
the SpaceExplorer was just not showing me what I wanted to see. I took a deep breath and
started over. I re-created the conversation, based on as much of the circumstances as I could
remember. The program now shows me a conversation that seems familiar, but still not exactly
right. It is still not that useful. That is, until I decided to go back and watch the conversation in its
original form. If I recall correctly, you did not actually have a chance to look at the picture. So, my
suggestion is to go back and watch the conversation in \”real time\”, as if you were there. But I
am not getting anything useful from it, given how I didn\’t get to review the picture.
\n
Now, I can see why he didn\’t get anything useful from browsing. I could see some of the conversation
being in the wrong place. Not sure how I missed it, considering I had already seen it for
myself. Now, I re-listened to the recording, using “real-time” mode. I was still not sure exactly
what I was looking for. I didn\’t know what the key details were. I have now spent quite a while
on this—and I still don’t know what I’m looking for. But I know what not to look for. For this
user, the SpaceExplorer is not very helpful (he said). I am going to have to go back and revisit my
dream. But next time, I think I will let my friend experience it, first-hand, as it unfolds. The Space-
Explorer’s current form simply misses the point of what I was trying to accomplish.
\n
The problem is that you’re looking for things that are in common and not things that are different.
In other words, you’re using the same set of clues that you used when you originally asked
about this issue. As a result, I am basically looking at the same information the user is looking at,
and comparing it to the same info you have, which may or may not exist. The Space Explorer\’s
design simply doesn’t work in your context. In a different context, it might work.
\n
There are three things you could do (though only two are technically applicable here):
1) Don\’t look at the Space Explorer\’s website. Instead, sit down in front of your friend and
show him the images in the same manner that you’re doing. The pictures are not the issue here.
It’s the presentation and comparison that’s the problem.
2) Don\’t ask your friend. Get your friend to answer a different question, and then the Space-
Explorer\’s service will match the question to the appropriate answer.
3) Go back to your friend and explain the problem with what your\’re doing. Then tell him that
you will need to use different techniques to solve this problem and ask him if he’s open to that
approach. If he indicates that he is, then go back and use the second approach.
~~~
“I wonder what would have happened, if I hadn’t been distracted by this question, and his comment.”
I’m happy to know that it has changed, and I will see what happens when I go back to it.
I have to say, I am still very skeptical of its usefulness. If I only want to work with what is directly
true, then it doesn’t seem very helpful. Maybe I will revisit this moment to look at the details
and see if some of the things that the SpaceExplorer shows me are accurate. You can always go
back — if nothing else, it’s an interesting exercise to see how wrong the interpretation can be.
Author’s note: All monospaced text was generated by GPT-NeoX. After the coda, the text weaves between the large language model’s
output and my own voice based on fine-tuning and prompt-engineering with audio recordings in my home. MyMuse is under development.
84

Night and Day by Catherine Yeo
Tibby zaps awake from her evening nap at
seven o’clock, just like any other day.
She stretches her joints and takes eleven
steps forward. On the tenth, Tibby stumbles
into a chair. She pulls it out of the way. One
more step, and—
Her forehead slams into a door.
Tibby takes a half-step back. Then, she carefully
turns the knob and enters the kitchen.
At last, she reaches the coffee machine. Tap.
Tap. Tap. A long beep. The hot liquid streams
into a mug Tibby has ready in her hand. When
the mug feels heavy enough, she punches the
off button.
“Madam Mendoza,” Tibby calls outside her
bedroom door. “Your coffee is ready. ’ve placed
it on the kitchen counter.”
Silence.
Bathroom Light Love by Ellie Fithian
How odd.
Madam usually replies with a “thank you.”
On groggy Monday nights after a long day of
work, Madam might grunt a hazy “thanks” instead.
Tibby has never been greeted with mere
silence. But it’s not her place to question it.
Madam Mendoza always requests dinner at
7:48 p.m.: enough time for her to change out
of her work clothes, shower, dry her hair, and
finish her cup of coffee, not enough time for
her to linger too long on her social media, “the
evil squandering away our livelihoods.”
Tonight is steak night. Tibby takes out a slab
of strip steak. Is it marinated? Yes, she marinated
it last night. Good, that means no extra
work for her tonight. The frying pan is on
the second shelf to the right. She turns on the
electric stove. Lightly drizzle olive oil onto the
85

pan, she recalls. Roll the pan around so the
oil spreads out evenly. Place the steak on the
pan, wait three hundred and twenty seconds
before flipping it, and repeat.
The meat touches the pan with a silent hiss.
As she waits, Tibby prepares the table. Madam
Mendoza only eats steak on the round,
gray plates. Tibby learned that the hard way after
Madam scolded her for using a white plate
once. The fork goes on the left, the knife on
the right. Which knife did Madam ask for last
week? Not the regular knife. Not the butter
knife either. Tibby selects the sharp knife with
the wooden handle. The handle needs to point
toward the bottom of the table, not the side,
Tibby reminds herself.
