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FictionMicro ExpressionsThe soldiers call me Diogenes, although they never address me directly. I am a state-of-the-art neural network tasked with determining the likely threat of foreign nationals who wish to visit the State. Frame of MindInfiltrating the compound is like stepping into another world. Even primed by intelligence reports, Alec Berg is startled. After days in the desert, what greets him on the other side of the fence is a discontinuity. TransparentWelcome to 2028. Every detail of Lewis' life is laid bare online. The right to privacy is a thing of the past and everyone from his employer to his girlfriend can check his bank account or medical records. Pointing at the MoonThe Om’s wormholes might offer humanity the stars. Could the wisdom of an old man’s fading mind open a pathway blocked to science? For the Love of JazzSeeing nearly three metres of multi-jointed legs and squat metal body towering in front of him, Holden wondered if a lion might not be preferable. Not Enough Stars In The NightScience and progress has turned inward, creating new realities and entire new worlds. Fletcher works as a virtual reality tester to escape to the past, and longs for a bygone era when humankind could still gaze into space. WormwordsIf the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, how many bits does it take to remake a man? Untangling the FutureDigger had glimpsed the future and changed it. His untangler could interpret movements and fluctuations in space-time; it was like a sculptor's tool and he was the artist, shaping the future from the clay it gave him. Family valuesPolitics is a game for experts, even on a wildly alien world, but sometimes charm and audacity can more than make up for a lack of experience. All of CreationTrilobites died out 250 million years ago. Or so we thought. But now they've washed up on a Texas beach. Has a relic population clung on somewhere, away from human attention? Or is there a far stranger explanation... Ganymede DreamsGanymede swings around giant Jupiter like a ball on a million kilometres of string – once for every seven days on Earth. Far away in black space, the protective ecosphere of that blue world is all but chewed away, soaked in man-made toxins. Infant ColicThe baby's howling was stirring something bad in Helen's memory. The vacuum and quiet of the airlock, at least, would provide some space to think. For Solo Cello, op.12Mutilated in an accident, he faced a terrible choice - give up his music forever or raise a child he couldn't help but resent. FoundlingThe charred-looking shapes reminded her of something, an object from the past. Um-brella? Surely no one would ever again make such an elaborate, frivolous object. |
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