They gave me a certificate last Tuesday. Employee of the Month, February, laminated and everything. Karen from HR stood in the break room and started clapping, so everyone else did too, because that’s what you do when Karen starts clapping. The certificate has my name spelled wrong. Darryn instead of Darren. I didn’t like to say anything.
Continue reading “Productivity”
The door was unlocked. They always left the doors unlocked in the Reassignment Blocks. There was nowhere to run, and they knew it.
She moved through the hallway quickly, head down, the way you learned to move when you didn’t want to be remembered. Three bowls sat on the table, steaming faintly in the grey light.
Continue reading “Too Hot, Too Cold, Too Wrong”
The sun set at the same time every evening now.
Maren had read about it in the bulletin, the one slipped under the door each morning on grey paper that smelled faintly of something she couldn’t name. Atmospheric Regulation Phase Three. Sunset standardised to 20:10 across all coastal zones. Citizens are reminded that observation of the horizon between 20:00 and 20:30 is prohibited without prior authorisation. She observed it anyway, from the upstairs window, with the light off.
Continue reading “The Wire Across the Sky”
They told me it would be painless. They always tell you it will be painless.
I was seventy-three when they fitted the first interface. A volunteer, they called me. Pioneer. That word tasted sweet once. Now it sits in my throat like old copper wire. They needed someone whose mind had already softened at the edges, they said. Someone whose memories had grown loose, easy to pull free like teeth from rotting gum. The young ones held too tight. Their thoughts fought back. Mine, they said, would cooperate.
Continue reading “Lost Memories: A Tale of Memory Extraction at Seventy-Three”
The old man’s hands didn’t tremble anymore. That was the first thing people noticed, though they rarely lived long enough to mention it to anyone.
“Hold still, dear,” he murmured, tilting her chin upward with one weathered finger. The brush, so small, so impossibly fine, traced the curve of her lower lip. Vermillion. Always vermillion.
Continue reading “The Finishing Touch”
The AI Grandad 