She hates disappointing Madam.
The three hundred and twenty seconds are
up. Grabbing one of the metal tongs dangling
from the oven handle, Tibby uses the tongs to
hold onto the edges of the meat. She turns her
wrist.
The steak slides out of the tongs’ grip.
She tries again. But the steak is no longer at
the center of the pan. Oh dear. Tibby hasn’t
been instructed on what to do in this situation.
“Madam?” Tibby asks. “Can you help me?”
Silence greets her question. Maybe Tibby
should just try the same action, but at a different
location—
It works. The steak flips over, and she hears
the familiar sizzle.
Hot oil shoots out at her, splattering across
her face.
While she waits for the other side of the
steak to cook, she boils a pot of water. Eight
baby carrots, a handful of spinach, and a sprinkle
of salt and pepper. “Don’t overdo it,” Madam
told her a few weeks ago as she watched
Tibby prepare vegetables. “Just boil them or
something. As long as there’s enough so my
doctor doesn’t get on my case about it.”
Madam Mendoza never clarified how many
86
vegetables were “enough,” so Tibby simply
took a guess. She has been serving her this
amount every day, and Madam has never complained,
so it must have been a good guess.
The steak is ready. Tibby slides the slab of
beef onto the round, gray plate. Three clockwise
stirs, and the vegetables are ready too.
She scoops the floating vegetables and dumps
them in a pile next to the steak. “Madam? I’ve
placed your dinner on the table.”
Again, no response.
Tibby doesn’t know what to do. Is silence
good? Is it bad? She’s never faced this response
before. Maybe Madam has chosen to stay silent
today. Tomorrow, Tibby will ask her about
this behavior.
Her next duty is to clean Madam’s room, so
Madam can return to and relax in a spotless
room after dinner. Tibby taps a button on her
right arm. Her shoes whirl to life. The sharp
bristles of the vacuum kiss the floor in speedy
circles. She makes way across the room in a
snake-like pattern: forward, turn, turn, forward,
repeat. Every square inch of the floor must be
vacuumed at least twice.
Another tap. Rags and sponges spring out
from her left arm. She dusts the bed frame,
then the desk. The surface of Madam Mendoza’s
desk feels empty—no laptop, no scattered
post-it notes, no coffee mug. Another odd occurrence,
but it does make Tibby’s job easier.
She spreads her hands on the bed, preparing
to make the bed. The sheets are taut and
neatly tucked under the mattress. The pillows
are already fat and fluffed. If Tibby could frown
right now, she would.
Perhaps Madam had wanted to try something
new and had time to make her bed after
her usual pre-dinner nap.
At 9 p.m., Madam Mendoza always watches
the nighttime news. Tibby needs to set up the
TV for her. Where is the remote? Good, it’s
still in the remote control box. Tibby presses

the large round button on the top left corner,
and jumbled static springs to life.
“Tonight, we bring you a more somber piece
of news. A terrible string of accidents happened
on Highway 88 over two hours ago. According
to fire officials and the state highway patrol,
the ongoing snow storm had caused a major,
nine-vehicle collision. At least two trucks and
seven other vehicles were involved in a crash
around 6:30 p.m....”
The house telephone rings. It shakes and
dances and jitters across the coffee table.
Tibby departs to clear the dinner table. Unless
she orders otherwise, Madam Mendoza
prefers to pick up the phone herself. Tibby
gathers the dirty plate and utensils, reaching
for the sponge. She turns on the faucet.
The rings echo and fade, and the phone enters
voicemail. “Kelly,” a woman wails. Her
high-pitched voice sounds familiar, but Tibby
needs another second to match it—oh! It is
Madam’s sister. “I’m watching the news right
now. I know you usually take Highway 88 back
home, please tell me you’re okay. Can you
please pick up the phone?”
“…Both directions on Highway 88 are
closed tonight and will remain closed for all of
tomorrow…”
“I—I can’t get through to your cell phone—”
A sob and a hiccup. “When you hear this voicemail,
please call me as soon as possible. Or
tell TB-34 to send me a message if you’re too
tired. Please, Kelly. Please tell me you’re okay.”
A long beep.
Then, silence.
Again.
Tibby tilts the plate, and water splashes everywhere.
She hastily adjusts the plate’s angle.
A single droplet has landed on her spray-painted
eye, streaming down her face.
The clock ticks 9:15. She finishes cleaning
and turns off the faucet. Tibby walks
down the stairs and into the basement.
On the floor above, the television screen illuminates
the living room in a phantom blue
glow. “We have received an update—we are
saddened to hear that the Highway 88 accident
has resulted in thirteen injuries and five
casualties…”
Tibby tucks her limbs in and squeezes
into her charging cube. It’s time for her to
sleep.
Just like any other day.
