Eleven pounds of clay is not a great deal of weight. Vera Kessling had lifted heavier bags of groceries in her seventies, before her hip stopped cooperating. But tonight, at eighty-three years old, hunched on the stool she'd used since 1974, she found the clay on her wheel dragged against her hands like it was … Continue reading The Last Casting
Something I Made Up
The Interdimensional Complaints Department
Dr. Wren Halvorsen had built a machine that could see into infinite alternate universes, and the only thing it had shown her all week was a version of Earth where everyone communicated exclusively through jazz flute. "Turn it off," she said to her lab assistant, Leo, who was recording everything on his phone. "Turn it … Continue reading The Interdimensional Complaints Department
The Locksmith
Renata Cole had watched four hundred hours of stolen memory, and none of it belonged to her. That was the job. As lead investigator for Halcyon Dynamics' Continuity Division, she spent her days inside other people's heads, sifting the backed-up minds of executives who'd paid a fortune to have their memories archived against death, dementia, … Continue reading The Locksmith
The Believer
The first time I heard the name Mr. Pockets, I was folding laundry and only half listening. "He doesn't like it when you fold his shirt like that," my daughter said. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor of her room, arranging a tea party for exactly one visible guest. "He likes it folded in … Continue reading The Believer
The Ledger Will Burn
Mara Okafor had eleven minutes before her Provision score reset, and she was going to spend every one of them somewhere she wasn't supposed to be. The maintenance shaft beneath Sector 12 smelled like ozone and old rain. She dropped the last three feet onto the access grate, boots silent on the metal, and checked … Continue reading The Ledger Will Burn
The Lighter
The water came up to my chest before I felt sand under my boots again, and even then I wasn't sure the sand was real. Everything since the ramp dropped had the loose, sliding quality of a fever dream. The cold of the English Channel had already worked its way past my uniform and into … Continue reading The Lighter
The Grinder of Light
The bells of the Badia were ringing the hour when Vittorio Calandra ground his three hundredth disc of glass and finally understood that he had failed. He set the lap down on the bench, rubbed the grit from between his fingers, and held the lens to the window. Through it, the rooftops of Florence swam … Continue reading The Grinder of Light
The Watch That Wouldn’t Keep Time
The pocket watch sat at the bottom of a shoebox marked "ESTATE - MISC," and Nora Quill almost didn't notice it. She'd spent three hours sorting through the contents of a storage unit her great-aunt had left behind, mostly old letters and a moth-eaten quilt, when her fingers brushed cold metal beneath a layer of … Continue reading The Watch That Wouldn’t Keep Time
The Last Version of You
Margaret had been awake for thirty-one hours when they finally told her it was time. She sat in the waiting room of the Synapse Institute with a cup of terrible coffee going cold in her hands, watching the second hand on the wall clock make its slow, indifferent circuits. Around her, the room hummed with … Continue reading The Last Version of You
Could Back to the Future’s Time Travel Actually Work?
Everyone knows the rules by now, even people who haven't watched the trilogy in years. You need a flux capacitor. You need 1.21 gigawatts of power. And you need to hit exactly 88 miles per hour at the moment it all comes together. Say those numbers out loud to almost anyone and they'll nod, maybe … Continue reading Could Back to the Future’s Time Travel Actually Work?
