Chasing Joe Enza was like trying to catch smoke. Just when I thought I had him, he’d slip through my fingers, leaping into another timeline—another reality. It was maddening.
But this time, he was still in sight—at least for now.
I tucked a long strand of my auburn hair behind my ear
“We must evacuate!” Ojiichan warned. “Evacuate or die!”
For just a moment, there was no reaction. I trembled, not knowing what to expect. I silently implored them to listen to my grandfather.
Instead, they laughed. Not as if he had told a joke, but as if he was the joke. Worse still…
“I got nothing.”
My grin was snarky because I meant that both ways: what you say when you have absolutely nothing to add to a conversation. And literally. Because I had no re-memory.
My Eternal Counselor, Mirah, looked distressed. “Please, Ms. Iandolo…”
“Ronni,” I corrected. “Since we’ll be here a while, might as well be
I find my father standing on the balcony overlooking our courtyard, his arm drawn back, a trident in hand, aiming at my airship.
“This invention is worse than Icarus’s wings,” Páppa shouts.
“Don’t!” I drop my sewing. Strips of whalebone scatter on the floor. Instead of winding through my side of our U-shaped home,
“Welcome back to the afternoon session,” Conference Chair Toke Tuilaepa greeted, his floral print button down shirt and suit jacket straining to contain a barrel chest and broad shoulders. “The first panel after lunch is always a challenge, but Explaining the Pacific Islander Wanderlust is not one to miss.” He turned to the two
Read it now
If you were to ask me to list the Top Ways I Might Die Someday, “decapitation in a Safeway parking lot” wouldn’t have been at the top of the list.
What a difference a couple of days makes.
I looked around at the gaggle of survivors huddled in the safety of a shallow drainage
They come to me for the dreams—bubbles of florescent light that pop behind their eyelids and reveal an elsewhere. They don’t even care where they go. They just don’t want to be here.
I understand. With Earth a hair’s breadth away from total annihilation due to alien laser beams, I get the need…
The rhythm of boots against the metal stairs rumbled through the complex louder than the sirens. Jake 257 covered his ears and ducked under the cafeteria table.
Demir 338 peeked down with a smirk. “That’s not the take-cover alarm.”
Lila 411 leaned next to him, pressing her headset to her ear. “Yeah, the emergency’s
Boom!
Christopher jumped up, knocking their board game off the kitchen table. He turned toward his sister, Paisley. “What was that?”
She shrugged. “Sounded like it came from outside.”
Rushing to the window, Christopher tore back the curtain of their third-story apartment and stepped onto the balcony. The view made him gasp.
An entire universe lies between us now. And I just want to touch him, one last time.
I sit in the window of my berth. We’ve been drifting through space for six months; the panorama of stars beyond is the same as it’s been for most of that time. We survived because we fled.
We have been in the shelter for an hour, but it feels like a lifetime.
My tongue is thick, cotton-dry from disuse. Though my eyes have adjusted, the light is too dim to see my family’s expressions––just the faint outline of Mum’s slender nose, Finn’s trembling lips. My hair has unraveled from its braid,
“Y’know, it’s still pretty cool to look at,” Gil said, as another solar flare flickered out across the night sky. “You can see splendid patterns, roiling changes that resemble wind direction, and a fantastic purple-orange hue to the sky. It’s a bit like the Northern Lights, I think.”
He turned and pointed upwards
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