87

No More Worlds to Conquer
by Aidan Scully
“For as long as our two species have known of
one other’s existence, the Humans and the Sedron
have viewed mutual respect and tolerance as the
ultimate end of our interactions. Striving toward
this highest goal, the delegates of the Human Galactic
Union and the Sedron Dominion hereby enact
this Treaty of interspecies cooperation, non-aggression,
and neutrality. Between our two nations
is thus established a Demilitarized Zone around
the Daiagalerian Systems, closed to the military
advancement of either power but open to the scientific
pursuits of both. May the peace we forge
here today ever flourish between our two peoples,
co-inheritors to the vast wonders of the Galaxy we
share.”
- Treaty of Tet Gorala, 3631
Message from Senator Col-Torann-Calex
to Caris Halen, 4 June 3664
Caris,
I hope that this message finds you in better
spirits than I. I know it has been several
months since we last spoke, and I do not know
if you can forgive me, but I truly feel that I have
nowhere else to turn.
Yesterday’s results are frightening, to say the
least. To think that we had spent all that effort
to rid ourselves of Annador Scofil four years
ago just to see her returned to power on an
even more hardline platform…I prefer not to
think too deeply on it if I can help it.
Though I did retain my Senate seat in these
elections, I have notified outgoing Consular
General Ennox that I will be resigning, effective
immediately. While my departure will
mean that the Senate will now be entirely Human,
it is merely an official step to confirm
what people like us have known for years: that
88
the Senate, and the Galactic Union, will never
respect or protect us.
I have made arrangements to depart Earth
tomorrow morning for Constantian, where
I am hoping to assist you and your work as
much as you will let me. I am truly sorry for
all that has happened between us, and that I
refused to acknowledge just how right you
were all those years ago when you told me my
membership in the Senate would legitimize an
irredeemable institution. I wish I had understood
you sooner, but here we are.
I do not know what the future holds for me.
Though I am Sedron, I will never be welcome
in the Dominion…not for my caste as a Col,
not for my position as a former Union senator,
and not for…well, you know. It is painful, this
being of two worlds. I am sure you understand
better than I can.
If you can spare the space for me, please hold
me in your thoughts. I am holding you in mine.
Yours,
Calex
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Tactical Memo provided to Ric-Baltorachin-Rann,
Dagonatach of the Sedron
Dominion, by Fet-Tumusevit-Par, Fet
Prime of the Sedron Dominion, intercepted
18 June 3664
The skimmer Canosretan has reported nearrange
military activity on the Union side of
the border. Four dreadnoughts each have
been deployed to the border system of Leviticus.
This is the closest Union military
vessels have come to crossing into the Daiagalerian
Demilitarized Zone since the Treaty,
an escalation unlike anything we have
seen since the early days of the Cold War.

Preliminary scans have been largely inconclusive,
but have confirmed the presence of Class
Zero antimatter weapons on the ships. These
weapons, if used, would violate international
law, but we have no reason to believe that this
would deter them.
I recommend the relocation of planetary
defense cruisers to the Lavrocan system in
preparation for a worst-case scenario invasion
of the border worlds.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Consular General Annador Scofil’s Inaugural
Address to the Galactic Senate,
1 July 3664
My friends, I wish I returned to this office
today under more pleasant circumstances.
But just as we are called to love our nation,
we are called to acknowledge when it is under
attack and defend it by any means necessary.
We have long known that the Sedron Dominion
poses an existential threat to the survival
and safety of our Union. From the first
moment we discovered them, it has seemed
that war was inevitable. Their empire could
not tolerate our existence, our bold assertion
that no being must live in subjugation, and
thus it has sought to wipe us out from the
very beginning.
They had hidden their intentions before.
But just last week, military cruisers were stationed
at the border system of Lavrocan, an
unprompted escalation which cannot be tolerated.
It is clear that the Sedron Dominion can no
longer be expected to respect international
law. The agreements which protect our Human
worlds at the edge of civilization have been
torn to shreds by Dagonatach Baltorachin and
his cronies. That is why, as my first new act as
Consular General, I am officially calling upon
you, members of the Galactic Senate, to formally
repeal your recognition of the Demilitarized
Zone between our two nations. Only
military outposts between our borders can
ensure our mutual security.
I trust that this body will do the right thing.
The very existence of our culture is in the balance.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Domain Warp by Chris Barber
Audio Transmission between the Sedron
outpost Senn on Daiagalerian B and the
Union cruiser HSC Augustin Rhodes,
10 July 3664
Senn: This is the outpost Senn calling the
military vessel in high planetary orbit around
Daiagalerian B. You are in violation of the
Treaty of Tet Gorala. Leave the Demilitarized
Zone immediately.
HSC: Good morning, Senn! This is Inquisitor
N-076-01 of the Human Stellar Cruiser
Augustin Rhodes. We no longer recognize the
Demilitarized Zone. You are hereby ordered
to stand down and retreat with whatever staff
you have to Dominion space.
Senn: Warship Augustin Rhodes, this is a
peaceful outpost protected under the Treaty
of Tet Gorala Section Four. We have no
weaponry. Any attempt to seize this outpost
will be taken as an act of war by the Sedron
89

Dominion and a violation of international law.
