LINKDING

quote: Dad says Auntie was beautiful when she was young, with a bright-eyed gaze, pure yet alluring, and a slender, curving waist. When happy, her face was like springtime. When sorrowful, she was like a thin willow bending in the wind. Sometimes I try to imagine my aunt’s youthful beauty, and I end up thinking of those fox demon women in Zhiyi novels, eyes flickering like stars. With a slight twist of the demon’s waist, your soul is hers. But Auntie was the type who’s a thousand miles removed—aloof, full of rebuffs. Every boy who saw her back then suffered pangs of desire, yet they shunned her. Before Deng Baolin met her husband, she scratched the faces of thirteen boys. She was a prickly beauty, a thorny rose. In short, she was completely unlike the person before my eyes. ➤ scifi short story translated from chinese; originally published in 2021 ➤ it's a fascinating outside-outside pov, a nephew telling the story of his aunt, whose story is that of her famous physicist-astronaut husband ➤ the multiple layers of abstraction work well for this story -- and the narrative loops around itself in how it's told too, wandering forwards and backwards in time to circle around the heart of things ➤ which is really a story about family and about place and about how you decide what to prioritise in your life ➤ it's lovely and thoughtful and wistful. I really liked it! ➤ 7k words in length

<blockquote>I am a tender. I tend the St. Benedict Radioactive Materials Containment Center. I perceive the outside world through treated glass. My immediate surroundings are barren but comfortable. I can order anything I like, necessity or luxury, from the Federal Sustainability Program. The items I order are delivered by truck and placed in a transfer box that decontaminates everything that enters it, including the air. The purpose of this system is not to protect me from contamination by the outside world, but to protect the world from me. St. Benedict’s is meant to be a temporary facility, a place to hold materials destined for deep, permanent burial, but the fears of the public make it so hard to create permanent facilities that no one knows how long this place will be necessary. My job is to monitor the levels of toxicity in and around the containment vault and submit reports to the Sustainability Program. “I used to be very unhappy,” I wrote recently to the psych team, “but now I am happy because I have meaningful work.” </blockquote> ➤achy