Data broke in waves against the caged arena like high tide. Nuri’s green eye collected the feed, harvested it from the nanotech swimming in the crowd’s guts.
The women in the cage each bent, tensed, muscles corded, instructions from the chittering cortex rigs on their backs cracking through them like whips. They stalked each other like lionesses. Nuri and Marquez could see changes in the vitals, brainwaves, could see the enhancements spinning up and bodies overworking to compensate.
They’d been given ring names. Mojave, or at least his voice, called out each as she’d entered the ring. One with a red rig on her back grew claws. She was Bastet. Curved, braced titanium between each knuckle, enhanced speed. Bastet launched herself at Fury, a tattooed girl, green rig, with spiking adrenaline and strength bursts. Fury was sweating bullets and looking everywhere at once. She caught Bastet in mid-air and slammed her to the ground in a fluid motion. For a split second Fu

It used to be an aircraft hangar, big enough for three C-130s to touch wingtips, occupying what used to be a GOSAZ emergency response airfield. Shot through with buckling tarmac and overgrown with brush, the airfield was now a fuselage graveyard, home only to coyotes and squatters.
Witch’s Night, the moon was pink and clouds scudded ugly across her. Nuri sat inside an empty air scrubber casing, itself inside the hangar, bolted just under the ceiling. She looked through the vent grille at the preparations below. Divebomb was setting up shop.
Divebomb was a guerilla venue. Not a place, a mobile concept. Sometimes it was a pitch-dark nightclub issuing patrons low-light goggles in the guts of a Venezuelan freighter in port. Sometimes it was a ten-minute obscene art gallery erupting in animated nanotattoos on the backs of a flash mob in the middle of the Cascade during the Christmas rush.
The collective had a Robin Hood reputation among the glitterati and the avant garde. Anti-corpora

It used to be a GOSAZ emergency airfield, now an aircraft graveyard, and a haven for off-grid squatters.
The full moon glowed pink in the sky grime, and Nuri threaded her bike through without lights, her green eye bringing skeletal fuselages into view like great metal shipwrecks. She threw her leg over and hopped off, running the motorcycle up the cargo ramp of an old C-130 hulk. It creaked and banged with the wind. She knew the plane well, used it as an equipment drop often.
She leaned her bike against the side of the bay, threw a tarp over it and looked around. She had somewhere to be, but this place always made her pause. Wasn't that long ago when she'd stand alone, stock still, in cargo bays just like this, a couple miles over a drop zone, shuffling a toothpick from side to side between her lips, waiting for her go signal. Sometimes it wouldn't come, and she'd stand down for a long ride home. Sometimes the whole bay would go red, the cargo door would drop, then so would she, into t

Sound of a metal, segmented door rolling upward. Needs a hit of grease. Grunts of a man, tough but out of shape, with a lot of mileage on him.
“Hiiii, Gard-dog!” Girl’s voice, nine or ten. Sound of a chair squeaking, spinning.
Sound of the door rattling closed. Sound of a respirator’s elastic sliding off. Sound of a man’s heavy footsteps.
“Yeah, yeah, don’t with the ‘Hi, Gard-dog.’ I know you heard me coming. Could have opened the fucking door.”
“Aww. Don’t be poopy. What’d you bring to eat?”
“Thai.”
“A-gain?”
“Thai’s cheap. So’s my boss.”
“Yeah. Nothing I can do about that.”
Sound of the man walking up next to her, clearing a space on the workbench beside her. Sounds of parts, metal, lots of them.
“What is all this shit?”
“My STUFF. Well. Her stuff. You know.”
Sound of a bag hitting the workbench. S

The children, as they always did, perched on the Stones for the Evening Telling. The Teller stood, face in white, Stick of Truths in his hands. When it was such, only the Teller could say stories and tell truths. All others were to stay silent unless called to respond. Even the Chief-In-The-Walls could not speak if he were in attendance, although tonight’s Telling was only for the children and Mums.
Behind the Teller, the Burning Mums tended the Telling Fire. It kept the Teller in silhouette, and the children’s faces sweaty with its heat, hotter than usual tonight. The girls especially scratched at the cloth over their mouths.
Further back, seated on wider Stones, the Mums heavy with child attended the Telling as well, mouths also covered.
Tonight, the Telling was of the Beginning, and the Teller was on a tear. He told, spittle flying, of death on the winds, of the Great Plagues that swept the world like a broom, leaving only dust and dead behind. WEH-POH-NY-ZED began the c