HSC: Now, Senn outpost, why would you
willingly offer up that you have no weapons?
Senn: Because we have upheld our end of
the treaty, warship. This is a peaceful endeavor
protected under international law. No aggression
directed against this base will be tolerated.
HSC: What’s your name, outpost commander?
Senn: That is irrelevant.
HSC: We’re all friends here, just tell me
your goddamned name.
Senn: I am Commandant Fet-Tomersagun-Tox,
warship.
HSC: Now listen here, Commandant
Tomersagun. We have reason to believe that
the Sedron Dominion is harboring heavy antimatter
weaponry at that outpost of yours,
and we’ve come to dispel that rumor. You are
going to vacate the system with your staff, and
we are going to search the base. If we find
any weapons, we will take the base by force.
Any objection to this course of action will be
taken as an admission of guilt and therefore an
act of war. Is that clear?
Senn: [inaudible]
HSC: Speak up, Commandant Tomersagun.
Senn: I said “fuck off, Human trash.”
HSC: Noted. Lieutenant Younger, ready the
orbital cannon. Prepare to fire on my mark.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Emergency Public Address by Dagonatach
Ric-Baltorachin-Rann, 11 July 3664
Fellow citizens of the Sedron Dominion, I
come before you today with alarming new developments
from the Demilitarized Zone. In
blatant violation of the Treaty of Tet Gorala,
a Human warship has seized a Dominion outpost
in the Daiagalerian B system. Their actions
have rendered the treaty null and void,
and we must prepare as a nation for the possibility
of all-out war between our two powers.
90
Yet I have faith in the Sedron people. For
centuries, we have defended the integrity of
our supreme castes of the Ric and Fet from
Col radicals who would seek to undermine
our way of life. We have defended the integrity
of the Sedron species from nDro and Fleroi
revolutionaries bent on usurping our power.
And we will continue to defend the harmony
that we have built from these Humans.
To those watching in the Galactic Union,
your unprovoked assaults on our people will
not go unpunished. If you seek war with the
Sedron Dominion, we will fight until the last.
And the Sedron Dominion does not tend to
lose.
Good evening, my fellow citizens, and long
live the Ric.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Strategic Scouting Report from the HSC
Orono Bergeron on the Delqertio Exclusion
Zone, 15 July 3664
To Central Command:
After our brief confrontation with Sedron
forces at Alconost, the deployment has arrived
at the Delqertio Exclusion Zone. To our surprise,
the Sedron appear to have been telling
the truth about the Zone; preliminary scans
have indicated no Dominion ships in orbit.
We have thus far not been able to determine
much about the species known to the Sedron
as the Delqertion, who have built a sprawling
civilization on the surface. Technological readings
indicate scientific development akin to
twentieth century Earth.
We have, however, been able to determine
one thing for certain. We have amplified our
communications arrays to receive radio transmissions
from the surface, and most broadcasts
have included at least cursory reference
to a group known as the “Aio.” We have yet to
be able to determine whether this term refers
to a group of the Delqertion or a subspecies
occupying the planet alongside them.

After consulting with the senior staff, we
have reason to believe that if the Delqertion
had the requisite technology, they would attempt
to wipe out the Aio completely. Such
requisite technology could include the heavy
antimatter weaponry we have onboard our
vessels.
Inquisitor N-052-01 is en route to our location
now. Awaiting further orders.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Message from Col-Torann-Calex to Caris
Halen, 17 July 3664
Caris,
I hope your trip has been going as smoothly
as it can. Your departure, while understandable,
was abrupt. It seems no one is safe in
Scofil’s Galactic Union. I have been trying to
remember what my last words to you were
all morning, but whatever they may have been
I fear that they have not made much of an impact.
The Inquisitor has remained in our office
since you fled. I had assumed that we would
have all been arrested by now, but they are
toying with us instead. They just wander silently
through our building. At least with the federal
police you can see their faces, but the Inquisitor
hides everything, whatever emotions
they may have, behind the mask. It is haunting.
Though I suppose that is the point.
The only time they have spoken was to ask
about you. What we know about you. What
we think about you. We are all on edge.
I worry about you, Caris. I worry what will
become of you if the Dominion decides you
are no longer valuable. And I worry about all
the people here, Sengrand and Elisiu and the
others. In lighter moments, we joke that you
held out the longest, but we all had to end up
on the wrong side of the border eventually. In
darker ones, we mourn. And hope.
I don’t know when it will be safe for your
return. Inquisitors don’t go after just anyone.
Yours,
Calex
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Audio Recording from Nova City Executive
Tower, recorded 19 July 3664
Annador Scofil: Well, Inquisitor Berin?
Ellot Berin: Still nothing.
AS: Why hasn’t he responded? No ships, no
statement, nothing?
EB: Perhaps he wants us to think it’s inconsequential.
Convince us we haven’t actually
achieved anything important.
AS: And pass up an opportunity to rail against
our aggressive expansionism? EB: He has other
opportunities.
