Miles woke several more times, each time panicked. The staff watched with clinical indifference as he thrashed. His eyes rolled wildly in his skull, his teeth gritted and his muscles fought the straps that held him down. The last time, his eyelids fluttered and slowly opened. “He’s ready,” one of them said to the darkened …
Miles opened his eyes to the glare of a cloudless sky. He felt ridges beneath his back, the corrugated tin of his family’s roof. He had spent countless evenings up here as a child, starting at the accusing blink of the spire’s lights and the odd beauty of the sunset. The pink and green softness …
The transpo came to a slow halt, stopping at a checkpoint. The lights hovered above Miles, spindly limbed quadrocopters festooned with lenses. Several took sight of him, and their mechanical pupils expanded and contracted as they sucked in his features. The clouds beyond them were a dingy pale green, reflecting the spotlights and neon mounted …
Miles had spent much of his life avoiding the internal workings of the City. So many people: gears in a great machine designed to extract blood from others. With that many gears, it was too hard not to get crushed. He had, of course, gone into the city once. When he had turned 14, he …
After the cop had knocked Miles out, he reached back to his belt, replacing the flashlight and removing a plastic ziptie. He bound Miles’ hands behind him, then spoke into his headset, “Request transpo to spire for processing of rural male.” He waited for the chirp of confirmation, then settled in to wait, leaning against …
The word was spoken with the finality and assuredness only available to authority. “Xin. Miles Xin.” Miles spoke through gritted teeth, blood dripping from his mouth. He had bitten his tongue when the cop tripped him. He closed his eyes. Behind him, he heard the quiet clacking of keys as the cop ran his name …
We begin, as all good stories do, with a fall. We plummet from the bright, ashen sky toward clouds the color of cataracts. Passing through the smog, a red landscape stretches out in every direction. Below, The City rises to greet us, its central spire a thumbtack on an rust-colored carpet. Dust storms swirl at …
While many websites are blacking themselves out today, in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, I thought this would be a perfect time to break my accidental vow of silence and speak. The internet has evolved from its very basic database form into a communications tool the likes of …
The boy is now a man. He stands, feet upon the pavement of a bustling Manhattan street. He is successful. He turned his nothingness into purpose, bringing to bear a wealth of skills and emotional detachment to the field his father had excelled in. A floor of a building in downtown New York now bears …
The next morning had yielded a quiet, stale breakfast. The food lay uneaten, cooling and congealing in heaps upon diner flatware. The old man spoke occasionally, remarking on the scenery of the campus and the presumption he held that his hard earned dollars were being put to good use. The son sulked and sweated, expending …
