As a leading scientist who has just achieved a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, you’ve developed a humanoid machine that can learn and express real emotions. However, there is one emotion it has not grasped yet: guilt. What kind of situation do you create to help it understand what it means to feel guilty?...

One time, on vacation in Mexico,

the birds spoke to me.

I was twelve then—

all bones, Pepsi, and rebellion.

I didn’t understand their words.

I didn’t understand

the glowing feeling in my chest.

I didn’t know joy was better than getting high.

Because the first time I smoked,

it tasted like that lake

where my friends and I swam on summer break.

Like the lips of the girl

I was never supposed to kiss...

The clouds are running in the sky,

Trailing an icy white,

Clothed in the skin of the dead.

Folded in the cobalt blue,

Lord they see rising through,

Golden as heaven,

Real as gold.

Dropping to their knees,

They cry,

Falling to their chests,

They await their wings to fly.

Death is the final color

In a sunrise.

Some mix of terracotta and peach.

Some burning palette of

_let it be over, please._...

Somewhere in every army, there is a godless soldier—if not two, if not three, if not many more.

Most soldiers turn to God the second they realise the bullets they’re firing aren’t just piercing a dot on cardboard but flesh just like theirs. It’s not like hunting deer in the woods behind your house. No, you’re killing something that looks just like you. And when you realise that, you need God. ...

I scraped the throat of heaven,

clawing my way out;

I scraped the dirt

from the shower’s grout.

I saw God on my way,

a cigarette hanging from his mouth,

like his son from the cross.

I saw two women drinking liquor and

stealing underwear from Ross.

I dared to look him in his golden,

all-forgiving eyes;

I dared to watch YouTube on my phone

and let it slowly die.

“And oh, to all, to peace…”

“Give...

When you’re reading this, you might laugh, might call me crazy. Say I’m lying. But no—this ain’t something you can make up. I’m cursed. Not blessed, not lucky. Cursed.

Just hear me out.

I live by the water, as far from people as I can get. I do what I know—fishin’. Now, I wouldn’t call myself a fisherman, not exactly. That’d be a stretch. But you can call me Lou. That’s my name. That’s who I am...

The first moment I open my eyes, it’s like being born again—but this time, I’m alone, and the room is completely dark. No light seeps in from beneath a door, no soft glow filters through a window. I try opening my eyes again, unsure if they were ever truly open to begin with, but nothing changes. The darkness is absolute.

Panic crawls up my throat, but before I can let it take hold, I realize so...

Had I built a world that wasn’t real?

though it felt so, my broken heart,

somehow it healed.

Had living been disguised as being alive?

when bad things happen they don’t say

to live, they say to survive.

The creatures danced above us as we marvelled at the sky,

we had not expected to find a world as amazing as this.

They told us that Heaven was not real

and that God was dead.

That it was a...

As we trekked this endless path of heat,

our faces stinging with days of sweat,

the sun whispered a secret to me:

it’s easier to walk to the rhythm of

your own heartbeat.

We can fall to our knees,

bathe ourselves in dirt,

our hands desperate for reach,

we can scream, and allow the sun

to wash us clean.

The sun whispered to me:

it’s easier to count to three.

We can remember how to breat...

In the darkness, someone grabs me by the wrist and slams me into the building’s wall, my head thudding against the bricks, and the world spinning as the metallic taste of blood fills my mouth.

I have the good sense to fight back against my attacker, whoever it is, and lunge forward, knocking them onto the ground. They attempt to slide from underneath me but I have a firm grip on their arms. “Who...