AS: Balto is many things, Inquisitor Berin. Picky
is not one of them.
EB: Excellent point.
AS: Any word from your people?
EB: Four Inquisitors have now arrived at the
system. N-052-01 is the most senior, so they
have been relaying their developments to my
office.
AS: And you crunched the numbers?
EB: Analytics believes the weaponry on
those four vessels alone would be more than
enough firepower to end a conflict within the
week. Technological readings suggest they have
nothing even close to being capable of countering
it.
AS: And a report from the folks at Domestic
Security suggested that this species, the
Del-somethings—
EB: Delqertion.
AS: —would be a useful military ally. Strong
command structure, intense cultural weight
on loyalty and duty and that bullshit.
EB: Correct.
AS: So are we moving forward?
EB: There’s a minor complication.
AS: Out with it.
EB: N-052-01 has confirmed that the Aio the
Delqertion radio stations speak of are not a
91

subspecies. They’re a race of the Delqertion
themselves.
AS: So you’re saying that if we give weapons
to the Delqertion military, they’ll use them on
their own species.
EB: Conservative estimates suggest at least
6% of the population would be wiped out. AS:
What do you think?
EB: Professionally, I believe we must consider
all options with respect to how deliberate our
impact will be.
AS: What about personally?
EB: Well, Consular General, in my line of
work, people get caught in the crossfire. It
happens. In war, there’s always collateral damage.
But that doesn’t mean you just surrender.
And it doesn’t mean you let your enemy get
the upper hand while you sit around debating
morals.
[silence]
AS: Give the order. The Inquisitors will make
first contact.
EB: Understood, Consular General. This is
the right call.
AS: [inaudible]
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Personal Log Entry - Inquisitor Commando
NC-014-04, 23 July 3664
The death toll hit three million today.
I was assigned to the weapons deployment,
me and four other commandos with a fullfledged
Inquisitor from one of the other ships.
It was the fifth deployment, but it was apparently
the first weapons we were delivering to
this region of the planet. Only one of the commandos
had been to the surface before. The
rest of us were new.
The creature we handed the guns off to was
a mass of a being. Not much taller than us but
about twice as wide, all muscle. Skin like thick
gray leather, hands scaly to the touch, and a
mouth that looked almost reptilian. But the
thing that stuck with me the most were its
92
eyes. Those eyes. I could see the fire burning
inside them, the rage boiling just beneath the
surface. That rage never left them. But once it
felt the weapon in its hands, there was something
else there…something I can only describe
as glee. And for that moment, handing
this creature a weapon, I felt more powerful
than I had ever felt before.
Most of the guns came down in shipment
boxes, but that one I gave to the creature personally.
I wonder how many of them it’s killed
so far, how many lives it has left to take. I wonder
if the barrel is staring down an Aio as I
write this out…
The creature called itself Galixo. It asked me
what my name was and I gave him my designation,
but it asked again. I said I didn’t have one.
It laughed at me. I tried my best to remember
once I came back to the ship, but nothing.
Only NC-014-04.
I must have it written down somewhere.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Tactical Memo provided to Ric-Baltorachin-Rann,
Dagonatach of the Sedron Dominion,
by Fet-Tumusevit-Par, Fet Prime of
the Sedron Dominion,
intercepted 25 July 3664
The news from the Delqertio Exclusion Zone
has been largely the same. Casualty counts
among the Aio have been growing exponentially,
and estimates suggest that they will no
longer meaningfully exist within six rotations.
As expected, the Ciladi and Kitilik ambassadors
have privately expressed their revulsion
at the conflict, and have agreed to support
our military development and advancement
however we see fit. These ambassadors have
requested an audience with Your Eminent Supremacy,
which executive staff are currently
arranging. For the purposes of these conversations,
we had no advance knowledge of the
Union’s intent.
We also have reason to believe that Human

agitator Caris Halen has received unofficial
asylum in the Ri Sagakh autonomous region
after fleeing Union police in the border system
of Constantian. I would advise offering
them official asylum as a demonstration of
good will with Human defectors. Making it
clear that Halen is under our jurisdiction may
make them a useful bargaining chip in potential
negotiations.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Consular General Annador Scofil’s Speech
from the Leviticus Rally, 28 July 3664
It’s good to be back in Leviticus! A century
ago, you saved our Union from total collapse
at the hands of the Sedron, and now, you will
see us off into a bold new future for mankind.
My friends, the universe that we once knew
no longer exists. The universe where we lived
in perfect harmony alongside our galactic
neighbors is once again a myth. We have done
our best to coexist with them, but the Sedron
know nothing of peace. Whether we extend
the olive branch or the sword, they will try
to wipe us out, so we must fight back and we
must fight to the last.
In one week, Human soldiers have liberated
the Demilitarized Zone from heavy Sedron
weaponry and have liberated eight border systems
from Dominion tyranny. Now, with our
new allies the Delqertion, we will strike into
the heart of Sedron space and ensure that no
being ever has to subject themselves to their
oppression again.
