Previously published as 'Undoing Cycles' by Noct Moll.Ignorance is bliss, knowledge is suffering......until you remember your past.Seventeen-year-old Lisa manages the laundry at the hotel between worlds.Has always managed, in the eternity stretching backward.Will always manage, in the eternity stretching forward.In other words, forever. Because that's what the worker-residents of the hotel do for the re...

In the quiet village of Eldham, ninety-year-old Sonje Rapp holds a secret more enduring than time: her cow, Anabelle, whose milk carries the power to heal, preserve… and perhaps, reverse fate itself.When Sonje's estranged grandson Herrick returns, desperate and debt-ridden, he sets his sights on her most precious companion.But Anabelle is no ordinary cow, and Sonje is no ordinary old woman. What begins as a quiet standoff between generations spirals into a ...

Arthur Schopenhauer. Frida Kahlo. Helen of Troy.Bazz is the proud designer of the unique, noble, and memorable faces given to these icons.Art. Craft. Life itself. That is what face design is, for Bazz.He does whatever it takes to design faces that make a human's life worth living: spending long shifts at his workstation at the Face Design Department, dealing with his uninspiring boss, and limiting his existential rumination to the briefest of moments so that he does...

In a world where touch brings oblivion, a girl with hands that make things vanish must decide if her power is a curse—or salvation.Nine-year-old Laika has spent her entire life within the walls of a secretive hospital run by religious fanatics, where her deadly touch is contained by milk cartons tied around her hands.When a burned boy named Helio arrives and discovers that Laika's touch reveals his inner light instead of destroying him, their unusual powers...

Nothing beats watching cat videos.Especially in a world where cats don't exist anymore.Flora loves nothing more than cats.And Firmament, an advanced algorithm, shows her exactly the kinds of videos she loves.So, with a practically infinite reservoir of cat videos, Flora is fairly content--even while living in a coffin-like metal booth. All human survivors live in one of these booths in a pit, after all.Everything stays splendid, until...

"Band 1" is a chronological collection of previously published short stories by Ithaka O.- - -List of stories in this collectionMoonlight Through the ManholeTo Me Who Is UselessBecause They Don't Bleed RedSilver LiningReplaceablesMuseum of Earth Art

When a simple airport delay becomes a fight for humanity's future, technician Aria Rush discovers that some connections run deeper than code.Aria thought she was just helping an elderly man and his malfunctioning aidbot navigate airport security. But Antonius Wang isn't just any old man—he is the reclusive genius who revolutionized the bot industry. And his "broken" bot isn't broken at all.Now Aria is running through a world where the line between human and...

Three stories, each based on three random words.1) marsh, month, birdNothing beats a peaceful walk through the marsh, K told herself. Whistling a cheerful tune, she followed the winding path around a pond of elegantly floating ducks....2) eye, exploration, morselWhen X learned that one of her eyes had gone blind, she didn't cry....3) obstacle, sculpture, assessmentNot anybody and e...

He's just a delivery guy walking the surface of the earth......in an era when humans don't rule there anymore.Overcast skies. Greasy roads. Endless sonic tension.That's the cold reality a young man must face when he wants to get anywhere above-ground these days. It's a risk. It can get deadly. Yet he must rise above the shield of safety to protect his loved ones.If only the machine overlords wouldn't notice.

Survivor's guilt. It comes in all shapes and forms.Even as a funeral guest.Kevin Ralter blames himself for his wife's death. Little does he know that she met someone up there in the clouds before drawing her last breath. Can Kevin handle an unexpected meeting with this mysterious figure?

A month has passed since the day at the airport, the day that changed Aria's restless life. Now that she's recovered from the injuries of that day, she plans to leave her hiding place.The objective: get human skin and hair for her new robot friend. Without such a disguise, long-term success is unlikely, regardless of what their plan involves: continued hiding, fleeing elsewhere, or fighting.But little do they know what a changed appearance can do to a bot and its closest hu...

Everybody and their neighbor's dog thinks they can handle the truth.But the truth is, they can't.Three years ago, Madame Polonaise's Palm Reading Salon went by a different name: the Scientific Palm Studies Institute.Decorated more like a dentist's office than a fortunetelling shop, the Institute suffered from misbranding. Only when Madame Polonaise gave up much of her self-respect (and abandoned words like "objective," "logical," an...