High above the Amazon Rainforest, Hynd circled, her massive wingspan only visible by the shadow she cast on the battlefield below. She felt the wind pass across her wings, whispering of torrential rain coming; not her concern, so far above the clouds, but she packaged the data and shot it down to the comms base at ground level so the grunts would know what was coming.

“Once upon a time,” outputted the algorithm, “there was an AI.

“It generated recipes and ingredient descriptions for an online grocery store. The website said that this recipe was not just a squash soup recipe, but it also was a good diet recipe / keto recipe / recipe for autumn nights / five ingredient recipe / easy beginner recipe / recipe to impress your date.

Today, like every other day, I wake up expecting to die before night comes. No, I’m not suicidal and I don’t have a death wish. I am just a Hunter. The life expectancy of the average Hunter in the Second Quadrant is ten years, and even that is if they are exceptionally lucky. There are too many ways to die in this line of work; so much that not even the few old-timers like myself and Jess can remember all the deaths we’ve experienced.

No one can deny that the Apollo program of the early 1970s was an embarrassment to our nation: ill-conceived, hostile, and audacious. Not only did the astronauts fail to bring back the severed head of the Moon King, but every one of them fled within hours of having landed, urinating in their suits as they retreated. The assault on the lunar surface stopped short at the planting of a stiff and garish flag.

1.You’ve gotten a C-minus, and it isn’t your fault. It is also not your fault that your parents are anal, Pakistani immigrants who came to this country with nothing and think a C-minus in tenth grade spells life-long doom. It doesn’t help that your Auntie (your mother’s cousin three times removed) is staying over and caught you watching inappropriate content on your laptop.

When she decided to wander through the woods in search of poppy fields and prowling houses, the stepmothers and grandmothers scoffed.

“You’ll be looking for love potions and beauty serums, then. Shallow. I always knew you were an insecure girl.”

“She wants slimmer thighs.”

“She craves wider hips.”

“She knows the boys don’t look twice at her, that she’ll never marry. Sad.”

When Amy begins to flay herself during office hours, you aren’t quite sure what to do. You hate office hours. You used to enjoy them, actually, back before the flayings started. Sure, it’s hard sharing your office with three other postdocs, and sure, you could spend these hours more efficiently without constant interruptions from shy undergraduates with a dozen questions already answered on the syllabus.

In a minute, nothing we’ve said to each other and nothing we’ve done with each other will ever matter again. I don’t want her to go. We’ve just made love: spontaneous, unexpected, volcanic, in the way that sometimes occurs between people who are usually more cautious, more guarded, more moved by rational calculation than whim.