Obsession
Her latest obsession was clouds. Books on clouds of all varieties, from picture books to nonfiction, were piled in her corner of the room next to her graying cot. On the rare occasion it was safe to be outside, Imogen would lie on her back and try to name them. She could tell cirrus clouds from their soft, cotton candy threads, while cumulus clouds were the soft cottontails that piled on top of each other in fluffy heaps like a litter of rabbits. Sometimes she struggled to identify a patch of clouds, and the frustration could plague her all through the night. Grace hated those times. Imogen...
Read MoreRobotomy
Transmission from Nubium9 to AICRO, 15 May 2145 The fleshlings routinely insult me. I’m a brain surgeon, and what do they call me? Repairdroid. Maybe it’s because I wouldn’t touch a human brain with a three-meter laser. They don’t think silicoperations count as surgery, even though the procedures are so complex they would require a large team of fleshlings even to attempt. You wouldn’t think it would be too much to ask them to call me fellow surgeon, to call me doctor. I would even settle for cybermedic. But instead I get repairdroid. No higher status than the drudge-bots...
Read MoreThe Society
The pup in me quivered, but the burgeoning wolf snarled as I thrashed my head around, trying to get the black nylon hood off my head. The hood smelled from a mixture of creatures’ sweat, and I couldn’t pick out a distinct scent; but I was sure of the other smell: men. There were two of them in the room. One of them reminded me of the woods: balsam and pine. The other man’s scent was waterless: dry earth, yellow pollen and sun. A punch in the gut knocked me into a concrete wall, and then the hood was yanked off. I didn’t fall. I wasn’t about to look weak, despite my stomach seizing...
Read MoreMoira
Moira Leibowitz was a force of nature, all long curly hair, shawls and scarves, and the scent of patchouli. We were organizing the grad students that winter — protesting, wearing buttons, threatening to strike. Moira brought her guitar and played songs like “We Shall Overcome” on it, wearing her grey gloves with the fingers cut off, the same gloves that handed out coffee to everyone on the especially cold days. I remember her voice was low and warm, but it carried. We were too young to realize nothing would come of it all. Sure, they would show up and drink coffee and sing, but putting...
Read MoreWhat You Can’t See
South Vietnam — 1968 Clack went the shutter on my camera. The two South Vietnamese soldiers looked at one another, nodded and stepped back from the edge of the bomb crater. One pulled a cigarette from a pack in his breast pocket and lighted it. He offered one to his comrade, who shook his head and turned to look across the rice paddies toward the high ground, where a network of trees drew clean, black lines against the yellow sky. A hand squeezed my shoulder, and I looked up. The company commander tapped my camera with his finger and whispered, “Take any...
Read MoreLandslide
I was comfortable at the University of Tehran studying geology. I had meandered into this discipline randomly. My family enjoyed hiking in the nearby Alborz Mountains. My father had always been excited by unusual rock formations and pointed out the many layers of earth which had been compressed into colorful strips of rock on the face of the slopes. He encouraged me to start a rock collection. Although I was a lukewarm outdoorsman, I was attracted to the science by the sheer order of it. Every type of rock could be named and categorized. Natural forces slowly changed the stones. Just by...
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