A deposit of azure Caerulum glimmers deep within the inky cold strata. The miners’ pickaxes splinter the stone in rhythm to their anthem. Drills thrum, gears grind, grunts echo, and oil drips—the never-ending song of the crystal mines.
But I don’t
We plodded through the streets, human water droplets forming tributaries that flowed toward the Auditorium. Talking was forbidden now that Corporations owned words. It was too late to mourn the legal battles over copyrights won by slick lawyers. The world order had changed, and there was
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Tavin was on autopilot until everything ahead turned a bright vermillion.
His feet had been leading him home while he watched his favorite engineering channel, trying to meet his required screen time. His family didn’t need trouble with the ever-vigilant Inspectors.
He’d lightly
I jogged to keep up with Mother, my clanging footfalls on the raised metallic walkway nearly lost to the cacophony of the market. The unique technological marvels in the city of Cantabile had convinced our captain to land on this world and let me, the crew’s
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Janitor. Maid. Hygienic maintenance specialist. All these job descriptions were technically accurate. But none of them alluded to the truly unique skillset required to be a member of the staff cleaning crew at C.A.P.E Quarters—that is, the headquarters of the Crimefighting Association of Powered Entities.
She was Dee Dalsey … The Cleaning Lady.
“Our firm must move with the times, Jacob. Renting an automaton will cost us half of what hiring a human clerk will, including the coal to power it. They are less error-prone, as well. Many London businesses are doing so. It’s in The Times.” Scrooge handed the newspaper clipping and his calculations to his partner.
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Zai Witz gritted his teeth, bracing himself for the worst as the gray-haired, grim-faced Dr. Fox completed the exam.
“Mr. Witz, you have a third-degree… stubbed toe.” The doctor rolled her eyes. “March yourself out of my emergency department. This is the fourth time I’ve seen you this week over nothing.”
Witz winced.
“I hired a mechanic, not a food service worker. What’s with the hairnet?” Greg Hahn sniffed, as if I were trying to smuggle improperly preserved twentieth century school lunches from my shuttle onto his shiny space station and he smelled something foul.
Don’t let his attitude bother you, Joe. You can handle another Z Job.
The stiffness in my metal joints tells me there’s a chill in the air. I look up, and a flake of snow falls on my sight-sensor. Thin steel wipers swipe it away, sending it onto the miles-long heap of rubbish and waste—forgotten objects from a faraway world, once loved, now cast into the
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Sadie was seven years old, sitting next to her father on the flat roof of their low-slung barn as they watched farm workers move through the fields under the harvest moon. The mechanical whir of the robots filled the warm September air, and crickets sang along. Their metal limbs gleamed as…
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One and a half miles. Seven thousand nine hundred and twenty feet.
That alone stood between Reese and the Triple Crown.
And eight other horses, but who cared about them? Not Reese, and certainly not her horse, Paddock Pizzazz, who butted his metal head against the starting gate, impatient. Smoke blew from the metal plates covering his nostrils, filling Reese’s lungs with acrid exhaust.
When I woke, I could feel each fiber of the plasticky hospital sheet covering me. But it was distant, almost like someone else was feeling it. I pulled off the sheet and stared at two human-looking legs. I dug my fingernails into my right quadricep hard enough to make it bleed but felt no pain.
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