A man is coerced into modifying his lover’s street-market implant . . .
Tampering without a license is a felony right up there with dealing firearms. If I don’t get the damn thing treated, she’s dead; if I take her to a doctor, I’ll face incarceration, guaranteed. But everyone’s heard the horror stories, how infections like this one kill. Fragile things, too— puncture it and the fluid spreads along the spine, paralyzing the body or destroying the brain . . .
A vision of a constantly shifting world tells the cost of being efficient . . .
On the third day he woke to find that the door had disappeared. He knew it hadn’t led anywhere, that there was nowhere it could have led. Nevertheless, there was something to be said for the illusion of freedom, even knowing it was an illusion. It took a great effort not to panic, to start beating against those blank, unbreachable tiles . . .
Young recruits find themselves patched in and in more trouble than they bargained for . . .
“Yeah,” Tommy said, swaggering. He tossed an arm around Cassandra, who helped him glare at the droopies. “And it’s a private party, too. We don’t need your ugly alien faces messing up our fun.”
“Ugly faces,” the alien mused. A green iris rolled across the flat black surface of its left eyeball and was gone. “What’s the girl doing here, then?”
A routine terraforming project turns into a genetic puzzle . . .
“Maybe this planet has fast cancer. It has all kinds of crazy things. It’s got birch trees
infected with spiders. It’s—”
”Wait a minute,” I said. “Hold on. You said birch trees infected with spiders.”
“Yeah, just, you know, a figure of speech.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “Oh, my god.”
And eight other stories sure to rouse your curiosity and stimulate your imagination.
