When I was about 16, I decided that I wasn’t real. I don’t remember much of the details of those days, for better and worse. But I recall the certainty I felt then, the concreteness of my refusal. I simply stopped accepting the world. The things I experienced
There was once a king who was blessed in every way. He was kind to his friends and merciful to his enemies. He was severe in matters of state and jovial in matters of spirit. He was possessed of great wisdom, and yet did not think himself so wise that
The epidermis of an android is the part of its body most similar to the humans it was built to emulate; it is also, not coincidentally, the part most frequently in congress with the outside world. Humanoid skin is the android’s armor of subjectivity. It is the quality which
In queer circles, ‘Detransition’ is a dirty word. The reasons we feel such anxiety over this particular topic are fairly understandable: over the last decade, right-wing interests have held up examples (real or imagined) of detransitioners to undermine the very basis of transition care. We are told horror stories of
“Do you think that if you were falling in space, you would slow down after a while, or go faster and faster?" "Faster and faster. And for a long time you wouldn't feel anything. And then you'd burst into fire. Forever... And the angels
I apologize too much. My first memory of making an apology was in elementary school. I must’ve been in second or third grade- young enough to understand, at some fundamental level, that something was catastrophically different about me, but not old enough to understand what it was, or that
Alive again. I reach out through machine amnii, vomiting up dark clouds that billow and stain my face. My palm strikes something that resists, then yields, then splits, and finally I tear myself out, dragging myself limb-over-limb across the scaly floor. The spent surgeonmites flop like dying fish beside my
3 BED, 2 BATH IN LITTLE RHODESIA, MARIE BYRD LAND- Ideal single-family home in charming new settlement in rapidly expanding frontier. Elegant plantation style design recalls heights of American greatness. Settlement amenities include shopping mall, sports stadium, temperature-insulated golf course, and round-the-clock monitoring from contracted PMC. New arable farmland rapidly
You’re feeling lonely so it’s time to go on a date. You open up an app and slap your intake bag a couple of times until the IV gets going again. The algorithm has already selected five potential matches for you. It wasn’t perfect at first (too
I decided to go to Australia; it was that or suicide. I bought a plane ticket and packed my things. Halfway through packing I decided to clean my apartment. At the end it looked as spotless and bare as a monk’s cell. I thought if I was going to
You are a writer of critically-acclaimed novels no one has read. You have spent the past month driving across America, reading excerpts to handfuls of onlookers in bookstore back rooms and echoing college auditoriums. You spent your twenties doing exotic and expensive drugs and you’ve spent your thirties sweating