For weeks, Sprite had told herself that Ratchanee Malakul was helping her hero get better, but no. “You have to accept that Jaran is never going to have sex with you,” the lifeguide told Sprite, as she was leaving on that last day. “You’re wrong,” s…

At the nurses station, Qina and Auntie Han were the only two left on duty. Everyone else had already gone home, relief flooding their faces as they exited the ward. Qina wasn’t her usual carefree self—but who could blame her? She was in the middle o…

This is a story that ends as all stories do, eventually, in deaths. When Ada’s parents died in the winter of her sixth year, she was sent to the neighboring parish to live with her aunt, Margery. via Pocket

And then there was quite a long time with nothing to chase. No suggestive tracks in the ice, no hopeful stories told by misinformed strangers. The air didn’t hold any name glancingly resembling her name, and there weren’t even rumors about intriguin…

Sometimes the Discontinuity kinks and curves and flips about as if it is alive. Openings slide along its vast length like undigested morsels down the gullet of a cosmic serpent. via Pocket

Sister Nadine’s first true thought is of beauty. Father Paul is delivering a sermon on sacrifice in his deep voice, pausing for emphasis every so often, when the bird lands on the ledge of her squint with a silent flutter of wings. via Pocket

“I rise today on this September 11th, the one-year anniversary of the greatest tragedy on American soil in our history, with a heavy heart . . . ” —Hon. Jim Turner September 9, 2001 Jessica slumped against the inside of the truck door. via Pocket

Landing planetside used to be a good feeling. via Pocket

The occasional breeze allayed the scorching midsummer heat, soothing the fever dreams of the sleepers in the mining scar. The remote blue sky was rooted to the earth, which here in the work zone was the blood red of hematite. Zhang Hua crouched low.…

They all tried to save me. In that space between life and death, you make a decision whether to wake up. Maybe that’s when time ceases to matter. I felt older than four years old and too young to remember. via Pocket

When Li Yaya was roused from sleep, it was seven o’clock in the morning on a Saturday. This was aggravating because the day before Saturday was Friday, and on Friday nights, Yaya never retired too early. The first thing she saw when she woke up was …

My father’s stables were the most important part of his holdings. By the time I had ten summers, I could soothe a panicked stallion and help birth a breech foal. via Pocket

The skimmer is on the roof waiting for him, but he cannot help but pause to take a few deep breaths when he first enters all that open space. via Pocket

Chenguang hikes up her sleeves before vaulting over the pile of fuzzy moss and greets Lukas with a nod. The chloropolyurethane fabric flaps in the slight breeze and the double suns beat down onto her arms. via Pocket

They never gave her a name; when she needs one she names and renames herself after the birds she sees from the watchtower, the birds she sees in the forest, whichever most recently caught her eye or arrow. via Pocket

Stormchases’ little skiff skipped and glided across the tropopause, skimming the denser atmosphere of the warm cloud-sea beneath, running before a fierce wind. via Pocket

Have you ever found yourself on a midtown sidewalk on some warm July day when a plummeting body splattered on the pavement, directly in front of you? Close enough to feel the explosive shockwave of hot liquid air, pelting your trousers with meat pel…

The Gods were circling when the sun rose, nine long patches of black that did not brighten with the sea as the sky lit up. I watched Them, Their knife-blade fins like polished onyx slicing the surface, formation shifting but the huge old matriarch a…

Gonzo arrived in an assault of brass music and spilling banners rippling the pelt of cannon smoke where her feet would’ve been, taking up the hotel entrance in all its marble and chrome—its expensive anachronisms and the people paid to stand next to…

Wake up, killer. For a year, two, you’ve been the static hum of space, floating, spread out over a solar system, asleep, invisible. Girl born on Helio 70, you. via Pocket

Long ago I dreamt things to myself because, when I talked to people, I had nothing else to do, most of the time. Robots were easy. I could loan them cycles and bandwidth to temporarily accelerate them, or just download them and read them completely …

I was sixteen when the viz came. The spiral went crazy for a while, shooting, soldiers at the corners. But then, like everyone knows, it went back to normal. By twenty I was looking for ghosts in the vaults. via Pocket

Sahar, moving softly through the river valley, made sure to listen. The sound filtered into her helmet from the external mics, and she imagined this must be what hiking on Earth must be like. via Pocket

Peter had been in the ground for six months when the birds began pushing up out of the earth. Small ones, at first, with brown feathers: sparrows, spitting out topsoil, their black eyes alert. They shook and stretched their wings in the sunlight. vi…

But visions are not prophecies, he told me. Prophecies come true. “There is a place,” I told him, “where time runs back on itself, where parallel lines converge, and where visions become prophecies. Where you will be not alone. via Pocket

I had heard Rob’s question. It’s just that while I was in the middle of performing CPR in the back of an ambulance on a patient who had been very stable until he had all of a sudden up and crashed, I wasn’t going to stop and answer it. It was a stup…