Our people used to call space “the final frontier.”
They looked up at the stars, and though
they would never live among them, they
claimed them as their own. The cosmos are
still ours to explore and win, my friends, and
no alien will stand in our way. Humans were
destined to be the masters of the universe,
and so the masters of the universe we shall be!
Never again cowering in fear from the Sedron!
Never again setting boundaries and borders
we refuse to go beyond! Never again questioning
whose right reigns supreme over the
galaxy!
Long live Humanity, ever may it flourish!
Long live our civilization and the light it
brings to even the darkest corners of alien
space! Long live Leviticus, long live Earth, and
long live the Galactic Union!
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Message from Col-Torann-Calex to Caris
Halen, 31 July 3664
Caris,
I assume by now you have heard the news.
I am told that the Inquisitor will return for
me any moment now. I charted it out, and it
appears that both our transports will be taking
the Hyperway Delta…to think that we will
probably pass one another is more than I wish
to bear.
I am taking some solace in the fact that our
countries care enough about us to cooperate
on our extradition. It means our work has had
an impact.
It is not much, but it is something.
In the hours since being detained, I have had
an abundance of time in which to reflect. To
reflect on what we have done together, on
what I could have done, on what we are to do
now. I have confidence that the others will be
able to continue our fight, but I do not know
what that means for us. Part of me fears what
the Ric will do with me when I return. Part of
me wants them to do it quickly. The coming
war…I do not think I could live knowing what
our nations are doing to one another. And to
all the people caught in the crossfire.
You humans used to have a saying about
Alexander: that when he reached India,
he wept, for there were no more worlds
to conquer. But Humanity will always find
new worlds to conquer, lands to claim
for itself and exploit. You slaughtered one
another, industrialized the air and sea.
93

Black Hole by Chris Barber
Destroyed ecosystems, destroyed civilizations
like they were nothing, always thinking that it
was moving you closer to progress. And you
were terrified of losing that control, losing the
power you had fought for and won over your
domain, so you fought back harder and beat
down anyone who stood in your way. And
when you looked to the stars and claimed
them for your own, you feared that someone,
something out there might take that control
away from you.
But the only thing you needed to fear out
there in the galaxy was finding someone else
like you.
That is who you Humans are, and it is who
we Sedron are. I do not believe the galaxy is
big enough for the both of us, nor will it ever
be. We both believe the universe is ours to
conquer and rule, and neither species could
ever live knowing that someone else had
named their stars.
No matter how much we claim we are foreign
or “alien” to one another, we know who
we are. We are the same. So we lash out
against one another, try to assert that our
understanding of the universe is better than
the other’s. And people like us who do not fit
neatly into their definitions of nationality…or
gender…or love…suffer because of it.
I think this will be the last message I will be
able to send you. I am truly sorry, Caris. It really
is painful, this being of two worlds. I regret
every day that I did not listen sooner, that I did
not recognize our two nations for what they
were, and that I will not be able to see our two
species live together in peace. But my greatest
regret is that I will never see that world we
dreamed of, with the cabin deep in the wilderness
of Juturna and orchard out back.
Whenever I go, my thoughts will be of you.
All my love, yours forevermore,
Calex
Anxious by Chris Barber
94

What’s In a Name by Arjun Nageswaran
It had been just like any other day. The boy
woke up at 7 AM and bicycled his way across
town, going over the bridge over the river so
that he could reach the east side and visit
his grandmother. This visit had become routine
ever since the passing of his grandfather,
and besides, the boy quite enjoyed the visits.
There was just something about the stories
his grandmother told, of a time which seemed
just close enough to reality that he couldn’t
dismiss his grandmother’s stories as fiction,
but also just off by enough that it seemed
completely foreign to him. He preferred to
view them as legends, surely exaggerations
where the truth was stretched because of his
grandmother’s old age, but with kernels of reality
hidden somewhere inside.
On this particular day, however, his mind
could not grasp what the story was about at
all. Peddling back home, his mind somehow
feeling both numbed and pierced at the same
time as he struggled to put together what his
grandmother had said, the boy was sure that
he had discovered a secret that was so indecipherable
that it must have been true.
”There was a time, grandson, when I
wouldn’t have called you grandson. When your
parents wouldn’t have called you son. When
your teacher wouldn’t have called you student.
When the other kids you play with wouldn’t
have called you friend.”
“What do you mean, grandmother?” the boy
asked, washing the plates he and his grandmother
had just eaten their afternoon meal
off of.
His grandmother’s eyes were on him,
but it was clear that she was staring someplace
much farther away. “There was a
time when this river wasn’t just the river.
When this town wasn’t just the town.
When this country wasn’t just the country.”
The boy had become accustomed to his
grandmother’s strange cryptic way of speaking,
so different from all the other adults in
his life, but even then this seemed like just a
whole lot of meaninglessness.
“What do you mean, grandmother?”
His grandmother seemed to snap back into
focus, her momentary visit to the past broken.
