**Falvio sat back in his stellar lounge and browsed through a rotating torus of faces that looked uncannily similar to his own. Each small bust floating by had a scene surrounding it. Tiny dioramas showing the habitat and level of technology that the owner of the bust inhabited. He skipped through several whose societies looked too far advanced. He preferred more primitive targets. They didn’t pay...

He sits at the bar, gaze unfocused, maybe getting some sort of cerebral stream-feed, maybe just trying to sort things out. He signals the bartender for another round. She emerges from a dark corner behind the bar like a hermit crab leaving the shell. Her arms stretch out, fingertips undulating, making him think of underwater plants in a tidal current. She feels the space in front of her, orienting...

Shoulders aching, he pulled back on the oar, sending his canoe downstream faster. He wanted to glance over his shoulder, but he only had the will to keep paddling. To keep putting every iota of his focus on making more distance between his craft and the pursuit. The palms of his hands burned from burst blisters, his knuckles oozed blood.

While struggling to keep the boat upright in some rapids, a...

So my birthday isn’t normally something I consider an exciting event. I keep to myself and don’t expect anyone to acknowledge that this day might be more significant than any other. It isn’t to me. I don’t feel any different. Maybe part of me just got tired of boring birthdays at some point.

I came home from work planning on spending some quality time watching videos with my psychotic parrot. He...

We fly. It’s what we do. It’s all we do.

At the first sign of talent, we go off to the training grounds. We are torn from our lives and families, friends, pets, loves…

Tears rain, grief cuts.

And then we fly!

And then there is nothing else. We soar, we see, we try not to die, and we fly!

The first time the spinner takes us up, our psyches tear from our bodies and we soar.

When we lose momentum, we...

Jaime and Will are going to a performance art installation in the Tenderloin and I don’t want to miss it so I said I’d go. I really want to see it because yesterday a couple of my co-workers were talking about it and I was totally clueless. It was awful.

The only problem was that my family has their weekly video call at the same time and I can’t stand missing out on all the conversation there. Wh...

Hey,

I haven’t figured out how I’m going to send this to you yet. I guess it doesn’t matter. Even if I could send it to you, how would you read it? Using pen and appear is so awkward, but I can’t do anything that would give up my location, so no electronic tranmsmssions of any kind. It’s a shame, some of the old cell towers still work.

Back in the day, I travelled with a notebook and pen and even...

I off-boarded yesterday, late, and went straight to the local creative collective for lodging. The door stop met me with typical disdain. I lacked no visible augments. No fused digits or symbiotic disfigurements pronounced my line of expertise.

“Stars to your favor. I need lodging.”

“We only provide for guild members,” he ignored my standard guild greeting.

“I should hope so,” I ignored his aut...