"You wanna see something cool, Peter?"
Marnie's hair was long, shaggy. She peered at me through it. Shy. Brown eyes behind black curtains.
Every time she said that, it was an adventure. Danny'd snicker at me. "Where'd she drag you off to this time, Pete? Catch a chicken and kill it? Pull the wings off butterflies?"
The whole town thought Marnie and her family were strange. Marnie was bullied at school. One time Danny shoved a cup of worms into her locker. Everybody thought that was real funny.
I didn’t. It was stupid. Marnie was just quiet. Her mom drank a lot, didn’t leave the house much. Her dad, well. He wasn't around.
Marnie drummed threadbare sneakers on my porch. One of her knees was scabbed.
"Sure," I said. We grabbed our bikes.
--
Marnie led me down a dirt road. She stopped, skidded up dust. I did the same. "There," she said, "We're going under the fence." She slipped her thumbs under the barbed wire and scooted under it like a raccoon. She held the wire up for me.

In a special post-playoff promotion, the glass walls of the Cascade, the canyon of capitalism that formed the heart of the Gulf Orleans Special Administrative Zone, all went opaque. A drone swarm projected titanic images of bubblegum virtual-idol twins Akari Moment and Akumi Realize, excitedly blazing post-game analysis in chirpy, focus-group tested voices.
It was dawn, but the sullen, pink sun couldn’t compete with the perpetual industrial fog and the Akari and Akumi show on fire among the skyscrapers below.
Nuri tied back her hair against the buffeting wind, adjusted her respirator and popped out her right eye. She was tethered to the satellite array on top of the Arcadia Sophia Hotel. About thirty floors down was Star Player’s suite. She already had the lay of the land in her flashbank, knew it was about time for golden boy and his agent to have a post-surgery face-to-face over breakfast, or whatever baby food they were letting him eat, given his new kidneys.
Nuri put he

The stadium roof was a steel spider web, lit pink and red from above by digital sakura falling from a passing promo airship.
Nuri stood in silhouette against the giant springtime display behind her. Far below, pyros fired, bold colors reflecting from her left eye. A crowd roared. She shifted her weight, leaned against the metal support of the huge LEDs that craned over the stadium like wide-eyed insects. Final score. Somebody won, somebody lost.
Nuri clicked through her feed brought through her right eye. Money changing hands. She could see it pulse through the stadium like a heartbeat, fed through satellites, wire transfers, currency exchanges. She smiled a little as she confirmed one exchange. Why not? She was here anyway.
She clicked over to the social feeds, then VR, then news crawls, all the while watching her cameras. Killing time, until.
Her mouthpiece slid into place from her ear like a grass snake, and Gardener's voice crackled in, right on time as always. "Is he moving?"
Quic

They ignored their City's gleaming towers,
her rose-hued walls,
her sparkling streets,
her abundance.
They had eyes only for the other across the plain.
It was not until
her towers rusted,
her walls fell,
her people starved,
That they found the other across the plain
was a mirage.

There were a lot more trick or treaters this year.
Lot more spider mans, wonder womans,
little astronauts in their pressure suits,
more moms and dads carrying the helmets after a few blocks
this year.
This year, spider man is going to a new school,
one taking on lots of new spider mans,
and wonder womans,
and astronauts,
with the same teachers carrying the extra load
this year.
This year, wonder woman's mom washed her
magic lasso
with her school clothes
in a washing machine fixed up
by students, and dried them on a pole welded
by students and
maybe they'll be able to move out of this shed
this year.
This year, little astronauts spacewalked for candy
around the piles of fence that aren't fence anymore
but little mountains of weeds and lumber and dead vine chicken wire,
maybe the trucks and ones driving the trucks
working extra-long shifts
along with the mosquitoes
will pick up all the pieces
this year.
This year, there was a hurricane.
Wind, high water and rain
where whole towns used to

Came out of the sand,
wind blowing hot
ruffling his hat brim
No wings.
They had wings, we thought,
but the Good Book
never said anything about that.
Just a long chain
A long chain,
A chain as long as we've been here
crawling across His skin
until today.
A long chain,
holding a big box
tight
on his back,
pine,
fine grain,
if you've a mind
for detail.
Along his chest,
leather.
He pulled it,
Sam Colt
in each claw,
and he dared the horizon
Draw,
you Sons of
Sons of
Bitches,
And as we started,
we ended,
rats, crawling over the dirt
scrambling
for water
for sun
for a dark hole away from
the storm
we'd made.
One
by one
by one he raised his hands
and squeezed
and turned that wheel
amidst the gun
never stopping,
never running dry
and the box on his back
held there by the chain,
every link our lives,
put there since the start,
every link we died
until the box was full.
And then one day,
one drunk in a dark room
encased by clay
wrote it down as a flood
of water
when two by two every beast of the