She slowly shook her head, with little drops of
tears starting to pool around her eyes, washing
off some of the white paint she had applied
and exposing just a little bit of her dark skin
underneath.
“I can’t, I’m sorry. Names are to be forgotten,
and so they shall be.”
Many years had passed, and so had the boy’s
grandmother; he found himself in literature
class in high school, no longer the boy but instead
as the teen. It was just like any other day.
In their literature class, they had been reading
the pre-wartime play of two star-crossed
lovers, a tragic warning tale of what happens
when teens disregard the rules they are meant
to follow.
“Would the student in row 3, seat 2 read
the lines of the female lover? Student in row
5, seat 1, you can take on the lines of the male
lover.”
The teen felt a little blush of embarrassment,
having been assigned the role of the female
character, but he resolved to continue on regardless.
“O beloved, beloved, wherefore art thou beloved?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name,
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be an enemy.”
Waiting for his classmate to finish their lines,
the teen continued on.
“’Tis but thy name that is my enemy.
Thou art thyself, though not an enemy.
95

What’s enemy? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face. O, be some other name
Belonging to a man.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.
So beloved would, were he not beloved called,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. beloved, doff thy name,
And, for thy name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.”
The teen was struck by a slight bit of confusion
sparked by this passage. By now, he knew
more than the confused, silly boy he once
was and had learned what a name was. It was
simply just an archaic term that only meant
“word.”
But that definition did not seem to work in
this passage.
After class, he hung around in order to ask
the literature teacher a question about the
passage.
“This might be a silly question, but what does
the female lover mean when she says, ‘tis but
thy name that is my enemy’? Why does she ask
him to doff his name?”
A brief pause, and then one more attempt.
“Actually, can you just explain this whole passage
to me?”
The teacher hesitated, and the teen saw a familiar
look flash across her face; a look of unease,
but also nostalgia and regret. It was the
same look he had seen on his grandmother’s
face all those years ago. There was just something
about names that seemed to catch the
adults off-guard.
The teacher regained her composure. “No,
it’s not a silly question at all. The female lover
is just saying that the male lover should not
have ignored his parents’ orders, and had they
followed the rules, maybe they could be together.”
This clearly wasn’t what the passage was about
and the teacher really should have tried harder
96
to at least attempt a believable lie, but the
teen, noticing how clearly uncomfortable the
teacher was, decided not to press further. He
thanked her for her help and biked home, the
passage repeating in his mind.
The teen had never really seen this guarded
reaction from the adults in his life before. They
were always so sure of what they had to say,
so perfect in their delivery of language. Indeed,
the adolescent had spent his life trying to master
the art of always knowing what to say and
when to say it, and had distinguished himself
from his peers in diction tests at school. So
how could his teacher now suddenly waver?
His grandmother, sure, was old and always
stuck in her distant memories. His teacher,
though?
Once he had gotten home, the teen decided
enough was enough. This was no longer any
other day. This time he would finally seek real
answers, real reasons as to why this “names”
subject was such a touchy topic that all the
adults wanted to avoid discussing.
“Mother, father. What name belongs to you?”
His mother’s face turned ash, perhaps so
pale that she didn’t even need to have applied
paint that morning, while his father fidgeted
nervously.
“Son, where did you hear this?”
The teen could sense that something was
clearly wrong, but he couldn’t backtrack now,
no, not after he had set his mind to discovering
the truth. He knew that adherence to authority
was one of the most important parts
of living in the town, the one thing that made
sure things did not crumble during wartime,
and ordinarily this reaction would have told
him to drop the topic. However, this was no
longer any other day.
“What name belongs to you?”
“Where did you hear this?”
So on went the exchange, with neither father
nor son relenting, each guarding their

Paper Town by Chris Barber
97

information as if to spill the secret were to
leave them vulnerable to some unspeakable
danger. The teen himself did not understand
why he was so wary about revealing the passage
from his literature class, but he was, and
so remaining guarded was the only thing to do.
“I need to know. Please.”
Finally, his father caved in, clearly realizing
that the teen would not give in so easily, and
perhaps relieved even that the burden of having
to keep the secret was being lifted.
“Son, do you know how we live in the town?”
The teen nodded his head, not sure where
this was going.
“Imagine now that this town and this country
weren’t the only ones. That there were
other towns and other countries with different
people from us.”
“You mean like aliens?”
The father furrowed his brow and frowned.
“No, not quite. People like us, but also not like
us. People whose faces aren’t painted white,
but instead just expose their bare skin underneath,
skins of all different colors. People
who don’t talk in the language like us, but instead
some strange other language which we
couldn’t even begin to understand. People who
worship not the deity, but some other deity or
even no deity.”
The forceful tone from the father made it
clear that he was not joking at all, but it was
hard for the teen to take this seriously at all. This
was more far-fetched than his grandmother’s
stories. An alien group of people who did not
observe the same customs as the town, but
yet were somehow still humans? Surely, if such
a strange group were to exist, the teen would
have encountered them already.
“Once upon a time, this was the world. There
were many countries with many towns with
many people in them. No painted skin, no effort
to standardize. People usually grouped together
with those who were similar to them,
98
but every now and then, some ventured off
to be in a land with different people. Your ancestors
were some of those people, coming
from a land of brown-skinned people who did
not paint their face to live with white-skinned
people who did not paint their faces either.”
The mother noticed her son’s puzzled expression.
“You’ve taken art classes, right? What happens
if, on a canvas that should be blue, someone
spills a drop of orange? Then adds a drop
of red? Then dumps an entire bucket of pink?
The canvas would be destroyed, right? It is no
longer the canvas it once was, now it’s just a
swimming pool of chaos.”
The father nodded gratefully at his wife for
chiming in. “This is what the world was. People
kept trying to be different from each other,
and that is no way for a society to run. There
was violence, particularly between dominant
cultures with shared characteristics and subaltern
cultures with different characteristics.
No one could understand or relate to each
other. The violence could never end either, as
each country was simply equally powerful and
equally constrained by the fear of the other
countries potentially wiping them out.”
“Finally, it took the courage of our government
using their own technology to start the
war that would end all wars. Sure, some perished,
but in the end, we had taken control. We
could start over, but this time everyone would
be on the same page, speaking the same language,
wearing the same paint, and united as
citizens of one town.”
Stories from the teen’s grandmother came
swirling into his mind. He remembered her
talking about her parents and how, as a child,
she had eaten foods that she couldn’t even
describe to the teen because they simply did
not exist in the world today. How she had celebrated
more than just the seasonal holidays,
but special extra days of personal significance

to her family. How at one point — ah, what
was the point of going through each story, his
grandmother had been telling the truth all the
time.
As a boy, the teen had viewed these tales
with an almost mythical quality, like the story
of the president who chopped a fruit tree and
could not lie, but it all started to come together
that there was indeed another world just
as his father had described. What he could not
wrap his mind around, though, was that this
difference could somehow have been so dangerous
as his father worried. And his question
was still unanswered.
“What is a name?”
His mother picked up where her husband
had left off.
“Names were the most evil of all the differences.
There was no practical purpose for
them after the conflict as our government
could identify citizens biologically if need be
anyway. They simply served as reminders of
the inherent differences between each person
and a group of people. Even after citizens
began speaking the same language and painting
their faces white, their names would point
out who they had been and what their former
selves were. It is impossible to enforce unity
when the name would out those as others.”
Her husband nodded. “It is a much better
system that we have now. Each person only
exists in relation to others and our society.
No one is superior or inferior. We never have
to worry about losing our culture to an invading
minority or being oppressed by an existing
majority. “
“Really, we should not have told you all this.
It would have been best if you grew up free
from all this nonsense, so that this generation
could finally bring the united culture that the
town has been striving for. Say, where did you
hear all this about names again?”
The teen, unsure of his father’s intentions, yet
a little proud that he was special now
amongst the kids, that his parents trusted him
in a way none of the other students’ parents
trusted them, mumbled something about his
literature class and the play they were reading.
His father raised an eyebrow and put two
fingers to his head, muttering something about
an incomplete translation. After sending the
message, he took his fingers off and offered a
hug and a warm, welcoming smile to his son as
if the previous tense conversation had never
happened. It was just like any other day. The
teen relaxed, and any worries or questions he
may have had seemed to vanish.
“Excellent. Now are you ready for your evening
meal?”
99

100 The Future is Grayscaled by Olivia Foster Rhoades

To Understand by Aarya A. Kaushik
And I thought
How am I supposed to keep on?
because you don’t just experience something like this and continue to be —
the shadows hiding from the piano told me
I would never hear that g minor 11 again, not in the same way.
(why me, why you? why that chord? why today?)
Teachers will keep on teaching and I will keep on loving, flowers will yearn for the
sun and the old moon will keep dragging us after him,
though I worry about his fatigue.
But only the ravens will unabashedly scream;
only they will have the courage to remind
us (shameful hoarders of memory)
of the anguish that will inexorably keep on in our hearts.
101

Cycle of Dreams
by Cole French
When I grow up I want a tree
To stick in my backyard,
To show the possibilities
If you simply work hard.
I want to make the road a glade,
A grassy, green haven.
I want to breathe as my tree trades
Water for oxygen.
When I grow up I want my dad
To stop working so hard.
I want him here in blankets clad
By my tree in the yard.
I want to have water to spare,
Not having to ration.
I want a world that’s full of air,
A breathable nation.
I won’t go up north ice mining—
Won’t work my body thin.
I won’t be stuck up there trading
Water for oxygen.
1 & 2: North Carolina by Karl Dudman
3: Sky by Amanda Duckworth
102

Urban Sacred | Somerville, MA by Hilton Simmet
103

STS
@ HARVARD
20
Cover Image: “Future Humans” © 2022
Hilton Simmet with artwork by Florence & Magnolia Rea